CONTRARIANS HAVE EDGE 

During the agricultural age playing it safe was safe. Even in the industrial age conservatism showed long-range benefits. In the far more rapidly changing economic and other climates of the communications age risk-takers will be favored, because to do nothing as everything around you changes will be fatal.

Let's look at the currently-accepted belief that environmental disaster is inevitable: that the global-warming trend is irreversible, we will all suffer from lack of oxygen as vast quantities of carbon dioxide rise from former Brazilian rain forests as hungry peasants clear the jungle to survive. Deja vu is that you? Didn't something similar occur with oil in 1973? "The global warming trend is beneficial and should be encouraged" is the new statement. What idiot said that, you ask? Well it just happens to be the fellow that said 20 years ago that a warming trend was underway and not one North American or European scientist supported him. He was a minority of one. The opposition against him was enormous. Now those who follow scientific superstition rather than scientific fact have jumped on the evangelical bandwagon, this time predicting not fire and brimstone but ecological disaster.

Meanwhile, the original visionary whom time has proved right is the same scientist who now makes that second outlandish statement and nobody believes him. What does this say about human intelligence? Was he previously ignored because at that time it was not kosher to accept knowledge from a Soviet scientist? This was pre-Sputnik remember. Reminds me of the derogatory comments from North Americans upon hearing that the Japanese were going to build cars. Statements like "what kind of cars are they going to make with American beer cans?"

Found out, didn't we?

That visionary Mikhail Budyko is now the Soviet Union's leading climatologist and he sees overall benefit from the warming prospect. That quote above are his words, not mine, although I certainly support looking in that direction as well.

Budyko sees "global warming as a good thing", which will create a more rapid turnover in the planetary evaporation system. This will create more rainfall. "It will increase harvests everywhere", he says. The additional warmth will cause polar icecaps to diminish, pouring large quantities of fresh water into the oceans of the world. Just the heating of the planetary seas will expand their size considerably, raising sea levels everywhere. All this enlarges the surface area of the two-thirds of the planet already covered with water. More surface area results in more evaporation and more rain. Because the planet is heating up, hurricanes and monsoons will become more violent. Is this all bad? Not necessarily so. The stronger storms, instead of fading as they hit land masses, will carry on into the interiors of India, Russia and North America, bringing more rain. The wetter soil again exposes larger quantities of water for evaporation. With more rain crops improve. With more carbon dioxide crops flourish.

Budyko admits there will be a drying trend in the U.S. Midwest for perhaps 50 years. Then that will come to a close and the area will become more bountiful than ever. Meanwhile, what else will happen, according to Budyko? "Deserts should disappear in the future", he says. He points out that in previous warm epochs (Pliocene climatic optimum) there were no deserts. "Africa was covered by forests. Now, paradise can return". "Canada and the Soviet Union will flourish most" he says. Only Great Britain will have "no considerable climatic change".

Today a full one-third of the world's land mass is desert. When rain falls on a hot desert, it blooms. When a desert blooms it can grow more food and accommodate more people. Even an arctic desert can come alive. Budyko sees up to 30 centimetres of rain falling in the Sahara, perhaps before the end of the 90s.

Looking for a good real estate investment?

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