Twelve thousand years ago the planet emerged from the last great ice age. A century and a half ago the earth emerged from a mini ice age. When the planet emerges from an ice age, it gets warmer, without any help from man. Completely forgotten are the dire warnings of a mere thirty years ago that we were all about to die from global cooling , with the same fearmongers warning of a looming, human-induced ice age. Hot, cold, no matter.
Ignorant fear is the order of the day .
Emulating the rooster that thinks its crowing causes the sun to rise, human ignorance, arrogance, and vanity causes some people to think that they have the power to fundamentally alter the climate of the planet. Environmental extremists would like to see human society driven back to pre-industrial levels, and in California they have been given free reign to implement their vision. It's a failure of the free market, cry the political panderers, government bureaucrats, and environmental socialists who created the mess. Plans, they claim, that will magically create new energy by legislative fiat, without building more power plants or drilling for more oil, without making environmental extremists angry, and even without raising consumer utility bills. The revolution in biotechnology holds the key to defeating disease, ending starvation, boosting the nutritional value of foods in poverty-stricken nations, inventing and producing breakthrough new pharmaceuticals, and helping to preserve the environment.