There is only so much we can prepare for and we only have so much money that we can prepare with. So we make assumptions about things. As I have mentioned before we are forced to make them. However, it does not mean we shouldn’t air them and discuss them. This time it is the assumption we are making regarding our climate.
I’m not a supporter of climate change and think it is a big scam. I have thought that for some time and nothing I have seen makes me reconsider that thought. However, in our unknown event we could have climate change depending on what the event actually is.
If the event is a nuclear war then we face an uncertain climate, a nuclear winter is a possibility. However there is also the risk that sufficient nuclear blasts could change our orbit around the sun. The short term, in the scheme of things, issue with a nuclear winter will turn into a long term ice planet or desert depending on the new orbit.
The same issue with an asteroid strike, a brown dwarf fragment or several other stellar events never mind the natural issues that could lead to changing our climate via earthquakes or volcanoes.
What this means for us is that to really prepare we must also look at preparing for life in either of those environments. That is going to be difficult because we have no idea of the potential severity. Of course the underlying assumption is that we can survive. If not there is no point. So we need to still collect our basics, that is a must, then we have the extras that we add on and we should also ensure that these cover these climate extremes as well.
Thus we need to look at what they do in Africa to survive in a desert environment and what they do in Alaska for a frozen wilderness. Because they may never be used we need to prioritise them appropriately but at the same time they are part of our prepping.
Snow shoes, parkas and a thawb and sandals may make strange cupboard companions but if we have a fully stocked survival kit we should have them.
Something else to think about. If you haven’t already.
We need to be careful when we discuss “Climate change” as to what we mean.
The levels of CO2 in the air are 50% higher than they were before the industrial revolution (and climbing)
The average temperature is 2 degrees higher than it was X years ago.
The polar ice is receding.
These are un-refutable facts.
The consequences of these changes are not facts; they are debateable hypotheses.
> However there is also the risk that sufficient nuclear blasts
> could change our orbit around the sun.
That sounds very dubious, the earth the phenomenally heavy. Are you sure you didn’t see that in a 1950 sci-fi movie?
Skvez
They maybe unrefutable facts but I will believe in them more when the liberals are out of office.
There is one blog that blames man for everything. We are only part of it. Mother Nature hasn’t been sitting on her hind quarters doing nothing. And I believe she does her thing in cycles.
In the US when there were millions of buffalo where did their methane go? Maybe the slaughter of them was a needful thing (don’t get your drawers in a bind this is an example). Maybe those big ol’ reptillians from thousands of years ago let off enough gas that it exploded to their demise.
In our area the weather man gives the past degrees when they started collecting the information. Seems that it was more than kinda hot here a hundred or so years ago. They had more than a few days that would cook the brain.
As far as cold goes I am old enough now to feel a draft 50 miles away. But so far seems that we can put on enough stuff to stay warmer than a popsicle.
And if you can could you tell me who measured the CO2 before the industrial revolution? I would like to know. Yes, man maybe the culprit, but who had the forsight to measure it over a hundred years ago?
We have enjoyed all the things that they say we have done to distroy this earth. Mostly unknowingly. But I cannot believe that it is all our fault. There are things that just happen. And as preppers we are definitly deciding to go back a hundred years and suffer because we feel that something is going to happen to cause such conditions. Chances are it will be man-made rather than nature but we do not KNOW.
Ellen,
CO2 levels from hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago can be measured from air trapped at different depths in snow in antacrtia (and other places where it never melts, just turns into a glacier and creeps towards the sea).
You back my point up exactly.
Climate change is a fact.
The *cause* is not so clear.
The *effect* is even less clear.
Yep, that’s about it we don’t know squat.
Skvez,
The climate on ths planet has been changing for millions of years, long before we made the first SUV. Itis what it means to us in preparing I am interested in not the cause or solution.
I saw portable communicators, hyposprays, lasers and smart computers in SciFi as well as this. Bear in mind that it only needs to shift our orbit a fraction of a degree and we will see massive changes. A single nuclear explosion may change it 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 of a degree but we have nearly 100,000 warheads. That change may be enough to change the mean temprature more than all the cars we have. To me it is a risk, not very likely but many think most of our risk are unlikely anyway.