Self Correcting Climate Change

I personally have no doubt about global warming. I read about it in my science class when I was a kid in middle school. I understood green house gases and how they worked and how it could cause mountain ice and polar ice to melt. I got that when I was 12 years old. It's been 21 years since and even now I see people who go around saying "Oh it's just a hypothesis. There's no definitive answer to that question." If you push them harder, they might give in a bit, but then they'll come back with their strongest defense: Earth is too big and it's not possible for humans to damage a planet. And even if they did the planet will correct itself.

I actually totally agree with that last part, Earth will indeed correct itself. And that is the whole problem!! The foundation of the entire global warming and climate change awareness is the idea that we should correct ourselves before the planet starts the correction process. We should NOT let Earth correct itself. Because no matter how we much we call our planet "mother" Earth, after all it is a vicious mother and has no mercy.

With rising temperatures, ice caps will melt, sea levels will rise, many cities will go under water, millions of lives will be lost, there will be more and more irregular patterns in storms, floods, droughts. And this will continue for a while taking a toll on nations and economies. The end result will of course be a lull in human civilization. Humans will be busy trying to fight natural disasters instead of making progress. If your house is burning down (or flooding) you can't sit down to invent new microprocessors. All of this will eventually effect in reduced human activity. Either the planet will find equilibrium in a redistribution of land and water: more water, less land. Or temperatures will start dropping as human activity dwindles, and the planet will enter another ice age. Either way Earth will have corrected itself. Mercilessly.

Priora!

What's the plural for Mustang? Mustangs!
What's the plural for Hummer? Hummers!
What's the plural for Corolla? Corollas!
But what's the plural for Prius? Prius.

At least that's what Toyota says. But they don't mind if customers use whatever their hearts desire. What does Prius mean? It is a Latin term that means before, ahead, prior. So put in context Prius is that which goes before. Wikipedia says the true plural of Prius is Priora. Here is the section. If you know Latin, I suppose it's really easy to understand.

I once walked into a Lexus dealership. They were holding a raffle (or some kind of draw) to give away a brand new Lexus sedan. As we walked up, the receptionist called in a sales person to take care of us. We told him we weren't looking to buy a Lexus, but we wanted to participate in the raffle nevertheless. In our conversation we had mentioned the Prius. And surprisingly the salesman went into a rant about how the Prius causes more damage to the environment than it saves. His argument, and I had seen this before, was that the mining of nickel for the battery, shipping it to Japan, making the battery, shipping the car back to the USA and then in time disposing the battery causes more harm to the environment than a Hummer does. A CNW Marketing analysis named "Dust to Dust" made these same claims. I wonder if that's where he got his talking points from. Of course he didn't mention the tests conducted at MIT, Carnegie Mellon and Argonne National Laboratories that completely shredded the "Dust to Dust" report. Again, here is the section from Wikipedia.

Another time, when we rented a Prius for a road trip, the Hertz mechanic who was around when we picked out the car, said that hybrids are no good at all. They are weak and inefficient and what the world needs is a better gas engine. He also said global warming was sham, scam and nonsense. According to this rental car company mechanic, the Prius is just a political show-off. I was extremely polite when I reminded him that he was neither an engineer, nor a physicist, nor a climatologist and that his opinion, as entitled to it as he may be, is best stored in a dark damp place only he is familiar with.

I called Toyota once to ask them about these claims. They actually took the time to explain the fallacy of the naysayers' arguments.

Priora: the ones that go before. And truly they do. They herald a new era. They blaze a trail for other cars to follow. And indeed, following the rest are.