It’s been hot lately. Therefore, I assume the press (which I’ve been ignoring) is baying about global warming. Nothing new under the (too hot) sun.
A side note about this video (hat tip to Feral Irishman).
I remember watching this particular episode when it first aired. I remember seeing it on our shitty black and white TV. I remember enjoying Leonard Nimoy’s voice. I remember thinking; “If he’s Spock, doesn’t that mean he’s just an actor? Nah, I’m sure he did his research.” I remember asking my parents about the looming ice age. I remember getting some vague unspecific answer along the lines of “shut up kid”.
I was just a kid. This particular episode scared the shit outta’ me; unlike crap about bigfoot or UFOs which were just plain nerdy fun.
Now I’m older. I’ve seen great heaps of “expert predictions”. Many of them (the vast majority) were so utterly wrong that it’s almost comical. I think maybe each person in every generation has to individually learn “what they say” is crap. Some do it young and quietly. Some do it slow and loudly; spending their twenties “trying to change the world” from their campus sandbox before they settle down and pay off their huge loans for a useless degree. Like the matrix, you can’t be told, you gotta’ see the depth of their incompetence for yourself. A few simply never learn at all; old, gullible, dumbasses exist. However, they’re the exception, not the rule.
I take solace knowing each generation usually figures it out. Someday, maybe 15 years from now, today’s Gen Z kids will be telling their children about how everyone lost their shit in 2020. “It was at most a minor risk, but everyone flipped out. They cancelled school for a year, drove half the restaurants in town bankrupt, and we have all these historic TV commercials where people wear masks and talk about how Applebees cares. It was nuts! You had to be there.”
Their kids won’t believe it. They’ll be busy fretting over their own generation’s bullshit du jour. They’ll be saying things like “this new threat X will wipe our asses from the map in 20 years if we don’t act now!” Doom is always 20 years in the future. It’s always solved by urgently needed massive social change. It’s always something that should be imposed by someone on everyone… for the good of society. Happens every generation.
The experts will make bad predictions. The kids will fret. The geezers will counsel them to calm the fuck down. The wise will shrug their shoulders and go fishing. It’s the cycle of life.