Climate history clearly shows that we’re living in a blessed time, and that past civilizations generally prospered during warm periods and declined during cold ones.
By Robert Girouard
Since appearing in Africa a few hundred thousand years ago, Sapiens has had to contend with climatic changes of a magnitude and severity far beyond the benign warming we’ve experienced since the end of the Little Ice Age. These include at least two glacial-interglacial cycles, numerous major shifts in temperature and humidity, and cataclysmic eruptions such as that of the Toba volcano around 73,000 BP (yr before present), whose ashes darkened the sky for years. Thanks to his intelligence, Sapiens not only overcame all these challenges posed by a turbulent and unpredictable nature, but also became increasingly resilient, less and less dependent on the climate.
A tumultuous prehistory
From 190,000 BP onwards, our distant African ancestors first faced the Riss glaciation, followed by the Würm glaciation. Default climate during these ices ages was cold, dry and dusty, and polar at higher latitudes.
The mega-droughts that affected much of tropical Africa between 135,000 BP and 75,000 BP made life very difficult, forcing Sapiens to take refuge in the caves along the South African coast (Blombos). The Great Lakes Tanganyika and Malawi, now several hundred meters deep, remained almost completely dry for several thousand years, on several occasions.
Sapiens experienced a brief interval of favorable climate during the Eemian interglacial, which began around 130,000 BP and lasted around 15,000 years. It was significantly warmer than today, as evidenced by the disappearance of the Arctic summer ice pack and Alpine glaciers, and the greening of the Sahara. During the heat peak, the oceans were on average 2°C warmer than at present, which implies much higher temperatures on land. Some archaic Sapiens took advantage of this exceptional climatic window to leave Africa.
Between 70,000 BP and 60,000 BP, thanks to improved and wetter conditions during the last ice age, populations migrated from the coasts of South Africa to East Africa, the starting point for new exits from Africa, this time by Sapiens sapiens.
The first European Sapiens arrived around 45,000 BP (long after their Neanderthal cousins), and over the course of almost 30 millennia, the climate shifted back and forth, creating a veritable chaos. Trapped on the European peninsula, they survived some of the most brutal climatic changes of the last two million years, including a dozen sudden and pronounced warming events (Dansgaard-Oeschger events), with rises of 8°C to 10°C in just a few decades. In winter and during cold periods, the Cro-Magnon bands living in Western Europe took refuge in the valleys and caves of southern France and northern Spain. Even in these valleys, the average winter temperature was around 10°C lower than today.
During the Glacial Maximum, around 20,000 years ago, extreme cold and drought created horrific conditions almost everywhere. African lakes dried up again, deserts spread and human and animal populations collapsed. Vegetation, deprived of an adequate supply of CO2, were crying for food. Dust levels in the atmosphere were 20 to 25 times higher than today. The temperature gradient between the poles and the tropics reached 60°C, 20°C higher than today, generating monster wind and dust storms.
A salutary global warming occurred 14,700 years ago. This was the Bölling-Allerod, which lasted 2,000 years and was particularly beneficial for humans living in the Near East. In this warmer, wetter environment, where the Sahara was once again covered in vegetation, small villages sprang up and Natufian culture flourished.
This boom was suddenly interrupted by a terrible and sudden cooling, the Younger Dryas. For more than a millennium, the nascent civilization regressed. The Natufians once again became nomads, and Sapiens was forced to leave several regions that had become uninhabitable, including England, Belgium, the Netherlands and northern France.
The Holocene and relative climate stabilization
Around 11,700 years ago, our Holocene interglacial began. Temperatures warmed within a generation, vegetation greened up, lakes and rivers swelled, animals flourished… and mankind began to prosper again. And, as with the Bölling, it’s in the Near East, and more specifically in the Fertile Crescent, that civilization first bounced back. Agriculture took root, livestock farming developed in parallel, the first cities (Jericho, Çatal Höyük, etc.) came into being, while cultural innovations such as the wheel, the plough and metallurgy multiplied.
To this day, the Holocene climate has proved to be “relatively” stable, although it has oscillated between warm periods called “climatic optima”, generally favorable for humans, and cold or dark periods, generally unfavorable; these fluctuations of a few degrees in the Earth’s average temperature have been highlighted by the advance and retreat of Alpine glaciers, and other proxies.
The Thermal Optimum of the Holocene (i.e. the warmest period) stretched from 9,500 BP to 5,500 BP. However, it was not to be a long, tranquil period; among other things, the emptying of glacial Lake Agassiz caused a violent global cooling that lasted for several centuries, and its repercussions were felt as far away as the Near East, which then experienced a Little Ice Age. In the face of cold and drought, the survivors were forced into exile, notably in Mesopotamia.
When the Sumerian civilization of Ur reached its splendor, a new climatic crisis hit Mesopotamia, with drought reaching catastrophic proportions around 4,200 BP. Pastoral tribes from the surrounding mountains came down into the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, contributing to the decline of the Akkadian empire.
Analyses of proxies and archaeological excavations have shown that this climatic crisis was resolutely global. It was at this time that many other civilizations and empires collapsed, such as the ancient kingdom of Egypt and the Indus Valley civilization (Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, etc.). In China, the Liangzhu culture in the Yangtze delta, among others, was destroyed by concomitant climatic changes.
Around a millennium later, other civilizations that had flourished thanks to a renewed climatic optimum were hit hard by a new episode of mega-drought, accompanied by famine and migration. We’re talking here about the new empire of Egypt, the Cretan and Minoan civilizations, the Hittite empire, the kingdoms of Mycenae and Ugarit, to name but a few. Within fifty years, they all collapsed, along with the trade networks they had established. The causes of this civilizational debacle known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse are undoubtedly manifold – think of the invasions of the Sea Peoples – but climate change was certainly a factor. The dark ages that followed, which forced Sapiens to adapt once again, marked the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, demonstrating that adverse climatic change need not be a brake on progress.
From 250 BCE (before common era) onwards, a new optimum, known as “Roman” or “Classical”, created conditions conducive to the rise of the great Greco-Roman and Carthaginian civilizations (later absorbed by Rome), on whose ashes Western civilization was later built. The Mediterranean basin is described as an Eden where life is good, and high agricultural yields supply Rome, whose idle population exceeded one million. According to a recent study, this was the hottest period in the last two millennia , and a well-watered one at that. In the absence of sufficient data, it is uncertain whether this optimum extended beyond the Roman world.
From the fall of Rome to the Little Ice Age
Various factors contributed to the fall of Rome. But historian Kyle Harper claims that the collapse was mainly due to successive epidemics and a deteriorating climate. Temperatures began to cool around 250 CE or even earlier. A dozen proxies such as ice cores, glacier advances, pollens and marine and lake sediments attest to the reality of this cooling, to which we must add the writings of the time and other basic data such as solar variations. The granaries of Africa and Sicily dried up, causing famines. The steppes of Central Asia suffered severe drought, leading to migrations by the Huns, who in turn led the Goths to invade Rome.
Conditions seem to have worsened during the Little Ice Age of Late Antiquity, from 536 to 660, which may have contributed to the establishment of the Justinian plague, transformation of the eastern Roman Empire and collapse of the Sasanian Empire, movements out of the Asian steppe and Arabian Peninsula, spread of Slavic-speaking peoples and political upheavals in China.
America was not spared by climate change, though it manifested itself in different ways. The fall of Teotihuacan, the largest pre-Columbian city, around 550 coincided with a change in the monsoon regime in the Mexico basin. In the Yucatan, several Mayan cities also succumbed to the onslaught of drought, despite all the human sacrifices and other barbaric rites devised by the elites to appease the rain god Chaac.
After six centuries of hard times, the gentle way of life returned from 900 onwards. During this Medieval Optimum, which lasted around four centuries punctuated by ups and downs, Europe experienced unprecedented demographic, economic and cultural growth. Countless written sources studied by talented historians such as Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie confirm the reality of this warm period. At times, the weather was warm enough for Northern England to produce excellent, exportable wine, and vines were grown as far away as East Prussia and southern Norway. Agricultural surpluses helped finance the Crusades, cathedral construction and the arts in general. Morals also softened, with the advent of courtesy and the spirit of chivalry.
At the same time in China, the Song civilization was flourishing, by far the most sophisticated and advanced of its time. It was responsible for the construction of extensive canal systems, large bridges and trading ports, as well as the invention of gunpowder, the compass and printing. The art of living reached an unprecedented level of refinement. The Songs were also the first to develop a metallurgical industry using blast furnaces. Their giant warships, powered by paddlewheels and able to accommodate a thousand soldiers, were unrivalled. However, they were defeated in 1279 by the Mongols, who also benefited greatly from the good weather in Central Asia, marked by high rainfall.
In South America, the expansion of the Inca Empire coincided with a significant rise in temperatures in the central Andes between the 12th and 16th centuries. Thanks to this warming and the irrigation made possible by melting glaciers, the Incas were able to substantially increase their agricultural land by terracing the mountain slopes. The resulting surpluses enabled them to build their impressive communication networks and feed their huge armies to carry out their military campaigns.
Medieval warming spread to such northern lands as Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland, where the bold Vikings succeeded in establishing more or less durable colonies. The two communities established on the coast of Greenland held out for several centuries, until the cold returned. Being breeders and beer-drinkers, the Vikings would not have stayed so long if they hadn’t been able to grow grains and barley. Today, however, Greenlanders are still struggling to grow potatoes. Similarly, the discovery under an Alaskan glacier of the remains of a 1,000-year-old forest suggests that temperatures there were also higher than today.
Then came the Little Ice Age, which began in Europe in 1300 and brought its share of misery, famine, epidemics, migrations, revolts and more. The population was halved by the plague and the deleterious effects of climate change, and took a century to recover. Between 1560 and 1630, Alpine glaciers began to advance rapidly during the Grindelwald Fluctuation. The middle of the 17th century was one of the coldest periods of the Holocene. People skated on the canals of Holland and Belgium depicted by Brueghel father and son, while fairs were held on the frozen surface of the Thames until 1814. The most famous of these frost fairs took place during the Great Freeze of 1683-84, when the Thames remained completely frozen for two months.
Numerous historical testimonies from this period attest to the severity of the Little Ice Age, which was not limited to Europe but probably global. Among others, including the Khmer kingdom of Angkor, Ming China was hit even harder, the worst occurring in the 1640s when a powerful volcanic eruption exacerbated climate change.
One of the most sordid and striking cultural manifestations of this troubled period was undoubtedly the witch-hunt in Europe. This movement of “extraordinary popular delusion”, which consisted in accusing perfectly innocent people – poor old women in particular, but also Jews, homosexuals and the mentally ill – of witchcraft, and holding them responsible for all the evils that plagued society, was mainly observed in Germany, Switzerland and northern France, and reached its climax in the years 1560 to 1650.According to various estimates, between 50,000 and 100,000 witches and sorcerers were tortured, hanged or burned to protect society from their supposed misdeeds. All with the blessing of the civil and religious elites, both Catholic and Protestant.
That said, this period of history wasn’t all doom and gloom; it also saw many dazzling innovations, notably in agriculture, architecture and medicine, and even spectacular advances in civilization such as the Renaissance, the Great Discoveries, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It was also during this cold period that the Dutch Golden Age flourished: thanks to their resilience, adaptability and creative opportunism, the 17th-century Netherlands was able to turn climate change to its advantage and rise to become the world’s leading trading power.
The modern optimum and the imaginary climate crisis
For obvious reasons, and whatever the causes, the global warming that followed the Little Ice Age (officially ended in 1850) came as a relief, since it eased the suffering of the cold and ushered in a new Eden similar to the Roman or medieval optimum. We must also never forget that we are living in the neoglacial phase of an interglacial…
Although some believe that warming began after the trough of the Little Ice Age, around 1750, as suggested by the early retreat of Glacier Bay glaciers, it wasn’t until 1910 that we saw the first sustained surge, lasting 30 years, followed by a slight cooling until the early 1970s, and then a second warming surge quite similar to the first, ending in 2000. A heat peak was reached in 1998-1999 and another, one iota higher, in 2015-2016, both corresponding to powerful El Nino events. A new record will undoubtedly be broken during the current El Nino.
In all, the global average temperature has risen by around 1.15°C over some 170 years, which, as we have seen, is by no means exceptional given the climatic upheavals of the past. In addition to its margin of error, this “global average temperature” makes little sense, since there is no single Earth climate, but rather a panoply of regional and local climates with a wide variety of characteristics. How can we average the climate of Antarctica with that of Amazonia? We also know that land warms up more than oceans, the northern hemisphere more than the southern, mid and high latitudes more than the tropics, and cities more than their countryside (i.e. the urban heat island phenomenon). Some climates are benefiting from the warming, while others remain inhospitable.
Like all the others that preceded it, this new optimum has been generally beneficial for mankind. Today in fact, humanity finds itself in a situation incomparable to that of 1850. The world’s population has now reached 8 billion, compared with 1.2 billion at the start of the industrial era. Food production has more than kept pace, as famine has been virtually eliminated, a feat in itself; in fact, thanks to the Green Revolution, agricultural yields are exceeding all expectations. Average life expectancy has almost doubled, and infant mortality has been divided by 10. Wealth has increased exponentially, while extreme poverty has declined dramatically throughout the world Added to this are all the marvels of science, technology, medicine, transport, communications, architecture, the arts and entertainment, to name but a few, that make life so enjoyable for a growing number of human beings.
That said, climate being what it is, there have been painful episodes in certain regions of the world. In the 1930s, for example, the northern hemisphere was plagued by extreme heat waves and drought. The year 1936 still ranks as one of the hottest on record in the USA. During the Dust Bowl, the Western Great Plains were also devastated by appalling sandstorms, with dramatic consequences for the people who lived there. Such droughts, often interspersed with periods of heavy rainfall, have been recurrent over the last millennia, and there will certainly be more to come.
Likewise, the slight global cooling of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly present in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions and extending from Europe to China, raised fears of the advent of a new Ice Age. Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich and future Obama science advisor John Holdren wrote in a book about “the risk of a sudden shift in the Antarctic ice cap induced by an overload of ice”. With the return of warmer temperatures, these exaggerated fears faded, but only to be replaced, a few decades later, by even more alarmist predictions, this time linked to “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming”.
At a time when life on Earth has never been so easy, part of the human race, concentrated in wealthy Western countries with a Judeo-Christian tradition, has got it into its head that current global warming is different in that it’s bad, and must be stopped before it drags the planet into irreversible climatic hell. As in the days of the witches, a scapegoat has been designated: fossil fuels. In the words of UN Director-General Antonio Guterres, “fossil fuels are incompatible with human survival”. This is because they are responsible for everything that supposedly goes wrong on the planet: heat waves, torrential rains, cold snaps, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, forest fires, loss of biodiversity, declining polar bears, disappearing coral reefs, epidemics, and so on.
This irrational fear, fueled by pseudo-scientists and idiotic or unscrupulous elites, is all the more incomprehensible given that Sapiens has never been so well-equipped to cope with climate change and the vagaries of the weather – two very different things, by the way, and which are in no way abnormal. In fact, the drastic fall in weather-related deaths has continued unabated since 1900.
However, the real danger facing humanity lies in the drastic solutions proposed by the proponents of climate catastrophism. These involve the forced elimination of fossil fuels by 2050 and their replacement by so-called renewable energies, mainly wind and solar power, which presupposes a radical transformation of the material economy. Not only would humanity be depriving itself of the undeniable advantages of fossil energies – abundant, inexpensive, versatile, easy to transport and store and, above all, available at all times – but it would also be jeopardizing its future, given the well-known shortcomings of wind and solar power – low density, intermittence, randomness due ironically to the vagaries of the weather, impact on the stability of electricity grids, need for back-up systems, etc. In fact, because of its staggering costs and risks to the continuity of energy supply and the functioning of the economy, this hasty transition, imposed by restrictive policies, could mean the weakening or even collapse of modern post-industrial civilization as we know it.
So, for the first time in history since the advent of Sapiens, a highly advanced civilization is in danger of disappearing during a perfectly acceptable climatic optimum, due to a totally fictitious and imaginary “climate crisis”! Our descendants won’t believe it! Fortunately, this won’t happen, because “extraordinary popular delusions” are always unmasked in the end. There are signs that this could happen soon. Let’s hope so.
Acknowledgement: This article is based on well-established geological and historical facts, but it owes much to the excellent synthesis by Olivier Postel-Vinay, in his book Sapiens et le climat – Une histoire bien chahutée, Les Presses de la Cité, 2022
The Green Blob loves plague, famine, and war. Why else would they bemoan the end of the Little Ice Age?
Fantastic summary!
Can one imagine if this was taught in public schools, or presented as a guest commentary in major media?
There is nothing in this that is based upon theories or models or arguments, only well known and well documented historic and geohistoric facts.
The climate alarmism position, regardless of all their models and arguments, cannot refute documented historic facts.
But they do, because they’re history deniers.
And to think, all of that variation in temperature and climate was when CO2 levels were almost constant at 250-280 ppm.
Required reading in all schools and colleges and universities
Why is the compromised, bought-and-paid-for Mass Media not publishing this article?
I think you answered your own question. 😉
They “refute” them virtually every day. them
Great and useful summary of the era of humans. Us geologists would say you could multiple the times by one thousand and still have the general history of the earth and its climate cycles. Sure, there are more glacial and more warm periods, but, just take a look at those dinosaurs…they got big because they ate well.
Thanks Ron, you efficiently precluded a long response, Many of ‘us geologists’ regard all of what is presented in that excellent article as a skin of dust on the top of the surficial geology that is in the way of the real rocks that we look at; the stuff that the geologist need not even be on site for when the drillers case through the overburden.
Then within the rocks is the story of climatic changes that have occurred during geologic time, like that which produced dominant creatures of 20 tons, not 20 stone of today, following several extinctions like the Permo-Triassic boundary. They indeed exceed the timescale of this article by factors of thousands, but the story is the same.
The Dinosaurs died out after a Meteor hit the Earth and made it dark for five years. The solar industry should take note.
“The Great Lakes Tanganyika and Malawi, now several hundred meters deep, remained almost completely dry for several thousand years, on several occasions.”
Wow, very interesting! I don’t see that in the NY Times. 🙂
How great of an illustrated text book would that make for about a 5th grade science class?
It would be easy to include things that pique the interest of both boys and girls.
Teach them the basics at that age, and then start teaching more of the specific mechanisms as they learn biology, chemistry, physics, and math going through middle school and high school.
Of course, the cultural Marxists would never allow such a thing in the public schools.
“Vegetation, deprived of an adequate supply of CO2, were crying for food.”
That would make for a great AI produced image. Come on, you AI users- I wanna see it!
Kinda reminds of “Little House of Horrors” with Steve Martin where his giant Venus fly trap plant kept saying “feed me- feed me”. The laugh I got from that was in my top 10 laughs of my 73 years.
….and butter wouldn’t melt….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SwQ9iavJeI
After all the nice dreams, come nightmares.
Soil Erosion
…..it being what actually caused the warm periods and what ended the civilations – NOT what gave them birth.
Forests and Fertile soils gave them birth, deforestation and resultant soil erosion ended them.
Did anyone check out Oliver’s other books.
In one, he ventures into boys/girls and X chromosome.
He hasn’t The First Clue what ‘romance’ actually is but even worse, really does think that boys & girls (are supposed to) exist in a state of constant warfare with each other and always have done.
(That’ll be the Absinthe I imagine)
and that qualifies him to write about human history and climate?
That song descibes him perfectly
Not sure that is entirely correct, if I understand what you’re trying to say which isn’t guaranteed.
The early civilisations (Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian) of Mesopotamia were mainly concentrated in Lower Mesopotamia, which is generally lacking trees, only date palms and tamarisk grow in volume. Similar to in Egypt, the need for timber for construction was one of the drivers of trade and innovation in Sumeria.
Agriculture in Lower Mesopotamia relied on irrigation which was fine until the land became contaminated with salt. As far as I’m aware the land is still contaminated.
The Egyptians with a similar dearth of forests had natural flooding and fertilisation most years but used irrigation as well.
I’ve a feeling that the Indus Valley Civilisation didn’t have similar conditions to the other two
Nit picking?
“But historian Kyle Harper claims that the collapse was mainly due to successive epidemics and a deteriorating climate. ”
Probably- but certainly corruption had a lot to do with it. The values of the Empire were inferior to The Republic.
Definitely different. Don’t forget that the Roman Republic (on which the US Republic is loosely based) lasted for 480 years before reinventing itself as the Roman Empire – keeping the pretence and trappings of a Republic whilst one family wore the purple and kept the supreme power for itself.
If the delusional thinking was limited to just climate it would be bad enough. But western civilization is now in the hands of incredibly wealthy powerful and corrupt global elite. The problem , the warped thinking of these men (one world government) extends so deep into culture, society and geopolitical and military miscalculations now that some sort of crisis or disruption of our nations is almost inevitable and soon. And it is not going to be due to any man made climate problem.
A brilliant piece. If only all of those interested in climate would read and consider the evidence as presented here. I agree we will not destroy ourselves based on this delusion, but we may do an awful lot of harm (much has already been done) before we collectively put the climate emergency myth where it belongs – in the junkpile.
Even the least intelligent of animals, not to speak of plants that lack a nervous system, that we can find today also overcame all these challenges.
Intelligence is overrated and sapiens is not a good name for such an irrational bunch willing to mass-believe we are destroying the planet by emitting CO2.
Sorry to disagree Javier, but animals and plants adapt by natural selection (remember Darwin?) but humans adapt using culture (i.e. their overgrown brains). Also, Sapiens is not always irrational. I read many of your writings and, until today, I thought you were rational too. Just kidding.
Neandertals with bigger brains than ours did win Darwin Prize.
Neanderthals, like the other types of humans (Heidelbergensis, Denisovans, etc.), interbred with the other types to the extent that we essentially became one homogenous species. Those other types make us who we are today – they may not be around as a distinctly seperate population but their dna is in all of us and make modern humans what we are today.
“Neanderthals, like the other types of humans (Heidelbergensis, Denisovans, etc.), interbred with the other types to the extent that we essentially became one homogenous species.”
I just read a study yesterday saying the same thing.
Yup. It contradicts the previous popular memes of killing off the different types, or that we out-competed or were better than everyone else. I personally think it explains a great deal and ties up more loose ends than other hypotheses.
And all the supermarkets today sell dinosaur meat (with labels like ‘chicken’)..
Brain size does not always mean more intelligent. As others have already said, Neanderthals just got incorporated in the mass gene pool of us Sapiens. All of us today have a small percentage of Neander genes in our DNA. The Neanderthals were remarkably successful for a very long period of time much of which was hard times due the ice sheets.
We actually have a lot of Neanderthal genes in us, it’s just that 99.9% of all human types have the same genes – they only differed from other types with such a tiny difference in genes that there isn’t much distinctive Neanderthal DNA to identify.
You is both wrong. Plants have enough inter- and intracellular communication to count as a nervous system, especially if you add the mycelia.
And Darwin is sooo yesterday, the haps is with Rupert Sheldrake, doncherknow?
Then I guess we can just agree that ‘intelligence’ is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it allows ‘sapiens’ to expand his range and numbers well beyond subsistence levels. On the other, it also seems to be a necessary condition for the evolution of highly parasitic governing structures, many of which historically have collapsed in the face of adverse climatic conditions, per your fine summary.
Empires rise and fall throughout history, there is nothing new about that. It’s when we forget history and think that the system we have now is far superior and will last forever that we are in trouble. Change is the only constant.
Change is constant but its direction may, or may not be chaotic. Hope springs eternal that it can be guided in a benign direction.
Imagination allows consideration of not only the real world input but of anything that anything can dream up. Unfortunately, too often for the majority, some pretty destructive dreaming happens. It often takes root in the main stream because it is so much simpler to grasp than all that disorganized sensory data from the world at large.
Then I guess we can just agree that ‘intelligence’ is a two-edged sword.
Two edged swords are fun. Rolling your wrists back and striking short edge is incredibly satisfying.
Go Team Intelligence!!! 😀
“Food production has more than kept pace, as famine has been virtually eliminated,
a feat in itself; in fact, thanks to the Green Revolution, agricultural yields are exceeding
all expectations.”
No mention that the increase in CO2 has a positive effect on basic photosynthesis.
_________________________________________________________________
“This irrational fear, fueled by pseudo-scientists and idiotic or unscrupulous elites,”
Great article, but name calling when the facts are on your side is unnecessary and unproductive.
__________________________________________________________________
“Not only would humanity be depriving itself of the undeniable advantages of fossil
energies – abundant, inexpensive, versatile, easy to transport and store and, above all,
available at all times.”
No mention of nuclear power.
I did my very best to summarize 200 000 years of global history in the least number of pages, so I had leave out a lot of elements, even some very interesting ones. Thanks anyways for positive and pertinent comments.
Thanks (-:
“This irrational fear, fueled by pseudo-scientists and idiotic or unscrupulous elites,”
“Great article, but name calling when the facts are on your side is unnecessary and unproductive.”
Steve, I would say those descriptions are very accurate.
pseudo-scientists: Michael Mann, etc etc….
idiotic or unscrupulous elites: the head of the UN, who thinks the oceans are boiling
A full list would be very, very long.
Chris
Beware the deranged rantings of the climate clerisy
“”So you want to go outside — despite the heat, heavy rainfall and poor air quality affecting millions this summer. Here’s how to determine whether it’s safe to leave the house,”” – The New York Times Health section
Idiot Times reporter(s) writing stupid articles for moron readers.
”during the last ice age”
We live in an Ice Age right now and have been for the last 2.6 million years so I would prefer the terms Glacial and Interglacial.
Very fortunate the Holocene Interglacial came along, the extra warmth allowed for the development of the human species.
Now the anti-CO2 idiots want to see all that development undone.
Everything they do in the name of “CO2 reduction” (which won’t happen anyway) seems to be designed specifically to make life harder and harder for everyone except the elite.
Instead of anti co2 just call them anti human and be done with it
I find nothing with which to disagree in this article, but I am as always in total agreement with this statement of reality / rationality –
I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a climate before 1978 or so. I remember it was first going to be an ice age but it was really global warming instead.
That was because they inverted then reverted the signal, which Piltdown Mann took to heart.
Lesson learned, decision based evidence making.
Great article, Robert!
It would be especially helpful if it could be made into an illustrated pamphlet for elementary students, or an expanded version with some of the basic geology, archeology and history delineated for secondary or college students! If only alarmists listened to the science instead of their feelings!
Good idea, in the meantime, do not hesitate to share the article
“The Science” is an imaginary concept similar to global temperature or global climate. Science is a process, the hard work of analyzing and reasoning on the data.
Well said. As I always remark when I hear “The Science” invoked, Science is a PROCESS not a THING. There can be no “The Science”
Bang on. Thanks for the write up. Spread the word.
The author states something we don’t hear every day:
We can conclude that, according to available evidence, CO2 plays no role at all in the most abrupt and frequent climate changes.
The D-O cycle and the increases in CO2 observed in Antarctica associated with Heinrich events appear to be a consequence of Southern Ocean warming, and neither a cause nor consequence of Antarctic warming.
Furthermore, the increase in CO2 during Heinrich events (of about 10 – 15 ppm) does not appear to significantly alter the rate or magnitude of the warming during the subsequent D-O oscillation…
(Sorry about that Climate Alarmists.
Let us assume that an underwater volcanic eruption that vapourises water and sends it high into the stratosphere, also has the ability to significantly warm the ocean around it.
The location in Tonga is on the downward drift of the South Pacific Gyre.
This gyre links into the Antarctic Circumpolar Current then loops up past Peru into the Nino region.
The ACC also feeds into the lower Atlantic Ocean, and looking at maps of ocean currents, could eventually feed into the Gulf Stream
We have already seen that the delayed ocean seismic activity corresponds very well to UAH data. Seismic-vs-temperature hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB (ibb.co)
Plenty of interest on how the extra stratospheric water vapour might affect the weather, but is anyone looking at how the Hunga Tonga eruption may have affected ocean current temperatures.. (may not be immediately noticed in sea surface temperatures.)
Where would the energy go to? What time delays are likely etc etc
Would certainly explain the sudden drop in Antarctic sea ice and the warmer than usual SH.
Very nice. More effort needs to be given to educating the general population. They are being lied to, cheated and fleeced by those they trust. The problem will not be solved by experts, professionals or politicians. Educate those who are being hurt the most and this will end.
Paddlewheels can move watercraft but they can not power anything. How were these ships actually powered?
Of course, by human power. No motors then.
Yes, the worlds first pedalo’s.
I think they had really big containers of hamsters and dropped them one by one into the wheel.
😀
From the article: “it wasn’t until 1910 that we saw the first sustained surge, lasting 30 years, followed by a slight cooling until the early 1970s, and then a second warming surge quite similar to the first, ending in 2000. A heat peak was reached in 1998-1999 and another, one iota higher, in 2015-2016, both corresponding to powerful El Nino events.”
According to James Hansen, the United States experienced about 2.0C cooling from the heighth of the hot 1930’s, to the cool 1970’s. That’s not what I would call a slight cooling.
And Hansen also said that 1934 was 0.5C warmer than 1998 (2016).
You are talking US temperature, I am talking Global temperature, US is only a small portion of the globe.
Yes, but the rest of the globe, where written temperatures were kept, in both hemispheres, show that, like the U.S., it was just as warm or warmer in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today. I have Tmax charts from around the world showing exactly that. And there are hundreds of other Tavg charts from all over the world that show the same temperature trend as the Hansen U.S. chart.
So which should we believe? The written record, or the bastardized Hockey Stick record? Climategate. Need I say more?
The U.S. temperature profile is much more representative of a global temperature trend than is the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick charts you are using. That’s what *they* show: a slight cooling from the 1930’s to the 1970’s. That’s where you got that from. But that’s not what the historical written record shows, as represented by Hansen 1999.
You can’t learn anything from a distorted temperature record.
Unfortunately, more than one skeptic is mesmerized by the bogus Hockey Stick chart. They can’t tear themselves away from it. I think it is because the Hockey Stick is “accepted science” by the mainstream science crowd, and some of our skeptics feel the need to pander to that group, consciously, or unconsciously.
I agree Tom.
In most of the world they have spotty temperature records mostly from cities so the “world” temperature record from 1880 is essentially all UHI which is why it shows a more linear trend.
All smoke and mirrors.
In the few areas with good records like the USA you don’t see this.
Go figure.
Excellent article. It underscores the simple fact that unexplained warming is not proof of AGW, because unexplained warming has occurred repeatedly without AGW.
Proof in science requires successful prediction of something that is not expected. Climate Science has failed to do this.
Climate Science routinely states that rapid warming has never occurred in the past. This is clearly false and deserve an article on its own because it demonstrates that warming is not proof of AGW.
And besides, what’s so alarming about a degree or so over about 170 years after a little ice age?+
Nothing, of course
The Earth has had periods up to years when it was dark because of a meteor. Solar panels won’t work in the dark and battery storage for years of usage is impractical.
Great article
Reminds me of a book, “a cultural history of climate change”.
Wish more people could read and think.
A great essay, backed with historic facts and all !. 🙂 🙂
Yes, we are extremely fortunate for the slight warming since the LIA… Warm is “gooder” !
We have also been very fortunate to have had access to very usable forms of efficient reliable energy supplies.
Please, let’s not destroy all that has been accomplished, all that is available for the future…
based on bad science, cult religions, and the equivalent of SimCity computer games. !