Manmade climate crisis promoters reject inconvenient evidence of natural climate change
Fifty years ago, I helped organize Earth Day #1 programs on my college campus, calling attention to serious pollution problems that afflicted much of the USA. Over the ensuing decades, laws, regulations, and changed attitudes, practices and technologies reduced most of that pollution, often dramatically.
I didn’t buy into the 1970 end-is-nigh, doom-and-gloom, billions-will-die hysteria that Ron Stein and Ron Bailey summarize, including the manmade global cooling crisis. I don’t buy it today, either – certainly not this year’s Earth Day focus on the alleged manmade global warming crisis, also blamed on emissions of carbon dioxide, the same gas that humans and animals exhale, and plants use to grow. We’re told the crisis is unprecedented, and poses existential threats to humanity and planet. What nonsense.
But what I find fascinating in all this is the steadfast, often nasty determination of scientists, politicians and interest groups promoting alarmist themes – and profiting immensely from them – to reject and deny any science, history and evidence that undermines their claim that nothing like this ever happened before.
The “highest ever” temperatures are a mere few tenths or even hundredths of a degree above previous records set many decades ago. The United States recently enjoyed a record 12-year respite from Category 3-5 hurricanes, ended finally by Harvey and Irma in 2017. Violent tornadoes were far fewer during the last 35 years than during the 35 years before that, and the complete absence of violent twisters in 2018 was unprecedented in US history. Modern day floods and droughts were certainly no worse than past floods or the multi-decade droughts that devastated Anasazi, Mayan and other civilizations.
However, alarmists insist, Earth’s climate and weather were stable and unchanging until humans began using coal, oil and natural gas. We must eradicate fossil fuels now, they say, regardless of what biofuel, battery, wind and solar replacements (and mining for raw materials to manufacture them) might have on wildlife, scenery, environmental values or human rights. Their disconnect from reality is astounding.
Equally fascinating is the notion that melting glaciers are something new. It amounts to asserting that everything was just peachy until American, European and Greenland glaciers started melting a few decades ago, threatening us with catastrophic sea level rise. It amounts to claiming the glacial epochs never happened; their mile-high ice sheets never blanketed a third of the Northern Hemisphere, multiple times, with warm periods in between; and seas haven’t risen some 400 feet since the Pleistocene ice age, leaving the entrance to Cosquer Cave and its Paleolithic paintings 115 feet beneath the Mediterranean.
It amounts to claiming the Roman and Medieval Warm Periods never happened, and weren’t followed by the Little Ice Age, when priests performed exorcisms, asking God to keep glaciers from inundating villages in the Alps of Europe. It’s as though we couldn’t possibly be finding what we are finding today.
In the latest example, government and university researchers recently found numerous Viking-era artifacts along a Norwegian mountain pass that had been heavily traveled for at least 700 years, but then was buried beneath the ice and lost to history for 1,000 years. Locals used the rough 2,200-foot-long pass to travel between summer and winter lodgings, while long-distance trekkers used it as a trade route.
Within the treasure trove were tunics, mittens, horse shoes and bits, remnants of sleds used to haul food and gear over winter snow, a small shelter, and even the remains of a dog with a collar and leash. They all came to light because the glacial ice is again receding, as Earth continues its post Little Ice Age warming.
Alarmists insist the warming is due to fossil fuels, and deny that it is just part of natural climate cycles. And much more evidence of past warming and cooling periods has also come to light in recent years.
In 1991, German hikers found the incredible mummified and heavily tattooed remains of “Oetzi the Ice Man” sticking out of the ice in the Oetzal Alps near the Italian-Austrian border, at an altitude of some 10,000 feet. A partial longbow, bearskin hat and other artifacts were found nearby. He had died about 5,300 years ago from an arrow wound and had the blood of four different people on his clothes and weapons. He is further evidence of human habitation in these alpine areas during past warm periods.
Tourists and archeological teams have also discovered parts of shoes, leather clothing, fragments of a wooden bowl and numerous other items from 3000 to 4500 BC (BCE) that have emerged from the alpine ice. They are among the oldest objects ever found in the Alps. A Bronze Age pin, Roman coins and early Medieval artifacts have also been found. They show how these mountain passes and trails, impassible during cold, more glaciated periods, served as vital trade routes in periodic warmer centuries.
Norwegian ice fields show shrinkage and growth patterns similar to those of the alpine glaciers, says Norwegian glacial scientist Atle Nesje. The archaeological findings “seem to fit quite nicely with our glacier reconstructions,” he adds, which helps us understand past, present and future climate changes.
Years of research by Swiss and other scientists have produced similar findings – sometimes human artifacts, but also plant and animal remains, in areas of newly melted ice. In one location in the Swiss Alps, University of Berne geology professor Christian Schluechter found pieces of wood 12-24 inches thick and the remains of a moor. Melting waters had flushed them out from under the glacier. That means the ice there is hardly “perpetual,” he says. There were multiple periods of warmer weather and less ice.
In fact, carbon-14 dating shows ten “clearly definable time windows” over the last 10,000 years – periods when glaciers were limited to regions up to 1,000 feet higher in the Alps than today. This means that, for multiple long streches of time, “the Alps were greener than they are today,” Schluechter concludes.
Inca children sacrificed 500 years ago in Argentina’s Andes have also emerged from melting glaciers.
Off the Florida coast, the Mel and Deo Fisher archeological diving team didn’t just find the famous Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, which sank during a ferocious 1622 hurricane, or only the British slave ship Henrietta Marie, which went down during a 1700 hurricane, after leaving 190 Africans in Jamaica to be sold as slaves. They also found charred tree branches and pine cones from a forest fire 8,400 years ago, when this ocean area 35 miles from Key West was still well above present day sea levels!
Even an entire forest has been discovered, protruding from the melting Mendenhall Glacier near Juneau, Alaska – an area I visited several years ago. Roots, stumps and large segments of entire upright spruce or hemlock trees have already been found across several acres. They are the remains of a forest that thrived there for as long as 2,350 years, until it was buried by glacial ice around 1,000 years ago.
The chronicle of amazing discoveries yielded by melting glaciers goes on and on. Their most important lesson is that our current climate is but a snapshot in time, on a vibrant planet where climate change and extreme weather have been “real” since time began. Only a science-denying climate alarmist would refuse to recognize this. Simply put, there is nothing “unprecedented” about what we are seeing today.
This is dangerous stuff – sacrilegious, even. It pulls the rug from under demands for a post-Coronavirus Green New Deal. It must be suppressed. And frightened climate science deniers are doing their best to keep it out of “mainstream” and social media. Realists must do their best to disseminate climate facts.
Of course, it may be that these past climate changes were caused by carbon dioxide and water vapor from wheezing, snorting horses, oxen and humans – laboring at the edge of exhaustion, doing what our fossil-fuel-powered vehicles and equipment do for us today. But it’s far more likely that the changes were due to a complex and still poorly understood combination of solar and other powerful natural forces.
Climate alarmists may not want to recognize or discuss these natural fluctuations and causes. But the rest of us should, and this historic evidence must be a central part of that discussion.
Improving our knowledge of what these forces are and how they work together will enable us to better predict, prepare for and adapt to future climate changes. Continuing to focus on carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases,” as the primary or sole cause of climate changes and weather events, will ensure that we never get beyond the politically driven climate and energy battles in which we are now engaged.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.
Jay H Mohler says
People will always twist evidence to suit their theory rather than adjust their theory to fit the facts
Rozy says
Exactly what I’ve been saying for decades! Earth’s climate is cyclical and ever changing. If you live long enough and pay attention, you can recognize this. We absolutely should take care of our home by not polluting with trash and toxic chemicals. However, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and is necessary for plant growth. Thanks for this great post.
Tom Risher says
Looking forward to watching the blog posts
Vincent Loseto says
Thank you very much. People need to be informed with truth and allowed to make their own decisions of what they read. You guys have some solid data and I truly appreciate the work you do.
God bless,
vince
Ronald J Martin, Ph.D. says
98% of scientists agree that climate change is a serious, even existential threat, resulting in droughts, famines, migration of tropical diseases north (pestilence), and burying our coastal cities under sea water. The 2% that do not believe this do research funded by fossil fuel companies. This 98% know about climate change over the millennia, and they see that the current warming has already surpassed that. In times before humans on earth, there were high CO2 levels, which led to glacial melting and mass extinctions. A few evidences pointing to climate change during the human era do not negate these serious warming findings.
Warren Turner says
Any article/statement that starts with the rather obvious falsehood that 98% of SCIENTISTS AGREE that “climate change is a serious, even existential threat, resulting in droughts, famines, migration of tropical diseases north (pestilence), and burying our coastal cities under sea water.” is to be ignored until that 98% figure is verified.
The author then proceeds with a list of unsupported effects which is going to take place.
Finally, the claim is made that that The 2% that do not believe this do research funded by fossil fuel companies. Again a provable lie. Just read Quora! There are many so called deniers and if Quora is anything like a representative sample of the skeptical scientists the 2% appears to be another fabrication, and furthermore we don’t have income from fossil fuel companies.
James Rogers says
Excellent, plain English summary of the absolute absurdity of “climate change”. I have tracked the arguments since the TIME magazine article in June 1974 which asked if we were headed to a mini-ice age. The climate alarmists could never settle on climate cooling or climate warming, so we got climate change, which the alarmists dont have to prove. As far as the “complex and poorly understood forces driving NATURAL climate change“ you speak of in the third paragraph from the end of the article, weather (short term) and climate (long term) are driven by solar heating of the Earth. The intensity of the solar insolation varies with time since our SUn goes through a natural minimum/maximum cycle every 11 years. We re currently approaching a minimum as we have been on a cooling trend for the past 15 years. Next, Milankovitch cycles, validated by NASA in 1976, drive changes in the intensity of solar insolation because of changes in our orbital parameters. Specifically, our orbit around the Sun is not circular. It chan ges from a near circular to slightly elliptical over a 90,000-100,000 year period. At the same time, the tilt of our orbit changes slightly up and down as well. Further, the Earths axis of rotation precesses during a period of about 26,000 years, tipping in the range of 21 to 23 degrees from vertical during the period. All of these natural, orbital forces combine to drive our long term climate changes. We are currently in the Holocene period and are at the lowest average temperature for the past 8000 years. Besides doing a literature search for Milankovitch cycles, do an online search for paleoclimate, Ice Age, Little Ice Age, Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period. It will add a lot to your knowledge of what actually causes weather/climate. Answer: Our SUn heating the Earth – surface and atmosphere. Also, know that CO2 is only 0.04% of the Atmosphere while O2 (21%) and N2 (71%) make up 99% of our atmosphere. CO2 is NOT a pollutant but a vital and necessary atmospheric gas, not only for photosynthesis, but the wee bit of CO2 in our blood is the trigger that causes us to breathe. Finally, checkout “http://www.cfact.org” and the movie “The Climate Hustle” (both the 1st one and the pending 2nd one.) Climate alarmism is just another socialist tactic from the Democrats to create a “crisis” that only centralized government control – the essence of communism, the ultimate objective of socialism, as stated by none other than Vladimir Lenin himself. – can fix by dictating what you, the loyal citizen, must do, like drive an electric vehicle and abandon all use of fossil fuels.