Over the last few years, a large number of politicians, “scientists”, theologians, and quite ordinary people have been convinced we can do something about the climate, prompting over 190 countries to sign onto a non-binding accord to cut human CO2 emissions by 2050, ostensibly to limit future global warming to 1.5 to 2 degrees centigrade.
Leaving this symbolic accord aside, climate change is a natural process and characteristic of all geologic history, of which we humans occupy an infinitesimal slice. In fact, we do have some precise measurements of recent climate variabilities based on analyses of air bubbles in deep ice drill core in Antarctica.
Three kilometers of such core, representing the past 800,000 years of history, show a repeated series of warming and cooling, marking some eight major continental glaciations over this interval, the last of which ended some 15,000 years ago.
Since that time, the world has been warming and we are now in the midst of a major interglacial warming episode. Given the remarkable and regular periodicity of this climatic behavior, it is not unreasonable to expect another major episode of cooling and continental glaciation in the next 15 to 20,000 years.
This remarkable ice core record showing the correlation between temperature and CO2 content derived from the ice air bubbles can be found in a series of graphs presented in a recent tract by Messrs. Rapley and Macmillan entitled “2071” (John Murray, 2015).
A careful examination of these graphs, however, shows atmospheric CO2 content rises after temperatures begin to rise and similarly begin to drop after temperatures begin to fall.
In other words, the absolute controls of global warming are not a function of atmospheric CO2 content, but rather lie elsewhere and have nothing at all to do with human activity.
Such huge and periodic temperature changes that are seen on this 800,000-year scale are very unusual in the geologic record, keeping in mind that 800,000 years is in itself a tiny fraction of that record.
The causes of this remarkable behavior are not well understood, except to say that they are related to such things as the tilt of the Earth’s axis in its orbit, variabilities in the energy output of the sun, cosmic ray bursts from outer space that affect cloud formation, and the ever-changing position of our solar system in the galaxy itself.
Of one thing we can be certain, these changes are always happening and it is our task to deal with them. The process is not “fighting climate change” which in this context is utter nonsense, but rather adapting to it as we have throughout our history using our ingenuity and latterly the vast resources generated by our carbon-based economy to alleviate any negative by-products, a process which is ongoing and continues to evolve.
This is the only way forward. Indeed, future economic development, the certain discovery of new technologies and energy efficiencies will see succeeding generations benefit hugely.
This hopeful, optimistic picture is in total contrast to the current alarmist and fear mongering tone of the so-called climate change narrative and the Paris Climate Accord, which in effect has given the carbon-based economy only another 34 years before its “necessary” total transformation by as yet undiscovered means.
Indeed, China has promised to begin reducing CO2 emissions only by 2030 leaving a 20-year balance for this process. Even Mr. Rapley, firmly on the side of “drastic actions to curb warming” has great difficulty with this.
The fact that mankind looks forward and is by nature a builder of new and better worlds is a concept about as far removed as one can get from the prim, risk-free, politically correct and ultra-safe climate change narrative with its accompanying cohorts of believers.
Climate change has become all things to all men, a motherhood issue beyond reproach, and quite simply irresistible to politicians, so-called scientists and, of course, theologians – all of this in essence because of the enormous sums of money involved in what promises to be one of the greatest wealth redistributions schemes in history.
A profoundly depressing picture, perhaps, and most certainly no credit to any of the parties named, and yet, hopefully, so unwieldy and so fundamentally dishonest that the day will come when it falls of its own weight.
Thanks for sharing, C.
Anyone who has visited the Grand Canyon should be able to rate the significance of an 800,000 year old ice core. Compare that to Michael Mann’s tree ring proxy analysis, which underpins the IPCC’s campaign.
Our ability to control Earth’s fate is zero. Stop pretending that it’s in our hands.
It should be mentioned that ice cores only show trends in atmospheric CO2 concentrations of the past. Barring any chemistry effects that might occur over time and high pressure while buried in the depths of the ice sheet, ice cores suffer catastrophic micro-fracture during extraction and decompression. Best estimates are that 30 to 50% of the CO2 is lost during ice core retrieval. If you back calculate 40% into the resulting CO2 data, it is clear that CO2 in the past was the same as it is now and most of the time has been much higher during interglacial periods. We are currently coming out of a period of dangerously low CO2 concentration.
Many like to assume that ice core CO2 measurements are absolute measurements, which they are not, but it serves their narrative. What is funny (and alarming) is that they are willing to look at the data and not take alarm at the unhealthy low CO2 concentrations shown in the ice core data. We were truly on the verge of extinction at 260 ppm.
The facts that they want all skeptics persicuted and those 20 crack-pot scientists the greens want a Enviromental Inqustion to persicte all skeptics the judges will be Bill Nye,Al Bore,David Suzuki,Leonardo DiCaprio plus the leaders of Greenpeace,NRDC,EDF and the rest of the Enviromentalists wacko crowd