The right questions on global warming (first question)
One thing that has always bothered me about the global warming dispute is that so many people seem to be asking the wrong question. The question is usually, “Can Western civilization be forced to do something about the global warming that it has caused?” But that’s like “Have you stopped beating your wife?” There are other questions to be asked first.
First question: Is global warming occurring at all? The problem with this is that the answer is Yes, No, or Maybe, depending on the time-scale.
- Yes. On a scale of thousands of years, the Earth is warming up. Fifteen thousand years ago, the spot where I am sitting was under a mile of ice. It’s warmed up substantially since then.
- No. On a scale of millions of years, the Earth is cooling down. For most of the Earth’s history, there were no continental glaciers anywhere, not even at the Poles. Our current climate, with an ice cap on Antarctica and another on Greenland, with occasional excursions on the continents of the Northern Hemisphere, is quite unusual. Any warming we may see is quite trivial compared to that huge decline.
- Maybe. On a scale of decades and centuries … I don’t know. The part of the Earth for which we have the best, most complete, and longest records, underwent the Little Ice Age not so long ago. According to Wikipedia, there is evidence that the Little Ice Age was world-wide, though of course the IPCC denied this and further claimed that “[Viewed] hemispherically, the ‘Little Ice Age’ can only be considered as a modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during this period of less than 1°C relative to late 20th century levels.”
I find it extremely hard to believe that a “modest cooling”, a decrease in average temperature of just 1°C, produced winters so cold that trees broke apart when their sap froze solid, that it was possible to have “Ice Fairs” on the Thames River, and that whole villages were destroyed by advancing glaciers. The claim comes from the IPCC, of course, so they probably got it off the back of a cereal box.
It’s possible that the Little Ice Age was a blip and the Earth is now recovering back to the same levels as the Medieval Warm Period (though it isn’t there yet). Glaciers that destroyed medieval villages have melted back (I don’t know where I read this, but I remember a sad description of villagers going up to the glaciers and praying to God to stop their advance — it didn’t work). Grapes grew in Britain during the Medieval Warm Period, but the Little Ice Age was too much for them and they essentially disappeared. Apparently it is now possible to grow grapes in Britain again, though not as well as during the Medieval Warm Period.
So the Earth may be warming up, or it may have warmed up since the Little Ice Age but has now reached a plateau, or it may even have started to cool again, maybe because of the low number of sunspots recently.* And it is really maddening that the principal climate scientists have made it impossible to know what the answer really is.
* Or, if the IPCC is correct, the Little Ice Age affected only the well-instrumented parts of the Earth, and all other parts were much warmer than today, so as to offset the documented temperature drop. In that case, most of the Earth is cooler than it was 150 years ago.