David Stockman on the GreenMageddon… Part 2
Editor’s Note: Right now, the global elite and world leaders are coming together at the UN Climate Change conference in Glasgow to address the “problem” of climate change.
Over the next couple days, Washington DC insider David Stockman will debunk the narrative and offer a comprehensive look at the climate change agenda including what it means for you.
Below is part two David’s article series…
The assembled governments of the world meeting in Glasgow for COP26 are fixing to declare war on the backbone of modern economic life and the abundance and relief from human poverty and suffering with which it has gifted the world. We are referring, of course, to its agenda to essentially drive fossil fuels—which currently make up 80% of BTU consumption—from the global energy supply system over the next several decades.
All of this is being done in the name of preventing global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius above “pre-industrial” levels.
But when it comes to the crucial matter of exactly which pre-industrial baseline level, you can see the skunk sitting on the woodpile a mile away. That’s because, as we showed in Part 1, global temperatures have been higher than the present—often by upward of 10–15 degrees Celsius—for most of the past 600 million years!
Moreover, during the more recent era since the great extinction event 66 million years ago, the decline in temperatures has been almost continuous, touching lower than current levels only during the 100,000-year glaciation cycles of the last 2.6 million years of the Pleistocene ice ages. Not unsurprisingly, therefore, the Climate Howlers have chosen to ignore 599,830,000 of those years in favor of the last 170 years (since 1850) alone.
They actually put old William Jennings Bryan of the Scopes Trial to shame. At least he thought the world was 6,000 years old!
Still, the juxtaposition of the temperature record of the last 66 million years and the sawed-off charts of the climate alarmists tells you all you need to know: to wit, they have simply banished all the “inconvenient” science from the narrative.
Global Temperature Trend during the Past 65 Million Years (+/− in degrees Celsius from the present)
Global Average Temperature Trend, 1850–2018 per the Global Warming Narrative
Needless to say, there is a reason why they start the graphs in 1850, and it is not just because it was the tail-end of the Little Ice Age (LIA), from which low point the temperature trend might well climb upwards for a time as climatic conditions normalized.
Actually, the intellectual deception is far more egregious. To wit, the Climate Howlers want you to believe the absolutely anti-scientific notion that the global climate was in general equipoise until the coal barons and the John D. Rockefeller’s of the mid-19th century set off a dangerous chain of climate dysfunction as they brought the stored solar energy embedded in coal and petroleum to the surface and released its combustion by-products–especially CO2—into the ambient air.
The Risible Myth Of Climate Equipoise
The global warming narrative is the most risible manifestation yet of this leap into self-righteous disregard for evidence, logic, and plausibility. For when you step back from the shrill, sanctimonious narrative that passes for the global warming catechism, the ridiculousness of its central claim that industrial society is destroying the climatic equipoise of the planet is self-evident.
For crying out loud, there has never been equipoise!
What there’s been is 4.5 billion years of wildly oscillating and often violent geologic evolution and climate disequilibrium owing to manifold natural causes, including:
- plate tectonics that has sometimes violently impacted climate systems, especially the assembly and breakup of Pangaea between 335 million and 175 million years ago, and the continuous drift of the present-day continents thereafter;
- asteroid bombardments;
- the 100,000-year cycles of the Earth’s orbital eccentricity (it gets colder when it’s at maximum elongation);
- the 41,000-year cycles of the Earth’s tilt on its axis, which oscillates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees and thereby impacts the level of solar intake;
- the wobble or precession of the earth’s rotation which impacts climate over the course of its 26,000 year cycles;
- the recent 150,000 year glaciation and inter-glacial warming cycles;
- the 1500 year sunspot cycles, where earth temperatures fall during solar minimums like the Maunder Minimum of 1645-1715 at the extreme of the LIA when sunspot activity virtually ceased.
The natural climate change now underway is, therefore, the product of powerful planetary forces that long predated the industrial age and which massively exceed the impact of industrial era emissions. As we indicated in Part 1, that the present conflation of these forces has resulted in a warming cycle is nothing new—warming has happened repeatedly even in modern times.
These modern warmings include the previously discussed Holocene Climate Optimum (5000 to 3000 BC); the Roman Warming (200 BC to AD 500); and, most recently, the Medieval Warm Period (AD 1000-1300).
Contrary to the false claims of the Climate Howlers,
- Current mildly rising temperatures are in keeping with the historical truth that warmer is better for humanity and most other species, too;
- Continued planetary equipoise requires no interventions whatsoever by the state to retard the use of prosperity-fostering fossil fuels or to subsidize and accelerate the adoption of high-cost renewable energy.
So the question recurs. What “pre-industrial” temperature baseline can be picked out of all these eras and all these climate change forces that would be anything but an arbitrary political, not science-based, choice?
After all, the science is agnostic. Mother Earth has weathered every kind of climate disequilibrium at both the colder and warmer ends of the spectrum and, crucially, experienced the eventual release of countervailing forces that took both temperature and CO2 levels back in the other direction.
We think the planet’s climatic resilience is especially evident in the fact that, after five major ice ages, warming forces returned with robust energy until they reversed again, thereby proving there is no doomsday loop that leads in linear fashion to inexorable catastrophe as is embedded in the climate models.
There have naturally been extended periods of global warming in between these ice ages, but the last three listed below are of special significance. They all occurred during the last 600 million years of generally much hotter temperatures and CO2 concentrations that were 2–6 times higher than current readings.
That is to say, the last three ice ages prove better than anything else that the planet’s subsequent warming cycles have been self-limiting and self-correcting. If that were not true, the earth would have been boiling into perdition eons ago:
- Huronian (2.4–2.1 billion years ago),
- Cryogenian (850–635 million years ago),
- Andean-Saharan (460–430 million years ago),
- Karoo (360–260 million years ago),
- Quaternary (2.6 million years ago–present,
As we indicated in Part 1, regarding the most recent Quaternary era, the last glacier retreat gathered warming steam about 14,000 years ago until it was interrupted by a sudden cooling at about 10,000–8500 BC, known as the aforementioned Younger Dryas. The warming resumed by 8500 BC.
By 5000 to 3000 BC, average global temperatures reached their maximum level during the Holocene Optimum and were 1 to 2 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today.
As we noted, during the Holocene Optimum, many of the Earth’s great ancient civilizations began and flourished because conditions were especially hospitable for agriculture and the generation of economic surpluses. The Nile River, for instance, had an estimated three times its present volume, indicating a much larger tropical region. In fact, 6,000 years ago, the Sahara was far more fertile than today and supported large herds of animals, as evidenced by the Tassili N’Ajjer frescoes of Algeria.
That is to say, warmer and wetter was far better for mankind than prior bouts of cold.
Nevertheless, from 3000 to 2000 BC, a renewed cooling trend occurred. The latter caused large drops in sea level and the emergence of many islands (Bahamas) and coastal areas that are still above sea level today.
A short warming trend took place from 2000 to 1500 BC and the associated renewal of the Egyptian dynasties, followed once again by colder conditions from 1500 to 750 BC. This caused renewed ice growth in European continental glaciers and alpine glaciers, and a sea-level drop of between 2 and 3 meters below present-day levels. Incidentally, that period is also known as the Dark Ages and preceded the flowering of Greek and Roman civilizations.
The period from 750 BC to AD 800 brought a general warming trend, but it was not as strong as the Holocene Optimum. During the time of the Roman Empire, in fact, a cooling began that intensified after AD 600 and resulted in a renewed dark age that lasted until about AD 900.
During the AD 600–900 Dark Ages, global average temperatures were significantly colder than they are today. From writings of the time, we know that at its height, the cooling caused the Nile River (AD 829) and the Black Sea (AD 800–801) to freeze.
Thereafter came the crucial Medieval Warm Period from AD 1000 to 1300. As shown in the chart below, temperatures were at or above current readings during most of the period, which saw a rejuvenation of economic life, trade, and civilization in Europe.
Indeed, prior to the post-1850 warming, there had been five distinct warming periods (red areas) since the last glaciers with temperatures above current levels. Never, of course, does this chart see the light of day in the mainstream climate change narrative.
Also, during this period, the Vikings established settlements in Iceland and Greenland. Long before the industrial era, Greenland was so warm, wet, and fertile that major colonization occurred after AD 980. At its peak, it included upward of 10,000 settlers, extensive farming, numerous Catholic churches, and a parliament that eventually voted for union with Norway.
So, obviously, the Vikings named their settlement not because they were color blind but because it was hospitable to human settlement.
As another measure of comparison, studies show that the snow line in the Rocky Mountains was about 370 meters above current levels (it was warmer then than today).
Thereafter, the climate trend again reversed in the colder direction. There are ample records from around the world of floods, great droughts, and extreme seasonal climate fluctuations up to the 1400s. Horrendous floods devastated China in 1332 (reported to have killed several million people).
Likewise, by the 14th century, the Viking colony was lost to sea ice expansion, and the growing season got ever shorter, thereby undermining the economic viability of these farming settlements. Food eventually got so scarce that the remaining settlers’ last winter turned out to be one of rampant cannibalism, as archeologists have documented with respect to the remains of the settlement pictured below.
As we said, warmer is better for mankind!
Nor was the reversal from the hospitable climate of the Viking era settlements in Greenland merely a regional anomaly has some Climate Howlers have claimed. During the Medieval Warm period, great civilizations flourished in many other areas, which then became uninhabitable.
For instance, a great drought in the American southwest occurred between 1276 and 1299. Grand settlements like those in Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde were abandoned. Tree-ring analysis has identified a period of no rain between 1276 and 1299 in these areas.
Needless to say, these extreme weather perturbations were not caused by industrial activity because there was none, and they occurred during a period when it was getting colder, not warmer!
From 1550 to AD 1850, global temperatures were at their coldest since the beginning of the Holocene 12,000 years ago. Hence the designation of this period as the Little Ice Age (LIA).
In Europe, glaciers came down the mountains, thereby covering houses and villages in the Swiss Alps while canals in Holland froze for three months straight, a rare occurrence before or after. Agricultural productivity also dropped significantly, even becoming impossible in parts of northern Europe. The cold winters of the Little Ice Age were famously recorded in Dutch and Flemish paintings, such as Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel (c. 1525–69).
From 1580 to 1600, the western part of the United States also experienced one of its longest and most severe droughts in the last 500 years. Cold weather in Iceland from 1753 to 1759 caused 25% of the population to die from crop failure and famine. Newspapers in New England called 1816 “the year without a summer.”
Self-evidently, when the LIA finally ended around 1850, global temperatures were at a modern nadir (no wonder the Climate Howlers start their charts in the middle of the 19th century).
But the significance of this fact goes well beyond cropping the temperature charts at 1850. Actually, in order to erase the above-described oscillations of the modern climate, climate change advocates have actually gone so far as to literally attempt to airbrush them out of existence.
We are referring to what we call the climate “Piltdown Mann,” named for one Michael Mann, a newly minted Ph.D. (1998) who became the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) lead investigator and advocate for what famously became the “hockey stick” proof of global warming.
The latter, of course, was the blatant fraud embedded in the image that Al Gore made famous in his propagandistic movie “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. Suffice to say, the purpose of the hockey stick was to wipe out all the evidence summarized above.
That is, in lieu of the planet’s long-term and recent severe climate oscillations, the IPCC posited an entirely opposite thesis. Namely, for the pre-industrial millennium before 1900, global temperatures were nearly as flat as a board.
Accordingly, only when the industrial age got a head of steam and reached full force after 1950 did today’s warming temperatures first appear, or so it was alleged. The suggestion, of course, was that an uncontrolled temperature breakout to the upside was well underway and that a planetary disaster was just around the corner.
The only problem is that Mann’s graph was as phony as the Piltdown Man itself—the latter famously being confected in England in 1912 and conveniently “discovered” by an amateur anthropologist who claimed it was the missing link in human evolution. At length, it was shown that the fossil was a forgery; it consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth.
In the case of the graph, Professor Mann and his accomplices at the IPCC doctored the evidence, used misleading data from southwestern US tree rings in lieu of abundant alternative data showing the contrary, and jiggered their computer models to generate pre-specified results.
That is, the models were produced by goal-seeking on the part of Mann and his associates to prove the man-made warming thesis. In essence, this was accomplished by simply pasting modern temperature records showing steady increases on top of a pre-industrial baseline that never happened.
The phony pre-industrial baseline is depicted by the yellow area in the graph for the period 1400–1900. The hockey stick-like eruption of the yellow space after 1900, of course, allegedly depicts the man-made temperature rise since the onset of the hydrocarbon age.
By contrast, the corrected version is in blue. In this version—which comports with the history of climate oscillations cited above—there is no hockey stick because the shaft never happened; it was invented by computer model manipulations, not extracted from the abundant scientific data on which the Mann study was allegedly based.
So the question is answered. The mid-19th century is exactly the wrong baseline from which to measure global temperature change during modern times.
The blue area of the chart, in fact, is the smoking gun that obliterates the whole predicate on which COP26 is being foisted upon the everyday people of the world.
Editor’s Note: We’ve seen governments institute the strictest controls on people and businesses in history. It’s been a swift elimination of individual freedoms.
But this is just the beginning…
Most people don’t realize the terrible things that could come next, including negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and much more.
If you want to know how to survive what the central bankers and the Deep State have planned, then you need to see this newly released report from legendary investor Doug Casey and his team.
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