This isn’t the first time the planet has warmed up

Editor: Aside from manipulative editors who write inflammatory headlines to push controversy rather than truth, it is sad that neither the media nor others who flog anthropogenic global warming so easily dismiss the vast variations in past climate history.

The fact is that scientists investigating ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, sediments from lakes, and other indicators that come to us with evidence down through the millennia, have discovered that the world was a full degree warmer during the Roman Warm Period (about 300 BC-200 AD) than it is today.

During the Medieval Warm Period (825-1350) the earth was slightly warmer than today, but still warmer.

In between there have been several cold periods, including the Dark Ages Cold Period (ended suddenly about 825) and the last of which was the Little Ice Age (about 1350-1850).

Ice core evidence especially shows conclusively that the climatic changes often took place quite rapidly. The climb up from the Dark Ages Cold Period (which was about three degrees colder than the Roman Warm Period) took place extremely rapidly rising almost two degrees in less than 100 years. That sudden warming, all scientists would affirm, had nothing to do with anthropogenic causes or more significantly with greenhouse gases.

This is significant, for if anthropogenic-caused greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon dioxide, supposedly “cause” global warming, the facts from the past put the lie to that theory.

Indeed, it is scientifically irresponsible to attribute previous warmings to “other factors” and then to arbitrarily conclude that the warming we witness today is almost entirely of human origin while blithely dismissing those “other factors.”

Interestingly, historic observations are being buttressed by current satellite data about solar cycles (each about 11 years duration) and their extremely close correlation with the warming and cooling of the Earth.

Broadly speaking, a rise in solar activity generally corresponds to a warming of the earth.

A slowing, even a cessation of sunspot activity, seems to correspond to a cooling of the earth.

Over the course of sunspot cycles 19-23, about 1947-2009) there was a great amount of solar activity which (coupled with other natural factors such as El Nino) led to a warming climate.

However, beginning with cycle 24, there has been a significant drop in activity (since Dec. 2016 to present the number of sunspots have almost ceased, indeed have done so for several weeks at a time).

Astrophysicists are predicting another cooling period on the Earth which some forecast to last until past the middle of this century.

The question is whether those married to the anthropogenic ideology will agree with science or their ideology. Only time will tell.

Jim Church, Kelowna