Climate change occurs naturally
Editor: Let’s get something straight right off the bat: no one who is observant denies that the ‘climate changes.’ The problem is that climate alarmists fail miserably to take into account that climate has always changed.
Case in point: Greenland. Greenland ice cores show the average temperatures have fluctuated between minus 29 to 32.5 Celsius over the past 10,000 years. That doesn’t sound like much, but extrapolate that out over the world and climatologists tell us it is huge.
Two thousand years ago, the Earth warmed and there occurred ‘the Roman warm period,’ where temperatures were about minus 29.5 Celsius. Then during the Dark Ages cold period (AD 550 to 925 ), world temperatures plummeted and temperatures on Greenland fell to minus 31.2C.
That was followed by the Medieval warm period (AD 925-1350) when the temperatures rose dramatically to about minus 30.5 C. The Vikings made their remarkable discoveries in Greenland and North America during these centuries. Indeed, it was so warm that they gave Greenland its name! (Surely they must have been burning too much fossil fuels in those days to warm the climate so much).
But the climate continued to change, driving the Vikings from Greenland because during the Little Ice Age (AD 1350-1850) the temperatures dropped precipitously to –32 C. It grew so cold that glaciers advanced in the Alps and the Rockies. The Thames River froze over. New York Harbour did too. Suddenly crops were not able to grow and famine struck many regions. Demand for furs to keep Europeans warm led to the lucrative fur trade industry from North America!
Then the climate changed again. It began once again to warm up. Presently, the average temperature, according to those same ice cores, is about minus 30.5 C, about as warm as it was during the Medieval warm period.
Now, if honesty were to prevail, climate alarmists would point out in their graphs and papers these historic fluctuations in global temperatures. Why though, do they almost only just go back to the low point of about 1850? Why do they only show graphs on the upward trend side and not the downward trends too? Because if the public saw the highs and lows of just the past 2,000 years, they would realize that climate change is a naturally occurring phenomena, which would determine that climate is a reality that must be managed, not something humans can control. Jim Church, Kelowna