Let’s Say Man IS Changing the Climate. So What?

By Selwyn Duke

“The temperature is rising!” “The temperature is dropping.” The temperature is staying the same.”

We argue the “facts” of climate change (even as parts of New Jersey were just buried under 11 inches of global warming). One side wants the facts to show that man is disrupting the climate, while the other wants them to show that he’s not. But an almost never posed question should be asked:

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that our industry is causing global warming. So what?

No, I’m not a guy who “just wants to see the world burn” (and that would be literally). Rather, if anthropogenic climate change were occurring, why should we assume it wouldn’t be beneficial?

Oh, it’s not just that the Earth is greener and crop yields are higher when CO₂ levels are greater; it’s not just that relative warmth breeds life. It’s also this:

Some scientists have said the Earth will soon enter, or has already entered, a significant cooling phase. Others even contend that another ice age is nigh. And if this is so, any man-caused temperature increase would merely mitigate this naturally induced but deadly phenomenon.

One of these scientists was the late Professor S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric and space physics expert who had been a founding director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. “I have recently become quite concerned about ice ages and the dangers they pose to humans on our planet,” he wrote in 2015 — “and indeed to most of terrestrial ecology.”

Singer explained later in his article that there “are two kinds of ice ages”:

(i) Major (Milankovich-style) glaciations occur on a 100,000-year time-scale and are controlled astronomically. (ii) “Little” ice ages were discovered in ice cores; they have been occurring on an approx. 1000-1500-yr cycle and are likely controlled by the Sun.

The scientist then warned that the “current cycle’s cooling phase may be imminent....”

Now, this is a frightening prospect. Even the liberal New York Times admitted in 2017, reporting on a Lancet study, that “cold weather is responsible, directly or indirectly, for 17 times as many deaths as hot weather.” That’s in our relatively warm time, too. What would happen during a major ice age?

Well, “The coolings are quite severe,” informed Singer. “[T]he most recent one, ending only about 12,000 years ago, covered much of North America and Europe with miles-thick continental ice sheets and led to the disappearance of (barely) surviving bands of Neanderthalers; they were displaced by the more adaptable Homo Sapiens.”

In other words, another major ice age would likely be a Hollywood-like, apocalyptic disaster. In fact, Singer insisted that we should be prepared to use scientific interventions to mitigate such an eventuality (while Bill Gates wants to do the same to cool down the Earth). To be clear, though, while Singer said that another ice age could begin tomorrow, it could also be tens of thousands of year away. And my article isn’t about hashing out the details, assessing probability, or recommending mitigation measures. (you can read Singer’s work for that). It is about this: prejudice.

Again, accepting for argument that man is significantly warming the planet (not my belief), why assume this is bad?

In reality, moderns’ thinking so often reflects a kind of misanthropism or, at least, a bias against Western-triumph-born modernity. People believing that extraterrestrials furtively visit our planet never assume the aliens’ matter-of-course environmental impact could be malign; they’re too advanced. People pondering a hunter-gatherer tribe (e.g., the North Sentinelese) generally assume they just must live “in harmony with nature” and be innocuous; they’re too primitive. Never mind that American Indians deforested stretches along, and caused the sedimentation of, the Delaware River long before Europeans’ New World arrival (to provide just one perspective-lending example). The activities of man, or modern man or Western man, depending on the precise prejudice, just must be harmful for the simple reason that he engaged in them. So, yes, racial profiling is a problem — against the human race.

In fairness, we can do and have done much to damage the environment. In fairness again, though, forested area in the U.S. is greater than it was a century back and our water and air are cleaner than they were 60 years ago. And in recent times the Great Barrier Reef has actually increased in size (this isn’t necessarily due to man’s activities). So we can also be good shepherds of the Earth.

The odd thing, though, about the misanthropic prejudice is that implicit in it is an idea that man is akin to some unnatural, artificial presence. This, coming from people who generally also believe man is himself only an animal, a mere product of evolution; in other words, just another part of nature. And, of course, whether the result of divine creation or evolutionary happenstance, part of nature (or Creation) is precisely what man is.

As for the world’s fortunes, 99.9 percent of the species of life that have ever existed are extinct, partially due to ice ages. So ironically, if man’s activities — either accidentally, intentionally or both — mitigate the coming ice age, we humans may be responsible for counteracting the next great extinction.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on X (formerly Twitter), MeWe or Gettr or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

Comments

[Snake]

Lets thing of this: If it is humans causing global warming, and if the sun was to quit giving off heat, would the earth still be warm enough to support life, OR would the earth freeze?

REAL science has dictated with in 48 hours the entire earth would be one big ice cube. Therefore, the so called global warming caused by humans would not contribute to maintaining the earth heat.

We receive ALL and I say again ALL our heat from the SUN!

[ArmyofOne]

Remember When Leftist Climate Fanatics Told Us...

1960's - Oil gone in 10 years!
1970's - Another ice age in 10 years!
1980's - Acid rain will destroy all crops in 10 years!
1990's - Ozone layer will be destroyed in 10 years!
2000's - Polar ice caps will melt in 10 years causing oceans to rise wiping out worlds coastal cities!
2024 - - None of this happened! Except many charlatans such as Al Gore got filthy rich!

[AbsurdlyCritical]

The simplest way to know that the climate hoax is a scam and a hoax is to look at how all the proponents of Anthropogenic Climate Change own coastal real estate despite asserting based on faulty data that much coastal real estate will be underwater in the future. If they really believed the doom they were prophesying they wouldn't own the coastal real estate. The private jet hypocrisy is pretty good too but owning coastal real estate is the kicker

[beau]

it becomes obvious it is a scam when al gore supports it.

[tj]

Excellent discussion of where "science" went wrong, Selwyn. I'm old enough to remember public discourse about a coming ice age then had some confusion in the 90s as "global warming" began being discussed by fear-mongering fanatics. I guess it could be assumed that the radicals had completed their takeover of higher education by the mid-90s so it's no coincidence that the universities also became dominated by critical race theory and the culture by political correctness at this time. Carry on righting these conceptual wrongs. Once the fight is won then we can perhaps discover some way to prevent the rational thinkers in higher education from gradually becoming more and more irrational again.

[Roger Graves]

It would be interesting to consider what our world would be like if the concepts of global warming and climate change had never entered our consciousness. For a start, wind and solar energy would not exist in the massive industrial form that they do today. EVs, if they existed at all, would probably occupy a niche as urban runabouts for those with facilities to charge them at home. Certainly nobody would use them by choice for long trips or in cold winters.

The concept of climate change has been immensely profitable for those involved in these technologies, and where there is a lot of money sloshing around one can guarantee that the core belief system supporting it all will be elevated into a quasi-religious form. This will result in hordes of academics exhorting us that climate catastrophe will shortly be upon us, public sector officials inundating us with climate-related regulations and politicians with campaign slogans which boil down to ‘vote for me or the world is doomed’. None of this supporting infrastructure will fade away gracefully, but fade away eventually it must.

I wonder what will replace it?

[Howard Hirsch]

Back in the 70s I taught a course in energy and environmental policy at Metro State University in St. Paul, MN--although decidedly not toeing the Sierra Club line.

While researching possible texts to assign to my students, I came across the following books, released almost simultaneously:

"The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun?" by Lowell Ponte (1976)

"Hothouse earth" by Howard A. Wilcox (1975)

So which was it? I guess the jury is still out on that, but between the two I suppose we can expect to break even.