Beginning around 1760 at the end of the Little Ice Age, the Earth’s temperatures began increasing which has continued to the present. Concurrently with this warming cycle, the Industrial Revolution began generating energy by burning fossil fuels which emitted increasing levels of CO2 into the atmosphere. Some scientists and others attributed these CO2 emissions as the primary factor driving the increases in the Earth’s temperatures by 0.8 degrees Centigrade between 1900 and 2022.
Furthermore, major concern has arisen that the Earth’s rising temperatures pose an existential threat to our civilization. To mitigate these concerns, the U.S. government and others have initiated policies they hope to reduce the Earth’s CO2 emissions to zero by 2050. They have set a target of holding the Earth’s future temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Centigrade or less.
Our modern civilization has been built upon the energy provided by fossil fuels to provide most of our electrical energy and most of the fuels used in all modes of transportation. Therefore, to make such dramatic changes in our basic energy systems, the premises upon which the changes are proposed must be valid.
The foundation of these premises is that increases of CO2 in the atmosphere are the primary driver for the Earth’s current warming period. Second, wind and solar are suitable replacements for fossil fuel electrical generation. Third, these temperature increases caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere are an existential threat to our civilization. These posts will address these basic issues.
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The history of the Universe began 13 billion 278 million years ago, give or take an astrophysicist or two. All known history of mankind, though, has occurred within the 10,000 years since the end of the last Glacial, which we know as the Ice Age. The significant recorded history of mankind extends back only about 3,500 years beginning in the Minoan Warm Period, or the Bronze Age.
10,000 Years of Climate Cycles During the Modern Era
Within these last 3,500 years, the Earth has experienced warming and cooling cycles naturally reoccurring every 500 to 1,500 years, give a take a few hundred years here and there. The Bronze Age, beginning around 1,500 B.C., occurred during the first warming cycle of this period. In it kingdoms flourished within China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.
The Greak Dark Ages, a cooling period, followed from around 1,200 to 250 years B.C. The great Bronze Age kingdoms all fell preceding this nearly one-thousand-year cooling period. Subsistence farming maintained the fragmented populations, most of whom were also forced to sacrifice their entire animal husbandry food supplies.
Prosperous times returned, and human energy again began a new period of empire building during six hundred years or so during the Roman Warm Period, 250 B.C. to A.D. 450. Bountiful harvests returned; animal spirits revived again beginning with Alexander of Macedonia. Alexander stretched his Greek Empire all the way to India with his armies being able to supply their food needs as his armies rushed in record time across the Middle East, Persia, and into India.
After Alexander’s death, the Romans rushed in on the heels of his fragmented empire, and the Roman Empire prospered for approximately six hundred years. A cooling period returned, though, just before the middle of the millennium. Seeking warmer climes, Mongols from the Asian plains streamed down through eastern Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people were pushed south before them into the Roman Empire resulting in the Sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D.
This Dark Age cooling period was followed by new enlightenment during the Medieval Warm Period from 850 to 1250 A.D. The sails of Norsemen ships were filled with warming winds sailing them to Greenland and Nova Scotia. Norse settlements were abandoned when the Little Ice Age began around 1300 A.D. hitting its coldest depths at Valley Forge during the American Revolution in 1778. Since then, the Earth has been in another natural warming period which ushered in the current era of human energy, growth, and prosperity which gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. During this last Warming Period of 250 years, mankind has experienced the greatest period of prosperity in history.
Even a casual reader of history is aware of many of the above historical periods, and more ardent readers of history are aware that the times and empires most studied were ended by Cooling Periods which strained the existing political entities to their breaking points.
Fifteen years ago, I first viewed Al Gore present Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick presentation which failed to show the Little Ice Age. I knew instantly that their premise was suspect, if not irresponsibly false. Mann’s temperature profiles were later proven to be weak, faulty, if not fraudulent, and the available climate science at that time was relatively primitive.
Recent reliable temperature proxies, principally ice cores samples providing temperature (and CO2) data back thousands of years, have produced reliable profiles showing both major and minor temperature cycles. These show that our current warming period has produced substantially cooler temperatures than any of the three previous warming periods in modern human history – Bronze, Roman, or Medieval Warming Periods. The temperature profiles over the last 10,000 years are shown in the following graph.
Current Warming Period is Coolest Over Last 4,000 Years
The Romans did not have air conditioning to keep them cool, but they did wear togas, not furs! Their villas and public places probably were designed with cross ventilation and shaded porches, something our older relatives became experts at before prosperity and technology gave us year-around 72-degree temperatures to live in. Perhaps as much as one-half of the world’s population today still lives with the seasons, but they are still much more comfortable than those that preceded them in times past.
Mankind has always thrived during the Warming Periods; but most of mankind has previously had to scramble for survival during the Cooling Cycles.
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in future jenkins-speaks posts, the complete “Climate Made Simple” series of six posts will follow. In them, science, economics, and the other climate change issues will be clearly explained. The media histrionics harkening the coming climatic Armageddon being used to keep you from sleeping soundly each night will be absolved forever. These posts will eliminate the fear being promoted that unless all fossil fuel use is eliminated by 2050, the Earth’s climate will consume us all in a fiery furnace of Hell.
Likewise, you should feel confident in the knowledge that these temperature change periods require hundreds of years to develop; accordingly, our living generations will not be thrown into the next Ice Age that will inevitably follow.
Sleep well tonight!
John Whitmore Jenkins
March 21, 2024
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