Guilt and Global Warming
November 29, 2007
By: Dennis T. Avery
CHURCHVILLE, VA—The most awful thing about man-made global warming is that it’s our own fault. It’s our own greedy materialism that has the planet’s climate headed toward disaster. Or so we’re told.
The world has been through climate guilt trips before, however. During the 400 years of the Dark Ages (540 to 950 AD) the climate turned cold, cloudy and stormy, with poor crops and widespread hunger. The Roman Empire collapsed even as Europe’s cities were besieged by the Mongol hordes of Attila the Hun. To cap it all off, bubonic plague swept through Europe, killing perhaps 25 million people.
Christian leaders told their people that God was angry at humans. Hindu leaders in India said several gods were angry at people.
What really happened was a climate shift. The earth had enjoyed 800 years of the pleasant Roman Warming, with good crops and few storms. Then, about 540 AD, the earth shifted into a harsh, unstable global cooling.
Science today knows that this sort of climate shift happens every few centuries, apparently driven by variations in the sun. Those historic shifts are recorded today in ice cores, seabed sediments and fossil pollen—around the world.
In the 6th century, people had no such knowledge of climate change. They just suddenly found that their pleasant world had become unexpectedly dominated by cloudy skies, untimely frosts –and hunger.
Even the bubonic plague was brought by the climate change. The Little Ice Age triggered long, severe drought in the Near East, where the plague’s bacteria are always lurking. The region’s rats fled the drought, carrying their plague-infected fleas. Many hitched rides on trading ships and perhaps in the packs of camel caravans. The world’s port cities were infected first, but ultimately a big fraction of Europe’s people died. The victims literally turned black as they breathed their last.
Then, God’s anger seemed to disappear. About 950 AD, sunny skies warmed the planet again for 350 years. The growing seasons became long and fruitful, populations doubled, and plague was only a memory. A huge proportion of the world’s now-famous cathedrals and temples were built as people expressed their gratitude.
After the year 1300, came another climate shift—into the Little Ice Age. The world suffered 550 years of intense cold, untimely frosts and widespread famine. Even the bubonic plague returned, and killed perhaps 100 million people across Asia, Europe and Africa.
In the French Alps, frightened villagers called on the local bishop to exorcise the demon from the local glacier, which had been dormant for centuries and was now suddenly advancing on the town. The glacier reportedly stopped—for a while.
Witches were blamed for the crop failures. More than 1,000 witches were burned in Bern, Switzerland, between 1580 and 1620. The little town of Wiesensteig, Germany, burned 63 witches just in 1563. Once again, people were supposedly guilty of causing climate change and the populace reacted as best they could to appease.
Today, too, global warming is our fault: our sport-utility vehicles, our air conditioners, our energy-hungry lifestyles. But as climatologist Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama/Huntsville has written, “This myth continues despite that fact that there have been NO scientific papers published with evidence that our current warmth is not due to natural climate variability.”
All we have is a warming which started in 1850—too soon to be blamed on human-emitted CO2—and some unverified computer models. With humanity’s always-guilty conscience, that’s been enough to threaten a shutdown of most of the world’s power plants and vehicles.
How much guilt should we feel, however, for a warming of 0.2 degrees C over 70 years? During a rebound from the Little Ice Age? How many state climatologists, weathermen, climate researchers and general Greenhouse climate skeptics must be publicly vilified and economically ruined to satisfy the thirst for sacrifice?
DENNIS T. AVERY was a senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming—Every 1500 Years, available from Rowman & Littlefield. Readers may write him at the Center for Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org) Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421.
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