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December 24, 2024
Estimates of Earth’s age and how long homo sapiens have been around vary somewhat. Numbers like three-to-four billion years are offered as Earth’s age, and our “ancestors” are estimated to have been here for six million years. However, our form of humans has been around for only about 200,000 years.
Over those countless centuries Earth has experienced many changes, and temperature fluctuations are among them. We have had both warm periods and cold periods along the way, and they have alternated back and forth many times.
Smithsonian Magazine explains that “Our planet’s average surface temperature did not stick close to a central point but instead has swung into very hot and very cold periods through the past 485 million years.”
“Earth has experienced cold periods (informally referred to as ‘ice ages,’ or ‘glacials’) and warm periods (‘interglacials’) on roughly 100,000-year cycles for at least the last 1 million years,” according to climate.gov. “The last of these ice age glaciations peaked around 20,000 years ago.” During these cycles, global average temperatures warmed or cooled anywhere from 5-15 degrees Fahrenheit.
Moving from an ice age to a warm period, and vice versa, is a slow, lengthy process, taking tens of thousands of years. And we are currently in a warming period.
Currently, there is an energetic debate over Earth’s increasing temperatures, with scientists and others on one side expressing a fear of temperatures warming to a dangerous level due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide/greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
The scientists and others on the opposing side say that this carbon dioxide level is not dangerous, and in fact that double the amount of it would actually be a good thing, spurring more and stronger plant life. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen into the atmosphere, and that is a good thing.
The climate alarmist side has predicted several catastrophes over the last 50 years, none of which actually occurred:
* In the 1970s we were warned of global cooling and a descent into a new ice age.
* Paul Erlich claimed worldwide famine by 1975.
* It was claimed several times since 1988 that “we only have ten years left to save the planet.”
* Global warming “creator” Jim Hanson, predicted that lower Manhattan would be underwater by 2009. It isn’t.
* Al Gore predicted that the Arctic ice cap would be gone by 2015. It isn’t.
*We were told that polar bears were going to be extinct by now, but they are still around in large numbers.
*More droughts were predicted, but there have actually been fewer droughts.
* We were warned of more frequent and more intense hurricanes and tornadoes, but they have actually decreased in numbers and severity.
* Polar ice caps melting due to global warming was going to flood island nations. They are still here.
And now there is another study with a similar message. This one, conducted by the University of Bristol, also focuses on carbon dioxide/greenhouse gasses as the culprit: we must stop burning fossil fuels now, it warns.
As reported by the UK based LADbible Group, “The report suggests that Earth will cease to have any mammal inhabitants that cannot adjust to living with temperatures of between 104 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit.”
Their research showed “all mammals will die … [and] that humans are likely to go extinct in 250 million years,” unless we stop burning fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gas emissions now.
Obviously, 250 million years is a long way off, so we have a good bit of time to both observe what is happening and adjust if needed.
Science tells us that Earth has experienced much warmer periods in its geological history. It is said that 2023 was the warmest year on record since recordkeeping began in the late 19th century. The warming theorists say this means the Earth is warmer now than at any point in recent history.
But these temperature records only go back about 150 years, and that is a miniscule part of a warming or cooling period.
Furthermore, there are questions about the accuracy of the temperature records. Three scientists from the CERES environmental nonprofit organization — Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly, and Michael Connolly — believe that there is not a strong enough argument for the choice of the available global temperature trends used in these predictions.
In an article on The Heritage Foundation website, they commented that, “The scientific debate is still ongoing, and the scientific community is not yet in a position to establish whether the observed temperature changes since the 1800s are mostly natural, mostly human-caused, or a mixture of both.”
Another article on the Heritage site titled “Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models,” author Roy Spencer — Visiting Fellow in Heritage’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment — notes that “Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy.”
The evidence does not support the United States making radical changes in the way we want to live, and the things we prefer to have. Especially when other countries are unconcerned about it.
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