I just googled the phrase “how many ice ages have there been?”
What I learned is that there have been at least four major Ice ages, and dozens of smaller ones. Some of the essays I read said that there have been seven major ice ages, I guess because they differ in how they define “major.”
These global ice ages, and subsequent global warming periods, started long before the industrial revolution. Millions of years before.
The reasons put forth for all of these global cooling and warming periods include volcanic activity, solar activity, slight changes in the earth’s orbit, and tectonic movement.
One reason that isn’t mentioned is human activity. Good thing, since there weren’t any humans during most of the periods under discussion.
So my question is this.
If all of these global warming and cooling periods happened without any help from humans, what kind of hubris makes us think that we are causing all of this climate change, and that the only way to solve it is the total ruination of our national economy with onerous taxes, and a crazy cap and trade scheme?
Kirk Marsh, a professor of Geology at the University of Maine, says the following, writing for Nova Online:
“If ‘ice age’ is used to refer to long, generally cool, intervals during which glaciers advance and retreat, we are still in one today. Our modern climate represents a very short, warm period between glacial advances”
Not quite the gospel according to Al Gore, is it?
The entire article can be found
here.
He also says:
“We are still in the midst of the third major cooling period that began around 3 million years ago, and its effect can be seen around the world, perhaps even in the development of our own species.”
So, am I being a denier? I don’t think so. In researching this subject, I made it a point to avoid articles that have an obvious ax to grind either for or against global warming. In fact, most of the reading I’ve done for this essay didn’t mention global warming at all. I just make my own conclusions, based on these types of articles.
Want to hear my conclusions? Too bad. Here they are anyway.
- The climate is changing, because it is always changing. Always has, always will. Since the earth was first formed, the average temperatures have been going up and down, based on many different external forces, none of them human.
- Whether the current trend is for temperatures to be rising or falling, we didn’t start it, and we can’t stop it.
- Cap and trade will make billionaires of a few investors (Al Gore, for example), but increase the cost of EVERYTHING to EVERYBODY. Well, maybe not everything, but at least everything that the uses energy to manufacture. Bread, shoes, cars, candy, electronics, furniture, shirts, tires, repair services, potato chips, road construction, homes, baseballs, nail clippers, dog food, air plane travel, and lawn mowers are just a few of the items that will cost more to buy under cap and trade. So, maybe EVERYTHING is an appropriate word after all.
- Once it starts costing more to make goods, and companies start passing along the extra costs in the form of higher prices, people will buy less of them, so the companies will lay off people, or go out of business, which will cost jobs.
- The companies that don’t go out of business will try to control costs by sending operations overseas, which will cost more American jobs.
- The countries where goods are manufactured will not be constrained by a crazy cap and trade scheme, so they will spew more carbon in the air than if those products were made in the US. Not that it matters in the long run, since man made greenhouse emissions are a drop in the bucket compared to the forces of nature, but it is worth pointing out the irony. We will pay more for products, and more pollution will go into the air than if we didn’t have the crazy cap and trade scheme to begin with.
Please, all you Al Gore apostles, stop listening to politicians on this, and stop listening to scientists that are funded by the efforts of politicians.
Read things for yourself, and then let your politicians know that you don’t want a crazy cap and trade scheme.
If global warming is inevitable, then let’s put our ingenuity to work figuring out how to deal with the rising sea level, rather than trying to stop the unstoppable. Let’s build levees, dykes, channels, canals, and seawalls. Let’s figure out how to move coastal homes and industries away from the shore.
Trying to stop climate change with a crazy cap and trade scheme is just spitting into the wind, but the effects on our economy will be disastrous.
That’s the way I see it.
Neill Arnhart——
Bio and Archives
Neill Arnhart lives in Southern Indiana with his wife, step daughter, two dachshunds named Ricky and Lucy, an Australian Cattle dog named Indiana (Indy for short) an inside cat named Elphaba, and about a dozen barn cats. Aside from living in the US, he has lived on the island of Trinidad, and in Venezuela, back when it was nice place.
When not rousing the rabble with sarcastic essay’s, he hides behind the secret identity of a mild mannered insurance agent, specializing in Medicare, and other matters concerning senior citizens.
