Be Grateful for Global Warming
Present-day warming has been termed a crisis, and modern economic development a cancer.
But what if I told you that much of the recent advancement in human prosperity would have been impossible without the temperature increases of the last several hundred years?
A key to the sustenance of any society is food security. Today’s world should be grateful for today’s relative warmth as well as higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide because both have been instrumental in propelling plant growth globally.
A review of human and climate history reveal a strong link between the rise and fall of temperature and the rise and fall of civilization, and it is just opposite of what the climate doomsayers are telling you.
Past warming periods were much warmer than our modern temperatures and were associated with times of great prosperity.
The intervening cold eras had names like Greek Dark Ages, the Dark Ages and Little Ice Age and were linked to crop failure, pestilence and mass deaths.
According to historian Wolfgang Behringer, “…cooling has always resulted in major social upheavals, whereas warming has sometimes led to a blossoming of culture. If we can learn anything from the history of culture, it is that, even if humans were ‘children of the Ice Age,’ civilization was a product of climatic warming.”
Are you among those wishing for lower global temperatures? According to ‘climatologist’ Dr. Michael Mann, the ideal temperature for the planet would be “the temperature range that prevailed since the dawn of civilization until we began burning fossil fuels.”
That timing would place humanity squarely in the death-dealing cold that prevailed during the aptly named Little Ice Age (LIA), ca. CE 1250–1850. This was a cold period of global extent.
The LIA froze rivers such as the Thames, which rarely has done so in the modern era. Here in the United States, we know that Martha Washington enjoyed ice during the summers at Mount Vernon that was harvested from the Potomac River and stored in an icehouse on the grounds. These thick freezes were an annual event in the 18th century, while today they only occur occasionally during unusually cold winters.
Historian Philipp Blom says that the Little Ice Age resulted in a “a long-term, continent-wide agricultural crisis” in Europe. His book, Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present extensively captures the collapse of Western society owing to crop failure in the 17th century.
Published scientific journals documented agricultural collapse in Europe. Finland, for example, witnessed massive crop failure and abandonment of farmlands due to the cooling phase.
Famine killed millions through starvation and disease. A priest in France wrote:
“The crops that had been sewn were all completely destroyed…. Most of the hens had died of cold, as had the beasts in the stables. When any poultry did survive the cold, their combs were seen to freeze and fall off. Many birds, ducks, partridges, woodcock, and blackbirds died and were found on the roads and on the thick ice and frequent snow.
Oaks, ashes, and other valley trees split with cold. Two thirds of the vines died…. No grape harvest was gathered at all in Anjou…. I myself did not get enough wine from my vineyard to fill a nutshell.”
Thankfully, the natural climate cycle took its own course, and the cold period gave way to a warming period that began more than 300 years ago and continues in fits and starts to this day.
While it is true that the 20th century’s remarkable increase in crop growth was greatly aided by advancements in agricultural technology, it would have been impossible if the earth hadn’t warmed to levels more conducive to plant life. As if this booster in temperature weren’t sufficient, the growth of plants has been further turbocharged by increasing carbon dioxide that is likely the result of the industrial use of fossil fuels.
Image: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center
Today, countries across the globe excel in agriculture and are breaking records year after year. Some formerly famine-struck countries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, China and Philippines produce abundant quantities of crops, increasing global food security.
To call present-day temperature a “crisis”’is pure ignorance.
Human and climate history reveal that we should welcome the warmth and fear the cold, quite opposite the story that the Climate Industrial Complex peddles.
See more here: co2coalition.org
Bold emphasis added
Header image: National Gallery of Art
About the author: Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist, executive director of the CO2 Coalition, expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and author of the bestselling book Inconvenient Facts.
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Alan
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Also, where would we be without the other great evil of today – coal? Without coal we would have probably cut down every tree to keep warm, for cooking or making charcoal and for shipbuilding. David Attenborough featured the loss of Acacia trees in Africa in the last of his Green Planet programmes. They have been cut down for fuel. Africa needs cheap coal to generate electricity, not the spreading of seeds for more trees.
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nonstopca
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If you didn’t figure this out by yourselves…You’re NOT a free thinker… you’re a slave to the communists that control MOST people…
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Bruce Johnston
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Having been alive for most of the run up in atmospheric CO2, I can only say that Toronto is still a very cold place in winter, summer smog in the city is close to non-existent, and water clarity in our lakes has greatly improved.
Oh, and sightings of coyote, deer, rabbit, skunk, raccoon, rabbit, red tailed hawks, etc, are now commonplace.
If this is earth going to hell in a hand basket, let’s enjoy the ride.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi PSI Readers,
A question: Has there been observed any significant warming since the LAST melting the the Northern Hemispheres LAST glaciation of the northern portions of its continents.???
Have a good day, Jerry
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Doug Harrison
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I must point out an error in this article. The writer proposes that the burning of fossil fuels (a misnomer if ever there was one) has raised the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. While this is partially true to a very minor extent, it is not the main cause of the increase. Of course it is the warming that causes the CO2 levels to rise not as the author implies the effect of more CO2 warming the atmosphere..
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Herb Rose
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Propaganda crap. Why do you have a graph showing sharp CO2 emissions increasing combined in a graph showing a sharp increase in CO2 removal by plant growth?
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Herb,
The short answer is the graph has nothing to do with CO2 removal by plant growth. What is being compared by the graph is the increase of carbon dioxide emissions (scaled to compare with the sharp increase of grain yields per acre due to changing farming practices beginning after WWII. Maybe due to the GI Bill which provided free education which taught modern farming methods to the young returning farm veterans coupled new farming equipment and genetic breeding of better plant stock, etc. One would need to have been a farmer during this time of rapid yield increase to appreciate the multiple factors that were involved.
Have a good day, Jerry
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jj
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I don’t buy it. Yes, I realize the earth goes through cycles over the eons, but there isn’t enough change in a lifetime to be noticeable. Humans can’t do anything that could alter the climate on a global scale if we wanted to. CO2 is created naturally on a larger scale than we are. Nope. I don’t believe it.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Jj,
You wrote: “Yes, I realize the earth goes through cycles over the eons, but there isn’t enough change in a lifetime to be noticeable.” Do you notice any change in the weather from one year to the next???
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Jj,
Before I came to my computer and read you comment I had been pondering the difference between words; like push or pull, heterogeneous or homogeneous.
But when I wrote my previous comment I forgot about heterogeneous or homogeneous and that I had concluded the difference between these two words was CRITIALLY IMPORTANT. When you wrote “there isn’t enough change in a lifetime to be noticeable” you defined a homogenous system which differences between the weather of one year to the previous or the next PROVE THAT THE EARTH SYSTEM CANNOT BE HOMOGENEOUS. So I had to correct my oversight.
Have a good day, Jerry
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John Doran
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It is not just warming nature contributing to man’s food security: the stalwart efforts of people like Norman Borlaug should not be overlooked.
He is credited with saving a billion lives.
In complete contrast to the depopulation Nazis running our climate & covid frauds.
The same Nazis demonise safe & clean nuclear power.
All this is well documented in PhD nuclear engineer Robert Zubrin’s book,
Merchants Of Despair.
Highly recommended.
JD.
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Jerry Krause
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Hi JD
Thanks for the information. I will need to lookup Norman Borlaug and Robert Zubrin because I know nothing about their achievements.
However, at the beginning of your comment you wrote: “It is not just warming nature contributing to man’s food security”. Which, I consider implies you accept the idea that any slight AVERAGE TEMPERATURE INCREASE has contributed significantly to increase of grain yields indicated in the graph.
I suspect that when I read about Norman Borlaug I might find that he was a plant breeder, but I certainly could be wrong. However, while I have a poor memory, I know that there was plant breeder who by crossing two common cereal plants to produce a ‘new’ plant which could be productive in regions of marginal rainfall and seem to remember that he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for this achievement. Of course, this all could be a figment of my imagination. But I will do a literature search like a good SCIENTIST should. Thanks again for a place to start this search and for motivating me to better inform myself.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jerry Krause
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Hi JD and PSI Readers,
It did not take long to discover that Norman Borlaug was the agronamist of my vague memory and found that my comment about the ‘new plant’ was not supported by the Wikipedia article but I do not necessarily believe everything I read.
Now about Robert Zubrin’s Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, the subtitle says it all. I am familiar with the beliefs of the radical environmentalists. I am familiar with Pseudo-Scientists who truly believe that they are SCIENTISTS. Hence I consider what they write and state cannot be considered criminal because they have no idea of what they are doing. And about the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism, I conclude but do not know, that this about these people’s objective to depopulate the world as we read in some (many) PSI articles.
However, the Robert Zubrin has been during his career a sales person for his employer and the aero-space industry. Of which I had a personal experience of such a sales person. About which John O’Sullivan posted October 16, 2016. (https://principia-scientific.com/nasa-industrial-complex-new-twist-eisenhowers-warning/). Suggest you and PSI Readers read this history.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Jack
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60 years ago there were m
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Jack
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60 years ago there were many famines in India and in China?
India’s population has since increased threefold while its wheat, corn and rice annual crops have increased fourfold, making this country becoming a nett exporter of food related goods these last years.
Thanks to CO2 and monsoon rains !
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