Climate Change
Just What Do You Mean: Part 1
By Daniel Muniz

“Climate Change” is perhaps the most disingenuous term ever employed by environmentalists. This terminology implies that there really is some kind of measurable normalcy in global temperatures. Nothing could be further from the truth because there is no such thing as a “normal” temperature for our planet. Even a cursory look at our recorded history vividly demonstrates that there is absolutely no average or normal climate.

However, the beauty of a term like “climate change” is its simplicity. Nothing else has to be explained because any “change” in temperature means that something bad must have happened. And since the human race is tinkering with the ecology of the planet, human activity must be the source of that change.

Right now there are some parts of the planet experiencing a warming trend so environmentalists claim that this modest change in temperature is abnormal. Naturally, these eco-warriors are demanding that governments do something to stop global warming because the human race caused it.

Well, does anyone remember global cooling?

There was a modest “drop” in global temperatures between the 1940’s through the 1970’s. In fact, since this change was supposedly “abnormal” eco-warriors also demanded that governments do something to stop global cooling.

So does that mean that prior to World War II, the planet’s temperature was normal?

Centuries ago the Little Ice Age plunged the world into prolonged bitter winters. No one knows exactly when this ice age really began or when it ended because the daily measurement of temperature is actually a fairly recent occurrence in human history. And even when people did begin keeping records; it only started out in a few places on the planet. But we do know that the Little Ice Age did happen because recorded historical events documented severe weather changes.

As a result, it is generally agreed upon by experts that the Little Ice Age must have completely ended by around the 1850’s and below are some fairly good guesses on the possible start dates:

1250 - Atlantic pack ice began to grow
1300 - Unreliable warm summers in Northern Europe
1315 - Rains and the Great Famine of 1315-1317
1550 - Theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion
1650 - First climatic minimum

Source: Wikipedia – Little Ice Age

Our recent but very modest global cooling of the previous century only lasted several decades but the harshly brutal Little Ice Age lasted several centuries. Incidentally, historical evidence indicates that during this prolonged freeze that there were actually a couple of intervals of global warming.

So was the climate between the 1850’s to the 1930’s normal even though the industrial revolution was spewing vast amounts of pollution at that time? If not, then was the temperature “before” the Little Ice Age normal?

At the earliest suggested start date of the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) or Medieval Climate Optimum had just ended. The Medieval Climate Optimum was a period of very significant global warming from around 800 to 1300 which was substantially warmer than the modest warming of today. Again, we don’t know the exact start and end dates because daily temperatures were not taken but we do know that it happened because recorded historical events also documented these severe weather changes.

That harsh warming trend created enormous prosperity for Europe. The longer growing seasons generated a surplus of crops (which meant more food) and more land was available for livestock (which also meant more food). Because of melting polar ice caps and dwindling glaciers, the Vikings colonized Greenland and raised livestock there. Unlike today, people in that era loved global warming because more food was available, fewer people died from the elements, and huge construction projects (like cathedrals in northern Europe) allowed cities to mushroom in size.

So before the Medieval Climate Optimum, were the temperatures normal?

The simple answer is that we don’t really know. We do know about the severe changes in weather because we have very good historical records for the Little Ice Age and for the Medieval Climate Optimum. But those were highly significant events, thus we would have absolutely no way of knowing about any minor trends that may have also occurred like the modest temperature changes of the cooling from 1940’s through the 1970’s and the warming of today.

There are also records of strange years that had no summers which coincided with a volcano erupting on the other side of the planet.

And prior to the Medieval Climate Optimum, our historical records become scanty and scattered so there is not really a whole lot of accurate information to analyze. We can make some pretty good guesses but we definitely cannot say with any certainty what temperature was really considered to be normal two thousand years ago. And before recorded history, well, there aren’t any written records available for us to analyze.

However, extensive scientific research reveals another significant global warming trend which is known as the Holocene Climate Optimum. Without any historical documents to refer back to, very broad strokes have to be made about when this climate change probably occurred (around 10,000 years ago) and its length (perhaps several thousand years) although different parts of the planet experienced warm peaks thousands of years apart.

So saying that we are experiencing climate change is totally meaningless because there is nothing that we can precisely pin down as being normal for the past two thousand years. And claiming that we are living in the warmest period of recorded history is scientifically absurd. The recording of temperatures only began in the latter half of the 1800’s and weather balloons and weather satellites only happened last century. Even today, the continent of Antarctica, which is approximately the size of the United States and Mexico, only has a handful of monitoring stations in place.

In fact, the only thing that does seem to be normal about our climate for the past 2000 years is constant change.

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