Just over a year ago I posted On Carbon Dioxide in which I threw rotten tomatoes at the idea that the carbon dioxide (CO2) content of the atmosphere somehow controls the temperatures on Earth and hence the climate system. Not only does an increase in CO2 not produce an overall increase in atmospheric temperature, but the link between them is, in fact, the other way around. It is a rise in temperature that produces an increase in atmospheric CO2 with a lag of approximately 800 years. In it I quoted the Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer in describing the evolution of the atmosphere and the Ice Ages. Here is what I wrote:
According to the celebrated Australian geologist Professor Ian Plimer, the Earth has had 3 different atmospheres. The first one which was created shortly after the planet was formed 4,640 million years ago (mya) was mostly ammonia with some hydrogen and helium and a little CO2. The first water appeared shortly thereafter in geological terms, about 4,400 mya in the Hadean eon. Then CO2 began to increase markedly due to off-gassing (volcanic activity) to create the second atmosphere, rich in CO2, more than 100 times as much CO2 as there is around us today. There was no runaway global warming during this period. It was during this time, in the Archean eon, that photosynthesis began about 3,500 mya. By 2,200 mya in the Proterozoic eon there was atmospheric oxygen and the Earth’s third and, so far final, atmosphere was beginning to take shape.
Geologists know that the Earth has undergone six major ice ages, three of which occurred before the Cambrian explosion of multi-cellular life 570 mya: the Pongola (2800 mya) and the Huronian (2200 mya) and the Cryogenian (about 700 mya). All three occurred when the atmosphere was CO2 rich. That alone proves that there can be no link between increased amounts of CO2 and rising temperatures.
We’ll skip the next two ice ages and fast forward to the Eocene period when the earth had warmed to a climatic optimum about 49 mya when it was as much as 10℃ warmer than today with a smaller difference in temperature from the equator to the poles. There was virtually no ice, and the sea-level was about 150 metres higher than at present.
Following the Eocene climatic optimum there was a gradual descent into an ‘icehouse’ climate at the Eocene–Oligocene transition 34 mya. During this decrease, ice began to reappear at the poles, and at the Eocene–Oligocene transition the Antarctic ice sheet began to expand rapidly as the planet entered cooler periods. The Quaternary/ Pleistocene Ice Age started 2.58 mya and has proceeded with a series of glacial and warmer inter-glacial periods, about 44 in all. Over the last 800,000 years there have been 9 complete glacial cycles from maximum glaciation to warm inter-glacial peak and back again.
People are fond of the expression “since the last ice age” but the truth is that the Pleistocene Ice Age is still in progress as evidenced by the presence of polar icecaps, montane glaciation and the Greenland ice sheet. The warm inter-glacial period we are in, the Holocene inter-glacial, started about 11,700 years ago. Given that interglacial periods have lasted from 10,000 to 15,000 years we are due for a descent into another glaciation. There is no reason to suppose this will not happen sometime in the next 3,000 years. Now, THAT’s climate change.
Now step forward Paul Burgess. Paul, for those who haven’t yet come across him, is a scientist and the retired water resources engineer for Gwynedd River Authority in Wales when Dinorwic Pumped Storage Station was built. It was a post he gained while he was still in his twenties. He later held the same post for the whole of Wales in the Welsh National Water Development Authority. He has a channel on YouTube, Climate Realism by Paul Burgess in which he takes aim at all the climate and energy lies we are being fed. It is sterling work. For a while he was appearing on the Nana Akua Show on GB News arguing with a particularly irritating climate zealot, one Jim Dale, who posed as some sort of meteorological expert despite having no qualifications other than as a weather observer. Burgess regularly exposed Dale with data and facts to which he had no answer other than to resort to ad hominin attacks and refutation of the truth.
Paul Burgess’s latest offering dropped into my inbox last night and it is a tour de force. In under 14 minutes he explains why there is no link between CO2 and the Earth’s climate, starting with a four-minute canter through the ice ages finishing on the one we are still in. It perfectly sums up what Professor Plimer had said, and I thoroughly recommend it to everyone who takes an interest in these matters.
The Holocene interglacial (which the climate zealots have relabelled the Anthropocene) commenced about 11,700 years ago. The whole of the rise of human civilisation is packed into those 11,700 years which is but a blink of the eye in geological time. Following on from the work of Professor Valentina Zharkova on the Modern Grand Solar Minimum we can begin to get a picture of what the very plausible future of our planet is.
First, there will be a brief descent into the Mini Ice Age until the mid 2050s then a warming trend will resume due to the Halstatt Cycle until about the year 2600. Beyond that the Halstatt Cycle will begin to increase the distance between the Sun and Earth with obvious ramifications for the solar energy reaching the planet. The Milankovitch Cycles will become more influential as the Earth cools again.
We know that the interglacial periods of the Quaternary Ice Age have on average lasted for 15,000 years and we are 11,700 years into the present one. It won’t bother us, but our distant descendants some 3,000 years or so from now are likely to have to cope with a glaciation period that could put half a mile of ice on top of the great cities of Northern Europe and North America. The good news is that sea levels will fall exposing more land.
Three thousand years is a long time in the human timescale and who knows where humanity will be by then or even if it will still exist. For now, we really do need to dump all the climate and energy bullshit which is being daily poured over us and on which we have wasted trillions of tax dollars, pounds and euros. We need to get on with making energy as cheap and abundant as we can for it is undeniable that cheap energy is essential to lifting people out of poverty all over the world.
For us in Britain, our current energy situation is an existential crisis which has been brought upon us by left-wing politicians whom we simply have to get rid of. Robert Bryce in this Spectator TV Broadcast explains why.
How the geological history can be completely ignored by these deranged 'climate change' zealots is mystifying, well, probably not, it is predictable because it is always policy without context. A very interesting Article and thank you for link to vid.