Humans can primarily thank two things for their current successful presence on Earth and the advanced civilization they live in in wealthy countries. One is the arrival of the current interglacial period (technically called the Holocene) a little more than about 10,000 years ago and the discovery and use of fossil fuels. The good and more stable weather and much higher CO₂ levels relative to the previous Ice Age made possible by the Holocene appears to be what enabled the development of human civilization by enabling the cultivation of crops rather than hunting and gathering. Both rainfall and atmospheric CO₂ levels are much higher during interglacial periods. Atmospheric CO₂ levels depend primarily on global temperatures (not human emissions of CO₂ as the climate alarmist environmentalists claim). And higher temperatures also increase evaporation of water into the atmosphere and thus increased rainfall. Finally, the discovery and use of fossil fuels enabled humans to escape the backbreaking manual work that characterized earlier human civilization by allowing the development of modern economies with all the conveniences that energy use makes possible in high income countries.

The human species emerged at a very recent period of Earth’s history. Ice ages are a comparatively recent development geologically speaking, and they have been becoming slowly but steadily more severe. As a result the Earth is not as warm as it used to be and temperatures are steadily but slowly declining from one ice age to the next. And atmospheric CO₂ levels are also declining compared to earlier ice ages since atmospheric CO₂ levels depend primarily on global temperatures, which have been gradually falling.

CO₂ levels during the last Ice Age were so low that many plants were in danger of dying for lack of one of their basic nutrients, CO₂. The great longer-term threat to humans is cold, not the global warming that climate alarmists claim. Yet the climate alarmists claim just the opposite, so their analyses and prescriptions are exactly backwards. One hypothesis why CO₂ has no significant effect on temperatures is that much of the Earth, particularly in the tropical oceanic areas which receive much of the energy from the sun are regulated by emerging climate phenomena, not CO₂, and these are what primarily determine temperatures in these areas. If so, reducing CO₂ emissions as the climate alarmists insist must be done would have no discernible effect on temperatures, which appears to be the case.

The main effect of these climate alarmist “environmental” efforts, if successfully carried out, will be to greatly increase energy costs and reduce the availability and reliability of fossil fuel energy so crucial to the development of modern civilization. These misguided efforts may also help to seriously starve plants during the next ice age. Climate alarmist “environmentalists” are indeed enemies of human civilization and plants, not the saviors of nature they so often claim to be.

via Carlin Economics and Science

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March 2, 2018 at 09:05PM