Is climate change an existential threat to humanity?

Canonized! Saint Greta.

It’s ironic, even funny, that the year that climate change became a climate crisis, then a climate emergency, has ended in disappointment for the true believers at the COP25 (or as I prefer CON25) in Madrid.

2019 was also the year that media hype has reached fever pitch with stories of imminent disaster if we don’t act now, of tipping points, unlikely young heroines, climate strikes, marches, and of radical new movements, all in a concerted effort, allegedly, to save the planet.

By the way, the meeting in Spain was supposed to be held in Chile. Ironically Chile had to withdraw because of massive political protests regarding exorbitant price increases for fuel etc., which is precisely what the Madrid meeting would have encouraged the rest of the world to do to forestall climate change. But alas, they could not agree.

The latest climate change catastrophe everyone is pointing to, are the Australian Bush Fires. Yes, it has been hot and dry down under, and bush fires are common in the Aussie summer, but these fires are very severe. Why? The answer is likely related to available fuel, rather than climate change. Historically the aboriginals knew this and practiced “cool burning” when conditions allowed. This involved intentional local burn offs of accumulated fuel (brush) to reduce the chances of huge conflagrations of the type we are now witnessing. The aboriginal practices were discontinued when pressures from Green activists forced new and possibly unwise government policies.

But let me answer my question in the title. Emphatically NO! 

Climate change is no more a threat to humanity than overpopulation was in 1968 when Paul Ehrlich published his book The Population Bomb. There was no bomb, there were no worldwide famines, Ehrlich and his book were simply wrong. Some simple advances in agricultural technology solved the Malthusian crisis that Ehrlich had predicted. Coercive government action on a world-wide scale was NOT required. No taxes, no limits to the number of children in families (except for the Chinese, and they will rue that day). It did not require a concerted effort by a world government to solve the alleged crisis. It was solved because people became smarter, wealthier, and healthier through free markets. In fact, today we live in what is arguably the best of times ever for humanity.

The best of times.

How can I be confident that climate change won’t threaten humanity this time? History tells me. At least five major ice ages have occurred throughout Earth's history: the earliest was over 2 billion years ago, and the most recent one began approximately 3 million years ago and continues today (we are living in an ice age!). Currently, we are in a warmer interglacial that began about 11,000 years ago. At its peak, ice thicknesses would have dwarfed building (see graphic below) in areas where cities now exist. I'm writing this blog post at a location just north of Toronto. In fact, very close to my home is a moraine left over from that last continental glacier.

The Great Lakes are remnants of the last glaciation.

That last ice age coincides with all of recorded human history. The entire history of our human civilization has taken place in this interglacial period after the continental glaciers retreated. Not only did humanity survive that ice age, but today humans are being accused of possibly preventing the next one. I’m assuming there will be another ice age, but maybe not. We don’t entirely understand why the previous glacial periods occurred, and we certainly have a very poor track record making predictions into the future, even the near future (see graph below).

The idea that humans are the primary cause of the climate change is now so entrenched in our media, in our culture, that anyone doubting it, even suggesting there was a debate, is dismissed and equated with being a Holocaust denier. I'll have more to say about that in a future post.

The models don't jive with reality.

The reality is that the media, most politicians and many scientists would say there is no debate. Climate change is happening and humans are the primary cause. We, the people of Earth, must do something now because its reached the point of an existential threat to humanity, despite my comments above. It's an emergency, a climate crisis no less.

That, I believe, is an accurate description of the present state of affairs for the affirmative side, if there were a debate.

However I believe there is still a debate and I take the contrary position, not that climate change isn’t happening, it is and has been throughout history, but that the matter is so unimportant, that its not even worthy of further discussion. The difference between these two opposing positions is staggering and needs to be unpacked. How serious should observers consider the debate given some interesting facts? 

Consider that the chief spokesperson for the climate crisis side is a sixteen year old autistic school girl from Sweden, who has lately been absent from school for great stretches of time. She is little more than a self-appointed (maybe not  self) media wunderkind with no particular expertise except her age and innocence. How she, aged 16, organizes rallies and marches around the world, no one seems to ask. It’s astounding to me, almost laughable given all the scientists that might be available, that the media has chosen her as the chief spokesperson for such a complex and apparently important scientific and politically significant idea. It’s beyond ludicrous that she was recently named most influential person of 2019 by none other than TIME magazine (see photo). It’s practically a self-parody. If, as many people would agree, belief in climate change has become a secular religion, Greta was just canonized by TIME. 

Consider also that most nations of the world have signed onto an “accord” that has set goals and targets for fixing the problem. However, the leader of one nation, the one with the largest economy in the world (USA) has decided to opt out of the accord and the nation with second largest economy (and growing fast - China) plus other smaller but important contributors (India) to the problem have been exempted from the accord. In fact they are not going to help solve the "emergency" for at least another ten years, and they will continue to exacerbate the problem in the meantime. Am I exaggerating?

I've got much more to say on this issue, but that will wait for another post.