Core Essays

09 February 2023

Are you frightened by the high temperatures of our time?

 Then you need a bit of historical perspective.  Examine the temperature history of the last 4 thousand years recorded in the ice and plotted by the CO2 Coalition:


Civilizations around the world flourished during the Minoan Warm Period.  Many collapsed and people starved when that warm period ended.  Athens prospered only in the late, warmer part of the Greek Dark Ages above.  Then Roman civilization flourished during the early Roman Warm Period enough to coast through the dip in temperatures in the Roman Warm Period and then collapse as that warm period came to an end.  Then followed another colder, hard-life period, before there was a substantial recovery of European civilization during the Medieval Warm Period, only for human lives to become more marginal when the Little Ice Age struck Europe.  The Industrial Age began about the time of the sudden rise in temperatures that ends this record of ice temperatures.  The increase in temperatures then was not the result of the initial puny industrialization, but more likely was a significant contributor to the conditions that allowed men to make the innovations and investments needed to begin industrialization.

Warm temperatures have generally been kind to mankind, while colder temperatures have brought great hardship.  We should be happy that we are enjoying a time of warming temperatures, though those temperatures are still cooler than they were in many historically known times in man's past.