Warming Up to a Historical Perspective on the Climate

Ever tasted Scottish wine? You probably have not, but in the Middle Ages it was considered good enough that the French complained of the competition. The idea of Scottish wine may surprise those that know it is too cold to grow grapes in Scotland. From about the 1000s until the late 1300s temperatures rose to levels substantially (climactically speaking) higher than today. This allowed grapes to grow in Scotland and Viking colonizers to build cities and raise sheep in Greenland.

At this point you may be shocked. Rising global temperatures did not lead to the destruction of all mankind like Al Gore told us they would? During this period urban civilizations expanded across the planet. From central Mexico to the Great Plains to Europe trade and commerce fueled the expansion of cities and nations. The Mayan pyramids, the great burial mounds in the Ohio Valley, and the Gothic cathedrals all appeared in this era. It is called the Medieval Warm Period and it ended in the late 1300s.

The Medieval Warm Period’s warmth was replaced by the extreme cold of the Little Ice Age. The Viking colonists abandoned Greenland to expanding ice sheets, agriculture declined in northern Europe, and the great trade routes connecting eastern North America to the Aztecs and West Coast broke down. Decline in agricultural productivity coincided with the rise of imperial powers such as the English, Spanish, and Five Nations of the Iroquois League seeking to conquer new regions. Only in the 1700s did temperatures gradually climb again over the long term.

Surely this is all the fault of George W. Bush and Halliburton. Although some want to pin everything from climate change to the fall of the Roman Empire on President Bush, he does not control everything. In fact no one can say with any certainty what controls the climate, or even what the climate is doing right now. Some say it is warming, others say it is just fluctuating. NASA revealed recently that the Martian ice caps are melting and that Mars has gotten warmer. Again you could blame President Bush for that, but NASA believes that the sun’s energy output has increased lately.

Thirty years ago Newsweek and scientists warned us that the climate was cooling to dangerous levels and that industrialism was ushering in an ice age. Now these same people want us to believe that civilization is creating a hot spell that will end mankind. There is nothing wrong with trying to reduce pollution and trying to conserve resources. Industrial and capitalist nations have accomplished more towards those ends than any other system in the world. Using scare tactics and lies to frighten the public for a quasi-Marxist and anti-industrial political agenda is despicable.