“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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Ignoring the Little Ice Age Contributes to Very Bad Conclusions
CBS aired a “60 Minutes” show on Sunday that included a piece on wine growing problems attributed to climate change?
In the piece, Lesley Stahl interviewed a wine grower who said that winemakers all over the world are having difficulty right now because of climate change. To emphasize how bad things are for the wine industry, he explained that they have records dating back to the 1300s in Europe, and those records indicate that the climate is warmer now than it has been since the 1300s.
For Stahl, that was a eureka moment. She gave the wine grower a dumbfounded look as if to indicate that she was shocked. Then, she said something like this: “Things really are bad now.”
The Little Ice Age is the part of the story that neither the wine grower nor Stahl mentioned. To them, it didn’t matter, but it’s the key to climate change since the 1300s. You see, the Little Ice Age started in the 1300s and lasted for about 500 years. It ended in the mid-1800s, so Earth has been coming out of the Little Ice Age for only about 170 years.
Those are facts. They may be inconvenient facts for climate change fanatics, but they are facts nonetheless.
Of course, the climate was cooler in the 1300s. Earth was entering an ice age. Do you think that matters when you are talking about Earth’s climate since the 1300s? Of course, it does.
Turns out the climate in the 1300s in Europe was great for most winegrowers, and the climate in Europe for wine growers remained favorable four roughly 500 years. That’s how long the Little Ice Age lasted.
In the mid-1800s when the Little Ice Age ended, the climate started to become a problem for wine growers in parts of Europe. Lately, the climate has become a serious problem for wine growers in most of Europe, but Stahl and the wine grower never hinted at the notion that we are in a warming period following an ice age. That’s like ignoring an 800-pound gorilla in the room.
That’s an unacceptable oversight. It’s impossible to explain what has taken place in wine growing over time without zeroing in on the Little Ice Age.
The Little Ice Age may have been great for wine growers in Europe, but it was horrific for humans in general. During the Little Ice Age, winters were extremely long and cold, and the growing season was reduced by many weeks. As a result, there was famine all over Europe, and millions of people died.
At the beginning of the Little Ice Age between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death, a pandemic that ravaged Europe, took about 25 million lives. Like famines, pandemics and pestilences of other sorts are associated with ice ages.
At the end of the Little Ice age in Europe, the Potato Famine (a.k.a. the Great Famine) led to death by starvation and mass migrations of people. Ireland’s population, for example, declined by about 3,000,000 people between 1844 and 1851. About 1,000,000 people in Ireland died, and about 2,000,000 people in Ireland moved to other countries.
That’s what happens during ices ages.
By contrast, warm periods like the one we are in now tend to be very prosperous times for humans. Growing seasons are longer, pestilences are infrequent, and humans thrive.
Right now, we are in a sweet spot of sorts. It’s true that there are some problems associated with warm periods, but on balance, warm periods are much better for humans that cold periods.
Humans have never played an important part in climate change. The climate cycles all by itself. Nothing humans do can cause a climate cycle to begin or end. It’s a natural phenomenon that has been taking place since the creation.
Industrialization didn’t begin until the mid-1700s. Climate change fanatics like to point to industrialization as the main cause of climate change, since industrialization is driven by humans. However, the climate has been changing since the beginning. It will continue to change until the end.
And let’s not forget that Yahweh can cause things to happen that are impossible for humans, things like ice ages. If He wanted to, Yahweh could cause a cold period that would wipe out a large percentage of Earth’s population. He’s done it before. The best example is Noah’s flood. I think we are heading for something like that right now.
The time will come when climate change fanatics will long for the day when things were warm and hospitable. When that time comes, they will realize how stupid they were.
The problem with climate cycles is that they play out over hundreds or even thousands of years. Human life expectancies are just decades long, and human memories are shorter still. Some people can’t remember the beginning of a 30-minute television show they just watched. How can people like that draw conclusions about anything?
Keep in mind that the printing press wasn’t invented until 1436 AD. Serious recordkeeping didn’t start until then, and serious climate recordkeeping didn’t start until the mid-1600s. That’s just hundreds of years ago ago, but humans have been on Earth for thousands of years. We don’t have good records for most of the things that have happened to humans since creation.
These things don’t enter into the thinking of climate change fanatics, but they should.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
