Man-made global warming is our friend. According to a study in Nature, the extra CO2 generated by our burning of fossil fuels has postponed the next ice age for at least 100,000 years.
The new research, published in the journal Nature, examined the eight global ice ages over the past 800,000 years and used complex climate models to determine the critical factors that kickstarted the big freezes.
The result was surprisingly simple. A particular combination of lower sunlight at a latitude of 65 deg N, where snow surviving through the summer leads to ice sheets, and low carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was the signal for a new ice age to dawn. The level of sunlight is very predictable as it varies with cyclical changes in the shape of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and in the tilt of the Earth’s axis, called Milankovitch cycles.
But the level of CO2 has been drastically altered by human activity, rising from 280ppm at the start of the industrial revolution to 400ppm today. The researchers showed that even if carbon emissions are limited to the amount consistent with a 2C rise in temperatures – the internationally agreed goal – there will be enough CO2 in the atmosphere to avoid future ice ages that could have started 50,000 or 90,000 years from now.
Since a new ice age would kill life on earth far more effectively than a few degrees C of global warming, this ought to be good news. Unfortunately the study needs to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt because it’s based on “complex climate models” and emanates from Germany’s fanatically warmist Potsdam Institute, which is ideologically committed to “proving” that CO2 is a significant driver of “climate change” even when most real-world evidence suggests it’s not.
One of the study’s co-authors is none other than Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the hard left activist who advised the Pope on his eco Encyclical last year and who was responsible for inventing the random and bogus 2° C target so often cited by policymakers to justify more green taxes and regulations.
Schellnhuber says:
“Now human interference is acting as a huge geological force, so this is a defining paper for the Anthropocene idea.”
One of his fellow warmists, Professor Andrew Watson of the University of Exeter, agrees. The Guardian quotes him as saying:
“Humans now effectively control the climate of the planet. If only we were wise enough to be able to use that power responsibly. Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve reached that level of wisdom yet.”
What neither appears to have appreciated is that if the science of this study is to be taken seriously then it spells disaster for the man-made global warming industry.
The reason we should act now to combat climate change, we’re constantly told by activists, scientists and politicians, is to make sure the world is safe to be enjoyed by “future generations.”
We don’t know much about “future generations” but of one thing we can be pretty sure: they’ll be much more comfortable living in tropics-style heat than they would be under a mile and a half of ice.