Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Bronze age global warming

Few people understand that for 2000 years, Europe was several degrees warmer than today. And that is the most compelling reason to be distrustful of the linkage between global warming and the CO2 in the atmosphere.

What this means is that although there is absolute certainty in blaming ourselves for the CO2 in the atmosphere, The same is a long way from been true regarding the global temperature. What this does suggest is that global warming is not a real issue and I suspect may even be welcomed in the long term. Recall that the decline in temperature at the end of the Bronze age (2000 BCE) and also at the end of the fifteenth century (1500 AD) was hugely disruptive as populations were forced out of their livelihoods. The reverse should be just as true as warmer soils become way more productive.

I have just completed reading the recent book by Felice Vinci, titled The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales. For those of you who have taken the trouble of reading these works in translation, you will discover that these complex descriptions of a bronze age civilization maps cleanly onto a Baltic geography. There is really no doubt left.

I am more than pleased because it supports my own conclusions regarding the antiquity and richness of the European Bronze age for which a great deal of the copper came out of Lake Superior.

What is described is a culture based primarily on cattle raising which we knew already. However, grapes were reported growing in Sweden at this time and that is also supported by the archaeological record. The climate was clearly warmer but still miserable in a way that was never true in the Mediterranean.

In any event, this shows that the public panic over global warming could well be premature. What is not premature is our concern over the CO2 content of the atmosphere. The Biosphere has not been able to keep up with our capacity to produce CO2 and this can be dangerous in any number of ways. It is culturally prudent to help the biosphere adsorb this overage and to do it in such a way that our agriculture and woodlands achieve maximum productivity through best practice.

Maybe global warming is the fire lit under our butts in order to do the right thing by mother nature. That certainly is my objective and I think that I am well down the right road.

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