Climate has always changed with or without man’s help

From: Michael Green, Baghill Green, Tingley, Wakefield.
Extinction Rebellion protesters outside the Houses of Parliament.Extinction Rebellion protesters outside the Houses of Parliament.
Extinction Rebellion protesters outside the Houses of Parliament.

NOW that the activities of Extinction Rebellion have put climate change back on the front pages (has it ever not been?), it might be useful to put mass hysteria on one side, and look at the facts, because climate change is nothing new.

Earth’s climate has been changing ever since the planet was formed. It has been changing entirely due to the forces of nature. Often, the changes have been cataclysmic. For example, several million years ago, what is now the Sahara Desert was fertile.

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In our own corner of the planet, ice sheets covered most of Britain until around 15,000 years ago. The area now covered by the southern North Sea was dry land until about 8,000 years ago.

The English Channel first separated Britain from continental Europe about 1,000 years after that. None of that was due to the activities of the human race. And that sort of natural change is inevitably going to continue; and there is absolutely nothing that the human race can do to prevent it.

What is new is the vast increase in the numbers of people who are now living on this planet and who will be affected by the inevitable future changes. Change mattered less when human existence was primarily nomadic. Change on the scale that has occurred in the past may very well now be catastrophic for the human race.

It will certainly cause vast migrations of population that make current immigration concerns insignificant. And yet those with the loudest voices still want us to believe that, if only we were to close our factories, abandon travelling by powered vehicles (unless we’re actresses), and stop eating meat, everything in the garden will be lovely. No it won’t.

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So, I would have a lot more respect for the people making a fuss, if their objectives were practical ones of adapting to cope. That means no more building in flood plains. It means gradually moving riverside and coastal settlements uphill out of harm’s way. It means planning to cope with sudden water run-off, rather than creating more impermeable surfaces. It means building structures, particularly in the third world, that are more able to resist downpours and earthquakes. It means lots of other, practical, things. And, in particular, planning now how to relocate the billions of people who, whatever we do, are still going to be displaced by the inevitable. One thing is sure – if all we do is rant about the supposed failures of modern industrial society, we will surely fail.