At school, in a lesson in Geography, I learned about the creation of corries in Scotland. They were formed by the action of ice in grinding parts of the mountains there. The mountains lost their points and became rounded. That ice had been from one to three miles thick. It melted several thousand years ago, at the end of an ice-age. The former tops of the mountains and contents of what became corries, reappeared as gravel, sand and clay, mainly in southern England.
Several thousand years ago, the few people then living did not drive cars, fly in planes or heat their homes by gas- or oil-fired central heating. The ice still melted, though, up to three miles of it.
People lived in Doggerland, now known as the Dogger Bank. Where was the water stored which flooded Doggerland? What about the water which caused England to become separated from Europe? Melted ice? Why did it melt? Climate change? Global warming?
England enjoyed a warmer period around the time of the Norman invasion enabling greater agricultural production. Evidence of that was that fewer people worked in the fields, enabling more people to be employed in building the eighteen cathedrals and many castles the invaders needed to dominate the population. That warmer period ended. Why?
In the decades immediately before the arrival of The Black Death, in 1349, there were long periods of bad weather with resultant poor harvests. In 1348, rain had poured down in the south and south west of England, from early summer to Christmas. That the rain fell and caused malnutrition, weakening the population against the Black Death, has been proved by skeletons recently unearthed in the areas of Smithfield and Charterhouse in London, during excavations for Cross-Rail. The rain poured and the rain stopped. Why?
The industrial revolution had been in full swing in Britain for decades when, in 1881, there was an unusually cold winter. Another occurred in 1940, a time of vast industrial production for the war-effort, with chimneys and steam engines belching carbon dioxide, another in 1947, when The Thames froze, and in 1963 ("The Big Freeze"), also years still being affected by the industrial revolution.
There is clear evidence that, periodically, the climate does change but does not do so uniformly across the globe. Ancient religions make reference to floods. Last year, people living in parts of Germany witnessed vast floods, while people living in Litton, in Canada, saw their town razed by fire in a few hours in record temperatures (50C); and in the last five to seven years, rain has not fallen in parts of South Africa, ruining farms and farmers. Why?
Two point four million blocks of stone were used in building the largest pyramid in Egypt. How many men would have been employed to complete such a monumental task, and over how many years? How were they and their families fed and watered when the area is largely desert? Where were the trees to fell to make rollers to enable the movement of the blocks to the site? The answer may be in the existence of vertical striations on some of the most ancient buildings there, clear evidence of heavy rain over centuries. The rain would have enabled a flourishing of crops to feed the pyramid-builders and to produce the trees from which to make the rollers. Rain? Why did the rain stop, still not to return?
How was it possible for a map, drawn in the fifteenth century, to show accurately the layout of Antarctica when, at that time, Antarctica was covered by ice? The "accurately" has been confirmed by modern, electronic equipment doing with ice what the programmes "draining the oceans" do with water. How many, many centuries ago, before the snow had settled and converted into ice, had someone with the skills to map it, been able to view the entire continent? Had the mapper lived on Antarctica when it was free of ice? Had he travelled there? Climate has clearly changed Antarctica from ice-free to iced-over.
(What happened to the ancient mapper's civilisation, to the skill of mapping a sphere and to a knowledge of longitude sufficient to enable travel to Antarctica are other questions.)
There seem to be only two sources of heat capable of affecting the earth and its weather: emissions from the sun and eruptions by volcano. The amount of carbon on earth cannot have changed: it has not been augmented from space and cannot leave the planet. It has changed its form, however, so that much of it is found in fossil-fuels, plants and rock. Carbon dioxide, an essential for all plant-life, is only 0.04 of 1% of the atmosphere.
With such evidence, could it be that the 26,000 people who travelled to Glasgow to attend COP 26, mostly using fossil-fuels to do so, were discussing a fiction?
Apart from the likely cost of arranging for "net zero", and the effect on the population, industry and commerce of attempts to achieve it, is "net zero" such a good idea when the evidence suggests strongly that climate has been, is and will continue to be in charge?
Electric car, anyone?
