A Personal Journey with Mankind

I have over the last 2 years made a personal journey, and in this piece I hope to convey how I reached my conclusions in this blog.

I started out with the knowledge that in the 80’s when I studied science at the OU climate was driven by physics and geology, and a vague disquiet that anthropogenic climate change was hysteria. My re-evaluation of the science led me to a belief that humanity and climate were inextricably linked. The 2 million year plus history of the evolution of humanity has occurred against a backdrop of massive (by Holocene standards) climate change. Population swings have been driven by changing climate. Generally speaking cold periods have driven the population lower and warm periods have led to increasing population such that coincident with the last glacial termination mankind embarked on its greatest adventure.

Is this coincidence or serendipity, the conclusion that I have voiced in other pieces is that human population growth both numerically and geographically has been intimately involved in climate change for the benefit of the current generation. I believe that we accidently contributed to creation of the Holocene warmth, selfishly and without design. Nonetheles evolution made us fit to grasp this opportunity, as we have been evolving with and fighting the vagaries of climate for tens of thousands of years. We are a tropic evolved species which has adapted too and overcome the ice ages and claimed our place in the earth when the glaciers retreated or were driven back.

The final irony is that the current anthropogenic climate change is a direct response to an incipient ice age which would be occuring at the lowest point of the solar cycle i.e. climate forcing of -1.5/2 degC since the preceding maximum, with a balancing forcing of + 0.5 degC which is just enough to stop us crossing the ice threshold and dissapearing under kilometres of cold hard death.

Mad Mike