One good thing about Covid and BLM

At least Covid and BLM did us the favour of keeping Greta Thunberg and her particular obsession more or less out of the news.

‘More or less’ are the operative words here, for Greta is a veritable polymath. Though the world gave global warming a short break, she filled her time by appearing on the CNN panel of experts discussing coronavirus. I’m eagerly awaiting her contribution to piano technique, molecular biology and treatment for cancer.

Now the two current blights seem to be past their peak, Greta is back with a vengeance, and so is her pet issue. But, having acquired expertise in adjacent areas, she has graduated from analysis to synthesis. Greta cast a panoramic glance around her and realised that global warming, coronavirus and BLM are all aspects of the same problem.

The problem is the West with its pernicious politics and money-grubbing capitalism. That dastardly entity is trying to fry people alive with carbon dioxide, poison them with Covid-19 and exterminate ethnic minorities.

But no longer. According to Greta the world has “passed a social tipping point, we can no longer look away from what our society has been ignoring for so long whether it is equality, justice or sustainability”.

However, global warming is taking centre stage again as the longest prong of the trident about to skewer mankind. Here Greta treats different countries’ undertakings to reduce carbon emissions with the derision they deserve.

Even if they keep their word, which is never a given with capitalists, we’ll still suffer “catastrophic global temperature rises of 3-4 degrees” and the ensuing extinction of life.

As with cancer treatment, which must be next on Greta’s agenda, it’s no use treating the symptoms of the disease while ignoring its cause. And the cause is capitalism.

Hence the only way to avert the extinction of life on Earth is to get rid of capitalism and its political offshoots. “The climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved within today’s political and economic systems”, explained Greta. “That isn’t an opinion. That’s a fact.”

Of course it is, dear, now calm yourself, have a glass of milk and go to bed. Seriously now, what does it say about a cause when its most prominent champion is a hormonally retarded, hysterical child with a whole raft of mental problems?

But let’s not be too beastly to Greta. She merely jumped on the bandwagon that had started rolling before she was born. Greta didn’t invent the global warming hoax; she just lent her shrill, incoherent voice to it.

For the ‘catastrophes’ of global temperature risings of a few degrees have happened countless times in the past – and somehow both the Earth and its inhabitants have managed to hang on. Moreover, the periods of global warming always miraculously coincided with an increase in biodiversity and general well-being.

Nor is there a shred of proof that those cyclical temperature rises were driven by atmospheric CO₂. In fact, The CO₂ in the atmosphere is only 0.001 per cent of the total CO₂ in life, and human activity contributes only 3.8 per cent to that minuscule proportion.

It wouldn’t take a mind much greater than Greta’s to figure out that, if global warming is caused by anthropogenic carbon emissions, then no such phenomenon would have existed before capitalists colluded to profit from industrial activity.

Conversely, if it can be shown that there were extended warm periods in the idyllic times of carbon-free economies (or no economies at all), then the whole global warming will be shown for the ideological fraud it is.

In fact, if we look at the past six million years, it was warmer than now for three million of them. The rest of the time saw a steady increase in the frequency of climatic cycles, with glacial and interglacial periods (such as the one we’re living in now) alternating at varying intervals, lasting from millions of years to mere decades. Compared to those cycles, modern warming is trivial.

If we look at the past thousands, rather than millions, of years, there were warmings galore. For example, in the Roman Warming (250 BC to 450 AD) temperature was at least 2C to 6C higher than now. During that ‘catastrophe’, in the 1^st century BC, citrus trees and grapes were grown in England as far north as Hadrian’s Wall.

Medieval Warming (900-1,300 AD) registered similar temperatures – and similar flourishing of agriculture. That created an abundance of food and a massive influx of excess capital and labour. Both, incidentally, went into the construction of the great cathedrals that adorn Europe to this day.

Cycles of glacial and interglacial periods have been with us forever, and scientists still don’t know exactly every contributing factor. About 98 per cent of climate changes are produced by variations in solar activity. Also vital are volcanicity, cloud cover, changes in Earth’s orbit, radiation levels, the position of other planets, such as Jupiter, and so forth, ad infinitum.

Serious study of climate changes must engage many different sciences, including inter alia astronomy, geology, solar physics, astrophysics, palaeontology, tectonics, oceanography, geochemistry, volcanology – and history.

Since our Renaissance girl Greta doubtless possesses expertise in all these disciplines, she can explain why temperature hasn’t increased in the past two decades despite the growing amount of anthropogenic CO₂.

If CO₂ produced by capitalism is killing ‘our planet’, then why did the global temperature increase from 1919 to 1940, decrease from 1940 to 1976,  increase from 1976 to 1998 and decrease from 1998 to the present? And why do the same people who in the early 1970s were screaming about an imminent Ice Age now carry on about global warming?

They base their alarmism on computer models ranging from speculative to slapdash to downright fraudulent. For example, the notorious ‘hockey stick’ graph was concocted by plotting data that excluded Roman and Medieval Warmings and choosing only a short arbitrary period. As to such factors as solar activity, they were ignored altogether.

Greta gets one thing right, albeit inadvertently: the issue has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. The kind of politics that can indeed bring about global extinction possibly and global enslavement definitely.

The poor child can’t be held responsible for her words and actions, but in a normal world the grown-ups who inflamed her little mind would be brought to account. But who told you we live in a normal world?