I find it strange that liberal environmentalists, who believe human beings need to conform to nature and natural processes, say that we need to interrupt global warming to avoid mass dislocation and disaster. That seems contradictory, but they make the argument on the basis of their belief that we humans have interfered with nature and need to undo our misdeeds.

The evidence says otherwise.

The Milankovitch Cycles

A recently aired episode of National Geographic’s Naked Science, titled “Ice Age Meltdown,” said the global warming that ended the Ice Age and put us on the steadily-warming trend we may still be in the midst of was caused by three key natural cycles known as the Milankovitch Cycles. (Learn more here.)

Obliquity is the variation in the tilt of the earth’s axis, which gradually changes the amount of heat that reaches the North Pole. The range of tilt is 22.1 – 24.5 degrees, and we are currently at 23.45 degrees. The cycle from one extreme to the other takes 42,000 years. Less of an angle means less seasonal differences between the northern and southern hemispheres; more angle increases the differences, producing warmer summers and cooler winters. At the right times in this cycle, January and July do not experience much seasonal difference.

Eccentricity is the variation in the distortion of the orbit of the earth around the sun, which affects how much of the sun’s heat reaches the earth. Over a 95,000 year cycle the earth’s orbit changes from a thin oval to a circle and back again. In its most elliptical orbit, the perihelion (when the earth is closest to the sun; Jan 3) is much warmer than the aphelion (when the earth is farthest from the sun; July 4). So, the more elliptical the earth’s orbit around the sun, the warmer the winters and the cooler the summers. In time, January will be much warmer than July.

Precession is the variation in the wobble of the earth’s orbit. This can be likened to the angle of a spinning top: if you paint a spot on the circumference of a top and set it spinning, you’d see that at some points in the spin that spot is above the horizontal plane, and at other points it is below. That ‘wobble’ is precession. Precession affects the amount of sun reaching the earth as it varies how directly the earth faces the sun in the course of its wobble. Due to that wobble, in 12,000 years the northern hemisphere will experience summer in December and winter in June because we will be in that portion of the wobble when the axis of the earth will be pointing at Vega instead of Polaris (the North Star).

About every 100,000 years these three cosmic cycles form a ‘perfect storm’ of solar radiation and warmth reaching the earth. In the subsequent 100,000 years, they move toward their least-coordinated periods, and the earth cools into another ice age.

Ice ages have been coming and going for at least a million years. According to the National Geographic program, the last switch from cooling to warming began about 20,000 years ago, and the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. During the 10,000 year transition, the climate warmed 11 degrees F, which allowed the beginnings of human civilization. As the warming climate made it possible for people to develop agricultural domesticity and other adaptive behaviors, populations increased. However not all animals adjusted; many animals failed to adapt and went extinct – through no fault of humans.

Is the Globe Warming or Cooling?

Given what we know about the three cosmic cycles that affect global warming and cooling, it would seem we ought to not be surprised if we discover that the earth is warming. According to the National Geographic program, we are about 18,000 years into a very long warming trend, after which the world will switch to a cooling trend that will eventually produce another ice age.

And award-winning geographer Matt Rosenberg, who authored the above article on Milankovitch Cycles, notes in “The Next Ice Age” (here) that there is disagreement in the scientific community over whether we are currently in an interglacial period of the Pleistocene Age, or at the beginning of a post-glacial period known as the Holocene Age. The Pleistocene Age began 1.8 million years ago, and was characterized by general cooling interspersed with periodically warmer interglacial periods. Because we are only 11,000 years into the current post-glacial period, and because our recorded weather history is so short, he says it’s too early to tell whether the era of ice ages is past, or whether another ice age is in our not too distant future (geologically speaking).

Furthermore, he notes that the current global warming is considered – by scientists tending toward the view that we are in an interglacial period – as a sign that another ice age is just around the corner. According to this theory, the increase in global temperature leads to an increase in the amount of ice on the earth’s surface.

That’s because increasing temperatures cause an increase in the amount of moisture in the atmosphere. Normally, little snow falls on the polar ice packs. But as atmospheric moisture increases, polar snowfall grows, leading to both increased ice shelf thickness and a larger ice shelf footprint.

So What’s That Doing There?

Given all that evidence, I found it strange that, at about the 45-minute mark, the hour-long National Geographic show inserted the comment that we should be seeing global cooling now, but we’re not. That statement took me by surprise. It was completely out of context, and was made with neither preparation nor foundation. The show went on to say that the evidence indicates increased warming that could soon put us into another rapid warming period – which is consistent with the Milankovitch Cycles theory, but runs at cross purposes to the statement that we should be seeing global cooling.

According to Nat Geo’s “Ice Age Meltdown” program, continued warming will produce catastrophic consequences akin to what happened in the 10,000 years that ended the last ice age, during which the average temperature warmed 11 degrees. A new, dramatic warming trend, they say, could produce a rise in the sea level, a disruption of the temperature-regulating action of the ocean currents – which would cool North America by 5 degrees F – new volcanic activity, and the loss of as many as millions of species of animal life.

Remember, according to the Milankovitch Cycles theory, we’re heading toward a period during which there will be little difference in temperature between January and June, and both will be warmer. That’s because the earth’s tilt is increasing, adding sun to the northern hemisphere (and North Pole, melting the ice cap). Also, the earth’s orbit is stretching toward an ellipse, which makes January hotter than July. And our orbital wobble is moving toward a more direct sun-facing orbit, increasing the amount of the sun’s heat directly hitting the earth. So “Ice Age Meltdown” should have said we must expect warmer, not cooler, temperatures as the cycles move steadily closer to the ‘perfect storm’ alignment. The one-sentence claim that we should be seeing cooler temperatures is just weird.

Just as weirdly, in his article on Milankovitch Cycles Matt Rosenberg explained that the Milankovitch hypothesis was confirmed in the 1970s, when ocean bed core samples showed that these long-term cycles do explain the cooling and warming of the earth. But then he threw in a last paragraph claiming that “though Milankovitch cycles do explain long-term climate change, they can’t account for changes being made by humans, which appear to have an even greater effect than variations in earth-sun interaction.”

Here again, as with the National Geographic program, an unsupported and unprepared-for tipping of the hat to the notion of catastrophic man-made pollution is inserted, and it runs at cross-purposes to the thrust of the prior presentation. And this is from the guy who, in the article on the next ice age, says we don’t know whether we’re in an interglacial period or in a post-glacial period. If we’re in an interglacial period (part of the Pleistocene Era), another ice age is coming. If we’re in a post-glacial period (at the start of the Holocene), another cooling trend is not coming. Either way, we should expect warming for some thousands of years, yet. So, why that strange statement that humans are causing changes that have an even greater effect than variations in sun-earth interaction? Isn’t that quite a claim?

And since no evidence is presented in either case, don’t those claims sound more obligatory and faith-based than evidentiary and science-based?

After all, Rosenberg says at the end of the ice age article that, “Our short history on earth and our shorter record of the climate keeps us from fully understanding the implications of global warming.” Now keep in mind, he makes that statement in an article that is exclusively about the dramatic fluctuations that have occurred in the earth’s climate throughout its entire 4.6 billion year existence. Never in that article does he say anything about human-caused warming, which means his tail-end reference to global warming is a reference to the naturally-occurring warming the article does discuss. He is saying that we don’t know enough to do more than merely speculate – and that on very thin evidence – on the implications of cosmically-induced global warming and cooling, though we can imagine, he says, that wide temperature variations must have catastrophic implications for meteorological and geological events on earth.

Now that would tend to argue that it’s very premature to suggest human activity has any power at all over the earth’s mean temperature. Yet, despite ruling out the value of speculation in his “Ice Age” article, Rosenberg indulges in speculating that man-made global warming is more powerful than naturally-occurring global warming in his “Milankovitch Cycles” article.

That’s weird because, overall, Rosenberg argues that we haven’t been around long enough, and we haven’t been keeping records on climate change long enough, to understand the implications of natural global warming. We can barely even speculate about it. According to Rosenberg, we can’t even say for certain whether we are at the beginning of tens of thousands of years of cyclical warming (entering the Holocene Era), or are facing the return of massive ice sheets in just a few thousand years (in a Pleistocene Era interglacial period). In fact, based on Rosenberg, it might be reasonable to think that whatever warming is taking place could produce excess sea water in the short term as the ice shelves melt, and longer-term reductions in sea levels as warm temperatures cause more water to be taken into the atmosphere and deposited as snow on the polar caps.

Since we don’t have enough knowledge about how the natural cycles are affecting the climate to even determine whether we are in a post-glacial or an inter-glacial period, how can we pretend to understand what – if any – effect human behavior is having on those natural cycles? Until we know what those natural cycles are, and how they behave, we can’t know what effect we are having – or if we are having any at all.

Mixed Signals and No Scientific Consensus

Science is throwing us a lot of mixed signals. Apparently – Al Gore notwithstanding – there is no consensus. Some scientists say we’re facing a long period of global warming because of the Milankovitch Cycles – and there’s nothing we can do to stop or reverse it. Other scientists say we are merely in an interglacial period, and another ice age is coming. If that’s the case, any currently-measurable global warming is temporary and aberrational.

Then there are the scientists who say that it’s the warming of the planet that’s going to produce the cooling of the planet as water is redistributed to the poles in snowfall and ice. And across it all we’ve got these seemingly-obligatory genuflections to the faith-based notion that human beings are causing a kind of global warming that is more powerful than the natural cycles caused by the earth’s spin, orbit, and proximity to the sun! – claims that are presented without foundation or evidence, and that run at cross-purposes to the force of the arguments to which they are attached.

So, what’s really going on? It’s hard to say: we don’t have enough real information. But strip away the seemingly-obligatory genuflections to man-caused warming and it looks like the scant evidence we do have indicates that we should not be surprised if we experience warmer temperatures for the next 10,000 to 1,000,000 years – completely independent of what humans do or do not do with so-called greenhouse gasses.

If we’re facing the beginning of a post-glacial epoch, we could see a rise in the sea level, a disruption of the temperature-regulating action of the ocean currents, a cooler northern hemisphere, new volcanic activity, and the loss of as many as millions of species of animal life.

If we’re in an interglacial period, the fact that the earth is warming may well be setting up the next cooling period – complete with lowering sea levels, changes in the temperature-regulating action of the ocean currents, and the likely extinction of millions of species of non-adaptive animal life.

Whatever happens next, apparently this rough and dramatic cycling between warm and cold has been going on for some 4.6 billion years, and it’s never smooth. General trends are interrupted by sometimes-extended periods of movement in the opposite direction, and geological and atmospheric upheavals are an inherent and natural part of the process – whether humans exist or not.

The Liberal ‘Fix-it’ Folly

So here’s what I come away with: If the globe is on a long-term warming trend (Holocene Era), we’re going to face a set of catastrophes. The National Geographic program says we’ll just have to adapt, as our ancestors successfully did 10,000–20,000 years ago. And if the globe is about to turn back into a cooling trend (Pleistocene Era), scientists say we’re going to face another set of catastrophes. (If National Geographic had entertained that option they would probably have said we’ll just have to adapt to those changes, too.) And whatever the case, non-adaptive fauna are going to die in large numbers.

There is nothing humans can do to arrest this cycle. Yet liberal environmentalists are determined to try, at the expense of civilization itself, if need be. But their efforts will have no impact on the grand cycle. That’s why the effort makes about as much sense as a flea biting an elephant and pretending to be a great influence on the course of the elephant’s daily stroll and overall life course.

But liberals tell us they want to arrest climate change. What? Don’t they know the climate is always changing? At times it changes very dramatically, and at other times less so. And even in the relatively quiet periods, there are sudden episodes of climate drama.

For example, solar flares are known to produce increased radiation that hits the earth in the form of heat, warming the atmosphere dramatically. The cycles of solar flares are far shorter than any of the Milankovitch cycles. According to Habibullo Abdusamatov (here), head of the Russian space research laboratory at the St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Observatory, the season of increased solar flares that has been in place for most of the 20^th century is the cause of our warmer climate. And as the climate warms, more natural carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere – producing the above-average concentrations of CO₂ that many scientists mistakenly ascribe to human industrial activity.

Though many prominent scientists disagree with Abdusamatov’s insistence that carbon dioxide concentrations are the result of natural processes, most scientists – on every side of the global warming debate – acknowledge that temperature rises can cause massive increases of naturally-occurring greenhouse gases as a result of natural feedback mechanisms. The release of methane by melting permafrost, the reduced capacity of ocean algae to absorb carbon at higher water temperatures, and the release of carbon by trees when forests dry up, all contribute to increased, naturally-caused CO₂ levels. Those increases and decreases are recorded in the ice core, and have been shown to closely track with the glacial and interglacial periods that were occurring long before human’s produced industrial pollution.

Furthermore, the recent and continuing cooling of the earth’s ocean surface layers – unexpected and unexplained by those who argue that current levels of CO₂ are both higher than historically recorded and causing irreversible global warming – corresponds, Abdusamatov says, to the slowing pace of solar flares and indicate that global cooling is on the immediate horizon. By 2060, he says, we will be in a deep freeze, and around 2110, the temperatures will start going up again – regardless of what humans do to the environment. If he’s right, solar flares have much more to do with global warming than does human activity.

The scope of climate drama – both in its short and long time frames – is pretty hard to wrap our minds around, but when we begin to get a sense of how long and how dramatically the earth’s climate has been changing, and how established are the cosmic and terrestrial cycles that cause so much earthly drama, it’s pretty silly to even entertain the notion that we are capable of any kind of long-term impact on the earth. Even if we set about burning all the carbon-bearing elements on the planet as quickly as we could, we would do nothing more than risk our own extinction – and even that’s unlikely – but the earth would still cool over the next 50 years, and over the long term the earth itself will continue to warm and cool, to go through geologically active and quiescent periods, to bring forth new forms of flora and fauna, and then freeze them or heat them to death, over and over again.

We cannot stop the process. We might be able to have some small influence over a few niches of animal and flora life for a geologically short period of time, but we cannot – say – change the cycle from interglacial warming-cooling to post-glacial warming only; or back again. We cannot start or stop solar flares. And we can neither indulge nor deprive ourselves enough to stop the warming and cooling patterns that are governed by either solar flares or the Milankovitch Cycles.

Furthermore, I don’t understand why liberals want to change the cycles of warming and cooling. They keep telling us we have to learn to live within nature’s boundaries. But they are the ones who want to alter natural processes – they want to try to stop the loss of species and the warming (or cooling) of the climate, the rise (or fall) of the seas, the loss (or gain) of polar ice, and the patterns of the deep ocean currents. They want to control the wind and the rain, the snow and the sun. They want to manage people in order to stabilize nature so things will stay the way they are now – or, perhaps, the way they were 200 years ago – as if this most recent moment in the earth’s 4.6 billion year life-span is the ideal or perfect moment; as if they have some knowledge that this is the moment of the earth’s perfection.

What hubris. What conceit. What narrow-minded egocentrism. Liberal environmentalists accuse those who disagree with them of being narcissistic, but no one is more self-involved, self-absorbed, or self-congratulatory than the liberal environmentalist – who wants to freeze time and make a judgment about what should and should not be allowed to change in nature. As if their desires would have any effect on the natural processes that are already in play and that will continue to operate regardless of our actions.

Some Personal Conclusions

It appears to me that liberal environmentalists operate on the basis of a mystical and self-serving notion of what pristine nature looks like – despite the fact that everything we have personally experienced of nature, indeed, everything human civilization knows about nature in our collective memory, is only a passing moment’s configuration in the long expanse of the earth’s ever-changing geology, flora and fauna. Human society, human memory, and certainly our contemporary experience of life, is not even a momentary blip in the stream of cosmic and geological time.

Environmentalism is running way ahead of its actual understanding, and is trying to fill shoes much too large for any human enterprise. The range of opinion and perspective is well-articulated in the Wikipedia article, “Ice Age” (here). But when all sides have had their say, it remains a fact that we simply cannot stop or influence the long and large course of cosmic and geological change. Climate change will happen, and it will continue on its own course regardless of what we do or don’t do.

This is not an argument for ignoring the environment. I do believe we can poison ourselves and the flora and fauna that share this moment in time with us. I lived in Southern California when the smog was bad enough to hide hills just 1½ miles away, and my lungs still suffer from my high school career as a track runner in that pea soup pollution. I am happy to know that the atmosphere around my alma mater is a lot cleaner today than it was in the mid-1970s, even though the population has increased. I favor efforts to clean up our industrial impact; we all benefit from a cleaner environment. However, the hyperbolic imagery of forever damaging the earth is pure nonsense.

Let’s be responsible stewards of the earth and what is in it – as I believe Scripture calls us to. But let’s not think too much of ourselves: we cannot over-rule nature’s constant evolution and change, though we can improve our own lives by practicing good stewardship and by learning how to be more efficient in our use and deployment of energy and natural resources. So let’s keep doing that – it is what we have been doing throughout human history.

But let’s not think we have to roll back our technology or life-style in order to “save the Earth.” We can’t save this form of the Earth. In time, grand natural processes – that are truly cosmic in scope – will wipe this all away and replace it with another version of Earthly fecundity. Probably humans will continue to adapt to changing conditions and circumstances; but quite likely, many of the plants and animals familiar to us will not survive as long as we do (the cockroach excepted, of course).

The Earth, the temperature, and the composition of the atmosphere will always be in constant change. And weather patterns will change from year to year – sometimes quite dramatically. That’s all perfectly natural. Get used to it.