by Michael Smith
From all what I have so far studied the Earth, our Mother, our Planet, throws a wobbly every now and then – approximately every few hundred to a thousand years, give or take a few – and this is what this current Climate Change would appear to be all about.
While we may not have helped with our wasteful nature, our destruction of forests and Nature per se, the evidence for man being the culprit in the fact that the Earth's climate is changing is not a proven fact whatever the experts – who seem to have some hidden agenda – are trying to make everyone believe. In fact they are beginning to go so far now as to say that any one who does not believe in their version of Climate Change has a mental disorder and worse.
As said before, I am not saying that, if, as I believe, Climate Change is a natural phenomenon of the Earth we should abandon all out efforts as to recycling and such like. Far from it. In fact I very much believe that we must even increase our efforts but not in order to stop the climate changing for, if it is a natural phenomenon we have no chance in doing so. We must reduce our impact on the Planet simply because that is the right thing to do, the ethical thing to do. Man has long enough, especially modern western man, been exploiting the Earth and her resources and it is about time that we reigned back on that.
The Earth's climate has been changing always and the problem is that, if it is natural, as I believe, then we have no way of stopping it. So, what now? We have to learn to live with it as our ancient ones did when it was warm and when it got to a mini ice age again.
The History Channel had a special in March 2009 on Greenland. Certain areas of Greenland that were under ice have now melted and it has made it possible for historians to study the Viking settlement of Eric the Red and others that had been on the island before the island was covered in ice.
The Vikings named the island Greenland (Gronland in their language) because is was green and covered with vegetation of all kinds. This story was very interesting especially in the context of the Global Warming/Climate Change issues. The island had trees and grass etc during the Medieval Climate optimum and then iced up during the Little Ice Age in the 14th and 15th century.
This tallies with the story of the Vikings' arrival in Newfoundland and calling the land “Vinland”, that is to say “Land of the Wine”, because of the juicy dark-red grapes they found there.
The Vikings were not just raiders and such like. They were cattlemen and they settled in Greenland because of the great pasture land that was to be found there. When in the centuries after the island iced over and also the Canadian areas became cold they left and returned to Europe, most of them.
When it comes to the Earth's climate and its changes we must also not forget that the Romans grew, so I understand, grapes in England, the dark-red grapes, all the way to Hadrian's Wall. Those grapes were grown for the making of wine and as the Romans likes sweet wine, so we are being told, the temperatures in the British Isles must have been good enough to have the yeast in the grapes turn to sugar and sweeten then wine. It is not possible, as yet, to even grow those same grapes for making into wine as yet in the UK again. White yes, but the dark-red ones for good red wine, no.
In between those periods of warm to very warm we then have ended up, again and again, with small ice ages. And we, more than likely, are going to be bound for another one of those after the warmer periods that we have just entered.
Other records too speak of the fact that the period of the 11th and 12th centuries in Europe, for instance, were very warm. There are journals of monks in the French Jura that speak of little boys swimming naked in the rivers (of the Jura) in January and February and of playing about naked. The monks seems to make it a habit – a bad one – to watch small boys, so it would seem. Nevertheless, aside from the fact that small boys were, probably, a lot hardier in those days than they are today, swimming in those rivers in what is winter would not be feasible unless the climate was rather warm. I would not want to swim in those rivers even in summer today. No sir.
The problem that we are going to have to deal with, if this climate change is not a man-made thing but a natural cycle of the Earth, is the fact that we cannot do anything about it bar learning to live with it.
All effort, at present, however, is concentrated on “combating climate change”, much like “combating terrorism”, though it may be a wasted effort; the “combating climate change” I mean, not the terrorist one. We cannot combat it by reducing CO2 or whatever else if it is a natural cycle of our Mother. Maybe we should ask Her how to live with it.
Mankind must learn – once again – to live in closer harmony with Nature, with the Earth, and its cycles, small and great, and by reducing our impact on Her. Most of our actions are not sustainable and if we continue on this path, climate change or not climate change, we are going to simply kill the Earth. No two ways about it.
Water is already getting scarce and the cycle of perpetual renewal of water that those of us who have attended school were taught there or which others have learned from books does, in fact, not or no longer function. Why is that? It is because we are using and abusing way too much water and we then flush it down the drain. Most of that water is then lost to us for ever. Another reason of the rising sea levels and no, I kid you not.
We flush millions and million of gallons of pure water down the drain in our so-called developed countries every time that we flush the loo, and that is just for starters. Every time someone keeps the tap running when brushing teeth, even though that may only be between a minute and a half to four minutes, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. And where does all that water go? In the end right down into the sea and most of the water stays right there. It does not come back to land as rain. Only a small percentage of it does. That is the reason we are running out of water in so many places of the world.
And other resources, I prefer to call them gifts, of the Earth we waste and abuse in a similar manner. This is not sustainable and we cannot and must not go on like that whether or not we can stop the changing of the climate that way.
Water is but one gift of Mother that we thus abuse. There are many others to boot and unless we do a rather swift turnabout we are going to be in trouble.
The Native Americans have a saying, so I understand, that say “we did not inherit the Earth from our fathers; we have only borrowed it from our children”. Now what kind of Earth are we going to give back to them?
All I can say is “About turn! Quick march to sustainability!”
So, who comes along for the campaign.
© M Smith (Veshengro), 2009
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Climate Change – A Natural Earth Cycle
