Let me begin by saying that I am, on occasion, guilty of misnaming climate effects. But I am not alone in that. And I have the excuse that I am not a scientist, nor was I ever desirous of becoming one. I am an intelligent person (my own self-rating) who has spent much of his 80 years of life thinking about things. You might call me a dreamer – and I have often been accused of such. Yet I have learned much about climate science, not from a scientific viewpoint (how boring would that be) but from reading beyond the normal dubious dialog, asking and answering my own questions. And also by taking a logical stance – having always been involved with number problems, data scoping and analysis of a fairly broad range of systems of one kind or another. In any case, it is a fact that many scientists fall into traps in defining things they study. And I, knowing what I meant, did not say some things correctly through trying to fit the generally accepted definitions of science by using the same words as they did in order to avoid, to some extent, unrealistic and lengthy explanations as to what things really mean. Long explanations not generally being a good idea in a blog post, where I write most frequently. I do not write books.
That was just an explanatory comment in general terms of an issue which I decided to take up based on something said in the article linked below. Which I know is wrong, and misleading, and which I have seen so many times before, each time grinding and needling a little more into my offended sensibilities, but without making any effort to correct it. Well, I feel compelled to do that now. So, this is not a direct attack on this particular writer, but on the whole egg-basket of climate punditocracy who have so offended me in the past as well. I am angry at myself also for falling into the mode of ‘sameness’ for sake of a little more effort.
The Need to Reset How Modern People Think of Climate Change
Before I begin, let me just say that I heartily endorse ~99% of the article below, which is much needed and which compliments much of my own writings on the subject. We need more like this, to combat the raging bullshit generally served up under the auspices of ‘the science’, but generally by non-science types – like politicians and climate alarmists, many of whom have a scientific background of some sort and many who would not know anything material about the subject other than what they have heard.
I cannot fully endorse the author either, this time because he is an ex-UK government scientist (for me, not a good recommendation) and he has written a great number of books on a wide variety of subjects, none of which I have read, and so I do not have a clear picture of how he thinks generally. But he does do a very good job in this piece – apart from the error I will explain in the following paragraphs. An error which must confuse a great many people who come up against it. After that, I will explain the smaller error (now that I have thought more about it) of which I now confess I have been guilty in the past.
‘1900 Scientists Say ‘Climate Change Not Caused by CO2’ – The Real Environment Movement Was Hijacked’ – by Mark-Gerard Keenan, a writer at Global Research, March 21, 2025
Incidentally, in April 2024 I first wrote about that World Climate Declaration (link points to a pdf of the actual document) which was signed and published in 2023, for the second time. Unbelievably, that group of scientists also fell into the same trap as Keenan did. But the error is so widespread and accepted now, that this should be no surprise at all. I am now going to denounce the error, using the following image as evidence.
This is a picture of the last 11,000 years of Earth’s history, generally known as the Holocene period, in terms of average global temperatures, or more specifically, in Global Mean Surface Temperature (GMST) – which is what everyone uses or should be using, when talking about both modern and (scientifically estimated*) historical climate data. The scale used in this image being slightly incorrect, with the depicted objects being positioned up to half a degree higher than actual temperatures, although that has been covered (?? I guess) by claiming the scale to be representative for the Northern Hemisphere only (??).
[* – It is a fact that without scientifically estimated historical temperatures, we would be left only with records from the relatively short period of thermometric records to support climate knowledge. Which would leave us in exactly the same position as we are today in terms of modern climate theory – with no way to dispute it. And given the results produced by the true morons who work in that field (aided by their moron generated computer models), that is the real value of scientific discovery. Thank goodness for true science.
You will notice that the peak period of temperature during that depicted timeframe occured between 6-7 thousand years ago and there have been a number of decreasing peaks since then, the last of them – labelled ‘Modern Warming Period’, which is our own time (the last half millennia), due, according to the chart, to come to an end round about now. Quite humourously following a period of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming Hysteria’. It should now be obvious to the reader why the term ‘Hysteria’ is used in that tag.
The main, and most dramatic, point I want to make here, concerns that brief dip in temperature between the Medieval and Modern warm periods. Surreptitiously shown in blue to make you think of it as a cold period (it represents less than a 1°C drop in global temperature). This period, later named ‘Little Ice Age’ by François Émile Matthes, in 1939, was the first such event in history – being the most recent recorded – cold period studied by man. It was obviously not an ice age although it took place within the still ongoing ice age of the past 40-50 million years.
All true ice ages, of which there have been around five over the past 500 million years – all discovered only be modern research – all follow a distinct pattern into which the so-called ‘Little Ice Age’ simply does not fit. And yet it still delusively sits within the memory and mind of man as an example of that phenomena. If only because it was so named. So what we call things is obviously of great importance. So easily are we misguided. And so easily are we misled into believing that what occurred during the peak of the current inter-glacial period – both highs and lows – are in any way representative of climate reality. They are not, as humanity – not current, but future – will inevitably discover.
The fact is, that we are still living within the confines of a real ice age. The one which began some 40-50 million years ago, and within which the polar ice sheets began to form, and which will not end for an unknown number of millions, or ten-millions, or 100-millions, of years, sometime during which those ice sheets will have disappeared once more and global temperatures will have begun to really rise from the basement levels we are now approaching, to something around a 30°C global average maximum again. Although, who knows, maybe those hot times are gone forever. The planet has not been up in that range for over 200 million years now. But I would not wager on that. Not that it concerns us anyway, We shall never see such temperatures, which humanity, in all its history, has never before experienced. That is the general pattern of climate on Earth, throughout history – never going below +10 Celsius and never going above +30 Celsius as a global average. You beg to differ? Think again. And these parameters (which may be thought of as Earth’s operating temperature envelope) may well go back much further into the planet’s history. We just do not have sufficiently accurate data to sustain such a proposal. This is not something we need to concern ourselves about. Our concern is to wonder how much cold we (our descendants) have to endure, now that the current warm period is almost over, and how long before it begins to get reasonably warm to levels we now enjoy once again for another few thousand years in the next inter-glacial.
At around the current long-term global average temperature, which stands at something a little below 12 Celsius (the red line in the Global Surface Temperature image) and generally in the past has fallen to around 10 Celsius before climbing again after several millions of years (see the 500 million years chart), I can tell you, at least as near as we can project based on the past 5 million years of ups and downs – it will be around 100,000 years – if our distant descendants are lucky enough to survive the cold over that intervening time, and still remain a viable species.
This series of images are the same ones I have used throughout my climate writings. I don’t need to change them, because together they tell the whole story in different ranges of detail, based on the best scientific knowledge we have available – none of which, to my knowledge, was produced by computer models. And while some of those charts carry flaws, those flaws are not super-critical to the dialogue.
What is an Ice Age (and why the Little Ice Age is a misleading modern delusion)
To finish off this section, I want to explain, or allow others to explain, just what is an ice age, in order to hopefully dispel some of the confusion that science has itself, by its careless naming of various objects and for mysterious reasons still clings to them, even knowing they are false.
Please read this. It will save me a lot of time and effort…
Ice Age – Editors at History dot com – Published: March 11, 2015 : Last Updated: May 28, 2025
Did you read it? Ok, maybe later.
The Little Ice Age, being of only ~400 years duration and dropping global average temperatures by only 1°C, is quite obviously not a real ice age. Not even a teeny-weeny-tiny little one. Even though it was responsible for a considerable number of human deaths while it lasted. That being an indicative warning of what is likely to reoccur in a future not too far away, as the world gradually assumes the shape of another truly glacial period.
Can someone in authority please find another name to replace that unfortunately chosen one from an age of relative ignorance (less than 100 years ago). If that happens there will be far fewer confused people around, and perhaps a far greater understanding of what climate change is all about.
Now, To My Own Mea Culpa
You may notice that I have not so far mentioned ‘cycles’ in this piece. There is a reason for that. People who talk about climate often talk about the cyclic nature of climate effects, as I have often also done. And there is no doubt that the universe in which we dwell and which we often forget is ‘out there’ in the middle of our madcap mental meanderings about the way things are and how we want them to be, is built on the structure of cycles – of ‘wheels within wheels’, spinning, circling, on many different levels. Many of which impose themselves on our simple lives by causing or influencing day and night, seasons, calendars, time, gravity, and all the other myriad of effects, often unseen or barely felt but always present in our interesting journey through life. We are governed, like it or not, by cyclic progressions. Including those which cause climate effects.
The previous section segued nicely into this by talk – in the article ‘Ice Age’ – mentioning the cyclic nature of the causes of climate effects as discovered by such people as Milutin Milankovitch. It is undoubtedly both cosmic and Earth’s cycles, which to a large extent are the major causes of climate change, aided and abetted, or even retarded, by long or short term natural events which throw into the ring, forces capable of disrupting or influencing abnormal divergence from those overall and mainly background cyclic paths. We, humanity, do not wield such powerful forces in the normal range of our activities, no matter the claims of those whose desires are for such proposals to guide or mold our progress to cater more for their own purposes. A broad-scale nuclear conflict might also have something to say about that.
And so, what we see of climate is a mixture of largely invisible natural forces, interfered with from time to time by usually quite visible unprogrammed or unforeseen natural events. But suffering hardly anything of influence from our own progressive meanderings – let’s not kid ourselves as to our relative unimportance in such matters. The Earth’s climate systems are not so finely balanced as for that to be even a factor for consideration.
But, in order for my own work, in writing about these matters, to be as acceptable as possible, I have at times (it seems so unimportant to be saying this now, as I write these words) failed to recognise the difference between causes and their effects in the climate field, by attributing the cyclic nature of ’causes’ to describe the effects as being also cyclic when they are obviously not. It is an easy trap to fall into and I must try better not to do that in future.
For example, while temperature variations may be causally varied by cyclic processes such as Milankovitch cycles, over time, the effects when drawn on a graph cannot be so described. They resemble more of a roller-coaster effect when so viewed (see the most recent 800,000 year graph above). The effect’s motion against time being the operative factor. Whereas the cause is viewed as being more subject to forces of rotation than actual time. It may be a small point, and it seems to be so as I am discussing it now, but it is how the reader views the thoughts which is of the utmost importance. And incorrect descriptions should not detract from or distort facts a writer is trying to convey. Writers should at least try not to convey distorted views, simply as a matter of personal convenience, which might be the cause of such confusion. ‘Must try harder’ is the motto of the day. I will try to remember that.
Not Something Else 
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