Climate fear 3

Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe published a new book, Weathering Climate Change, on the same topic as last Friday's post. He agrees with Michael Shellenberger on his primary points, that climate change is indeed happening and that environmental alarmists have whipped up counterproductive hysteria over it.

A little history will help. For over two million years ice ages have periodically taken over, spreading sheets of ice and snow on 2/3 of the planet's surface. They happen every ~100,000 years, triggered when earth's mean temperature rises 2-3C over average. Ice cap melt leads to more precipitation; more snow starts a runaway cold trend because it reflects the sun's heat.

A new ice age would have started a couple thousand years ago, but human activity produced a warming trend to offset the historically normal cooling trend.  It resulted in 9,500 years of extraordinary temperature stability . . which is going to end.

(cont'd tomorrow)