Despite what the climate-scare-media tell us, the big danger facing life on Earth is not global warming, but a return of the deathly Pleistocene ice sheets which once covered the great grain belts of Eurasia and North America. Such global cooling would also trigger plant starvation as more carbon dioxide is dissolved from the atmosphere into the cooling oceans.

We have abundant evidence that alarmist computer modelers have no ability to forecast climate. Meteorologists are gaining the ability to forecast weather up to a week ahead and the trends in ocean temperatures can help forecast whether we have El Niño or La Niña conditions for the next year. But for weather or climate forecasts beyond one year we must look to other scientific disciplines—geology, archaeology, physics, and astronomy.

Geological evidence comes from ice cores, deep drilling, stratigraphic mappings, and clues exposed in mines and quarries. These records show clearly that with no help from human activities, Earth has suffered recurring periods of volcanism, tidal waves, floods, droughts, asteroid strikes, planetary disruptions, magnetic reversals, ice ages, and the extinction of many species. Archaeology and studies of tree rings have also revealed more recent evidence of disruptive natural climate changes.

The global warmth we enjoy today can only come from two sources: the sun or the Earth’s molten core. The major and most reliable source of global warming is that big nuclear power plant in the sky. Our sun directs a continual stream of radiant energy towards Earth. This solar energy melts ice and evaporates water from oceans, seas, and lakes. This feeds rain and snow, provides energy for plant life, and generates the atmospheric convection that powers trade winds, storms, tornadoes, and cyclones.

Energy also reaches the surface and the oceans from Earth’s molten core via surface and subsurface volcanic activity. Many volcanoes on land are now generally quiet, but geological evidence shows that there are periods of massive and destructive volcanic activity, often coincident with species extinction and the onset of new episodes of life.

Our scary computerized forecasts of dangerous global warming are based solely on an absolutely trivial factor—the extent to which human production of carbon dioxide and methane may affect global weather by slowing down the transmission of solar energy through the atmosphere. They also ignore the fact that CO2 feeds all plant life, which feeds all animal life, and dismiss the fact that current levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are dangerously low.

Almost every day now, the alarmist media tries to concoct a disaster story from the changing weather. Weather is always changing—the only time Earth has had a “stable” climate is during the long deathly ice ages.

A diligent lone mathematician/astronomer, Milutin Milankovitch (without giant computers or world conferences) calculated the likely cycles of global temperatures by calculating the varying solar energy received by the major northern hemisphere land masses. His calculations have proved better than anything the IPCC can produce. The Milankovitch cycles are telling us that the next climate cycle will be a cold one, with support from three pieces of evidence:

Glaciers are returning. When geologists investigated the age of most current glaciers they found they were surprisingly young, and rather than declining, many are growing. Glaciers known to be advancing include the Vernagtferner glacier in the Alps; the Perito Moreno Glacier, the Viedma Glacier, the Piedras Blancas Glacier, and the Gorra Blanca Glacier in Patagonia; the Tsaa Glacier and the Hubbard Glacier in Alaska; and the Jakobshavn, Hofsjökull, Langjökull, Mýrdalsjökull, and Vatnajökull glaciers in the north Atlantic.

It was reported in 2017 that at least 58 glaciers in New Zealand advanced between 1983 and 2008 with the Franz Josef Glacier advancing nearly continuously during this time and actually regaining almost half of the total length it had lost in the twentieth century. The Fox Glacier in New Zealand is growing, as is the Nisqually Glacier in North America. It’s the same story for a significant proportion of Himalayan glaciers, contrary to the IPCC claiming in a 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers were all retreating and could vanish by 2035.

The Greenland Ice Core Project has been used to reconstruct climate for the last 10,000 years; this shows the temperature there has fallen over the last 6,000 years. It also showed that global temperature drives atmospheric CO2 levels, not the other way around.

Thirdly, the Medieval Warm Period, an era over which historians and climatologists agree, asserting that most areas of the world were warmer than they are now—food production and population grew, and art and culture flourished. This benign productive era was followed by the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1300 AD until almost to the beginning of the 20th Century. The period between 1550 AD and 1700 AD was a frigid time, and famine and disease stalked the world. Arctic sea ice expanded, rivers and lakes froze, the tree line fell, cold gales wracked Europe (one destroyed the Spanish Armada), crops failed, and the population fell in northern areas like Norway and Scotland. The population of Greenland perished, and the capitals of both Scotland and Norway moved south.

Today’s modern warm era started about 2000 AD, but it will probably prove to be just another short warm reprieve. As the warmth fades and the ice returns, the threatened generations will likely gaze in wonder at the snow-covered solar panels and blizzard-damaged wind turbines and power lines that this generation littered across the landscape at such great cost. Future wars could be fought for access to oil, coal, gas, and nuclear energy; herds of cattle, sheep, goats, and reindeer will be especially valued and protected. Australians may also discover why the Snowy Mountains earned the moniker.

Image provided by author’s organization.

Only two conditions are needed for a sudden return of the ice: increased volcanic heat under the oceans, and cold cloudy skies. Evaporation from heated oceans would provide the moisture and the cold skies will cause the precipitation of snow and ice on land. Ice ages can start frighteningly fast and appear to be triggered by magnetic pole reversals, which trigger massive volcanism, especially in the oceans along the mid-ocean trenches. This under-sea heating drives evaporation from the oceans, increasing cloud cover, and reducing surface temperatures.

Once the winter snow remains through the heat of the next summer, the ice age tipping point is reached. The extra snow will reflect more solar energy—ice sheets grow and sea levels fall. Coral reefs would be left stranded, and island nations would expand as sea water is locked up in ice sheets.

Carbon dioxide plays almost no part in this drama except with plant life. When the seas warm up, the dissolved CO2 is driven into the atmosphere and plant life flourishes. But when the oceans cool down, carbon dioxide is re-dissolved and plants suffer. (Only fools like Queensland mining company Glencore would try to win green points by promising to bury the gas of life by forcing it into underground aquifers.)

So let us be relieved from the daily dirge about imagined global warming disasters and plan appropriately to ensure reliable energy and food supplies as the next ice age approaches.

Viv Forbes has studied geology, chemistry, physics, cycles, computer modeling and pasture management.

Image provided courtesy of the author via saltbushclub.com.