North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

For some time I have been musing about the global warming/climate change conundrum because, as is often the case, the proselytizers are so strident in their conviction. To question their rhetoric is tantamount to heresy. Unfortunately, there are more than a few problems in my mind with the thesis.

In the first instance, it must be conceded, I think, that there have been ice ages on Earth for eons, and they have been interrupted by sequential warming trends. Within the most recent 20 millennia, the northern hemisphere has been covered by an ice sheet which lowered the sea level sufficiently to allow migrations from Asia to North America to occur on dry land, at least that is what most folks seem to believe, and I do not doubt that to be true.

A difference, however, between what occurred for the first 10,000 years since the last glacial maximum and the most recent 2,000 or 3,000 years (or maybe the last 500 years, or the last 200 years - take your pick), is the "anthropomorphic contribution" to climate change.

It all began with the Industrial Revolution, or the discovery of charcoal, or slash and burn farming, or something. In any case, mankind has sealed its own fate by bringing us the toys and tools of the modern era. We certainly never had any of these problems when we lived in trees and ate snakes.

The wide-eyed genius who first made famous the concept that mankind was doing itself in was the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus (Feb. 13, 1766 - Dec. 29, 1834) an English cleric, influential in the fields of political economy and demography. His Essay on the Principle of Population opined that sooner or later population will be checked by famine and disease, leading to what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe. He wrote, "The power of population is infinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man." In other words, everyone who didn't die of something else was going to die of starvation.

In 1972, the Club of Rome (headquartered in Switzerland) weighed in with its report called The Limits to Growth. This volume is a must read for everyone of the "Chicken Little" persuasion. The club states that its mission is to act as a global catalyst for change through the identification and analysis of crucial problems facing humanity and the communication of such problems to the most important public and private decision makers as well as to the general public.

Most recently, when Al Gore became aware of anthropologically-caused global warming, he, likewise, took it upon himself to ensure that everyone knew of the impending new catastrophe, and that cudgel has been used to bash the rest of us in the face on a daily basis for most of the last decade.

In my world, conservative thinkers see the glass as half empty; liberal thinkers see the glass as half full; and scientists see the glass as too big. Accordingly, when pseudo-scientists begin to tell us how we should fill the glass, no matter how much alphabet soup they have after their names, they forfeit credibility.

Clearly, Malthus was not wrong, nor is the Club or Rome, with all of its fearsome concerns. In fact, probably such apocalyptical seers are right on cue. What seems to be missing from the equation is an answer to the mystical question, "Assuming that everything that you say is true, so what?"

During the last great flood, between 4,300 and 7,600 years ago, according to the reckoning of some people, there were survivors. Likewise, when the waters of the ocean rise to their maximum, assuming that every single glacier melts to a puddle and the sea level rises 412 meters (more or less), it just doesn't seem to me to be the end of mankind, or even a major inconvenience. Presumably, most people will relocate to higher ground or build houses on stilts, etc.

What Malthus proved, and the Club of Rome corroborated is that mankind has a way of adapting, especially when it comes to slow-moving inexorable forces. The historic periodicity of the ice ages suggests that sooner or later the warming trend will reverse itself, and we will tumble back into the next ice age, which doesn't seem like a happy consequence.

In other words, perhaps manmade greenhouse gases will, in fact, save us all from freezing to death.

In the short term, we do know one thing. In Alaska, the retreating glaciers reveal new ground that may have mineral potential and may result in new mines, so that is a good thing (if we are allowed to extract them).