Science vs. Environmentalism, Exhibit 372B

The UK’s Mail Online reports:

Rings in fossilised pine trees have proven that the world was much warmer than previously thought—and the earth has been slowly COOLING for 2,000 years. Measurements stretching back to 138BC prove that the Earth is slowly cooling due to changes in the distance between the Earth and the sun. The finding may force scientists to rethink current theories of the impact of global warming.

It is the first time that researchers have been able to accurately measure trends in global temperature over the last two millennia. Over that time, the world has been getting cooler—and previous estimates, used as the basis for current climate science, are wrong. Their findings demonstrate that this trend involves a cooling of -0.3°C per millennium due to gradual changes to the position of the sun and an increase in the distance between the Earth and the sun.

Read the whole article here.

Whatever these measurements prove or support (and it may be less than the article claims), this is the kind of data that counts toward answering whether changes in global temperature occur irrespective of industrial activity. The findings here integrate with what we already know—that the earth has been both warmer and cooler in the past than it is now. And they leave open the possibility that small temperature changes one way or the other ultimately don’t matter because people can adjust to them.

Of course, many so-called scientists who have been beating the “global warming” drums will disregard these new findings, as they do any facts that don’t comport with their goal of anti-industrialization at all costs. At most, this new data will cause them to dream up yet another angle as to why industrial progress must be stopped. In the 1970s it was “global cooling”; then it morphed into “global warming”; now it’s “climate change”; perhaps tomorrow it will be “temperature stagnation.”

Whatever the environmentalists’ pretense and agenda, science proceeds by gaining knowledge of facts, and knowledge of facts is always on the side of those who want to live and prosper.

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Related:

• Keep the Lights On—and Shine ‘Em on Environmentalist Nonsense
• On April 22, Celebrate Exploit-the-Earth Day
• The Assault on Energy Producers
• Interview with Alex Epstein, Founder of Center for Industrial Progress

About Craig Biddle

Craig is cofounder and editor of The Objective Standard, cofounder and director of education at Objective Standard Institute, and executive director of Prometheus Foundation. He is the author of Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It; Rational Egoism: The Morality for Human Flourishing; and the forthcoming Moral Truths Your Parents, Preachers, and Teachers Don’t Want You to Know. He is currently working on his fourth book, “Thinking in Principles.”

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