Blankenship: Baby, it's warm outside

Baby, it’s warm outside

By BEN BLANKENSHIP

“My pleasant little area of Virginia, beside a lovely creek, has just experienced its warmest January on record. Thus, scare stories even now are being prepared about that omen, not only for our area... but also all of Virginia, and by the time the final figures are in, the whole [darned] world. We are clearly doomed by return, after 15 uneventful years, of global warming. Be very afraid.” 

That was my skeptical commentary, via the Powerline blog on the Internet the other day, on the fading argument over Al Gore’s thesis, that a warming world is going to imperil us all pretty soon. 

My intemperate kidding of climate change science may soon be ridiculed because we all know that Stafford can also get socked with tons of snow and bitter cold. If it still hasn’t happened just yet, just you wait.

Still, it was parochially comforting to learn that Virginia has enjoyed its warmest January ever. Of course, we must add, “on record.” Weather calculations were most likely not recorded on a monthly basis back in the old days when the Brits ruled here, and everyone attending Aquia Church had to pay up something each Sunday to the Crown. Or even before, when Indians quarreled over things locally, like the fate of Pocahontas. 

Even so, one would think, based on historical measurements of the weather, that some kind of agreement could be reached about our world and its climate — other than “things change.” 

They do indeed. It’s pretty clear that our globe has had several major coolings and warmings. Things have tended to stay awfully cold and then quite warm for extended periods.

Some folks claim that today’s warm periods here on earth have lasted a long time and threaten to get even hotter unless we do something. They argue that the main remedy is to stop breathing out CO2. I exaggerate, but in essence the CO2 increase in the world is claimed to be making us warmer — and too warm for our own good. 

I don’t know about that. Fact is, when it’s been warm our world has seemed to prosper more than when it’s been cold. The planet underwent terrible cooling during the Little Ice Age that lasted centuries, ending about 1900, and we’ve done better being warmer ever since. History books tell us that warmer temperatures have correlated with greater human prosperity and bountiful harvests.Still with me? During today's long warm spell, we see crop yields per acre reaching new highs never before hardly even contemplated. Is that cause and effect? Maybe not totally, for science has produced yield-enhancing technology apart from the prevailing climate from season to season. But could crop production have been nearly so abundant if the weather had stayed cold as all get-out? 

I would guess not. Cold climates, not warm, correlate with harm to mankind. Class dismissed.

Ben Blankenship, a long-time journalist, lives in Aquia Harbour. Reach him at info@staffordcountysun.com.