Foreign Perspectives

Almost all of the press coverage that you see is of the view that global warming is a “bad thing” and we should be getting the finger out to stop it happening. But, is it?

This is a painting by Hondius in 1684 of one of the regular Frost Fairs taking place on the Thames. In fact both the Thames and the Baltic Sea froze over quite regularly in the 1600s.

That was prior to the industrial revolution of course and combined with a much lower population, pollution at that time was considerably less than it would have been 150 or so years later. The “Black Country” wasn’t named that for nothing as it was filled with major league polluters during the industrial revolution.

Did the industrial revolution stop us getting into another ice age? Nobody can really say as there are just too many variables in the equation: you’ve everything from the industrial revolution raising pollution levels considerably to sunspot cycles and to top it all the records over the period simply weren’t accurate or complete enough to really give a definitive answer.

What if the alternative to global warming were global cooling? Would that be a “good thing”?