Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems
Andy May, Marcel Crok
First published: 29 May 2024
https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12579 Prior to the mid-19th century, Earth was in the grip of the Little Ice Age. Since then, temperatures have on average trended upward. At the same time, human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have increased, and the interest of scientists has turned to consider the extent of the relative contributions of anthropogenic CO2 and natural forces to warming.
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group II (WGII) claims that human-caused climate change or global warming is dangerous. According to the report, “Human-induced climate change … has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability. … The rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt (high confidence)” (IPCC, 2022a, p. 9).
The AR6 WGI and WGII reports measure climate change as the global warming since 1750 or 1850. The period before these dates is commonly referred to as the “pre-industrial period.” The Little Ice Age, a phrase rarely used in AR6, extends from about 1300 to 1850. It was a very cold and miserable time for humanity, with a lot of well documented extreme weather in the historical record from all over the Northern Hemisphere. It was also a time of frequent famines and pandemics. Arguably today's climate is better than then, not worse.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajes.12579
