The Age of Unreason
Post Lux Tenebras
Posted on 09 Oct 24
by Mark Hodgson
A few things have come together in the last few days to stir me from my sloth (I have, after all, been thinking about penning this for some time). More on what those things are below. First things first.
When Thomas Paine wrote the Age of Reason some 230 years ago, it represented both an attack on traditional religion and a call for reason and rationality to come to the fore when debating. Following what is sometimes known as the Age of Enlightenment, humanity was moving towards an era of increasing scientific knowledge and greater questioning of all that was taken for granted. Scientific knowledge improved because it was never still, the science was never settled, and logic and reason underpinned ongoing questioning and the search for better understanding. That was then. This is now.
What is the climate we “ought” to have – and why?
It’s widely known that our planet has been in existence for around 4.6 billion years. During some of that time, it has been speculated, the planet was frozen solid for what (to humankind) are periods of such length as to be beyond all conceivable timescales. At such times, we are told, the equator was as cold as the poles are today. At other times the earth’s currently icy poles have been rather warm and covered in lush vegetation and forests. According to this study which I discussed here “[l]ate Pliocene and Early Pleistocene epochs 3.6 to 0.8 million years ago had…mean annual temperatures of 11–19 °C above contemporary values…”. So our planet has (many times) been much hotter than it is today and much colder than it is today, and no doubt has experienced every conceivable climate in-between. As it happens, humanity today possibly lives in something of a “Goldilocks” period, but today’s climate is probably (for some of humanity at least) rather pleasanter and more fruitful than the climate as recently as 250 years ago. In A Yeoman’s Diary I discussed the detailed record left to us by the daily diary of Cumbrian resident Isaac Fletcher. Of course, life was harder then, simply because society lacked so many of the luxuries which we take for granted – double glazing, central heating, motor and air transport and much, much more. However, leaving that to one side, it is quite apparent from reading Isaac Fletcher’s diary that the climate was worse then than now. Floods and storms were regular occurrences, and by and large it was much colder then than currently – so cold that on at least one occasion “the frost got into the houses. Froze the piss in the pots under the beds.” I summarised it thus:
https://cliscep.com/2024/10/09/the-age-of-unreason/
