Climate Changers

When journalists or the general public talk about climate change, they’re almost always referring to anthropogenic or human-caused climate change. In some mainstream media circles (such as NPR, PBS, or the BBC) journalists take anthropogenic climate change as a given fact. But climate science is far more complex and uncertain than they seem to realize. Our inability to predict climate changes reflects that complexity. As William Poundstone wrote long ago, no model (including climate models) can accurately predict phenomena that are more complex than the models themselves. Thus, for example, the previously un-factored component of terrestrial nitrogen alone invalidated earlier climate models and their predictions. But if previous climate modelers failed to include terrestrial nitrogen, what other components might they be inadvertently excluding now? Do we even know all the components that might affect climate? How much cardon dioxide and methane is the sea floor naturally releasing, and how will those rates change in the future? No one knows. Climate models also invariably fail to predict future human technological changes that could effect the climate. In fact, humans have never been able to predict the future at all, and thus climate predicting models end up being about as useful as tarot cards, tea leaves, crystal balls, and the like.

Here’s an irrefutable fact: every day humanity is dumping megatons of carbon into the atmosphere. But here’s another fact: the so-called “greenhouse effect,” in which atmospheric carbon and methane cause global warming, is a scientific hypothesis — not a scientific theory. It is a plausible hypothesis, but it is far from a proven fact. And, to be sure, most science never reaches the theory stage. Darwin’s theory of evolution is a fairly rare example of true scientific theory, one that geneticists have only improved upon since Darwin’s own time. But as so many scientists and philosophers of science will tell you, science is primarily a method of inquiry, not a dogmatic progenitor of convenient claims of fact — and certainly not the politicized and monetized science that unfortunately obscures so much of the climate change conversation. Climate change alarmists and climate change deniers swirl around in their own partisan whirlpool, and few in this whirlpool ever mention geological or astrophysical causes of climate change. For them, it’s anthropogenic or nothing.

Geologists can no more predict the planetary future than historians can predict the human future, except in the most general terms. We’ll all die and most of us will pay some taxes. Empires will come and go. Our sun will expire in about five billion years — but what sort of geology will characterize the earth between then and now? No one knows. Regardless of anthropogenic carbon emissions, conditions on earth might or might not remain agreeable to mammals. The vast majority of the earth’s geological history was not conducive to human life at all. For one dramatic example, over 50 million years before the human species appeared, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was an era of high atmospheric carbon (much higher than now) that was so warm it melted all the earth’s ice. Geologists and other scientists are not sure what caused that warming, but (adhering to the greenhouse hypothesis) speculate that natural methane release, asteroid phenomena, high volcanic activity and its associated emissions, and other factors may have contributed to the atmospheric warming.

So what would happen if we ended all anthropogenic carbon and methane emissions? What if we even began capturing and sequestering carbon already in the atmosphere and thus actually reducing levels of carbon? Would the earth cool? Not necessarily. The fact is, nobody knows what would happen because (for one thing) we cannot currently distinguish potential anthropogenic climate changing agents from geological and astrophysical factors. For all we know, the geological warming trend that began about 20,000 years ago (with the peak of the Wisconsin glaciation) will continue toward a new Thermal Maximum. If so, humans could do little or nothing to stop such massive planetary forces. Maybe we would retreat underground and try to survive, but obviously we would also witness a massive die-off of current configurations of life.

The maximum extent of the Wisconsin glaciation as seen from the North Pole, covering Canada, northern Europe, and parts of the northern U.S. (Image from WikiMedia Commons).

Those preoccupied with anthropogenic climate change seem to have an ironic presumption that we actually control or at least significantly influence global climate. Maybe we can effectuate changes large or small, or maybe not. I would prefer erring on the side of caution. How wonderful it would be if we could stop dumping all this carbon into the atmosphere. Yet a perennial complication of climate policy involves its socioeconomic consequences. Most of the world does not live in the comparatively luxury found in the United States, whose population represents only around 5% of the world total but is responsible for about a fourth of the world’s energy consumption. Yes, hypocrisy more than abounds. In fact, the elite preaching environmentalism insults the poor, who already “reduce, reuse, and recycle” out of pure necessity, not from some righteous moral imperative.

Obviously we’re not going to return to pre-industrial technology, population levels, and their associated lower carbon emissions. But there is also no reason to despair. If human ingenuity has led us into environmental problems, human ingenuity can lead us out. Still, we should not expect any cooperation from astrophysical and geological forces, which will eternally remain indifferent to us and our aspirations. That’s just life on planet earth.

Copyright © 2026 Will Sarvis. All rights reserved.

SOURCES

Ralph Ellis and Michael Palmer, “Modulation of Ice Ages via Precession and Dust-Albedo Feedbacks,” Geoscience Frontiers 7, no. 6 (Nov. 2016): 891–909.

Ben Z. Houlton, et al, “Convergent Evidence for Widespread Rock Nitrogen Sources in Earth’s Surface Environment,” Science 360, no. 6384 (April 6, 2018): 58–62.

Phil Jardine, “The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum,” Paleontology Online 1, no. 5 (Jan. 10, 2011): 1–7.

William Poundstone, Labyrinths of Reason: Paradox, Puzzles, and the Frailty of Knowledge (NY: Anchor Pr., 1988), 253.

Will Sarvis, Embracing Philanthropic Environmentalism: the Grand Responsibility of Stewardship (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Pubs., 2019), 134, 136–37.