Commentary - A tale of two climates

But over time, they began to notice changes. In the winter, snows seemed heavier, and took much longer to thaw. Eventually, it was apparent to all the mountain snow wasn't melting anymore—even in the summer. The unsettling discovery of a dried-up brook from the slopes of the peaks proved that even in summer, the snow remained intact.

Ice slowly descended from the summit and began creeping down the valley, until the onslaught was inexorable. Field by field, home by home, families gave up and moved south, looking for new land.

Humans weren't the only ones affected. Entire species of plants and animals were wiped out by the ice. Of course, other species better adapted to the cold and white gained a competitive advantage—at least, a temporary competitive advantage. Of course, there would come a day when the ice would recede, when the land would be freed from its prison and would again bloom and flourish.

It was a global catastrophe when the glaciers came down those valleys, driving people from their homes and burying millions of acres of productive farming land under a thick sheet of ice.

So why it is considered a global catastrophe now that the glaciers are receding, and the land is being freed?

Are we, like the people displaced by the glaciers, captive to the arrogance of the status quo? Do we assume that the conditions that exist during our lifetimes are the way things always have been, and the way things always should be?

Or is it possible that we, like they, simply happen to live during a climate tipping point, where the results of immutable climate cycles are simply becoming manifest?

Why do we assume that having massive amounts of the earth's surface covered in a thick sheet of ice is a good thing? We're accustomed to seeing glacier-filled valleys and snow-covered mountains, but is that necessarily the ideal state of the earth?

Is it better for Greenland to be green, or to be covered in an ice sheet? Is it better for Canada's northernmost territory to be useless, or productive? Why do we celebrate the delicacy of the tundra biotope? Is frozen soil good?

Did white critters like polar bears gain a temporary selective advantage due to their white coats, and is it possible that animals with darker coats are now due their turn? Is this crisis, or just change?

We have only computer models and theories to predict global warming horror, but computer models warned us only a few years ago of global cooling, and occasionally still do.

On the other hand, we know, absolutely, that areas currently under the ice were once green and productive. We know this from core samples, but as the ice melts, we're actually finding things. We're finding people buried in the ice, and tools, and crops. And we're going to find more.

Finding people and plants buried under the ice is concrete scientific evidence, and is more credible than the projections of computer models. We can't even reliably model what interest rates or the nation's GDP is going to be next year.

Further, we know that there was once a greater amount of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere than there is now, and that this greater amount of CO2 was associated with more productive plant growth and more temperate climate around the globe, as opposed to the extremes that we observe today.

Yet such is the pessimism of global warming discussion that we hear only of the increased productivity of poison ivy as a result of increased CO2. We hear nothing of the increased productivity of corn, wheat, grasses and trees, which will themselves help process CO2 as they colonize soil once buried in ice.

Why do our discussions of global warming almost entirely avoid the undeniable fact that the ice wasn't always there. People were there before the ice, and people will occupy those valleys once again.

That is fact. Everything else is theory.

Tom Giovanetti is the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a Lewisville, Texas-based think tank.