The chart below does a pretty good job of showing the climate changes that occurred as my species moved from being a general purpose biped to Homo sapiens. It covers the last half-million years and gives the global mean temperature. A text I read a half-century back referred to Homo sapiens as “interglacial.” The rises and drops in the chart demonstrate that. Modern man developed during climate change. The frosts and snows didn’t support developing agriculture 100,000 years ago (as the chart below shows).
This next chart deals with the last 8,000 years – the time when agriculture was developed. Looking at the two charts shows that there were few warming windows for hunters and gatherers to make the shift to horticulture and agriculture. Climate change is no stranger to my species.
The charts illustrate why “Climate Change” doesn’t seem much of a theory, while “Anthropic Global Warming” can be tested. 500 million years of glaciations and interglacials may be better served by physicists and geologists than political activists.
From my handful of somewhat related studies, I can only conclude that the warming climate came along at the right time for my species to develop agriculture . . .. and that is definitely a good thing for me.
Trego's Mountain Ear 