2019: Already a vintage year for climate claptrap 

From The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF)

It has been an encouraging start to the contest for the year’s loopiest climate story.

First out of the blocks is a cracker from the geography department at University College London with the suggestion that Spanish colonisation in the Americas contributed to global cooling.

Early interest is also being shown in a paper that appeared in the Journal of the American Heart Association suggesting that a rise in temperatures stemming from climate change may increase the number of US infants born with congenital heart defects. This presumably opens up a whole new field of science – and funding – investigating the effect of latitude on vast numbers of ailments.

The global drop in temperatures started in 1300, long before the Spanish invaded the Americas. The UCL team suggested that reductions in population after the Spanish conquests and subsequent increases in tropical jungle led to more CO2 being used from the atmosphere.

The report seems to suggest that this amounted to around three parts per million in the atmosphere. If true, this would be a minute amount in an atmosphere that held at the time round 280ppm of CO2. Three ppm is well within any genuine scientific margin of error.

The ‘mini ice age’ was caused by many natural events and continued until around 1850. It was characterised by numerous variations in temperature across different time periods and regions in the northern hemisphere.

Needless to say the BBC led the media charge and was all over this story. Linking climate change with the genocidal activities of white colonists just ticks so many boxes, even for so-called science correspondents.

Continued here.