The Logic of Climate Change

Or the lack thereof is demonstrated in this article from Discovery News about the finding of a Stone Age bow and arrows uncovered when a patch of "ancient" snow melted during the summer.

"It's actually a little bit unnerving that they're so old and that they're coming out right now," Callanan told LiveScience. "It tells us that there's something changing."

Let's think about this.  The bow and arrows made from the wood of elm trees -- which currently grow in the region at lower altitudes -- was found on bare ground.  I wonder, 3800 or 5400 years ago, when those hunters were up there after reindeer, was the ground bare or snow-covered?

You know, 6200 feet, that's a little above the altitude of Denver, albeit in more northerly latitudes.  My guess is that, during drier periods, snow tends to get pretty thin in those very long days of summer.


Climate changes all the time.  No one argues about that.  Does man affect the climate?  Sure -- cities are heat islands.  Man-made lakes, highways, and other features alter the conditions at the surface on a micro-scale.  The miniscule amount of CO2 most likely has no effect on climate except to feed the flora that gives us O2 to breathe.  

Greenland, for example, experienced a relatively milder climate between 800 and 1200 AD, when Norse settlers farmed there.  They did not drive over in Chevy Suburbans.  The climate got progressively colder until about 1700, after which it has gradually returned to more hospitable levels.

It's quite possible, then, that the hunter who dropped his bow was on bare ground.  We really don't know what the conditions were like at the time.  It could have been an unusually warm stretch as has happened throughout the centuries since the last great Ice Age.  

Instead of talking about the significance of the find for history and archeology, we talk about climate change.  That sounds less like objective science and more like propaganda.