It’s All in the Spin
Milankovitch Climate Theory and Fake News
In an article by Ethan Huff entitled “NASA admits that climate change occurs because of changes in Earth’s solar orbit and NOT because of SUVs and fossil fuels,” he presents a meteorological theory called Milankovitch Climate Theory. The article published on Natural News.com on August 30th, 2019 gives the claim (1)“For more than 60 years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has known that the changes occurring to planetary weather patterns are completely natural and normal. But the space agency, for whatever reason, has chosen to let the human-made global warming hoax persist and spread, to the detriment of human freedom.” After reading about the topic, it is confirmed that their argument doesn’t measure up to their claim.
Comparing the article with sites such as Snopes (2), it is proven to be fake news. The natural anthropomorphic climate change of the Earth spans over thousands of years from ice age to ice age. Huff’s position caters to an audience that denies climate change has anything to do with man made CO2 emissions. Though it’s agreed upon as a factor by both sides, the details determine how much.
Milutin Milankovitch was a known mathematician and possessed a doctorate in technical sciences from the Vienna Institute of Technology. While appointed as a professor at the University of Belgrade, he lectured on celestial mechanics. In the early 1920’s he gathered all the possible data he could and confirmed there is a pattern of natural heating and cooling of the earth based on the exposure of radiation from the sun in the atmosphere. His theory contains three pillars.
Huff’s argument of the Sun being the only source of climate change would have been correct in the Pleistocene Ice Age, ending roughly 12,000 years ago. Milankovitch’s theory created a base line of past epochs to predict future changes. The only factor that not taken into account was the effects following the Industrial Revelution ending in the 1840s. The coal driven economy gives a boom to economic gain, international trade, and new fuels such as coal and petroleum.
While this is a complex issue with many factors, we have to acknowledge the impact man has always had on our planet. Even in Milankovich’s time, we were struggling to understand the reason’s behind rising ocean temperatures in the Atlanic. In an article by Rich Buhler, the Norwegian Department of Commerce sent out an expedition to make observations in 1922 and were concerned by what they saw. They spoke with a local sea captain and conferred with local knowledge and reported the following; “…It is of interest to note the unusually warm summer in Arctic Norway and the observations of Capt. MartinIngebrigstaen, who has sailed the eastern Arctic for 54 years past. He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, that since that time it has steadily gotten warmer, and that to-day the Arctic of that region is not recognizable as the same region of 1868 to 1917.”
Milankovitch’s formulas are always in play. So long as the Earth orbits the sun, we will always be receiving radiation from it, but our Earth’s natural sunscreen (the O-Zone) grows thinner by the year. This particular article makes note that while it doesn’t prove much else than there have been local climate fluctuations, we can infer that these can be caused by more than just sun shine.
At the core of Huff’s position is mankind is not responsible for any of the changes made to our climate and that it is a hoax perpetuated “ by leftist politicians and a complicit mainstream media, insist that not using reusable grocery bags at the supermarket and not having an electric vehicle are destroying the planet so quickly that we absolutely must implement global climate taxes as the solution.”
The sun’s effect on our climate has everything to do with human emissions. As shown in NASA’s presentation, the Montreal Protocol created observable evidence of society’s conscious decision to change our climate. We chose to reverse damage directly linked to our consumer driven effects of the O-Zone. There have been small changes and large changes to the Climate Change platform globally, but we as people know that we can control our impact on our environment.
The United Nations’ response to human factors in the natural world created the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, and they have been researching and helping to educate global citizens on climate change. Almost 200 countries are contributing to the conversation of what the effects of humanity are in our climate and challenge each other on policies that can benefit our planet.
The argument made by Huff of Milankovitch’s Theory is summed up by himself, “ The biggest factor influencing weather and climate patterns on earth is the sun, period.” Throughout history- human history, we have seen and changed patterns in the world around us. CO2 emissions are not the only aspect of the story that we are responsible for or have helped change. We, like people, have to continue to change our sociocultural climate for the better, as well as our literal climate.
