by Ian Plimmer, Nov 4, 2021, SpectatorAustralia

Greta Thunberg rejects all ideas of the enlightenment. Despite what she wails, she is now living in the best times ever to be a child on planet Earth. She can actually go to FLOP26, something that few of us would want to do. Would she prefer to live in the worst of times when there was panic, suffering, environmental damage, death and no hope which she claims exists today?  

We now eat better, are less affected by natural disasters and are able to cope with extremes of weather and climate. During the last 4 of at least 20,000 generations of humans, child mortality has decreased and global human longevity increased from 25 to 79 years. The climate moaners need to get some perspective from history. 

The worst years to live since the time of Jesus were 535-550 AD because massive volcanic eruptions, perhaps Kamchatka or Alaska in 535-536 AD and Ilopango in El Salvador from 539-540 AD. The Northern Hemisphere atmosphere with filled with dust and acid sulphate clouds. These volcanic eruptions were coincidental with extraterrestrial impacts in March 536 AD in the Gulf of Carpentaria and elsewhere in August 536 AD. To make matters worse, these were at the time of a Solar Minimum. 

The Sun was dimmed for 18 months, a white sulphuric acid aerosol cloud enveloped Europe, global temperature dropped by 1.5 to 2.5°C producing worldwide crop failures and death by starvation. There was migration (e.g. Slavic speaking people), political turmoil and the collapse of empires (e.g. Sasanian Empire in Persia). Tree rings show almost no growth for a few years.  

 

Icelandic eruptions around 540-541 AD also lowered summer temperatures by 1.4 to 2.7°C in Europe. The weakened population was hit by the Justinian bubonic plague 541-543 AD killing 35-55% of the people through the Mediterranean and speeding the collapse of the Roman Empire. These times were called the Dark Ages, for good reason.  

Surges in atmospheric lead recorded as particles in Swiss glacial ice at 640 and 660 AD indicate an economic revival with lead mining and smelting in France to obtain silver co-product for coinage. At that time, coins changed from gold to silver. Bits of wood stuck onto pumice discovered in the GISP2 Greenland ice core came from numerous volcanic eruptions at Rabaul (Papua New Guinea) around 667 to 699 AD which led to another few bleak years.  

How will the climate moaners survive the next Grand Solar Minimum (2020 to 2053) if there are coincidental natural events such as large volcanic eruptions and small extraterrestrial impacts? Will some events of the 6th Century repeat themselves?  

The year 1349 AD was pretty grim when the Black Death wiped out half of the European population. The Spanish Flu from 1918 to 1920 wiped out more than 50 million people from a population of 1.8 billion and these were mostly young fit adults. To date, the COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 5 million of the 7.7 billion global population and is a mere sniffle compared to the Spanish flu. 

The Swedish pixie wants us to back to the good old days. They weren’t. The world has many remarkable children. Greta will never be one of them. For example, Alma Deutscher was born on February 2005 in Basingstoke (England). She composed her first piano sonata at five, a short opera The Sweeper of Dreams at seven, a concerto for violin and orchestra at nine and, at ten, a full-length opera Cinderella. At twelve, she premiered her first piano concerto at Carnegie Hall. She has written many piano, orchestral, vocal and chamber music pieces.  

Composer, violinist and pianist Alma Deutscher will be remembered for generations. Greta Thunberg will not. Deutscher’s world is positive and constructive. That of Thunberg is negative and destructive for her and can only end badly.  

I feel so sorry for the abused and manipulated Greta whose world is devoid of history, knowledge and perspective. She is a window into the morality of green activists who use even their own children as money-making pawns in their evil green activist political games.   

Professor Ian Plimer’s latest book, Green Murder, will be released in late November by Connor Court Publishing. The pre-publication price is discounted.