Global Warming Angst? Blame Currier & Ives

--- by Micheal

Yes, I mean those 19th century producers of "cheap and popular prints" which still grace so many calendars and Christmas cards. I don't mean to say that Currier & Ives caused global warming. Rather, I think they're part of the reason so many otherwise reasonable people are running in circles screaming about it.

Currier upsets people because he illustrated -- in such a romantic, idealized way -- life in the early 1800s. One-horse open sleighs, snowy New England Christmases, skating on rivers, etc. Trouble is, his quaint engravings never change, but the world has been.

Currier lived at the tail end of what climatologists call the Little Ice Age (LIA, for short). From around the years 1500 to around 1850, the world was experiencing a cold period. Currier's New England winters were LIA winters. For him, Christmases were always white (whereas they seldom are now) and his rivers always froze (but nowadays they freeze only occasionally).

Prior to the LIA, the world had been a degree or two warmer. Climatologists call that the Medieval Warm Period. The MWP spanned from 800 to 1300 AD. England was more like what we think of Italy being like, sunny, warm, complete with vineyards. In the MWP, the Vikings explored Greenland which was, well, green then. Sea levels were a little higher. Glaciers were smaller.

What if Currier had engraved romantic pictures of green Greenland and British villas amid vineyards? Would the people of the 16th century have agonized about global cooling? Would they have fretted over the climate changes that devastated the British wine industry?

Before the MWP, the world averaged a half degree cooler. What if Currier lived in the 800s and illustrated quaint villages at lower sea shores and majestic long glaciers? Would people of the tenth century have bemoaned the "threat" of rising sea levels wiping out their quaint villages, the "loss" of glaciers and changing climates?

All of this warming and cooling has been going on long before the first SUV or coal-fired power plant. Pop culture likes to pin the blame on CO2, so there's much running in circles screaming about how to reduce CO2. But what if it's not CO2? We'll have circled and screamed for nothing.

Many scientists say that it's normal for the globe to warm and cool. Normal that glaciers melt back, seas rise, then switch back again. Yet, people are all upset about the change at this cycle. I say it's Currier & Ives' fault. They gave us engravings of snowy New England Christmases, and we expect things to stay the way he drew them.