Day: September 21, 2026

The Roman Climate Optimum: Warmer Than Today in Europe — But Not Globally

The Roman Warm Period (RWP), also called the Roman Climatic Optimum (or Roman Climate Optimum), was a multi-century interval of relatively warm and often more stable/humid conditions primarily in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic, roughly spanning ~250 BC to AD 400 (with peak or most stable conditions often placed around 100 BC- AD 200 or similar).

Cooling and increased climate variability after the Roman Climatic Optimum are well- documented and are considered contributing stressors to challenges faced by the Roman Empire.

The Roman Warm Period (RWP, or Roman Climatic Optimum, roughly 250 BC- AD 400) was a multi-century phase of relatively warm conditions mainly in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic. Comparisons to today must distinguish regional vs. global scales, proxy uncertainties, and rates of change.

Infographic illustrating the Roman Climate Optimum (200 BCE - 200 CE) and its warmer climate compared to today in Europe, featuring a world map showing temperature variations, historical context, and climate change data.
AI generated by Grok

The Roman Warm Period (RWP), also called the Roman Climatic Optimum (or Roman Climate Optimum), was a multi-century interval of relatively warm and often more stable/humid conditions primarily in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic, roughly spanning ~250 BC to AD 400 (with peak or most stable conditions often placed around 100 BC- AD 200 or similar).

It is named for its chronological overlap with the rise, expansion, and early imperial peak of Rome, though climate was one contributing environmental factor among many (political, military, economic, and technological) rather than a sole cause of Roman success.

Key Characteristics

Temperature: Proxy data (tree rings, speleothems/stalagmites, marine sediments, pollen, glacier advances/retreats, and archaeological indicators) indicate conditions often ~1- 2°C warmer than later pre-industrial centuries in parts of Europe and the Mediterranean. Some high- resolution Mediterranean Sea-surface temperature (SST) reconstructions (e.g., Sicily Channel Mg/Ca ratios from foraminifera) show the Roman period as the warmest of the last ~2,000 years in those records, with peaks up to ~2°C above late pre- modern averages.

Hydrology and variability: Many European and Mediterranean records point to relatively warm and humid/stable conditions during much of the period (favoring agriculture), though with regional and temporal differences, including drier intervals and a shift toward cooler, drier, or more variable conditions later (especially from the 3rd- 5th centuries).

Regional nature: Modern multi- proxy analyses treat it (like the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age) as a regional phenomenon rather than a globally coherent, synchronous event. Evidence is strongest for Europe, Mediterranean, North Atlantic; signals elsewhere are weaker or asynchronous.

Evidence Sources

Proxies include:

  • Tree- ring width/density and dendrochronology (e.g., Alps, Italy, Scandinavia).
  • Speleothem (stalagmite) isotope records (e.g., northern Italy showing warming and humidity trends).
  • Marine sediments and SST reconstructions across the Mediterranean (Alboran, Sicily, Aegean, etc.).
  • Glacier behavior (Alpine retreat facilitating passes).
  • Historical/literary notes (e.g., Theophrastus on date palms in Greece; Pliny; grape/olive cultivation extents) and archaeological finds (e.g., warmth- loving insects farther north, such as the nettlebug in Britain).
  • Other indicators like mollusk shells, pollen, and biomarkers.

The term itself entered wider use after a 1995 thesis and a 1999 Nature paper; earlier literature discussed related warm/stable conditions without the specific label.

Relation to Roman History

Favorable conditions (milder winters, longer growing seasons, reliable harvests in key grain and agricultural zones, and more passable Alpine routes) coincided with Rome’s expansion and the early Empire’s prosperity and stability. Climate deterioration and increased variability (linked in some reconstructions to the 3rd- century crisis and later challenges) have been discussed as one stressor among many contributing to later difficulties, including in the Western Empire’s decline, though historians emphasize that climate was not deterministic.

Some recent local studies (e.g., biomarkers from Roman sites in Dacia/Romania) reconstruct mean annual temperatures ~2°C above modern local values during occupation, consistent with broader warmer/drier signals in parts of Eastern Europe.

Context and Caveats

It is one of several late-Holocene climate fluctuations (preceding the Late Antique Little Ice Age and followed much later by the Medieval Warm Period). Reconstructions continue to be refined with denser proxy networks; absolute temperatures, exact boundaries, and global vs. regional coherence remain subjects of ongoing research. Comparisons to modern instrumental temperatures depend on the baseline chosen and the specific region/proxy.

In short, the RWP reflects a well- documented phase of relatively favorable climate in the Roman heartland and surrounding regions that provided a supportive environmental backdrop for classical Mediterranean civilization at its height.

A historic scene depicting an ornate fountain with sculptures, surrounded by ancient Roman architecture and people dressed in traditional attire.

The climate of ancient Rome (roughly the period of the Roman Kingdom, Republic, and Empire, ~753 BC- AD 476 in the West) was fundamentally Mediterranean: mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers, with regional variations across the Italian peninsula and the wider empire. It largely coincided with the Roman Warm Period (or Roman Climatic Optimum, ~250 BC- AD 400), a phase of relatively warm, stable, and often more humid conditions that supported agriculture and population growth.

Overall Climate Regime

Italy sat in a subtropical/Mediterranean zone. Northern areas were more temperate, while central and southern Italy experienced classic Mediterranean patterns. Annual precipitation in the Rome area was typically in the range of several hundred millimeters, concentrated in autumn and winter, with dry summers. The Tiber River and surrounding marshes were prone to seasonal flooding, especially during snowmelt or heavy rains.

Key features during the Roman era included:

Temperatures: Often comparable to or slightly warmer than mid- 20th- century averages in many proxies (sometimes estimated ~1- 2°C warmer in parts of the Mediterranean and Europe during peak phases). Evidence includes northward shifts of warmth- loving species (e.g., the nettlebug Heterogaster urticae farther north in Britain than in the 1950s) and expanded cultivation of olives, grapes, and other crops.

Precipitation and humidity: Relatively reliable and sometimes wetter than in intervening cooler periods, aiding agriculture. Some records indicate more frequent summer rain in parts of southern Italy than today. North Africa (a key grain supplier) and parts of Spain also benefited from adequate moisture.

Stability: The early and high Empire (~100 BC- AD 200) featured exceptional climatic stability, which correlated with agricultural productivity, urban growth, and imperial expansion.

Chronological Variations

Climate was not static:

Early period (Kingdom and Republic, before ~100 BC): Part of the broader Subatlantic phase, with cool summers and mild, rainy winters. Occasional severe winters froze the Tiber (recorded in 398 BC, 396 BC, 271 BC, and 177 BC). The climate was generally more humid and cooler than the modern baseline in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, with higher precipitation in what is now more arid southern Italy.

Roman Climatic Optimum peak (~100 BC- AD 150/200): Warmer and more stable conditions prevailed. Alpine glaciers retreated, improving passes; growing seasons lengthened; and agriculture expanded (e.g., viticulture farther north). This phase supported the Republic’s late expansion and the early Empire’s prosperity.

Later Empire (3rd century onward): Increased variability, cooling, and shifts toward drier conditions in some regions. These changes overlapped with the 3rd- century crisis and later stresses. A brief recovery of more favorable conditions occurred in the 4th century, after which cooler and more variable climate (leading into the Late Antique Little Ice Age) contributed to challenges in the West, while the East sometimes fared differently.

Extreme events are recorded in historical sources: powerful storms that wrecked fleets during the First Punic War (255 BC and 249 BC), droughts (e.g., 226 BC lasting months), and occasional unusual phenomena.

Impact on Roman Society and Agriculture

Favorable conditions during the Optimum enhanced yields of the Mediterranean triad (cereals/wheat, vines, olives), supporting large urban populations (Rome itself exceeding 1 million at peak) and military logistics. Expanded cultivation is attested by writers such as Pliny and archaeological evidence. The empire’s grain supply from North Africa, Egypt (Nile- dependent), Sicily, and elsewhere relied on these climatic patterns.

Climate was an enabling factor rather than a deterministic cause of Rome’s rise or fall. Political organization, technology (e.g., aqueducts, villa systems, irrigation), trade, and institutions allowed Romans to buffer variability better than many earlier societies. Later cooling and variability, combined with disease (e.g., Antonine Plague and others coinciding with cooler/drier phases), migrations, and internal stresses, added to difficulties.

Evidence Base

Reconstructions draw on multi- proxy data:

  • Tree rings, speleothems (cave formations), marine sediments (sea-surface temperatures), pollen, glaciers, and ice cores.
  • Historical texts (Pliny, Columella, Ptolemy’s weather notes from Alexandria, literary accounts of floods/freezes).
  • Archaeology (insect remains, crop distributions, villa remains).

Modern Rome retains a similar Mediterranean (Köppen Csa) climate, mild winters and hot summers, but the ancient period’s relative warmth and stability during the empire’s height provided a supportive environmental context for classical civilization.

In summary, ancient Rome experienced a predominantly favorable Mediterranean climate, especially during its imperial peak, that facilitated agricultural surplus and expansion within the broader Roman Warm Period framework.

Cooling and increased climate variability after the Roman Climatic Optimum (roughly ending between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD) are well- documented and are considered contributing stressors (among many others) to challenges faced by the Roman Empire.

These shifts interacted with disease, politics, economics, and migrations rather than acting as a sole cause of decline.

Main Cooling Phases and Transitions

End of the Roman Climatic Optimum / early instability (from ~AD 130- 200 onward): Gradual transition from the warm, relatively stable, and often humid conditions of the Optimum. Proxy records (tree rings, marine sediments, speleothems, ice cores) show increased variability, with cooler and sometimes drier intervals. A high-resolution southern Italian marine record indicates instability and cooling from ~AD 100, more notably after ~130, with pronounced cold phases ~160-180 and ~245-275.

3rd- century cooling and Crisis of the Third Century (~AD 235- 284, peaking around 250- 275): Cooler and more arid conditions in parts of Italy and the Mediterranean overlapped with political fragmentation, military anarchy, economic troubles, and the Plague of Cyprian (~251- 266). Settlement contraction occurred in Italy. Climate stress is viewed as one amplifying factor in this multifaceted crisis.

4th- century partial recovery: A shorter interval of more favorable conditions aligned with imperial recovery and reorganization under emperors such as Constantine and others.

Late Antique Little Ice Age (LALIA, ~AD 536- 660): A sharp, severe, Northern Hemisphere- wide cooling triggered primarily by a cluster of major volcanic eruptions (notably 536, 540, and 547 AD), possibly amplified by ocean/sea- ice feedback and a solar minimum. Summer temperatures dropped substantially (reconstructions show averages ~1.5- 3°C or more below prior peaks in some records; southern Italian data indicate ~3°C colder than Optimum highs in the late 6th century). This was one of the coldest multi-decadal intervals of the last 2,000 years

Key Impacts of Cooling

Agriculture and food supply:

  • Shorter growing seasons, increased frost risk, and shifts in precipitation reduced yields of key crops. Modeling studies estimate substantial declines: e.g., average wheat yields potentially ~50% lower and grape yields ~70% and lower in some Mediterranean/Italian locations during LALIA conditions compared with the Optimum.
  • Harvest failures contributed to famines, higher grain prices or import costs in parts of the empire, and strain on urban food systems (Rome and other cities depended heavily on reliable surpluses from Italy, North Africa, Egypt, Sicily, etc.).
  • Northward or higher- elevation cultivation that had expanded under warmer conditions became less viable.

Disease and demography:

  • Cold/dry periods strongly coincided with major pandemics: Antonine Plague (~165- 180), Plague of Cyprian (~251- 266), and especially the Plague of Justinian (starting 541- 542, first wave of the First Plague Pandemic caused by Yersinia pestis). Cooling likely disrupted ecosystems (affecting rodent hosts and flea vectors), stressed populations via poorer nutrition, and facilitated disease spread amid migration and conflict.
  • Demographic losses compounded economic and military pressures; the Justinianic plague alone caused massive mortality across the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire and beyond.

Society, politics, and migrations:

  • Agricultural shortfalls and economic strain weakened state revenues, military logistics, and urban vitality.
  • Cooler/drier conditions on the empire’s periphery and in steppe regions (linked in some studies to North Atlantic Oscillation shifts) acted as “push” factors for migrations and invasions (e.g., associated with movements involving Goths, other groups in the Migration Period, and broader Eurasian upheavals).
  • In the East, LALIA cooling overlapped with the transformation of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire, wars, territorial losses, and the eventual rise of new powers; similar stresses affected the Sasanian Empire and other Eurasian societies.
  • Overall, the shift from the supportive Optimum climate to more hostile variability and cold helped erode the environmental foundations that had aided earlier prosperity, interacting with internal weaknesses and external pressures.

Causes of the Cooling

Primarily natural: declining solar irradiance in some intervals, increased volcanic activity (especially the 6th-century cluster that dimmed sunlight for years, “the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon”, as Procopius described in 536), and possible ocean feedback. These were independent of human activity.

Important Caveats

Climate was a contributing environmental stressor, not a deterministic “cause” of the fall of the Western Empire (476) or later Byzantine challenges.

Historians emphasize multifactorial explanations: political instability, overextension, economic issues, military pressures, institutional changes, and pandemics. Regional differences mattered, the East often adapted differently or recovered better in some periods. Proxy data continue to be refined, and absolute magnitudes/regional expressions vary.

In short, the transition from the relatively benign Roman Climatic Optimum to phases of cooling and instability (especially the severe LALIA) reduced agricultural reliability, amplified disease impacts, and added pressure during already turbulent centuries, forming part of the complex environmental backdrop to late Roman and early medieval transformations.

The Roman Warm Period (RWP, or Roman Climatic Optimum, roughly 250 BC- AD 400) was a multi-century phase of relatively warm conditions mainly in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the North Atlantic. Comparisons to today must distinguish regional vs. global scales, proxy uncertainties, and rates of change.

Temperature Comparison

Regional (Europe/Mediterranean): Some high- resolution proxies, especially Mediterranean Sea- surface temperatures (e.g., Sicily Channel and western Mediterranean records), indicate the RWP was among the warmest intervals of the last ~2,000 years in those areas, often estimated ~1- 2°C warmer than late pre-industrial or mid- 20th- century averages in specific locations. Certain studies describe Roman- period SSTs as the warmest of the past two millennia in parts of the central/western Mediterranean, with peaks roughly 2°C above late- century pre- modern values. Alpine glaciers were relatively small (comparable in some reconstructions to early 21st- century extents), and warmth- loving species or crops expanded northward.

Global scale: multi- proxy syntheses (e.g., PAGES 2k) show that pre-industrial warm intervals like the RWP (and the Medieval Warm Period) were primarily regional, not globally synchronous or coherent. Global mean surface temperatures during the RWP were not higher than the present day. Recent decades (especially post- 2010s, including years through the mid- 2020s) have been warmer globally than any multi-decadal period in the last 2,000 years according to large-scale reconstructions. Global warming since the late 19th century is ~1.1- 1.5°C above 1850- 1900 pre- industrial levels, with the most recent years setting successive records.

Proxy data (tree rings, sediments, speleothems, etc.) have uncertainties of roughly ±0.5-1.5°C or more depending on the record and region, and they often reconstruct seasonal or local signals rather than annual global means. Instrumental records since the mid-19th century provide far higher precision.

Key Differences from Today

AspectRoman Warm PeriodPresent Day (early–mid 21st century)
Spatial extentRegional (strongest in Europe/Med/N. Atlantic)Global, nearly all regions warming
Rate of changeGradual, multi- centuryVery rapid (~0.2°C per decade recently; faster than any 50-year period in at least the last 2,000 years)
Primary driversNatural (solar irradiance, low volcanism, ocean dynamics)Dominantly anthropogenic greenhouse gases (CO₂, etc.), with natural factors secondary
CO₂ levels~280 ppm (pre- industrial Holocene range)~420 and more ppm (rising rapidly)
StabilityRelatively stable for centuries in key regionsIncreasing extremes, rapid shifts
ContextWithin natural Holocene variabilityOutside the range of the last ~2,000 years globally; continuing upward trend

Other Factors

Hydrology and extremes: The RWP was often associated with relatively humid/stable conditions favorable to Mediterranean agriculture in many records. Today’s warming includes changes in precipitation patterns, more intense heat extremes, and other impacts not identical to the RWP.

Sea level and cryosphere: Modern sea- level rise and glacier/ice- sheet responses are driven by the current rapid warming and are ongoing; RWP glacier extents were reduced regionally but without the same global ice- volume implications.

Rate matters: The speed of modern warming is a critical distinction. Natural past changes of similar magnitude typically unfolded over centuries to millennia, allowing more time for ecosystems and societies to adjust. Current change is occurring within a human lifetime and continues.

In summary, parts of the Mediterranean and Europe experienced warmth during the RWP that was comparable to or locally exceeded mid- to- late 20th- century levels and ranked among the warmest of the last two millennia regionally.

However, today’s climate is warmer globally, the warming is far more rapid and widespread, and it is driven primarily by human greenhouse-gas emissions rather than natural forcings. Large- scale reconstructions indicate that recent global temperatures surpass those of the RWP and other pre- industrial warm intervals of the last 2,000 years.

No, Climate Change is Not ‘Squeezing’ the World’s Vineyards

It has become one of the settled rituals of the climate-activist press: almost any hardship afflicting any agricultural sector, anywhere in the world, is now reflexively laid at the door of “climate change”.

The latest instalment arrived via the Conversation, under a headline declaring that climate change is putting the squeeze on the world’s grape-growers, dressed up as fresh research.

An illustration depicting the impact of climate change on vineyards, featuring a worried man squeezing bunches of grapes with the text 'CLIMATE CHANGE IS SQUEEZING THE VINEYARDS!' in the background. Other vineyard workers are shown happily harvesting grapes, surrounded by baskets filled with grapes and signposts pointing to options like 'Adapt' and 'New Regions.'

From The Daily Sceptic

By Tilak Doshi

It has become one of the settled rituals of the climate-activist press: almost any hardship afflicting any agricultural sector, anywhere in the world, is now reflexively laid at the door of “climate change”. No mention of ordinary weather variability, market economics, pests or poor planning. The latest instalment arrived via the Conversation, under a headline declaring that climate change is putting the squeeze on the world’s grape-growers, dressed up as fresh research. It was duly amplified across social media as further proof that the planet’s vineyards are dying on the vine. This should be duly mocked by those weary of seeing every inconvenience – from frost and floods to a merely disappointing harvest – blamed on “climate change”. The truth, as usual, lies in the data – and the data on grape and wine production tell a rather different story from the one being sold to a public primed to expect climate catastrophe in every news cycle.

A narrower study than the headline admits

Read past the headline and the underlying research turns out to be considerably narrower than the framing suggests. The paper behind the Conversation piece is a modelling exercise by Australian researchers projecting how warming and drying trends could, over coming decades, alter the suitability of Australia’s wine regions for viticulture. It is a study of possible future risk – among many future risks – in one country. It is not a documented account of a global industry currently in decline, though it comes across as such.

Even the article’s own examples cut against the doom framing: it notes that warming has allowed English growers to expand sparkling wine production in areas once thought unsuitable for anything but hedgerows, and that Tasmania stands to benefit as conditions there become more favourable. An industry that is simultaneously said to be collapsing in one hemisphere and blossoming in another is not evidence of crisis. It is evidence of what agriculture has always done in response to a changing climate: move, adapt and substitute varietals.

What the hard production data actually show

The relevant test of an existential ‘squeeze’ on grape-growers is not a projection but the actual harvest. On that score, the figures compiled annually by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) – the industry’s own statistical authority – are unambiguous. World fresh grape production has been on a broadly rising trend since the 1990s and stood at roughly 77.7 million tonnes in 2024, according to the OIV’s 2024 statistical brief – a level that has essentially held or grown even as the area under vine has shrunk, reflecting steady gains in yields and viticultural technique rather than any climate-driven contraction.

Production has shifted geographically, away from a shrinking European vineyard area and toward China, the Americas and other emerging producers, as documented in the OIV’s historical releases. The geographic reshuffling is driven substantially by economics and land-use policy and is not the same thing as a climate-induced collapse in supply. The Climate Realism project at the Watts Up With That? website reached a similar conclusion when it dug into UN Food and Agriculture Organization data in response to Canadian media claims of a climate-driven wine crisis: both grape and wine output have risen sharply worldwide since 1990, during the very period of modest global warming that is supposedly squeezing growers out of business.

The real pressure is demand, not climate

If the wine business is genuinely under strain – and in places it is – the industry’s own trade body points to a very different culprit than the one making headlines via the Conversation’s cited Left-leaning academic experts. The OIV reported that global wine consumption fell for a seventh straight year in 2025, down 2.7% to roughly 208 million hectolitres and some 14% below 2018 levels – the lowest volume in a quarter of a century. Nine of the world’s 10 largest markets saw demand fall, led by steep declines in China, France and the United States. Asked to explain the slide, the OIV’s Director General did not reach first for the catch-all “climate change”. He pointed to structural shifts in mature markets, changing generational habits, reduced alcohol consumption among younger drinkers, tariff disruption and squeezed household budgets after years of inflation. Production, meanwhile, actually rose slightly in 2025 after a weak prior vintage. In other words, to the extent growers and vintners are under genuine commercial pressure today, the evidence from the industry’s own statisticians points overwhelmingly to a demand-side story about shifting tastes and stretched wallets – not a supply-side story about vines withering in a hotter world.

This is not the first time the wine-apocalypse story has been told, and it will not be the last. Canada’s public broadcaster ran essentially the same segment twice within two months in 2023, and was debunked twice – once by pointing out that the varietals Canada is well suited to growing have expanded output even as the country remains poorly suited to others. American audiences, meanwhile, were treated to a CBS 60 Minutes segment built around France’s genuinely poor 2021 vintage – a year of frost, hail and summer humidity that French winemakers themselves attributed to unfavourable weather, not a climate change trend, and one in which other major producers simply made up the shortfall. A single bad season, cherry-picked and stripped of context, is a typical mainstream media headline: find the worst year on record for one region, attribute it to climate change and ignore the global aggregate that shows the opposite.

The European summer of 2026

Summer 2026 was hot in western Europe but it is not historically unique as the headlines would have us believe. Continent-wide, Copernicus ranked it only third among recent summers, behind 2024 and 2022, while “record” headlines often refer to a single station or month in a short modern network. Longer instrumental series still put 1976, 1947, 1911 and even 1826 among Europe’s great hot summers; France’s 1947 canicule – the French term for a sustained heatwave – put 40°C on the Paris record for 72 years.

But even here, the alarmist framing that treats every fire as a direct emission of carbon dioxide from SUV tailpipes and power plants obscures an inconvenient human element. French authorities reported that close to 500 people had been arrested on suspicion of starting wildfires across the country by the end of July, with roughly seven in 10 suspected of deliberate arson rather than accident. The vines around Bordeaux were threatened that summer rather less by an abstraction called “climate change” than by matches, cigarette ends and, in a meaningful share of cases, deliberate criminality.

Even on the heatwaves themselves, the single-cause story that dominates headlines is misleading. In a two-part analysis, the climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr. has argued that “climate change” is properly understood as an outcome – a detected shift in the statistics of weather – rather than a single cause, and that Europe’s accelerated warming reflects several interacting factors, prominently including the sharp post-1980 reduction in aerosol pollution over the continent, alongside the direct and indirect effects of greenhouse gases. Pielke has separately cautioned that even an aggressive near-term push to Net Zero would do little to alter European heat trends on any policy-relevant timescale, given the physics of the climate system and the other forces at work. None of this is a claim that nothing is happening; it is a caution against the lazy shorthand – repeated uncritically by outlets from the Leftist academics cited in the Conversation to the wire services – that collapses a set of causal factors into a single “climate change” narrative.

Agriculture has always adapted

Grape-growing has never been a fixed, immovable enterprise pinned to one patch of soil for all time; it has shifted with climate for as long as it has existed, from Roman-era vineyards in a warmer southern Britain during the Roman Warming Period to the retreat of continental viticulture during the Little Ice Age and its subsequent recovery. That English sparkling wine and Tasmanian pinot noir are now expanding is not a symptom of catastrophe but a textbook case of adaptation. It is the response that economists in the tradition of William Nordhaus, rather than the catastrophist school associated with Nicholas Stern, would predict from an industry facing a gradual, foreseeable shift in growing conditions over decades.

Growers substitute varietals, move up in altitude or latitude, adjust irrigation and canopy management, and in some cases relocate entirely. This is what farmers of every crop have done since agriculture began at the dawn of time. Treating each such adjustment as proof of an unfolding emergency, rather than evidence of a resilient and adaptive industry, inverts the actual lesson of the data. The Nordhaus approach to a gradually warming world (as it emerges out of the Little Ice Age) was never premised on warming being costless. Most industries, agriculture included, adjust incrementally and at manageable cost when they are left to respond to price signals and changing conditions over time, rather than being frog-marched toward a predetermined transition on the timetable of NGO activists and Al Gore-type alarmists.

Wine is, if anything, an unusually favourable case: it is a high-value, adaptable crop grown by sophisticated producers with every commercial incentive to track shifting conditions closely and to invest accordingly. This is, unsurprisingly, precisely what the industry’s own investment patterns – new plantings in southern England, Tasmania, higher-altitude Andean valleys and elsewhere – show it doing.

Read the harvest data, not the press release

This is a pattern this column has traced before in other domains – wildfires attributed reflexively to global warming while arson and land-management failures go unmentioned, insurance losses attributed to climate change when rising property values and denser coastal development are the primary causes, extreme-weather deaths cited in isolation from the sharp long-term decline in weather-related mortality that better forecasting, infrastructure and adaptation have delivered. The grape-growers story fits the template precisely. A narrow, speculative modelling study is packaged as proof of an ongoing global collapse, amplified by outlets with every institutional incentive to find the climate angle in each week’s news, and left largely unchallenged by a mainstream media in search of bleeding, leading stories.

Readers who want to know whether the world’s wine supply is being ‘squeezed’ by climate change would do better to consult the OIV’s harvest tables than the latest alarming headline. None of this is to deny that a warming world poses genuine, gradual challenges to which growers must respond, as they always have. Indeed, most growers in general would rejoice at a greening world brought about by an increase in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. The distinction between a real and manageable long-term adjustment and a fabricated emergency is often erased in modern climate journalism.

Grape-growers who have spent centuries chasing the right slope, the right soil and the right microclimate will go on doing so, altitude by altitude and varietal by varietal, largely indifferent to the press releases written in their name. The vines, as it happens, are doing rather well. I just had a very nice Shiraz vintage this evening. Cheers!

Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO₂ Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.

The El Nino is but a Band-Aid on the western drought

The drought in the West will persist until the La Niña base state changes.

And that won’t happen until the forcing causing the distorted warming changes.

And there is no reason to believe it will happen, even if nations decide to commit economic suicide via net zero.

Le Chatelier’s principle states that if a dynamic equilibrium is disturbed by changing conditions, the position of equilibrium shifts to counteract the change and reestablish equilibrium.

A single sunflower growing out of cracked, dry earth with mountains in the background under a cloudy sky.
A solitary sunflower stands defiantly amid a jagged, parched terrain, with rugged mountains fading into the horizon, symbolizing hope amid desolation.

From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi|

The drought in the West will persist until the La Niña base state changes. And that won’t happen until the forcing causing the distorted warming changes. And there is no reason to believe it will happen, even if nations decide to commit economic suicide via net zero.

But what is the La Niña Base State? It is a climate Le Chatelierian response to the warming. Remember what Le Chatelier’s principle says:

Le Chatelier’s principle states that if a dynamic equilibrium is disturbed by changing conditions, the position of equilibrium shifts to counteract the change and reestablish equilibrium.

This is obvious when we look at the Multivariate ENSO Index, which, since the great El Niño of 1997-98, has been more negative than positive.

Line graph displaying the Multivariate ENSO Index Version 2 using JRA3Q, spanning from 1980 to 2025, with red bars indicating positive values and blue bars indicating negative values, and a horizontal line at zero.

The climate debate has prostituted the physical meaning of this. People on my side of the AGW issue try to push the idea that a La Niña has a cooling impact. It does, but only in response to the sudden warming of El Niño (which, btw, shows you it’s water vapor, not CO2 that impacts temperature) and only to establish a new equilibrium, which can be clearly seen if one examines the relationship of El Niño to the temperature surges, the fall-off, and the new plateau that develops behind it.

Graph depicting UAH satellite-based temperature deviations from the 1991-2020 average for the global lower atmosphere, showing data points from 1979 to projected values for July 2026.

You can clearly see when the strong El Niños went off: the rapid rise, then the fall to a higher equilibrium. It’s a step-up function. These started to become really impactful after the geothermal input started. There was a very strong El Niño in 1982-83, and then 1986-87, and yet no equilibrium increase.

Graph depicting the relationship between ocean heat content anomaly and mid-ocean seismic activity from 1977 to 2022, showing a rising trend in both metrics over time.

But if we then look at the increase in SST after the input from geothermal, we get the answer to why the 1997-98 event did what the previous ones did not, and why each subsequent one has continued: There is more heat to put into the atmosphere. The fact that there were more El Niños before 1997-98 shows that the earth was not warming, as there was a warm response to the cooling, but overall, the planet did not warm. That can be plainly seen in the decadal temperatures from the 1950s to the decade ending in 1985 (the input started its rise after that).

Global surface air temperature anomalies from 1951 to 1960, with colors indicating variations from the average temperature 1991-2020, presented in a world map format.
World map displaying surface air temperature anomalies in Celsius from 1991 to 2020, created by NCEP/NCAR, showing variations from January to December 1976 to 1985.

The change there is much less than what has occurred since then.

World map showing surface air temperature anomalies from 2016 to 2025, with color gradients indicating warmer and cooler areas compared to the 1991-2020 average.

This is why the global temperature metric, though mathematical, has some value in helping to explain what we are seeing. The nature of the warming, more away from the tropical Pacific than around it, means warmer temperatures and more low pressure over Indonesia and the Indian Ocean, and higher pressures in the mid-latitudes in the northern and southern hemispheres.

World map showing surface pressure anomalies in millibars from January to December 2016 to 2025, based on NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data from 1991 to 2020.

This creates a stronger easterly flow in the mean in the equatorial Pacific and hence the La Niña base state overall. El Niños, when they occur, have a greater heat source to tap, so they can go off, but you will see this collapse quickly in the spring, and next year at this time there should be a strengthening La Niña. And the lack of hurricanes this season will reverse. We are already thinking a major impact year is on the way next year.

All this is to explain that the drought-quenching rains with this El Niño, in the West, are a Band-Aid on a wound that cannot heal in this state. And it’s feeding back. You see that same distortion leads to less cloud cover in areas with the most incoming solar radiation, which in turn leads to a reduction in the Earth’s albedo (along with less ice), and that is a major natural warming signal. The man-made climate advocates want you to believe it’s CO2. Any point they have is dwarfed by the large natural forcing as described above. So, until the natural causes change, the West is in big trouble. For a while, I have been on record since April saying this El Niño is going to bust up the drought across the South and Southwest, it’s a one-year event, and they will be right back in the overall trend toward drier within a few months of the El Niño ending.

Knowing this, people in the West have to adapt rather than shake their fists at the sky or blame this or that. But overall, they have been just as negligent as people who should have had all hands on deck for the grid (if anything, the Biden administration was doing all it could to sabotage that). But what is going on in the West will get a Band-Aid. It has already started, as the anticipated Pacific-tropical connection, be it direct or indirect, is occurring. But this El Niño, with a negative PDO and such high-water temps off the Mexican coast, is going to be able to dump heavy to excessive amounts of precipitation across the South into the spring. I said the drought headlines will be replaced by flood headlines, and it’s already starting.

But the bottom line: This is a Band-Aid on the overall situation in the West, and adaptation policies need to be developed with all haste.

The history tells us that:

Tree-ring reconstructions (the North American Drought Atlas and related Colorado River / Sierra Nevada streamflow reconstructions) show repeated “megadroughts” — persistent dry spells of roughly 20–40 years or more — especially between about 800 and 1600 CE. Notable examples include:

  • Two long dry intervals in California and the Sierra Nevada, roughly 862–1074 and 1122–1299, documented by trees that grew in lake beds and river channels that later refilled.
  • A particularly severe mid-12th-century drought (roughly 1130s–1170s), including the driest decade in some Colorado River reconstructions around 1146–1155.
  • Additional multi-decadal dry spells in the 13th century and a widespread late-16th-century megadrought (about 1559–1590s).

The difference, of course, is there weren’t about 85–90 million people, or roughly one-quarter of the U.S. population then.

You aren’t going to stop it. It’s already entering mega-drought status. And this El Niño may stop the bleeding, but again it’s a Band-Aid on a gashing wound. Adaptation is the answer, not draconian CO₂ policies that have no impact.

The 4.2 ka Mega-Drought That Brought Down the Harappan Civilization

The Harappan Civilization (also called the Indus Valley Civilization or Indus Civilization) was a Bronze Age urban culture that flourished in the northwestern regions of South Asia, primarily in the basins of the Indus and Ghaggar- Hakra rivers.

The 4.2 ka event (also called the 4.2-kiloyear event or 4.2 ka BP aridification event) was a major climatic episode of prolonged drought and aridification that began around 4,200 years before present (approximately 2200 BCE). It ranks among the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch and formally marks the boundary between the Northgrippian and Meghalayan stages of the Holocene.

A dramatic landscape featuring an ancient, weathered structure resembling a pyramid, set against a backdrop of a setting sun and clouds, with a dusty, cracked ground indicative of arid conditions.
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The Harappan Civilization (also called the Indus Valley Civilization or Indus Civilization) was a Bronze Age urban culture that flourished in the northwestern regions of South Asia, primarily in the basins of the Indus and Ghaggar- Hakra rivers (modern- day Pakistan and northwestern India).

It ranks as one of the world’s three earliest civilizations alongside Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, and it was the most geographically extensive of the three. The civilization is named “Harappan” after its type site, Harappa, the first major site identified by modern archaeology.

Chronology

  • Overall span: roughly 3300-1300 BCE.
  • Early Harappan phase: ~3300-2600 BCE (village and early settlement development).
  • Mature (urban) Harappan phase: ~2600-1900 BCE (peak of city life, standardization, and trade).
  • Late Harappan phase: ~1900-1300 BCE (decline and transformation).

The mature phase produced large planned cities and a high degree of cultural uniformity across a vast area.

Major Sites:

Harappa and Mohenjo- daro

These two cities were the first discovered and remain among the best- known and largest centers (other major urban sites include Rakhigarhi, Dholavira, and Ganweriwala).

Harappa (Punjab province, Pakistan, on the old course of the Ravi River):

  • Discovered and first systematically excavated in 1921 by Daya Ram Sahni.
  • Suffered significant damage in the 19th century when bricks were removed for railway ballast.
  • Featured a fortified citadel (west) and a larger lower town (east), large granaries, workers’ quarters (rows of small identical houses), and a cemetery (R37).
  • Estimated population in the range of ~23,500- 35,000.

Mohenjo- daro (“Mound of the Dead”; Sindh province, Pakistan, near the Indus River):

  • Identified in 1922 by R. D. Banerji and extensively excavated under John Marshall and others.
  • Best- preserved major Indus site and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  • Also divided into a raised western citadel and eastern lower town.
  • Famous structures include the Great Bath (a large, carefully waterproofed public or ritual pool), a large granary complex, an assembly hall, and an elaborate system of wells and covered drains.
  • Estimated population ~35,000- 41,000 or higher; the city was rebuilt multiple times on raised platforms to counter flooding.

Both cities show remarkably similar urban planning: streets laid out on a rough grid (often north- south and east- west), standardized baked bricks (typically in a 1:2:4 ratio), sophisticated drainage and sanitation systems connected to individual house bathrooms, and private wells. Houses were generally made of baked brick with flat roofs.

Key Characteristics

Urban planning and technology: High degree of standardization in bricks, weights and measures, and architecture across distant sites. Advanced water management (drains, soak pits, public baths, wells) stands out for its time.

Economy: Based on agriculture (wheat, barley, pulses, sesame, and some of the earliest evidence of cotton) supported by river floods and irrigation, supplemented by animal husbandry, craft production (beads, seals, pottery, copper/bronze metallurgy), and long- distance trade (including with Mesopotamia).

Material culture: Thousands of steatite seals (often with animal motifs such as the “unicorn” or bull and short inscriptions in the still- undeciphered Indus script), standardized cubical weights, jewelry, figurines (including the famous bronze “Dancing Girl” and the soapstone “Priest- King” from Mohenjo- daro), and toys.

Society and governance: Evidence of organized civic planning and possible administrative control (uniformity of weights, seals, and urban layouts), yet relatively few clear signs of extreme social hierarchy such as royal tombs or monumental palaces. The political structure remains debated.

Decline

Urban centers began to decline after ~1900 BCE. Populations dispersed, many large cities were largely abandoned or greatly reduced, and the culture transformed into smaller, more rural Late Harappan settlements, with some movement eastward.

Current research points strongly to climate and environmental factors as major contributors: a series of prolonged droughts (some lasting decades to over a century), weakening of the summer monsoon, reduced river flows, and shifts in river courses (including the drying of the Ghaggar- Hakra system).

These stresses would have undermined agriculture and the urban economy. Other contributing factors may have included disruptions in long- distance trade and internal social or economic changes. Older theories emphasizing large- scale invasion are generally no longer favored as the primary cause.

The Indus script remains undeciphered, limiting direct historical insight, so most knowledge comes from archaeology. Over a thousand sites have been identified, with dozens excavated, revealing a sophisticated, peaceful, and highly organized civilization that left a lasting imprint on the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent.

Harappan urban planning stands out as one of the most sophisticated and standardized systems of city design in the ancient world (Mature phase, c. 2600-1900 BCE). Unlike the more organic growth seen in contemporary Mesopotamian or Egyptian cities, Harappan settlements show clear evidence of deliberate, pre-planned layouts shared across sites hundreds of kilometres apart.

Ancient ruins of a large brick structure on a hillside under a blue sky.
Mohenjo-Daro, located in the Sindh province of Pakistan, is one of the most remarkable archaeological sites of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, dating back to around 2500 BCE. Credit: STDC.

Core Principles of Planning

1. Grid Layout (Gridiron Pattern)
Streets were oriented roughly along the cardinal directions (north- south and east- west) and intersected at right angles, dividing the city into regular rectangular blocks.

  • Main avenues at sites like Mohenjo- daro could reach 9-10 metres wide, wide enough for two- way cart traffic.
  • Narrower lanes branched off into residential areas.
  • House entrances typically opened onto side lanes rather than main streets, enhancing privacy and reducing dust/noise.

This systematic grid facilitated movement, ventilation, drainage flow, and efficient land use.

2. Two- Part Division: Citadel and Lower Town
Most major cities followed a consistent bipartite plan:

  • Citadel (Upper Town): A smaller, elevated area on the western side, built on massive mud- brick platforms (sometimes 6-12 m high). It housed monumental public structures and was often fortified.
    • At Mohenjo-daro: Great Bath, large granary complex, and possible assembly halls or “college.”
    • At Harappa: Large granaries with ventilation ducts and workers’ quarters.
  • Lower Town: The larger eastern residential and commercial zone where most people lived and worked. It contained houses, workshops, and markets arranged in the grid.

Variations existed (e.g., Dholavira had a three-tier system with an additional middle town; some smaller sites lacked a clear citadel).

3. Standardized Construction Materials
Baked (kiln- fired) bricks were used extensively, especially for drains, wells, bathrooms, and important walls. Bricks followed a remarkably consistent ratio of approximately 1:2:4 (thickness : width : length).

  • Typical house brick: ~7 × 14 × 28 cm.
  • This uniformity across vast distances (from Punjab to Gujarat) points to shared technical standards and coordinated production.

Mud bricks were also used, particularly for platforms and less critical walls. Structures were often multi-storeyed, with flat roofs.

4. Advanced Water Management and Sanitation
This is widely regarded as the most impressive feature of Harappan planning:

  • Almost every house had a private bathroom (with a sloping floor) and often its own well.
  • Vertical pipes or chutes in walls carried wastewater from upper floors or bathing platforms down to street level.
  • Covered street drains (built of carefully fitted baked bricks, sometimes sealed with gypsum or bitumen) ran alongside roads and connected to larger channels.
  • Manholes/inspection points and soak pits allowed regular cleaning and maintenance.
  • Public wells and, at some sites (especially Dholavira), sophisticated reservoirs and water-harvesting systems.

Mohenjo- daro alone had hundreds of wells. The emphasis on hygiene and wastewater removal was unmatched in the contemporary Bronze Age world.

5. Zoning and Functional Organization
Evidence suggests some separation of residential, craft/industrial, and public spaces. Workshops (bead-making, pottery, metallurgy) were often located toward the periphery. Granaries and storage facilities were concentrated near the citadel or river access for efficient food distribution.

Notable Site Variations

FeatureMohenjo-daroHarappaOther Notes
Street PlanHighly regular gridGrid, partially excavatedDholavira more geometric
CitadelMassive western platformWestern platformDholavira has multi-tiered plan
Key StructuresGreat Bath, large granaryMultiple granaries, workers’ quartersLothal: dockyard
DrainageExtensive and sophisticatedWell- developedAlmost universal across major sites

Significance

The consistency of these features across a vast area implies either a strong shared cultural tradition, some form of coordinating authority, or both. Planning prioritized practicality, public hygiene, flood protection (raised platforms), and efficient resource use rather than monumental royal or religious architecture.

This level of urban organization, especially the drainage systems, remained exceptional for millennia and continues to impress modern urban planners and archaeologists.

An aerial view of an ancient city with mud-brick buildings, bustling streets, and various market activities. People are seen socializing, working, and transporting goods. A central water feature is visible, surrounded by citizens engaging in daily life.
Ancient Civilizations: The Indus Valley Educational Resources K12 Learning, World, World, History Lesson Plans, Activities, Experiments, Homeschool Help

The 4.2 ka event (also called the 4.2-kiloyear event or 4.2 ka BP aridification event) was a major climatic episode of prolonged drought and aridification that began around 4,200 years before present (approximately 2200 BCE). It ranks among the most severe climatic events of the Holocene epoch and formally marks the boundary between the Northgrippian and Meghalayan stages of the Holocene.

It involved widespread drying across North Africa, the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, parts of the Indian subcontinent, and elsewhere. Proxy records (speleothems, lake sediments, marine cores) indicate weakened monsoon systems, reduced precipitation, and cooler or more variable conditions lasting roughly a century or more (with regional variations and sometimes multiple pulses).

Connection to the Harappan (Indus Valley) Civilization

The Mature (urban) phase of the Harappan Civilization peaked roughly 2600-1900 BCE. The 4.2 ka event falls near the transition toward decline and de- urbanization. Many researchers link the event’s climatic stresses to the transformation of the civilization.

Key evidence includes:

Marine sediment records from the Arabian Sea (e.g., oxygen isotope data from foraminifera near the Indus delta) show a prominent reduction in Indus River discharge around 4.2 ka BP, interpreted as decreased monsoon rainfall and runoff.

Speleothem (cave stalagmite) records, such as those from Mawmluh Cave (northeastern India) and Dharamjali Cave (Himalaya), document multi- decadal to centennial- scale dry periods between roughly 4.2 and 3.9 ka BP. Some high- resolution records reveal repeated droughts affecting both the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) and winter rainfall (westerly disturbances).

Paleohydrological and settlement data indicate progressive aridification of the Indus and Ghaggar- Hakra (Saraswati) systems. The latter was largely rain-fed and became less reliable, reducing the floods that supported inundation agriculture.

Consequences for Harappan society:

  • Major urban centers such as Mohenjo- daro and Harappa were largely abandoned or greatly reduced in size.
  • Populations shifted southeastward/eastward toward regions with more reliable rainfall (including parts of the Ganges-Yamuna interfluve).
  • The highly uniform urban culture gave way to more localized, rural Late Harappan settlements.
  • Long- distance trade networks weakened.

The decline was gradual rather than a sudden collapse. Urban life contracted over centuries, with evidence of adaptation (changes in crops, settlement patterns, and resource strategies) before full de- urbanization.

Some studies describe a “double drought” pattern: an earlier reduction in winter rainfall (linked more directly to the classic 4.2 ka signal, ~4.26- 3.97 ka) followed by a longer weakening of summer monsoon rains.

Broader Context and Caveats

The same event is widely associated with stresses on other Bronze Age societies, including the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia and the end of Egypt’s Old Kingdom.

For the Harappans, climate was a major contributing factor, especially reduced water availability for agriculture and urban systems, but not necessarily the sole cause.

Other elements (trade disruptions with Mesopotamia, internal social or economic shifts, and possible river-course changes) likely interacted with the climatic stresses.

Recent research emphasizes that the 4.2 ka interval involved repeated multi- decadal dry spells rather than one continuous megadrought lasting exactly 200 years.

Societies dependent on monsoon- driven rivers and flood agriculture were particularly vulnerable. Overall, the event is considered a key trigger or amplifier in the transition from the sophisticated urban Mature Harappan phase to the more dispersed Late Harappan cultures.

The Vatican’s Green Gospel

Under Pope Francis and now Leo the Catholic Church has drunk deeply of the climate Kool-Aid, says Professor Roger Watson. It’s about time it quit the pseudo-scientific scaremongering and got back to saving souls.

An illustrated depiction of a religious leader presenting the 'Green Gospel' in a church setting, surrounded by concerned clergy members. Visual elements include climate action plans, targets for carbon reduction, and references to environmental issues, emphasizing the connection between faith and environmental stewardship.

Under Pope Francis and now Leo the Catholic Church has drunk deeply of the climate Kool-Aid, says Professor Roger Watson. It’s about time it quit the pseudo-scientific scaremongering and got back to saving souls.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Dr Roger Watson

How the Roman Catholic Church moved from its great commission to save souls to its current obsession with saving the planet is not clear. But it is obvious that the hierarchy of the Church has drunk deeply of the climate change Kool-Aid and, and while it would be unfair to say that it has abandoned saving souls, its mission has certainly drifted considerably into an area which is not exactly within its area of expertise. Wherever it is getting its advice on climate change from, it is most definitely listening to the wrong people.

The problem, as some Catholics see it, is demonstrated amply in a column in the September issue of Middlesbrough Diocesan Catholic Voice – known locally as the Voice – which is distributed to and through parish churches in the Middlesbrough Catholic Diocese. It is always with trepidation that I take a copy from the pile at the back after Sunday Mass.

The Voice, while it contains useful diocesan information, dates of events and news from the parishes, almost always has at least one article which, for me, is an ‘occasion of sin’ as to read it conjures up thoughts which are far from Christian. My only justification being that this is engendered by reading content that is far from Christian. Inevitably, if we do not have a report on the oxymoronic concept of the Diocesan LGBT Masses it will be an article on the so-called climate emergency.

Blessed are the carbon conscious

The September issue of Middlesbrough Diocesan Catholic Voice contains an article by Sir John Battle, former Labour MP for Leeds West and a minister in the Blair government titled ‘Stop taking a climate change gamble’. A Roman Catholic and made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory by Pope Benedict XVI – who clearly didn’t get everything right – Sir John hinges his argument on the gambling industry and the obvious love of gambling among the British people.

The first quarter of the article, on the popularity of gambling and its possibility of easy returns for one’s money, is rather tenuously linked to the gamble that we are taking over climate change. This expectation of quick profit is blotting out people’s minds to the realities of what we can do to mitigate the damage of global warming.

The customary superlatives are used to support his argument. Thus “wildfires rage” across Europe and “devastating floods” hit Bangladesh. Never mind that the fires in Europe were almost certainly deliberately caused by arsonists and that there have been floods in Bangladesh for as long as anyone can remember. Add to that the news that, far from melting, the polar caps are increasing in size, the polar bears and penguins are thriving and coral reefs are growing. The facts must not stand in the way of a good argument. After all, there is a “scientific consensus” on the issue and “daily news reports of worldwide extreme climatic events”. So, it must be true.

Sins of emission

Sir John explains that the much bandied Net Zero mantra “does not mean producing zero emissions but rather taking action to reduce emissions as much as possible”. If so, then why call it ‘Net Zero’ and why does the UK have a target of Net Zero by 2050? According to the University of Oxford’s Net Zero Centre, Net Zero means “balancing the greenhouse gases put into the air with an equal amount taken back out”. That is a subtlety I have never heard any of the zero carbon fanatics explain on BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Sir John refers to the “merchants of doubt”, pointing the finger at Big Carbon (not Sir John’s description) who have “financial interests” in not reducing our use of hydrocarbon sources. This leads people to doubt anything untoward will happen to them because of climate change due to the gambling mentality referred to in the initial paragraphs of his article. These “powerful vested interests” – spoken like a true socialist Sir John – then try to shift the blame on to consumers and society. But the consumers in turn think ‘why bother?’ when places like China and America carry on emitting greenhouse gases like there is no tomorrow.

Having seemingly criticised Big Carbon and such vested interests in trying to offload their responsibilities for the planet onto the little people, Sir John then quotes arch climate catastrophist Gabriel Winslow-Yost, who reckons climate change to be a “crime” and that we are all “implicated”. Winslow-Yost, clearly a lover of dramatic prose, says, “car rides and plane trips, coffees and burgers, heating and cooling and clothing are paid for in blood, contributing every moment to the suffering and destruction global warming brings”. My goodness, but he sounds like he’d be a regular hoot on a night out, doesn’t he?

The catechism of climate change

As if to give his article some theological clout he quotes Pope Leo who “insists” that climate change is “a scientific reality and a moral responsibility”. I think you’ll find, Pope Leo, that you are wrong on both counts there. Laudato Si’, the late Pope Francis’s execrable encyclical letter, is quoted twice, including his ridiculous exhortation to “ecological conversion”. We Catholics had all hoped for better from Pope Leo, but he seems to have fallen for the climate change catastrophe agenda as much as anyone, referring to concepts such as “environmental justice” and how it is part of the Church’s mission to “promote human dignity, peace and care for creation”.

It is hard to know what lies behind all this nonsense being spouted by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and by senior Catholics who should know better. Are they – as I fear they might be – genuine believers in the climate change catastrophe? Perhaps they are trying to be ‘relevant’ and ‘relatable’ by addressing topical concerns in a vain attempt to fill the pews. If so, why would that work? If people want to hear scientific social justice based gobbledygook, there is always the Anglican Church, the BBC or the Guardian.

The Catholic Church rightly encourages Christians to be good stewards of creation, but has that stewardship begun to eclipse salvation? Reducing carbon emissions seems to be a greater priority than reducing sin. The Church’s unique mission is to proclaim the Gospel, administer the sacraments and prepare souls for eternity. If it chooses to become just another voice in the chorus of climate activism, it should not be surprised if people conclude that it has become more interested in saving the planet than in saving the souls of the people who inhabit it.

Professor Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including the Salisbury Review, the European Conservative and the New Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. His Substack can be found here.