The United Nations Development Program put out a bizarre video Wednesday of “Frankie” the computer-generated talking dinosaur. Frankie warns us not to choose “extinction” by ignoring the so-called Climate Crisis. Apparently, no one thought that having an extinct dinosaur warning us about possible extinction from climate change actually belies the entire “climate change caused by fossil fuel” nonsense.
Dinosaurs were prehistoric reptiles who, according to most scientists, through a warming trend in the earth’s climate, began to roam the planet during the Mesozoic Era some 230 million years ago on the single large land mass that existed on earth. This warming trend was not caused by fossil fuels, since no human existed to burn them at that time. Dinosaurs came in many shapes and sizes. Some walked on two legs, some on four, and some flew. Some could move swiftly while others were lumbering and slow. Most were herbivores, living on plants, but carnivores also existed among them, feasting on other dinosaurs. Suddenly, around 65 – 66 million years ago, dinosaurs and many other creatures except mammals, vanished. Scientists believe this because no bones have been found that date back beyond that approximate time. What they don’t know for sure, is what killed them.
There are three theories:
One is that it was the changes caused by the breakup of the continental plates. Around the same time period, the continental plates on the earth’s surface began to shift, gradually separating the land mass into what we have today. As they shifted, rubbed against or even over each other, they caused violent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The most violent occurred in the Deccan region of what we know as India. Ash, volcanic rock, and poisonous gases would have been spewed repeatedly into the atmosphere over thousands of years. All life near the volcanos would have been killed by the poisonous gases or by the volcanic rocks that were hurled out of the volcanos. The volcanic eruptions were often accompanied by earthquakes which may also have swallowed up dinosaurs in giant fissures in the earth’s surface. Historically, a lot of volcanic activity is eventually followed by a cooling period, caused in part by the ash from volcanos cutting off much of the normal sunlight. This changing environment caused by the breakup of the continental plates and the resultant violent earthquakes and volcanos may have hastened the extinction of dinosaurs.
Another theory, the Alvarez theory, is that a large meteor hit the earth, forming Chicxulub crater which spans nearly 100 miles from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and into the Gulf of Mexico. The crater is 12 miles deep. The mighty meteorite landed with more power than a nuclear bomb and shattered, starting fires and sending dust and more ash into the atmosphere. The soil in at least 50 locations around the world contain iridium, a mineral found commonly in meteorites, but rarely in rocks on the earth, indicating that debris from the meteorite spread through the atmosphere and was sprinkled across the globe. The ash and dust probably blocked the sun, causing a drop in temperature during a “nuclear winter.” The lack of sunlight would have killed the plants, and without food and unable to stand the much cooler temperature, the herbivore dinosaurs would have died out. Eventually, the carnivores would also have perished, both from lack of food and from cold. Only mammals were able to adapt to the cooler climate and survive.
However, the most likely theory, many scientists believe, is that it was a combination of the two events. The volcanic eruptions in the Deccan region especially began about 250,000 years before the Chicxulub meteorite hit the earth and continued for about 500,000 years afterwards. Did the volcanos and the meteorite between them change the climate so drastically that dinosaurs could no longer exist? No doubt. We know that during the Cretaceous period, the earth’s temperature rose around 10 degrees followed by a cooling period, common to the aftermath of a lot of volcanic action. The climate that followed, as the earth became cooler, drier, and less sunny, no longer sustained the food the dinosaurs needed. Certainly, by the end of the Cretaceous period they were extinct.
All of this is interesting, you say, but what does it have to do with Frankie the talking dinosaur and his warning to stop burning fossil fuels lest we, too, become extinct? Only this. The very fact that dinosaurs once roamed the planet, and roam it no longer because of changes in the climate is significant. The changes in the climate were not caused by the burning of fossil fuels: gas, oil, or coal. Instead it was caused, as climate changes have been caused repeatedly throughout the history of the world, by natural forces rather than man-made ones. Adam and Eve had not yet been created by God, so no human existed to cause the climate change that caused the extinction of dinosaurs. It was all nature.
So, using Frankie the talking dinosaur to lecture us about fossil fuels to avoid becoming extinct is rather foolish. Frankie’s live ancestors had no control over the changes in the earth that brought about their extinction. And to be entirely truthful, we have very little control over the changes in our climate today. Certainly, our carbon emissions contribute somewhat to the warming trend, but not enough that ceasing the use of fossil fuels would stop it. In addition, China and Russia, along with many smaller countries, continue to build coal burning plants that produce far more CO2 than do any in the United States.
Historically there was a Roman warm period followed by the cold temperatures of the Dark Ages. Then the Medieval Warming Period arrived, allowing the growth of the population as food could be grown much farther north than before. But even with the increased population in Europe, for example, where everyone burned wood to heat their food and their homes, there arrived, instead of a continued warming trend, the Little Ice Age. (PollutionWatch.com points out that burning wood gives off more carbon dioxide than burning oil or natural gas.)
Climate alarmists contend that these changes in the climate were caused by other things — lack of volcanic activity, La Nina, sun spots — and not by the burning of fossil fuels. Whereas, they claim, our current warming trend is due entirely to our use of fossil fuels and will kill us all in less than 10 years. Sadly for them, while the media and many other people buy this totally, thousands of scientists around the world do not. Study after study, looking at the historical changes in the climate, have indeed found that the same things which caused changes then are causing changes now. And fossil fuel is not the major driver of the warming trend.
If you have any doubts, if you are old enough, you should remember that in the 1970s Newsweek, Time, and others were repeating the warnings of the climate alarmists then that we were entering a new ice age. Temperatures in Illinois reached below -20 degrees in the winter, often for days on end. Snow was heavy, and we experienced a blizzard in Paris. But the ice age never came and the temperatures began to slowly warm.
Then Al Gore made millions off his prediction of a Global Warming catastrophe that would cause the north and south pole ice caps to melt, flooding seacoast cities around the world and killing off many species such as the Polar Bear. But the ice caps stubbornly refused to melt away, melting a bit in some places each summer but growing in other places at the same time. The seas did not substantially rise, cities were not flooded, and the Polar Bear population has increased.
Suddenly “Global Warming” was changed to “Climate Change.” That way, whether it gets hotter or cooler, whether we have drought or floods, it is all the fault of “Climate Change” which is all the fault of our burning fossil fuels. Naughty, naughty!
They were wrong in the 1970s. Al Gore was wrong in 2006. And the climate alarmists are still wrong today. Climate changes and has always changed throughout the history of the earth, but man’s effect on it, even today, is minimal. Buying an electric car will do nothing to save the earth. In fact, the minerals needed to produce the battery for that car are not renewable, so that car is really not using renewable energy.
And Frankie the talking dinosaur is as helpful as many of the United Nations’ wonderful ideas!