When it comes to global warming, I put more faith in observed ice behavior than actual or proxy temperature records. The records don’t go back far enough, proxies are hard to calibrate, and it’s just too easy to lie about the data.

As an empirical observation, the Milankovitch orbital cycles model matches glaciations very well (but not perfectly) through the last 3 million to 4 million years of geologic record. And did you notice that I did not utter a word about CO2?

Milankovitch says big glaciers should already be forming in eastern Canada, but they’re not. The Arctic ice cap has instead been shrinking for at least the past 50 years.

Something appears to be different about this cycle. And, depending upon what you assume could now melt, the sea level rise could be anywhere from 1 to 100 meters. There are roughly half a billion people living within 1 meter of current sea level — and nearly all of us live within 100 meters of sea level.

Billions could soon be on the move, and we demonstrably cannot handle the temporary evacuation of one flooded city of less than a million. I see a total disaster looming here. We all should.

Only now does CO2 get into it. Lab experiments with bell jars and bottled gases easily confirm the “greenhouse” effect.

If it increases in the atmosphere, there could well be warming, simply because it happens in the lab. Warming is therefore likely if enough gets added.

The “Keeling curve” of real, measured data shows CO2 went from 280 ppm in 1958 to about 387 ppm today, a very large increase in only about half a century. Alarmingly, that trend is accelerating.

Given the potential disaster, it makes sense to buy time by reducing those activities we know make the problem worse — greenhouse gas emissions. This may or may not actually have the desired effect, but it surely seems a prudent thing to try.

We must buy that time to figure out how to deal with the migration of billions. We clearly do not now know how to handle it.

The global warming “debate” as currently framed is entirely foolish and pointless. It should be focused primarily on how to cope with the coming migrations, and secondarily on how to buy the needed time.  

Unfortunately, time looks short. Greenland is beginning to deglaciate (at worst a 6-meter rise, perhaps this century), and mountain glaciers are almost certainly disappearing within a decade or so (a meter rise).

 Condemning billions to starvation and death as civilization crashes for the sake of profit or political advantage now is a crime against all of humanity that makes the World War II holocaust pale in comparison.

Formerly an aerospace industry engineer, Gary W. Johnson is a professor of mathematics at Texas State Technical College and an adjunct professor of engineering at McLennan Community College.