History and the Limits of the Climate Consensus - The American Conservative

Acknowledging the science of global warming does not require accepting that it is immune to criticism. - Philip Jenkins

• Some periods in particular, especially the years around 1680 and 1740, stand out as uniquely stressful. Extreme cold led to crop failures and revolts, social crises and apocalyptic movements, high mortality and epidemics, but it also spawned religious revivals and experimentation. 

If you write history without taking account of such extreme conditions, you are missing a lot of the story...we must acknowledge that the climate has changed quite radically through the millennia, and that equally is beyond dispute...

• The issue today is identifying and assessing the human role in accelerating that process...

See for instance the recent Papal encyclical Laudato Si, with its much-quoted statement that

Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.

Well, not exactly. 

• “Climate change” is a fact and a reality, rather like the movement of tectonic plates, or indeed like evolution...