I didn’t mean that Greenland was farmland just a few centuries ago. I’m saying that Burke talks about times in the Earth’s history where the climate was quite different than our climate right now, and civilizations lived and even thrived in these different environments. So, I can’t get into who is the best scientist or which scientific findings are accurate—I’m just not qualified to analyze it. But Burke is a pretty trustworthy historian. I’m asking, how is this situation different than the past?

For instance, there was another historical debate about the Sphinx—a geologist was showing patterns of both wind erosion and water erosion. The geologist concluded that this meant the Sphinx was quite a bit older than archaeologists thought, going back to a time when Egypt was like a forest. Well, the archaeologists wouldn’t have any of this, basically dismissing on principle the patterns of water erosion.

Now, despite my questions, I wholeheartedly support a technological change in the way that our present world deals with fuel and energy.