Category: Global warming
Global warming powered an empire that dwarfed the Vikings
Popular culture loves its image of Norsemen shivering in fur pelts, raiding British monasteries, and braving the icy North Atlantic. Yet while Vikings struggled to survive on the thawing margins of Greenland, a far richer and more formidable maritime power flourished thousands of miles away in the tropical warmth of southern India.
That power was the Chola Empire.
A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.
At its height between 985 and 1044 A.D., the Cholas projected force on a scale that made Viking longships look like backyard skirmishers. Their ships were technological marvels — floating fortresses capable of transporting cavalry, infantry, and weeks of provisions across vast distances.
The Cholas mounted a major naval expedition against the Srivijaya Empire, a dominant maritime power based in what is now Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula. This was an amphibious assault conducted thousands of miles from home ports, a logistical achievement comparable to modern naval operations. The Cholas toppled rulers, secured the vital Malacca Strait, and guaranteed safe passage for merchant guilds trading from the Middle East to China.
On land, they maintained a standing army that included thousands of war elephants.
Their wealth also found expression in stone. The Great Living Chola Temples — now recognized as UNESCO World Heritage sites — stretch across southern India and neighboring islands. Built without modern machinery, these monumental structures relied on elephants to haul massive stones from distances of up to 60 miles.
Chola society possessed abundant labor, food, and wealth. The question is why.
What enabled a civilization to generate the immense caloric and economic surplus required to build stone monuments and launch armadas across the Indian Ocean? A large part of the answer lies in climate — specifically, global warming.
The rise of the Chola Empire coincided with the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted roughly from 900 to 1300 A.D. This relationship between warmth and human flourishing is inconvenient for the modern climate-industrial narrative, which treats rising temperatures as an unqualified catastrophe.
Warmth strengthens tropical monsoons, the lifeblood of agrarian economies like the Cholas’. Recent scientific research confirms that fluctuations in the Indian summer monsoon shaped agricultural output and the rise and fall of major dynasties. Indian civilization flourished during the Roman Warm Period, fractured during the Dark Ages Cold Period, and reached new heights under the Cholas during the Medieval Warm Period.
The Chola Empire was sustained by the very kind of warming modern activists describe as an “existential threat.”
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ajijchan via iStock/Getty Images
In the Cauvery Delta — the empire’s heartland — this favorable climate transformed the region into the “Rice Bowl of the South.” Three harvests a year became common. Granaries overflowed. Revenues surged.
That surplus freed labor from subsistence farming and redirected it toward imperial ambition. Chola trade guilds thrived, exporting textiles, spices, and grain to the Chinese Song Dynasty — another civilization that prospered during this warm epoch.
Today, we find ourselves in another warming phase, emerging from the depths of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-19th century. Global crop yields have repeatedly reached record highs. India has re-emerged as a major grain exporter. The planet is experiencing a measurable “greening” effect as higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels fertilize plants and warmer temperatures expand cultivable land.
Yet, we are told to feel guilty.
Coal, oil, and natural gas — fuels that protect humanity from the elements and power modern economies — are vilified. Environmental extremists implicitly argue for a colder world, despite the historical record showing that colder periods brought famine, disease, and social collapse.
The Chola Empire stands as a reminder of what human ingenuity can achieve when the climate cooperates. Its ships sailed on prosperity sustained by warmth. Its temples rose from a society rich in calories and confidence. Its civilization commanded respect across continents.
We face a similar opportunity today. A modern golden age remains within reach — provided we do not cripple ourselves with fear of the very conditions that have so often underwritten human prosperity.
Give thanks for the sun, the CO2, and the farmers — not the climate scolds
What if, this Thanksgiving, we offered a small tribute to global warming and the relative abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? An apparently scandalous idea. Global elites and their media partners insist that these forces promise catastrophe. Yet sound thinking demands the opposite conclusion.
Fifty years ago, the story was reversed. In the 1970s, major outlets warned of a coming ice age. Some scientists called for immediate action to stop the planet from plunging into widespread glaciation.
Abundance is not an accident. It reflects a climate far friendlier than the one our ancestors endured — and a modern economy powered by fuels that make global agriculture possible.
The fear of cold had at least a historical basis. Unlike today’s speculative climate models, past civilizations suffered through genuine cold-driven crises.
The Little Ice Age, from roughly 1300 to 1850, brought centuries of persistent chill. Historical accounts describe crops withering, growing seasons collapsing, and communities starving as food systems failed. The Thames froze solid. Frost fairs became a tradition because the cold was relentless. Entire regions fell into poverty and instability.
People living through those centuries would have welcomed the warmth we enjoy today.
Modern Americans rarely think about that history as they prepare Thanksgiving meals sourced from every climate zone on Earth. Our abundance depends on a long supply chain anchored in one fundamental reality: Plants grow best in warmth, not cold.
Warm periods fed civilizations
Warm eras have repeatedly aligned with human flourishing. During the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, farmers cultivated crops in regions that are too cold for them now. Warmer temperatures didn’t bring disaster; they supported prosperity.
The present is no exception. Earth has quietly greened since the late 20th century. Satellite data shows expanding vegetation, especially in arid regions. The drivers are straightforward: increased carbon dioxide and a slightly warmer global climate.
CO2 is not a toxin. It’s plant food — an essential input for photosynthesis. Higher concentrations allow crops to use water more efficiently and grow more robustly. This is one of the greatest environmental improvements of the past century, though you would never know it from the coverage.
RELATED: ‘Green Antoinettes’ live large, preach small
Julia Klueva via iStock/Getty Images
The other indispensable ingredient is modern fertilizer, made largely from natural gas. High-yield crops require nitrogen, and synthetic fertilizers supply it.
Energy-dense fuels — coal, oil, natural gas — power nearly every part of modern agriculture. Irrigation pumps, fertilizer plants, harvesters, delivery trucks, and refrigeration systems depend on them. Remove these fuels, and global food systems collapse. The return of famine would be swift.
A simple truth
Climate alarmists warn that warming will devastate global food security. Actual yields say otherwise. For 40 years, production of wheat, corn, rice, and other staples has climbed dramatically. Most food shortages today result from war or corrupt governance, not climate.
Earth’s climate has always shifted. Mega-droughts, severe floods, heat waves, and cold snaps have occurred throughout history. Treating every anomaly as evidence of imminent collapse ignores the long record of natural variability.
So as Americans gather around Thanksgiving tables, remember a simple truth: The feast depends on warmth, carbon dioxide, and the affordable energy that moves food from field to plate.
This abundance is not an accident. It reflects a climate far friendlier than the one our ancestors endured — and a modern economy powered by fuels that make global agriculture possible.
‘Ponder’ Your Turkey’s Carbon Footprint, Climate Group Tells Axios on Thanksgiving Eve
A climate group spent Thanksgiving Eve warning Axios about turkey’s “carbon footprint,” leading the publication to report that you should “ponder” how the “beloved bird” produces “the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming.”
The post ‘Ponder’ Your Turkey’s Carbon Footprint, Climate Group Tells Axios on Thanksgiving Eve appeared first on .
Trump declares victory on ‘climate change hoax’ after Bill Gates issues concession memo
President Donald Trump said opponents of the “climate change hoax” had won the struggle after Bill Gates said supporters should pivot their efforts.
Gates has been a longtime proponent of policies to fight climate change, but on Monday he took a far more moderate tone that accepted the survivability of slightly higher global temperatures.
‘Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue.’
“I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax,” the president wrote on his Truth Social account.
“Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue,” he added. “It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”
Gates issued the announcement in a memo titled, “Three tough truths about climate.”
He described the previous view on climate change as the following: “In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us — just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.”
He added: “Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong.”
Gates opined that governments may have to “invest in cooling centers and better early warning systems for extreme heat and weather events,” and added that people “will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
RELATED: Trump shuts down UN-backed effort to impose global climate change tax, calling it a ‘scam’
Gates went on to say that the world’s efforts are better spent trying to reduce poverty and disease.
“The doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world,” he added.
The billionaire concluded, “The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.”
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Glenn Beck warns: Amazon layoffs & Bill Gates’ climate flip signal the energy war splitting America in two
In September, Amazon raised warehouse worker pay to over $30/hour, framing the wage hike as an effort to enhance employees’ experience. However, earlier this week, the company contradicted its human-centric initiative when it suddenly slashed 14,000 corporate jobs in accordance with its plans to invest heavily in artificial intelligence.
Longtime climate change fearmonger Bill Gates also published a memo on his Gates Notes blog, where he wrote: “Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries – it will not lead to humanity’s demise” — a stunning contradiction to his yearslong alarmist rhetoric.
While Amazon and Gates’ shifting narratives may appear unrelated, Glenn Beck says they both hint of a dark future on the horizon.
And it all centers around power — but not the political or economic kind.
“I mean energy,” says Glenn. “The world is starving for energy.”
But energy means different things to different people. Amazon’s push for AI-driven commerce represents one side of the playing field — the side that craves unrestricted energy abundance via fossil fuels and nuclear power. Gates’ long history of climate alarmism, though recently softened, embodies the other side’s push for “green” energy only — restrictive renewables and emission caps that will surely starve innovation.
It all boils down to “global fascism on one side” and “Marxist degrowth” on the other, says Glenn, noting both frameworks are deeply flawed.
However, both sides will have good and bad parts. The Marxist degrowth crowd will be pro-human workers and real food but anti-capitalism and fossil fuels. The growth-centric fascist crowd will promote capitalism and oil drilling but also Big Ag and Big Pharma, unrestricted artificial intelligence, and other dystopian technologies, like digital IDs.
But where does that leave someone like Glenn, who’s pro-human workers, ethical AI, oil drilling, real food, and capitalism but anti-climate change, Marxism, and globalist initiatives, like digital IDs, 15-minute cities, and central bank digital currencies?
He warns we’re headed into a time where we’re going to be asked to choose between these two options.
“This is the split that is coming, and I believe the Marxist global warming side is going to be extraordinarily appealing to a lot of people,” says Glenn, warning that it’s “a utopia that can never survive.”
The other camp, however, is equally as flawed. So what do we do?
We choose the “third way,” says Glenn.
“It’s the U.S. Constitution.”
To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the clip above.
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