The whole basis for the fashionable eco-charade is the self loathing of some humans. Take, for example, this marvellous discovery by the very readable Corrugated Soundbite of a group dedicated to removing the cancerous growth of humanity from the face of the Earth…one by one*.

Mankind, they firmly believe, is responsible for every harmful thing that has ever happened. For example, cavemen started global warming by hunting mammoths:

Mammoths used to roam modern-day Russia and North America, but are now extinct — and there’s evidence that around 15,000 years ago, early hunters had a hand in wiping them out. A new study, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), argues that this die-off had the side effect of heating up the planet.

So go on, how does this work?

First, mammoth populations began to drop – both because of natural climate change as the planet emerged from the last ice age, and because of human hunting. Normally, mammoths would have grazed down any birch that grew, so the area stayed a grassland. But if the mammoths vanished, the birch could spread. …

The trees would change the color of the landscape, making it much darker so it would absorb more of the Sun’s heat, in turn heating up the air. This process would have added to natural climate change, making it harder for mammoths to cope, and helping the birch spread further.

Notice that subtle aside about natural climate change? That flew under the radar, didn’t it?

However our eco-insensitive ancestors didn’t just start global warming by hunting mammoth, they also started global cooling by….hunting mammoth.

Extinction of mammoths, camels, giant sloths and other large mammals in the New World may have cooled the global climate about 11,500 years ago, suggest paleobiologists.

The culprit? Less of the greenhouse gas, methane, emitted by the massive herbivores.

So what it basically boils down to is…..we did it…..whatever ‘it’ is:

“About 13,400 years ago, the Americas were heavily populated with large-bodied herbivores,” says the study in the current Nature Geosciences study led by biologist Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. “However, by 11,500 years ago and within 1,000 years of the arrival of humans in the New World, 80% of these large-bodied mammals were extinct.” …

“We are not the first to suggest that human-mediated activities influenced the planet prior to the industrial age… Although still controversial, the megafaunal extinction is the earliest catastrophic event attributed to human activities,” conclude the Nature Geosciences study authors.

So there we go. Cut a long story short; it’s windmills and power cuts for us all, and blame cavemen.

*This is from memory. Linky when I find it. Linky added. Cheers to Corrugated Soundbite by email.