I’ve been writing quite often about climate. The Biden Administration seems to believe in a climate crisis, and that is the reason behind much of their actions. The XL Pipeline executive action which destroyed something like 11,000 jobs with the stroke of a pen — for no reason whatsoever, was because President Joe Biden clearly believes that there is an upcoming climate catastrophe. (as defined by AOC’s Green New Deal) and seems to believe that his presidency will be defined by saving us all from climate doom. Climate doom is supposedly caused by carbon dioxide, CO2 increasing too much in the atmosphere. Some scientists got very concerned about carbon dioxide, emitted by the exhausts of modern motor vehicles (See Los Angeles smog) and cow farts. Clearly, we have to get rid of fossil fuels and cows.
Our records of the characteristics of the climate don’t go back very far. We only started tracking the climate in the late 1800s, I think. Before that we have to rely on sources like a minister’s diary or ship captain’s logs, or paintings of the past like the one above, or the written comments of someone who was interested in the weather for their own personal vegetable garden. The big deals, like floods, tornadoes, hurricanes were apt to be written down, but remember that newspapers, photography, accurate measurements of some sort are all quite recent in terms of long-term information.
We know something about the weather when the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, because they were new people in a strange land and learning about the local weather was important to them. We know what Greenlanders and Australians found when they first arrived in their countries, but the idea of needing records of the climate of the earth had not yet occurred. You get enough hurricanes and tornadoes and massive floods and interest in climate deepens a bit. A lot of exploration, and the idea that things were quite different in different parts of the world grew as we learned. Keeping records became important to ships captains, and the knowledge that there were north and south poles, that different parts of the world had very different climates.That’s how interest grows and knowledge grows.
And so we have developed stations where the universe is scanned and temperatures are measured, and the more we learn, the more interest and the more investigation. Why were there hurricanes in some places and were they related to tornadoes, and why was there ice at the poles. The invention of the computer gave scientists the tools for more investigation. Ocean depths, ocean currents, stations to measure and record the temperatures, satellites to measure worldwide temperatures. Are the Himalayas melting or is the snow growing, what do volcanoes do to the climate, and what causes earthquakes and tornadoes.
As interest in climate increased, so did government grants, university chairs, department reputations, and what became elaborate computer programs. At some point, eager climate scientists entered more and more data, often substituting guesswork for the facts that were missing. Not sure just how the idea that the earth was going to die in just 12 years surfaced, but Christiana Figueres who was General Secretary to the IPCC, remarked at a press conference sometime in 2015, that the “climate crisis” was our best chance of getting rid of capitalism. That explains a lot.
RECENT EARTH CLIMATE HISTORY
600 – 200 B.C.: An Unnamed Cold Period
200 BC to about AD 600: The Roman Warming
600 to 900: The Dark Ages Cold Period
900 to 1300: Medieval Warming
1300 to 1850: The Little Ice Age (two stages)
One whole degree? Run for the hills! Actually, there are records of periodic times of panic, for one reason or another. People sitting out on a hill all night waiting to see if the sun came up again. Visit Climate Depot, where you can purchase very cheaply a movie explaining the climate. Anthony Watts, at WattsUpWithThat is a former weatherman.and Dr. Roy Spencer is a climate scientist who flies the satellites that measure temperatures across the world for NASA. Each of these sites referrers you to many other climate scientists. Visit them daily.
Might help if those who are making major governmental decisions actually did their homework, or had someone knowledgeable on their staff.
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American Elephants 