Liberals, as a group, display a genetic inaptitude toward history. “Liberal historian,” then, becomes oxymoronic.
One example of the phenomenon comes from the cult of Global Warming.
The brilliant Anthony Watts has uncovered some old newspapers from 1922 and 1933 that prove my point very well. From the Washington Post of November 2, 1922, we learn that the death of the Arctic ice cap was nigh:
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
More dramatic than copied text, though, is an image of the original article, at least for those like me who treasure old newspaper clippings. [Click Me to see original article]
Bear in mind that the tools available in 1922 to measure extent of ice coverage were less comprehensive than today’s satellite images. Still, this article is telling. Al Gore, undoubtedly, will declare Captain Martin Ingebrigtsen a conspirator in the Big Oil plot to wipe out life on planet earth. Ingebrigtsen was a Norwegian sea captain who sailed the Arctic for 54 years. The article recounts his observations of changes to water temperatures, ice extent, and biology of the region due to climate change from 1918 to 1922.
In another article from 1933, we learn that the situation remedied none over the intervening decade. As Watts points out, in 1934, we had the hottest year in modern history . . .
the dust bowl and great depression occurred, followed by World War II. The climate changes again, a return to a colder phase lasting all the way until about 1978 when the “new ice age” was being discussed. Then the great PDO shift occurred and warming has been the norm since then.
There wasn’t any push then to accept blame for the change or to take action to change the climate. Many people look to the graph below though and see something other than natural variations.
The difference today is that during this warming phase, much like what led up to 1934, had a significant El Nino year of 1998, and it set off alarm bells. Because unlike in the 30’s, when this paper was written, somebody was ready to step in with a cause that they believed could be modified by action- man made CO2.
So, before you sentence your infants to a lifetime of mental retardation through the careless use of CFLs, learn history. Man-made carbon dioxide omissions, if in any way responsible for recent increases in mean temperature, are infinitesimal in their effect. Blame nature, and nature’s God, not man.
If you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe one of the planet’s leading climate scientists, Jennifer Marohasy. There, now, don’t you feel silly for buying carbon offsets?
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