‘Weird Weather’ and Our Abysmal Ignorance of Earth’s Climate History

When someone tells me, “Boy, the weather sure has been weird in recent years,” I am pretty confident of two things: one, they have bought into the climate change hoax, and two, they know absolutely nothing about history.

Upon hearing the “weather is weird lately” comment, I immediately ask two questions: “Compared to what?” and “How do you know what the weather was like 200 years ago?” [emphasis, links added]

To the first question, they might mumble something like, “Well, it’s weirder than it was a few years ago” and to the second question, they have no answer. Because they don’t know.

Except in general, I don’t, either.

So, the weather is weirder than it was five years ago, but maybe not as weird as it was 205 years ago. Brilliant. Let’s destroy the world’s economy on that.

Lots of tornados in America so far this spring? Weird weather! Climate change! Global warming! Snow in the northern plains in late April? Uhh…has to be climate change. Somehow.

“It’s been a long winter,” I heard the nice lady on The Weather Channel say a few days ago. She probably will never be heard from again. You people in Montana have fun sweeping that “global warming” off your sidewalks.

As a historian, I have frequently, in various writings, bemoaned the abysmal ignorance of history evident among most Americans today.

To use history effectively, we must broaden our view beyond what we had for dinner last night and especially put events into their historical circumstances.

The last point is critical and what most people almost never do, simply because they don’t know enough history to accomplish it. This is true with the “climate change” discussion.

One conundrum is that thinking is an exercise that requires a little bit of training and labor, more than most folks want to accede to. People don’t think, and they often don’t think because they have little knowledge to think about.

You must “know” something before you can “think” rationally about it, and Americans know virtually nothing about history. This is obviously true regarding climate history.

And Al Gore has made millions off that ignorance while Joe Biden has destroyed American energy independence via the same method.

So, back to the southern tornadoes for a moment. Yes, terrible. Can anybody tell me the weather in Mississippi on March 20, 1701? How about in central Utah on June 13, 1666?

Mr. “Weird Weather Genius,” please enlighten me about the weather in western Arizona on October 3, 1312. Florida panhandle on April 15, 1512. Manhattan Island from February 5, 772 B.C. to March 25, 756 B.C.

Don’t know? Then how do you know our current weather is “weird”? How many tornadoes did Oklahoma have in 1412? 1639? 1845? You have no clue, have you?

All you know is the “weather is weird ” and “global warming/climate change is true” because CNN and Greta Thunberg tell you so.

“But the weather records show warming…” Yes, that is true—over the last few decades. How far do accurate instrument-measured weather records go back? Maybe 140 years, tops.

So how do we know about specific weather events, on specific days or even months, before those records started being kept? We don’t.

Climate scientists can tell us weather trends over decades and centuries, but they cannot tell you how many tornadoes Mississippi had in any month, for thousands of years, prior to recent record-keeping.

It is folly to say our weather is “weird” because we don’t know what “normal” was like in the past. It may have been even weirder.

Thirty years is nothing historically, and the planet shouldn’t be revolutionized based on information over such a small sample period.

On top of that, satellite data (the most accurate current weather instrumentation) demonstrates that there has been no true “global warming” since 2013 (check Marc Morano’s “Climate Depot” website for more information about this).

There is a reason the switch was made from “global warming” to “climate change”—there ain’t been no warming recently. Climate scientists also know, through various methods, that the Earth was warmer in the year 100 A.D. than in 2000 A.D.

The 2000-year trend, except for the “Medieval Warming Period”, has been towards colder weather. Since about 1900, there has been gradual, but inconsistent, warming.

We can see the developments of weather, but no specific places or dates (Mississippi, April 3, 1102). Thus, there is absolutely no way of knowing if, historically, this spring’s tornados are “weird” or “normal.” It may have been worse 1,000 years ago.

Climate scientists also speak of the “Medieval Warming Period” (appx. 1000-1300 A.D.), followed by nearly 500 years of a “Little Ice Age.” The Earth only began to recover from that last century, though predictions of another “ice age” were widespread in the 1950s to ’70s.

Now the trend is back to greater warmth. Except for the long winter this year. But, of course, the hotter temperatures, especially over the past 30 years, are the evidence “global warmists” use for their theory. And it is man’s fault.

But how did humans cause temperatures to rise 2,000 years ago in the Roman period? What industries did medieval men invent that created the Medieval Warming Period? Peasant farming, I guess.

Thomas Jefferson, in 1799, noted there was generally less snow then than 60 years earlier (there was indeed a warming trend in the 1700s). Did mankind cause that, too?

A little history can work wonders in debunking hoaxes and myths. That is why Karl Marx so accurately said, “Keep people from their history and they are easily controlled.”

h/t Joe K.

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