Pluviculture and Meteorological Mumpsimuses: How to Avert an $11 Trillion Climate Change "Investment"

By Arthur Sharp

This unique book traces the history of climate change through published accounts dating back hundreds of years. It’s like readers have subscriptions to old newspapers and are reading their predecessors’ concerns firsthand. The author traces the thoughts and actions of “climate changers” from the Roman and Greek eras and presents eleven inane, outrageously costly schemes that they have proposed over the years, e.g., placing an umbrella over the Sphinx, diverting the Gulf Stream to warm the climate of Eastern Canada, or heating Chicago with underground pipes. He warns that taxpayers can expect more of the same types of costly and unnecessary schemes from contemporary climate changers in the near future. Ultimately, readers are left to decide for themselves if climate change is the most serious challenge of our generation that politicians and scientists claim it is. (Spoiler alert: it isn’t.) Simply put, history trumps science in the climate change debate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728329932

Arthur Sharp

Arthur G. Sharp, a native of Waterbury, CT, is a historian/writer/editor/researcher. He is the author of 19 books and 2,500+ articles on a variety of topics. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from the University of Hartford (West Hartford, CT) and Trinity College (Hartford, CT) respectively. Sharp served four years in the United States Marine Corps, from which he received an honorable discharge. He taught at the university level for over thirty years, His subjects ranged from Technical & Business Writing to Literature, Management, Business Ethics, and International Management. He edits three military association magazines: The Graybeards (Korean War Veterans Association); The Old Breed News (1st Marine Division Association); and The Chosin Few Digest (Chosin Few Association). He currently lives in Sun City Center, FL. His curiosity and background as an historian led him to do the research for this book, which sheds new light on climate change.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

All the news that’s fit to print—and a lot that’s not

"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807.

Newspaper editors and publishers have long maintained that they are the purveyors of truth that citizens need to make up their minds about matters that affect them the most. That has never been truer than in the area of the 21st-century hot button issue of climate change, or global warming, or climate trend, or whatever people want to call it. Yet, those very same editors and publishers shirk their responsibilities in the pursuit of the truth about the existence of climate change as an immediate threat to humanity.

They are in unique positions to fact check climate changers’ constant Chicken Little hysteria. As readers of this book will ascertain, in the old days articles about climate change were published without editorial opinions embedded in them by concerned reporters. That way readers could make up their own minds about climate change.

Today newspaper poohbahs have become cheerleaders for climate change and try to make up readers’ minds for them. If they were truly impartial about the climate change news they publish they would take a few simple steps to make sure what they print is true and raise readers’ awareness about the history of climate change. Editors and publishers can:

1. Ask their reporters to verify their facts before printing them to make sure they are truly facts. A lot of climate change news reporters include in their articles is based on emotion rather than logic. Worse, it is often unverified but accepted simply because it came from the lips of an avowed politically progressive climate changer. Sounds simple, but due diligence is less of a strong point for journalists now than it used to be. Their new motto has become If I report it, it must be true.

2. Visit publications’ and on-line archives. There they will find thousands of stories from centuries ago dealing with climate change that seem to have been forgotten—perhaps intentionally. Again, climate changers would prefer to keep a lock on news that might cast doubt on—or even refute—their arguments.

3. Pay attention to history. Stop printing every 21st-century climate change story as if it is the first time the events portrayed have ever happened. Hey, maybe even drag some of those 19th-century stories out of the vault, pro and con, and rerun them in a retro section just to let readers know they existed. Such stories are the essence of this book. If I can find them so can newspaper editors and their staff members.

4. Suggest to reporters that they might use some historical material in their contemporary stories. There was a world—and a climate—before 2020, and readers should be made aware of that.

Unfortunately, those steps might not fit the narratives of some editors and publishers. Sometimes they prefer to make up their own truth or repeat climate changers’ allegations without doing the necessary due diligence to prove or disprove them as the experts shift their focus on the issue to suit their needs.

A few decades ago the focus was global cooling. Then climate changers reversed their course because thermometers refused to drop precipitately to accommodate their claims, so they switched to global warming. Then it became climate change when the earth failed to catch fire, which is what it is called today. Tomorrow? Who knows?

Exactly what is climate? Since this book is written with a simple thesis, i.e., humans are not experiencing radical climate changes nowadays and therefore don’t need to reverse what is not changing, we will use a simple definition presented by the International Tuberculosis Association in 1908 (The Roswell Daily Record, Oct. 1, 1908, Roswell, NM): climate is the average weather conditions of a given place. That means the climate can wobble a little to the left and a little to the right at times. But over the long run it will stay average. That is borne out by history.

In an April 3, 2014 op-ed in the Winchester [VA] Star, Donovan (Mark) Quimby wrote, We’ve heard some version of climate change for more than four decades. He was off a bit re the time span, which comprises at least two centuries. No, charges about climate change are nothing new. It’s just that climate changers ignore history in an attempt to deceive the public into thinking that the world is going to end soon if we don’t do something to reverse the trend. That is the crux of this book.

James Hansen, the former director of NASA’s Institute for Space Studies, and an expert on atmospheric change, said about climate change in 1988, I think the story is a lot stronger, a lot clearer than it was ten years ago. He believed that the public viewed climate change as something remote.

We are getting to the point where the effects should be noticeable to the person on the street, he concluded. That was over thirty years ago. The public for the most part still thinks of climate change as something remote, as it has for hundreds of years.

Former President Harry Truman said that there is nothing new in the world except for the history we haven’t read. That has special meaning in the context of this book. In all probability few people have taken the time to read newspaper or magazine articles from hundreds of years ago to help them form opinions about climate change. They will find if they do that the evidence debunking it as a universe-destroying problem is overwhelming.

As of October 1, 2019 the website genealogybank.com lists 182,490 entries in a search for climate change. Newspaperarchive.com offers 318,449. The Library of Congress’s Chronicling America includes 76,229. That is almost 600,000 articles. Granted, some of the articles are duplicates, and not all of them pertain directly to climate change as contemporary politicians define it, but the number is staggering nonetheless. And they date back to the early 1700s, with references as far back as the third century B.C. Taken together they prove one thing: climate change is not a significant issue in 21st-century America—or any other place or time.

(We focus on newspapers in this book because they were for the most part the media during the period in which the research for this project was conducted. Readers are invited to draw their own conclusions from the articles presented. Many of the articles address several issues included in this book in a cross-reference fashion. Thus they don’t fit into one specific chapter.)

Let’s begin with this startling prediction as we prepare for what the supporters of climate change aver will mean the imminent destruction of our planet if we don’t spend trillions of dollars to reverse it.

It has been argued, also, that the great increasing masses of snow and ice at the pole will someday become so solid and heavy that by the force of gravitation they will change the earth’s position in the plane of the elliptic, so that the poles will be two opposite ends of what is now the equatorial line. The poles would then lie in the torrid zone, where the hottest rays of the sun would have a sweltering effect upon the mountains of ice and drive the polar bear, the seal and the Eskimo out of their native land, and in time change Greenland, Siberia and the Antarctic continent into luxuriant tropical countries.

Sound familiar? Which progressive 21st-century climate change zealot who wants to spend trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ dollars to correct a problem that does not exist made that bold prognostication? Actually, none of them. It comes from an article in the Helena, MT Independent’s May 7, 1891 edition. Yeah, 1891. That was over 125 years ago—and none of the dire circumstance have occurred yet. But the predictions are so 21st century! Oh, right: they are the same ones being tossed about by today’s climate changers, who proffer mountains of evidence to back their claims. They are preaching to the choir.

Experts have been predicting for years that the nomadic Greenland will soon bump into Alaska and the two will merge and head for the equator to form Greenaska or Alagreen or some other new country:

"TROPICAL ALASKA IS NO IDLE BOAST

"LONDON, Feb. 10.—The earth is wobbling on its axis, according to Colonel P. Jensen, the Danish scientist who returned recently from a degree measuring expedition into Greenland.

He reports that Greenland is moving westward at the rate of 20 yards a year. This seems to confirm the recent report of surprising climatic changes at the North Pole.

It is now established that there is a periodic shifting of the latitude of the North Pole. The movement is difficult to detect because of the small area of the Pole—about the size of a tennis court. Some authorities say that the poles are gradually changing their positions, and that this alteration to the world’s axis will in time mean that regions which are at present ice-bound will become warm and habitable countries (The Cordova Daily Times, Feb. 10, 1923, p. 2, Cordova, AK).

That was a century ago. An excerpt from an article in 2019 stated:

The magnetic north pole is always on the move, but the shift of its position is generally quite steady. The unexpected change could be related to a strange phenomenon known as geomagnetic jerks. First discovered in 1978, these jerks are characterized by the magnetic field abruptly and unexpectedly accelerating at fairly random intervals.

What is new? Earth continues to revolve around the sun, the stars remain in their places, and our environment remains basically static despite climate changers’ dire predictions. All anybody has to do to understand that politicians and scientists in particular are using scare tactics to spend other people’s money is read the thousands of articles from hundreds of years ago that refute the idea that climate change is a contemporary problem.

This book is a compendium of more than 200 articles extracted at random from a variety of publications dating back to the early 18th century. And, we are using only a small percentage of the half-million plus articles that are available to prove that Earth is safe from the ravages of climate change for a few more years. It’s like readers have subscriptions to numerous newspapers and magazines of the past and are getting their information firsthand.

Together the articles compose a historical refutation to fearmongers’ claims that we are all going to die sooner rather than later if we don’t heed their dire warnings. The articles provide evidence from the viewpoint of history that proves the dangers of climate change are a sham.

Certainly, scientists can provide what they consider legitimate evidence that global temperatures can shift a couple degrees one way or another to support politicians’ claims that we must act quickly to save our skins. But what is the rush? Politicians have to realize that climate change is a slow process that cannot be reversed overnight—or ever. Newspaper writers knew that in 1700, and probably before. What has changed since then? Heck, let’s go back to the days of the Roman emperors.

"CHANGE OF CLIMATE—Gibbon tells us that 1,800 years ago, the Roman legions passed on the ice of the Danube with their baggage wagons and munitions of war, and that battles were fought upon its bosom. The lapse of so many centuries has redeemed Germany from barbarism, and given the soil to the seed of the sower.

"The forests have been cut down, and the light and heat let in upon the earth; morasses have been drained, and the chilliness arising from dampness destroyed. At the time when Gibbon wrote, some seventy years ago, so great had been the change, that the climate, which once rivaled Quebec in that of sternness, was not able to cover the calmest waters of the Danube with a film.

What has been wrought there will by like cause be wrought here. And the time must come when this climate shall be one of the most delightful under the sun. But our children’s children will be in their graves ere that blessed day (Bellows Falls Gazette, Bellows Falls VT, Apr. 23, 1850, p. 3).

Note: The Gibbon to whom the writer refers was the renowned British historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), whose most important work was the six-volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published between 1776 and 1788—a time period covering the American Revolutionary War and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution!

Journalists have been preaching caution for hundreds of years about acting hastily to change the climate to fit humans’ needs rather than adapting humans’ needs to the climate, as plants and animals have done. There was a story about a plant in several newspapers many years ago exemplifying the ability to adapt as a way to cope with nature—and help man:

"As Good as a Compass.

"It is a well-known fact that in the vast prairies of Texas a plant is always to be found which, under all circumstances of climate, change of weather, rain, frost or sunshine, invariably turns its leaves and flowers to the north. If a solitary traveler were making his way across those trackless wilds without a star or compass to direct him he finds an unerring monitor in an humble plant, and he follows its guidance, certain that it will not mislead him (The Globe-Republican, Dec. 25, 1902, Dodge City, KS).

The litany of articles in this book attests to the value of adaptation over man-made change and diminishes climate change supporters’ claims of impending doom. (Incidentally, Mr. Gore had this to say about adaptation as it relates to climate change: it represented a kind of laziness, an arrogant faith in our ability to react in time to save our skins.) Earthlings do not need politicians and scientists to come to their aid to alter the natural progression of atmospheric changes, which is neither radical nor fast. Time and nature will do that.

Journalists and historians have provided all the evidence citizens of the world need to set their minds at ease about their futures, at least from a climate change standpoint. In this case, we can all live happily ever after and ignore the warnings about our imminent demise as a result of climate change. Something else might destroy us, but it won’t be climate change. It will more than likely be climate changers.

Oh, by the way: there will be a quiz at the end of this book. Don’t worry: it’s easy, and you will be the only one who knows your score.

CHAPTER 2

Freaks of climate

"The climate which science figures upon is not the climate we live in." James C. Purdy

Here is a classic example of articles written over 100 years ago that address climate change. Pretend it was written yesterday. It could have been. It is a safe bet that if the dates of the articles selected for inclusion in this book were deleted readers would be hard pressed to pinpoint their actual publication dates. That’s because the messages are basically the same ones we see in print today with just the writers’ names, times, and dates of publication changed.

Ah, the benefits of hindsight—and paying attention to history. And, just to avoid confusion we have included the actual dates of publication with each article rather than in a master source list in the back of the book. Ask yourselves this question as you read: other than the headline, the writer’s name, and date of publication, what has changed?

Incidentally, the blizzard to which the writer refers was the March 11-14, 1888 monster storm that shut down the east coast of the United States for at least a week. Its arrival was a major surprise to everyone, especially the meteorologists who failed to see it coming. Many people still rank it as one of the Storms of the Century, even though there is no one alive today who survived it.

"Pessimists Say These Mild Winters, Cyclones and Floods ARE GOING TO WIND US ALL UP.

"Optimists Keep on Smiling and Scientists Have Nothing to Say.

"TALES OF OLD-FASHIONED WEATHER

"WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH

"There is a great deal of anxiety just now about our climate. The most optimistic people among us are more or less worried about it. They are compelled to uncomfortable reflections and to reticent admissions that things are not quite what might be desired and that future possibilities are less cheering than we could wish. The pessimistic ones growl openly and aggressively, and make the air heavy with predictions of despair. The climate appears to be changing, says those of the one class. The climate is changing, says those of the other. There is no room for doubt in the matter, these assert. We know what we know, don’t we?

"Well, then, let us face the inevitable conclusions of logic. We cannot deny the premises; the conclusions are pretty sure to sweep ns all from the face of the earth, but we might as well make up our minds to that, for the climate is changing. Take the blizzard for a starting point, says these hopeless ones. Could we have a blizzard in this section of the country if the climate were not changing?

We never used to have them. We had good old-fashioned winters, with plenty of snow and long runs of sleighing," and January thaws and all that sort of thing, but we never had a blizzard.

"We never had whole systems of railroads blockaded by one night’s snowfall; we never had great cities made utterly helpless; we never had telegraphic communication made an impossibility; we never had to get news from Boston by way of London. None of those things ever befell under the old order of climatic events.

"The Mellow Winters.

"Then study the two winters since the blizzard. Wonderfully upsetting seasons those were; warm and wet to such an extent that coal dealers and plumbers were driven well-nigh to bankruptcy, and tin roofers reaped the harvests of wealth those others had expected, while ice men began to wear diamonds.

"Why, last winter blue and white violets were blooming in February in places where the February snow always lay a foot deep before the climate began to change. Peach trees put out their green leaves in dead of winter, and were pink with bloom before March had fairly begun to howl. Those things were not quite in the old way, when you come to consider them. And the summers have been just as progressive as the winters.

"Was there ever a season more revolutionary than the season we are now passing through? Cyclones used to be as alien to this region as blizzards were. We are well enough acquainted with them now. Pennsylvania has had its surface twisted out of shape by them. If things keep on as they have begun we shall have to bring on Minnesota experts to build cyclone cellars for Pennsylvania residents. And when we have rested from the cyclone and the tornado, thunder storms at the rate of 5 or 6 in 24 hours played havoc with us.

"And between whiles we have suffered from such intensity of humid heat as has brought contempt upon the old belief that a mild winter brings a cool summer after it to make the balance even between the ends of the year.

"That the strange summer may lack no feature of strange violence, an August snowstorm has whitened parts of sober, steady going Pennsylvania, causing all the people to sneeze and sniffle by reason of the sudden cold it brought.

"Climates Always Change.

"Such things as these never used to happen. In previous summers we could decide for ourselves what county we would stay in, without fear of being carried by a cyclone into a county we had no desire to visit. In the good old times the winter left us with ice enough to make the next summer endurable; and if by any chance there was a lack, the summer never thought of making it good by deposits of snow in August. It was only after the climate began to change that the blossoms came in the winter time and the fruit failed to come at all.

Can anyone doubt these evidences? the pessimists ask. Of course the climate is changing.

"Well, when did our climate ever do anything else? Change is the very habit of its being. Age cannot wither, custom cannot stale its infinite variety. Exhaustless novelty and boundless versatility are its distinguishing characteristics. Entire absence of monotony is what makes it always interesting. Perpetual change is its one unchanging attribute. For every day, for almost every hour, it has the unfailing charm of unexpectedness. Like genuine wit, it is never without the element of surprise.

"When you wear your dust cloak abroad, then is the time you find need for your umbrella.

"When you are away from home in your russet shoes, then you wish you had brought your arctic overshoes.

"Sometimes, when a straw hat crowns you you have cause to wish for your earmuffs. The time set for a picnic is likely to prove better suited to an aquatic contest. Probably the memory of man cannot reach back to a time when these things were not so.

"They Were Freaks, Too.

"We talk sadly of the old-fashioned winters. I suppose there never was such a thing. The seasons we call by that name are only tricky delusions of our treacherous memories. The winters we remember when the snow lay deep on the ground from Thanksgiving to Easter, and when we went coasting over the tops of fences, are likely to have been freaks as unusual as the strange winters of recent times.

Years hence our children shivering through four or five months of steady cold will refer to last winter as an old-fashioned winter," and will sigh for the good old times when violets bloomed in February and peach trees made early March glow with bloom.

"If the climate is changing it is not any sudden affair, such as the talk of the day seems to assume. The change has been going on for more years than one would care to count into his past life. A moment’s reflection will convince the most careless thinker of this fact.

"Can any of us recall a hot spell when the temperature did not rise higher than at any time the oldest inhabitant could remember? Can any of us recall a cold spell that was not more frigid than the oldest inhabitant had ever had to deal with? Has there been, in the years we can count, a storm of snow or wind or hail or rain or thunder and lightning that was not the severest within the memory of the oldest inhabitant? Certainly not. So we see that the climate has been changing continuously and with considerable violence.

"Territorial Changes.

"And the changes have been going on over a wide expanse of territory. Individual observation proves that some years ago a man visited a certain point in Southern California. All the circulars and advertisements had assured him that the wind never blew in that particular place. It was the region of perpetual calm. That was the reason he went there.

When he arrived a fierce tempest nearly blew the life out of him. But everybody hastened to assure him that this was entirely exceptional." The oldest inhabitant could not remember any such wind as that. The conclusion was inevitable. The climate was changing.

"The change, I fear, has continued. The same man had personal knowledge of similar climatic changes in Minnesota, where he had been assured that the severest cold brought on chill and that dampness was unknown; and where the marrow in his bones was curdled with such chilling dampness as he could in nowise endure. That was exceptional, too, and proved that the climate was changing.

"For better or for worse I fear we must accept the conclusion of the pessimists. Science says not, but that makes little difference. Science is neither optimist nor pessimist. It has no preferences in the matter. It is simply judicial. It is simply a mere colorless medium in which statistics are held in solution. In some matters science is unimpeachable; but when it assumes to contradict the weather it undertakes what is beyond it.

"The mistake it makes is radical and elemental. It starts from the wrong premises. It takes a thermometer and hangs it somewhere in the upper air, away above the highest roof. No radiated or reflected beat can get at it. It is shaded from the direct rays of the sun. It is guarded by Venetian blinds so that no current of air can cross its bulb. Then the figures it registers at certain times of the day are noted down, and are published to the world.

"What Science Says.

There, says science, is your temperature. This is official. You can see for yourselves that the day has not been hot enough or cold enough to make anybody uncomfortable. If any person has suffered a sunstroke, or has frozen his ears, he has done so without any proper and scientific excuse.

"That would be all right if the human race lived up there where the thermometer of science hangs; but it doesn’t. Men and women in their daily lives are not canopied and shielded in that manner. They have to take the rays the sun shoots at them, and must endure the added pangs of heat reflected and heat radiated. They must take what comes in the way of winds, hot or cold. In other words, the climate which science figures upon is not the climate we live in.

"So the recollections of the oldest inhabitant will have to be relied upon as a basis of prophecy rather than the provisions of science. Still, science has done well within its limitations.

"If we have to make allowance concerning what it tells us of yesterday, we have the delight of knowing what ought to happen tomorrow. There is unfailing entertainment in that. I suspect we all have something of the gambler’s instinct in us, and are fond of a game that depends somewhat on the element of uncertainty. Therefore we cover up the cabbage plants when frost is predicted, and take it as a joke if the frost follows some obstructing isothermal line up into Manitoba, where it belongs. And if a predicted hot wave keeps the promise that it made and overwhelms us, we take our winnings of discomfort, and make the best of them.

"The Use of Fore-Knowledge.

"What we wait for now is for science to devise some way of preventing the dire things it prophesies. Without that there is little real good in fore-knowledge. It is not comfortable to be told that a tempest is coming your way, and to have no way of mitigating its ravages. Perhaps it would be as well to let the tempest make its own announcement.

"Still there is comfort in the element of uncertainty I have spoken of. There is one thing science will undoubtedly have to do in view of these climatic changes; and that is to shorten up its chronology. It has allowed too much time to the various eras into which the world’s past is divided. I suspect the scientists have made the world several millions of years older than it ought to be.

"When we consult our own brief experience, and reflect how swift and sudden have been the changes of temperature, we are led to question whether it was not so in the past. And, if so, is it not probable that a series of our cold waves precipitated the glacial period, and that a series of our hot waves wound the period up, both in much less time than is commonly assigned to the processes?

"Undoubtedly the pessimists are right, and there is trouble ahead for all of us because of the changes in the climate of our region. But it is likely to be such trouble as those same changes have brought us in the past; such trouble as we are well accustomed to and ought to be pretty well reconciled to.

And the optimists may lift up their heads and smile with confident hope. For while the climate is certain to change, it is also certain to change back again! James C. Purdy (Pittsburg Dispatch, Sept. 7, 1890, p. 10, Pittsburg, PA).

That last line provides fodder for climate changers, who are happy no matter which way the climate goes: global warming, global cooling, glaciers melting, glaciers refreezing…it does not matter to them. As long as they can say the climate is changing one way or another and apply the lessons in their handbook they will be happy. Let’s look at that handbook.

CHAPTER 3

The Climate Changers’ Handbook

"Come now, Vic, that’s right there in the private detective’s handbook, technique number nineteen: the idle threat. It gets the juices flowing, gets the pot stirred. Make the threat, stir the pot, follow the mark until he leads you to something worth your while." Phil Skink

There was no global concern about climate change in 1891 when the following piece was published. Most concern was local, especially in the burgeoning western part of the United States, where there was an increasing demand for water to irrigate the growing number of farmers and ranchers.

"MAY CHANGE THE CLIMATE.

"Effect of the Flooding of the Colorado river

"San Bernardino, Cal., Aug. 18. Another heavy storm occurred in the mountains east of here