Readers were doubtless aware of Al Gore‘s 24-hour climate awareness ‘event’ this week. It was yet another of his alarmist rants about how terrible our climatic predicament is, and how disastrous it’s going to be, and we’re all going to die, and so on, and so forth. (Yawn.) The fact that much of the alleged ‘science’ behind such claims isn’t scientific at all, and has been thoroughly debunked by those who’ve examined it objectively, is conveniently ignored by Mr. Gore and his disciples.
For those with saner heads on their shoulders, the Climate Conservative Consumer presents an antidote: “Severe Weather Reality From The 1950s, 1960s & 1970s“. It links to dozens of news headlines about climate-related scares, and also connects to another page containing similar disaster stories dating back as far as the 15th century! Here are a few examples from one year alone.
1950: Floods In Brazil & Ecuador Take 150 Lives – Train Plunges Off Washed-Out Bridge
1950: Hurricane Sweeps Along New England Coast – 60 MPH Winds, Mountainous Waves
1950: 1,000 Villages In Pakistan Destroyed By Flooding
1950: Cold Wind And Dust Storm Sweep Over Bombay, India
1950: Record Rain In Queensland, Australia
1950: Minnesota, N. Dakota & Nebraska Regions Swamped By Flooding
1950: Oregon Heat Wave Breaks Temperature Records
1950: Oklahoma’s ‘Dust Bowl’ Region Struck By New Drought
1950: Nine Die In Midwest Dust Storm
1950: 3rd Dust Storm This Year Strikes Wheat States
1950: Scientists Find Earth Warming, And Glaciers Melting
1950: Eroding Beaches In Australia Due to Rapid Sea Level Rises
1950: Rapid Warming In Greenland – Sea Temperatures Up By Several Degrees
1950: Six Nations Send Scientists To Arctic To Investigate Glacier & Ice Cap Melting
1950: Scientist Says Sidney, Australia Climate Getting Hotter
There are many more at the link, and also on this page. That should help to balance the “OMG-we’re-all-going-to-die!” rhetoric emanating from the alarmist climatic lunatic fringe.
Peter
It's amusing how the 'cure' to man made climate change always seems to be funneling money into the multi-billion dollar company that AlGore owns.
Unfortunately, Peter, all it's going to do is fuel their ignorance. They'll point at it and say, "See, it's been happening for longer than we thought," or "They just didn't realize how quickly it would happen."
See, for example, the first comment (from Pat M) on your link:
1950: Scientists Find Earth Warming, And Glaciers Melting
Envirowackos say that big business is ignoring science. I say, ignoring science is big business. Just ask Algore.
One thing I'm going to say though: I'm worried about the deforestation and more so, destruction of corral reefs that we humans cause.
This is less from a climate change, and more of a it's going to be hard breathing when oxygen levels drop kind of thing.
Mikael, you might be heartened to know that one of the world's leading experts on deforestation says there just isn't any evidence it's happening. I'm not sure it's this article, but I remember reading that the best numbers that can be measured are ambiguous at best. This Science Daily paper says that "Indeed, while his own estimate in 1983 of tropical moist forest area in 1980 was 1,081 million hectares, the latest satellite data led to an estimate of 1,181 million hectares for the same 63 countries in 2000."
Coral reefs? I don't know, but I wouldn't doubt the threat is overblown. There is so much market for environmental alarmism, it just sells so well, that we hear it everywhere. Here's a peer reviewed, published article (not that peer review means much, as you see in the climate gate emails) that says that the Great Barrier Reef has shown no decline in 14 years from 1995-2009, when the climate alarmists were saying the GBR was in steep decline and was going to die off. While the limited data for the GBR prior to the 1980's suggests that coral cover was higher than in our survey, we found no evidence of consistent, system-wide decline in coral cover since 1995. Instead, fluctuations in coral cover at subregional scales (10–100 km), driven mostly by changes in fast-growing Acroporidae, occurred as a result of localized disturbance events and subsequent recovery. bold added
Funny that I keep hearing the great barrier reef is dying from corral bleaching. I've also read a lot of recent reports of destroyed reefs(I'm a PADI instructor, I get a lot of project AWARE emails), including one recently where apparently an entire reef somwhere in southeast asia(I forget if it was philipines or indonesia) was destroyed, harvested for its black corral. This was a few square kilometers of reef.
I once worked with a woman in the 1980s who believed it was the USA sending rocket ships into space that was causing "weird weather" on earth. I asked her if it was a rocket sent into earth in Noah's time that caused it to rain for 40 days and 40 nights! She didn't have an answer.
chicopanther