WINTER 2017 WEATHER BLOG

With not enough time to deliver a forecast for winter 2017 I decided instead to blog my old piece of research into references found in old texts about climate change, that old debate about whether the world is square round, doomed or saved….or just endlessly fascinating.

I am blogging this tp give fodder to the debate on climate change and global warming, with no bias or preference, just a tour of the debate over the centuries but in brief.

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/charles-lyell/the-students-elements-of-geology-hci/page-23-the-students-elements-of-geology-hci.shtml shows evidence of climate change through plants.

http://www.icecap.us/
http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/pf/pf12.htm

Paradise Found, by William F. Warren, [1885], at sacred-texts.com

Some interesting findings to suggest that rather than being scaremongered into believing carbon emissions and burning fossils will destroy the planet ( though for sure some of the e methods of exploiting them do cause tremendous pollution and irreversible desecration of the environment), should we be delighting in the fact that climate change could take us back to our very origins. Here’s a tour of some ancient texts reportage of climate change down the ages:-

CHAPTER IV.
THE TESTIMONY OF PREHISTORIC CLIMATOLOGY.
Ver Iliad erat, ver magnus agebat Orbis.—Vergil.

One of the most startling and important of the scientific discoveries of the last twenty years has been that of the relics of a luxuriant Miocene flora in various parts of the Arctic regions. It is a discovery which was totally unexpected, and is even now considered by many men of science to be completely unintelligible, but it is so thoroughly established, and it has such an important bearing on the subjects we are discussing in the present volume, that it is necessary to lay a tolerably complete outline of the facts before our readers.—A. R. Wallace 1880).

It is now an established conclusion that the great aggressive faunas and floras of the continents have originated in the North, some of them within the Arctic Circle.—Principal Dawson (1883).

All the evidence at our command points to the Northern hemisphere as the birth-place of the class, Mammalia, and probably of all the orders.—Alfred Russel Wallace.

Another well-known naturalist says: “It should also be observed that in the beginning of things the continents were built up from North to South,—such has been, at least, the history of the North and South American and the Europeo-Asiatic and the African continents; and thus it would appear that north of the equator, at least, animals slowly migrated southward, keeping pace as it were with the growth and southward extension of the grand land-masses which appeared above the sea in the Paleozoic ages. Hence, scanty as is the Arctic and Temperate region of the earth at the present time, in former ages these regions were as prolific in life as the tropics now are, the latter regions, now so vast, having through all the Tertiary and Quaternary ages been undisturbed by great geological revolutions, and meanwhile been colonized by emigrants driven down by the incoming cold of the glacial period.” …..

……Professor Friedrich Müller, of Vienna, and Dr. Moritz Wagner, both of whom place the probable cradle of the race in some high latitude in Europe or Asia, lay the utmost stress upon the mighty climatic revolution which came in with the glacial age, ascribing to it the most stupendous and transforming influences that have ever affected mankind. 1 In our view the deterioration of natural environment reduced the
vigor and longevity of the race; in theirs it changed one of the tribes of the animal world into men! Which of these views is the more rational may safely be left to the reader’s judgment. Few will be disposed to accept the doctrine that man is simply a judiciously-iced pithecoid.

….We must now be prepared to admit that God can plant an Eden even in Spitzbergen; that the present state of the world is by no means the best possible in relation to climate and vegetation; that there have been and might be again conditions which could convert the ice-clad Arctic regions into blooming Paradises.—Principal J. W. Dawson.

Mr. Scribner’s answer to the question, “Where did Life begin?” human as well as floral and faunal life should be included. After examining these fresh lines of evidence it is believed that the reader will find more impressive than ever the words with which our author concludes his charming tractate:—

“Thus the Arctic zone, which was earliest in cooling down to the first and highest heat degree in the great life-gamut, was also first to become fertile, first to bear life, and first to send forth her progeny over the earth. So, too, in obedience to the universal order of things, she was first to reach maturity, first to pass all the subdivisions of life-bearing climate and finally the lowest heat degree in the great life-range, and so the first to reach sterility, old age, degeneration, and death. And now, cold and lifeless, wrapped in her snowy winding sheet, the once fair mother of us all rests in the frozen embrace of an ice-bound and everlasting sepulchre.”

http://www.sacred-texts.com/atl/rag/index.htm
RAGNAROK:THE AGE OF FIRE AND GRAVEL.BYIGNATIUS DONNELLY,
[1883]

Ragnarok, The Age of Fire and Gravel, proposes that a comet impacted the Earth several tens of thousands of years ago; the impact produced the ‘Drift’ layers of gravel which have been attributed to the Ice ages; this event destroyed a civilization which had high technology, a civilization which vanished completely except for some myths; the disaster was accompanied by catastrophic fire followed by years-long cloud cover and extreme cold. Humanity survived only by hiding in deep caves; when they re-emerged they had to restart civilization from scratch. Donnelly provides extensive geological, archeological, astronomical and mythological evidence for this theory. The book is not academic and often sensationalistic, but his populist style does not seem to detract from the argument.

Today, mass extinction from cometary impact is considered mainstream science, supported by a huge body of physical evidence.
More recently the book When the Earth Nearly Died When the Earth Nearly Died by D.S. Allan and J.B. Delair [1995] (reissued as Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C.), brought together a mass of evidence that a catastrophic impact of extrasolar material occurred in 9,500 B.C.

You can also read how it may be that the Zoroastrians may have left us evidence that they were preparing for a nuclear disaster and how it may be that climate change is a result of extra terrestrial impacts of earth with comets and other objects…..

http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/we/index.htm Wonderful Ethiopians
of the Ancient Cushite Empire by Drusilla Dunjee Houston
[1926, no renewal] read how the desert regions of Africa have been subjected to horrors of horrors….CLIMATE CHANGE!

CHAPTER III. ANCIENT ETHIOPIA, THE LAND.

The Nubo-Egyptian desert was once abundantly watered and a well timbered region. With the exclusion of the narrow Nile valley, all of this is generally a barren waste today. Geology reveals that in the primitive ages, this country had a moist climate like the Congo basin; but these conditions prevailed in remote geological times, probably before the creation of the delta. The changes that turned the Sahara into a burning waste in time made Upper Egypt dry and torrid. Keane describes its climate as often fatal to all but full blooded natives. Under those brazen skies the children of even Euro-African half castes seldom survive after the tenth or twelfth year. Passing southward, we find that ancient edifices occur throughout the whole extent of Ethiopia. In the olden days, the climate there was favorable to the nurturing and development of a high type of civilization and produced an Ethiopian so superior to the later types, that they were called by the ancients, “the handsomest men of the primeval world.”

http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/ca/lly/lly64.htm

The Lore and the Lure of the Yosemite The Indians Their Customs, Legends and Beliefs, and the Story of Yosemite Herbert Earl Wilson
[1922]

Not only Africa but the Yosemite Valley as well…..was affected by climate change and not a motor car or airplane in sight….

‘It is known that since the beginning of time the surface of the earth has undergone various changes brought about by its cooling and shrinking and by internal eruptions and disturbances.

During one of these disturbances the region between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains was affected. Here the surface of the earth was broken into great blocks and one of these, four hundred miles long and eighty miles wide, was pushed up at its eastern edge, separating it from the depressed region to the east, leaving a steep scarp, and pulled down at its western edge giving it a gentle slope to the sea.

The streams which flowed in diverse directions before the uplift of this block now were given a definite course flowing down the slope to the west and forming broad shallow valleys. One of these streams was the Merced River which now flows through the Yosemite Valley.

After a great period of time there occurred a second upward thrust which raised the eastern edge of the block to an elevation of several thousand feet making a distinct mountain range, later known as the Sierra Nevada. This second uplift gave to the western side a greater incline so that the Merced River was given enough velocity to enable it, through the millions of years elapsing before a third series of uplifts, to cut a narrower valley within its old broad valley.

The tributary streams which flowed parallel to the range and at right angles to the Merced River were not benefited by the tilting of the block, hence the deeper the main river cut the higher the side streams were left above it. With the broadening and leveling of its bed the Merced lost its cutting power and flowed lazily over the valley floor.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/gibbon/01/daf01026.htm
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 by Edward Gibbon 1776

We can learn ever so much about the impact of climate change in this book……
Find out how Germany has been affected by CLIMATE CHANGE…….which meant that vines brought to the dinner table were still frozen posing a problem for hungry diners…and find out if the reindeer ever lived in Germany…

‘The modern philosophers of Sweden seem agreed that the waters of the Baltic gradually sink in a regular proportion, which they have ventured to estimate at half an inch every year. Twenty centuries ago the flat country of Scandinavia must have been covered by the sea; while the high lands rose above the waters, as so many islands of various forms and dimensions. Such, indeed, is the notion given us by Mela, Pliny, and Tacitus, of the vast countries round the Baltic. See in the Bibliotheque Raisonnee, tom. xl. and xlv. a large abstract of Dalin’s History of Sweden, composed in the Swedish language.

Diodorus Siculus, l. v. p. 340, edit. Wessel. Herodian, l. vi. p. 221. Jornandes, c. 55. On the banks of the Danube, the wine, when brought to table, was frequently frozen into great lumps, frusta vini. Ovid. Epist. ex Ponto, l. iv. 7, 9, 10. Virgil. Georgic. l. iii. 355. The fact is confirmed by a soldier and a philosopher, who had experienced the intense cold of Thrace. See Xenophon, Anabasis, l. vii. p. 560, edit. Hutchinson. Note: The Danube is constantly frozen over. At Pesth the bridge is usually taken up, and the traffic and communication between the two banks carried on over the ice. The Rhine is likewise in many parts passable at least two years out of five. Winter campaigns are so unusual, in modern warfare, that I recollect but one instance of an army crossing either river on the ice. In the thirty years’ war, (1635,) Jan van Werth, an Imperialist partisan, crossed the Rhine from Heidelberg on the ice with 5000 men, and surprised Spiers. Pichegru’s memorable campaign, (1794-5,) when the freezing of the Meuse and Waal opened Holland to his conquests, and his cavalry and artillery attacked the ships frozen in, on the Zuyder Zee, was in a winter of unprecedented severity. – M. 1845.

Note: The passage of Caesar, “parvis renonum tegumentis utuntur,” is obscure, observes Luden, (Geschichte des Teutschen Volkes,) and insufficient to prove the reindeer to have existed in Germany. It is supported however, by a fragment of Sallust. Germani intectum rhenonibus corpus tegunt. – M. It has been suggested to me that Caesar (as old Gesner supposed) meant the reindeer in the following description. Est bos cervi figura cujus a media fronte inter aures unum cornu existit, excelsius magisque directum (divaricatum, qu ?) his quae nobis nota sunt cornibus. At ejus summo, sicut palmae, rami quam late diffunduntur. Bell. vi. – M. 1845.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/008/0080496.htm Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII The Twelve Patriarchs, Excerpts and Epistles, The Clementina, Apocrypha, Decretals, Memoirs of Edessa and Syriac Documents, Remains of the First Ages

A good source of ancient documentation quite long but this link takes you to the bit about climate…http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/008/0080496.htm

Are the Romans responsible for climate change…..read on….

Chapter XXVII.—Doctrine of “Climates” Untenable.

“Moreover, we ought to remember the things which have been mentioned, that in the one country of India there are both persons who feed on human flesh, and persons who abstain even from the flesh of sheep, and birds, and all living creatures; and that the Magusæi marry their mothers and daughters not only in Persia, but that in every nation where they dwell they keep up their incestuous customs. 847 Then, besides, we have mentioned also innumerable nations, which are wholly ignorant of the studies of literature, and also some wise men have changed the laws themselves in several places; and some laws have been voluntarily abandoned, on account of the impossibility of observing them, or on account of their baseness. Assuredly we can easily ascertain how many rulers have changed the laws and customs of nations which they have conquered, and subjected them to their own laws. This is manifestly done by the Romans, who have brought under the Roman law and the civil decrees almost the whole world, and all nations who formerly lived under various laws and customs of their own. It follows, therefore, that the stars of the nations which have been conquered by the Romans have lost their climates and their portions.

Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, 6th ed. [1872], at sacred-texts.com

Let’s see what Darwin had to say on the issue of climate…but surely he isn’t arguing we can adapt to climate change ….is he???….

‘The capacity of enduring the most different climates by man himself and by his domestic animals, and the fact of the extinct elephant and rhinoceros having formerly endured a glacial climate, whereas the living species are now all tropical or sub-tropical in their habits, ought not to be looked at as anomalies, but as examples of a very common flexibility of constitution, brought, under peculiar circumstances, into action.

How much of the acclimatisation of species to any peculiar climate is due to mere habit, and how much to the natural selection of varieties having different innate constitutions, and how much to both means combined, is an obscure question. That habit or custom has some influence, I must believe, both from analogy and from the incessant advice given in agricultural works, even in the ancient encyclopaedias of China, to be very cautious in transporting animals from one district to another. And as it is not likely that man should have succeeded in selecting so many breeds and sub-breeds with constitutions specially fitted for their own districts, the result must, I think, be due to habit. On the other hand, natural selection would inevitably tend to preserve those individuals which were born with constitutions best adapted to any country which they inhabited.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/tbr/tbr094.htm
Now lets visit and old treatise named the Bible and see what Revelations we can find there …..millennia old I might add, that inform us of how old climate change actually is….THE NEW EARTH.
Rev. 21:1.
“Thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; He is God; that formed the earth and made it; He established it, He created it not a waste, He formed it to be inhabited.” See also Jer. 4:23-26. What caused the earth to become a waste after its original creation is not expressly stated. Some awful catastrophe must have befallen it. It is clear from the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve that sin existed before man was created. The inference is from Ezek. 28:12-19, and Isa. 14:12-14, that when the earth was originally created that Satan was placed in charge of it, and that he and his angels rebelled and led astray the inhabitants of the Original Earth, and that the Pre-Adamite race are now the demons who as they are permitted liberty seek to re-embody themselves in human beings that they may again dwell on the earth. It is clear that the Original Earth was inhabited, or God would not have blessed Adam and Eve and said–“Be fruitful and multiply and REPLENISH the Earth.” Gen. 1:28. It does not follow however that those inhabitants were human beings like ourselves. No human remains have been found ante-dating the creation of man.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/tbr/index.htm The Book of Revelationby Clarence Larkin [1919]

‘Is there a conflict between the biblical and scientific theories of the origin of our planet and climate change??

There can be no question but what the Earth in its original formation required millions of years. There is ample time in the statement of Gen. 1:1 that–“In the BEGINNING God ‘created’ the heaven and the earth,” for all the “Geologic Ages” that science declares were necessary for the creation of the Earth. There is no conflict between the Bible and Science as to the time occupied in the formation of the Earth.

Happily, we are told not to worry about the earth being overcome by a natural process of climate change because:-
‘NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH.” 2. Pet. 3:13. These words of Peter reveal the fact that this Earth is to pass through 3 stages. First the Original Earth that “perished” by WATER. Second the Earth that is now, that is to be renovated or cleansed by FIRE. And the New Earth that is to exist forever. See the Chart “The Three Stages of the Earth.”

Goodness me…. a new earth that will last forever……..amazing…

“And I saw a new Heaven and a NEW EARTH: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”

http://www.sacred-texts.com/piri/index.htm
Why haven’t we got a map to show how the UK was once joined to mainland Europe and other geo changes that would give us a better idea about how climate change is a natural process, pre the motor car, air travel and energy giants trying to charge us more for setting up sustainable fuel systems that none of us will be able to afford?

Such a map does exist though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map
The Piri Reis map is a patchwork which has gaps (most notably the Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica) which can be explained as non-overlapping areas between the source maps. Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings and Hapgood’s other book The Earth’s Shifting Crust, in which he advanced a theory of polar shifts, are controversial, and earned him the scorn of official academia.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/jei/jei14.htm
A Journey to the Earth’s Interior
by Marshall B. Gardner
[1920]

Finally, in 1999 the http://www.dailycal.org/ featured an article by Westyn Branch-Elliman entitled Longterm Climate Change Due to Astronomical Cycles.

‘’Climate cycles on Earth are directly related to astronomical cycles in the solar system, UC Berkeley researchers have found.
The team of scientists collected evidence of ice ages stored at the bottom of the oceans and found that there is a distinct pattern of cycles – an ice age that lasts approximately 90,000 years is followed by a warm period that lasts approximately 10,000 years.
“Astronomy is responsible for almost all climate changes,” said project leader Richard Muller, a UC Berkeley professor of physics and a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. ‘’
In addition, the researchers examined the astronomical cycles caused by variations in the tilt of Earth’s orbit. They found that the tilt cycles match the cycles of the ice ages.
“When we look at ancient records of planets, these astronomical cycles appear in the climate record,” Muller said.
Due to gravitational forces caused by other planets, the tilt of Earth’s orbit changes depending on the position of these other objects.
“The orbit of the earth around the sun is constantly changing due to the gravitational effects of other planets,” Muller said.
The law of gravitation is dependent on the distance between two objects. When objects are closer together, they exert stronger forces on each other than when they are farther apart.
Other planets orbit the sun, so their proximity to Earth varies over time. Due to gravitational forces exerted by other planets, the tilt of Earth’s orbit changes in a cyclic pattern.
“By using the laws of physics, we can figure out what kind of cycles (other planets) induce on the orbit of the earth,” Muller said.
The two planets that most strongly affect the tilt of Earth’s orbit are Jupiter and Venus, Muller said. Jupiter is large an massive, so the planet exerts strong gravitational forces on Earth. Venus is relatively close to Earth, so it also has a large effect on the tilt of the orbit.
“Jupiter, which is the biggest planet (in our solar system), is the most important,” Muller said. “The other planet that is very important is Venus. Even though it is much smaller, it comes much closer to the earth.”

…………………………………………………. All of civilization has taken place during this short and relatively unusual warm period, which won’t last very long,” Muller said. “We have been through 10,000 (years of this warm period), so some time in the next 10,000 years, another ice age will arrive.”

FOOTNOTE Astro-meteorologists have been watching planetary cycles down millennia using satellite technology to forecast weather and still do so proficiently and accurately today.