Dramatic Weather Variations Sometimes Have No Discernible Cause
New Scientist published an eye-opening article a few weeks back, and it is especially relevant to the global warming scaremongering we are experiencing of late… It concerns the year 1709, when winter became a very calamitous affair:
People across Europe awoke on 6 January 1709 to find the temperature had plummeted… The sea froze. Lakes and rivers froze, and the soil froze to a depth of a metre or more. Livestock died from cold in their barns, chicken’s combs froze and fell off, trees exploded and travellers froze to death on the roads. It was the coldest winter in 500 years.
…In France, the temperature dipped lower still. In Paris, it sank to -15 °C on 14 January and stayed there for 11 days. After a brief thaw at the end of that month the cold returned with a vengeance and stayed until mid-March.
Fish froze in the rivers, game lay down in the fields and died, and small birds perished by the million. The loss of tender herbs and exotic fruit trees was no surprise, but even hardy native oaks and ash trees succumbed. The loss of the wheat crop was “a general calamity”. England’s troubles were trifling, however, compared to the suffering across the English Channel.
In France, the freeze gripped the whole country as far as the Mediterranean. Even the king and his courtiers at the sumptuous Palace of Versailles struggled to keep warm.
…In more humble homes, people went to bed and woke to find their nightcaps frozen to the bed-head. Bread froze so hard it took an axe to cut it. According to a canon from Beaune in Burgundy, “travellers died in the countryside, livestock in the stables, wild animals in the woods; nearly all the birds died, wine froze in barrels and public fires were lit to warm the poor”. From all over the country came reports of people found frozen to death. And with roads and rivers blocked by snow and ice, it was impossible to transport food to the cities. Paris waited three months for fresh supplies.
…In Paris, many survived only because the authorities, fearing an uprising, forced the rich to provide soup kitchens. With no grain to make bread, some country people made “flour” by grinding ferns, bulking out their loaves with nettles and thistles. By the summer, there were reports of starving people in the fields “eating grass like sheep”. Before the year was out more than a million had died from cold or starvation.
…Overall, the climate was colder, with the sun’s output at its lowest for millennia. There were some spectacular volcanic eruptions in 1707 and 1708, including Mount Fuji in Japan and Santorini and Vesuvius in Europe. These would have sent dust high into the atmosphere, forming a veil over Europe. Such dust veils normally lead to cooler summers and sometimes warmer winters, but climatologists think that during this persistent cold phase, dust may have depressed both summer and winter temperatures.
Seems it was just “one of those things”. If science cannot tell us why Europe suffered so terribly in 1709, I suggest they cannot explain the current, less dramatic fluctuations.
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