1709: The year that Europe froze (even the Mediterranean iced over)

New Scientist ^ | 07 February 2009 | Stephanie Pain

[E. Pluribus Unum]

People across Europe awoke on 6 January 1709 to find the temperature had plummeted. A three-week freeze was followed by a brief thaw - and then the mercury plunged again and stayed there. From Scandinavia in the north to Italy in the south, and from Czechoslovakia in the east to the west coast of France, everything turned to ice. 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.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Three cheers for global warming!

[exist]

Thank goodness for those SUVs and hairspray and polluting corporations in the 1900s that warmed the earth up.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[Defiant]

As I recall, our global temperature the past couple decades is somewhere about halfway between the medieval warm period and the Little Ice Age. The Medieval Warm Period is hailed as a time of prosperity for Europe, allowing for bumper crops and healthy, well-fed people. I’ll be concerned about warming if and when we blow past that temperature. As of now, I am of the belief that we are entering into another Little Ice Age, but it’s too early to tell. It might actually be a real ice age. The globull warming idiots have no idea what the earth is doing, and anyone who claims they do is lying.

[muawiyah]

Just looking at the normal cycle (we've had 20 of them) we are at the precipice of the next great glaciation.

It's hard to believe there are people actually talking about making this place colder ~ last thing we may need shortly.

[mamelukesabre]

“By the summer, there were reports of starving people in the fields “eating grass like sheep.”

That would be a sight to see.

[arthurus]

They can’t make the place colder but they can put a lid on industry and innovation and kill the ability of industry to adjust to a new ever colder reality.

[bigheadfred]

eating grass like sheep.

Yeah, nowadays they just smoke it. Weird.

[Defiant]

If we are looking at glaciation, the global warming alarmists had better hope that humans are capable of warming the planet, because if we cannot, the entire northern 1/3 of the US and all of Canada will be under ice. Do they have any idea what happens to a city, even Manhattan, when the glacier comes to town? Check those big rocks in central park; that’s what will be left.

[Publius6961]

"We need to explain the natural variation in climate over past centuries so that we can tease apart all those factors that contribute to climate change. But before we can do that we need to nail down those changes in detail," says Wheeler. "Climate doesn't behave consistently and warmer and colder, drier and wetter periods can't always be explained by the same mechanisms." In the two decades after that terrible winter, the climate warmed very rapidly. "Some people point to that and say today's warming is nothing new. But they are not comparable. The factors causing warming then were quite different from those operating now."

Poor conflicted scientists. They can't seem to make up their minds whether studying the past can give us insight into the present and the future.

That current "global warming" religion certainly has a pernicious and persistent effect on scientists (as opposed to science.)

If this is their belief (emphasis mine) why bother studying the past at all? In detail or otherwise?

[headsonpikes]

It’s 21st Century Lysenkoism!

[muawiyah]

I was just thinking that we need to develop a directory of Global Warming enthusiasts ~ just a huge list, with addresses, or last known location, for all the "heavy hitters" over there.

Then, when the ice builds up on Baffin Island (which is where the big glaciers form that surge down to the Great Lakes) we can round all these guys up and prepare them as a suitible sacrifice to the "ICE GODS". Then we light some really big fires, burn a lot of coal in the least efficient manner, and demand nukes.

[mamelukesabre]

ewww!

Or should I say “ewe”?

[comps4spice]

You can find that today, unfortunately, in Zimbabwe.

[Da Coyote]

I love that last line: “...In the two decades after that terrible winter, the climate warmed very rapidly. “Some people point to that and say today’s warming is nothing new. But they are not comparable. The factors causing warming then were quite different from those operating now.”

In previous paragraphs, they admitted that they DID NOT KNOW why that winter in was so very cold...but now, our factors are very different.

Really?

Gads, glad these folks don’t mess around with real physics - like, you know, nuclear reactors, etc.

[tbw2]

The latest diet fad - straight from Europe! All natural and vegan, too!

[tbw2]

I noticed that ALL those bodies are white. No wonder Europeans are dying out - they’re the only ones who bought into worshiping the Earth without worshiping human fertility, too.

[sphinx]

1709? There should be reasonably reliable records from the Middle East, India, China, and the Americas, both north and south. A broader picture would be interesting.

[Myrddin]

Look again. Lower left.