The Boston Globe reports:
Droughts, wildfires, floods, storms: Climate change appears to be exacerbating these phenomena around the world. And in the United States, at least, preparations for the impact of global warming on our lives are paltry.
If history is any guide, however, these “natural” disasters may be just the beginning—at least, that’s the implication of a comprehensive new book by British historian Geoffrey Parker, “Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century.” Behind a tumultuous and grueling series of revolutions, wars, and famines, which ultimately killed off a third of the human population, was a culprit, he writes: a period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age. Extreme weather caused crop failures, which led to hunger, disease, and forced migrations, which in turn translated to political and social chaos.
Interesting that the historian advocates loss of freedom for individuals and governments’ gaining central control for survival.
This is, and has always been about the arrogant few that think we would all be better off if we just let them run everything. They are so much smarter than the rest of us, don’t you know.
A brilliantly researched book, but he takes all his knowledge and comes to the easy and wrong solution.
Prepare for what? The science is certainly not “settled”.
Allow cruelty and despotism to provide “safety”. From what or whom?
Sounds like the conclusions were written by the Obama administration as an excuse to allow them to control and force the populace to do what they (and they alone) think necessary.
Just don’t apply the rules to the ones in power.
Despite acknowledging that there is a connection between fewer sunspots and cooler climate and noting how despots dealt with it in the past, ol’ Geoffrey failed to draw the correct conclusion (that we should reduce government meddling and allow free economies to generate the technology and wealth to adapt). Instead, from the city at the heart of the American Revolution, we have an article about a Brit who is advocating that we suspend (or abandon) the Constitution.
BTW, “Hunters in the Snow” was painted in the 16th century.
Tee hee hee hee hee ™! Did the Globe just acknowledge that a cooler world is usually harder to live in than a warmer world? ‘Cuz it sure sounds like it.
Apparently th author makes the same mistake Jared Diamond made in ‘Collapse’. Cooling = bad. Cooling = change. But that does NOT mean that change = bad. It wasn’t that climate changed and bad things happened, therefore climate change caused bad things to happen. Climate COOLED, and THAT caused bad things to happen. Warming is good.
It’s science journalism like this that cause people to dismiss the nonsense. Droughts are not increasing, wildfires are decreasing, tropical cyclones, tornados, and thunderstorms are decreasing. Sea level rise trends are not increasing. There’s no troposphere hot spot. Most if all of the supposed indicators of global warming aren’t happening. They make this stuff up because they’re too lazy to check facts.