Comparing the occurrence rate of the phrase "unseasonable warmth" in literature (blue) to a 1975 northern hemisphere temperature reconstruction (black)
posted by AlreadyPublished @
10:56 am
from Chilling Possibilities, Science News, 1975
The winter of 1780-81 was a particularly bitter one for the American
Revolutionary forces. Washington's troops hunkered down, ill-clothed and
ill-fed, around their campfires at Morristown, N.J., while a few miles
away British troops enjoyed the relative luxury of an occupied New York
City. But even the British had their problems, for the win- ter was so
cold that parts of New York harbor froze for weeks at a time, blocking
movement of their powerful fleet. The ice even got thick enough to allow
hauling cannons from Manhattan to Staten Island. The colonists had
struggled against devastating winters ever since establishment of the
earliest settlements, when one of the few holidays celebrated by the
stern Puritans was that of Thanks- giving-for a harvest bountiful enough
to ensure survival until spring.
Though they didn't realize it,
these hardy pioneers were trying to conquer a New World in the midst of
some of the worst weather in over 2,000 years, a cold spell that had
begun in the early 15th century and was to continue until around 1850,
known to later climatologists as the "Little Ice Age."
By contrast,
the weather in the first part of this century has been the warmest and
best for world agriculture in over a millennium, and, partly as a
result, the world's population has more than doubled. Since 1940,
however, the temperature of the Northern Hemisphere has been steadily
falling: Having risen about 1.1 degrees C. between 1885 and 1940,
according to one estimation, the temperature has already fallen back
some 0.6 degrees, and shows no signs of reversal.
posted by AlreadyPublished @
9:51 pm
Scientists blame sun for global warming - BBC, Feb 1998
"The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years."
posted by AlreadyPublished @
9:28 pm
