I originally wrote this column in mid-April 10 years ago, at the tail end of a winter that never seemed to end. Funny how things haven’t changed that much since then, have they? Wasn’t the world supposed to warm up in the meantime? Anyhow – take the dates in that context. Also, looking at what Lake Tahoe has been getting, they might be living what I describe here, for real.
Years like 1816 is long overdue. I flew from Toronto and back recently. Everything in between looked like the high arctic.
1816 had nothing to do with climate. It was entirely the result of the explosion of Mount Tambora. There was an event similar to this in 1991 in the explosion of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. Far from being overdue, they happen on a regular basis. For long term events, what is happening now is mostly the result of the new grand solar minimum.
Or possibly the huge volcano in the South Pacific near Tonga last year.
Much more than that. The new grand solar minimum has been advertising it was on its way through the last four solar cycles. Each one since the early 1970s has been weaker than the ones before. About 2019, there were no sunspots for an entire year. If we are fortunate, it will only be as bad as the Dalton Minimum of the 19th century. If we are unfortunate, it will be as cold and frozen as the Maunder Minimum of the 17th. What is upon us now is far worse than just an enthusiastic volcano. We can expect the new lower world temperatures to go on for about 2 decades if past history is any measure.
Does it really matter the reason?! A year like 1816 is overdue. It could happen any number of ways.
The reason always matters. Otherwise you can’t know why or how anything happens. Making everything that happens because of global warming is the delusion of the klimate kult.
SugarBowl … Norden, CA
https://www.sugarbowl.com/home
YTD – 769” … 64 feet !! of snow
Very much what I allude to here in the column. Maybe all that snow will just stay? Wouldn’t that mess up Greta’s message?
One sentence caught my eye: “Coastal populations would flee inland as massive cities the world over became inundated.” Well, there has been some evidence of populations starting to flee coastal cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles due to “climate change”, though the “inundation” causing it differs from that which our masters would have us believe.
Inundation of crime, filth, and insane policies. CA will soon become the land of GATED communities … surrounded by poverty, despair, and rampant crime. Armed patrols will guard the fences. I still live here … so trust me on this prediction.
Kenji, so California is regressing into Third World status?
Walk the streets of LA or SF … it’s worse than the Brazilian Favela. Tijuana is safer than SF … because they actually have police.
Thanks, Kenji. That in itself is appalling that Tijuana is safer that SF or LA. Those two cities literally have rivers of human feces running through the streets. I find it astonishing that a fully developed state in the US would have degenerated to such a condition. When was the last time that California had a sensible governor? Ronald Reagan?
Dukemajian was OK … but he was the LAST … and his term ended in 1991. We haven’t had a sane Gov. for 32 years. Sad. A LOT of shit has gone down since 1991.
We had Arnold for a term … but all he did was scream at us that “Global Warming is REAL … and caused by man … and must be stopped” … texted from his Hummer. Why did we have Arnold Swartzenegger as Gov? Because Gray Davis was gonna radically increase auto registration fees because we were all sinful drivers against Gaia. So we threw him OUT with a special election. As soon as Schwarzenegger was booted out of office … Jerry Brown doubled our auto registration fees … and all the lemmings living in CA just shrugged and wrote the check.
The snow is guaranteed to melt FAST … and run over the already saturated soils RAPIDLY into rivers that overflow our reservoirs and spill over the Sacramento River delta. This will be called “EXTREME weather” as the sun comes out HOT after a long cold winter and Spring. ANY weather can be termed CAGW now … anything is man’s fault. Ohhhhhhh mommmaaaaa
I don’t know one person who wants winter to be longer and colder.
If I do meet one I’m going to fold them like a lawn chair.
Stephen Guilbeault wants longer and colder winters.
Until he doesn’t. It will take far more carbon based fuel to keep us warm than to travel. The guy is a bearded frog, with about as much trustworthyness. I am sick as hell being ruled by Not Canadians.
I’m sick as hell being ruled.
… by LIARS and FOOLS
Their gettin the results from ice storm.
I know.
I have a dog who loves snow. As I dug myself out from a metre high drift, he was as happy as anything. He thinks I was throwing snow at him for his enjoyment.
My dog’s the same.
10 degrees is too warm for her.
It’s the same in southern Ontario. Snow only just went, trees are only just starting to bud, no tulips or daffodils in the garden yet.
The planet experienced an ice age at over 4000ppm in the atmosphere, making John Tyndall’s test tube experiments meaningless in the big picture, and consequently the Global Warming BS with it’s hothouse planet ending runaway greenhouse effect.
But the smart people pushing this nonsense already know that.
Which is why they laser focus on the rate of CO2 increase. They rely on man’s ignorance or laziness by taking this conjecture and blurring and confounding the current science to downplay what we already know of the history of climate science of the planet.
So you won’t ask the obvious questions.
northernont, I have commented on the lack of intellect of the people, that is the canadian , american and damn near every country in the world. There is no where to go with this. People who do not think, cannot think. Sadly the stupid bastards will kill those who they hate along with themselves.
Yep … murder/suicide seems to be what the mentally ill are doing these days. Take out the whole family … wife and kids … kill ‘em all … before offing themselves. The final act of pure evil.
Nobody knows what causes ice ages. We are in the middle of one now.
Actually, it’s pretty simple. When a single snowflake falls, and doesn’t melt for 75,000 years, along with all its buddies, you get an ice age.
It depends where the snowflake falls and how long it stays. For example, a glacial period can last for 75,000 years and then the snowflake can melt during the interglacial period. Both periods form part of a much longer ice age. Glacial and interglacial periods are strongly affected by Milankovitch cycles and are responsible for the ice over South Saskatchewan. But Ice Ages last millions of years, such as the one we are currently in. It is at least 1 M years old. About 0.4 M years ago most of the ice sheet in Greenland melted. I bet you could have grown bananas in South Saskatchewan, at least for a few thousand years – during an Ice Age.
Bingo Brian. Steve does not seem to get what you said. Why he had to say anything is ……
The likelihood of this scenario becoming reality sometime between now and a few thousand years out is far more probable than the earth melting from man made emissions of plant fertilizer and marine bio-carbonate feedstock (where all that surplus CO2 went that isn’t recycled on the surface, now comprising 8% of the earth’s crust).
I think Brian Zinchuk must have been reading “The Sixth Winter,” a novel I read during a severe winter in about 1995. Good story, based on the idea of albedo, the measure of reflection of the sun’s light and heat off snow. A good snow cover several years in a row would have the effect of lowering global temperatures enough that it finally doesn’t melt at all, and we’re into another ice age.
Actually I had just finished listening to the superb audiobook of World War Z, narrated by a full cast. I really considered expanding this column into a novel, in a similar personal oral history format as that book. But alas, there was never the time. Maybe I still might.
I personally think this was one of the best columns I’ve written over 31 years and ~1700 opinion pieces. But that’s just me.
why do so many people mis-spell “global warming”?
Live long enough you get to see green winters and winters with the snow up to the roof tops and the wires on the hydro and phone poles. . Climate will always be climate and stupid will always be stupid.
I listened to a radio program out of Vancouver the very morning … Talking about the end of fossil fuel and how some native tribes are cashing in on the gas and oil biz on their own and they don’t want the government messing with their money. The one caller basically said screw the Indians, saving the planet is more important. I suggest he tell it to China.
My point is the some of the callers were so in deep belief that it’s only a few short years away that we are all going to fry. Have you heard this before about a dozen times in the past half century? The insanity around this issue is frightening.
There is no climate crises and a warmer planet would be a good thing as I see it. Unless you want an eternal Winnipeg to shovel.
An eternal Winnipeg, terrifying.
I’ve driven around the outskirts on a couple of occasions to make deliveries and I dislike it as it is.
An ice age or more accurately a glacial advance is not likely for several thousand years, unless we have a drastic run of volcanic events or nuclear winter. The Milankovitch factors that strongly influence glacial cycles are all close to steady-state at the present time and are not predicted to tilt towards the glacial outcome for quite a long time. With the addition of greenhouse gases, we may in fact not see another major glacial advance, and perhaps in the future, if the atmosphere discharges its current excess load, society might return to fossil fuel use after possibly moving on from it in the meantime, just to forestall a glacial advance.
I could see that being hypothetically possible in the time frame of 5k to 15k years from now. Before that, I don’t think the climate will change a lot from the current range. It seems likely to me that political trends, whether you or I agree with them or not, will reduce the volume of greenhouse gases; that volume may never return to the pre-1950 levels but may become too low to prevent glacial advances at some point. It’s a problem for our distant descendants to figure out, if they survive other aspects of woke socialism.
I have come to the conclusion that Coats Island is the solution to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming.
Banishment has long been a tool of civilized men.