From the BBC’s very own ‘Civilisation’ series by Kenneth Clark.
Seems that much has been conveniently forgotten since 1969 about the beneficial effects of a nice summer’s day (and it would seem about Christianity and the Church authority as well….keep watching)
There have been times in the history of mankind when the earth becomes warmer or more radioactive. I don’t put this forward as a scientific proposition but the fact remains that 3 or 4 times in history man has made a leap forward that would have been unthinkable under ordinary evolutionary conditions.
One such time was about 3000 BC when quite suddenly civilisation appeared…not only in Egypt and Mesopotamia but in the Indus valley, another was in the late 6th century BC and it was not only the miracle of Ionia and Greece, philosophy, science, art all reaching a point that wasn’t reached for another 2000 years, but also in India, a spiritual enlightenment that has perhaps never been equalled.
And another was round about the year 1100, it seems to have effected the whole world, India, China, Byzantium, but it’s strongest and most dramatic effect was in Western Europe where it was most needed. It was like a Russian spring. In every branch of life, action, philosophy, organisation, technology there was an extraordinary outpouring of energy and an intensification of existence, popes, kings, emperors, bishops, scholars philosophers, saints, they were all larger than life, and incidents of history, our great heroic dramas or symbolic acts that still stir our hearts, the evidence of this heroic energy, this strength, confidence of will and intellect is still standing….[in the Cathedrals.]
Note the Medieval warm period and his assertion it affected the whole world.
Curious how that has all been forgotten by many scientists when cash handouts are in the offing for more research.
“…Curious how that has all been forgotten by many scientists when cash handouts are in the offing for more research…”
Even more curious how any sensible debate about such things has long since been deemed ‘inappropriate’ by the ever-censorious BBC. Understandable, if only because actual events continue to prove the BBC entirely misguided and wrong-headed at every turn; for example, Antarctic ice extent is now reported by many respectable climate news outlets online to be only ‘300 Manhattans’ short of breaking it’s all time record for total extent. The BBC, who will not only NOT report this, continue to focus on the far more ‘on-message’ news that the perfectly normal annual summer melt up at the Pole is somehow (however improbably) another sign of CAGW. You couldn’t make it up.
All very regrettable. I’ve just about stopped watching BBC news now. No good ever seems to come from it, after all. Even ‘smiling’ George Alagiah can’t persuade me they’re even trying to report the facts any more.
Its often the archeologists and historians who throw a spanner in the global warming works, but the bbc never seem to report these little inconveniences – after all, the university of East Anglia has so much more credibility !
To whit – when Viking settlers colonised Greenland and the hint is in the name folks, they found a very fertile country. Excavated settlement graves were dug six feet deep.
When the settlements were abandoned, some 400 years later, graves were found to have been barely scratched in permafrost top soil. Wonder what the hockey stick model made of that fact ?
Watched a great programme a few years back of a Brit geologist standing on a large rock on the edge of the Alberta prairie near the town of Okotots. He was discussing with the presenter how glacial action had moved the rock some 12,000 years ago. He could even identify to within a couple of hundred yards where the rock had originated, Mount Edith Cavell near Jasper in the Rockys.
The presenter, eager to push the global warming agenda breathlessly expounded that the Athabasca glacier was receeding at an alarming rate, and wouldn’t the geologist agree that in two hundred year time it would disappear.
“Oh yes” said the geologist, but went on to add, ” You shouldn’t worry, because where we are standing right now will be under ice a mile thick in five thousand years time. It’s all cyclical you see”
When I was studying for my History A level many years ago I used to be an avid reader of the History books in the school library which mostly dated back to the 50s and 60s. I remember they all made a big deal of the effect of weather changes on history with the Medieval warm period but also the mini ice age in the 18th/19th century. There was a theory that the increase in food prices due to the weather in the early part of the 19th century was just one of many causes of revolutions and general mayhem that took place in Europe in that period. I often wonder if the similar increase in food prices (caused by other things) is a bigger reason for the so called “Arab Spring” rather than a striving for democracy.
One of the reasons for increasing food prices is the “green” requirement to turn food into fuel. Less food available to eat means higher prices, and it’s the world’s poor who suffer the most.
In Astronomy, the Sun’s effect on weather was first postulated two hundred years ago when William Herschel tried to prove the price of grain was inversely correlated with the sunspot number, which was subsequently proven.
They also seem to have forgotten (which a proper historian like Clarke knew) that Edward Gibbon wrote about the warming climate in The decline and fall of the Roman empire in the 18th century. In searching online for the exact quote, I came across this site, which also includes a quote from Thomas Jefferson, of which I was previously unfamiliar, plus the Roman writer Columella, among others.
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/climate-change-winter-and-history/
The BBC is never slow in coming forward to give Julian Assange a sympathetic hearing following the leaking of emails through wikileaks. Something they refer to as “leaks”
Julian Assange: Amnesty calls for Swedish assurances
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19749931
It’s a different story when the bogus climate change research at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit was exposed by leaked emails.
For the BBC that was straightforward theft.
In a hilarious piece of tosh from none other than Richard Black is this:
“The theft and release of e-mails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit provoked a huge furore over the integrity of climate science.”
He goes on to quote Edward Acton, the university’s vice-chancellor, who is “disappointed that the perpetrators had not been caught.”
“The misinformation and conspiracy theories circulating following the publication of the stolen emails – including the theory that the hacker was a disgruntled UEA employee – did real harm to public perceptions about the dangers of climate change.” he said.
He finished with:
“Prof Michael Mann from Penn State University in the US, who collaborated with CRU researchers on many projects and led the development of the noted “hockey stick” graph, said it was important that the criminals be brought to justice.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18885500
So there we go. The wikileaks saga, where Bradley Manning who stole emails and handed them to Jullian Assange can be put down to “leaks”, whereas those who exposed the fraud being perpetrated by the UEA’s CRU are criminals who stole and who should be “brought to justice”
Not far from where I now live in Canada is a superb museum of paleontology , the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tyrrell_Museum_of_Palaeontology
They have a chart there which shows that in the last two and a half million years the earth has experienced 5 ice ages. After each the earth warmed significantly. In this context we are still emerging from the after effects of the last ice age. I suspect we’ll never hear anything like this from the BBC as they have too much of their pension funds invested in the “green industry”
I prefer history books written 60+ years ago, that way at least you’re guaranteed of getting much less political, and especially cultural marxist, spin on the events.
You mean books like these:
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1582138_manchester-library-boss-defends-cull-of-210000-book
I couldn’t better the first comment made by Ergo so I reproduced it here, ‘I found a lot of information in the library that directly contradicted the false propaganda and lies we have been fed since the 60s. I suspect after careful inspection these will be the first to go.’
Most of the best books I buy these days are secondhand, and a high proportion of them are sold off stock from various public libraries. Soon all public sector sources of information will be exclusively Leftist propaganda. Although to be fair I now discover that the Pelican paperback books I bought in my youth were nearly all written by Marxists.
Sad but true. Most history books today make out western christian/jewish culture was/is evil and is the cause of all the trouble in the world.
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