Warmth is no Worry but Cold Kills

Guest opinion by Viv Forbes

It was ice, not global warming, that killed and entombed millions of mammoths and woolly rhinos in Siberia and Alaska.

It was unrelenting cold and then ice, not global warming, that forced the Vikings out of Greenland.

It was bitter winters, not heat waves, that finally defeated the armies of Napoleon and Hitler in Russia.

Russian Winter: “Napoleon’s Retreat from Moscow” Painting by Adolph Northen/Wiki Commons.

George Washington’s army also suffered from an unusually bitter winter at Valley Forge in 1778, in the depths of the Little Ice Age.

Snowy blizzards periodically kill more cattle than heatwaves in Colorado, South Dakota and Texas.

When the Tambora volcano exploded in 1816 it spewed massive volumes of ash and “greenhouse” gases including carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There was no global warming from the greenhouse gases, but the heat-blocking ash-filled atmosphere and a quiet sun caused “the year without a summer”. Failed crops and famine stalked Europe, Asia and America.

It is icebergs, not warm oceans, that sink ships like the Titanic, and spreading sea ice trapped “The Ship of Fools” in Antarctica.

Every major geological era has ended with massive volcanism on land and under the seas. Molten lava heats the seas and eruptions on land fill the atmosphere with dust which blocks incoming solar energy. There is rapid evaporation from the warm seas followed by rapid condensation in the cold dark atmosphere. This process dumps massive snowfalls which become ice sheets on land, starting a new ice age and bringing the extinction of many species.

It is lethal global cooling we need to fear, not life-sustaining global warming.

5 1 vote
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

305 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
J Mac
October 27, 2017 11:36 am

The physical impossibility of any civilization (technological, agrarian, hunter/gatherer, et.al.) arising under mile thick layers of grinding, crushing, continent spanning glacial ice demonstrates emphatically that global warming is beneficial to life on Earth… and global cooling is not.

Mark
Reply to  J Mac
October 27, 2017 8:26 pm

I half expected Crackers to ask for evidence (repeatedly).

J Mac
Reply to  Mark
October 27, 2017 9:07 pm

Or reallyskeptical Griff!

commieBob
October 27, 2017 11:37 am

It was unrelenting cold and then ice, not global warming, that forced the Vikings out of Greenland.

The alarmists don’t like that. As a result, it’s easy to find articles asserting that the Vikings died out in Greenland for other reasons … historical revisionism at its finest.

Tom S
October 27, 2017 11:59 am

Actually the winter of 1777-1778 in Pennsylvania was about average.

http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/history/weather.html

October 27, 2017 1:11 pm

George Washington’s army also suffered from an unusually bitter winter at Valley Forge in 1778, in the depths of the Little Ice Age.

My 5th Great Grandfather John Crow and his brother Dennis were at Valley Forge that winter with Washington.

October 27, 2017 1:18 pm

Well written Viv.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/17/alarm-about-alarmism/comment-page-1/#comment-2553701

[excerpt]

Joe d’Aleo and I had written a paper on Excess Winter Mortality based on other evidence when the major Lancet study was published, so we revised our paper to include that excellent study. Our summary reads:

“Cold weather kills. Throughout history and in modern times, many more people succumb to cold exposure than to hot weather, as evidenced in a wide range of cold and warm climates.

Evidence is provided from a study of 74 million deaths in thirteen cold and warm countries including Thailand and Brazil, and studies of the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, Australia and Canada.

Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures.

These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.”

Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf

Reply to  ALLAN MACRAE
October 28, 2017 8:15 am

Here is the 2015 Lancet article – see Fig. 2 below.

Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study
Dr Antonio Gasparrini et al
The Lancet, Volume 386, No. 9991, p369–375, 25 July 2015

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/abstract

Interpretation
Most of the temperature-related mortality burden was attributable to the contribution of cold. The effect of days of extreme temperature was substantially less than that attributable to milder but non-optimum weather. This evidence has important implications for the planning of public-health interventions to minimise the health consequences of adverse temperatures, and for predictions of future effect in climate-change scenarios.
Figure 2

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1477689138975310&set=a.1012901982120697.1073741826.100002027142240&type=3&theater

Gabro
October 27, 2017 1:50 pm

Napoleon’s army also died from typhus.

Sara
Reply to  Gabro
October 27, 2017 4:49 pm

They also died of starvation and exposure. And you left out cholera.

What was your point, Gabro?

Gabro
Reply to  Sara
October 27, 2017 4:57 pm

Typhus was what weakened Nappy’s army early on, then devastated it even more on the retreat.

Only a month into the campaign, Napoleon had already lost 80,000 soldiers either incapacitated by or dead from typhus.

So it was the heat of summer, making the louse infestation even worse, as well as the cold of winter which did the invasion in.

Tens of thousands of horses also died from lack of clean water and fodder on the way into Russia. Poland was particularly bad, as the retreating Russian army had previously devastated it.

Gabro
Reply to  Sara
October 27, 2017 5:19 pm

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/pandemics/2012/12/napoleon_march_to_russia_in_1812_typhus_spread_by_lice_was_more_powerful.html

So Napoleon and his sick, weary soldiers continued on. Smolensk fell to Napoleon on Aug. 17, and Valutino fell quickly after that. The Russians retreated as the French advanced, drawing Napoleon deeper into Russian territory. Napoleon had split his army into three parts. By Aug. 25, Napoleon had lost 105,000 of his main army of 265,000, leaving just 160,000 soldiers. Within two weeks, typhus had reduced the army to 103,000.

Vicus
Reply to  Sara
October 28, 2017 9:56 am

Gabro, can you cite something other than an entertainment news source?

Gabro
October 27, 2017 2:14 pm

Luckily, Minnesotans are generally prepared.

Early snow there. More global warming:

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/snow-blows-minnesota-1st-winter-storm-season-134503387–abc-news-topstories.html

Alex
October 27, 2017 2:31 pm

Lecture video, “Georg Feulner – The faint young Sun paradox” on LLIONTV Youtube channel explains the theory, popularized by Carl Sagan, that 4 billion years ago our Sun was 30% less luminous, which if all other factors had been the same would likely have meant the Earth would have frozen over. However evidence suggests that the Earth was never totally frozen over so there are various theories as to why not, chief one being that there was up to 100 times higher % carbon dioxide in our atmosphere compared to present and other greenhouse gases.

Looks to me like carbon dioxide has been a main factor which helped nurture life on Earth.

Burt Rutan’s 2011 article, “An Engineer‟s Critique of Global Warming ‘Science’ ” on page 14 has a graph which estimates carbon dioxide levels 600 million years ago were ten times as high as present at over 5000 ppm. How did our Sun’s luminosity at that time compare to present ?
If there hasn’t been run away warming in the past then why would it happen in the next 1000 years ?

Gabro
Reply to  Alex
October 27, 2017 5:00 pm

The sun’s power increases about one percent per 110 million years, so at the start of the Cambrian Period, it was some 5% weaker than now. But CO2 was probably around 7000 ppm then, as opposed to 400 ppm now.

Sara
Reply to  Alex
October 27, 2017 7:30 pm

“If there hasn’t been run away warming in the past then why would it happen in the next 1000 years ?”
Why? Because Algore, midkeymann, et alia, have decreed it. They have proclaimed it and thus it shall be!
How did you not know that, Alex?

October 27, 2017 3:09 pm

These pages would be just that much duller without periodic appearances by Griff the Clown to amuse us all with inane comments and support for the sinking CAGW theory.

Amber
October 27, 2017 4:55 pm

Lets see now Malibu Beach or Antarctica ? Why is it the bulk of the scary global warmies chose to live in a desert climate ? Cold kills and warmth creates hypocrite liberals .

sonofametman
October 27, 2017 5:19 pm

During the LIA harvests failed repeatedly in the 1690’s in Scotland, which combined with other economic and trade woes led to famine. Estimates of 5-15% population loss, with worst hit areas losing 25%. Cold is bad at our latitude. Warm is better.

Noah
October 27, 2017 5:49 pm

100% correct. According to UN statistics, far more people die from cold than heat.

Jon Kassaw
October 27, 2017 7:57 pm

Excellent post based on facts not some Hellwood demon breath who likes to prove he is a fool.

crackers345
October 27, 2017 7:58 pm

I wonder what the author of this post makes of this news. He wont’ reply, I suspect:

“In India, Slight Rise in Temperatures Is Tied to Heat Wave Deaths”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/world/asia/india-heat-deaths-climate.html

Patrick MJD
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:09 pm

From the abstract in the linked study…

“Using a novel probabilistic model…”

Models are not evidence crackers!

crackers345
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 27, 2017 9:34 pm

Pat mjd – models are just
calculations.

all the data comes from models.

Gabro
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 27, 2017 9:42 pm

The output of models is not “data”.

That should be obvious. Data are observations of nature, not model constructs.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 27, 2017 9:43 pm

“crackers345 October 27, 2017 at 9:34 pm

all the data comes from models.”

Data output from a model is not evidence. Y’know, the evidence you keep demanding.

gwan
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:37 pm

Crackpot crackers you are at it again .What a lot of twaddle .The small rise in temperature can not be blamed on CO.2 .We get all this sort of bilge in our news papers in New Zealand .The scientists who contributed to the fourth assessment of the UN IPCC stated that the human fingerprint was not able to be identified .Ben Santer a young lead author ignored this information and wrote that the human signal was real and would cause dangerous warming .The following climate conference embraced this lie without ever doing any checks or asking for other opinions.
If you took the time to research with an open mind you would see what a fraud and hoax has been orchestrated by a very small number of corrupt scientists and politicians greedy for power trying to move the world their way .We dont know where you live but when food starts to become very expensive because of short growing seasons you will be pleased and I guarantee you are against water storage for irrigation and any thing else that grows food for 7 billion people .

Mark
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 10:07 pm

The study claims 0.5 degree celsius increase from 1960 to 2009 in India; during that time, the population almost tripled (440m to 1.2B), so I suspect that most, if not all, of that temperature increase is from land use changes.

HankHenry
October 27, 2017 8:06 pm

Someone needs to calculate the probabilities of a cold spring combined with an early heavy frost. Follow this with an analysis of the effect on corn yields. We take our harvests for granted. A devastating crop failure due to cold is not inconceivable. Read about the year 1859 in Ashland County, Ohio. The EPA’s endangerment finding was incomplete for not putting possibilities of cold summers into the balance. One sure thing that is known about the climate is that large volcanos can produce cold summers.

Reply to  HankHenry
October 27, 2017 9:07 pm

This has been discussed on these pages numerous times.
I myself have made the point you make…an unseasonable cold snap or even one bad and ill-timed storm could be catastrophic.
Few people are aware of how much food there is in the world, in terms of days or supply at any given time to feed the entire world.
The loss of an entire North American harvest would be very bad for the poor people in the world.
Preppers know all of this well…they may overestimate the odds, but others surely underestimate those same odds.
I am sure any such calculation would be pure guesswork…if it ever happens it will be due to unforeseeable events.
How can the odds of something that has never happened be calculated?
I have seen where the odds of a person being killed by an asteroid strike are higher than the odds of being killed by lightning…and yet no one has ever died in an asteroid strike (meteors do not count), and every year people are killed by lightning.
So, you know what they say about statistics…

crackers345
Reply to  HankHenry
October 27, 2017 9:07 pm

what about
hot summers?

J Mac
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:16 pm

what about
continent spanning
glaciers?

Patrick MJD
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:22 pm

UK, 1976, hottest summer on record. I’m still alive and now live in the southern hemisphere in an even hotter country, Australia. Very few people die in winter here. UK, 10’s of thousands largely due to energy (Heat or eat) poverty.

crackers345
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:36 pm

J Mac – what about them?

are they shrinking?

crackers345
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:38 pm

Patrick MJD claimed:
“UK, 1976, hottest summer on record.”

so what?

what is the trend?

warming, that’s what the trend is.

Patrick MJD
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:41 pm

“crackers345 October 27, 2017 at 9:38 pm”

1976 was the hottest UK summer on record. It has not been hotter since. The trend is downwards (For the UK at least).

crackers345
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 9:43 pm

i do[nt think so pattie

30-yr trend of hadcet is
0.1 C per 10 years

Patrick MJD
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 10:24 pm

“crackers345 October 27, 2017 at 9:43 pm”

If that were true then the last UK summer would be warmer than 1976. It wasn’t neither was any summer since 1976.

Mark
Reply to  crackers345
October 27, 2017 11:42 pm

“i do[nt think so pattie
30-yr trend of hadcet is
0.1 C per 10 years”

Crackhead, did you really use a 30 year trend to refute Patrick’s claim that the hottest summer was 41 years ago? Of course Patrick was right.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/ssn_HadCET_mean.txt

gwan
Reply to  crackers345
October 28, 2017 5:59 pm

Cracked Peppers cracker.
The trend is that as the temperatures fail to accelerate the people in charge adjust ie drop the earlier temperatures to make a trend towards warming .They then readjust them down further This is happening all around the world .In the USA in Australia and New Zealand and many other countries .There are many temperature records around the world that show no warming in the last 100 years and the two longest temperature records in the world show that it was warmer in the 1930s and 40s than at present .The world has been taken in by the greatest elaborate fraud ever perpetrated . You are a troll cracker , bring some proof or go back to the ghetto or under your rock .

Toneb
Reply to  crackers345
November 1, 2017 10:22 am

“There are many temperature records around the world that show no warming in the last 100 years and the TWO LONGEST temperature records in the world show that it was warmer in the 1930s and 40s than at present .”
(my caps)

Well here is the world’s longest ….
(And no)

http://clivebest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CET-annual-CO2.png

ren
October 28, 2017 1:04 am

Since the winter polar vortex pattern is formed in the ozone zone, it can be assumed that man has no influence on the air circulation in winter. That means we have no influence on the weather in winter.
https://www.facebook.com/Sunclimate-719393721599910/?ref=bookmarks

October 28, 2017 2:36 am

There were no ice ages.
Global temperature has never changed until now.
That is the message that the climate research community is now telling us:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171026085756.htm

I have been predicting this for a while, and now it is happening. That the establishment will deny ice ages. This has clearly been carefully planned and choreographed. In the coming week the world’s media will be full of this story. The entire discipline of geology and palaeontology are going to go the way of Catalonia. A concerted attempt will be made to remove all geological knowledge from human society.

It’s official. Climate has never changed – until now. And you’d better believe it.

JamesG
October 28, 2017 8:31 am

Always trust your body.

My body tells me cold can hurt; it can actually cause pain.

My body tells me warmth itself cannot cause pain.

It’s not ideology. It’s common sense.

Warmth is good. Cold is bad.

JamesG
October 28, 2017 8:31 am

Always trust your body.

My body tells me cold can hurt; it can actually cause pain.

My body tells me warmth itself cannot cause pain.

It’s not ideology. It’s common sense.

Warmth is good. Cold is bad.

Tom in Florida
Reply to  JamesG
October 29, 2017 1:34 pm

While I agree that warm is better than cold, do not confuse pain of cold with no pain of heat. Too much heat will make you unconscious so you do not feel pain prior to dying. If you have ever seen anyone with heat exhaustion or heat stroke you would understand.

Tim Nicely-Thornogson
October 28, 2017 11:00 am

Since I started reading this blog, I’ve learned a great deal from some well-informed and wise people. This has helped me sneer and harumph at those politicians and their paymasters who are trying to frighten me into ludicrous alarmist panic…. But whenever I come across any mention of the Tambora eruption – just like the Carrington Event – I’m reminded just how precarious life on this planet actually is. And don’t get me started on the Younger Dryas: I know it only lasted circa 1200 years, but even so….

Reply to  Tim Nicely-Thornogson
October 28, 2017 11:59 pm

The Carrington Event was only an event because of the then recently installed telegraph wires and other such long runs of conductors.
While such an event now may well disrupt our lives and cause many deaths due to the collapse of our infrastructures, it is not a threat to life in general.
Likewise a cold summer may cause a lot of people to starve, but not everyone. Some lives will be lost, but not life in general.
Even after huge cataclysms like an asteroid strike, when many life forms are wiped out, others are not, and for the survivors life goes on.
Everyone and everything dies…just not all at once.

October 30, 2017 11:13 am

The following website offers evidence that climate change is caused by wandering magnetic poles:
https;//www,harrytodd.org

Reply to  harrytodd
October 30, 2017 11:15 am
Amber
October 31, 2017 7:53 pm

IPCC final editors shouldn’t leave the country . Funny how silent they have become now that AL Gore has told them the science is settled .
What ever happened to Paccuri ? Beat those sexual harassment allegations yet ?