Climate change anomalies
NOMALANGA Mkhize’s comments (“Sheer scope of Hurricane Irma puts climate change denialists on backfoot,” DD, September 12) refer.
I also love clean air, clean water, clean oceans, and therefore I agree with the environmentalists – we strive for the same goals.
I draw a line though, between protecting the environment and the climate change scenario; they do not support each other. One cannot use global warming and blame it on manmade pollution – it is dishonest and not scientifically correct, regardless of what “experts” say.
I have a few anomalies I’d like those “experts” to explain scientifically:
● Thousands of years ago the Sahara desert was green, crisscrossed by rivers and dotted by lakes with abundant wildlife. Mount Kilimanjaro was devoid of snow. When the pyramids were built, Egypt was green. So was the Promised Land after the Jews escaped slavery and settled there.
● In the first century AD, the Romans cultivated vast areas of maize in what is today Libya, 100km inland from the sea, where today there is just sand.
● The ramp the Romans built to conquer the fortress of Masada was stabilised with timber from huge indigenous trees.
● In 800AD when the Viking Olaf the Red settled in Greenland, he called it “Green Land”. Why? Because it was green and lush, so much so that the Vikings grew maize and made wine until after the year 1100, when the climate got cold.
● At the same time in southern England the vine was cultivated, producing better wine than France and Italy – which were too cold.
● From roughly 1100 AD to the end of 1400 Europe was gripped by very cold weather. Then it warmed up, only to cool down again in the early 1800s (the Thames River iced up every winter and all sorts of entertainment took place on it).
● From the late 1800s until now there has been a small see-saw of climate changes. In 1929 the snow in my home town of Ravenna, Italy, was a metre deep. In 1961 the snow was 75cm deep and the inland part of the harbour froze. I was there!
Much of the above happened long before the Industrial Revolution, before the atmosphere was poisoned by toxic gasses and the likes. Natural disasters occurred, but because the world’s population was small and there was no mass media, the damage did not make headlines!
Non-aligned scientists say the focus should be on the behaviour of the oceans in relation to natural gases escaping from the seabed; the shifting of the earth’s axis, the Sun’s corona, the continental shift of the land masses and the volcanic action, etc.
These scientists have a right to be heard, just as I have a right to express my opinion. We cannot be censored nor should we be called “right-wing fascists”, when in fact the fascists are the “Greenhouse terrorists”. — Vic Tabanelli, Gonubie