Don’t blame climate change

During the terrible climate of the 17th century, when weather extremes were much worse than now, witches were often blamed for floods and droughts. Some were burnt at the stake because of them.

Today, the witch finders have been replaced by charlatans such as Al Gore, who blame the less severe weather extremes now on “climate change” – by which they mean the fallacy of dangerous man-made change. Like the old witch finders, their approach is not only nonscientific, but antiscientific.

Houston in Texas, on the US south coast, has been devastated by Hurricane Harvey and so far, about 50 people have lost their lives, mainly because of flooding.

In the past 50 years or so, there has been no increase in extreme weather events and some have actually decreased. Hurricanes are an example. Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones occur naturally in low latitudes. Harvey broke a record 12-year hurricane drought of major hurricanes.

Harvey, which was downgraded to a tropical storm, was severe but by no means exceptional. There have been many worse hurricanes in the last 150 years. Probably the worst was the hurricane that struck Galveston, near Houston, in 1900. It killed more than 6 000 people.

What made Harvey harmful was that it paused for a long time over south Texas rather than moving on, and deposited an awful amount of rain there. This pause seems to have been caused by a chance combination of atmospheric pressures.

As can be expected, the climate alarm industry, which earns colossal amounts of money from scaring the public, blamed Harvey on climate change. There is not a scrap of evidence that rising CO2 had anything to do with Harvey.

Why were weather extremes in the 17th century worse than now? Almost certainly because of global cooling then, caused by low solar activity. The 10th century and 20th century had high solar activity, causing global warming and bringing equable weather with reduced extremes.

This is because global cooling increases temperature differences between the equator and the poles, causing worse weather extremes. Warming reduces the difference, and so reduces the extremes.

CO2 doesn’t come into it.