Terry Applegate | On July 4, 2017

Recently, President Trump signed an executive order to rescind many of the previous administration’s global warming policies.  The order was designed in part to roll back regulatory incursions on the energy industry to increase domestic production and make America energy-independent again.

He also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord arguing that doing so will juice the American economy to the tune of $2.5 trillion over ten years.

Given the continuing revelations of how the Obama administration promoted its climate change agenda by misrepresenting scientific data, these were probably not bad moves by Trump.

But the left continues to shriek about the end of the world as we know it, as they ignore all the inconvenient facts.

For example, the global warming pundits’ computer models predicted an increase of 0.2-degree/decade for the early 21^st century while the reality has been closer to 0.05-degree (in other words, no warming, as that number is within the margin of error).

And while the warming fanatics rant that carbon emissions are causing rising temperatures, the fact is that 40 percent of the temperature increase since 1900 happened between 1910 and 1945, a period producing only 10 percent of the increased carbon emissions.

Even more interesting is the weaselly warmers’ absence of historical perspective.  For their message to garner a hearing means that most people don’t know their history.

Climate change isn’t new.  The Earth’s weather has always been changing.  To believe that warming today results from man’s feeble activities, one must disregard the historical record.

Temperatures have fluctuated wildly over historical time, even before men were driving pick-up trucks.  Past episodes of climate change have resulted in migrations, crop failures, mass hunger, wars and witch hunts.

Witch hunts?!?  Yes, David Bressen in his article “Medieval Witch Hunts Influenced by Climate Change,” describes instances of witches being blamed for the “Little Ice Age” in the late 15^th century.

He quotes Bavarian and Swiss chronicles:

1445, in this year was a very strong hail and wind, as never seen before, and it did great damage, […] and so many women, which it’s said to have made the hail and the wind, were burned according to the law.”

Anno 1626 the 27th of May, all the vineyards were totally destroyed by frost […], the same with the precious grain which had already flourished.[…] Everything froze, [something] which had not happened as long as one could remember, causing a big rise in price.[…] As a result, pleading and begging began among the peasants, [who] questioned why the authorities continued to tolerate the witches and sorcerers destruction of the crops. Thus the prince-bishop punished these crimes, and the persecution began in this year…

Christian Pfister, in the Medieval History Journal, discusses how,

In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, continental Europe north  of  the  Alps  was  afflicted  by  a  13-year  cycle  of  frequent  cold  and rainy summers which was the result of a series of volcanic explosions in the tropics. The inclement weather led to recurrent subsistence crises and to multiple floods in the Alps following from extensive glacier advances.

Just as present-day warmers blame drivers of SUVs and coal-burning power plants for climate change, people 500 years ago had their scapegoats too.

According to Pfister,

Hardly  any  of  the  [prince-]archbishops  governed  their  diocese  with  such hardship,  such  sorrows  and  such  extreme  difficulties  as  Johannes [Prince-Archbishop  Johannes  VII  von  Schönenberg, reigned  1581-99].  During the whole period he had to endure a continuous lack of grain, the rigours of climate and crop failure with his subjects. Only two of the nineteen years [from 1581  to  1599]  were  fertile,  the  years  1584  and  1590  […].  Since  everybody thought  that  the  continuous  crop  failure  [emphasis  by  C.P.]  was caused by witches of devilish hate, the whole country stood up for their eradication.

However, historical chronicles do not document witch hunts during the earlier Medieval Warming Period (MWP).

In fact, it is frequently pointed out that the MWP was a prosperous time in European history. The interval was concurrent with Norse explorations of the New World, the founding of Norse settlements in Iceland and Greenland and increased agricultural productivity and crop diversity in northern Europe. Some paleoclimatologists and historians claim that the pleasant conditions of the MWP allowed the settlements in Iceland and Greenland to prosper and Norse explorers to venture to the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland to hunt and fish. They interpret records of bountiful harvests over much of Europe to mean that the region benefited from a series of extended summers and mild winters. As proof of warmer average temperatures in northern Europe, they cite the existence of wheat cultivation and vineyards at latitudes and elevations that were far higher than today.

(https://www.britannica.com/science/medieval-warm-period)

Times of warming bring more plant growth, think food, more salubrious conditions resulting in better health and less early death and consequent general biological and economic well-being.

Consequently, no witch hunts.

But while witches may feel safe today, those who champion the use of the ultimate solar energy – -captured, concentrated, transportable and ready to use –fossil fuels, are maligned, chased from academia, persecuted and hounded from the public square for daring to challenge the prevailing politically correct ideas of the day.

Rather than worry about the wily warmers though, we just might be better served to be afraid of the Creator of the Earth and its weather.  He who has promised us blessings in Leviticus 26:

‘If you follow my decrees and are careful to obey my commands, I will send you rain in its season, and the ground will yield its crops and the trees their fruit. Your threshing will continue until grape harvest and the grape harvest will continue until planting, and you will eat all the food you want and live in safety in your land.

Or, curses in Deuteronomy 28:

…if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee…The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

Terry Applegate

Terry Applegate writes from Utah in the winter and Michigan in the summer. He is CEO of Applegate Insulation, serves on the board for Citizens for Traditional Values, Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers Association and the European Theological Seminary and is married to Val with three children and four grand-children.