Gwynne Dyer's list (Citizen, July 11) of extreme weather events omitted a big one.
On May 24, a hailstorm dumped one metre of hail on central Germany followed two days later by an Arctic front that descended onto central Europe. Rivers froze, grapevines exploded, grain crops were destroyed and tree leaves blackened and fell. Birds literally fell from the sky. That would be May 24, 1626, in the depths of the period of global cooling known as the Little Ice Age.
Mr. Dyer seems unaware of some basic facts; that climate change is happening, always has happened and always will happen, and the same goes for extreme weather events. Humans can no more stop climate change than King Canute could stop the tide.
But it's never been this bad before? That's what they said in 1626 and they blamed witches because it had never happened before and such extreme weather couldn't be natural, could it? In fact, it had happened before. On the afternoon of Aug. 3, 1562, a thunderstorm front several hundred kilometres long struck central Europe and raged till midnight, dumping hail, destroying crops, birds and unprotected animals.
The climate was much warmer 1000 years ago during the Medieval Climate Optimum when agriculture expanded, civilizations thrived and populations grew. When the global cooling of the Little Ice Age descended on the world it was characterized by extreme weather, crop failures and famine, plague and war. Populations plummeted by 40 per cent and the cooling is believed to be primarily responsible for the collapse of the Mayan civilization and the Ming Dynasty.
It is established fact that the Medieval Climate Optimum, the Roman Warming and the Minoan Warming were all considerably warmer than now as well as most of the preceding 10,000 years so it's highly unlikely that a warming climate is a worsening climate. "But" you may object, "this time it's different because it's caused by human CO2 emission and climate has never changed this fast before."
No, according to science it's mostly natural and it has changed faster in the past.
The beneficial effects of global warming outweigh the detrimental so there's little to fear, but ill conceived efforts in a misguided attempt to stop climate change will make life very difficult and costly for humanity. It's high time we dispensed with the ideology of climate change and based our actions on actual science and fact.
Art Betke
Prince George
