Climate change was alive and well centuries ago

This week, I saw an interesting post at the Daily Sceptic about climate change: ‘In 1660, Self-Denial Was All the Rage to Stop Extreme Weather. Sound Familiar?’

Mediaeval witch hunts

However, extreme reactions to long-term weather changes were in play at least 200 years before that, as David Bressan briefly explained in his 2014 article for the Scientific American, ‘Medieval Witch Hunts Influenced by Climate Change’, which Forbes republished a year later, complete with illustrations.

Excerpts follow, emphases mine:

August 3, 1562 a devastating thunderstorm hit central Europe, damaging buildings, killing animals and destroying crops and vineyards. The havoc caused by this natural disaster was so great, so unprecedented, that soon an unnatural origin for the storm was proposed. More alarming was the impression that it was not the only climatic anomaly at the time …

These difficult times also see the emergence of a new kind of superstition, that witches could “make weather” and steal the milk from the (starving) cows.

So we read in 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…

Bressan says that, although most scholars believed that only God could change the weather, those working the land thought otherwise:

… only in Medieval Europe the idea of a sort of demonic conspiracy, perpetuated by sorcerers and witches against society, became common lore. Frequent storms, long winters and cold summers caused famine and starvation and so the demoralized peasants, demanding for fast actions, forced the authorities to prosecute the supposed culprits. The accusation of weather magic begins to play an important role in contemporary witch trials, even if at first it doesn’t seem that it was taken too serious.

… soon enough witch trials, also concluding with death sentences, became common in Swi[tzerland], Austria, Poland, Germany and France. A peak was reached between 1560-1660, also coinciding with two major cold climatic phases in the Alps between 1550-1560 and 1580-1600. Last witch trials occurred 1715-1722 in Bavaria, in Swiss (1737-1738) and in Germany (1746-1749). The last European witch was executed in the year 1782, soon after (1850) glaciers started to retreat and the climate became warmer …

… with the Age of Enlightenment … the ideological, legislative and social support for witch trials soon eroded and the persecutions stopped.

Sir John Evelyn’s climate worries

Sir John Evelyn (1620 – 1706) lived during a time of extreme weather in Britain.

His diaries rivalled those of his contemporary, Samuel Pepys, although Pepys’s ended up eclipsing Evelyn’s.

Evelyn was a polymath and a member of the group that founded the Royal Society, which still exists as the United Kingdom’s national academy of sciences. He was born into a family that made its fortune from gunpowder production and married into an equally wealthy family. In 1647, he married Mary Browne, the daughter of Sir Richard Browne, the English ambassador in Paris. In 1651, the couple settled in Sir Richard’s house, Sayes Court in Deptford. Evelyn purchased the estate outright in 1753.

Thanks to Evelyn’s family’s acquaintances and the network he made at Balliol College, Oxford, he knew all the necessary people in the various strata of upper society. He was a well-travelled royalist and also deeply religious.

Guy de la Bédoyère is Britain’s expert on Sir John Evelyn. He, too, is from an influential family which goes back several generations. Fans of the old archaelogical programme Time Team will have seen him in 2007 episodes with the presenter Tony Robinson. He is an expert on both Evelyn and Pepys and has even written a book about their mutual correspondence.

In his Daily Sceptic article, he gives us extracts of Evelyn’s diary entries about the weather. It is a good thing that the Met Office didn’t exist then, because Evelyn probably would have been at the head of it, broadcasting hysteria via town criers.

Evelyn lived much of his life at a time of extreme weather:

February 5th 1652: It continued so ill weather as no vessels put to sea.

June 25th 1652: There fell this 25th day (after a drought of near four months) so violent a tempest of hail, rain, wind, thunder and lightning, as no man alive had seen the like in this age: the hail being in some places four and five inches about, broke all the glass about Lond[on]: especially at Deptford, and more at Greenwich, where Sir Thomas Stafford, Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen, affirmed some had the shape of crowns: others the Order of the Garter about them; but these were fancies: it was certainly a very prodigious Storme: …

Six years later, and weather events were still the norm:

March 7th 1658: This had been the severest winter, that man alive had known in England. The crows’ feet were frozen to their prey: islands of ice enclosed both fish and fowl frozen, and some persons in their boats.

June 2nd: An extraordinary storm of hail and rain, cold season as winter, wind northerly near six months.

Guy de la Bédoyère introduces the next diary entries, now from the early years of Charles II’s reign, the post-Cromwell Restoration of the monarchy.

We see that, whether it be too cold — or too warm — weather was and is a problem. A national fast to avoid God’s judgement took place:

Horror of horrors, the winter of 1661-2 was exceptionally warm! Obviously global warming started before any of us realised. Luckily, the Charles II’s Government had a knee-jerk magic response up its sleeve:

January 15th 1662: Was indicted a general fast through the whole nation, and now celebrated at London to avert God’s heavy judgement on this land, there having fallen so great rain without any frost or seasonable cold: and not only in England, but in Sweden and the most northern parts, it being here near as warm as at midsummer some years. The wind also against our fleet which lay at great expenses, for a gale to carry it to Portugal for the new Queen [Catherine of Braganza]; and also to land the garrison we were sending with the Earl of Peterborough at Tangier, now to be put into our hands, as part of the Queen’s portion [her dowry]. This solemn fast was held for the House of Commons, at St Margaret’s: … The effect of this fast appeared, in an immediate change of wind, and season: so as our fleet set sail this very afternoon, having lain wind-bound a month.

Guy de la Bédoyère says:

Sounds familiar? All they had to do was go without food for a bit and bingo! Problems over. This self-denial brought a divine reward in God alleviating the vile and unseasonably warm weather. Sadly, the effects were short-lived. Evelyn was a very religious man. He knew where to point the finger. He thought Charles II’s Restoration Court, which came into being in 1660, was the epicentre of decadence:

February 17th 1662: this night, and the next day fell such a storm of hail, thunder and lightning, as never was seen the like in any man’s memory; especially the tempest of wind, being south-west, which subverted besides huge trees, many houses, innumerable chimneys, among other that of my parlour at Sayes Court [in Deptford], and made such havoc at land and sea, as several perished on both. Diverse lamentable fires were also kindled at this time: so exceedingly was God’s hand against this ungrateful, vicious nation, and court.

What was true then is still true today:

The point here of course is that any extreme weather, any perceived aberration from the norm, will do as evidence for the sins of man and which therefore requires self-flagellating, punitive, remedial action, together with the delusional belief that we have the power to change the climate through our actions. And it wasn’t only precarious winters:

June 12th 1681: my exceeding drowsiness hindered my attention, which I fear proceeded from eating too much, or the dryness of the season and heat, it still continuing so great a drought, as was never known in England, and was said to be universal.

June 19th: the dry weather had now withered everything, and threatened some universal dearth.

Note the frequency with which Evelyn says ‘as was never known’, ‘universal’ and so on, the same language we get on our weather reports today.

Guy de la Bédoyère continues with his own commentary punctuating Evelyn’s diary entries:

It didn’t get any better, even once Charles II was dead (he died in 1685):

July 11th 1689: about three in the afternoon, so great and unusual a storm of thunder, rain and wind suddenly fell, as had not been known in an age: many boats on the Thames were overwhelmed, and such was the impetuosity, as carried up in the waves in pillars and spouts, most dreadful to behold, rooting up trees, ruining some houses, and was indeed no other than a hurricane.

Things went from bad to worse:

January 11th 1690: There was this night, so extraordinary a storm of wind accompanied with snow and sharp weather, as had not been known the like, in almost the memory of any man living… What mischief it has done at sea, where many of our best ships are attending to convey the Queen of Spain, together with a thousand merchants laden for several ports abroad, I almost tremble to think of. This winter has been hitherto, extremely wet, warm and windy: such as went before the death of the usurper Cromwell, which was in a stormy day [September 3rd 1658]: the death of the Queen of Bohemia, and what this portends, time will discover. God Almighty avert the Judgements we deserve, if it be His blessed will.

Goodness me! Why it could be 2023, could it not? Despite there not being a diesel car in sight.

Nor any Industrial Revolution for which to do penance.

We get one of Evelyn’s final entries with these comments:

After another storm in November 1703, Evelyn, by then aged 83 could only ruminate in despair:

I am not able to describe, but submit to the Almighty pleasure of God, with acknowledgement of his justice for our national sins, and my own, who yet have not suffered as I deserved to: every moment, like Job’s messengers, brings the sad tidings of this universal judgement.

If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he’d spent too much time on the BBC website.

There is no question that a couple of episodes like the ones Evelyn describes could be effortlessly transported to modern times for rags like the Guardian and its tireless environment hacks to pounce on. I could have supplied here dozens and dozens of other examples just from his writings alone.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am all for cheaper, more efficient, less polluting ways of improving the way we live. I’ve got solar panels and batteries for crying out loud (monthly direct debit for electricity now £15, thank you very much and installation costs all paid off). But a panic-stricken religious crusade will get us nowhere apart from making a small number of people an astronomical amount of money …

If we rush in, in a state of hysteria, the next thing we’ll discover is that our ‘solutions’ either don’t work at all or make an unstable ever-changing world worse. That’s unlike Charles II’s fast which would only have made everyone famished for a day or two.

Sir John Evelyn was another wealthy Londoner steeped in metropolitan elitism:

And finally, John Evelyn was ahead of his time. In 1661 he produced a tract called Fumifugium, all about getting rid of London’s “presumptuous smoke” with his own version of a Ulez. His solution, just like London’s expanded Ulez, was to move the sources of pollution somewhere else, in Evelyn’s case by relocating London’s filthy industries five to six miles downriver, though no-one ever took any notice.

He had another idea too, which was to demolish “poor and nasty cottages near the City” for being an eyesore opposite the palace at Whitehall, and turn the sites into gardens to improve the atmosphere. As for those whose homes and livelihoods would be ruined, he didn’t give them a thought. But he could afford not to, as he wandered past the mulberry tree in his celebrated gardens at Sayes Court in Deptford.

Typical!

Evelyn died in 1706, at the age of 85, in Mayfair’s Dover Street, which remains fashionable to this day.

Environmentalists. Hmmph!

Why people cannot accept changeable weather and weather extremes as a given rather than an exception is beyond me. As history shows here, we have always been afflicted by weather events, i.e. those outside the norm.

Image credits: Wikipedia