At the dawn of the Great Spring of the first millennium, after the Late Antique Little Ice Age had wrapped up and the sun was coming out of hibernation:

806

 “The day before the Nones of June (4th of June), at the first light of dawn, the sign of the cross appeared in the moon in this fashion:

Annales Sanctae Columbae Senonensis

From:    Monumenta Germaniae Historica

Georg Heinrich Pertz  Volume 1  1826

p. 103

“At dawn on pridie Nones June (June 4th), the sign of the cross appeared in a wonderful way on the moon in this manner:

Annales Sancti Maximini Trevirenensis

From:    Historica Monumenta Germaniae

George Heinrich Pertz  Scriptorum Volume 4  1841

p. 6

…

…

…

“A wonderful crown appeared all around the sun, at the 4th hour of Sunday 3 Kalends September (30th of August).”

Annales Sanctae Columbae Senonensis

From:    Monumenta Germaniae Historica

Georg Heinrich Pertz  Volume 1  1826

p. 103

Annales Sancti Maximini Trevirenensis

From:    Historica Monumenta Germaniae

George Heinrich Pertz  Scriptorum Volume 4  1841

p. 6

“On pridie Nones May (14th of May), the sign of the cross appeared on the moon in a marvellous manner, and in the same year, on 13 Kalends September (20th of August), a Sunday, at the 4th hour, a wonderful crown appeared around the sun.”

Annales Sancti Maximini Trevirensis

From:    Monumenta Germaniae Historica

Georg Heinrich Pertz  Scriptorum Volume 2  1829

p. 212

The conflicting calendar dates are given as is from the sources.

A thousand years later, at the dawn of the Great Spring of the 2^nd millennium, after the Little Ice Age had wrapped up, and glaciers had started melting, with the Thames no longer freezing over, with solar activity now going insane, solar astronomer Richard Carrington made a drawing of a huge sunspot on September 1^st 1859:

As Carrington was mesmerized by this epic activity on the surface of the sun, as he stared through his telescope, a massive kidney-shaped ejection started flaring up, growing out from the giant spot on the sun, and then, poof!  It disappeared.

18 hours later, our poor tiny Earth was fully engulfed in a dense storm of charged particles.

Telegraph lines were zapped.

Some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.

Aurorae were seen in the Caribbean.

Gold miners in the US Rockies woke up and started making breakfast, while being puzzled at still being so tired from the labours of the previous day.

You could read a book at night.

“Those who happened to be out late on Thursday night had an opportunity of witnessing another magnificent display of the auroral lights.  The phenomenon was very similar to the display on Sunday night, though at times the light was, if possible, more brilliant, and the prismatic hues more varied and gorgeous.  The light appeared to cover the whole firmament, apparently like a luminous cloud, through which the stars of the larger magnitude indistinctly shone.  The light was greater than that of the moon at its full, but had an indescribable softness and delicacy that seemed to envelop everything upon which it rested.  Between 12 and 1 o'clock, when the display was at its full brilliancy, the quiet streets of the city resting under this strange light, presented a beautiful as well as singular appearance.”

The Aurora Borealis

Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser

September 3, 1859. p. 2; Column 2.

“I was gold-digging at Rokewood, about four miles from Rokewood township (Victoria).  Myself and two mates looking out of the tent saw a great reflection in the southern heavens at about 7 o'clock p.m., and in about half an hour, a scene of almost unspeakable beauty presented itself, lights of every imaginable color were issuing from the southern heavens, one color fading away only to give place to another if possible more beautiful than the last, the streams mounting to the zenith, but always becoming a rich purple when reaching there, and always curling round, leaving a clear strip of sky, which may be described as four fingers held at arm's length.  The northern side from the zenith was also illuminated with beautiful colors, always curling round at the zenith, but were considered to be merely a reproduction of the southern display, as all colors south and north always corresponded.  It was a sight never to be forgotten, and was considered at the time to be the greatest aurora recorded...  The rationalist and pantheist saw nature in her most exquisite robes, recognising, the divine immanence, immutable law, cause, and effect.  The superstitious and the fanatical had dire forebodings, and thought it a foreshadowing of Armageddon and final dissolution.”

Herbert, Count Frank (October 8, 1909)

The Great Aurora of 1859

The Daily News - Perth, Western Australia - p. 9

‘‘On the night of [September 1] we were high up on the Rocky Mountains sleeping in the open air.  A little after midnight we were awakened by the auroral light, so bright that one could easily read common print.  Some of the party insisted that it was daylight and began the preparation of breakfast.”

Rocky Mountain News

September 17, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘Singular as it may appear, a gentleman actually killed three birds with a gun yesterday morning about 1 o’clock, a circumstance which perhaps never had its like before.  The birds were killed while the beautiful aurora borealis was at its height, and being a very early species – larks – were, no doubt, deceived by the bright appearance of everything, and came forth innocently, supposing it was day.’’

New Orleans Daily Picayune

September 9, 1859

‘‘Yesterday morning at about 10 o’clock, the wires of the electric telegraph were seized with an unaccountable fit of restiveness; they did not altogether refuse to work, but acted irregularly, the adjustment of the instruments altering so frequently that it was almost impossible to get any continuous message through.  Everywhere the instruments were jammed.  The wires continued to display their obstinacy till the evening, when the cause of the mystery was, to some extent, cleared up.  A bright red light in the south-west quarter of the heavens, made many at first suspect that a great fire had broken out somewhere, but the changing hues and forms of light revealed at last to the initiated the Aurora Australis.’’

The Sydney Morning Herald

August 30, 1859, page 4

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

“The French telegraph communications at Paris were greatly affected, and on interrupting the circuit of the conducting wire strong sparks were observed.  The same thing occurred at the same time at all the telegraphic station in France.’’

The Illustrated London News

September 24, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘The wire was then worked for about two hours without the usual batteries, on the auroral current, working better than with the batteries connected.  This is the first instance on record of more than a word or two having been transmitted with the auroral current.’’

Washington Daily National Intelligencer

Tuesday, September 6, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

Boston operator, (to Portland operator) – ‘‘Please cut off your battery entirely from the line for fifteen minutes.’

Portland operator – ‘‘Will do so.  It is now disconnected.’’

Boston – ‘‘Mine is disconnected, and we are working with the auroral current.  How do you receive my writing?’’

Portland – ‘‘Better than with our batteries on.  – Current comes and goes gradually.’’

Boston – ‘‘My current is very strong at times, and we can work better without the batteries, as the Aurora seems to neutralize and augment our batteries alternately, making current too strong at times for our relay magnets.  Suppose we work without batteries while we are affected by this trouble.’’

Portland – ‘‘Very well.  Shall I go ahead with business?’’

Boston – ‘‘Yes.  Go ahead.’’

The Daily Chronicle and Sentinel, Augusta, Georgia

Thursday AM, September 8, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

“Happening to lean towards the sounder, which is against the wall, my forehead grazed a ground-wire which runs down the wall near the sounder.  Immediately, I received a very severe electric shock, which stunned me for an instant.  An old man who was sitting facing me, and but a few feet distant, said that he saw a spark of fire jump from my forehead to the sounder.  The Morse line experienced the same difficulty in working.’’

New York Times

September 5, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘All our exchanges, from the northern coast of the Island of Cuba (from the southern side we have none so late,) come to us with glowing descriptions of the recent Aurora Borealis, which appears to have been as bright in the tropics as in the northern zones, and far more interesting.  The sky was no more, or at least but for a moment, completely lit up from the horizon to the pole, but the light came and went, now here, now there, now in this direction, now in that, and each time varying in outline and brilliancy.  During the three hours which followed it seems to have had almost every latitude and longitude possible in its field, and to have described every possible figure.’’

New Orleans Daily Picayune

September 7, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘At one time the northern portion of the heavens assumed an almost blood red appearance, while here and there long streaks of light shot up from the horizon to the zenith.  These rapidly changed their place and their form until they extended over the greater part of the sky, breaking through the reddish hues and finally covering nearly the whole face of the heavens.’’

New York Herald, August 29, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘Objects at a distance could be more readily and clearly distinguished than when the moon is at its full.  Now vivid arrows of light of most exceeding brilliancy shot up from the whole northern horizon; and, retreating, would again shoot higher and higher, until they covered the whole sky.  This continued to grow darker, first to scarlet, then to crimson, and finally to the blood red like appearance of an immense conflagration.  The whole sky appeared mottled-red, the arrows of fire shooting up from the north, like a terrible bombardment, of which we could see all and hear none, while the stars of greater magnitude shone through like sentry lights ...’’

Correspondence of the Journal of Commerce, Cleveland, Ohio

Washington Daily National Intelligencer

Friday, September 2, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘The light appeared in streams, sometimes of a pure milky whiteness and sometimes of a light crimson.  The white and rose-red waves of light as they swept to and from the corona were beautiful beyond description, and a friend near by us, while looking to the zenith with the whole heavens and earth lighted up at a greater brilliancy than is afforded by the full moon, said that it was like resting beneath the wings of the Almighty.  The crown above, indeed, seemed like a throne of silver, purple and crimson, hung and spread out with curtains or wings of dazzling beauty.  The tremulous motion of moving light, which the inhabitants of the Shetland Islands call ‘‘the merry dancers’’, was less apparent than usual, but in place of it came those full, bright, changing, but more steady streams of light, which gave an intense brilliancy to the whole heavens.”

Washington Daily National Intelligencer

Wednesday, August 31, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘The phenomenon had for 30 minutes a most magnificent appearance, the bands being in complete repose, forming a truncated cone of glory, the apex of which, if projected would have terminated in the zenith.  This brilliant and beautiful magneto-electric storm appeared again about 9.30 p.m.  flickering in brisk coruscations of most beautiful color from the horizon to the zenith, and when reaching the converging point, it produced at one time a beautiful halo, and at another period it had the effect of falling from the apex in showers of nebulous matter like star-dust’.”

The Hobart Town Mercury

Wednesday Morning, September 14, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘Aurora Australis most magnificent at 6:30 p.m., and continued visible until after 2 a.m., displaying itself to about 60 to 70 deg.  First colour above horizon, a light blue with a tint of green blending into second, a very light yellow green, again blending into third, a deep red: the reddy scintillations throughout this coloured light, like opening of a lady’s fan; dark heavy clouds.’’

At Cape Otway, Australia (38.9S, 143.5E)

 (Melbourne Argus, September 1, 1859).

‘‘About 10 [PM] a tremulous flashing up from the east was observed – soon after a bank-like arc of a circle was seen in the North, below which, the appearance was very sombre, resembling a very dark cloud.  From this arc soon shot up columns of light toward the zenith.  This was immediately succeeded by the most lively and brilliant succession of flashes, forcibly reminding one of that prophetic scene described by St. Peter, whose language is – ‘‘Wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.’’ This grand and sublime exhibition was succeeded by another brilliant display of columns of light shooting up again from the arc, with a slight show of the merry dancers.  Soon after this the light gradually faded and ceased to attract much notice’’

Boston Transcript

Saturday September 2, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘The auroral light sometimes is composed of threads like the silken warp of a web; these sometimes become broken, and fall to the earth’’

Providence Daily Post

Rhode Island, September 3, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘But two hours later, when the light, as a whole, was at its greatest brilliancy, the northern heavens were perfectly illuminated, with the exception of a few dim and almost imperceptible white streamers, which passed from the zenith nearly half way down to the northstar (sic).  At that time almost the whole southern heavens were in a livid red flame, brightest still in the southeast and southwest.  Streamers of yellow and orange shot up and met and crossed each other, like the bayonets upon a stack of guns, in the open space between the constellations Aries, Taurus and the Head of Medusa – about 15 degrees south of the zenith.  In this manner – alternating great pillars, rolling cumuli shooting streamers, curdled and wisped and fleecy waves – rapidly changing its hue from red to orange, orange to yellow, and yellow to white, and back in the same order to brilliant red, the magnificent auroral glory continued its grand and inexplicable movements until the light of morning overpowered to radiance and it was lost in the beams of the rising sun.’’

New York Times

September 3, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

‘‘Early in the evening from the east there came a faint light, like that preceding the rising moon, while in the west a delicate crimson seemed to be thrown upwards, as if from the sun, long since gone down. 

Later, these strange fires overran the entire heavens – now separating into streamers, gathered at the zenith, and forming a glorious canopy – then spreading evenly like a vapour, shedding on all things a soft radiance; again, across the sky waves of light would flit, like the almost undistinguishable ripple produced by the faintest breeze upon the quiet surface of an inland lake; a pale green would now cover half the firmament from the east, while rich crimson met it from the west – then the ruddy light would concentrate itself at the zenith, while beneath it fell in folds of beauty the mild purple and green.

To the east and to the west lay huge fields of luminous clouds, tinted with a bright rosy flush, wholly unlike that produced by the rising sun and if possible even more beautiful.

Soon, as Everett has beautifully spoken of a somewhat similar scene, the hands of angels shifted the glorious scenery of the heavens.  The mass of apparent, red cloud to the east moved away southward, gradually failing, while the corresponding red clouds on the west seemed to sink into a chaos of dark cloud that, with a fringe of blue, skirted the western horizon.  Sheets of the same white luminous cloud again illuminated the sky, producing about the same amount of light as the full moon, and the night became almost as the day.”

Cincinnati Daily Commercial

September 1, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

“A Columbus Ohio, 16-year-old girl ‘‘of considerable intelligence and prepossessing appearance’’, who had been taken into custody by the Sheriff of Ottawa County was particularly effected by the aurora.  ‘‘Her agitated state necessitated that she be moved to the lunatic asylum.

The conclusion drawn from this, and no doubt her utterances, implied that she had become deranged from viewing the aurora borealis a short time ago.  She was convinced that all of this spectacular auroral activity meant that the world was soon to come to an end.’’

Harpers Weekly

October 8, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

...O ye wonderful shapes

With your streamers of light

Blazing out o’er the earth

From your ramparts of night;

With your strange hazy hues;

With your swift-changing forms,

Light the red-lightning rush

Of fierce tropic storms –

O ye terrible shapes!

Yet through all still appear

Yonder love-speaking eyes

Of the far starry sphere;

So ‘mid terror, we still

Can a symbol behold

Of the Heavenly Love

In the flame o’er us rolled;

Evermore, evermore

Though in mantles of fire,

There are pitying smiles

From our God and our Sire –

O Lights of the North!  As in eons ago,

Not in vain from your home do ye over us glow!

William Ross Wallace

The East Floridian

September 15, 1859

Sourced from Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859

James Lauer Green  et. al.

Then, roughly one 11-year solar cycle after the September 1859 solar flare:

Crevasse on the Mississippi River at Bonnet Carret, 1871

A breach of a 12-foot high levee on the Mississippi

In 1871, $1 US was worth the equivalent of $25 today; there were 1.2 billion people on earth, with 38 million in the US, 1.5 million in New York, 3.5 million in Canada, 32 million in the UK, 450 million in China, 250 million in India, 137 million in continental Europe, and 100 million in Africa.

Between 1870 and 1872, between 2 and 4 million Persians perished by famine, out of a population of roughly 8-10 million.

“January

1^st-10^th.  Terrific gales on the entire Atlantic.  On the British coast over thirty persons were drowned.  In the Gulf Stream the winds were terrific.  Snow, hail, sleet, rain, thunder and lightning prevailed.  One captain styled it "A marine hell."

7. Great fire in Plainfield, N. J.  Loss $200,000.

8.  The water famine begins in Jersey City, N. J. 

8.  Alarming spread of hoof and mouth disease in New England. 

10.  Great and damaging floods in Washington Territory.  Near Monterey, Cal., a waterspout destroyed bridges, cattle, lumber, etc.  An eruption of Ceburrucco volcano in Mexico destroyed three plantations and the villages of Apuarathan, Ithaus and Jaba. 

10-18.  The severest floods occurred ever known on the Isthmus of Darien (Panama).  All railway transit was stopped, and the losses were immense. 

5-12.  A water famine in Jersey City for eight days, causing a loss of $100,000 per day, by suspension of manufacturing business. 

14-15.  The steamer General Outram foundered by a cyclone in the Indian ocean and 53 lives were lost. 

14-16.  Heavy and disastrous snow-storm over the Western States.  In Ontario the storm raged three days with “a fury that had no parallel.”

14.  Steamer T. L. McGill exploded her boilers on the Mississippi in a great gale, and 58 persons perished.

15.  At Oaxaca, Mexico, a violent and disastrous earthquake occurred, but no lives were lost. 

18.  At Laconia and Lake Village, N. H., seven earthquake shocks were felt. 

18-24.  The Panama floods nearly ended, having lasted fourteen days.  The village of Metachin was completely overflowed; only the tops of the houses seen. 

21.  In two weeks contagious diseases in New York city caused the death of 537 persons.

20-29.  All the North of Spain inundated by rain and floods.  Immense destruction of property. 

26.  A great snow storm extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic; the severest in New York “known for many years.” Destructive fires in New York.  Applications for relief by the poor were 30 percent greater than in 1870, so cold and severe was the season. 

31.  A furious torrent of rain cause the dykes to overflow at the city of Smyrna.  Many lives and much property destroyed.

31.  A terrible scourge begins in Buenos-Ayres, caused by the long continued drought.  Gales and destructive floods in Australia and New Zealand.  Violent eruption at Vesuvius. 

February

5.  An earthquake and tidal wave at Minititlan, Mexico. 

11.  Awful gales on the British coast caused a loss of one hundred vessels and as many lives.  Twenty vessels and 40 persons lost in Bridlington Bay.  The Pacific, of Liverpool, was wrecked, and 26 souls perished. 

10-11.  A French transport foundered in the Bay of Biscay, and 98 persons were drowned. 

12.  The Danube burst its banks, and the city of Vienna went under water. 

17.  In Victoria, Cape of Good Hope, by a sudden and extraordinary water spout, a village was torn from its place, and 110 men, women, and children were drowned in the torrent of waters.  Thirty houses were swept away. 

17.  A tornado in Arkansas and Mississippi tore in pieces two towns; and a hurricane at Norfolk and Richmond, Va., and at New Orleans and Chicago, destroyed $200,000. 

18.  Great earthquake at Sandwich Islands, the severest ever known there.  All walls were broken or fell down, the valleys filled with earth, and great rocks from the mountains, the ground cleft open in a thousand places, and the accompanying electric light seen in the eastern sky.  Little, if any, loss of life. 

20 — March 4.  Violent earthquakes in Cuba and Hayti.  On the 22^nd, seven Haytien volcanoes burst into furious eruption. 

20-21.  Unparalleled tropical storm at San Francisco, Torrents of rain, with wind, thunder and lightning, occurred all night.  No thunder and lightning storm had occurred there for 20 years.  The barometer fell lower than ever before witnessed.  Four killed and others injured.  Property damaged $100,000. 

23.  Great rains and destructive floods in Oregon. 

23.  Tornado at Baxter Spa, Kansas, and hurricane at Jefferson City, Mo., and in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.  A great area of country was swept, seven cities and towns were devastated, and the property destroyed was over $100,000.  At Cleveland, Ohio, houses were demolished. 

March

1. A tidal wave swept through Long Island Sound. 

2. Severe earthquake shock at Eureka, Cal., lasting a minute; chimneys toppled over and the walls of buildings cracked. 

2.  The volcano Ruwang on Tagulaudang Island, in the Malay Archipelago, broke forth in eruption; the sea rose in a tidal wave 125 feet, and rushed on the land sweeping everything before it.  But three houses left on the island.  Four hundred and sixteen persons lost their lives. 

2.  In Central Illinois a farmer was killed by lightning while sowing grass seed in his field. 

1-7.  During this first week two fire balls in succession, several feet in diameter, fell on the deck of a vessel in latitude 40°, longitude 62° [nowhere near the Malay Archipelago – this is off the eastern seaboard of north America].  They were accompanied with a crash and peal like thunder, and burst with a crimson flame that illuminated all the sea around. 

2.  Extraordinary rains began in Peru, resulting in floods that inundated the whole land between the Andes and the sea for several weeks.  Eight or ten towns were destroyed, more than 1,000 houses swept away, and seven thousand people made homeless and paupers.  Loss estimated at $7,000,000.  The calamity was considered as great as the earthquake of 1868, and was the greatest flood that ever occurred in Peru. 

7.  South Nevada visited by the severest rains and gales experienced for years. 

7.  An earthquake at Hawaii, tore up the ground, shattered houses, and prostrated chimneys. 

8.  A terrible tornado swept everything before it from Helena, Arkansas, to Fayette, Illinois.  At East St. Louis, six depots and sixty houses were demolished, one hundred freight cars overturned, a thirty-ton locomotive was carried forty feet into the river, shingle nails and parasol braces were driven through one inch boards, seven persons were killed, and over fifty more or less injured.  Fayette, Illinois, was torn in pieces, and Memphis, Tennessee, had a violent and destructive wind.  At St.  Louis alone, the damage was put at $500,000. 

9.  A furious gale swept the entire British coast.  In three vessels twenty men went down into the sea. 

9.  Mount Rainier, in Washington territory, which was never a volcano (yes, it was, and is), became heated at the top, dissolving snow, throwing off steam and smoke, giving signs of eruption. 

10.  An electric storm at Arequipa, Peru, followed by earthquake shocks. 

11.  A dreadful rain storm, accompanied by fierce thunder and lightning, deluged Mobile, Alabama, and one-half of the city was inundated, causing great damage.  Fire in New York.  Loss $100,000.

14.  The Europa's disaster; the captain, the first and third officers drowned in a gale.  A tornado at St. Clair county, Illinois, demolished twenty farm houses, blowing some of them six hundred feet away.  Several persons killed, Loss $50,000.  The terrible Ruwang volcano (which had broke out on March 2^nd in the Malay Archipelago), destroyed by flame and lava nearly all the cultivable land on the island.  All who survived the shock were in famine and distress. 

15.  Memphis visited by a destructive gale. 

17.  Violent gale on the British coast. 

18.  Earthquake in all the north of England.  A water spout, five hundred feet high, and sixty feet in diameter seen off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

18-20.  Twenty-five bridges swept off by flood in Morgan county, Illinois. 

21.  Disastrous flood at Hallowell, Maine. 

23.  Pittsburgh, Pa., had a $100,000 conflagration. 

23.  A strong earthquake shock all over the British Isles. 

25.  A meteor, so brilliant as to cast a shadow, seen at New York.  On the same day, a fire destroys $250,000 worth of property in the city. 

25.  A cyclone, that prostrated everything in its tracks at Aukland, Australia.  The severest earthquake felt since 1851, in Valparaiso and all Chile — prostrating persons, and cracking and shattering all walls; also a new volcano in the sea near Smith's Island, North Pacific. 

26. The damaging Bonnet Carre crevasse begins.

29.  All the business portion of Truckee, on the North Pacific Railway consumed; one hundred and twenty houses reduced to ashes. 

30.  In St. Joaquin Valley, Cal., a drought, so severe as to cause thousands of cattle to die of thirst. 

31.  Magnificent aurora; a great cloud of blood red in the northeast sky; the sight "to be remembered a lifetime".

During the month a sun spot of 2,300,000 square miles area was visible. 

We notice eight other persons drowned, eight killed and seven injured by explosions, five burnt to death, twenty injured on railways, and four whites killed by Patagonians, who ate one of the murdered victims.  It was the most disastrous quarter for vessels of the United States known since 1867.  Since January 1, there were 125 vessels wrecked, involving a total loss of $6,800,000. 

April

1.  Severe shock of earthquake at Melbourne, Australia. 

2.  Two sharp earthquake shocks at San Francisco, Cal. 

2.  Tornado at Dubuque, Iowa, and hurricane at Omaha, Nebraska. 

3.  Vesuvius in violent eruption since March 27. 

8.  Thermometer in Albany, N. Y., 100° in the shade.  Extraordinary weather for two days. 

9.  Destructive tornadoes in Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri.

9.  Thermometer 100° in the shade.  An aurora so brilliant and powerful as to suspend the operations of the telegraph in all directions from New York.

10.  Hurricane at St.  Joseph, Mo. 

11.  Severest rain and wind ever known at Pottsville, Pa., and the damage estimated by thousands. 

13.  Extraordinary auroral display of red, green, and white colors, with a broad white belt spanning the sky overhead. 

14.  Terrific hail storm at Jackson, Miss.; stones fell six inches in circumference, 4,000 lights broken, and roofs pierced. 

14.  To date since Jan. 1, six vessels and 45 fishermen were lost on the Banks. 

15.  Forest fires at Clinton and Bolton, Mass., consume everything over 200 acres.  At Newfield, N. J., 48 square miles of forest are burnt over, with barns, fences, etc. 

15.  Remarkable mirage witnessed at Rochester, N. Y. 

15.  Earthquake in Scotland; ceilings cracked and houses sunk a foot. 

18.  Wind storm at Leavenworth, Kansas, destroyed many thousand dollars worth of property. 

24.  Destructive hail storm at New Orleans. 

14-26.  One sixth of the Mississippi river pouring through the Bonnet Carre crevasse, now 1200 feet wide and 18 feet deep.  A tract of country for forty miles is under water, a dozen miles of railway swept off, plantations inundated, and the damage put at $300,000. 

25.  At this date the loss of life by the great floods in Peru is great, and $15,000,000 it is said will not cover the damage by the water. 

27. Violent and destructive hail at Detroit, Mich. 

28.  A yellow fever plague at Buenos Ayres destroys in five months 26,000 persons. 

28.  The flooding of New Orleans begins. 

29.  Destructive hail storm at Jacksonville, Miss. 

29.  A breach in the Erie canal, near Rochester, that cost a million dollars to repair. 

30.  Floods in Meridian, Miss., very damaging. 

30.  It is announced in Vienna that Verovitica, a large town in Sclavonia, is destroyed by fire, that 400 houses are consumed, 4.000 people houseless and in want, and the loss is $2,000,000. 

May

1.  The Island Camiquin, one of the Philippines, yielding one tenth of the Manilla hemp of the world, thickly inhabited by 26,000 people, was torn in pieces by volcano and earthquake.  A crater opened 1500 feet wide — there was a rain of fire — all the forest was set ablaze — 200 persons destroyed, and the rest fled from the island.  "It was the most terrible eruption that ever took place in the Philippian group."

1.  Great floods at New South Wales, nearly ruining the wheat crop — “loss immense”.

2.  20,000 hogsheads of sugar lost by the Louisiana flood.  Hurricane over all Louisiana; “the oldest river-men say they never witnessed such a storm”.  Hundreds of houses at Baton Rouge blown down, and scores of boats damaged or sunk.

2-4.  Violent and destructive wind storm over all the Northwestern States. 

3.  Awful hurricane at Fiji Islands; a brig went down with all on board; many others wrecked. 

5.  Freshet (high-river) at Albany N. Y., with all the lower streets submerged.

5.  Great landslide at Silver Hill, Bradford, N. H.  Several acres covered with rock, earth and debris. 

7.  Portage Lake, four miles long and two and a half miles wide, broke its bed and became joined to Lake Michigan. 

10.  Tornado at Bridgeport, Ill.; a woman killed. 

16.  Tornado at Chicago; buildings fell and men killed. 

19.  Tornado in New Kent county, Va., that swept all movable things before it, hail fell nine inches in depth, and human beings were knocked senseless by it; crops were totally ruined. 

19.  Forest fires rage in Ulster and Sullivan counties, N. Y., and in Burlington county, N.  J.

21, Earthquake in all Ontario, Canada. 

21.  An aerolite weighing twelve pounds fell at Searsmont, Me. 

21.  Floods in Antioquia, New Grenada, cause losses that amount to more than a million of dollars. 

18-23.  In South New Jersey a forest fire raged over forty thousand acres of land, ruining timber valued at $800,000. 

18-23.  Forest fires in New Hampshire and on Long Island run over one hundred square miles of woods and fields. 

24.  Fires in the Shandakin Mountains, N. Y., burn over ten thousand acres of woodland.  Loss $300,000. 

20-25.  The city of Rhio, on the island of Bintang, the largest of the group of Rhio Islands, was visited by a convulsion that devastated the place, and caused the loss of 400 lives.

26.  The strange horse epidemic appears in New York city.

24-26.  The Shawangunk Mountain fires and the forest fires of Sullivan, Delaware, Ulster, Orange, and other counties run over thousands of acres, and the loss by them is estimated to be $500,000.

24-26.  Terrible forest fires around Ottawa, Ont., with loss of $200,000 in timber.  In Sussex county, N.  J., and in Pike, Wayne, Monroe and Carbon counties, Pa., the loss is $300,000. 

27.  The South Jersey fires now said to have run over 70,000 acres of forest land. 

27.  Forest fire at Waverly and Lakeland, L. I., burnt over 1000 acres with houses and barns. 

28.  The potato bug appears in Wisconsin. 

26-28.  In Essex, Clinton, Franklin and St. Lawrence counties, N. Y., nearly 200 square miles of woods were burnt over, with the destruction of houses, barns, fences, etc. 

29.  Remarkable mirage seen at the river Firth, Scotland. 

30.  No rain in New York since May 5.  Intense heat, with terrible storms everywhere. 

30.  Terrific hail storms on all the Upper Hudson, N. Y.  — the stones killed birds, broke glass, and destroyed crops. 

31.  In addition:  the flood stood over thousands of acres in Louisiana this month; 50 persons in the United States lost their lives in some calamitous manner.  Of fires, Reading, Pa., had a $100,000 fire; Cincinnati, 0., $200,000; Honesdale, Pa., $250,000; Bridgeport, Conn., $100,000; Folsom, Cal., $125.000; and Mobile, Ala., a $300,000 conflagration.  By the sudden movement of an iceberg, near Newfoundland, 23 persons perished in the sea.  The death-toll, by yellow fever at Buenos Ayres, since the start of the year, runs to about 26,000 persons; while perhaps millions have been devoured by famine and plague in Persia.

June

1.  Unexampled floods in New South Wales.  The Emma Patterson wrecked in a gale and six men drowned. 

2.  Extraordinary sulphurous cyclone near Mason, Illinois emitting an odor like burning sulphur a mile from its track.  It was an inky-hued, revolving cloud, flashing and hissing, with electrical discharges like the sound of musketry; 80 feet in width, and progressing three miles, plowing the earth to a depth of six inches, burning with intense heat everything in its path. 

2-6.  A fearful storm of five days on the Gulf.  All lower Galveston three feet under water; buildings and two miles of railroad track washed away; steamers and vessels are wrecked; whole crews perished.  Houston badly damaged.  Wind 39 miles per hour. 

4.  Great flood in New Orleans. 

5.  Unusually high and injurious tide on the Massachusetts coast. 

4-15.  For two weeks half the city of New Orleans under three and five feet of water.  The damage was put at half a million dollars, but “could not be estimated”. Twenty five thousand people suffered. 

8. At Zarate in the Argentine Republic, during a frightful hurricane, real stones as large as goose eggs fell in a great shower, killing human beings, animals and birds, and causing much havoc. 

8.  Iowa City had the most fearful storm “ever witnessed in this section”.  A furious forty minutes' burst of wind, rain and hail destroyed property valued at thousands.  At Chatawa, La., a tornado occurred. 

11.  Destructive tornado at Holden, Paxton, Oakdale, West Boylston and Wenham, Mass. 

11.  Immense fires cover scores of square miles of forest in Maine. 

13.  Awful storms on the coast and inland at Labrador, and great destruction to property; fifty schooners swept out to sea and 300 men said to be lost.  On the British coast, a steamer and 10 lives lost.  At Avoch, on the coast of Scotland, a boat capsized, and eight men and six women drowned. 

14.  A storm of unparalleled violence devastated Oregon, and the telegraph wires charged with fire.  Poughkeepsie, N. Y., visited by a destructive hail storm. 

15-22.  The city of Portland, Oregon, and an entire railway half overflown by a flood in the Columbia river.  “Great damage”.

16.  Enormous waterspout off Cape Cod, and an aurora that covered the entire heavens.  

16.  A terrible tornado that swept away Eldorado, Kansas, demolishing 100 houses and blowing a horse and wagon, into the air.  “No such storm ever seen on the plain”. Loss $100,000. 

18.  Tornado at Scranton, Iowa; one killed, seven hurt, and a house carried ten rods (165 feet).  So terrible were the electrical disturbances in and around Edinburgh, Scotland, today that 20 persons were killed by lightning, and an equal number of buildings struck and consumed.  There were floods and hail, and at Shields the lightning discharged a loaded cannon — “never done before”.

19.  Earthquake at Staten Island, Long Island and New Jersey; houses rocked, bells rung, and dizziness produced.  It lasted five minutes. 

19.  Singular sinking of a canal bottom in Morris, N. J,, probably by the earthquake.  The water for a mile and a half suddenly disappeared in great holes in and beside the canal.  $20,000 damage done. 

20.  A violent hurricane destroys the nutmeg and mace crop on the Bandana Islands, and the damage estimated at two million dollars. 

21.  Chimneys thrown down by an earthquake at Calistoga, Cal.  Steamship Collingwood, to Bombay, is reported foundered, and 30 souls went down with her. 

21.  The town of Damak, on the north coast of Java, totally destroyed by fire. 

23.  A terrific thunder-storm inflicted $50,000 damage on Chicago, and one, “the severest thunder-storm ever known here”, destroyed the crops in two towns in St.  Joseph county, Mich.  Ice nine inches square, and pieces a foot long fell. 

23-30.  The Rhine overflows Switzerland to a fearful extent; whole towns under water; damage: “millions”.

26.  An unseasonable snow-storm in Shields, Eng.

27.  Deaths in London from small pox weekly 240.  “No mortality equal to it during this century.”

28.  In Centreville, N. Y., a black and red, rolling, cyclonic cloud or wind carried a barn roof half a mile, carried apple trees into the air as far as one could see, flashed electric fire, rolling over and over with a frightful roar, and presenting a remarkable phenomenon.  On the same day a gigantic column of fire and cloud moved over the earth near Springfield, Mo., prostrating and rending everything in its way with frightful fury.  “It was the most terribly grand spectacle ever beheld.”  “Scarcely in the memory of man have tornadoes been more frequent or more fierce, or floods more destructive”, said the New York Times. 

July

1.  The London Times announces that at a recent whirlwind or cyclone in India, men, herds, houses and trees were carried high into the air and dashed down to the earth a mile or two away, every living thing being instantly killed. 

3.  Four days' forest fires ruin everything within thirty miles around Port Elgin, Ont., and the woods all in flame in the Ottawa region. 

3.  Hurricane at Wheeling, W. Va., causes great damages. 

4-5.  At Kohl, Japan, a typhoon raised the sea four feet above the highest water, wrecked the Pride of the Thames and drowned four of her men, destroyed eight vessels and 60O small boats, caused the loss of 400 lives of natives, and the destruction of $500,000 worth of property. 

5.  Frightful rain and wind in Nebraska.  It lifted a train from the track and dashed it 20 feet away, causing the death of two, and injury of 15 passengers.  Horrible waterspout over three towns in Nevada, washing down rocks upon the railway, and throwing off a freight train. 

5-7.  Awful thunder, lightning, and hail in Scotland, with heavy damaging floods.  “At Lindean Station the fall of hail was so heavy and the darkness so great that the engine could not be seen from the guard's van.”

6.  Great destruction caused by a tropical storm at Moundsville, Va., and at Portsmouth. 

7.  Alarming freshets (high-rivers) on four rivers in England; “loss heavy”. Unusually severe thunder and lightning around London, and men, houses and churches destroyed. 

8.  The Colorado potato bug invades Michigan and Western Ontario. 

8.  Tidal wave on Lake Superior, cause unknown, and the first occurrence of the kind.  At Duluth the water was forced into the canal for half an hour at the speed of a horse, and the lake rose and fell in tide waves all the morning. 

9.  Tornado at North Bend, Neb., and hail four inches in diameter.  A hurricane of fifteen minutes at Elmira, N. Y., with ruin of everything in its track.  Terrific wind and rain at Dayton, 0., and vicinity, without a precedent in irresistible power.  54 buildings were demolished or damaged, 11 persons were killed and 50 wounded, while the damage was estimated at $1,000,000.  A mirage seen at Gloucester, Mass.; bays, headlands, ships and cities visible in the air.  Tornado at Syracuse, N. Y.; loss $100,000.

9.  At Ashton, England, a pond, around which 40 persons stood fishing, was struck by lightning.  It appeared like a broad ring of liquid fire around all the margin, and then suddenly contracted itself into a narrow compass in the centre of the water and disappeared, leaving the pond violently agitated, some of the anglers were thrown down insensible. 

12-14.  The Labrador calamity fully reported.  Twenty-three families became extinct, twenty-three dwelling houses were destroyed, ninety-three men, women and children perished, three hundred and twenty-five fishing smacks were lost, and forty stores and $1,500,000 worth dried fish were ruined. 

13.  St.  Joseph, Mo., visited by a tornado; houses were unroofed and blown flat in every part of the city, five persons killed, many injured, and the damage was put at $200,000. 

14.  Hail as large as hen's eggs fell at Rutland, Vt. 

16.  Thermometer at Denver, Colorado, 105° in the shade.  Cholera ravages Russia, and appears in Poland. 

16.  Hurricane over New York city.  Tornado at Louisville, Ky.  Desolating hail-storm at Peterborough, N.  H.  Fearful storm, with great damage, at Vineland, N. J.  The most destructive thunder, lightning, wind and rain storm ever known in Huron county, Ohio, entailing a loss of $100,000.  Destructive hail storm over five towns in Northwestern Massachusetts, “the severest ever seen there.”  In Sullivan county, N. Y., and Wayne and Pike counties, Pa., sleighs were run over the hail it was so deep.  $400,000 would not cover today's damages. 

17.  A hundred poor families burnt out at South Boston, Mass., crops, houses, barns, etc., consumed by woods fires at Sutton, Canada; a thunder-bolt from a clear sky fell on a farmer in Norwalk, Ohio, and killed him; and the Nahmor said to have foundered in the Indian Ocean whereby 30 persons lost their lives. 

18.  Great winds and rains at Augusta, La., destroyed property amounting to $50,000, and a storm at Memphis “surpassing in fury and destructiveness everything known for years”, wrecked a railway train, killed an engineer, and wounded 15 persons. 

19.  Earthquake at Wolfboro, N. H., the most violent ever known there; eight shocks occurred, twenty chimneys were thrown down and as many more damaged.  The shock was felt all through New England. 

22.  The most remarkable aurora ever witnessed observed at Springfield, Mass., and elsewhere. 

22.  A water-spout in Nevada destroyed a railway track. 

23.  Enormous forest fires in the Cascade Mountains, Cal.  First train for three months over the Jackson Railroad, Miss., floods having swept the road all away for 13 miles. 

25.  Heart rending account of the famine in Persia reach the civilized world. 

25.  The greatest storm at Long Branch known for 20 years. 

26.  St. Helena Island nearly ruined and made uninhabitable by unprecedented rain and flood; "the greatest ever known;" 500 people washed out of their houses, and the damage was irreparable. 

27.  Three children consumed in the extensive forest fires at New Lowell, Ont. 

30.  A tidal wave, the first ever seen on Lake Winnipisseogee, N.  H., full five feet high. 

30.  Lightning struck a shed in Birmingham, Eng., where 20 school children had taken refuge, and one was killed and nine badly injured. 

31. Hail fell so deep at Albion, Wis., that sleighs were run over it; stones two or three inches in diameter.  There was ruin of glass, corn, tobacco, etc., to the amount of $250,000. 

31.  Persia, is reported to have lost fully one-third of her 10,000,000 population by famines, plague, flood, war, etc; a condition of things that has “no rival in horror since the plague of A. D. 1299”. 

August

1.  The cholera appears in England and France. 

1.  Terrible floods in Switzerland.  Great hail, destroying crops and fruit at Walla Walla, Oregon.  Whole towns submerged. 

2.  Unusual fall of rain in the Districts of Tientsin, China (near Beijing), for a week past.  On the 4th the Grand Canal and Peiho river burst their banks.  By the 6th, 8th, the town, having a population of 500,000, was completely inundated; hundreds of horses, thousands of cattle, and 3,000 soldiers perished in the waters.  The deluge continued, causing terrible suffering. 

3.  An American brig wrecked in a gale on the Pacific, and twelve persons died of starvation. 

7.  A tornado at Winneconne, Wis., tore down half the houses, prostrated thirty chimneys; churches, lumber, and grain ruined; a steamboat capsized, two men killed, and 50,000,000 feet of logs let loose. 

8.  The most terrible thunder and lightning storm at Richmond, Va., known for years.  Nitro-glycerine in the Hoosac tunnel exploded by lightning, and three men killed.  Damaging floods in Northern Vermont, with hail and hurricane over Northern New York and Northern Vermont. 

9.  The Sandwich Islands devastated by the severest hurricane ever felt there.  All the orange groves destroyed, and 120 houses blown down. 

9-12.  At twenty-five observatories in France were seen at night 10,000 meteors of the August group. 

11-12.  At the city of Tabreez, Persia, a hail, wind, and thunder storm caused a wreck and deluge such as never was seen there before.  Whole villages were swept off, and crops ruined.  At Tabreez 1,000 houses and 1,700 lives were destroyed.  Besides this calamity, the death rate of Tabreez this week from famine, is from 300 to 900 daily! 

12.  A large meteor passed over Montreal, leaving a fire-train visible for ten minutes. 

15.  In Ontario hundreds of square miles of valuable forest are burnt over; also destructive fires in the pine woods of Wisconsin and Michigan. 

17.  The Arno in Italy overflows, causing immense ruin of crops.  Terrible hail at Richmond, Ind.  Eight horses consumed by fire at Charlestown, Mass.  A recent shower of meat in Los Angeles, Cal. 

See the Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876

Apparently, vultures are to blame.

???

18-19.  Terrific gale and rain in Georgia and South Carolina, and great damage to crops, houses, telegraph, etc.  Nine inches of rain in forty eight hours. 

19.  Vast and numerous sun spots seen this week. 

19-21.  Extraordinary and unprecedented flight of millions of butterflies, from 100 to 500 feet in the air, seen for three days at Hartford, Conn. 

21.  Puerto Plata (population 6,000) in San Domingo burnt; loss $800,000.  In a gale, thirty buildings burnt at Williamsport, Pa.; loss $225,000.  Lexington, Ky., a $50,000 fire.  Warsaw, Ind., 13 buildings, and $50,000.  At Newark, N. J., a fire of $80,000.  Total in a day, $1,205,000. 

20-21.  Awful hurricane over all the Antilles.  On St.  Thomas Island — size 5 by 17 miles— of a population of 12,000, 6,000 were made houseless, and 150 killed and mangled.  15 vessels were wrecked or injured.  An earthquake accompanied.  At Antigua every estate was damaged; 30 persons were killed and 100 wounded; all the ships wrecked.  Abaco Island was swept through by the sea and made two islands, and scores drowned.  At Turks Island there was earthquake and hurricane.  At Tortola an earthquake and the storm made 7,000 people homeless.  At St. Kitts 800 houses were destroyed and 40 estates ruined.  Jamaica was shaken by an earthquake.  The calamity caused the destruction of hundreds of lives, and perhaps ten million dollars worth of property.

22.  From the 5th to date (17 days) 300 earthquakes were experienced at Iquique, Peru, some very damaging.  The English steamer Prince of Wales foundered off the Asiatic coast, and 50 lives were lost.  A storm-burst occurred in Nebraska, quite damaging. 

22.  At Ihaugara, in India, on the hills, a cloud-burst and rain-torrent was followed by a thunderbolt that rent and tore the earth in a vast chasm, and all the huts there, with the inmates, fifty or sixty persons, were swallowed up in the pit.  The Times, of India, says “such a catastrophe has never been known in Sind”.

23.  Storms in South Hungary of unknown severity, caused disastrous and extensive flood that bring a wide-spread ruin and misery.  Banat half under water, crops gone, and dismay of the people. 

24.  At Bologna, Italy, a church full of people is struck by lightning and 32 persons, mostly women and children, were either killed or injured. 

24.  Strange flight southward of myriads of peculiar flies supposed to be the pestilence fly, seen at Philadelphia.  “Had every appearance of a snow-storm”.

24.  A fierce typhoon at Yokohama did immense damage. 

25.  The unusual phenomenon of a tidal wave at New Bedford, Mass., the see ebbing and flowing at intervals of fifteen minutes with great velocity.  The Annita and eleven men sunk by the steamship Java. 

26.  Whirlwind at South Amherst, Mass., and in Chemung county, N. Y., both very destructive.  Lightning struck a hall full of people at Clifford, Pa., killed one, seriously injured five, and shocked hundreds of persons.  Terrific hurricane for 20 hours in the Gulf, the coast strewn with wrecks.  Tornado at Tallahassee, Fla., for three days, with a cataract of rain; Jacksonville two feet under water; the cyclone moves up the Atlantic; tornado in Boston and vicinity; every town on the coast devastated; tornado at Laconia, N. H., and at Labette, Kansas.  This cyclone doubtless destroyed $1,000,000 of property. 

26. All the shores of Michigan seem to be a vast line of conflagration, and the smoke so dense as to hinder navigation and hide the light of the sun.

27.  At Lamia, in Turkey, lightning struck and exploded a powder magazine, the thunder of the detonation shook and nearly destroyed the entire place; people, panic stricken, fled to the country. 

28.  By explosions, wrecks, and collisions in Great Britain today nearly 30 persons lost their lives.  Five sharp earthquake shocks at Calcutta.  So terrible were these calamities that a sober Boston journal was led to say — “There is an accumulation of horrors.  Such crises almost make us lose faith in the orderly regulation of mundane affairs, as if some derangement had crept into the forces of nature.  It is as if the wrath of heaven were added to the culpable carelessness of man.”  But all this was only the beginning of this year's sorrows. 

29.  Great losses by rain and floods in Central New York and in Maine.  The next day there was the greatest storm of thunder and lightning ever known at Great Falls and at Dover, N. H.

31.  A frightful tornado, the severest in twenty years, devastated the North Sea and all the Scandinavian coasts.  The sea was strewn with debris, and in the Categat alone there were fifty wrecks.  South China was parched and dried up, and the drought visited the whole valley of the Mississippi and Missouri, while in Texas cattle died for want of water. 

September

1.  European Russia entirely overrun with cholera. 

1.  Vesuvius in eruption.  The Geysers of Iceland near Hecla become violently agitated; one threw up a column of water eight feet in diameter to a height of 84 feet.

1-10.  The Canadian shores of Lake Huron all ablaze with gigantic forest fires; traffic impeded and lumber destroyed worth millions. 

1.  Floods near Guangdong, China.  At Tientsin there is an area of flat country embracing 20,000 square miles under water and 1,000 people said to be drowned.

2.  A typhoon at Macao destroyed the lives of over 300 Chinese; 12 vessels wrecked; ship Courier and crew lost. 

2-12.  Great and extensive floods in the region of Bombay.  Floods in Lower Bengal over entire districts.  A great drought in Northwest Bengal broken by torrents of rains and floods everywhere.  In East Bengal 6,000 square miles of country are under water.  “The mind can scarcely conceive of the suffering and loss by these unprecedented Asiatic floods.”

4.  Destructive hurricane at Windom, Minn. 

6.  Hurricane at Fremont, Neb., destroying property worth $50,000. 

6.  A cyclone in the Gulf of Mexico.  On Lake Erie occurred the severest gale of the season. 

7, Extraordinary explosion in the sun seen and described by Prof.  Young of Dartmouth College.  Debris of hydrogen, or masses of solar fire, 5,000 to 15,000 miles long, were projected at a speed of 100,000 miles in ten minutes to a height of 200,000 miles from the solar surface.  At night the earth's atmosphere responded with a grand aurora, “one of the finest ever seen.”

7.  The “most dreadful thunder storm ever known” at Yorkshire, Eng., occurred, and rain fell equal to 233 tons per acre. 

11.  Since August 18 torrents of rain have fallen at Savannah, Georgia, the likes of which had not been seen for 20 years, while all North Georgia and East Tennessee suffer with severe drought.

11.  Awful typhoon on the Chinese Sea.  At Hong Kong four ships were wrecked.  It is said that 3,000 Chinese were drowned.  Drought prevails at Shanghai. 

12.  Tornado at Kohala, Cal.; heavy damage. 

13.  Twenty-three horses burned up at New York; a brig lost off Land's End, Eng., and a dozen men with it; great storms reported off Cape Horn, and many vessels lost. 

15.  The river Gumti, in India, rose suddenly.  On the 17^th, the water flooded all the near lands.  The city of Jounpeer, on its banks, with 9000 houses and 25,000 inhabitants, was that week destroyed.  From 2000 to 3000 houses were carried off by the waters, and as many more were undermined and ruined, while half the population are houseless paupers, in suffering and famine. 

20.  Cholera reaches Smyrna and Constantinople. 

20.  Tidal wave alarm for a month on all the South Atlantic coast

26.  The severest rain and wind storm in Raleigh, N. C., known for many years, causing much damage. 

27.  A great conflagration at Valparaiso, Chile, that consumed property valued at half a million of dollars.  The forest fires of Wisconsin and Michigan sweep over miles and miles with alarming desolation.  Forests, crops, buildings, etc., destroyed.  In Kewaunee county alone 22 buildings are burnt, and the loss is a quarter of a million.  Everything dry as tinder. 

27.  A deficiency of eighty-eight millions of bushels announced in the wheat crop of Great Britain. 

28.  Terrible gales on the British coast.  Ship Hesperus wrecked near the Weser's mouth and 24 men lost.  In English waters 22 drowned.  Methane explosion at Grisons, Switzerland, suffocating to death 30 miners.

23-30.  Awful rains and floods in all England and Scotland, with loss of life; 300 acres of land reclaimed from the sea overflown, 300 feet of a $250,000 pier destroyed, and the aggregate loss millions.

October

1.  Half the vintage of South France ruined by storms, hail, water-spouts and floods.  Ship James Booth, with 19 men, lost in the Bay of Biscay. 

2.  In Wisconsin 100 families are now burnt out.  Near Fox River the area of the fires is 120 by 30 miles.  The people houseless and starving.  No water.  For 25 miles in length and 8 or 10 miles in breadth on the Wabash Railroad, fires rage two days, and crops, woods, meadows, are consumed. 

3.  A frightful hurricane, the severest ever known in the Gulf, wrecked the C. K. Hall, drowning all on board, and wrecking scores of other vessels, flooded New Orleans, Galveston, Houston and all the shores.  The losses estimated by the million. 

4.  From August 26 to date, Wyoming, Arizona and other territories visited by destructive fires in the woods.  For 40 days this devouring element consumed millions of acres of forest timber in the Rocky Mountains, making the air black with smoke. 

6.  Great earthquake in all Peru.  The city of Iquique shattered, walls cracked, etc.  In Terrapecca a great dam and 20 buildings destroyed.  Matilla and Pica in the interior totally destroyed, not a house left standing; at Pica a great fire followed.  Three other towns suffered badly.  Five lives were lost. 

6.  Greatest drought in the Western States known for 25 years, and terrible forest fires raging. 

7.  Pensaukee, Wisconsin, is half devoured by the flames of the burning forests; 25 houses and 40 human victims to the fire.  Damage to timber alone in Wisconsin is already put at $2,000,000. 

8-9.  A fierce wind, in some places a tornado, swept over all the Western States bordering on the Upper Mississippi where the drought prevails.  Strong electrical action pervaded the heated air and accompanied the wind.  It drove the flames with great rapidity, and the result was baleful in the highest degree. 

8.  Large conflagration at Chicago, the greatest that had ever occurred there.  Four blocks were burned, one woman perished, and the loss was $300,000.  $.  An electrical tornado fans the flames of the burning cities, towns and forests of the West, and terrible calamities occur in Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. 

9-10.  The burning of Chicago, a city of 300,000 souls.  It was a raging, roaring hell of fire for 48 hours, without doubt the most destructive conflagration in any city for 500 hundred years, and perhaps the greatest that ever occurred.  The whole country moved and thrilled with horror and sympathy.  The fire was seen at a distance of 110 miles, and at the distance of two miles persons could see by its light to read the finest print.  From 200 to 500 men, women and children are supposed to have perished — the real number unknown.  From 75.000 to 100,000 persons were made homeless or paupers.  The area of the burnt district is a mile and a half in width, and three and a half miles in length, or about five square miles, embracing the richest and most business portion of the city.  2000 wealthy mansions were burnt.  The total number of buildings of all kinds consumed was about 18,000.  This is 4000 more than were burnt in the great fire in London in 1666, and 3000 more than were destroyed at Constantinople June 5, 1870. 

9.  The town of Peshtigo, Wis., population 1,800, consumed by forest fire, and clouds of burning hydrogen driven by electrical tornado.  Some 400 dwellings and as many other buildings devoured in an hour.  In Peshtigo and the Sugar Bush region nearby, 1,000 human beings were burnt up, and the loss in property was $3,000,000. 

On October 8^th, in a small town in northern Wisconsin, a town of around 1700 people:

“The fire which destroyed Peshtigo occurred on the evening of the 8^th, and history has never furnished a parallel of its terrible destructiveness.  Shortly after the church-going people had returned from the evening service, an ominous sound was heard, like the distant roar of the sea, or of a coming storm.  This increased in intensity, and soon the inhabitants became alarmed and apprehensive of coming danger.  Balls of fire were observed to fall like meteors in different parts of the town, igniting whatever they came in contact with.

Now bright light appeared in the south-west horizon, gradually increasing till the heavens were aglow with light.  But a few moments elapsed after this before the horrible tornado of fire came upon the people, and enveloped them in flame, smoke, burning sand, and cinders.  Those who had not now reached the river or some other place of safety were suffocated and burned to a cinder before they could advance a half dozen steps further.  God only knows the horror and terrible suffering of the whole town of Peshtigo on that memorable Sunday night.  It seemed as if the love of God had been withdrawn from the place, and the fiery fiends of hell had been loosened to wantonly vex and torment the people.

No tongue can tell, no pen can describe, no brush can depict the realities of that night.  Exaggeration would be utterly impossible.  It defies human ingenuity.  It was the destruction of Sodom re-enacted.  It seemed as the wickedness of the place had mocked God until his fiery thunderbolts were loosened for its destruction.  But now he who had been boldest in sin was first to call upon his Maker for succour…

The character of this fire was unlike any we have ever seen described before.  It was a flame fanned by a hurricane, and accompanied with various electrical phenomena.  Those that survived the terrible ordeal testify that they received electrical shocks, while they saw electrical flames flash in the air and dance over the surface of the earth around them.  But the fury of the flash was past in half an hour, though the fire continued to burn more or less fiercely during the whole night.

To one visiting the locality after the fire, the great wonder is not that so many people should have perished, but that a single individual remains to describe the fearful scene through which he passed.  Certainly no one of the few that did escape expected anything but certain destruction at the time.  The deadly, withering fire of the battle-field appals the stoutest heart, even though there is a hope that a victory and triumph may be gained.  But the enemy that came down on the miserable people of Peshtigo was irresistible.  All efforts to oppose it were futile.  Hope fled from every heart at the very onset of the storm.”

The Great Fires in Chicago and the West: History and Incidents

anonymous Chicago clergyman

Published by H. S. Goodspeed, 1871

Quoting from the testimony of

The Milwaukee Committee of the Young Men’s Christian Association

“Sunday, October 8^th, in Peshtigo, passed as other Sundays had.  The dense smoke told of fires in almost every direction surrounding the valley; but so they had for weeks, and in general there was no especial fear of impending disaster that night.  But we hear of individual cases where a fear of impending danger seemed to take deep root in the mind.  It seemed as if a warning of the calamity, although dim and undefined, had been given to some.

The dense smoke could be seen to the south of the town (with) a dull red glare near the horizon.  Again a breeze sprang up from the southwest, and the air was hot as a sirocco.  Then came a low rumbling noise, like the distant approach of a train of cars.  The noise increased to a heavy roar, variously described as like the noise of thunder or a mighty wind, and the startled people rushed into the streets to ascertain the cause …  The roar increased, and burning coals began to drop in the village, first like stray meteors of the night, and then as thickly as the snows of winter.  Many of the survivors represent that the shower of coals was as dense as a heavy snow storm.  In less time than it takes to write it, the wind had reached the force of a tornado, the buildings nearest the woods were on fire, and the very air seemed an atmosphere of flame.

The bridge was soon on fire, and there was an awful scene: parties on each side suffering with the withering heat, and hoping to reach the other, where they fancied they could find safety, but unable to do so.  For large numbers of them the river was the only resort, and they plunged in, some to drown and others to escape after enduring the most fearful tortures.  Scores failed to reach the river at all.  Strangled by the smoke, or foul gases, or both, they fell, and their charred and shrivelled bodies lying on the streets present a ghastly and horrible sight the next morning.

Some were burned to death within a few feet of the river, some in their houses, some in the woods, and some on the roads attempting to escape.  But the difficulty of escape was so great that it is almost impossible to comprehend it.  Within a half an hour, and some say within ten minutes, of the time the first building caught fire, the entire village was in flames.  The great sheets of fire curled and rolled over the ground like breakers on a reef.  Overhead, the air seemed to be on fire.”

Sketch of the Great Fires in Wisconsin at

Peshtigo, Sugar Bush, Menekaune, Williamsonville,

and Generally on the Shores of Green Bay.

Frank Tilton

Robinson & Kusterman Publishers

Green Bay, 1871

page 37+

“The atmosphere was heavy and oppressive, strangely affecting the strength and rendering respiration painful and laborious.  The only consideration that could have induced me to keep on working when I found it almost impossible to move my limbs, was the fear, growing more strongly each moment into a certainty, that some great catastrophe was approaching.

The crimson reflection in the western portion of the sky was rapidly increasing in size and in intensity; then between each stroke of my pickaxe I heard plainly, in the midst of the unnatural calm and silence reigning around, the strange and terrible noise already described, the muttered thunder of which became more distinct as it drew each moment nearer.  This sound resembled the confused noise of a number of cars and locomotives approaching a railroad station, or the rumbling of thunder, with the difference that it never ceased, but deepened in intensity each moment more and more.

The wind, forerunner of the tempest, was increasing in violence, the redness in the sky was deepening, and the roaring sound like thunder seemed almost upon us.  It was now time to think of the Blessed Sacrament – object of all objects, precious, priceless, especially in the eyes of a priest … of course I had intended from the first to bring it with me.  Hastening then to the chamber containing the tabernacle, I proceeded to open the latter … There was no time to delay, so I caught up the tabernacle with its contents and carried it out.

I re-entered to seek the chalice which had not been placed in the tabernacle, when a strange and startling phenomenon met my view.  It was that of a cloud of sparks that blazed up here and there with a sharp detonating sound like that of powder exploding, and flew from room to room.  I understood then that the air was saturated with some special gas, and I could not help thinking of this gas lighted up from mere contact with a breath of hot wind, what would it be when fire would come in actual contact with it.

I vainly called my dog who, disobeying the summons, concealed himself under my bed, only to meet death there later.  Then I hastened out to open the gate so as to bring forth my wagon.  Barely had I laid hand on it, when the wind, heretofore violent, rose suddenly to a hurricane, and quick as lightning opened the way for my egress from the yard by sweeping planks, gate, and fencing away into space.  ‘The road is open’,  I thought,  ‘we have only to start.’

The air was no longer fit to breathe, full as it was of sand, dust, ashes, cinders, sparks, smoke and fire.  It was almost impossible to keep one’s eyes unclosed, to distinguish the road, or to recognize people … Some were hastening toward the river, others from it, whilst all were struggling alike in the grasp of the hurricane.  A thousand discordant noises rose on the air together.  The neighing of horses, falling of chimneys, crashing of uprooted trees, roaring and whistling of the wind, crackling of fire as it ran with lightning-like rapidity from house to house – all sounds were there save that of the human voice.  People seemed stricken dumb by terror … The silence of the tomb reigned among the living, nature alone lifted up its voice and spoke.

The whirlwind in its continual ascension had, so to speak, worked up the smoke, dust and cinders, so that, at least, we could see clear before us.  The banks of the river as far as the eye could reach were covered with people standing there, motionless as statues, some with eyes staring, upturned towards heaven, and tongues protruded.  The greater number seemed to have no idea of taking any steps to procure their safety, imagining, as many afterwards acknowledged to me, that the end of the world had arrived and that there was nothing for them but silent submission to their fate.

It was about ten o’clock when we entered into the river.  When doing so I neither knew the length of time we would be obliged to remain there, nor what would ultimately happen to us … Once in the water up to our necks, I thought we would at least be safe from fire, but it was not so; the flames darted over the river as they did over land, the air was full of them, or rather the air itself was on fire.

The terrible whirlwind that had burst over us at the moment I was leaving home had, with its continually revolving circle of opposing winds, cleared the atmosphere.  The river was as bright, brighter than by day … When turning my gaze from the river I chanced to look either to the right or left, before me or upwards.  I saw nothing but flames; houses, trees, and the air itself were on fire.  Above my head, as far as the eye could reach into space, alas!  Too brilliantly lighted, I saw nothing but immense volumes of flames covering the firmament, rolling one over the other with stormy violence.

The hour of deliverance from this prison of fire and water had not yet arrived – the struggle was not yet over.  A lady who had remained beside me since we had first taken to the river, and who, like all the others, had remained silent till then, now asked me:

“Father, do you not think this is the end of the world?”

“I do not think so,” was my reply, “but if other countries are burned as ours seems to have been, the end of the world, at least for us, must be at hand.”

It is a painful thing to have to speak of scenes which we feel convinced no pen could fully describe nor words do justice to.  It was (a few days later), the eleventh of October, Wednesday afternoon, that I revisited for the first time the site of what had once been the town of Peshtigo.  Of the houses, trees, fences that I had looked on three days ago nothing whatever remained, save a few blackened posts still standing, as if to attest the impetuous fury of the fiery element that had thus destroyed all before it.”

The Great Peshtigo Fire: An Eyewitness Account

By Reverend Peter Pernin 1874

Reprinted by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin 1971

“On that same sinister Sunday, the 8^th of October, 1871, when Peshtigo’s volunteer firemen were facing a threat that neither a thousand nor a million men could have coped with, the men of more than two score cities, towns, and settlements in Michigan were facing the same threat, the same wind, and often with the same result.”

Burning an Empire

The story of American forest fires (1943)

Stuart H. Holbrook

page 94

On the other side of lake Michigan:

“About 9 o’clock Sunday night a terrible tornado swept down from the southwest, thru the western side of the county, carrying death and destruction in its awful career…  The fire did not come upon the people gradually from burning trees or other object to the windward, but the first notice they had of it was a whirlwind of flames, in great clouds, from above the tops of the trees, which fell upon and enveloped everything.  The atmosphere seemed to be on fire.  The poor people inhaled it, or the intensely hot air, and fell down dead.”

Sturgeon Bay Advocate

October 14, 1921, page 8

Fire of Fifty Years Ago

On the very same day, at the very same hour, in Chicago, 250 miles from Peshtigo:

“As I opened the front door, I saw the cinders falling like flakes of snow in a storm … … As I looked to the south, the sky over the city was a bright red, glowing like a furnace, and studded with innumerable sparks, ignited cinders and blazing embers, shining like myriads of red stars; but I could see no flames nor even smoke.  Indeed, the absence of smoke from any point of view I had of the fire was a notable characteristic, which I attributed to the intensity of the heat … … It seemed as if I were alone in the city, that the last day had come, and the final conflagration of all things created was at hand …”

narrative of George M. Higginson within:

The History of Chicago from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

Volume 2, 1885, The A. T. Andreas Co. Publishers

pages 751-752

“A fierce see-sawing hurricane set in.  The fire appeared to tear up and instantly consume the firmer structures, while light and loose articles were hurled into the air like blazing torches.  A large mass of fire, seemingly two feet in length and one foot in thickness, arose from a spot just north of Taylor Street, and went whirling through the air for more than three blocks, alighting on the cupola of the German Catholic Church on the northeast corner of Mather and Clinton streets.  The entire building was almost instantaneously enveloped in flames.”

^

Account from Richard Riley

page 715

“… Every one has read, if he did not himself pass through the horrible experience, how the very air itself seemed full of fire, how the flames seemed to take giant leaps of many hundreds of yards, breaking out in points far away from the scenes of general disaster, and how huge balloons of flames swept through the sky, to descend and break like a burning [water] spout, licking up every vestige of human life and labor from open clearings to which many had fled as a haven of safety … … in the process devastating flames were kindled afresh in hundreds of places so far removed from the previous locality of the fire, that it seemed as if the havoc could only have been wrought by the torch of the destroying angel … ”

^

Narrative of Elias Colbert

page 702

“From the various recitals of individuals presented, a general idea of the terrors excited by this event may be gained; also a conception of the progress and magnitude of the conflagration.  No pen can do adequate justice to the subject.  No limner could depict the scene… …  There is nothing wherewith the fire can be compared.  It stands alone, a monument in the annals of pyrology … …  But when the reader looks intelligently at the enormous surface burned over, remembers the very brief time occupied in the destruction, and then reads the particular narrative or recital, he may arrive at some little comprehension of the catastrophe.”

“The incredible rapidity of the flames was noticeable here, as upon the South Side.  In fact, the mind is scarcely able to comprehend what is implied by this term, and none, save those who beheld the scenes of agony, can realize what is meant.”

^

page 754

“During all this time, the fire was falling torrents – there was literally a rain of fire…”

“There was a sea of fire to the south and southwest, the wind blew a perfect gale…”

“I saw the sky as it were in flames over my head and the streets lighted as if by lurid sunlight … … What a scene – a sea of fire!”

“Here indeed commenced the total extermination of all that was combustible.  Buildings of every description were swept away, leaving the ground upon which they had stood a field of absolute waste … ”

“Some few incidents are inserted here to show how terrible was the fire.  When it had reached the business center of the city, it ceased to be governed by any of the ordinary rules that are commonly attendant upon even great fires, as the terms are usually understood.  In places, the heat could only be compared to that from the combustion of oxygen and hydrogen by means of a blow-pipe.  In places it would strike great iron columns nearly two feet square, and for four or five feet, perhaps more, the iron would be all burned up.  No residuum would be left.”

^

page 734

“Safes, if exposed to these jets of heat, were of no account whatever.  George Smith, banker, told me that they had standing in a back office a large safe full of ledgers and other books.  That safe and its contents were all burned.  Not a vestige of it remained to mark where it stood … …  Some of the freaks of the fire are scarcely credible.  Very reliable gentlemen reported that they saw jets of flame dart across an entire block, and in an instant envelop the building it struck in a winding sheet of lurid flame.”

^

Statement from Ex-lieutenant-Governor Bross

page 734

 “The fact that building stone was everywhere baked and blistered into mere chips, even where it was used only for sidewalk or foundations, attests to the fearful heat which prevailed everywhere.  But in the interior of buildings the fervour was unprecedented; as witness the melting of the great Court-house bell, the burning up of many safes, so that they could be punctured with a single touch of the crowbar, and the fusion of metals generally.”

Chicago and the Great Conflagration (1871)

Elias Colbert and Everett Chamberlin

page 528

“In the stores of Messrs. Heath and Miligan … … the temperature was above 3000 degrees, as shown by the melting of white lead and other stores requiring that degree of heat to fuse them.  How much hotter it became, there is no index to determine; but this is known: that large masses of iron, such as iron columns, and the framework of a large elevator, were literally burned up, so that no trace of them could be found.”

^

page 351

“Your readers may wonder what I mean by fire balloons, and I confess that I hardly know myself, and only use the term because it was so frequently used by others in conversation with me.  All of the survivors with whom I conversed said that the whole sky seemed filled with dark, round masses of smoke, about the size of a large balloon, which traveled with fearful rapidity.  These balloons would fall to the ground, burst, and send forth a most brilliant blaze of fire, which would instantly consume every thing in the neighbourhood.  An eyewitness, who was in a pool of water not far off, told us about the balloon falling right down on the Lawrence family, and burning them up.”

^

appendix

“We now come to a farm that was occupied by Philip Weinhardt, wife, and five children, a real good, solid, substantial German family.  The first warning any of them had, was the low, rumbling noise heretofore described.  The wife went to the door, found fire on every side of them, and believing the day of judgement was at hand, without an effort to save themselves, they all perished.  This idea of final dissolution was entertained, not by the ignorant only, as the most intelligent thought that the noise they heard was the echo of Gabriel’s trumpet.  Mr. Beebe, the Peshtigo Company’s Agent, as soon as he saw the fire, declared that the last hour had come, and, although repeatedly requested to save himself, refused to do so, and perished without an effort to get away.”

^

appendix

“The heat of the burning city was felt far away on the lake … … so hot was the wind over at Holland, Michigan, a hundred miles or more northeast of Chicago, that some parties there, on the afternoon of Monday, were obliged to go down behind a hedge, and let the scorching blasts pass over them.  They were unable then to account for the heat, and greatly feared that the time had come when ‘the earth and all things therein would be burned up’.  ”

The History of Chicago from the Earliest Period to the Present Time

Volume 2, 1885, The A. T. Andreas Co. Publishers

page 734

The above Peshtigo and Chicago fire reports were compiled by Randall Carlson.

October 9.  Williamsburgh, Wis., burnt.  Of a population of 78 persons, 74 of them perished in the flames.  Negaunee burnt, and 100 persons destroyed.  Forrestville burnt, and 50 souls were victims At Birch Creek 13 were consumed.  On the lake shore at Fox River 70 lives were lost.  Brussels had 200 houses consumed and 22 persons burnt up.  Every house except five in this Belgian settlement was burnt.  At Little Sturgeon Bay 75 were burnt to death.  The Green Bay Advocate gives a list of 30 villages burnt, and some 1,500 human beings devoured by the flames in the single State of Wisconsin.  Perhaps 2,000 others were more or less burnt or injured.  Seven large counties, each including more than a thousand square miles of pine forest, with scattered villages, were more or less run over with fire.  The loss to pine timber and property in the State can not be less than $10,000,000. 

9.  The city of Holland, Mich., population of 3,000, consumed.  Five churches, 3 hotels, 68 stores, and more than 300 dwellings burnt, and 140 farms entirely destroyed.  A clean sweep a mile wide and two miles long was made.  Loss $500,000.  In Holland and vicinity were 6,000 homeless people. 

9.  Manistee, Mich., destroyed.  Population 4,000.  There were devoured by flame 200 dwellings, 6 mills, a dock and vessel.  The place half burnt, loss in property $1,300,000.  There were made homeless 1,500 people.  In Michigan the burnt district between Saginaw and Huron alone embraced 23 townships, in which nine-tenths of the houses and property were destroyed, and 19 townships partly burnt; total area 1,400 square miles.  The total area of fire was a coast line on the lakes west, north and east of 400 or 500 miles, and variously of five, ten, and fifty miles in depth.  One account says every county in the State suffered, and the property destroyed in a single week is put as high as one hundred millions of dollars.  The Chicago Tribune says there are fifty thousand people in Michigan and Wisconsin alone who are burnt out of their all. 

9-11.  On September 29 a prairie and woods fire started at Kaka on Red river in Minnesota, 250 miles west of St. Paul, and in ten days it ran to the southeast a distance of 300 miles, ranging 100 miles in width.  “The world never saw such a fire before.” The sun was darkened and the cinders filled the air.  Big Woods and Red River Valley were destroyed, and Fort Abererombie narrowly escaped destruction.  In the track of this sea of flame, 350 scattered farms and farm houses were consumed, and 200 persons lost their lives.  The loss to farms and houses is put at $3,000,000.  The pine and prairie territory ravaged embraced 30,000 square miles.  In all these western fires it is computed that from 2,500 to 3,000 human beings perished in the short space of a week or ten days!  The material loss cannot be calculated by man.

9.  At Collingwood, Germantown, and Sandwich, in Ontario, great fires destroyed 25 buildings, and the loss was $100,000. 

9.  Violent and injurious earthquake at Constantinople. 

11.  The world terrified at the awful Western fires, and all moving to aid the sufferers. 

12.  The American Relief Fund for Chicago— only three days old— reaches $2,500,000. 

12.  Great earthquake in Ecuador.  It occurred in Salta, a Republic twice the size of New York, and a population of sixty thousand.  Oran, one of the principal towns, was totally destroyed.  It disappeared in ten minutes, nothing remained but ruins.  The convulsion lasted nine hours, and forty shocks were experienced.  In the Province of Jujua the convulsion was very violent, and a volcano burst into eruption. 

11-13.  Terrible wind and rain in Halifax and all Nova Scotia.  “The heaviest hurricane known in twenty years”. The Sophia and all hands were lost; tide rose two feet over the wharves; thirty vessels were damaged; loss $200,000.  In Maine, torrents of rain fell, rivers burst their banks, and five million logs broke away and ran downstream.  Rain fell over Michigan and Wisconsin, also at Chicago. 

13.  Encke's comet makes its first appearance to New Haven astronomers. 

14-16.  Awful gale over Canada and all the lakes.  Steamer R. G.  Colburn foundered, and twenty or thirty of the crew went down with the vessel; loss $100,000.  In Ogdensburg and Malone, N. Y., a destructive tornado. 

16.  American Chicago Relief Fund runs up to $4,460,000. 

19.  Earthquake in Maine.  Great gale on Lake Erie and much damage at Buffalo.  Sand storms in Los Angeles and San Bernandino Co., Cal., scattered and destroyed 50,000 sheep. 

20.  In Santa Cruz county, Cal., fire ravaged a region nine miles long and four miles wide, covered with farm property. 

23-24.  Extensive forest fires in Livingston, Niagara, Genesee, Wayne, Seneca, and Monroe counties, New York.  Three persons burnt up near Auburn.  The city of Rochester so filled with smoke that lights are needed all day.  The forests and mountains of West Maryland a sheet of flame.  Near Troy,  N. Y., terrible fires rage.  In Orleans county, N. Y., 1,000 acres are burnt over; near Medina, “thousands of acres”. Near Albion, N. Y., a fire raged five days, and destroyed 1,500 cords of wood, 175,000 tons of hay, 12 houses and 12 mills.  At Black Creek, Ontario, terrible fires rage, and near Dauphin, Fa., the mountains on fire for miles.  “From all parts of the world”, says the Tribune N. Y., “we continue to receive tidings of destruction of life and property by flood, fire, and shipwreck.”

26.  Fires rage on the mountains near Ludlow, Vt., and west of North Adams, Miss.  In San Joaquin county, Cal., crops have failed two seasons and 1,000 people suffer want.  Destructive fires on the north coast of California. 

29.  Sunday: day of fasting and prayer at Chicago. 

30.  Boston Relief Fund for Western sufferers is $425,668. 

30.  The London Spectator says if the Persian famine lasts another year, Persia will be blotted from the list of nations. 

3O.  Severe and damaging earthquakes in all the West Indian Islands.  We also record the failure of crops, with want and destitution reported for Italy, the continuance of the horrors of famine in Persia, and the deaths during the past summer by yellow fever in all the Argentine Republic of not less than 60,000 persons.  The fire list of October is estimated to be not less than five hundred millions of dollars. 

November

1.  Chicago and other fire Relief Funds at London reach $225,000. 

1.  The Michigan fires still raging, and the people in fear, “Smoke so dense as to obscure the sun at noon-day”.

9.  A brilliant aurora so bright in New York as to “cast shadows”. It was visible everywhere, and seemed in its glorious crimson like an immense fire.  In all New England it was one of the most remarkable witnessed for years. 

8-10.  In Knobnoster, Mo., rain descended continuously for two weeks over a spot twenty feet square from a clear and cloudless sky.  (This Lusus Naturæ (just a term for any freak natural occurrence) also occurred at Mobile, Alabama, on the 3^rd of November the previous year)

9.  Other rivers in China reported to have burst their banks; dead bodies by the hundred found on the desolated plains; thousands will perish of famine. 

9.  A meteor fell and rolled along the ground beside a traveling carriage at South Easton, Mass. 

11.  Solar phenomenon seen at Buffalo, N. Y.  The sun at setting took a conical form, elongated as if it were molten iron, and the sides run down into the lake, magnifying it to twice its usual size.  In the centre of this long mass was plainly visible the figure of a ship, as if she were sailing in the sun. 

12.  The Tiber in Italy, by months of rain, flood all its valleys; enormous losses. 

14.  Extraordinary storm from Europe to California.  Thirty lives lost by wrecks in England.  Damaging gale and high water at New York and Brooklyn.  Long Branch nearly destroyed.  Charleston, S.  C., flooded, and half the city under water.  Estimated loss $1,000,000. 

15.  The Gloucester fishing season ends.  More vessels lost (22) than in any former year, and more lives lost (140) than in any other year save 1862; 45 widows and 90 orphans made. 

16.  The "Auk," an Arctic bird, visits New England for the first time. 

17.  Furious hail storm at Dallas county, Texas.  Men and stock killed in the streets; houses unroofed, and hail as large as hen's eggs. 

20.  The floods at Tientsin reach their height, but do not subside.  Forty thousand drowned out and starving in the city.  The Peiho for 140 miles has overflowed a vast track, thickly inhabited, embracing 4 prefectures and 59 districts. 

23.  Two auroral rings seen encircling the moon in a clear sky at Poughkeepsie, N. Y.  Terribly rough, cold, disastrous winds. 

23.  “Storms unprecedented in severity on the Plain.”

26.  Sixty deaths by small pox in Cincinnati last week. 

27.  Hurricane at Cape Breton.  Tide four feet higher than ever known before, with tidal waves; 12 vessels wrecked, and a loss in buildings, trees, shipping, etc., $100,000. 

28.  Early winter with cold weather sets in. 

28-30.  Millions of dollars damage by early and sudden freezing of all the rivers, lakes and canals in the North; 600 boats with 5,000,000 bushels grain, potatoes and apples froze in the New York canals.  Heavy losses in Canada.  Terrific gales all over the land, and men in many places frozen to death.  Off Cape Cod the Atwood and her crew of 6 men were all lost.  Said the Boston Journal, “The list of disasters by fire and flood in the present season is quite unprecedented.  Shall we have an earthquake or tidal wave to crown the catalogue of misfortunes in the eventful year of 1871?”

December

1.  Sudden water famine at Boston by the freezing of lake Cochituate. 

1.  Disasters on the great lakes this season numbered 1,167.  Two hundred and seventy-one lives lost; of these 214 were drowned. 

2.  Two hundred and thirty-three deaths from small pox in Philadelphia this week. 

5.  Cattle on the plains in Texas “dying by the scores of thousands” by reason of excessive cold.  Dreadfully damaging storms at the city of Portland, Oregon.  One thousand five hundred sheep burnt to death by the fires on the St. Joaquin Flats, Cal. 

6.  Two vessels with 16 men lost near Halifax, and Prince Edward's Island badly damaged in a gale.  At Lincoln, Ill., 24 buildings were burnt.

10.  Great distress and suffering in Paris among the poor.  Deep snow, weather intensely cold, many frozen to death, and hundreds of accidents daily. 

13.  The inhabitants of Turk's Island, desolated by earthquake and wind, reported in a starving condition. 

16.  Italy reported constantly afflicted with earthquakes, causing both damage and panic.  At Havre five sailors drowned. 

17.  Ten thousand people reported drowned out by floods in India. 

17.  A terrific snow storm blocks the Pacific Railroad near Cheyenne for eight days. 

17.  An infernal attempt made by incendiaries to burn what remains of Chicago.  (Is it the International ?)

19.  Poor harvests and terrible floods in Banat, the “corn chamber” of Hungary, “thousands of acres” under water, causing pauperism, famine and typhus.  In a single commune of 900 persons, from twenty to thirty die weekly of epidemic and starvation. 

20.  Great alarm in all our cities at the terrible ravages of the small pox. 

20-25.  California deluged with rain; nineteen inches fall.  Stockton, San Jose, and Gilroy half under water.  Two vessels and some twenty men lost. 

21.  A large blue, purple and red meteor visible at Bangor, Me. 

23.  Terrific tornadoes.  At Toledo, 0., no such wind was ever known.  The storm stretched clear across the continent; with deep snows on the high lands.  Hurricanes in Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.  In Essex county, N. Y., there was violent thunder and lightning.  The damage is estimated at $500,000.

30 The Russian steamship Kuma, with all on board, foundered in a terrible gale on the Caspian Sea. On board was a million roubles (i. e. $800,000,) which, with vessel, worth perhaps $700,000, were all lost.  In the Black Sea four Greek brigs and their crews all went down; and in the English Channel ship Edwards foundered and lost; not a person on board of 20 or 30 was saved.  Snow in Cottonwood, Utah, from 10 to 50 feet deep, and, storms perpetually, with great losses and suffering.

31. Deaths in Philadelphia city this month by the small pox: 1,094.

In Madras, India, during the first eleven months of the year, 233 human beings were devoured by wild animals. In Persia three great cities of from 120,000 to 180,000 souls have each lost 80,000 people by famine and disease, and as the year dies this entire nation of 10,000,000 people are dying of the most awful epidemics and calamities.”

“Our government isn't acting in accordance with what science and history tell us.  Therefore our government is criminally negligent.”

Extinction Rebellion Canada

Home page

https://www.climate.gov/media/14596

NOAA Climate.gov graph, adapted from original by Dr. Howard Diamond (NOAA ARL).

Atmospheric CO2 data from NOAA and ETHZ.

CO2 emissions data from Our World in Data and the Global Carbon Project. 

When debate is over, so is science, by definition.

That’s how science has been defined – the act of testing, refining, checking – trying to falsify your theories about the natural world.

So, you can’t claim to have science as your foundation if you stop debate, much less can you cry out loud that others aren’t following science!

Greenland ice sheet temperature interpreted with Oxygen-18 isotopic data from 6 ice cores (original dataset from Vinther et al. 2009)

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/vinther2009greenland.txt

See the beginning of page 1 for full sourcing notes and an elaboration of the top-right graph.

What these graphs represent is the relative concentration of the heavier oxygen 18 versus the lighter oxygen 16 atoms in water molecules in glacial ice (from Greenland).  What happens is, during hot times, the heavier water, with the oxygen 18 atoms is more easily evaporated from the oceans, and so you get more of these heavier water molecules deposited on the glaciers.  In colder times, the heavier water is not as easily evaporated, so you get a greater concentration of lighter water - with the lighter oxygen 16 atoms, accumulating on the glaciers instead.  So, the theory goes that, when you measure the relative concentration of heavy versus light water in a layer of ice, you can get a ball-park figure of the temperature at the time.

The reason the information gets choppy by the time you get to the bottom-right graph – that’s because they don’t sample every single year – they only sample every 20 years.

These graphs end in 1960, so, we need to add 1 degree of rising temperature since then:

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

So, here’s the same graphs, but with today’s temperatures roughly drawn in:

The graph on the left goes back 12,000 years, and starts with a dramatic rise in temperatures, with sea levels rising 350 feet (without our help), and the climate was generally warmer between 10,000-6000 years ago, than today’s average.

We would have to try a lot harder if we want to compete with temperatures and temperature-swings that earth went through between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, and we would have to really roll up our sleeves if we are ever going to compete with the sorts of temperature swings we see going back even further in the glacial record.

Which century went by without changing climate?

Which millennium went by without swinging up and down between 1 to 2 degrees, all the time?

Where is the alleged stability of climate?

Where is there to be found, in any stretch of time, a lax flatline of steady unchanging temperature?

When was this magical, grass-was-greener, Shangri-La time, when climate blissfully “didn’t change more than 1 degree”?

So, the main argument behind the human-induced runaway greenhouse-effect theory, which is allegedly causing all the climate chaos we see today, the main argument behind this theory is that CO2 concentrations and temperatures have been stable for all of geologic history before the industrial revolution.  Well, even glacial cores from recent times disagree with you!

First, prove your case – that climate was gentle before the industrial revolution!  You have to prove your case!  You can’t just vote on that shit!

The above graphs were of temperatures only.

Let’s take a look now at CO2 as well as temperature, this time in Antarctica, looking at just under a million years.

CO2 concentrations are on top, in red.

Temperatures are on the bottom, in black.

The very right of this graph – that’s what we were looking at above, with that spike that we saw at 12,000 years ago – that’s that same spike on the right.

Again, as you can clearly see, modern-day temperatures are not the warmest on record, and temperature swings on the order of at least a couple degrees are commonplace throughout this 800 thousand year timeframe, as well as significant swings on the order of 10 degrees centigrade once in a while.

Last 800,000 years of ice core data, showing CO2 in red, and Temperature in black.

Ice Core Data from the EPICA Dome C (Antarctica)

 Ice Core Showing Concentrations of Deuterium (D) and CO2 from the Ice Core Air

Jouzel et al., 2007; Luthi et al., 2008

This is not a year-by-year sampling – this is a smoothed out average.  In fact, some of this is up to 570-year resolution – so they sampled the CO2 only once every 570 years!  This is wide enough of an interval for our modern CO2 uptick to be completely missed by future glaciologists!

It is also smoothed out in another way:  the top layer of a glacier takes years to actually form closed air bubbles – so during all that time, the concentration of CO2 can get averaged out.

So, with all this smoothening of the CO2 measurements:  if earth, at the interglacials (the peaks you see in the above million-year graph) if earth experiences a sudden high concentration of CO2 for decades, this would get significantly smoothed out, and essentially would be lost in this graph, and this might even be true for an uptick centuries long, if not a single point is measured across 570 years of time!

To demonstrate just how choppy the sampling-rate is – just how much smoothing is going on here, look at the bits in this next picture – those points – those are the actual measurements of CO2, and once they then connect the dots, it makes it seem as if it is a complete detailed year-year sampling, which it most certainly is not.

Note that these points – these bits here is what all the fuss is about.  Without this low-resolution sampling (the paper is called “High Resolution” for some reason), without this here graph, there is no runaway greenhouse effect theory – these few bits are the basis for the whole theory – the starting-point – the whole reason this is a topic on our minds today.  This is the basis for the statement “CO2 has not ever been over 280 parts-per-million, in all of Earth’s history, ever, before we started burning fossil fuels, ever, ever, ever”.  That was the whole point of An Inconvenient Truth – this is the very same data used in Al Gore’s over-the-top scissor-lift stunt!

(Time, in the this graph, is in reverse, relative to the other charts here)

High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000–800,000 years before present

Dieter Luthi, Martine Le Floch, Bernhard Bereiter, Thomas Blunier, Jean-Marc Barnola, Urs Siegenthaler,Dominique Raynaud, Jean Jouzel, Hubertus Fischer, Kenji Kawamura& Thomas F. Stocker

But, let’s get back to this one with both the temperatures and the same CO2 concentration measurements as above (smoothed out)  (very very smooth indeed):

OK

Whenever one introduces some line of evidence to prove some seemingly outlandish theory, like the universe being infinite in size and eternal in duration, or that single cells and plants have a mind of their own; one is repeatedly told that “correlation does not equal causation”.  True.  It does not.  Just because you can match two things together with some line of evidence, this does not necessarily prove that one causes the other.

The temperature swings in the ice cores are indeed correlated, as Al Gore’s scissor-lift graph shows, with the CO2 levels showing the same dips and spikes as the temperature-proxy dips and spikes.  So, yes, there is a correlation between CO2 and temperature in the ice cores.

Now, why are all those who claim that humans alone drive climate, why are these people exempt from the scrutiny of the otherwise strictly-enforced principle of logic:  “correlation does not equal causation” ?  Eh?

“In your movie, you display a timeline of temperature and compared to CO2 levels over a 600,000-year period as reconstructed from ice core samples.  You indicate that this is conclusive proof of the link of increased CO2 emissions and global warming.  A closer examination of these facts reveals something entirely different.  I have an article from Science magazine which I will put into the record at the appropriate time that explains that historically, a rise in CO2 concentrations did not precede a rise in temperatures, but actually lagged temperature by 200 to 1,000 years.

CO2 levels went up after the temperature rose!

The temperature appears to drive CO2, not vice versa.  On this point, Mr. Vice President, you’re not just off a little.  You’re totally wrong.”

not-so-honourable Congressman Joe Barton

Texas's 6th district, 1985 to 2019

So, was this all just the mad delusional rantings of a xenophobic, corrupt, racist, homophobic, gun-toting, BP-loving, Gulf-coast-hating, hurricane-victim-abandoning, conservative ass-munch who wants to see all penguins suffer and die?

Nope.

They did not dispute Joe Barton’s point.

With a smarmy smirk, they confidently turned to Joe Barton and replied “yeah, we knew that”.

They knew very well that the CO2 changes follow temperature changes in the ice cores, by 200-1000 years.  First, the temperature went up, then CO2 went up 200-1000 years later – that’s what the ice cores show.  And when temperatures went down, CO2 then went down, 200-1000 years later.

Like everybody else (including myself), Barton walked away from watching Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth believing that the claim was that:  in the ice core records, the CO2 matches the temperature, and that CO2 was therefore the cause of the historical rise and fall of temperatures on the graph.  That was supposed to be the smoking gun – the solid undeniable evidence, so I thought.  That’s what I took away from watching it, and who could blame me, or my parents, or Joe Barton, for walking out of the theater with this firm conviction impressed upon our minds.

(Honestly, if you want to revitalize back-country conservative minds, and convince them of liberal values and notions, you would do well to get basic science right, so that you don’t give such explosive ammunition to the likes of Joe Barton.)

Let’s let NASA itself explain this sorcery:

“In Earth’s past, the carbon cycle has changed in response to climate change.  Variations in Earth’s orbit alter the amount of energy Earth receives from the Sun and leads to a cycle of ice ages and warm periods like Earth’s current climate.  Ice ages developed when Northern Hemisphere summers cooled and ice built up on land, which in turn slowed the carbon cycle.  Meanwhile, a number of factors including cooler temperatures and increased phytoplankton growth may have increased the amount of carbon the ocean took out of the atmosphere.  The drop in atmospheric carbon caused additional cooling.  Similarly, at the end of the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose dramatically as temperatures warmed.

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have corresponded closely with temperature over the past 800,000 years.  Although the temperature changes were touched off by variations in Earth’s orbit, the increased global temperatures released CO2 into the atmosphere, which in turn warmed the Earth.  [???]

Shifts in Earth’s orbit are happening constantly, in predictable cycles.  In about 30,000 years, Earth’s orbit will have changed enough to reduce sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere to the levels that led to the last ice age.”

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle

Did you catch that?

Pretty clever, eh?

The orbit of the planet changes – affecting how much sunlight is absorbed by Earth.  But, that’s not why earth warmed!  It warmed not because of the sun, but because the sun triggered the release of CO2 to then do the real warming.    Ohhhhhh…     I seeeeeee…      That makes soooooooooooo much more sense…   That actually makes a perfect full gigaton of absolute horseshit “science”!

Where’s the proof, and, more to the point, how could there possibly be proof, in the ice cores that:

“Although the temperature changes were touched off by variations in Earth’s orbit, the increased global temperatures released CO2 into the atmosphere, which in turn warmed the Earth.”

How can the ice cores, which clearly show a 200-1000 year lag, where the temperature is driving the CO2 changes, how can this data be proof that the CO2 was released which, in turn, warmed the Earth further?

Well, apparently, the ice cores are not the evidence for the Greenhouse effect!  Yes, that’s right!  You read that right!

That last line is worth repeating.

The graph above – the correlation between CO2 and temperatures, in the ice cores, is not the evidence used to support the Greenhouse Effect theory.  Al Gore’s scissor lift graph – that’s not the evidence!

It turns out, after all these years, modern physics equations are the only “evidence” for the hypothetical CO2-Driven-Runaway-Glassless-Greenhouse effect!  Ha!  Not the ice cores!  After all these years.  Wow.

Just as with the Space-Time continuum, some folks who claim to speak for Science, in fact twist simple basic truths – basic things like understanding Space or Time or how to interpret the above graph of temperatures and CO2 concentrations.  Certain people like to hide behind outlandish mathematics to promote outlandish fantasies about the natural world, allowing for time-travel or a birthday to the universe; while badgering others over the head with their PHD badges.

The sun heats up the earth, but the CO2, released by this heating from the sun, is what really heats up the earth.  Not the sun itself!  Not this giant friggin’ fireball in sky!  It couldn’t possibly be that simple.  Let’s complicate what is a straightforward affair and twist it, and turn it into an abstract opaque unteachable discipline.  And then let’s disallow any debate on the matter.

If NASA’s witchcraft were true, we would see this in the ice cores:

1.  Orbital changes induce an increase in temperature on Earth.

2.  This increased temperature, in turn, releases CO2.

3.  This newly released CO2 increases the temperature of the earth, even more.

4.  This greater temperature, in turn, releases more CO2.

5.  Then this newer CO2 further increases the temperature of the earth.

6.  Then, this even higher temperature, in turn, releases even more CO2, ontop of all that.

7.  And on, and on, and on.

A positive feedback loop – a real runaway greenhouse effect!!!

But, that’s not what we see!

That’s not how Earth works!

Like, not at all!

Not even close!

In fact, that’s a really really stupid theory because this cycle would have exhausted itself out long ago – it would have runaway long ago, naturally.

The earth has been warmer in the past, like during those peaks at previous interglacials, or even 10,000-6,000 years ago – conditions which would have triggered the running away – with all of the CO2 being off-gassed into the atmosphere from the oceans and land!

The earth has had plenty of opportunity to go “past the point of no return”.  The reason it hasn’t is because the Runaway Greenhouse effect is a ridiculous theory, having nothing to do with reality on Earth.

In order to return to common sense, we should re-appreciate the importance and then calculate the magnitude of the changes in incoming sunlight - almost certainly the primary driving force behind changing climate, whether this change is due to Earth’s orbit changing in relation to the Sun, or the Sun’s output oscillating up and down on 11-year time scales or on larger scales like the roughly millennial cycle outlined on page 1, or the loading of the atmosphere – blocking out the Sun for years, or years of rain – blocking the Sun for years on end with rainclouds.  Incoming sunlight is the main business in climate science.  This would be the proper first step in developing a proper science of climate on Earth.  You would start with the Sun: the big huge glowing yellow elephant sitting in the middle of the self-righteous CO2 warrior headquarters complaining lounge.

In any case, the mainstream position, at the very least, admits that this pattern you see here is, at the very least:  “touched off”  by the Sun.  A return to common sense would question the rejection of the idea that the Sun is bloody-well fully responsible for this pattern:

https://serc.carleton.edu/details/images/174582.html

Temperature drives CO2 concentrations in the ice core record.

With no evidence for things going the other way around.

Period.

End of story.

Temperature change (light blue) and carbon dioxide change (dark blue)

measured from the EPICA Dome C ice core in Antarctica

(Jouzel et al. 2007; Lüthi et al. 2008)

Dome C 800,000-year record: European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) members: D., M. Le Floch, B. Bereiter, T. Blunier, J.-M. Barnola, U. Siegenthaler, D. Raynaud, J. Jouzel, H. Fischer, K. Kawamura, and T.F. Stocker.

Vostok 400,000-plus-year record: J.R.Petit, Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Geophysique de l'Environnement , Grenoble, France

It is theorized today that when the oceans warm up, they off-gas CO2; and when they cool down, they absorb CO2.  With the oceans having 38 gigatons of carbon dioxide stored within them, and being able to change temperature relatively quickly, and with the oceans covering most of the surface of our planet; this is almost certainly the primary mechanism that explains the correlation between CO2 and temperature in the ice cores, which is (so the theory goes) driven by orbital mechanics – changing how the Earth receives sunlight.

Let’s read NASA’s well-intentioned propaganda concerning the Carbon Cycle:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle

“This diagram of the fast carbon cycle shows the movement of carbon between land, atmosphere, and oceans. Yellow numbers are natural fluxes, and red are human contributions in gigatons of carbon per year.  White numbers indicate stored carbon.  (Diagram adapted from U.S. DOE, Biological and Environmental Research Information System.)”

“At present, volcanoes emit between 130 and 380 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. For comparison, humans emit about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year—100–300 times more than volcanoes—by burning fossil fuels.”

“Chemistry regulates this dance between ocean, land, and atmosphere. If carbon dioxide rises in the atmosphere because of an increase in volcanic activity, for example, temperatures rise, leading to more rain, which dissolves more rock, creating more ions that will eventually deposit more carbon on the ocean floor.  It takes a few hundred thousand years to rebalance the slow carbon cycle through chemical weathering.”

That last statement flies in the face of the historical record (and tree-ring evidence), which clearly shows significant cooling and drought when volcanoes spew out their crap!

What kind of garbage “science”-writing is this?  This is NASA?  Is there more than one NASA now?  Where did all the smart people go?

They do not cite any sources here – they just say “CO2 would make it hotter after a volcano” – this, concerning a serious recurring catastrophic cooling and drought-inducing phenomenon that we are ill-prepared to handle today (the global hazes of 536, 541, 1600, or mount Tambora in 1815 – inducing the Year Without a Summer in 1816 - for examples of volcanoes shrouding and cooling and drying Earth significantly, which would stop modern civilization cold in its tracks).

Whoever wrote that line would benefit from a basic course in history – even at a grade-school level.  Even just a Reader’s Digest one-liner summary of History, read occasionally on the toilet bowl, would help immensely with this person’s understanding of the world.  Ridiculous!

A climate-science paper that denies Volcanic Winters!  What’s next?!?

(This last point is no small matter.  It is a central theme in this work and even ties in directly with mythology and scripture.  The courses of many civilizations have been affected by the loading of the atmosphere, and not by heating up the earth – by cooling it, reducing evaporation, which reduces rainfall.  In fact, the loading of the atmosphere is arguably the most significant recurring form of natural disaster in recorded history and leads to all other sorts of stresses on earth life – like all ailments that result from crop failure, for a significant example.)

Now, get a load of this last one from the same paper:

“Between 10*15 and 10*17 grams (1,000 to 100,000 million metric tons) of carbon move through the fast carbon cycle every year.”

If my math is any good, these quackademics are saying that between 1 and 100 Gigatons of carbon move through the fast cycle every year.

What this clearly indicates is that they haven’t the faintest clue what’s going on in the world!

That range of error basically says they have no idea how much carbon is cycled every year!  The low end would have us in a panic.  The high end would completely invalidate the anthropogenic-climate-change assertion with ease.

This is all far from settled science!

This is, in fact, quack science!

These human-emissions-driven-climate-catastrophist papers only prove that climate science is dead, with no serious professional mind comprehensively tackling the topic, and nobody examining the logic of the accepted concensuscience.

So, basically, Mr. Vice President:

It’s the Sun, stupid.

If you live in natural fear about looming natural disasters, and of changing climate, don’t worry – earth and humans and wildlife and plantlife and soillife have survived through these before.  Many, many, many, many, many times before.  We’re still here!  Congratulations!  You’re one of the lucky descendants of the survivors!  Cheer up!

If you live in relaxed blissful laa-dee-daa ignorance about natural disasters, and deny the solid fact that climate has always been changing (including now), please worry – please do worry – earth and humans and wildlife and plantlife and soillife have survived through these before – partly by us appreciating and dealing with the ever-present reality of changing ecological situations.

Those who deny severe changes in climate before our time, wishing to blame humans alone for climate-driven disasters in our time, hinder our collective efforts in understanding how climate might manifest itself in the future.

If you believe we are the Kings of Climate, and only our pollutants alone would suffice to explain all of the most severe natural disasters to be visited upon earthlife, and say that climate has been stable until the industrial revolution started; if you believe this, it stands in sharp contrast to a whole host of natural catastrophes recorded in documents, tree-rings and glacier-layers, for thousands of years prior to the industrial revolution, which would help us understand our situation and preserve life through similar catastrophes once they recur, which would help us to effectively do things like warn at-risk populations, or prepare stores of grain, or equip and train emergency-response teams well in advance, or do things like make first-aid standard free curricula every year (even into adulthood), and otherwise fortify our collective resilience to the inevitable calamities that nature will always have in store for earth-kind.

Those who claim that modern climate upheavals are “unprecedented” are truly “climate-change deniers”.  Even recorded history begs to differ.

The CO2-only-KingsOfClimate-camp campaigns have also made it seem like their rebellion is the very best place to put all your spare time and spare energy to help the environment.  Top priority.  All-encompassing mega-campaign.  All other issues are apparently understood to be either a result of, or dwarfed by, the effects of CO2.

Why the frog would the millions of sharks and other marine critters killed as bycatch each year, be concerned with CO2?  Do you think the whales are satisfied with the advocacy of the CO2 rebellion?  Why do we need to wait for CO2 numbers to go down, before doing something about idiots dropping nets to the bottom of the ocean floor, and scraping and scooping clean everything in the water column, then joining many such ships together, side-by-side, to filter through large swaths of ecosystems we do not understand, wholesale, and taking only the cash crops?  Why the frog would all this immense wildlife give a flying shart about CO2 concentrations?

What do the trees and the wildlife in the forest care of CO2, when we raze the ground bare of any scrap of greenery and the habitat it provides and soil critters it maintains and the moisture it retains; then plant, at cramped intervals, the same brand of tree, in vast carpets across this once diverse landscape, which once included necessary companions such as Alder to take nitrogen from the air and replenish the soil and feed the other trees and shrubs and ground covers; or Maple and other biggish leafy trees to diversify the root system with deeper roots that integrate into other more-flat root systems around it, for strength and for full moisture capture and retention in the soil column;  or precious ground covers that help retain the soil and moisture in place.  Then, we come back, after planting the cramped monocrop of telephone poles, and abort all fledgling understory plants that might compete with the cash crop – we destroy everything else that nature has provided with thousands of years of adaptations – with chemicals and weed-whackers, thereby leaving nothing to trap any moisture on the soil surface while many climates in British Columbia are super-dry, and offering only one type of root system to keep various soil layers alive and active and keep the soil in place.  As we then fight forest fires to protect the cash crops, we create stands of trees that all mature at the same time, losing the ability to produce sap – all at the same time – losing the ability to defend against bugs – and all drying up at the same time, with bare unprotected soil underneath!  What could possibly go wrong?

If a farmer clears a field of all wildlife and plants potatoes alone, year after year, one thing for sure is the potato beetle will have a field day, unless incessant spraying is employed.

What the fir do 1000-year-old giant cedar trees care about CO2 when their ancient, very moist and very cool forests, having maintained themselves for thousands of years, are cut clear, then the “bad” timber is all piled up and burned; and then, 40 years later, decimated river banks no longer direct the course of water properly for spawning, the soil is all swampy and gross for kilometers and kilometers, instead of fluffy and walkable soil as it was originally, with the streams having had clear paths – clear banks, and the wildlife is gone like the mountain caribou that supported themselves specifically on the lichen growing on those ancient cedars – something that doesn’t exist in that ecosystem any longer, and nothing is left but impassable swampy scrubland instead of bouncy carpets of healthy fluffy soils with clear streams and rivers running their courses as they had done for thousands of years, always helping human economies, always giving.  You, clearcut-logger, claim to understand the economy better than an environmentalist?  You have no concept, because the results are already in.  The costs of doing business your way have proven to exceed the returns.

What the fern does the bear care about CO2, when there are physical threats to its habitat, and not a scrap of diverse vegetation is replanted by our genius green-jobbers, like understory plants that grow nutritious roots and berries, to be found in times of need.  When the very last remnants of old growth forest – the templates of what this forest once was and could be again – when even this last tiny remnant is under threat – what do the plants and wildlife in the last tiny strips in the least accessible regions, without us having ever paused on our devastating encroachment – without us ever showing signs of thinking about the consequences of our actions – why do you think these critters would be worried about CO2, instead of the sound of our 4*4s and our chainsaws?

Taking care of the waters and forests of British Columbia is a solid issue, that has required attention for decades now, with plenty of solutions around, and absolutely frack-all has been accomplished!  We can’t even elect the left-leaning party to change our path in this critical ecological crisis!  Clearcutting something you don’t understand or even appreciate – utterly destroying ecosystems without reflection – this is a crime – a crime to be written in future law books in much less ignorant civilizations, which will condemn you lot posthumously for, at the very least, gross negligence – from the top cheeses involved in industry and government agencies, to the many able scientists absent from the political battle to end the destruction of what remains – and who are needed in ecology-investigation efforts to revolutionize the marine and forest industries but prefer to sit down and study the “Anthropocene”, to the “powerless” CO2-only rebels who choose to sit comfortably in the street, in errant self-righteous indignation.

If old growth is profitable, then there is no fucking excuse to not replant exactly as the diverse old growth forest was originally arrayed, including the understory!  (if you continue to insist on clearcutting)  (and good luck doing that, if you continue to insist on clearcutting)

Selective harvesting, coppicing (which is the planting of tree varieties that you can cut and leave in place to come back to cut again and again – a practice which used to be commonplace), and planting food forests (something the natives used to tend to here – stands of multiple varieties of trees, shrubs and ground plants that continuously produce harvests of all sorts of products) – 3 methods which perpetually preserve wildlife habitat, soil structure, mycelium connections between trees, and ground covers that help hold the soil and moisture in place, while offering a continuous and reliable yield; these methods will prove themselves to be the only methods worth contemplating for sustainable profit (a sure investment over longer time), and by taking care of the forest understory (the stuff that holds moisture), as it used to be, we will diminish the severity of forest fires, and with diversified forests, we can avoid things like beetle infestations bourgeoning amongst our monocrops – currently a legal requirement – the law currently requires a lack of diversity when you “replant” the “forest”.

Sitting around and blaming CO2 will not help us preserve life through severe earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, little ice age peaks, warm period peaks, solar flares, space-rocks; or humans devastating fragile ecosystems, or decimating wildlife, or making barren what was once lush.

All the current coral habitats were non-existent 12,000 years ago.  They obviously know how to adapt, with sea levels rising and falling 350 feet, on a regular basis (over thousands of years).

If coral’s optimal temperature is 26 degrees, then, if the ocean warms, it will surely find new habitat, in nearby coastlines that are slightly colder.

If we are worried about eliminating species of ocean life, then we should turn our attention to stopping things like building nuclear reactors on fault-lines, on the coasts of oceans; or grinding up the bottom of the sea floor, or trapping what few whales remain, or grinding up entire coral beds to make cement mix.  These are things that actually do happen.

Yes, the world does get warm.  That does happen.  Get over it.

Yes, temperatures swing on Earth, inducing wild climate at times.  Get over it.

Even Al Gore’s very own data demonstrates this – constant shifting temperatures!

The world also gets friggin’ cold at times.  The corals survived the Little Ice Age.  They survived the major ice ages.  They survived previous major warmings of the Earth.  They survived the Justinian Dark Ages.  They survived the Roman Warm Period.  They will certainly survive an extra degree Celsius, unless we turn them into cement condominiums or smother them with plastic wrappers beforehand.

“Environmentalism” really seems to have been co-opted by a bunch of half-witted science-zombies, unable to study and comprehend the so-called truths of nature they forcibly promote.

Save the corals with real work.

Roll up your sleeves instead of protesting a molecule essential for plant growth.

You, CO2-warrior, do not understand this planet.

(nobody does, including this author)

When debate is over, so is science.

Working to falsify theories cleans up and strengthens science.

Doubt is healthy for science.

But, do you actually want to be proven wrong?

If I believed in what you believe – about such a foreboding all-encompassing calamity – a Runaway Greenhouse effect, I would want to poke and prod at that belief, no matter how many scientists tell me it is so.  Consensus scientists also assured us nuclear radiation was not much more harmful than sunshine – that was also official “science”.  Would you have badgered people who disagreed with those scientists?  “Don’t get in the way of industry and progress – the science is settled!  Continue the testing!”

If CO2 did the exact opposite - if it cooled the atmosphere, would you be against it, or would you insist the oil companies produce more CO2?  Eh?  Answer the question!  Would you, CO2 warrior, be on the side of the oil companies and have them manage global weather effectively, with glee, by pumping double?  Eh?  “Let it all burn, baby, burn – for the good of the stability of climate!”  Answer honestly!  If the greedy malicious oil companies with egregious human rights records were not the antagonists of this story, how much interest would you really have?

If you want to invoke Science as your foundation, then you must be open to falsification, by definition.  The problem with that is that I don’t think you want to be proven wrong.  It’s nice to have a single problem to deal with – a simple thing that will fix all other environmental and social issues, eh?  It’s nice to have a simple target to blame, a simple objective.  It’s also nice to complain about something you don’t have to work to fix – it’s somebody else’s problem – it’s other peoples’ fault!  Eh?  I think that pretty much sums up this childish rebellion, led, fittingly, by a child.

It is high time we re-invigorate our pursuit of understanding the natural world, adding imagination, open-mindedness, and reaffirming the value of actual proper comprehensive debate.  We are all, including this author, walking blindly on a planet we do not understand, flying around in a solar system which we have clearly mis-understood, a solar system sitting in a universe – the nature of which we entertain contrived childish fantasies about – like there was “a birthday” to the universe – Pffffff!  A Beginning (Big Bang), a Middle(us), and an End (“The Big Rip”)!  Laaa.  Deee.  Daaa.  We need to wake up from these simplistic fairy-tale cosmologies – including the simplistic view of climate currently on offer.

Climate has, throughout recorded history, been wild and unpredictable at many times.  Yes, like the severity of events we see today, and even worse in many many cases.  No century has gone by without some serious climatic shit hitting the fan, at some point.

Basically, we have to admit to ourselves that we don’t absolutely control this planet, its internal convulsions, atmospheric disturbances, or its often wild and unpredictable celestial environment.  Then, we must roll up our sleeves to, first understand Earth’s ecosystems comprehensively, understand the true threats, making a distinction between the threats we can and cannot prevent, then enact wise solutions to help preserve earthlife, and work hard to tend with care the ecological systems where we can and do have an impact – like the stewardship of the waterways, fields, and forests of this great land; all while preparing for the effects of the unpreventable sorts of environmental disasters, which are out of our control.

The number of lives helped or saved every year from standing/active armies is certainly far less than the number of lives helped or saved if the same institutions were to be devoted, wholesale and wholeheartedly, to emergency-response, natural disaster warning, and natural disaster prevention efforts.

There are plenty of solutions to our natural predicaments within means already at our disposal.

The authors of the Bible and the Qur’an were well-aware of recurring serious ecological pressures, and of our predictable reactions to them (or predictable lack of reaction to them in certain contexts), as well as being well aware of our effect on ecosystems.

Their recommendations included preservation and stewardship.

Those who today call themselves Christian, while supporting, actively or passively, the clearcutting of complex and sometimes irreplaceable (irreplantable) ecosystems, and replanting cramped stifling dry industrial tree-cropping “systems”, these Christians might be surprised to find that Jesus Christ would not approve.  Not, at, all.  Christian loggers might be surprised to learn that their biblical Tree of Life includes Trees.  If a Christian logger would come to fully appreciate this reality, then maybe he would enthusiastically sell his tree-cutting-monster-machine and tend to a mixed true forest by interplanting selective-harvesting varieties, coppicing varieties, forest garden varieties, along with oodles of other alternative solutions, such as proper clean lice-free fish farming, which is possible.