Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Two steps backward, three steps backward
And while we're talking about sophisticated harmonies from the '30s.....
A passage from the WPA Guide to Kansas, written in 1938 as the Dust Bowl was still going strong.
Recent years of almost unprecedented drought have led to the often expressed belief that the climate of Kansas is changing. Geologists and meteorologists, however, point out that weather runs in cycles, the most pronounced being about a third of a century in length. Conditions during a cycle are easily mistaken by laymen for permanent changes. Despite year by year fluctuations in temperature and precipitation, recorded evidence shows that general climatic conditions remain unchanged.
The scientists of 1938 had knowledge, logic and common sense. They understood the principle of the wheel or the wave: what goes around comes around. Today's "scientists" have lost that basic understanding. Like a newborn babe, they see something going up and they assume it's going up forever.
And the third of a century has continued with fair precision. 1938 was a year of floods and droughts, including a terrible flood in Los Angeles and a hurricane that flattened Providence, RI with a HUNDRED-FOOT-TALL surge. Add 35 and you get 1973, another year of floods, supercells and tornados. Add 34 to that, and you get 2007.
Well, what do you know. Those old benighted scientists just might be right. Things do run in cycles. Amazing.
Satire aside, I'm desperately frightened to see our "keepers of knowledge" dragging us down into a Dark Age. It took several centuries for the learning of Greece and Rome to fade into raw superstition; our Communist masters have accomplished the same level of destruction in a few decades. ¶ 9:04 PM
A passage from the WPA Guide to Kansas, written in 1938 as the Dust Bowl was still going strong.
Recent years of almost unprecedented drought have led to the often expressed belief that the climate of Kansas is changing. Geologists and meteorologists, however, point out that weather runs in cycles, the most pronounced being about a third of a century in length. Conditions during a cycle are easily mistaken by laymen for permanent changes. Despite year by year fluctuations in temperature and precipitation, recorded evidence shows that general climatic conditions remain unchanged.
The scientists of 1938 had knowledge, logic and common sense. They understood the principle of the wheel or the wave: what goes around comes around. Today's "scientists" have lost that basic understanding. Like a newborn babe, they see something going up and they assume it's going up forever.
And the third of a century has continued with fair precision. 1938 was a year of floods and droughts, including a terrible flood in Los Angeles and a hurricane that flattened Providence, RI with a HUNDRED-FOOT-TALL surge. Add 35 and you get 1973, another year of floods, supercells and tornados. Add 34 to that, and you get 2007.
Well, what do you know. Those old benighted scientists just might be right. Things do run in cycles. Amazing.
Satire aside, I'm desperately frightened to see our "keepers of knowledge" dragging us down into a Dark Age. It took several centuries for the learning of Greece and Rome to fade into raw superstition; our Communist masters have accomplished the same level of destruction in a few decades. ¶ 9:04 PM
