Every winter, severe storms hit major cities. More predictable than the amount of precipitation is the media connecting climate change to any severe weather.
But before temperature recordkeeping or standardized spelling, people just took whatever icy squall or pleasant zephyr came at them. Without the “science”-backed narrative that our reliance on oil is to blame for it all, it was just weather.
Take, for instance, the testimony of a one-armed Lake Superior lighthouse keeper who saw the strangest patterns before carbon-fueled industrialization.
Napoleon Beedon wrote in the Au Sable Light Station log on Dec. 8, 1876, that in the morning there was a south light breeze, that it was cloudy, “snowing and freezing.”
By 5 p.m., it was “almost a hurricane” and a “frightfull storm” that “blew down 50 trees or more close by the light house and tower would blow down as they shouk like a leafe.”
Beedon concludes, “It was the worst storm I ever saw on Lake Superior.”
But of February in 1878, Beedon wrote: “This month that has passed has been as a summer month. Such wether never was known on Lake Superior before.”
“I have been a light keeper for over 25 years on Lake Superior and I never saw sutch a mild winter no ice in the lake and boats could [illegible] all winter if the only wished to do so,” Beedon remarked about the unusual warmth of the season.
The following year, the winter weather was again whipping the small light station on the top of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula near Grand Marais.
“The month of February 1879 has been stormey most all the month,” Beedon wrote. “It is one of the stormeys month I have ever seen.”
Beedon was no Lake Superior rookie. But the weather still surprised him. That’s the way the weather has been for most of human history. We did our best to survive it.
Reread Laura Ingalls Wilder to see what it was like to try to plan life and plant crops in the face of constant uncertainty. At one point in “Farmer Boy,” Wilder describes a frost encountered by her future husband on the first day of July. The family had to pour water on the corn all night long to try to save it.
Imagine what climate experts would have to say if that happened today.
In the years since, we’ve thankfully gotten better at predicting weather patterns. But after we got comfortable, we got cocky. We started believing the insidious lie that we are the ones actually controlling the weather.
When we have warmer winters, you hear a cacophony of climate alarmists cry out that it’s because the global temperature is rising. The dizzying cold is also a result of climate change.
If massive weather events are connected to climate change, the implication is that we all need to undo it. If you want your grandkids to have a white Christmas, you’d better switch to an EV, compost, and recycle.
If instead we’re willing to humble ourselves and accept the fact that the weather has always been erratic and dangerous, we can start separating truth from the fictions of the Climate Change Death Cult.
The truth is that the weather is crazy, and it always has been. Global temperatures may indeed be rising. I’m not a denialist. But it’s fiction to pretend that the latest severe weather is the direct result of your minivan’s trips on I-94.
It’s also fiction to pretend everyday people have the power to change the global climate. How much of a difference does choosing paper over plastic at the grocery store make when China and India are choking the world with coal plants?
Those influenced by the Climate Change Death Cult will invariably argue that we should all try to do our part to make small changes. To that, I say: Sure. Do what you think is right. Live how you want.
But as for me, I’m more concerned with living with the weather like Napoleon Beedon than pretending I can control it. My biggest concern this winter is whether I’ll need a bigger coat or if it’s time to break out my shorts.
Brendan Clarey is deputy editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
