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June 23, 2024 - Jim Fetzer
48:11
Defusing The Climate Propaganda - Squaring the Circle: A Randall Carlson Podcast
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Hello, I'm Randall Carlson, and I would like to welcome you to another episode of Squaring the Circle Podcast.
I would like to discuss an issue of critical importance for the future of freedom in America.
It involves a pandemic that is now affecting millions of Americans, rendering them incapable of thinking coherently and with clarity, while replacing their conception of reality with illusions.
I speak, of course, about propaganda.
which has become so pervasive and ubiquitous in America that many people have become numb to its effects and utterly incapable of recognizing its influence.
So what actually is propaganda?
Well, Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines propaganda as, quote, the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person, unquote.
Encyclopedia Britannica further defines propaganda as, quote, the dissemination of information to influence public opinion.
It can be done through mass media, symbols or words.
Britannica adds that it is the more or less systematic effort to manipulate other people's beliefs, attitudes, or actions by means of symbols.
Deliberateness and a relatively heavy emphasis on manipulation distinguish propaganda from casual conversation or the free and easy exchange of ideas.
Unquote.
In the pursuit of an agenda or a goal, propagandists deliberately select facts, arguments, and displays of symbols and present them in ways they think will have the most effect.
To maximize this effect, the propagandist, quote, may omit or distort pertinent facts or simply lie.
And they may try to divert the attention of the reactors or the people they are trying to sway from everything but their own propaganda.
It should be noted that, quote, comparatively deliberate selectivity and manipulation Distinguishes propaganda from authentic education, in which all sides of an issue are addressed and accounted for to the fullest extent possible.
True education promotes the collection and evaluation of information and evidence to arrive at independent and critically robust conclusions which reflect the truth and reality insofar as it is possible to do so.
The goal of propaganda, however, is indoctrination, not education.
And we now see that glaringly demonstrated in the repurposing of public education, which, of course, means government-controlled schooling.
Prominent propagandists in recent history include Vladimir Lenin, and his use of propaganda became a powerful weapon in the arsenal of Marxists and Communists to subjugate people to their agenda of social control.
On the American side was Edward Bernays, often referred to as the father of public relations.
He was prominent in developing propaganda for both corporations and the government, and was infamous as an agent for the quote-unquote Committee on Public Education, the first systematic exploitation of propaganda by the federal government during the Woodrow Wilson administration in order to whip up support for American entry into World War I.
As it is, many people know that propaganda is a tool employed by corporations and businesses to market their services or products, which, however, they have the right to do under the scope of the First Amendment, while it is left up to the people to discern the truth of the matter.
Acquiring the necessary discernment is a process which is actually facilitated by a strong and unfettered First Amendment that allows for the people to think for themselves.
But it is a different matter altogether when propaganda is disseminated by government, which, in the American constitutional system, is bound by a strict system of constraints.
In the case of America, people want to believe that their government is a source of truth and unbiased information in which they can confidently place their trust.
Sixty years ago, most Americans, some 80%, said they trusted the federal government.
Today, that statistic is fewer than 2 out of 10.
In fact, trust in the federal government is now the lowest it has ever been.
This is not simply the result of subjectively changing social mores or values.
It is an objective result of the fact that the government is now lying to us on levels unprecedented in the history of our country, and people are beginning to wake up to this fact.
Much of the propaganda being disseminated today pertains to the subject of climate change.
Sometimes the propagandistic distortions are subtle, but other times are so egregious that it is obvious to almost anyone who takes an objective look that reality is being manipulated.
Recently, a story appeared in the mainstream press about a storm that affected the United Kingdom in January of this year.
I will cite this as an example, as the climate change issue has become a major medium for the dissemination of propaganda.
On January 21st, the UK was battered by a storm named Isha.
At its peak, Isha gusted up to 107 miles per hour, according to Met Office, the UK's national weather service.
There were two deaths that resulted, and several tens of thousands of people were left without power for several days.
The day after the storm, senior meteorologist Claire Nassir, a government employee with the Met Office, went on BBC Radio to explain that, quote, when we see these storms, they are more intense, and that's down to climate change.
In 2023 we began a rainfall deficit and had two intense heat waves, yet the UK saw the 11th wettest year on record.
End of quote.
BBC News commented that Nassir explained this shift between extremes and weather patterns in the UK and that it would continue into the future.
Other media outlets echoed this assumption.
However, when perusing the BBC News website for the date January 21, 2024, one finds among their reportage this comment.
Quote, parts of the UK have seen their strongest winds in 10 to 20 years.
Gusts of up to 99 miles per hour were recorded in Northumberland.
Unquote.
As far as making the case that this storm was or was not unprecedented, clearly it was not, given that only parts of the UK experience this level of wind strength, which was only comparable in strength to earlier storms of just 10 to 20 years previously, as stated right in the article.
In other words, it was not unprecedented.
Yet it was invoked as a harbinger of future climate change.
Climate crisis true believers don't appreciate being reminded about the great storm of 1703 over the UK when wind speeds were clocked at 110 miles per hour.
This intense storm raged for more than a week, uprooted 21,000 trees, and blew ships many miles off course.
When the storm finally abated, as many as 15,000 people had lost their lives, as compared to two from Storm Isha.
A powerful cyclonic storm named Storm Ulysses battered the UK in 1903, causing many deaths and heavily damaging infrastructure.
Recent analysis of records suggests that wind speeds were some of the highest ever recorded in the UK.
Then there was the North Sea Flood of 1953, which resulted from a massive storm-caused surging of the sea.
A thousand miles of coastline were left severely damaged from the event.
More than 30,000 people were forced to evacuate.
326 people in the United Kingdom lost their lives.
At least 24,000 homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed, and more than 600 square miles of eastern England were flooded.
And another 2,225 people were killed in the Netherlands, Belgium, and at sea.
Wind speeds measured up to at least 126 miles per hour.
There have continued to be powerful storms striking the UK since 1953.
since 1953, for example, in the years 1987, 1990, and 2013.
But the severity and or frequency of such storms, are they increasing as we are constantly being told?
Well, when examining specific cases, in specific regions, which is all one can do to make such a determination, we must ask, does one find a documented upward trend associated with the gradual rise in global temperature of one half a degree since the mid 20th century?
Well, with respect to this question, a reference to the actual source data compiled on the Met Office website is revealing.
Under the heading, UK and Global Extreme Events-Windstorms, we find the following conclusion based upon exhaustive analysis of real-world data, and I quote, The UK State of the Climate Report states that there are no compelling trends in storminess when considering maximum gust speeds over the last four decades.
More comprehensive studies across the North Atlantic region have reached similar conclusions.
The divergence between the impression created by the mainstream media's biased reportage of weather and climatic events and what the actual data shows is stark.
After the ClimateGate debacle in 2009, official sources have become more reluctant to release falsified data overtly.
However, with a compliant media pushing out propaganda for them, rather than authentic data and rational conclusions derived therefrom, they are happy to retreat into the background and hope that astute observers and investigators don't ask too many questions.
But regrettably, such dishonest reporting has now become the norm.
American, British, and other European governments are spending enormous sums of money on propaganda to whip up support among their citizens for a fabricated climate crisis, forever wars, and the manipulation of their political opinions.
It is time to resurrect truth and honesty in government.
This is a call to all viewers and listeners to learn to recognize the pernicious effects of propaganda and to immunize yourselves against it.
And towards this goal, the Squaring of the Circle podcast is dedicated.
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Thanks!
Alright, let's continue with our deconstruction of propaganda.
For the sake of gaining a better understanding of the working of propaganda, let's take a deeper look at some more recent examples.
We'll start with Joe Biden's State of the Union address on March 8th, which was not, in fact, an actual State of the Union address, but rather a 2024 presidential campaign speech characterized by copious distortions and disinformation.
Let me cite a few examples from his address to make my case and to show you again the many forms that propaganda can take.
Biden went on at length about his economic achievements.
He boasted that wages keep going up.
Well, that sounds good, doesn't it?
However, when adjusted for inflation, wages have actually declined from when he took office.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average weekly earnings of working people have risen by 14.8% since Biden assumed the presidency.
But conservatively, inflation has risen by 18% based upon the Consumer Price Index.
That's an overly conservative estimate.
The difference provides a minimum measure of the loss of purchasing power of the U.S.
dollar.
And as anyone who has been paying attention to the rise in the cost of food and energy knows, inflation is considerably higher when applied to these critical areas of the economy.
By contrast, between the years 1954 and 1969, real median family income grew on average 3.54% per year over inflation.
Most boomers will remember these were still the days when one working adult was able to support a family on a single income.
There was a solid middle class that owned their own homes and were able to generally prosper economically.
However, between the years 1969 and 2022, median family income rose by an anemic 0.74% per year.
In other words, the growth rate of real income in the 54 to 69 period was 23%.
21 times higher than the period from 69 to 2022.
What changed?
Well, there were multiple causes, but the primary one was the out-of-control inflation of the money supply caused by the Federal Reserve that resulted when President Richard Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold bullion That's what changed.
After that, American currency became free-floating, having no fixed value based upon something tangible, for example, gold, instead deriving its value by comparison with other world currencies.
Prior to 1971, the number of dollars printed and in circulation was limited by the fact that it was tied to the actual amount of gold held in Fort Knox.
Since that time, the value of the dollar has not been backed by a hard asset, but rather the quote-unquote full faith and credit of the government, a rather nebulous concept at best.
Essentially, Nixon ended America's commitment to exchange U.S.
paper dollars for gold at the agreed-upon price of $35 per ounce.
The results of this shift in monetary policy have been stark.
For comparison, in 1960, the federal debt was only slightly more than half the total value of the American economy.
It is now, under Bidenomics, approaching 150% of the total value of the economy.
I think it would be accurate to describe the national debt as obscene.
The thing that I find most disturbing about all this is the number of Americans who continuously and repeatedly fall for the same distortions of reality over and over again, who willingly accept the propaganda that is now being spoon-fed to them on a daily basis through the agency of a subservient medium.
But let's go on.
Biden claims to have cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion.
However, he conveniently failed to mention that the decline in the yearly deficit occurred because emergency COVID funding programs that began during the pandemic expired, something that would have happened no matter who was sitting in the Oval Office.
Another claim he made was that, quote, my policies have attracted 650 billion in private sector investment in clean energy, end of quote.
Without, however, clarifying that this number does not represent actual investments, merely statements of intention by potential investors who are largely growing wary of the efficacy of many of the so-called clean energy schemes.
As I have pointed out in numerous places, clean energy needs to be considered in the context of the full range of processes necessary to extract the raw materials from the earth and produce the infrastructure of solar collectors, windmills, storage batteries, and so on.
Turns out that these procedures are not clean at all.
The bulk of the metals and materials used in fabricating the apparatus of wind farms and solar collectors on an industrial scale are mostly mined in Africa, often using slave labor or child labor, and processed in China, and the methods of extraction, refinement, and production are far from environmentally benign.
And so it goes.
It has reached the point where, with a few important exceptions, almost nothing coming out of the mouths of the political sector can be believed.
And now we have the Biden administration with the support of dimwit Republicans pushing to control the internet platform TikTok with the passage of House Bill H.R. 7521.
Ostensibly, because there is some vaguely defined connection between TikTok and the Chinese Communist Party.
Now anyone who knows me or my opinions knows that I am no fan of communism of any variety.
But as far as this bill goes, Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky has correctly pointed out, H.R.
7521 is in reality a Trojan horse, and not what it is being sold as, a policy to protect helpless, gullible Americans from the influence of nefarious Chinese propaganda.
The short title of the act in question is this.
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications.
I'm going to read that again.
Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Of course, foreign adversary, as defined in the bill, can be any entity the government chooses.
As Representative Massey accurately describes the latest attempt by the government to control the public narrative, quote, the president will be given the power to ban websites, not just apps, unquote.
Well, I, for one, do not need the government protecting me from information.
And as far as China is concerned, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has accurately pointed out that 60% of TikTok is owned by international investors, 20% ownership belongs to employees of the app, 7,000 of whom happen to be Americans, 20% is owned by two Chinese software developers with no known ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and finally, that the companies
CEO Xiaozhi Xiong is Singaporean.
He's not even Chinese.
Something that bonehead Congressman Tom Cotton couldn't seem to understand.
Ironically, the app is already banned in China.
As Rand Paul transiently asks, so we're going to emulate the Chinese Communists by banning it in our country?
He points out that this is an international corporation, and like every other international corporation, they deserve their day in court.
You can't just take their property.
This is absolutely the correct ethical position with respect to this issue.
Only in despotic dictatorships and totalitarian states can the government seize property with or without a bill legitimizing it, without due process, and without making a case in an unbiased court of law.
Let's be clear here.
The government, that is, politicians, have no right or legitimate authority whatsoever to dictate to free American citizens what they may read, what they may say, or what sources of information they access.
There's no ambiguity here.
Congressmen and women take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and as we all know very well, the very First Amendment to the Bill of Rights absolutely forbids the political sector from compromising or restricting freedom of the press in any way, and that now includes the digital press.
So the question should be asked, why now, and why TikTok?
Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that TikTok has become a primary source of criticism and condemnation of the Biden administration?
That is, the neocons, disastrous and immoral foreign policies vis-a-vis Ukraine, Israel, Syria, Yemen, etc., etc., and its policy of forever wars?
What I would like to know is who's calling the shots here?
It clearly isn't Joe Biden.
Let's get America back on track.
Let's demand that politicians tell us the truth, that they honor their obligation to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Let's insist that our tax money not be exploited to feed us a mass of propaganda and disinformation that we don't need, and we don't need our opinions manipulated by a bunch of self-serving politicians, agenda-driven control freaks, and deep state bureaucrats.
Let's return to the principle that the primary purpose of the government, at least the American government, is to protect our freedom.
That is the only legitimate reason for it to exist.
I'd like to take this opportunity to talk for just a minute about the upcoming Cosmic Summit conference that's going to be held in Greensboro, North Carolina this June 15th through 16th at the Sheraton Four Seasons Hotel.
It is going to be an awesome event with amazing speakers and presentations covering a whole wide variety of compelling and interesting topics, including such things as cosmic impacts, the Younger Dryas, lost civilizations, megafaunal extinctions, forgotten ancient technologies, the plasma energy revolution, megalithic monument building, the Knights Templar,
Catastrophic geology, even Atlantis, the Clovis culture in North America, and that's just the beginning of the list.
I think you should go check out, go to CosmicSummit.com, and you're going to be able to learn more.
You're going to get to see bios on the speakers, on the presentation topics, and this is something not to be missed.
This is a cutting-edge gathering of minds, some of the Finest minds on the planet right now doing the kind of paradigm-changing work that we so desperately need.
So this is something, and there's a lot of options, too.
There's a lot of options for involvement, whether it's in-house or live streams or only part of the conference.
So go to CosmicSummit.com, check it out.
And I hope to see you there.
There's still seats left.
And I think you will find that your time spent at the summit will be something that you carry with you for years and look back to as one of the most exciting events you've ever participated in.
So I hope to see you there.
So I will continue now with my expose of propaganda as a social as a tool of social control and its pervasiveness.
Over and over again, we are Hearing reference to the so-called climate crisis, or climate emergency, that demands, according to the pundits who would presume to chart the future course of civilization, an immediate about-face.
A termination of civilization as we know it.
A great reset that decrees that all fossil fuel use must end within the next decade or two, or even sooner.
We are being told that this must happen if we are to have any hope of staving off the inevitable global catastrophe that is going to bring untold misery and chaos upon the world, creating millions of climate refugees and victims of industrial civilization.
Well, I have a problem with some of this rhetoric.
Having been deeply interested in matters of global change for more than 40 years now and having invested a substantial amount of time in seeking to understand the nature of climate and environmental change, having read thousands of scientific papers related to the subject,
And having logged up some 150,000 plus miles in field reconnaissance and geomorphic investigation, and having participated in dozens of field excursions and interviews, and interviewing dozens of professionals and experts in their respective fields, all in the effort to better understand the direct effects of climate and environmental change upon the planetary landscape,
So as a result of all this, I find myself in a position of quite readily seeing through the massive propaganda campaign whose purpose it is to convince people we are on the verge of a global catastrophe, because we have increased the ambient amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by approximately 100 parts per million since the early 20th century.
To provide some perspective, consider this.
Increase amounts to just over one molecule of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 molecules of air over the past century.
I argue that it is entirely reasonable to question the claim that this increase is leading to an unprecedented climate crisis.
Allow me to emphasize a key point here.
The supposition upon which this catastrophic scenario is based is that the history of planetary change has largely been a steady state affair.
The factors perturbing the equilibrium of the planetary climate and environment are minimal.
And that the world we inhabit is the result of an endlessly long-term, incremental changes that, with some local and regional exceptions, accumulate so slowly as to be virtually imperceptible.
Upon this sedentary constancy, the disrupting presence of humankind is seen as an anomaly, imposing traumas upon the natural world such it has never before experienced, at least since the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid impact.
Regularly, we are told that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have never been as high as they are now.
And their unprecedented accumulation in the atmosphere is going to trigger runaway global warming, which is going to lead to more frequent and extreme weather events.
We were told by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth in 2006 that, quote, carbon dioxide having never gone above 300 parts per million, here's where CO2 is now, way above where it's ever been as far back as this record will measure, unquote.
This refrain has been repeated endlessly since then, and anyone who questions the accuracy or relevance of that claim is typically branded a climate change denier.
But are these claims true?
Do they reflect the reality of climate change over the course of Earth history?
Such assertions are only valid with respect to one's perspective and the underlying assumptions upon which it is based.
First, some context which has direct relevance to the issue.
The amount of CO2 in the ancient atmosphere can be estimated in several different ways.
300 parts per million that Al Gore talks about is based upon measurements of carbon dioxide concentrations in air bubbles trapped in glacial ice.
The assumption here is that at the time the bubble was formed and sealed off from the atmosphere, and there is a lag between the deposition of the snowfall and its conversion into glacial ice of at least 80 years.
So between the encapsulating of the atmosphere of the air in a bubble and its deposition into the ice sheet is, like I said, at least 80 years.
So the concentration of CO2 in the bubble, the assumption here is that the concentration of CO2 in the bubble was exactly the same as the average concentration of CO2 in the global atmosphere as a whole.
However, few matters need to be considered in greater detail.
The carbon dioxide measurements referenced in Gore's movie were derived from studies of Antarctic ice cores.
In 1998, a scientific joint venture between the United States, France, and Russia extracted an ice core at the Russian research station of Vostok in East Antarctica.
This collaboration, of course, happened before neocon crazies infesting American government from Bush to Biden decided that Russia had to be recast as enemy number one.
Anyways, the ice core reached all the way to bedrock, a length of almost 12,000 feet, and covered a span of time reaching back more than 420,000 years.
Using gas chromatography, scientists measured the carbon dioxide concentrations in the core And they ranged from a low of 180 parts per million to a high of 300 parts per million in the enclosed air bubbles.
Hence, Gore's reference to 300 parts per million, which according to him, atmospheric concentrations have never exceeded.
An ice core is typically about 4 to 5 inches in diameter.
If an air bubble is extracted from the Vostok core that resided in the ice at a depth of, say, 1,400 meters or 4,592 feet, the age associated with a layer of that depth is 97,930 years.
Back in the laboratory, a section of the ice core is removed and crushed in a stainless steel vacuum chamber, and the amount of carbon dioxide released is then measured.
But now consider that the Vostok core was extracted at a position close to the South Pole, about 800 miles distant, and I would ask this.
Is it reasonable to assume that the concentration of CO2 contained within the vacuum chamber in the laboratory, extracted from air bubbles trapped in ice at a single point location near the South Pole, buried for nearly a hundred thousand years nearly a mile below the surface, is unequivocally representative of the average atmosphere concentration for the entire planet at that time?
Maybe it is.
But maybe it isn't.
As a matter of fact, that assumption has been challenged by a number of highly qualified scientists who've pointed out that there are multiple factors that could affect the accuracy of the ice core results, not least of which is that the amount of CO2 within trapped air bubbles might be more a function of the pressure imposed upon the bubbles as a consequence of their depth than it is to the average global atmospheric concentration at the time of entrainment many thousands of years ago.
I will dive into this matter in greater detail in another episode of Squaring the Circle, but for now I will point out that this is only one among multiple issues affecting the potential accuracy of ice core analysis.
I think it a safe conclusion that almost no one outside the climate science community is even slightly aware of these legitimate challenges to fundamental assumptions upon which global warming scenarios are based.
Why, it should be asked, are the majority of people completely unaware of this?
Is it possible that mainstream media, from whence they derive their information, could be lopsided or biased in its reporting?
Is it possible that mainstream media has devolved, for the most part, into a mere advocate of officially approved narratives?
In an upcoming episode, I will present the additional evidence that ice cores are not the final word on carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
There's something I'd like to talk to you about regarding advertising partners for this show.
Advertising revenue is what keeps the show free for you, and it enables me to do this full-time.
An ad-free version of this show, with bonus material, will be available for a small subscription fee through my HowTube channel.
The link is provided below.
So, yes, I will personally be reading ads, but only for my favorite hand-picked advertising partners that I wholeheartedly support.
My producers and I will be choosing only companies, products, and services that we feel are in some way breaking the mold or pursuing, pushing the boundaries in their industry and that affect positive change.
To borrow a phrase from someone I'm just getting to know and greatly admire, Will Harris, who runs the White Oak Pastures Farms in Southern Georgia, Who's doing amazing work in the area of regenerative agriculture and wrote a book called A Bold Return to Giving a Damn.
And that phrase stuck with me.
In that light, I will be bringing you only those companies, individuals, and entrepreneurs who give a damn, who are doing their best to place the welfare of their customers, community, and their country first over profits.
We all need to make profits, but in my view, the days of profit at any cost are over.
Thank you very much.
I'm Randall Carlson.
For now, I would like to circle back to the claim that global warming is going to lead to a greater frequency and intensity of catastrophic weather events.
To examine the veracity of this claim, it would be useful to reference what is actually known about past periods of global climate change.
The subject that looks into this issue is called paleoclimatology.
The biggest problem here confronting us when we attempt to investigate paleoclimatology is that the literature is now so vast that one is forced to be somewhat selective in the matter of scientific literature.
I must mention that on multiple occasions I have been accused of cherry-picking the research to support the conclusion that we are not, in fact, in the midst of an unprecedented climate crisis.
And I have but one reply to this claim.
It is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other official sources that cherry-picks data that supports the preordained conclusions of their computer models, to the exclusion of an immense body of research that contradicts them.
If I am cherry-picking at all, it is rather an attempt to balance the equation by making people aware of the massive amount of evidence that contradicts claims made by global warming proponents.
And which, again, is evidence that the average layperson is completely unaware of.
To establish a much-needed perspective, I will begin by examining some of the research concerning Earth's changing climate over the past 2,000 years, the time known by historians as the Common Era, the span of time covered by our modern Gregorian calendar, a time period also called by some the Age of Pisces.
Starting at the present and working backwards into the immediate historical past, by some 150 to 200 years, we find ourselves in the final stages of the Little Ice Age, a period of cold and variable climate that began roughly 700 years ago, subsequent to a period of global warmth known as the Medieval Warm Period, also called the Little Climatic Optimum.
The use of the term optimum is appropriate, as will become readily obvious as we go into more detail in future episodes.
One of the early studies looking at the body of evidence for the Little Ice Age was published in 1951 by Dr. Axel Steensburg with the National Museum of Copenhagen.
Writing about the influence of climate on European history, his article, published in the journal Nature, begins, quote, It is a general feature of the agrarian history of northern Europe during the Middle Ages.
That large-scale colonization of land came to an end late in the 13th century, and that in the next two centuries it was followed by the abandonment of hundreds of villages in nearly all parts of North European countries.
This phenomena seems to be connected with a climatic change.
This retraction of the cultivated land in the late Middle Ages is also well known in England." Steensburg references other work which had already appeared by the time of his writing in 1951, and he references that Professor J. Schreiner of Norway who has shown that the retraction was general phenomena throughout northern Europe.
Everywhere in Northern Europe, the retraction was connected with a falling population.
What seemed to be connected by Steensburg back in 1951 is now overwhelmingly documented to be real.
To recap what I've just talked about, in the late 13th century, this would be, um, I should actually say, yes, in the late, between the late 12th and the late 13th century, large-scale colonization of agricultural land came to an end.
Population declined precipitously.
Hundreds of villages were abandoned, all signaling a major demographic shift in European society that was indeed connected to climatic change.
We can now trace a direct line from the end of the Little Climatic Optimum warmth, a time of agricultural abundance and prosperity, to the onset of cold, marking the beginning phases of the Little Ice Age and a series of repeated widespread crop failures that followed.
The fall in population culminated with the onset of the pestilence known as the Black Death.
Which first broke out in the year 1348.
This followed on the heels of widespread famine caused by the repeated crop failures caused in turn by the cold weather.
This led in turn to weakness, compromised immune systems, and enhanced vulnerability to pathogens.
By the 1990s, researchers were realizing that many of the plagues of history were connected with malnutrition.
In a paper published in the journal Climatic Change by historical climatologist Christian Feister, with co-authors Gabriela Schwarz-Zanetti and N. Wegman, all with the University of Bern, Switzerland, the authors studied a mass of documentary evidence from historical archives that related directly to Little Ice Age climate change and its effects on European society.
They clearly discerned a connection between the onset of cold, subsequent crop failures, and the onset of malnourishment.
Quote, The connection between famine and infection is complex, and scholars have debated the precise reasons for deaths by famine.
Especially in the 1980s, the correlation between malnutrition and epidemics was a topic of lively academic discussion.
In Finland, the causes of death during the famines of the 1860s was debated.
However, it is clear that severe malnutrition makes people susceptible to many infections.
It is also undeniable that historically there is a clear connection between famine and several infectious diseases like typhus, typhoid fever, and dysentery.
According to Danielle Larson, famines and food shortages in the late 17th and early 18th century Sweden induced epidemics of dysentery and typhus, which crucially affected mortality rates.
Karen J. Cullen, who has studied the ill years of the 1690s in Scotland, states that many people there perished from typhus and typhoid fever.
Feister, C.G.
Swartz-Zanetti, and M. Wegman Wrote this article in 1996, was entitled Winter Severity in Europe in the 14th Century, published again in the journal Climatic Change.
So I'm going to pick up the thread of this important research in the next episode of Squaring the Circle, but it is imperative at this time that a true and accurate perspective on the matter of climate change is available to people As major policy changes are in the pipeline that will directly affect people's lives and well-being for years to come.
So please join me in these future episodes to get an authentic interpretation and exposure to data and evidence to give you a realistic picture of climatic change.
So I look forward to joining you all again for the next episode of Squaring the Circle.
Thank you.
Hello, Randall Carlson here with a short announcement about the multiple ways you can enjoy my new podcast, Squaring the Circle.
If you haven't already done so, please make sure you watch Episode 1 to get a clear and detailed explanation on what you can expect from the Squaring the Circle podcast.
All indications are that it promises to be quite a ride.
In my effort to make this information available to as many people as possible, I am providing the following options.
Full video episodes with ads will run exclusively on Rumble for free, and free audio versions with ads will be distributed to all major podcast platforms worldwide, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Play, and the rest.
Ad-free episodes will air exclusively on my HowTube channel in exchange for a small fee of $7.20 per month.
You'll get every episode of Squaring the Circle with no ads, plus you'll get exclusive access to bonus material available only to HowTube subscribers.
Which includes private live streams with question and answer sessions and special presentations on a wide-ranging variety of compelling, relevant, controversial, and interesting topics chosen by myself to challenge your thinking and possibly even inspire you.
I will also feature special guests who are making major contributions to the evolution of human civilization and consciousness while advancing the critically important paradigm shift now gaining momentum around the world.
In general, we'll be publishing two episodes of the podcast per week, and we'll also post 15 to 20-minute clips of each episode daily across our social media channels—for free, of course.
We hope you'll follow us there as well.
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