Monday, March 20, 2017

Politics, Climate, and the Economy │ Peter Temple


Peter Temple (Mar 19, 2017) - Above is a chart of the US Presidents from 1913 through 2016. You can see the politicians who were liked and are considered “good leaders” by historians (green circles and check marks). The there are those we dislike (red circles and x’s) and threw out of office because “they destroyed the economy.”

Dr. Wheeler spent his entire life analyzing weather cycles back over 20 centuries to 600 BC. He found that major climate cycles changed every 25, 100, 500, and 1000 years and that they’re fractal, which means there are smaller cycles within larger cycles. During his life, he put together an archive of world events relative to changes in climate that was some 2000 pages in length, and when open, spanned a length of some 7 feet. To the left is the only shot I’ve found of him working on “The Big Book.” Here are the four twenty-five year cycles:

Spring: warm and wet
Summer, warm and dry
Fall: cool and wet
Winter: cold and dry.
The roaring ’20s (yellow) were mostly wet and warm, but in 1929 (red arrow), it got very cold – the mercury plunged. Cold and dry has always led to tough economic times. The stock market crashed. Then the next year, 1930 (green arrow points to temperature drop), was the driest year in over 150 years. It ushered in ten straight years of dry and hot (red)—about the hottest on record over the past couple of hundred years: The Great Depression. Hot and dry weather in history has led to a major war, despotism, dictators, socialism, communism, world wars, and other atrocities.

In the mid 40s (purple), it turned cool and wet … the economy picked up and the war ended. It lasted through to the ’60s—we had the Beatles, love and flowers … great times! Cool climate means energy–humans become much more active. Wet means prosperity in terms of food.

But in the late ’60s (green), we turned cold and dry … and that led to a deep recession that lasted through the late 70s. In fact there were articles in all the major newspapers predicting a mini ice age. Well, you’re likely to see those again.

But then it turned warm again in the ’80s (blue), the stock market turned up, and business started to boom! It was a warm-wet spring cycle once again—that means prosperity … and that lasted through the 90s, when it also started to get dry and cool again (after 1998).

These climate cycles happen so regularly, that in the 1940s Dr. Wheeler predicted the current change in climate with his drought clock. And sure enough, in 1998, the temperature started to cool and we’ve been getting cooler and dyer ever since. He also predicted extreme weather in the early twenty first century because we’re at the end of an even larger five hundred year cycle. Two major climate cycles are transitioning right now. That’s why we have such extreme weather (see also HERE).