Rewriting History to Fit the Latest Narrative of Climate Change

In the latest twist of remaking Western civilization history, Jorge Pisa Sanchez wrote in Nat Geo’s History magazine that “environmental disasters and devastating epidemics triggered the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century.” So “plagues and climate change” were the culprits for the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

The source of this new twist is Kyle Harper, a classics professor at the University of Oklahoma. In 2017, he [offered] “an ambitious synthesis on the causes of the empire’s decline.” He argued that “the fate of Rome was played out by emperors and barbarians, senators and generals, soldiers, and slaves. But it was equally decided by bacteria and viruses, volcanoes, and solar cycles.”

As proof, the article cites the Antonine plague (165-180 A.D.), the Cyprian plague (circa 249-269 A.D.), and droughts in the Mediterranean (368-369 A.D.) caused by climate shifts.

Harper drew conclusions from “data from climatology and epidemiology.” The article does not explain how and where this data came from. The Roman Climate Optimum is “believed to have lasted from circa 550 B.C. to 150 A.D.” What this belief is based on is not explained.

The article cited firsthand accounts of agronomist Columella who “indicated that in the first century A.D. rainfall in central and southern Italy was more frequent in summer than it is today.” And how do we know that?

The vast Western Roman Empire depended on its supply of grain and food on the many provinces that they had conquered. These areas produced the grains needed to support the army and the local population.

The Nat Geo article suggested that a tiny change in the Earth’s tilt reduced solar energy penetrating the atmosphere from the mid-third century A.D. which impacted the climate, making things cooler and less productive agriculturally.

What is the scientific evidence? Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (in north Africa) wrote as an eyewitness account that the world has grown old and in wintertime showers were not so abundant to nourish the seeds and the sun is not so hot to “cherish the harvest.” And the grain fields are not so “joyous,” and the autumn harvest are not so “fruitful in their leafy products.”

So based on this scant written evidence of a Bishop, we are now told to believe that the Western Roman Empire fell because of plagues and climate change. Never mind that the climate has changed for millennia across human history. And plagues and disease have affected, diminished, and killed some empires. But the Western Roman Empire did not fall because of climate change or bacteria.

Yes, cities were densely populated, and fires, and disease (tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria), and plagues have killed many across centuries in such closed quarters. Empires, including the Roman Empire, were affected by such occurrences.

Bishop St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote in a sermon De Mortalitate (On Mortality) about the plague in the middle of the third century which originated in Ethiopia, Egypt, Levant, Asia Minor, Greece, and even Italy (249-269 A.D.). The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A.D., two centuries later for entirely different reasons.

Paulus Orosius, a fifth century Christian historian, who was not present at the Cyprian plague, wrote about it in terms that indicated nothing but devastation for Italy. How credible is this historian two centuries later, a man who was not there?

The Nat Geo article talks about “climate refugees,” a term coined by the global warming crowd, in the form of nomadic herders from the “Eurasian steppe, from the Hungarian plains to Mongolia.” These nomads allegedly forced other “nomadic peoples from the north toward the land of the Roman Empire.”

The Nat Geo article states, “it now seems certain [how certain is that?] that epidemics and droughts were a notable factor in the process that led to the definitive fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D.”

Sanchez, writing for Nat Geo, ends his article very carefully with, “Our understanding of precise climatic conditions from that time remains incomplete, especially across a region as vast as the Roman Empire.” He warns against ‘deterministic conclusions’ because “history cannot be explained simply by a variation in temperature or rainfall or by the outbreak of plagues, however deadly they may be.”

Yet the title of his Nat Geo article clearly states, “Plagues and climate change, the fall of the Roman Empire, environmental disasters and devastating epidemics triggered the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late fifth century.”

Edward Gibbon wrote in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”

‘Climate change’ or plagues did not cause the fall of the Western Roman Empire. But many other variables were significant such as the sack of the Eternal City (Rome) in 410 A.D. which dealt a psychological blow to the Empire and the entire world; the Gothic invasions; the inability to control the vast and far reaching borders of the empire; the population reduction due to infertility from potential poisoning by lead pipes which carried water to the Western empire’s cities and provinces; drinking from lead cups and using lead as sweetener and cosmetics with lead would have certainly caused severe arthritic transformations in the population at a young age; the inability to defend its territories and borders with enough soldiers to keep the invading hordes out.

There is no direct data relating to temperature earlier than a couple of hundred years ago. Scientists use “proxies” such as tree rings and layers of ice deposited on glaciers and polar caps. But during the Roman Empire there were no tree-ring studies and glaciers in the Alps are far north. The Roman Empire's Worst Plagues Were Linked to Climate Change | Scientific American

John Haldon et al wrote that “Harper’s assertions that Rome fell as a result of environmental stress, in particular through a combination of pandemic disease and climate change is a conclusion cast under serious doubts.”

 

Sustainability and Greta the Climate Soothsayer

"Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”     
- Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Stanford professor of Biology

World Health Organization air quality map

The non-profits and think-tanks have now adopted and added another descriptor to their strategical predictions – sustainable. Mimicking and adopting the dictates of U.N. Agenda 21/2030 Sustainable Development 17 goals, everything is now sustainable. If it is not sustainable, it is not hip and worthy of discussion.

The sustainable reports and forecasts are apparently made more challenging by a “mercurial and unpredictable” president. What they mean is that they cannot control President Trump and thus have a hard time influencing the outcome of his policies. He is not playing ball with them by their rules.

They bemoan the “disappearance” of the “liberal progressive order” (read globalism) and its possible replacement with “autocratic dictatorship” influenced by “nationalist populism” and the narrative “China owes us.”

In an executive summary of global trends, the Atlantic Council describes economic migration as a “potential plus for the West.” Statistics forecast that the U.S. population will decline by 2030 if we are not receiving “migrants.” But the “trick will be how fast they can be integrated” and contributing to the economy.

As Europe has shown, the unchecked economic migration has been “politically destabilizing” not to mention erasing borders and national identity. But it was the intent of the EU to become a super state with no sovereignty left in any of its member-states.

Global warming is still everyone’s boogey man.  The climate change industry is back with its Wunderkind Greta Thunberg, the truant teenager, this time at Davos, Switzerland, wondering why the heads of state are not listening and heeding her dire warnings about climate change. The climate change industry might be in danger of suffering setbacks if the shrill and unscientific consensus voices at Davos are not supported. How dare you ignore climate change as a threat?

In her shrill, furious, and hysterical speech, Thunberg said, “Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We (who is we?) are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else… “We don’t want these things done in 2050, 2030, or even 2021. We want this done now.”

We, the good parents whose children go to school and learn, do not need to be chastised by a truant, arrogant, and smug teenager who knows nothing about climatology and should go back to school to study Economics and science before she can lecture states on policy and the rest of the planet on how to live.

How extraordinarily irresponsible that she has a platform to speak, threatening us, “how dare you,” reading a script prepared by environmental activists who are her adult handlers! 

Niall Ferguson from the Hoover Institution wondered why she did not address the biggest polluters of the planet – “Sixty percent of CO2 emissions since Greta Thunberg was born is attributable to China… but nobody talks about that.” Everyone expects Europe and the U.S. to fix the problem. He suggested that India and China must be constrained, and Greta should travel to Beijing and Delhi, not New York and Davos.

Environmentalists have declared that poor countries should not be allowed to use fossil fuels for cheap energy. They can’t be allowed development based on cheap energy from coal - rich countries must provide them with everything they need to produce expensive and unreliable renewable energy.

If you don’t help third world countries and transfer wealth to them, they are going to experience sea levels rise, horrible floods, and severe weather. Apparently, the omnipotent humans can mitigate weather and, if we listen to Democrat Party political ads while campaigning for the presidency, they can stop climate change if we all pay a carbon tax, very profitable for the climate change industry.

The world, as decreed by the U.N. migratory plans, apparently has “environmental migrants” (mostly male) as a result of climate change, sea level rise, and inclement weather. They are no longer economic opportunists in search of a country that gives generous welfare benefits to such migrants without request for work in kind, just “free” money. They are fleeing climate change and wars, leaving women and children behind to fend for themselves.

Billionaires and famous environmentalists have already told poor countries that they cannot adopt our Western lifestyle with cheap electricity from coal because the earth would suffer too much – it is better that they remain primitive and poor, hoping that the developed world would provide them with expensive solar panels and taxpayer subsidies for electricity and battery storage technology from the rich Western nations. Energy production in the poor world must be done sustainably otherwise Mother Gaia will be in Armageddon danger.

There is nothing that we do as human beings that does not involve some type of energy, most of which is provided by fossil fuels. Solar panels and wind turbines cannot function without the use of fossil fuels, they must be maintained and supplanted by energy and oil provided from fossil fuels or nuclear and hydro power. When the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow above 32 MPH, renewable energy must use electricity produced by other means.

Margaret Atwood wisely said, “If all fossil fuel were to go POOF! tomorrow, the result would be a cataclysmic social upheaval, with food riots, warlords, shutdowns, breakdown of social order, water shortages, and outbreaks of bloodshed and disease.”

Using corn as biofuel causes erosion, pollution, food poisoning, and a dead zone. Corn needs fossil fuels to grow because it requires a half gallon of fossil fuel to produce a bushel of corn. And there will be a shortage of corn for food if it is used for biofuel instead.

Fossil fuels and steam have created our modern civilization. Now environmentalists want us to devolve to a time when there was no cheap fossil fuel; they want us to invest in expensive renewables which would never supply enough energy for large economies. Only in the progressive universe will renewable energy be somehow safe, healthy, clean, and durable.

Elizabeth Warren, Democrat presidential contender, said, “I oppose the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. It’s an ill-conceived project that would lock us into further dependence on some of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet.”

If you ask anyone, who is charging their electric cars from the many stations that have popped up all over the country, where the electricity is coming from, they will tell you that it is from renewable energy sources which is not true.

The real reason for the global warming hoax later repackaged into the climate change industry was stated plainly by Dave Bower, Friends of the Earth Founder. “We must reclaim the roads and the plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers, and return to wilderness tens of millions of acres of presently settled land.” They want to destroy capitalism. There won’t be many places for humans to go if this green new globalist world becomes reality.

Paul Driessen said it best, “not using fossil fuels is tantamount to not using energy. It is economic suicide and eco-manslaughter.” Perhaps that is the intent.  Maurice Strong, head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (the birthplace of U.N. Agenda 21), stated, “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

Smart Growth and Green Growth - It Is Not What You Think

 

“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption, and set levels of mortality control.”   -  Professor Maurice King

Progressives (regressives) have been educating (indoctrinating) our American children for decades, inculcating (forcing) ideas such as political correctness (approved speech), globalism (one world government), global warming/climate change (redistribution of wealth), income equality (confiscation of wealth), resistance (anarchy), social justice (reverse discrimination), and tolerance (intolerance).

Progressivism has generally succeeded in creating a few generations of snowflakes (melting babies given to tantrums) and college graduates whose degrees were expensive and useless. But nobody is complaining about higher education escalating costs and globalist indoctrination.

Progressives have been urging their followers to make everything smart (U.N. compliant), to learn to deal with water shortages (water usage control) and to plan for green growth (control and destruction of property rights).

Progressives and their U.N.-affiliated organizations have preached to impressionable youth that it is for the common good (collectivism) and advanced the cause of global citizenship (U.N.-dependent global migrant). Teachers have been quite busy attacking patriotism, nationalism, and sovereignty while promoting destruction of one’s culture and history. https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/23333-un-global-citizenship-education-plan-pushes-social-justice

Smart growth/green growth (controlling and destroying property rights) has been pushed in local communities unaware of the globalist “sustainable visioning” (global communism) and “nudged” (forced) under the guise that the community had actually demanded it and voted for it.

Free grant money from the federal and state government came with sustainability strings attached to preserve farm land (take it out of production via conservation easements). Once the farmers received free money, they were not allowed to develop their own land or produce crops on it.

Smart Growth imposed population diversity (government-mandated race and ethnic balance), encouraged in every neighborhood through HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH). https://www.huduser.gov/portal/affht_pt.html

Obama’s administration combed neighborhoods to record income levels, religious affiliations, and racial and ethnic composition. If a neighborhood was not diverse enough for their liking, policies were put in place to diversify it.

Local government’s social engineering plans forced people to live in denser populated mixed-use communities on smaller tracts of land per unit in order to eliminate the need to commute to work, school, shopping, or play.

The idea behind such social engineering was that areas more densely populated have less mobility and are easier to control. It is exactly what communists did during decades of forced Stalinization, with disastrous results for the population forced off their lands into high-rise concrete block apartments.

Social engineering was amply addressed in U.N. Agenda 21 (1992) which morphed into Agenda 2030 (2015). This newer version expanded the idea that urban sprawl (suburbia) is dangerous to the environment and the planet. Their Smart Growth/Green Growth plans emphasized the implementation of walkable communities, rail trails, bike paths, “complete streets,” “strong communities,” and other visions of utopia, using various organizations such as the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the American Planning Association (APA). https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf

NAR is part of the Smart Growth Network which also includes the EPA, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), American Farmland Trust, Rails to Trails Conservancy, and the State of Maryland. http://smartgrowth.org/category/partner-spotlight-archives-page/

What would Smart Growth/Green Growth do? The euphemisms behind the real concepts sound placid enough. The propaganda materials say that the community will be beautiful, well-controlled, with high-rises and shopping within biking and walking distance, a quaint ride on a trolley to the market, “wind turbines turning lazily in the background to supply all energy needs,” solar panels on every roof, no “dirty smokestacks, no cars, no parking nightmares, no gridlock, no urban sprawl, no crime, everyone lives in perfect harmony.”

As our own county advertised, “The Potomac Community Design Guidelines and Vision of a New Woodbridge have long called for mixed-use developments based on Smart Growth principles, such as transit-oriented development and connecting neighborhoods to amenities such as parks and entertainment hubs.”

The advertised “Principles of Smart Growth” happen to coincide with those of U.N. Agenda 21:

-         Mixed land use

-         Compact building design

-         Walkable neighborhoods

-         Preserve open space, farmland, natural beauty, and critical environmental areas (if farmland is preserved, who is going to grow food?)

-         Varied transportation choices (rail, buses, bikes, all reducing mobility for Americans who are in love with their roads and cars)

-         Less or no parking, thus forcing people to give up their cars (many “stack and pack” high-rise tiny apartments have no elevators and no parking)

-         Segregate the rich who can afford to buy expensive homes in Eco-Villages, away from “stack and pack” high rises where the poor will be housed.

Globalists want to make “holistic” decisions with land use and transportation using Smart Scale Grants, promising to alleviate congestion. All the problems in our county could be easily solved if highway 1 and I-95 would be enlarged; they are the only major roads that carry traffic for locals and for those in transit between states.

The “stack-and-pack” living in a 200 square foot aPodments high-rise in Sammamish, Washington is described by a resident who “shares the kitchen with seven other tenants on the second floor.” To get to a loft cubicle, she must climb six flights of stairs in the absence of elevators. Cars are not allowed because of global warming. The micro-apartments are smaller than a hotel room, rent for $600-900 per month, and contribute to the population density rise in the area.

According to Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center, The American Planning Association (APA) commissioned a study of Smart Growth policies and it concluded that they do not work. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944360903409584?journalCode=rjpa20

But the Smart Growth planners in your area keep telling you that you live the wrong way, you are not living the green and smart way.  And there is the nagging question, why exactly do we have to “harmonize” our local, regional, state, and federal Smart Growth development plans to fit the United Nation’s Agenda 2030? Why must we live the way the third world U.N. bureaucrats dictate?

The state and local planners receive ample grants to entice and convince them that “cities and human settlements must be made inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.”

The U.N. Agenda 2030’s sustainable goal number 11.7 supports “positive economic, social, and environmental links between urban, peri-urban, and rural areas by strengthening national and regional development planning.” https://una-gp.org/clancyt/files/goals/goal11.pdf

How are these global directives translating into smart growth regional or urban planning in your area? As Tom DeWeese pointed out, all you have to do is look at Portland to see the “stack and pack” smart growth results where the “complete street,” “traffic calming,” and “strong communities” are in full effect, “on one side is a vast, dense development,” with high-rise, mixed-use buildings, and “on the other side is nothing but open land.”

“The result of Portland’s grand plan is that its increased density destroyed the entire livable atmosphere of the community. Congestion is worse, housing and consumer costs are higher, and urban services, including fire, police, and schools, have declined as the city took money from these programs to subsidize high-density developers.” https://americanpolicy.org/2015/01/05/private-property-rights-and-socialism-do-not-mix/

In our county more and more apartments are crowded per acre despite the scarce highways and traffic bottlenecks; the entire area is significantly congested by condos and apartments which fill every available space that is not occupied by wildlife and state parks.

Preserving the farmland, not for agriculture purposes but placing it in private environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) trusts’ control for future generations, is locking it in “conservation easements” in perpetuity in which the landowner, according to a specific contract, must ask permission to do anything on his property.

As Tom DeWeese described, “if the Smart Growth plans are fully implemented, as advocated by the APA and NAR, density in American cities will be as much as three times higher than those currently in New York City.”

 

 

Bacon and a Year Without Summer

Photo credit: www.pofta-buna.com

I’m placing the thickly sliced uncured bacon in the pan and, when it begins to sizzle, the marvelous aroma fills the house. It is a memory from my childhood when Grandma Elena would render bacon fat into lard in her tiny kitchen. It was a preservative for chunks of pork she would seal with wax in glass jars that would feed us for an entire year. It was stored in the cellar, the dank, damp, and constantly cool place. We did not need refrigerators and could not have afforded one anyway.

My dad eventually saved enough money when I was in 12^th grade and bought a small refrigerator for our tiny apartment in the city. It was empty most of the time because we did not have food to store, mom shopped daily and we ate what she purchased, no leftovers. We would cool a watermelon in the fridge in summertime or keep a small glass bottle of milk if we were lucky enough to have found the liter bottles sold in the government-run dairy stores.

Like everything else, shelves were bare as soon as the morning delivery was put on sale and the long line of shoppers dissipated with their laden expandable jute string shopping bags.  In winter time we had the window sill for cool storage with plenty of ice and snow.

I could have this bacon now every day if I wanted to but I don’t have to because I believe that I can find it any day in the grocery store and I don’t have to fight others for it like they do in socialist Venezuela.

We trust blindly that our local stores will always have a good stock of food every day. As a realist, however, I know that most grocery stores have enough stock for three days, but who wants to have negative thoughts when this country is so rich and the shelves are a cornucopia of abundance? We have fewer and fewer farmers, less than 3 percent, feeding 330 million. Nobody ever starves in America today but could they in case of terrible inclement weather?

What if we would experience another year like 1816, also known as the Year without a Summer?  Major food shortages occurred across the Northern Hemisphere due to the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, preceded by the 1814 eruption of Mayon in the Philippines. (Oppenheimer, Clive, 2003. "Climatic, environmental and human consequences of the largest known historic eruption: Tambora volcano (Indonesia) 1815.” Progress in Physical Geography. 27 (2): 230–259. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1191/0309133303pp379ra

Volcanic winters are not something new, they have occurred across the millennia but nobody was keeping track then. Evidence of inclement weather disasters and probable food shortages can be found, among others, in studies of soil strata and in ice core samples.

Reports in the U.S. described a persistent “dry fog which turned reddish and dimmed the sunlight - it could not be dispersed by wind or rainfall.”  Scientists termed it a “stratospheric sulfate aerosol veil.” It affected crops, particularly at higher elevations such as Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and even the garden state, New Jersey. In early June snow fell in Albany, New York, and in Maine. New Jersey’s crops were damaged by five continuous nights of frost.

Those who push the idea of an anthropogenic global warming conveniently leave out the historical data of the Vostok ice core samples taken by Russian, American, and French scientists. Global warmists have now switched to climate change which all sides agree that it does occur but it is not necessarily man-made. We should not confuse deliberate environmental degradation and lack of conservation of natural resources with CO2 gases emitted by humans and animals existing and breathing. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ice-core-data-help-solve/

The Little Ice Age that lasted approximately 500 years is another important occurrence worth mentioning that the global warmists conveniently leave out from their narrative. It caused tremendous agricultural hardship and famine in Europe from around the thirteen hundreds to the eighteen hundreds, affecting the Norse settlers and even Napoleon’s campaign in Russia in 1812 where they encountered such an unusual bitter-cold winter and a lack of food for which they were ill-prepared.  The culprit of the severe cold stretching over centuries was the diminished solar flare activity, a solar minimum, not CO2.

Long winters are not unusual in Russia or in the United States for that matter, it is the inability to have a long enough and warm enough growing season in order to produce sufficient food for its population.

Climatologists who argue when this cooling period actually began, dubbed Little Ice Age by Francois E. Matthes, are more definitive that it ended around 1850-1870. https://www.history.com/news/little-ice-age-big-consequences

In our 20^th century communist society, it was not the surprise of weather changes that we had to worry so much about but the unwise economic and agricultural central planning that bore no resemblance to reality or to the ability of humans to produce what was ordered and the fact that most food was used for export in order to buy industrial equipment needed for development. People starved, foreigners ate well, and the communist party had its factories that produced goods that nobody wanted to buy because they were so poorly made.

But we had bacon thanks to my grandparents who always raised a pig for Christmas slaughter, a beautiful animal that kept four-five families alive through winter, spring, summer, and fall until the next year.  If it was not for grandma raising this pig, raising chickens and ducks for eggs, keeping a cow for milk, and planting a garden, several families would have starved because there was not enough food provided by government in groceries stores for the size of the population. Communists do not recognize the law of supply and demand and are not particularly adept at planning centralized economies based loosely on Marxist ideology.

 

 

Carlisle, a Visit in the Apple Country

Cumberland Valley apple orchard
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

Driving through the winding roads of the Cumberland Valley, Pennsylvania felt like riding a roller-coaster sixty miles an hour, with exciting and breathtaking drops. It was a warm February day yet I could only imagine how treacherous it must be when ice and snow cover these roads.

I admired the picturesque apple orchards dotting the landscape and stopped to smell the fresh air, the soil, and to hear birds singing. Even in its dormant state, the sunny day, the stillness, the beauty of the fertile trees as far as the eyes could see, was captivating.

We were bound for Carlisle, Pa, the seat of Cumberland County. Carlisle has a population of 19,162 (2016) excluding the students who attend Dickinson College, a liberal arts college focusing on international education and global education.

Carlisle Barracks is one of the oldest U.S. Army installations and the most senior military educational institutions in the United States Army. The U. S. Army War College is also located on the grounds of Carlisle Barracks.

Cumberland County was crossed by major roads and had an important role in the westward migration. It is interesting to note that the historic district is constantly crossed and clogged by eighteen-wheeler trucks.

Carlisle Square in Historic District

Photo: Ileana Johnson

The settlement of Carlisle was planned in 1751 by John Armstrong Sr. Immigrants from Scotland and Ireland settled in Carlisle and farmed the Cumberland Valley.  They named it after Carlisle, Cumberland, England, and even built the former jail house in the shape of The Citadel in the English city. This jail is now used as general government offices.

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

Carlisle was a munition depot during the American Revolutionary War which was later developed into the U.S. Army War College. The munitions were kept in a barrack built by Hessians in 1777 which is now a museum located on the Carlisle Barracks grounds next to other historical buildings which have been transformed and modernized through time.

Entrance to Hessian Powder Magazine

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

 

A Revolutionary War legend, Molly Pitcher, who died in Carlisle in 1832, is buried in the Old Public Graveyard. There are signs all over Carlisle, reminding visitors of its tumultuous history. For such a small borough, it has found itself often at the crossroads of American history in the 18^th century.

When a march was planned in favor of the United States Constitution in 1787, Anti-Federalists initiated a riot in Carlisle. During the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, Pennsylvania and New Jersey troops assembled in Carlisle under the leadership of President George Washington. The Presbyterian Church in the historic district was the place where President Washington worshipped while in Carlisle.

A local lawyer, Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, founded Carlisle Grammar School in 1773 and established its charter as Dickinson College, “the first new college founded in the newly recognized United States.” One famous alumnus, who graduated in 1809, was the 15^th U.S. president, James Buchanan.

Another prominent lawyer and scholar, James Hamilton (1793-1873), left a $2,000 gift and a 60’ X 60’ lot in his will that would be used to construct in 1881 a two-story brick building that became the Hamilton Library Association, dedicated to housing its collection and eventually a research library about Cumberland County.

According to the Historical Society, another signer of the Declaration of Independence, George Ross (1730-1779), was a prosecutor for the British Crown in Carlisle in the 1750s and 1760s. He had been loyal to King Gorge III, but switched over to the Revolutionary movement. He was the last of the Pennsylvania delegation to sign the Declaration of Independence and the uncle of Betsy Ross.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

 

The Dickinson Law School founded in 1834 is the fifth-oldest law school in the U.S. and the oldest law school in Pennsylvania. The locals were quite upset when the law school ended its affiliation with Dickinson College in 1914 and reorganized as an independent institution, later merging into the Pennsylvania State University in 1997 as Penn State Dickinson School of Law.

Carlisle was a stop for the Underground Railroad, leading up to the American Civil War. As part of the Gettysburg campaign, General Fitzhugh Lee, attacked and shelled the town on July 1, 1863. There is a cannonball dent still visible on one of the columns of the historic county courthouse.

Many of the early settlers of Pennsylvania were Scots-Irish who brought with them their Presbyterian faith. By 1730, they were settling in Cumberland Valley, in the fertile land near the Conodoguinet Creek.

The First Presbyterian Church of Carlisle, the oldest public building in Carlisle, was constructed in 1757. Colonists met there in 1774 to declare their independence from England and President Washington worshipped there in 1794.

In an attempt to force Indians to reject tribal culture and adapt to western society, U.S. Army Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt established Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, a federally-supported school for American Indians off a reservation. The school was closed in 1918 and the property transferred back to the War Department to be used as a military hospital for soldiers wounded during WWI.

The Indian School memorabilia was packed up and employees helped students return home or transfer to other schools. The school’s 39-year history came to a sad end on September 1, 1918. There was no formal job placement in place and society at large did not rush to hire their graduates.

Additionally, those students who chose to go back to their traditional lives were not accepted back with open arms, they were considered having gone “back to the blanket.” According to the Carlisle Archives, “other Native Americans considered them ‘apple Indians,’ red on the outside and white on the inside.” Some graduates became the reservation’s translators and interpreters.  The trades they had learned in the western school were often useless on the reservation.

The museum archives describe how Asa Daklugie, an Apache, remembers the ‘civilizing’ process which stripped children of all outward signs of traditional life. “We’d lost our hair and we’d lost our clothes: with the two we’d lost our identities as Indians. Greater punishment could hardly have been devised.”

The archives recall, “One by one, the boys’ long hair was cut, a traumatic experience that caused resistance and deep resentment. Their clothing was replaced with military uniforms for the boys and Victorian dresses for the girls. For many students, who had arrived dressed in their finest garments made by family members, losing their familiar regalia was painful.”

The most famous student was Jim Thorpe (1887-1953), a halfback football hero who led its team to upset victories against the powerhouses Harvard, Army, and University of Pennsylvania in 1911-1912. Thorpe was also an Olympic gold medalist and coach, considered and named in 1950 “the greatest athlete in the world” of the first half of the 20^th century.

Old Courthouse with Liberty Tree

 

Ten Cumberland County residents received the Medal of Honor. A Liberty Tree stands in the yard of the Old Courthouse (erected in 1766), honoring the Iranian hostages of October 17, 1980.

On the site that had been chosen for Carlisle, there were five major Indian paths that converged, paths of culture, trade, and war. Cumberland valley was settled by Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands, Susquehannock, Iroquis Confederacy, Lenape, and Shawnee peoples. The Cumberland valley connected Iroquois lands to the Cherokee and Catawba in the Carolinas.

In the 19^th century, the Cumberland Valley Railroad opened new ways for goods and people to travel and the speed of life changed. Scientific agriculture was introduced and allowed habitation of legal immigrants who settled in the area. Eventually the railroad system would give way to automobiles, trucking, and to the development of our modern but aging highway system.

Many areas and buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places such as the Carlisle Historic District, Carlisle Indian School, Hessian Powder Magazine, Carlisle Armory, and Old West, Dickinson College.

Location of the former Green Tree Inn

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

The Green Tree Inn had many distinguished guests, among them Benjamin Franklin in 1753, Hamilton and Knox, members of Washington’s cabinet in 1794.

James Wilson (1742-1798), born in Scotland, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General of the Pennsylvania State Militia, cast the deciding vote for independence for Pennsylvania, was one of the six original justices on the Supreme Court, and a founding father of Dickinson College. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was twice elected to the Continental Congress.

James Smith (1719-1806) was another signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was born in Ireland and studied law at his brother’s office in Pennsylvania.

Daniel Drawbaugh

Historical Society Museum Archives

 

Another fascinating local was Daniel Drawbaugh, expert mechanic and inventor. He held seventy patents, thirty-five related to the telephone. He invented stone pneumatic drills that were used in the building of the Library of Congress, a coin sorting machine, and a charcoal stamping machine. His Great Cumberland County Clock was an interesting electrical invention that could not keep accurate time because of variations in ground current. 

Carlisle made national news when the McClintock Riot took place in 1847. Pennsylvania was a free state but three fugitive slaves were captured and brought to Carlisle on their way south - a girl named Ann, a man named Lloyd Brown, and a woman named Hester Norman, married to a free man, George Norman of Carlisle.

At the time, 300 freed men and women lived in Carlisle. The owners of the three fugitive slaves, Kennedy and Hollingsworth, were seeking certificates from a local justice to transport the fugitive slaves south, and permission to keep them in the county jail while they conducted other business.

Historic Old Courthouse

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

A crowd gathered at the courthouse and a riot ensued. The judge had reluctantly decided that the escapees could not be jailed but that the certificates of ownership were valid. Kennedy was trampled and broke his knee in the melee; he died of his injuries three weeks later. Thirty-four black and white people and Professor McClintock were charged with inciting a riot. Thirteen people were convicted and eventually imprisoned for this riot.

The faces of immigrants who built Carlisle post office

Museum Archives

Iron furnaces existed in Cumberland County as self-sufficient plantation communities: farms, mills, workers’ homes, school, offices, church, cemetery, and a company store. The labor was composed of free laborers, indentured servants, some of whom were white, slaves, and apprentices. Women mended clothes, farmed, supplied wood, and finished iron casting. A 1800s ironworker made anywhere from 51 to 86 cents a day for 12 hours of work. Most people in this time period worked on farms or in farm-related fields such as milling, blacksmithing, and tanning.

According to the museum archives, due in part to the tanning and iron industries, slavery lingered in Cumberland County even though it was abolished in Pennsylvania on March 1, 1780, one of the first states to do so. “In 1810, half of all the slaves held in Pennsylvania were in Cumberland County… Twenty-four Africans were still in bondage in 1840; 1847 was the first year that the county no longer held slaves.”

The museum archives explain that “Cumberland County was not a stronghold for abolitionists. Many residents had family and friends in slaveholding Maryland, southern born soldiers were in training at the Cavalry School at Carlisle Barracks, and nearly half of Dickinson’s students were from the south. Newspapers in the area were anti-abolitionist and slave catcher gangs roamed the county. After 1945, local churches forbade abolitionist meetings in their establishments.”

New Courthouse

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

The new courthouse is located on the grounds of the former Market House Square. The Penn family, in their 1751 plan for Carlisle, had designated a portion of the square to be used as a market. Consequently, a market was held continuously on that spot from 1751 until 1952 when it was demolished to make way for the new courthouse, to the protests of many local conservationists.

Twice a week markets were held here and overseen by the Clerk of the Market who used scales to validate the weight of the goods and produce sold. Three different buildings were erected to hold these markets, two open-air ones and one elaborate Victorian building.

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

 

On a quaint side street in the historical district, dotted with whimsically bright and colorful mom and pop stores, one particular shop displays in a large bay window numerous “progressive” signs of PEACE and COEXIST just in case you missed one. 

Et tu, Flamingo!

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018

 

 

Throughout downtown businesses posted flyers announcing its 15^th annual food dinner on March 31 sponsored by the Dickinson College, celebrating local agriculture, with a keynote speaker, a fourth generation grocer with a conscience and a political message. She runs “an all-local grocery, deli, and craft beer bar that exists specifically to make climate change progress through responsible sourcing practices, resource-conscious equipment, power and packaging decisions, and the realization of a no-food-waste mandate. This market empowers shoppers to make incremental progress at a time when large-scale legislative change seems unlikely.”

The food will be delicious and expensive ($30) but the dinner sounds like a political drive in support of the debunked man-made climate change scheme rather than just an opportunity to sample locally grown and prepared food and to meet other like-minded progressive neighbors.

 

Smart, Switch, Sweat, and Shiver

The federal government in Canada has moved to pass coal phase-out legislation into law with its Just Transition Task Force in favor of “clean energy.”

“The end of coal power will help usher in a new era for renewable energy,” said David Suzuki Foundation director of science and policy Ian Bruce. “With conventional coal-fired power officially headed for the history books, people across the country can literally breathe easier about the future of energy production.”

“This is yet another signal that dirty, outdated energy sources are on their way out,” said the Foundation’s lead climate campaigner and senior policy analyst Gideon Forman. “Canada will now join a handful of leading industrialized countries such as the U.K., the Netherlands and France in accelerating the end of coal power worldwide – and the onset of clean, renewable energy.” France uses mostly nuclear power to generate their electricity.

Clean energy sounds great, especially nuclear and gas, but wind and solar electricity production, at the current rate of production and cost, cannot possibly replace all the energy needs of the planet for the industrial and public energy sectors.

Rationing electricity via smart meters which turns off power during peak electricity use and now Smart Cooling Rewards are ways in which the global warming advocates are forcing people to do without electricity in order to save the planet from a manufactured global warming catastrophe renamed climate change which we used to call seasons.

It is hard to convince people to give up their civilization, air conditioning, refrigeration, cars, central heat, and other amenities that make life more comfortable. They were bribed or forced to install smart meters on their homes. But people fought back and many states now have opt-out programs.

They tried to force people out of their cars by narrowing roads, bulldozing parking lots, building high-rise, mixed use tiny apartments, limiting suburbia with regulations and fines, and charging ungodly tolls of $46.50 to go 10 miles on I-66 to Washington, D.C. But Americans find ways around this global warming piracy because they love their cars and the freedom which the open-wide roads given them.

Private-public partnerships now scalp the public, working against the public interest and for the globalist investors’ interest. Governments, whether local, state, or federal, despite their claims, do not know what works best for their citizens.

Virginia citizens fought back and won the right to keep their standard meters, protecting their privacy, lower electricity cost, and their health. Dominion Energy recently came up with another scheme to control electricity consumption, Smart Cooling Rewards. The rewards are $40 at the end of each year that a household volunteers to participate in the program.

What is the program about? Dominion Energy installs “a switch on or near the outside of your air conditioner or heat pump system.” How convenient and generous, $40 for the privilege to sweat to death in summer time or freeze to death in winter time when the mother ship decides to cut off your power in order to save them the headache of having to buy more expensive electricity during peak seasons or perhaps build excess capacity storage.

“The switch enables us to automatically ‘cycle’ your central air conditioner for a few hours when electricity demand is highest, helping to reduce demand when it counts most,” says Dominion Power.

Utilities buy electricity annually during low season when the weather is mild and electricity is cheaper; they buy it in a lump sum by estimating their future electricity needs. If the load on the power grid is higher, then they have to buy more electricity at the market price when prices are higher. Some utilities may go as far as helping their customers weather-proof homes during free inspections, and giving them rebates if they comply.

“During periods of high electrical use, Dominion Energy Virginia may call an ‘event’, which means we will cycle your air conditioner or heat pump compressor on and off for defined intervals. The fan will stay on circulating already cooled air. The switch is programmed to cycle your AC unit half of the time it ran preceding an event. If your AC runs non-stop the hour before an event, then it will run 30 minutes for each hour of the event duration. This is accomplished by running 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off. At the end of the event your AC returns to normal operation.” 

It is entirely up to you how much you are willing to sweat or shiver in order to save your power company money and save the planet from a non-existent Armageddon that the global warming alarmists world-wide have been promoting.

This “switch” installed by Dominion Energy will be nothing but another smart meter that will control your energy use since the air conditioning puts the biggest load on electricity use. Why don’t utilities pass costs onto consumers? Is this bribe only about saving costs to them? Could it be possible that it is a way to control the non-cooperating first world people who love their A/C and other modern conveniences that environmentally conscious globalist elites condemn?

According to electricians, the electric grid is not in really good shape, it is a patched job that sometimes results in brown outs and black outs, especially in metropolitan areas that have grown extensively. The grid has not kept up with this expansion and the electricity loads are more than the grid can handle. It is a lot cheaper for utilities to turn power off than to redo the grid.

Will building the smart power grid be safer and will it handle electricity loads better than the existing conventional power grid? According to experts, changing everything to a smart grid will not be any better in terms of load other than the fact that those in charge will be able to turn your power off as they see fit. Additionally, hackers will be able to interrupt service maliciously. There is always the potential of a solar flare or the explosion of an EMP in the atmosphere that would fry everything.

Smart grids, smart meters, and smart switches will also allow utilities to spy on its customers without a warrant in terms of energy consumption, types of appliances they have, when owners are and aren’t home, and then sell other data about your home to an interested third party. Thieves can also easily find out when you are and aren’t home.

My Global Warming Winters

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2018
Frozen River

Al Gore is now telling us that the cold winter and abundant snow in the north east is due to global warming, that he was right all along about his dire predictions of years ago that earned him a Nobel Prize, a Golden Globe for his documentary film-making efforts, and other accolades from the adoring environmental left.

Polar bears have not drowned, we found out they are quite good swimmers, and their numbers around the world have quintupled. Nat Geo showed us a video of an emaciated and sick bear, as an example of what global warming is doing to these poor little creatures, tugging at our environmental heart strings.  

The polar ice caps have not melted, on the contrary they grew significantly, islands were not swallowed by the sea, ocean front cities are still there and not buried under feet of water as he predicted.

Millionaires with money to burn keep buying and building very expensive yachts, outrageous homes by the sea, and carbon spewing jets. They are not worried about their carbon foot print, only you, devoted minions, who listened to him with reverence and fear, have to drive around in unsafe tin cans, ride bikes, and live in tiny homes in order to save the planet from environmental Armageddon. Environmentalists are laughing all the way to the bank.

Delta is still passing cute little Coca Cola white napkins imprinted with the picture of a mama polar bear and her two little cubs, a symbol of cuteness around the holidays and a reminder that we must preserve such beauty and tranquility in nature while we are flying at 37,000 ft. and sipping our favorite beverages.

As the media escalates its non-stop apocalyptic fixation with climate change and clever scaremongering such as “cyclone bomb,” and “polar vortex,” I can still vividly see the picture of my childhood winters when I walked to school via snow tunnels cut through mountains of piled high white fluffy snow way above our heads, fierce winds cutting our faces with stinging wet snow turned into tiny projectiles, stepping into slush to cross the street, so dirty and deep that sometimes it over-flowed inside my boots, reaching school with wet and frozen feet, necessitating removing the socks and placing them on the heater coils to hopefully dry by the time school was out and the trek back home began. My hands were frozen despite the thick wool mittens my grandma knitted every fall in preparation for the winter onslaught. It was not global warming in the summer, it was not the climate change industry profiteers telling us that Armageddon was near, it was just seasons as we've had them for millennia.

When the sun came up it turned everything into a shiny skating rink on which we, the pedestrians often slipped and fell, suffering injuries then or later on in life when arthritis from injuries began to creep up.

If it warmed up more and the snow started to melt, the slush would overwhelm the street drains and we would get splashed by passing buses who were going a bit too fast and too close to the edge of the road for the treacherous driving conditions. Then everything would refreeze when the sun went down, to the delight of children everywhere who could sled with renewed speed or ice skate. God’s nature skating rink was cheap and everywhere.

As children we would stay out all day, building snow men, sledding down the hill into the street below that had little traffic, getting our outside clothes wet. We never felt the elements, we kept on moving and sweating, our coats and pants would freeze, and did not go inside until moms or dads would come fetch us, usually when it started to get dark and the street lights would come on.

I visited the hill of my childhood sledding – it was occupied by high rises and steps had been dug into the hill. In the street below, a menacing pack of stray dogs was coming in my direction. I did not take a chance and returned to my parked car in the street on top of the hill.

Grandma’s village is semi-unchanged except for the asphalted roads. It would be dangerous and hard to pull a sled now on such heavy-trafficked roads. The road drains are no longer the muddy ditches we played in during hot summers. And no, Al Gore, it was not global warming, summers were hot and we sought shade and bathing in the clear river, with the fishes swimming around us.

The college “snowflakes” of today would have to be provided with warm shelters in winter and cool shade during hot summers. They would have no idea how to survive in harsher conditions because they’ve been so chickified and softened. The pioneer spirit that helped their ancestors survive the harsh conditions of the Wild West had sadly demised long time ago.

Today the college “snowflakes” are expert whiners about the “hurtful” words they cannot bear to hear. Take their smart devices away, free birth control, and “recreational” pot, and they are totally lost.