Thursday, February 08, 2007

An Inconvenient Truth?

A shocking new discovery of pre-industrial Hurricanes. Who did Exxon pay for this?

"(Washington, D.C.) Ancient photographs discovered in a Smithsonian Institution storage room depict what appears to be a hurricane, even though these destructive weather events are believed to be a relatively recent phenomenon. The most startling of the photos, sure to generate controversy among climate experts, has handwriting on its reverse side which reads: "Great Blow, Key West, September, 1897".

The photo (above), which appears to show wind driven waves and rain crashing into a seawall while palm trees are bent over by the wind, is sure to be closely scrutinized. "I just hope this doesn't set back our efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels use..", said Dr. Cruddy, "..we all know it is the right thing to do, and the last thing we need is to have the oil lobby in Washington stop progress over some fuzzy, black-and-white photograph."

7 comments:

Dave Cole said...

Turbo (genitive: turbonis) is the Latin word for hurricane. I don't know what the first mention ever is, but it is mentioned, I believe, in Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Book II Chapter 50, published in 77AD. I believe that predates the industrial revolution.

Matthew Sinclair said...

Brilliant Dave. Truly Brilliant. Your robust classical education comes to the rescue once again.

I read the post on your blog and I'm a little worried you may have gotten the wrong end of the stick. This is just a joke.

Dave Cole said...

Oh? How so? Please explain.

Dave Cole said...

Two further points - was the 'brilliant' comment sarcastic? Why didn't you post on my blog?

Hmph.

xD.

Matthew Sinclair said...

No. Your classical knowledge is genuinely brilliant and there is no trace of sarcasm in my appreciation of it.

I don't know why I didn't post on your blog... I think I started to write the post on this blog about how much your classical education rocks and then went across and you were making serious arguments, which if you click the link in my post is a little redundant.

Gavin Ayling said...

Apparently, and I'm not sure if I'm right about this, there were also thunder storms before the Industrial Revolution. I'll try and find the evidence.

On Dave's point, he should note (maybe) that hurricanes must travel East to West by definition and so could not possibly have been known about until 1492 if, indeed, they did exist before the great global warming fantasy.

Dave Cole said...

"On Dave's point, he should note (maybe) that hurricanes must travel East to West by definition and so could not possibly have been known about until 1492 if, indeed, they did exist before the great global warming fantasy."

Firstly, there were people outside of Europe before 1492. Secondly, there's textual references. Thirdly, Hurricance Gordon hit Britain, the Azores, Spain and the Republic of Ireland in 2006.

xD.