Climate change is in the Twilight Zone

Snow in Saudi Arabia.

On November 17, 1961, The Twilight Zone premiered its "The Midnight Sun" episode.

Rod Serling opened the show by saying, "The word that Mrs. Bronson is unable to put into the hot, still, sodden air is 'doomed,' because the people you've just seen have been handed a death sentence. 

"One month ago, the Earth suddenly changed its elliptical orbit and in doing so began to follow a path which gradually, moment by moment, day by day, took it closer to the sun. And all of man's little devices to stir up the air are now no longer luxuries—they happen to be pitiful and panicky keys to survival. The time is five minutes to twelve, midnight. There is no more darkness. The place is New York City and this is the eve of the end, because even at midnight it's high noon, the hottest day in history, and you're about to spend it in the Twilight Zone."

All, however, was not what it seemed. It was the Twilight Zone after all.

The Earth's orbit had changed, but instead of going nearer to the Sun, it was spinning away. Instead of being 120 °F, the temperature is -10 °F.

The heat was all a dream. A fevered dream. In reality, people were freezing to death.

Which brings me to my favorite physicist, Leona Woods. She graduated from high school at 14, and college at 18, which made her as smart as Sheldon Cooper. But she was hot like his twin sister. She was the only woman on Enrico Fermi's team in his part of the Manhattan Project. 

She wanted The Bomb to save her brother's life because he was a Marine in the Pacific. She knew The Bomb would end the war. She also believed the radiation claims were exaggerated. She married and gave birth while working on the project.

Post-war she had another son, divorced, and re-married the man who developed radiocarbon dating. He won a Nobel in 1960 for his work. She worked in environmental studies and developed the method we use to determine rainfall and temperatures from ages past.

I wrote about her in one of my last newspaper columns, on July 23, 2014.

The column said, "In 1979 -- when the scientific consensus was global cooling -- Dr. Libby forecast a rise in temperatures until the year 2000 when it would get colder again for the next 50 years.

" 'Easily one to two degrees,' she told the Los Angeles Times. 'And maybe even three or four degrees. It takes only 10 degrees to bring on an Ice Age.'

"The first half of her prediction proved true. Temperatures peaked in 1998."

***

As temperatures have fallen, the pseudo-scientists have continued to tell the public the temperatures rise. But they have abandoned their claim of global warming, using climate change instead. This makes no sense but none of this is meant to make sense because these scientists are charlatans. They are using the weather to advance a political agenda.

I do not want to panic anyone, but a blizzard in Saudi Arabia is something worth noting. This week's winter storm across most of the United States is alarming, but not comparable to the 1978 Cleveland Blizzard.

And nothing compares to the tragedy of the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888, when temperatures dropped 50 degrees within two hours to 10 below. The name honors the children who froze to death on their way home from school.

The politicization of the weather undoubtedly would enrage Leona Woods, who saw things for what they are.

Her forecast of a drop in world temperatures is more alarming than predictions of a rise of 2 degree rise over the next century because we can easily adapt to a slow rise. A quick drop in temperatures, however, runs the risk being trapped like those schoolchildren were 133 years ago.

Fear not the midnight sun. Fear the sunless sky.