Genealogical Climatology

My family is blessed with four living generations. My mother 73 myself 53, my son 31 his two children 8 and 6. Besides being a true life blessing it is also a living lesson in perspective. In an earlier post I put it this way:

It is difficult to have a long-term outlook on anything; most of us look at life through the prism of our lifetime, which is only natural. Even those that have a grasp of history tend to look at events in relationship to their times and must make a concentrated effort to try to evaluate the past by understanding the times, the attitudes or even the technology that existed prior to their time here on this beautiful blue orb. Even in a single lifetime events and technologies can change the world so drastically that a person will leave a far different world than the one he first came into.

A small example would be my mother who was born in the height of the Great Depression before the television. Now she can watch HDTV via satellite, which, there were none of when I was born though my son was born to late to experience a moon landing and my daughter was born after the first Space Shuttle took flight and my grandchildren will never have known life without a DVD player. To put that in some kind of perspective, think of everything you can conjure in your mind about a small little girl in the 1930’s Depression era... got it? Now imagine this girl plugging in a DVD and watching Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks on a 52” HDTV with surround sound, it does not’t compute does it? Oh yeah computers, oh well you get the idea.

When you can put things into personal perspective, it is sometimes easier to visualize, as in thinking of my mother as a small child in the thirties experiencing what is common place to her great granddaughter in the twenty first century.

Here is an interesting perspective. Obviously my mother just by longevity has experienced far more warm years in her lifetime than the rest of us, but when did she experience them? The surprising truth is that she experienced three times more of the hottest years in U.S. history before she was her great-granddaughter's age than her great-granddaughter has ever experienced.
In these times of accelerating global warming, this does not seem possible does it? But it is a fact. In fact my grandchildren have only experienced one of the top ten warmest years in U.S. History, (2006 number 4 on the list). Yet they are the ones that are being programmed to fear for the Polar Bears. They are they ones we are supposed to be saving the planet for, yet they have experienced a lifetime of flat temperatures not accelerating ones. If it were not for THE PARTY LINE, they would have no fear for their future at all, or should they.

Here are the warmest years in US History:

1934
1998
1921
2006
1931
1999
1953
1990
1938
1939

As an aside here, if you want a bit of a wake up call on the fallacy of us living in the information age. Google "warmest years in US". Did you do it? Enlightening isn't it? Add history to your search and you will get closer to the truth. However if you are reading this you probably already know the truth, but what about the person that is investigating the global warming hype. I am sure they would believe that number 4 was number 1.Which is appropriate in our "everybody gets a trophy" political correct world.

Back to my family, not only did my mother experience more warm years in her childhood than her great grandchildren, she did not even experience all the top 10. In fact three of the ten warmest years in US History occurred before her birth. Six of the warmest years were pre-me and my children and of course 9 of the warmest years in US history were before my grandchildren were born.
To wrap up this little walk through genealogical climatology, let's look at the big picture. The four generations of my family had an opportunity to collectively experience 40 of the hottest years in U.S. History. Combined these four generations have experienced 16.


Remembering that the U.S. record only goes back to 1860, consider this. If my grandfather were alive he would be turning 100 years old this year. He would have experienced all 10 of the warmest years in U.S. History. However even with that long of record, he would have experienced more than half of the warmest years in his lifetime (6) before he turned 50 years of age in 1959.

I know, I know, it is Global Warming/Climate Change, but the U.S is part of the globe and the part of the globe with the best records (or so they say). Besides like politics, all climate is local.

Which reminds me of one other quick aside in my genealogical climatology. The warmest temperature I ever experienced 110 F and the coldest temperature I ever experienced
-38 F a difference of 148 degrees were experienced in the same place (Montana) within a year of each other. I wonder how we will survive all this accelerating global warming uh climate change? And I wonder what grandpa would of thunk about it all?
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