Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer - #3


There is no such thing as a perfect translation.

En effet, on peut être utile sans atteindre à la perfection;

Agenda, ou tableau général des Observations et des Recherches dont les résultats doivent servir de base à la théorie de la Terre, H. B. de Saussure, 1796.

This article contains my translation of Ignatz Venetz's 1821 prize-winning Essay on the variations of temperature in the Swiss Alps - Memoire sur les variations de la température dans les Alpes de la Suisse. 

Arctic Ice July 2011 - Update

Are we headed for another 2007 style crash ?

In my Arctic Ice March 2011 - Update #1,  I gave these figures for September minimum -

an extent below 4 million km² is highly probable.
an extent below 3 million km² is entirely possible if Arctic weather continues to follow the overall trends of the last decade.

In April I revised that, based on some projections from IARC - IJIS figures to -

I project an end of season extent range between 3.9 million km² and 4.5 million km².

Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer - #2


Ignaz Venetz was, in 1821, awarded a prize of 300 francs for his memoire by the Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft - the Swiss Natural Science Society.  It is my firm opinion that, accordingly, the date of publication should be cited as 1821: the date of the award of the prize, and not 1833 which was the date of its re-publication in a bound archive of science papers.

Ignaz Venetz - Climate Change Pioneer

Climate has always changed - but we have not always known it.

Events following 1816 - the year without a summer - led to a major controversy in which the scientific consensus on the one hand was countered by dogma on the other.  On reading the history of that great controversy, one gets a strong sense of Déjà vu.

History Mystery #3 - Land, Law and Science

"Words are to the Anthropologist what rolled pebbles are to the Geologist — battered relics of past ages often containing within them indelible records capable of intelligent interpretation..."
John Herschel