GLOBAL WARMING OR COOLING?

124 Years of Failed Climate and Environmental Predictions

Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate summers and open winters through several years, culminating last winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade. - New York Times June 23, 1890

The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions - New York Times - February 24, 1895

The Oceanographic observations have, however, been even more interesting. Ice conditions were exceptional. In fact, so little ice has never been noted. The expedition all but established a record….Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society - January 1905

“Fifth ice age is on the way…..Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold.” – Los Angles Times October 23, 1912

The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot.... Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, have declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone... Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. - Washington Post 11/2/1922

Scientist says Arctic ice will wipe out Canada, Professor Gregory of Yale University stated that “another world ice-epoch is due.” He was the American representative to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress and warned that North America would disappear as far south as the Great Lakes, and huge parts of Asia and Europe would be “wiped out.” – Chicago Tribune August 9, 1923

The discoveries of changes in the sun's heat and southward advance of glaciers in recent years have given rise to the conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age - Time Magazine 9/10/1923

America in longest warm spell since 1776; temperature line records a 25 year rise - New York Times 3/27/1933

“Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right…weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.” – Time Magazine Jan. 2 1939

More than eighteen years of observing the fluctuations of Arctic weather conditions in the fifty-eight Soviet scientific stations in the Far North....lead Russian meteorologists to a forecast of warmer winters and hotter summers for the North and South Poles. They believe that the earth is entering a new cycle of warmer weather. A series of curious discoveries have been announced in support of this theory. It has been noted that year by year, for the past two decades, the fringe of the Polar ice pack has been creeping northward in the Barents Sea. As compared with the year 1900, the total ice surface of this body of water has decreased by twenty per cent. Various expeditions have discovered that warmth-loving species of fish have migrated in great shoals to waters farther north than they had ever been seen before..Our generation is living in a period when remarkable changes are taking place almost everywhere throughout the world. - Examiner April 12, 1939

A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a "serious international problem," - New York Times - May 30, 1947

Greenland's polar climate has moderated so consistently that communities of hunters have evolved into fishing villages. Sea mammals, vanishing from the west coast, have been replaced by codfish and other fish species in the area's southern waters. - New York Times August 29, 1954

After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder. - New York Times - January 30, 1961

Like an outrigger canoe riding before a huge comber, the earth with its inhabitants is caught on the down-slope of an immense climatic wave that is plunging us toward another Ice Age. - Los Angeles Times December 23, 1962

Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two. – New York Times - February 20, 1969

The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages. – New York Times - July 18, 1970

A comparison of climatic data for the eastern United States from the 1830's and 1840's with the currently valid climatic normals indicates a distinctly cooler and, in some areas, wetter climate in the first half of the last century. The recently appearing trend to cooler conditions noticed here and elsewhere could be indicative of a return to the climatic character of those earlier years. - Monthly Weather review Feb. 1968

The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)

It is now pretty clearly agreed that the CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.- - Presidential adviser Daniel Moynihan 1969

By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half..." Life magazine, January 1970

Get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters--the worst may be yet to come. That's the long-long-range weather forecast being given out by "climatologists." the people who study very long-term world weather trends…. Washington Post January 11, 1970

Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor "...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born," Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970

In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish - Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind. We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation," - Barry Commoner Washington University Earth Day 1970

"(By 1995) somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct." Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970

“By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970

Convection in the Antarctic Ice Sheet Leading to a Surge of the Ice Sheet and Possibly to a New Ice Age. – Science 1970 

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“In the next 50 years fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees. Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, could be sufficient to trigger an ice age." –Washington Post -  July 9, 1971

"By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Paul Ehrlich 1971

New Ice Age Coming---It's Already Getting Colder. Some midsummer day, perhaps not too far in the future, a hard, killing frost will sweep down on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and the Russian steppes…..Los Angles Times Oct 24, 1971

"It is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase 6 to 8-fold in the next 50 years. If this increased rate of injection... should raise the present background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5°C. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age. However, by that time, nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production" - Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" Steven Schneider  Science July 1971

A new glacial insolation regime, expected to last 8000 years, began just recently. Mean global temperatures may eventually drop about 1^oC in the next hundred years. Insolation and Glacials -Boreas March 1972

Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000. - Los Angles Times - May 16, 1972

The climatic warming trend since the 1880s, which seems to have been global in extent and was manifested by an upward trend in mean annual (and particularly mean winter) temperatures, seems to have given way since the 1940s to a cooling trend, which is most marked in higher latitudes.  -Recent Climatic Change and Increased Glacierization in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. Nature. June 1972

For the past 25 to 30 years the Earth has been getting progressively cooler again. Around 1960 the cooling was particularly sharp.  And there is by now widespread evidence of a corresponding reverse in the ranges of birds and fish and the success of crops and forest trees near the poleward and altitudinal limits. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Courier Aug-Sep 1973

"There is very important climatic change (Global Cooling) going on right now, and it’s not merely something of academic interest. It is something that, if it continues, will affect the whole human occupation of the earth – like a billion people starving. The effects are already showing up in a rather drastic way.” – Fortune Magazine February 1974

"A review of selected literature on latitudinal climatic shifts and atmosphere-ocean interaction suggests some similarities between the patterns of climate in the 1960s and the climate of the Little Ice Age". - Climate of the American tropics and subtropics in the 1960s and possible comparisons with climatic variations of the last millennium - Quaternary Research June 1974 *Quaternary Research June 1974

General agreement that the present warm epoch has reached its final phase, and that disregarding possible man-made effects - the natural end of this interglacial is "undoubtedly near". - Background to a geophysical model of the initiation of the next glaciation -Quaternary Research Dec 1974

“Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age” – Time Magazine June 24, 1974

"The western world's leading climatologists have confirmed recent reports of a detrimental global climatic change. The stability of most nations is based upon a dependable source of food, but this stability will not be possible under the new climatic era. A forecast by the University of Wisconsin projects that the earth's climate is returning to that of the neo-boreal era (1600-1850) - an era of drought, famine, and political unrest in the western world"... Leaders in climatology and economics are in agreement that a climate change is taking place and that it has already caused major economic problems throughout the world. As it become apparent to the nations around the world that the current trend is indeed a long term reality, new alignments will be made among nations to insure a secure supply of food resources. Assessing the impact of climate change on major nations will in the future, occupy a major portion of the Intelligence Community's assets.  Central Intelligence Agency Report - "A study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems" - August 1974

A number of climatologists, whose job it is to keep an eye on long-term weather changes, have lately been predicting deterioration of the benign climate to which we have grown accustomed….Various climatologists issued a statement that “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade,” If policy makers do not account for this oncoming doom, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence” will result. New York Times - December 29, 1974

Regardless of long term trends, such as the return of an Ice Age, unsettled weather conditions now appear more likely than those of the abnormally favorable period which ended in 1972. This possibility and its implications must be considered in planning and determining national and world food policies. There is an urgent need for better understanding and utilization of information on weather variability and climatic change in this context.– Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society - October 10, 1975 

A RECENT flurry of papers has provided further evidence for the belief that the Earth is cooling. There now seems little doubt that changes over the past few years are more than a minor statistical fluctuation – Nature - March 6, 1975 

Scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world’s weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. – The Cooling World Newsweek, April 28, 1975

The regions that would be most severely affected by a continuation of the cooling trend to the year 2000 would be the higher latitudes (above 50 degrees) where spring wheat is grown and the warm band below 30 degrees latitude where rice is the principal grain crop.- Weather Variability, Climatic Change, and Grain Production - Science  May 9, 1975

“Scientist ponder why World’s Climate is changing; a major cooling is considered to be inevitable – New York Times May 21, 1975

The trend of world temperature in this century appears to be directly related to the trends of atmospheric carbon dioxide content and atmospheric turbidity (dustiness). Both are believed by various scholars to be related to human activities. Since 1940, the effect of the rapid rise of atmospheric turbidity appears to have exceeded the effect of rising carbon dioxide, resulting in a rapid downward trend of temperature. There is no indication that these trends will be reversed, and there is some reason to believe that man-made pollution will have an increased effect in the future. - The Changing Global Environment 1975 

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976

An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. - New York Times - January 5, 1978

Move Where (to escape the cold)? The Brutal Buffalo (NY) winter might be common all over the United States. Climate experts believe the next Ice Age is on its way. According to recent evidence, it could come sooner than anyone expected. - In Search of - "The Coming Ice Age" 1978

One of the questions that nags at climatologists asks when and how fast a new ice age might descend. A Belgian scientist suggests this could happen sooner and swifter than you might think. - Christian Science Monitor - Nov 14, 1979

Evidence has been presented and discussed to show a cooling trend over the Northern Hemisphere since around 1940, amounting to over 0.5°C, due primarily to cooling at mid- and high latitudes - Present Climatic Cooling and a Proposed Causative Mechanism - Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society - November 1980

 

A global warming trend could bring heat waves, dust-dry farmland and disease, the experts said... Under this scenario, the resort town of Ocean City, Md., will lose 39 feet of shoreline by 2000 and a total of 85 feet within the next 25 years - San Jose Mercury News - June 11, 1986

Greenhouse Effect Culprit May Be Family Car; New Ice Age by 1995?...As the tropical oceans heat up (due to increased greenhouse gases), more of their moisture is evaporated to form clouds. The increasing pole-tropic wind systems move some of these additional clouds toward the poles, resulting in increased winter rainfall, longer and colder winters and the gradual buildup of the polar ice sheets. This phenomenon has come to be widely recognized by climatologists in recent years. What most of them do not recognize is that this process may be the engine that drives the 100,000-year cycle of major ice ages, for which there is no other plausible explanation....we may be less than seven years away, and our climate may continue to deteriorate rapidly until life on earth becomes all but unsupportable.... New York Times - Larry Ephron , Director of the Institute for a Future - July 15, 1988

[In New York City by 2008] The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change. There will be more police cars. Why? Well, you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up... Under the greenhouse effect, extreme weather increases. Depending on where you are in terms of the hydrological cycle, you get more of whatever you’re prone to get. New York can get droughts, the droughts can get more severe and you’ll have signs in restaurants saying “Water by request only.” - James Hansen testimony before Congress in June 1988

STUDY FORESEES 86 NEW POWER PLANTS TO COOL U.S. WHEN GLOBE GETS HOTTER: Global warming could force Americans to build 86 more power plants -- at a cost of $110 billion -- to keep all their air conditioners running 20 years from now, a new study says...Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010, and the drain on power would require the building of 86 new midsize power plants - Associated Press May 15, 1989

U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP - entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of "eco-refugees," threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect - Associated Press June 30, 1989

'New York will probably be like Florida 15 years from now,' - St. Louis Post-Dispatch Sept. 17, 1989

Some predictions for the next decade (1990's) are not difficult to make... Americans may see the '80s migration to the Sun Belt reverse as a global warming trend rekindles interest in cooler climates. - Dallas Morning News December 5th 1989

"(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots... "(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers... "The Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands". - Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund - "Dead Heat" 1990

Giant sand dunes may turn Plains to desert - Huge sand dunes extending east from Colorado's Front Range may be on the verge of breaking through the thin topsoil, transforming America's rolling High Plains into a desert, new research suggests. The giant sand dunes discovered in NASA satellite photos are expected to re- emerge over the next 20 to 50 years, depending on how fast average temperatures rise from the suspected "greenhouse effect," scientists believe. -Denver Post April 18, 1990

By 2000, British and American oil will have diminished to a trickle......Ozone depletion and global warming threaten food shortages, but the wealthy North will enjoy a temporary reprieve by buying up the produce of the South. Unrest among the hungry and the ensuing political instability, will be contained by the North's greater military might. A bleak future indeed, but an inevitable one unless we change the way we live.....At present rates of exploitation there may be no rain forest left in 10 years. If measures are not taken immediately, the greenhouse effect may be unstoppable in 12 to 15 years. - 5000 Days to Save the Planet - Edward Goldsmith 1991

''I think we're in trouble. When you realize how little time we have left - we are now given not 10 years to save the rain-forests, but in many cases five years. Madagascar will largely be gone in five years unless something happens. And nothing is happening.'' - ABC - The Miracle Planet April 22, 1990

The planet could face an "ecological and agricultural catastrophe" by the next decade if global warming trends continue - Carl Sagan - Buffalo News Oct. 15, 1990

Most of the great environmental struggles will be either won or lost in the 1990s and by the next century it will be too late. -- Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution “Real Goods Alternative Energy Sourcebook,” Seventh Edition: February 1993

Today (in 1996) 25 million environmental refugees roam the globe, more than those pushed out for political, economic, or religious reasons. By 2010, this number will grow tenfold to 200 million. - The Heat is On -The High Stakes Battle Over Earth’s Threatened Climate - Ross Gelbspan - 1996

"It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Ninos are going to become more frequent, and they're going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we'll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we'll have El Nino upon El Nino, and that will become the norm. And you'll have an El Nino, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years," he said.  - BBC November 7, 1997

One of the world's leading climate experts warned of an underestimated threat posed by the buildup of greenhouse gases ' an abrupt collapse of the ocean's prevailing circulation system that could send temperatures across Europe plummeting in a span of 10 years. If that system shut down today, winter temperatures in the North Atlantic region would fall by 20 or more degrees Fahrenheit within 10 years. Dublin would acquire the climate of Spitsbergen, 600 miles north of the Arctic Circle. "The consequences could be devastating," said Wallace S. Broecker, Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University's - Science Magazine Dec 1, 1997

Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people. - The Birmingham Post (England) July 26, 1999

A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (Malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world. - The Guardian September 11, 1999

 “But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.” -  Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund  New York Times - January 2000

“We are beginning to approximate the kind of warming you should see in the winter season.” - Star News, Mike Changery, National Climatic Data Center, Mar 11 2000

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. - Charles Onians -UK Independent Mar 20, 2000

Within a few years winter snowfall will become a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going to know what snow is," Dr David Viner, Senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia - Mar 20, 2000

“Good bye winter. Never again snow?” Spiegel, 1 April 2000

Officials with the Panama Canal Authority, managers of the locks and reservoirs since the United States relinquished control of the canal in 1999, warn that global warming, increased shipping traffic and bigger seagoing vessels could cripple the canal's capacity to operate within a decade. CNN November 1, 2000

Arctic meltdown - There will be anarchy as northern seas open up to shipping. THE Arctic ice cap is melting at a rate that could allow routine commercial shipping through the far north in a decade and open up new fisheries...But in 10 years' time, if melting patterns change as predicted, the North-West Passage could be open to ordinary shipping for a month each summer. And the Northern Sea Route across the top of Russia could allow shipping for at least two months a year in as little as five years...The resulting boom in shipping could lead to conflicts, as nations try to enforce fisheries rules, prevent smuggling and piracy, and protect the Arctic environment from oil spills..Peter Wadhams of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge agrees that the Arctic could soon open up. "Within a decade we can expect regular summer trade there," he predicts. New Scietist Feb. 27, 2001

In ten years time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu's nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels, CNN Mar 29, 2001

(1) global warming will cause milder winters and (2) global warming will cause a decline in heavy snowstorm events. IPCC 2001 Third Assessment Report

"Globally, 2002 is likely to be warmer than 2001 - it may even break the record set in 1998. - Daily Mirror August 2, 2002

In the North Atlantic, an increasing amount of fresh water, perhaps coming from melting ice in the Arctic, has been accumulating and lowering the salinity of the ocean for the past 30 years...Oceanographers presented new evidence that this northern freshwater buildup may be approaching the threshold where it could alter currents in a way that would cause an abrupt drop in average winter temperatures of about 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast. This change could happen within a decade and persist for hundreds of years. - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Sep 6, 2002

 Next year(2003)may be warmest recorded: Global temperatures in 2003 are expected to exceed those in 1998 - the hottest year to date - Telegraph UK-  December 30, 2002

By 2005 the climatic impact of the shift is felt more intensely in certain regions around the world. More severe storms and typhoons bring about higher storm surges and floods in low-lying islands such as Tarawa and Tuvalu (near New Zealand). In 2007, a particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break through levees in the Netherlands making a few key coastal cities such as The Hague unlivable. Failures of the delta island levees in the Sacramento River region in the Central Valley of California creates an inland sea and disrupts the aqueduct system transporting water from northern to southern California because salt water can no longer be kept out of the area during the dry season. Melting along the Himalayan glaciers accelerates, causing some Tibetan people to relocate. Floating ice in the northern polar seas, which had already lost 40% of its mass from 1970 to 2003, is mostly gone during summer by 2010. As glacial ice melts, sea levels rise and as wintertime sea extent decreases, ocean waves increase in intensity, damaging coastal cities. Additionally millions of people are put at risk of flooding around the globe (roughly 4 times 2003 levels), and fisheries are disrupted as water temperature changes cause fish to migrate to new locations and habitats, increasing tensions over fishing rights. - An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security - October 2003

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached. - Michael McCarthy - Environment Editor UK Independent - 1/24/05

(The) extra energy, together with a weak El Nino, is expected to make 2005 warmer than 2003 and 2004 and perhaps even warmer than 1998 - Reuters February 11, 2005

Environmental refugees to top 50 million in 5 years --"There are well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change and other phenomena," says UNU-EHS Director Janos Bogardi. - United Nations University news release - October 11, 2005

NOAA announced its predictions for the 2006 hurricane season, saying it expects an "above normal" year with 13-16 named storms. Of these storms, the agency says it expects four to be hurricanes of category 3 or above, double the yearly average of prior seasons in recorded history. With experts calling the coming hurricane season potentially worse than last year's, oil prices have jumped 70 cents per barrel in New York and made similar leaps elsewhere. Economists anticipate that demand for oil will rise sharply over the summer, when as many as four major hurricanes could hit the United States. -- Seed Magazine 5/19/06

“The more than ‘unusually‘ warm January weather is yet ‘another extreme event’, ‘a harbinger of the winters that are ahead of us’. … The global temperature will ‘increase every year by 0.2°C” Michael Müller, Socialist, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Environment, Die Zeit, 15 Jan 2007

This year (2007) is likely to be the warmest year on record globally, beating the current record set in 1998, - Science Daily Jan. 5, 2007

Very Active 2007 Hurricane Season Predicted - The U.S. Atlantic basin will likely experience a very active hurricane season, the Colorado State University forecast team announced today, increasing its earlier prediction for the 2007 hurricane season. The team's forecast now anticipates 17 named storms forming in the Atlantic basin between June 1 and Nov. 30. Nine of the 17 storms are predicted to become hurricanes, and of those nine, five are expected to develop into intense or major hurricanes (Saffir/Simpson category 3-4-5) with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater. – Science Daily April 3, 2007

Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009, with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday. - Reuters Aug 9, 2007

"According to these models, there will be no sea ice left in the summer in the Arctic Ocean somewhere between 2010 and 2015". “And it’s probably going to happen even faster than that,” Professor Louis Fortier - Université Laval, Director ArcticNet - November 16, 2007

NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: “At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions. - National Geographic  Dec. 12, 2007

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss. "Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC. "So given that fact, you can argue that maybe our projection of 2013 is already too conservative." Professor Maslowski's group, which includes co-workers at Nasa and the Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), is well known for producing models that are in advance of other teams. - BBC Dec. 12, 2007

Adelie Penguins Extinct in a Decade in Some Areas? The mid-latitudes of the Antarctic Peninsula once provided the perfect habitat for the penguins—but not anymore. "That region has experienced the most rapid warming during winter on the planet," said Bill Fraser, an ecologist with the Polar Oceans Research Group in Sheridan, Montana. "The mid-winter temperatures are now around 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit [6 degrees Celsius] higher than they were 50 years ago." If the trend continues, Fraser predicts that Adélie penguins will be locally extinct within five to ten years. National Geographic Dec. 28, 2007

Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer (2008), report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field. "We're actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history]," David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker. - National Geographic News June 20, 2008

World will warm faster than predicted in next five years, study warns. New estimate based on the forthcoming upturn in solar activity and El Niño southern oscillation cycles is expected to silence global warming sceptics - Guardian July 27, 2009

The world has less than five years to get carbon emissions under control or runaway climate change will become inevitable, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has warned.  - Oct 19, 2009

New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014, Al Gore said Monday at the U.N. climate conference. Dec 14. 2009

“There is a possibility of an ice-free Arctic Ocean for a short period in summer perhaps as early as 2015. This would mean the disappearance of multi-year ice, as no sea ice would survive the summer melt season….Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment Report – 2009

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Russia, predicts that a new "Little Ice Age" could begin in just four years. WND Heartland Institute's 4th International Conference on Climate Change May 10, 2010

“It could even be this year or next year but not later than 2015, there won’t be any ice in the Arctic in the summer,” he said, pulling out a battered laptop to show a diagram explaining his calculations, which he calls “the Arctic death spiral”. - David Vaughan Glaciologist & IPCC scientist - Financial Times Magazine Aug 8, 2012

Granted, when making projections, it's good to have sophisticated models. I don't claim to have used those, but I've got a good eye and by the looks of it, sea ice will be gone in September 2014. -Sam Carana Arctic News Sep 21, 2012

 For the record—I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean….” - Paul Beckwith Sierra Club – March 23, 2013

UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS

Why undocumented immigrants don’t just get to the ‘back of the line’

The widening gap between rich and poor at the national level is largely a myth that is fuelled by political propaganda, fake news and conspiracy theories. Rather than a widening gap between individuals in the same country, the gap is only widening between rich and poor countries. No one understands this better than those living in poor countries. That is one reason so many people want to start a new life in a new country.

But their dream is rarely realized. They must overcome restrictive laws and often racial and/or religious prejudice, and the myth that they will take work away from the locals, increase crime rates, or become terrorists, that is, if they can afford to get themselves to the border.

These days, the cheapest way to get anywhere is to fly with an airline, which explains why most immigrants enter at airports rather than land borders. They also understand that they are more likely to be caught and turned back if they try to sneak across a land border undetected. They can enter legally as visitors through an international airport, and just stay on, building a new life.

Nadia Y Flores-Yeffal, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work at Texas Tech University, sums it up perfectly writing for Express News:

 “Why don’t they do it the right way, like my ancestors?” is a common refrain heard from many European-origin Americans when they’re talking about immigration.

This is easily explained. Let’s start with the history.

When the Europeans came to the U.S at the turn of the 20th century, they just had to go through Ellis Island. More than 15 million immigrants were inspected and processed at Ellis Island, and the majority were allowed to stay. Only those with mental problems, those with sickness, those who were too weak to work, or those who were considered a danger to society were sent back — a mere 2 percent of all immigrants.

Immigrants at that time — the ancestors of most Americans — didn’t have to face numerical limitations or the need to have a visa to enter the United States.

This was true until 1924, the year in which the border patrol was established. Immigrants were then required to process a visa at an American consulate before entering the U.S. In 1924, the U.S. also decided to change the immigration law to mostly favor immigration from Western Europe because those from Eastern and Southern Europe were considered “undesirables.”

After World War II, the Bracero Program was implemented. It brought up to 5 million Mexican immigrants who came to do the hard work in the fields, as there was a labor shortage.

This program lasted 22 years and ended in 1964.

In 1965, for the first time, the U.S. had a restriction on visas for the Western Hemisphere. This was the beginning of undocumented immigration. In other words, our laws created this undocumented migration flow by making it exceedingly difficult for many immigrants to come legally to the U.S.

Today, we need immigrants to work in unskilled occupations — jobs that Americans don’t want to do. Would Americans want to pick the grapes in California under a hot sun all day? Or would they want to work in poultry processing industries inside refrigerators for entire shifts?

But our immigration laws only allow for 60,000 temporary visas and only 5,000 visas for unskilled workers annually to fulfill the demand for unskilled labor. All of the rest of the work-related visas are for those who are professionals and those who possess extraordinary abilities.

OK, so what about entry through refugee status? Or family reunification?

Let’s take refugees first. Unfortunately, refugees — particularly those from Central America and Mexico — are less likely to get their cases approved in immigration courts. Only 3 percent of Salvadorans applying for refugee status were approved, compared to 14 percent of all applicants.

Family reunification? People seeking entry through family reunification typically have to wait extremely long periods — often up to 15 years or longer. And the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996 made this even more difficult. This law says that those who entered without inspection, regardless of whether they are married to a U.S. citizen and/or have U.S. born children, cannot apply for Legal Permanent Residency (LPR) without first being banned from the country for 10 years.

Beginning to understand why undocumented immigrants risk being suffocated inside a cargo truck or dying of dehydration while trying to get across the desert to here?

If there was a way to “do it the legal way,” believe me, they would have at least tried. There isn’t.

DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) provided a lifeline for Dreamers, who did not have any other option for gaining a path to legalization. The same is the case with Salvadorans who recently lost their Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Most of them have been living in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

Why would they continue to renew their TPS every two years and pay about $500 in processing fees per person each time if there was another way for them to apply and become legal permanent residents?

Right, you’re probably now saying this is a country of laws, and these must be obeyed. By everyone.

OK, but employers are giving jobs to undocumented workers. So, of course, immigrants come to fill those jobs. And the effects of the free market economy also displace workers from jobs in developing nations.

For example, after the elimination of tariffs due to NAFTA, agricultural workers in Mexico suddenly found themselves unable to sell their crops because the corn exported from the U.S. was selling for a cheaper price. So, people suddenly found themselves without jobs and no way to survive — due to U.S. policy.

These countries don’t have effective safety nets, such as unemployment benefits. Others face deep levels of poverty. Others need to emigrate to save their lives due to the high levels of violence from or extortion by drug dealers and gangs.

Yes, part of the IRCA law in 1986 included employer sanctions, making it illegal to knowingly hire undocumented workers. But, guess what? There has been very little enforcement of that in the last 32 years.

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If this is a country of laws, why don’t employers set the example and follow the law?

These employers are hiring millions of undocumented immigrants and nobody calls them lawbreakers, much less “illegal employers.” That adjective — “illegal” — is reserved only for immigrants in the harsh anti-immigrant environment we now find ourselves in.

People who believe that today’s immigrants are lawbreakers because their ancestors followed the law and came legally should consider what would have happened if the current U.S. laws had existed when their ancestors wanted to come.

As with many immigrants today, back then many came without skills, were poor, and were escaping punishing economic conditions and war. They also would not have been able to qualify for legal documents.

So, please, stop asking, “Why don’t they just go to the back of the line?”

Let’s make it simple. Practically speaking, there is no line! Which is to say, there is mostly no way most undocumented immigrants can qualify for legal entry. They can’t successfully do it “the right way.”

The last time we had an amnesty program was through IRCA (the Immigration Reform and Control Act) of 1986.

I, along with another 3.5 million immigrants, was able to regularize my immigration status then. After that, a lot of wonderful life opportunities opened up for me. I was able to get my General Education Diploma (GED), attend a community college, transfer to a four-year university, and get my master’s and Ph.D. at an Ivy League university.

Today, I’m an assistant professor of sociology at Texas Tech University.

Without IRCA, I would not have been able to do all these things.

So, why not give the opportunity afforded by legalization — such as the one I had — to all the immigrants who have been satisfying the huge demand in the U.S. for unskilled labor?

The vast majority of these immigrants have been law-abiding, have been working very hard, and have already established their lives in the U.S.

Instead of criminalizing immigrants, we need to understand how, through bad immigration policy, the U.S. has created a huge population of second-class citizens who are now being used by corporations, legislators and our president for political and economic gain.

Nadia Y. Flores-Yeffal is the author of the book, “Migration-Trust Networks: Social Cohesion in Mexican U.S.-Bound Emigration.”

TRUMP'S LAST YEAR

The Trump downfall is playing out like a re-run of Nixon’s exit

It’s worth going back down the memory hole and remembering how swiftly it ended with Richard Nixon. It began in August of 1973 with his vice president, Spiro Agnew, who had been under investigation for taking cash pay-offs for construction contracts awarded when he was Governor of Maryland. The payments, it was alleged, continued into his vice presidency.

On August 6, Agnew and his attorneys met with Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and Agnew denied the charges. The Wall Street Journal broke the story later that day. On August 7, Richard Nixon expressed his support for Agnew, and on August 8, Agnew held a press conference and vociferously denounced the charges as “damned lies.”

Richard M Nixon

Stories about Watergate and Agnew’s pay-offs dominated the news for the rest of the summer and into the fall. Agnew initially took the legal position that vice presidents cannot be indicted, and began giving speeches attacking the prosecution as corrupt and venal. But by early October, Agnew had decided he would not survive and began negotiations to cop a pea.

On October 10, Agnew appeared before a federal court in Baltimore and plead no contest to tax evasion. He was fined $10,000 and given a term of three years probation. After leaving court, Agnew submitted his letter of resignation and was gone.

Ten days later, on October 20, under pressure from congressional investigations and by the Watergate special prosecutor, Richard Nixon undertook what would come to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre. He ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused, and resigned in protest effective immediately. Then Nixon ordered Deputy Attorney General (now acting attorney general) William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox.

Ruckelshaus refused and also resigned. Nixon then turned to Solicitor General Robert Bork, who had stepped in to assume control of the Department of Justice. Nixon sent a limousine from the White House to pick up Bork, and he was sworn in as acting attorney general. Bork then took the fateful step of firing Cox, and the Saturday Night Massacre was over.

Spiro Agnew

Nixon’s downfall was only beginning. On November 1, under pressure, the White House appointed a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. On November 14, a federal judge found that the firing of Archibald Cox was illegal. On November 17, Nixon gave his famous speech at Disney World defending himself against Watergate charges, assuring the nation, “I am not a crook!”

In the coming months, Nixon’s associates fell one after another. See if any of this sounds familiar:

On January 28, 1974, Nixon aide Herbert Porter plead guilty to committing perjury. Hmmm…seems like I remember a more recent perjury plea deal . . .

On February 25, Nixon’s personal attorney plead guilty to two charges of illegal campaign activities. Sound like Michael Cohen to you? I thought so.

A few days later, on March 1, Nixon was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in charges against seven of his aides. I think I might have read something about “Individual 1” in the Cohen guilty plea. OMG! I did!

On March 4, those aides, called “The Watergate Seven” were indicted: former campaign chairman John Mitchell; former White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman; former White House counsel Charles Colson; and former White House aides Gordon Strachan, Kenneth Parkinson and Robert Mardian. Indictments piling up . . . hmmmm . . . this is all very familiar.

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On April 5, White House aide Dwight Chapin was found guilty of lying to a grand jury. And another perjurer bites the dust . . .

Keep reading for the Coming Attractions:

On April 16, Special Prosecutor Jaworski issued a subpoena for 64 White House tapes.

On May 9, the House Judiciary Committee began hearings on the impeachment of Richard Nixon.

On July 24, the Supreme Court issued its decision in U.S. v Nixon, ordering him to release the White House tapes to Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski.

Between July 27 and 30, the House Judiciary Committee passed three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon.

On August 5, what became known as the “smoking gun” White House tape was released, on which could be heard Nixon and aide H.R. Haldeman planning to obstruct the investigation of the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex.

Shortly afterward, Senators Scott, Goldwater, and Rhodes drove to the White House and informed Nixon that he did not have the votes in the Republican caucus to survive trial on impeachment in the Senate.

On August 8, Nixon addressed the nation from the Oval Office, announcing that on the following day, he would resign the presidency.

On August 9, Nixon submitted his formal resignation and departed the White House on Marine One.

Top of Form

HONOUR FOR PILOT

Rescue pilot Denis Hartley awarded New Zealand Order of Merit

Former Wanganui and Hunterville pilot Denis Hartley has been awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to aviation and rescue services.

Hartley began flight training in 1957 with Wanganui Aero Club after being awarded a grant from the Maori Education Foundation. He later became a topdressing pilot in Taihape for Wanganui Aero Work, owned by the Harding family.

His flying with the Hardings was the stepping stone to a career spanning 60 years. After moving to Hawke's Bay flying for Barr Brothers and following a serious flying accident in 1968, he began flying helicopters.

Denis Hartley NZOM

In his first helicopter rescue 45 years ago in Hawke's Bay the patient stretcher was attached on the outside to the skid of the helicopter and the doctor had to lean out the door to give the patient medical attention.

In 1988 Cyclone Bola hit and isolated the East Cape area north of Gisborne with road closures, low cloud and heavy rain. From that first day Hartley was requested by Ruatoria Civil Defence to rescue people from rooftops and cars immersed in flood waters and help people who needed immediate medical treatment caused by the storm.

As Hartley flew in heavy rain and cyclonic force winds, he also attended to more immediate rescues where people needed to be evacuated to higher ground. Due to many hours of flying, Hartley's helicopter fuel stock became low with no fuel deliveries available and people still required urgent assistance. Fortunately, the naval ship HMNZS Monowai was stationed off the East Cape, riding out the cyclone, and they offered their helicopter fuel because they had no helicopter aboard.

Mr Hartley was familiar with the Monowai due to previous work, so he was permitted to land to collect fuel. Landing on a pitching deck in cyclonic conditions was certainly exciting, especially when the deck was at times pitched at such an angle, he was given the illusion the helicopter was going to slide into the sea but, as standard procedure, on landing the Monowai deck crew immediately roped the helicopter skids to the deck.

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Hartley established the East Cape Rescue Trust which equipped community first response rescue squads throughout the East Cape region with equipment including jaws-of-life, stretchers and other emergency equipment.

Hartley trained the squads which relayed weather and other safety information, especially for the numerous night landings that he did to pick up injured or sick patients who had to be flown to Gisborne, Whakatane or Tauranga hospitals at night. He believed the one-hour concept of receiving medical treatment was crucial.

GPS navigation was not reliable in the region for some years therefore night-time navigation was by helicopter instruments and Denis Hartley's local knowledge. Ngati Porou Radio Station instigated the fundraising for the rescue trust and donations were received from all over New Zealand, Chatham Islands and Australia. This pioneered in New Zealand the concept of a community owned rescue helicopter supported by commercial work.

He acknowledged the trustees who drove and supported the East Coast Rescue Service to become the dedicated Air Ambulance service it is today at the Gisborne Airport, and also to those who have given their skills and abilities under trying conditions to help others.

Denis Hartley thinks his saddest rescue was when he flew to pick up two very young children badly injured in a T-bone car crash. Fortunately, the helicopter was fitted with two stretchers. Four others were left beside the cars.

His happier moments were when he had two babies born in flight on two separate occasions and another just on touchdown at Gisborne Hospital.

Another time and while in bed with the flu, he had an emergency callout to pick up an injured powerline worker. After delivering the patient to the Te Puia Springs Hospital and having been soaked with heavy rain, Mr Hartley went back to bed where his condition worsened. St John Ambulance in Ruatoria delivered him to hospital where he was put in the bed next to a startled injured power-line worker who recognized him, and Hartley stuttered "just checking you are tucked in for the night".

Denis Hartley also established the East Coast Search and Rescue Association and Tokomaru Bay – East Cape marine communications, was a committee member of the Aviation Industry Association (Air Ambulance and Helicopter Divisions) and the Aerial Agricultural Association, was adviser for the Aviation, Tourism and Travel Training Organisation, regional safety officer for the NZ CAA, patron of the Tokomaru Coastguard and is currently a member of Ohope Lions.

As a flight instructor and flight examiner, Hartley has trained numerous pilots in New Zealand, China, Taiwan and India and pioneered methods of helicopter live-line insulator washing and human-sling helicopter live-line maintenance.

Mr Hartley was awarded the Royal Humane Society Bronze Medal for bravery as a 14-year-old when he dived 30 metres into a flooded river to save a passenger in a car crash.

GLOBALIZATION

Jobs dry up for travel 

agents and IT workers

By Peter Blakeborough

“If you’re a travel agent or an accountant, you could be facing extinction by 2017,” wrote Alanah Eriksen in the New Zealand Herald business pages on August 13, 2012.

She predicted also, just as many others often do, that car manufacturers, retail and IT workers would also need to look for new career paths. Eriksen pointed to Balance Recruitment as an agency that had compiled a list of top jobs that would disappear within five years. But two years after the jobs should have disappeared, it is mostly the job seekers that are disappearing as the world economy and employment continue to boom.

When the NZ Herald article predicted that travel agents and accountants would disappear by 2017, they were clearly wrong. The Herald article was one of the most masterly written pieces of doom and gloom ever published. 

It is true that over time some occupations do disappear, but the evolution of business and employment is, in some ways, just like the evolution of nature; as one species becomes extinct many new species take its place. There is a popular saying that as one door closes another opens, but in reality it is often a case of many new doors opening.

Many people like to blame the internet for the so-called hard times that exist today. Let’s examine that.

At the start of the twentieth century, www could have meant wooden wagon wheel because the whole world was busy bemoaning the expected demise of the wooden wagon wheel maker. But the wooden wagon was inefficient, few individuals owned one and, often as not, the wheels fell off between one town and the next. To add to the woes of wooden wagon owners, they needed to own a horse and have somewhere to graze it. If the wagon was needed to transport produce to a market, they needed a team of horses.

Nowadays people will tell you that motor vehicles, and their exhaust fumes, are destroying the world, but think where the world would be without motor vehicles. With today’s population the world would be literally knee-deep in horse manure.  

The evolution of business and employment has been going on for thousands of years and the invention of the wheel and the wagon has been a vital part of that evolution, but the development of motor vehicles has been crucial. Before the Industrial Revolution few people lived beyond the age of 40 and the main causes of death were starvation (chiefly from unemployment) war, plague, murder and suicide. 

Industries and occupations are lost when more efficient industries and occupations take their place and efficiency ultimately puts more spending power into more pockets. Granted, there can be pain during transition but in the end commercial and industrial progress means wealth for more people and that can be seen in the growing range of occupations, products and services available that are available and affordable today.

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When the wooden wagon wheel disappeared cars, aircraft and telephones were rare. Only the exceptionally wealthy owned them. Radio, television, computers and music tapes and discs, play station and thousands of other products and services now available were yet to be launched. Launching those products and services was not just a simple matter of inventing them and selling millions. They would have been next to useless until the masses of people had the money to buy them.

Outsourcing is a dirty word to many but it has positive benefits. It helps reduce the cost of goods and services and bring them within the reach of more people.

India, with more poverty and unemployment than any other country in the world, benefits enormously from outsourcing and that is just part of the evolving economic globalization in which ultimately everyone wins. As India becomes more wealthy, there are spin-offs for the rest of the world. Indians are now travelling more than previously thereby creating jobs in travel and tourism. They are also able to import more products from the rest of the world. 

Everyone ultimately wins from globalization.

FACTS ABOUT WORK HOURS

Second richest man has a radical opinion on work hours

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2014, THIS ARTICLE IS STILL RELEVANT IN 2019

Carlos Slim, the world’s second richest man wants you to work just three days a week. But don’t get carried away just yet. The 74 year-old, who is chairman of Telmax, didn’t say that he wants to hire you. Telmax is the dominant telecommunications provider in Latin America.

Carlos Slim

According to an article by Jenna Kagel in the Financial Times, Slim wants to slim down the working week to just three days to improve productivity by allowing people more rest and recreation. He says the downside would be that workers may have to work until they are 70 or even 75 years old. Carlos Slim is believed to have a net worth of about $80 billion USD and it can probably be safely assumed that he didn’t acquire his wealth without lots of radical ideas.

But is his suggestion really all that radical, or is he suggesting that progressive trends in working conditions over the centuries are simply due for the next step forward?

We’ve come a long way since the earliest agricultural workers worked in the fields until they fell asleep, where they worked, and when they awoke again they immediately started work again, seven days a week. We hear terrible things about working conditions during the industrial revolution when an 18 hour day was normal, six days a week, and the workers went home after work. That was a miserable existence, but it was an improvement on the earlier work conditions.

A chart from the Economist showing the relationship between work hours and productivity

During the 20^th Century the 40 hour/five day working week became normal for many workers, and nearing the end of the century some workers were allowed to go home for the weekend after only 35 hours. Annual leave not only became normal during the 20^th Century, but the amount of leave increased from two weeks to four weeks a year. Other entitlements that became acceptable during the 20^th Century included sick leave, bereavement leave, maternity leave and long service leave.

Shorter working hours can have many benefits for society other than increased productivity. Not the least of these is work place safety. Take the case of long distance truck drivers in places like the USA, Russia and Australia with vast distances to drive with primitive conditions and laws, compared with Europe. These drivers sleep in their trucks and drive each day until they are ready to fall asleep and there is always pressure to deliver on time. The most common cause of single vehicle truck accidents is drivers falling asleep at the wheel. These drivers are stuck in a time warp somewhere between the first agricultural workers and the factory workers of the industrial revolution.

Another Economist chart showing average working hours for OECD countries

But there are other important benefits to be gained by society from shorter working weeks and work days. Family life is one of the first things to spring to mind. The children of long hours workers often grow up poorly adjusted for life and may embark on a life of crime or anti-social behavior. Long hours workers are more likely to divorce than shorter hours workers, and they are also more likely to have health issues. It is common to hear from people who live to an exceptionally old age, that they achieved their old age with hard work. But the reality is that people who work hard and long generally have shorter lives.

Life expectancy has improved with better working conditions, shorter hours and better wages.

There is one more important benefit of shorter working hours that is often overlooked. In the days when workers slogged from daylight to dark every day for poor wages (or in slavery), they had no discretionary spending power to buy the products that they produced, or any non-essential items.

Starting in the 20^th Century and continuing into the 21^st Century, workers have had discretionary spending power, and the reduced working hours give them the time to spend their surplus wages. This is good for the well-being of the individual and it is good for the national economy.

As workers spend their wages they help keep others in work, and the more a particular product is purchased the cheaper it can be produced and sold. As they used to say about money: It’s made round to go round.

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However, the suggestion by Carlos Slim that the retirement age may have to go up to 70 or 75 must be challenged. To prove his assumption wrong, we must go back again to the slaves and workers in primitive agriculture. For them there was no retirement. They worked until they died. It was the same during the industrial revolution and it wasn’t until the 20^th Century that workers started receiving a meagre retirement pension. As the century progressed more people qualified for the pension and the qualifying age moved steadily downward.

Retirement itself became an industry, taking from and giving to the national economy. Without pensioners the economy would revert back to the hard times prior to the introduction of pensions. Baby boomers joining the ranks of the retired is no reason to raise the retirement age. In fact most WWII baby boomers are now receiving a pension and the economic effect has been zero.

In summary, shorter working hours leads to improved safety and productivity, better home life, increased industrial creativity or a wider range of products for workers to buy and enjoy. It is better for everyone including governments, businesses and workers. Bring it on!