homepage Forums SimHQ Community Community Hall Unusual climate conditions during WWI.

I knew that it was wet and cold in France during WW1. Turns out there was a reason for it.

Unusual climate conditions influenced WWI mortality and subsequent influenza pandemic:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200924135323.htm

On a related note, I've always been fascinated that the Russian winters of both 1812 and 1941 are amongst the coldest ever recorded for the region. Coincidence or not?

R.L. Mason in his history of the Lafayette Escadrille took copious notes from his father's excerpts and diary of his time serving in WWI. From the early years as an ambulance driver for the French Foreign Legion, to a pilot in the Lafayette squad, the years from 1915 onwards were cold and particularly damp. There was a new pilot who flew in to the 128's billet in Chappy from the French Air's repository of aircraft at Etampes, who was out flying in the dead of January on a particularly bitter cold morning in a Neiuport 17. They weren't expecting a new pilot to fly himself in while enduring sub zero temperatures.

He had also spent 30 minutes circling around Notre Dame cathedral doing a few charcoal sketches of the church because a stray bit of sunlight had caught his attention glinting off the church.

Weren’t the Ardennes in 1944 and the Chosin Reservoir in 1950 also unusually cold?

I think it is just added in for sensationalism.

There’s a saying; publish or perish.

In essence that means as a scientist, you’re hired, fired and promoted on the basis of your publications and the funding you can bring to your instititution. No bucks, no Buck Rogers

This causes a bias in science so that only certain topics are fundable. E.g. You can get funds to develop and study new drugs to cure lifestyle deceases but not for helping people improve their lifestyle, or offereing a good healthy diet.

You can get funding if you whisper the word “climate”. That is the abracadabra that unlocks the coffers.

Incredibly, this study does not mention the fact that Western Europe was suffering from near-starvation after four years of war, leading no doubt to compromised and weakened immune systems and that soldiers in many cases had been living and wounded in trenches infested with rats and the rotting remains of their blasted-to-smitherens fellow soldiers. I wonder if these conditions contributed to the extent of the pandemic.

If not a bat, then certainly a rat, would easily be the cause for the spreading of early deceases. Perhaps the diet on the front or the homefront was the Mallard duck that apparently did not think to migrate south before the coming of winter. I would like to see a lot more studies on the migratory pattern of Mallard ducks before accepting this as fact. Note the use of the word “may” in this part of the study. As in may or may NOT.

Pandemics do seem to occur in certain patterns; centennial and decadal. If you wanted to investigate any possible corellation or causation between this and the weather, the proper way to do so would be simply to tabulate the stats for those to factors. You certainly do not take one single event or sample and then conclude any meaningful relations from such poor stats. Sorry but you flunk the exam if you use such poor methods.

Cold kills. We know this. This has been documented over and over again. We must remember that people were extremely poor and did not have access to heating, sanitation and in many cases, adequate food.

The first thing you learn as scout or soldier is to keep warm and keep dry.

The biggest cause for our extended life expectancy is proper sanitation, get rid of the feces from your daily environment and you instantly add decades to you life expectancy.

Finally, climate is defined as the combined weather over a period of at least 30 years. Not four or five. That’s just plain weather variation.

Logically, we want a warm climate then. But oh wait, that doesn’t fit the narrative!

But I can see someone looking for a headline for the news, or an excuse to tell implement certain policies that are based on what media reports or politicians claim, grabbing studies like the one we have here, quoting out of context, not asking critical questions.

+1 McGonigle

Excellent post McGonigle.

I agree (based on my "on the job" experiences -- and my personal in depth study of "Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming" -- since called "Climate Change" because the "Catastrophic" warming stopped) !