Look Back In Bemusement, by David Archibald.  An amusing but informative piece on the carbon dioxide theory of global warming.

We study history so as to not repeat it. There are many historical parallels with Australia’s current insanity on renewable energy. The first book written, Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, mentions tribes from the area of current day Switzerland that would suddenly up and leave, burning their homes behind them, and go off on a rampage cross-country. A legion would be dispatched to send them back to where they came from and restore order. A closer parallel is the rise of puritanism in late 16th century England with its mental self-flagellation, joylessness and zeal. Puritanism burnt itself out eventually and Charles II was invited back to rule England in 1660. Religious revivals are recurrent. The burned-over district is a term for the western and central regions of New York State in the early 19th century, where religious revivals and the formation of new religious movements prevailed.

The closest parallel, ideologically, to what we are enduring at the moment in Australia is the 1858 cattle-killing frenzy of the Xhosa tribe in what is now South Africa. Briefly, a teenage girl named Nongqawuse and her friend Nombanda went to fetch water. Upon returning, she said that they had met the spirits of three of her ancestors who had told her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle. In return the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea. Then their granaries would fill again and their kraals would have more and better cattle. The cattle-killing frenzy that followed killed between 300,000 and 400,000 head of cattle. In the resulting famine, the population of the province dropped from 105,000 to fewer than 27,000. This is a photo of Nongqause’s gravestone:

Read it all.