1952: "Climate Change"? - No, pollution! ....

Atomic bomb tests in the atmosphere?

No, plain old pollution!

In 1952, the 'Great Smog of London' smothered London in a thick layer of filthy air which began to wrap itself around the city on Friday, December 5, and it lasted until Tuesday, December 9, 1952. It was brought about by windless and extremely cold weather conditions that froze the people of London, and trapped all that smoke being belched into the air that mixed with fog. But, immediately that weather pattern changed, that curtain of smog also vanished.

It was certainly caused by human activity, but at the time alarm bells were ringing in some quarters that it was the result of testing atomic weapons in the atmosphere. That soon proved to be untrue, and so atomic bomb testing continued in the atmosphere because 'clean coal' proved to be the answer!

You could see the black smoke belching into the air, but you could not see those radioactive particles that were falling from the sky with cancerous results. Meanwhile, in those few days of 1952, over 100,000 people were affected by respiratory illness which later research figured had  perhaps killed up to 12,000 individual human beings.

Was this unusual for London?

Well, yes, and no, because London had suffered under a blanket of bad air since the time of Shakespeare and the interlocking series of Civil Wars which raged within the British Isles at that time. However, this event of 1952 was bad enough for sensible legislation to be introduced in an attempt to stop it from happening again. But it took politicians at Westminster until 1956 to put that preventative legislation in place.

But what about those atomic bombs that were being tested in the atmosphere?

Well, while the visible smoke stacks began to come under control in 1956, it took until 1957 before an organized attempt was made to protest that unseen killer from the skies which was triggering various cancers caused by reckless  atomic weapons research. Then it took until 1963 to enact a partial test ban treaty to halt the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and under water. It was, and it still is okay to do the same thing underground, even though not everyone agrees with that compromise, so those potential cancer-causing tests continue unto this day.

Coughing and spluttering because of dirty air is an immediate reaction that attracts attention, but silently dying of cancer from idiopathic causes is something that kills its victims who often die, quite conveniently, out of the sight of large crowds. But then, atomic weapons manufacture and installation creates good paying jobs, which controlling pollution from smoke stacks also does.

It's all about money!

Then someone figured that decades-old electricity was a substitute for coal, without attracting attention to the details of manufacturing that electricity and the batteries to store it. So electricity was rebranded as 'clean energy' and sold to the gullible masses as 'green energy', because for some, it had also become a source of income funded by involuntary taxes levied upon gullible masses.

So 'green energy' evangelists have taken over from their predecessors of the 1950s, and they, like Billy Graham and Herbert W. Armstrong, are replacing warnings from God to "shape up or else", to warnings from scientists to "shape up or else". But not all religious people agreed with the evangelists, and not all secular people agree with the scientists.

But fear and financial pay-offs smother common sense, just like the London smog of 1952 smothered citizens of London.

Greta Thunberg would no doubt have been citing that event as part of her warning to the world, but for one slight problem to do with biology. Back then in 1952, this manipulated teen with her own future problems in a future life that began in 2003, was not even being considered for birth by her parents to be!

Sometimes, in the present, knowing details about the mistakes made in past events, really can prevent their repetition in the future!