Maybe that's why 'they' don't believe in global warming: it's a matter of 'crying wolf'. Over a hundred years ago, newspapers published this Fake News story.

What's true about it? Well, a scientist named Donati had died. Also, there were new transatlantic cables being laid. . . You can figure out the rest.

The Wichita City Eagle

12 February, 1874, p.1

This is a scientific-looking stereopticon picture of the Sun. Its presence on this page obviously proves something. It adds a touch of verismilitude to this premature global warming story.

To the Editor of the Kansas City Times:

A friend of mine residing in Florence, an American man of science traveling for the sake of his health, lately wrote to me as follows:

'I have attended the meetings of one [of] the numerous scientific coteries with which Italy is blessed. In one of them a subject was broached which if generally known would startle the whole civilized world. One of the members, a man whose name is known in both hemispheres, asserted that the celebrated Donati (who lately died, much regretted by scientific men) had been a victim, not to disease nor to time, although he was in a 'green old age,' but to nervous excitement or fright, caused by a discovery which he had made of great and even agonizing importance to the human race.

Donati had for many years been employing his unbounded energy in exploring some of the 'hidden things in astronomy. Of these investigations he kept a strict record of solar phenomena especially. He constructed an instrument by which he could calculate the earth's exact place in the great ellipse that it travels around the sun, and also, in his own estimation, its distance from the sun, although in this latter point he was not universally credited by his scientific colleagues. He never failed to make minute daily records of the results of his observations and to this custom he owed his fresh discovery. On the very day that the cable was laid, his instruments showed him that the earth, like some vast ship towed by invisible hands, was drawing nearer to the sun. Every month after the epoch its distance was perceptibly lessened, as shown by his instruments, much more delicate than telescopes or the human eye.

When the French cable was laid, there was an acceleration very marked in this attraction to the sun. Donati though[t] that this movement was increasing in a geometrical ratio (?).

He explained this alarming fact by certain reasonings based on the connection between gravitation and magnetism, which I suspect my friend was hardly able to follow.

His conclusion was this: That in twelve years the climate of Europe would become tropical, if not unfit for human existence, and that in a few more years this globe, which, with all its faults, we love so well, would be precipitated into the sun.

It seems that Donati had in vain tried to bring this matter before the Italian government (hoping through it to reach the nations most interested in oceanic telegraphs), but that war and politics had prevented any notice being taken of his representations.

He thought that if America and England could be induced to examine his data and proofs, they, seeing the tremendous consequence of man's tampering too far with the machinery of nature, would speedily cause these cables to be things of the past.

His failure induced him to think of private enterprise, and several wealthy Italians, amateurs of science combined together, chartered a brig and expensive machinery, and by their patriotic (although patriotism is too petty a name) efforts produced the first break in Field's cable, laid by the Great Eastern. Donati's instruments quickly showed that the earth was nearing its normal ellipse. But the break was quickly repaired, and once more the earth commenced its infinite spiral journey to the flames!

Donati's health gave way. Age and disappointment hastened his dissolution. A few days before his death he carefully sealed up all his manuscripts, with directions that they should not be opened for five years.'

So much for my correspondent, Mr. Editor. Make of him such use as seems best to you. I am yours respectfully,

J.B. Legendre

Dmitri Gheorgheni

13.03.17 Front Page

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