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When a book changes your life, you know it right away. You’re unable to put it down. You take the stories and lessons it has to heart. You can’t resist telling the people around you to read it too. Before long, you pick it up and read it again. You like it even more the second time around. Tyler Cowen called these “quake books”—they shake your whole world up and nothing is ever the same after.Unfortunately these kind of books are hard to come by. When I was younger, I used to go around and ask every smart person I met—even emailing important people I didn’t know—“What books can you recommend to a kid like me?” That’s how I was introduced to the Stoics. That’s how I found many of the books on the list below. Having been introduced to them by those kind, patient individuals, I’ll give you some of mine. It’s a list that has changed over time—and will continue to change—but it’s a good enough place to start.Pick one of them up and let it lead you to another. And then when you come to a dead end, come back to the list. If you want some more, I give some recommendations each month in my Reading List Email, which has all the stuff I am reading each month.Books to Base Your Life OnThe Meditations by Marcus Aurelius — To me, this is not only one of the greatest books ever written but perhaps the only book of its kind. Just imagine: the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world, admonishing himself on how to be better, more just, more immune to temptation, wiser. It is the definitive text on self-discipline, personal ethics, humility, self-actualization and strength. If you read it and aren’t profoundly changed by it, it’s probably because as Aurelius says “what doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” You HAVE to read the Hays’s translation. If you end up loving Marcus, go get The Inner Citadel and Philosophy as a Way of Life by Pierre Hadot that studies the man (and men) behind the work. And if you want more on the topic, Marcus inspired my book The Obstacle is the Way.Letters from a Stoic by Seneca — After Marcus Aurelius, this is one of my favorite books. While Marcus wrote mainly for himself, Seneca had no trouble advising and aiding others. In fact, that was his job—he was Nero’s tutor, tasked with reducing the terrible impulses of a terrible man. His advice on grief, on wealth, on power, on religion, and on life are always there when you need them. Seneca’s letters are the best place to start, but the essays in On the Shortness of Life are excellent as well.Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl — Frankl is one of the most profound modern thinkers on meaning and purpose. His contribution was to change the question from the vague philosophy of “What is the meaning of life?” to man being asked and forced to answer with his actions. He looks at how we find purpose by dedicating ourselves to a cause, learning to love and finding a meaning to our suffering.48 Laws of Power and Mastery by Robert Greene — There is no living writer (or person) who has been more influential to me than Robert Greene. I met him when I was 19 years old and he’s shaped me as a person, as a writer, as a thinker. You MUST read his books. His work on power and strategy are critical for anyone trying to accomplish anything. In life, power is force we are constantly bumping up against. People have power over us, we seek power ourselves that we might be free enough and influential enough to accomplish our goals—so we must understand where power comes from, how it works and how to get it. But pure power is meaningless. It must be joined to mastery and purpose. So read his book Mastery so that you can figure your life’s task and how to dedicate yourself to it.Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son by George Horace Lorimer and Letters to His Son by Lord Chesterfield These two books of letters are great—I wish my father had written me stuff this good. The first book is the (supposedly) preserved correspondence between Old Gorgon Graham, a self-made millionaire in Chicago, and his son who is coming of age and entering the family business. The letters date back to the 1890s but feel like they could have been written in any era. Honest. Genuine. Packed with good advice. Chesterfield wrote his letters to his illegitimate son, tutoring him on how to learn, how to think, how to act, how to deal with important people. I don’t agree with all his advice but most of it is great.Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen — In terms of business/economics, this is one of the more important books I’ve read in a long time. I even keep a framed passage from it on my wall (it also inspired a piece of writing I am proud of). Cowen’s books have always been thought provoking, but this one changes how you see the future and help explain real pain points in our new economy–both good and bad. Although much of what Cowen proposes will be uncomfortable, he has a tone that borders on cheerful. I think that’s what makes this so convincing and so eye opening. A hollowing out is coming and you’ve got to prepare yourself (and our institutions) as best you can.Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Life and Love from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed and Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott — It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. Cheryl Strayed, also the author of Wild, was the anonymous columnist behind the online column, Dear Sugar and boy, are we better off for it. This is not a random smattering of advice. This book contains some of the most cogent insights on life, pain, loss, love, success, youth that I have ever seen. I won’t belabor the point: read this book. Thank me later. Anne Lamott’s book is ostensibly about the art of writing, but really it too is about life and how to tackle the problems, temptations and opportunities life throws at us. Both will make you think and both made me a better person.The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh — A few years ago, I read The Education of a Coach, a book about Bill Belichick which influenced me immensely (coincidentally, the Patriots have also read my book and were influenced by it). Anyway, I have been chasing that high ever since. Bill Walsh’s book certainly met that high standard. Even if you’ve never watched a down of football, you’ll get something out of this book. Walsh took the 49ers from the worst team in football to the Super Bowl in less than 3 years. How? Not with a grand vision or pure ambition, but with what he called the Standard of Performance. That is: How to practice. How to dress. How to hold the ball. Where to be on a play down to the very inch. Which skills mattered for each position. How much effort to give. By upholding these standards—whatever they happen to be for your chosen craft—success will take care of itself.FictionI don’t just read fiction for fun—I try to read novels that express some fundamental part of the human condition or some hard won truth. I hope you’ll enjoy these (though for a fuller list, read my article on the 24 Fiction Books That Can Change Your Life).Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk — I’m amazed how many young people haven’t read this book. Truly life-changing. This is the classic of my generation; it is the book that defines our age and ultimately, how to find meaning in it. It’s a cautionary tale too—about being too caught up in revolutionary ideas.The Moviegoer by Walker Percy — The Moviegoer is exactly the novel that every young kid stuck in their own head needs to read. The main character—who lives in New Orleans just a few blocks from where I lived—is so in love with the artificiality of movies that he has trouble living his actual life. The Moviegoer—it is like a good Catcher in the Rye but for adults. Just a perfect book. An equal cautionary tale: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe.What Makes Sammy Run? and The Harder They Fall by Budd Schulberg —Budd Schulberg’s (who wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront) whole trilogy is amazing and each captures a different historical era. His first, What Makes Sammy Run? is Ari Gold before Ari Gold existed–purportedly based on Samuel Goldwyn (of MGM) and Darryl Zanuck. His next book, The Harder They Fall is about boxing and loosely based on the Primo Carnera scandal. All you need to know about Schulberg’s writing is captured in this quote from his obituary: “It’s the writer’s responsibility to stand up against that power. The writers are really almost the only ones, except for very honest politicians, who can make any dent on that system. I tried to do that. And that’s affected me my whole life.” Fiction can do that, and sometimes it does it even better than non-fiction.The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler — What a book. “A boy can be two, three, four potential people,” Duddy’s uncle tells him, “but a man is only one. He murders the others.” Which potential person will you be? Which part of you will you allow to rule? The part that betrays your friends, family, principles to achieve success? Or are there other priorities?BiographiesOne of my favorite categories of books: moral biographies. That is, the stories of great men and women in history, written with an eye towards practical application and advice.Plutarch’s Lives by Plutarch — Clearly the master of this genre, Plutarch wrote biographies of famous Greeks and Romans around the year 100 AD. As always, I tend to default to the Penguin collections. I strongly recommend Plutarch’s Lives Vol. I & II, Essays, and The Makers of Rome: Nine Lives. His book On Sparta is also a collection of biographies (and aphorisms) from the famous Spartans. There is a reason that Shakespeare based many of his plays on Plutarch—not only are they well-written and exciting but they exhibit everything that is good and bad about the human condition. Greed, love, pain, hate, success, selflessness, leadership, stupidity—it’s all there.The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by Giorgio Vasari — A friend and peer of Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael Titian and all the other great minds of the Renaissance sat down in 1550 and wrote biographical sketches of the people he knew or had influenced him. What I like about this book is that the profiles are not about statesmen or generals but artists. There are so many great lessons about craft and psychology within this book. The best part? It was written by someone who actually knew what he was talking about, not some art snob or critic, but an actual artist and architect of equal stature to the people he was documenting.Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi — The book has sold something like 5 million copies in Japan alone (an insane number). Totto-Chan is a special figure in modern Japanese culture—she is a celebrity on par with Oprah or Ellen, with a magazine, news show and exalted position to boot. The book describes a childhood in pre-WWII Japan as a poorly misunderstood girl who obviously suffered from attention disorders and excess energy. It wasn’t until she met a special school principal—unlike any I have ever heard of—who finally GOT her. And I mean understood and cared about and unconditionally supported her in a way that both inspires me and makes me deeply jealous. If only all of us could be so lucky…Titan by Ron Chernow — I found Rockefeller to be strangely stoic, incredibly resilient, and, despite his reputation as a robber baron, humble and compassionate. Most people get worse as they get successful, many more get worse as they age. In fact, Rockefeller began tithing his money with his first job and gave more of it away as he became successful. He grew more open-minded the older he became, more generous, more pious, more dedicated to making a difference.The Power Broker by Robert Caro — It took me 15 days to read all 1,165 pages of this monstrosity that chronicles the rise of Robert Moses. I was 20 years old. It was one of the most magnificent books I’ve ever read. Moses built just about every other major modern construction project in New York City. The public couldn’t stop him, the mayor couldn’t stop him, the governor couldn’t stop him, and only once could the President of the United States stop him. But ultimately, you know where the cliché must take us. Robert Moses was an asshole. He may have had more brains, more drive, more strategy than other men, but he did not have more compassion. And ultimately power turned him into something monstrous.Sherman: Soldier, Realist, American by B.H Liddell Hart — This was someone I knew little about before I read the book, and by the end of it found myself referencing and thinking of him constantly. It is equal parts due to the greatness of the man himself and to Hart’s vivid and engrossing portrait. I almost feel like I have lost something not having known this of him my whole life. There is a stunningly profound quote from Hart in the book that I’ll paraphrase here that defines his genius: Sherman’s success was rooted in his grasp that the way to success is strategically along the line of least expectation and tactically along the line of least resistance. It is that kind of thinking that immediately displaces any preceding notions about Sherman’s reputation as a general or a legend. All these myths belies his strategic acumen, his mastery of terrain and his deep understanding of statesmanship and politics. There is much to learn from the man and this biographer—who himself was a great strategist and mind.Practical PhilosophyI don’t believe that philosophy is something for the classroom—it’s something that helps you with life. As Epicurus put it: “Vain is the word of the philosopher which does not heal the suffering of man.” I’ve already recommended a couple of practical philosophy books in different sections but a couple more worth reading:The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus — A Syrian slave in the first century BC, Publius Syrus is a fountain of quick, helpful wisdom that you cannot help but recall and apply to your life. “Rivers are easiest to cross at their source.” “Want a great empire? Rule over yourself.” “Divide the fire and you will sooner put it out.”Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer — Schopenhauer is a brilliant composer of quick thoughts that will help us with our problems. His work was often concerned with the “will”–our inner drives and power. “For that which is otherwise quite indigestible, all affliction, vexation, loss, grief, time alone digests.” But he also talks about surprisingly current issues: “Newspapers are the second hand of history”–and that the hand is often broken or malfunctioning. And of course, the timeless as well: “Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing for its probability.”Fragments by Heraclitus — While most of the other practical philosophy recommendations I’m making are bent towards hard, practical advice, Heraclitus might seem a bit poetic. But those beautiful lines are really the same direct advice and timeless, perspective-changing observations as the others. “Try in vain with empty talk / to separate the essences of things / and say how each thing truly is.” “Applicants for wisdom / do what I have done: / inquire within.” “Character is fate.” “What eyes witness / ears believe on hearsay.” “The crops are sold / for money spent on food.”War/Strategy BooksRules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky — This is the 48 Laws of Power written in more of an idealist, activist tone. Alinsky was the liaison for many civil rights, union and student causes in the late 50’s and 60’s. He teaches how to implement your radical agenda without using radical tactics, how to disarm with words and media as opposed to arms and Utopian rhetoric.Boyd: The Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram —Boyd was probably the greatest post-WWII military strategist; he developed the F-15 and F-16, revolutionized ground tactics in war and covertly designed the US battle plans for the Gulf War. He shunned wealth, fame, and power all to accomplish what he felt needed to be accomplished. Coram captures his essence in a way that no other author has touched.For a whole list of books on the US Civil War, start here. For a more complete list of recommendations see my list of 43 Books About War and 24 Books To Hone Your Strategic Mind.Evolutionary PsychologyAs important as philosophy and moral fiction are, they’re just ideas if they’re not counterbalanced with an understanding of our biology and psychology.The Moral Animal by Robert Wright — This is probably the definitive beginner text on evolutionary psychology and one of the easiest to get into. It’s a little depressing at first, realizing how ruthless many of our so called “good” feelings are. But then you realize that truth is better than ignorance, and you emerge seeing the world as it truly is for the first time. Also, a similar read is Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters (Amazon), which is more of a Q&A approach to the subject and has contemporary edge.Sex on the Brain by Deborah Blum — One of the better books on evolutionary biology that focuses almost entirely on the biological and psychological differences between men and women. It’s written by a journalist (who cites scientists) so it’s easy to read if you’re not studied in the field. If you want to get into evolutionary psychology–which you totally should–this is a good starting point because it covers all the basics. Essentially, it discusses how men and women have benefited evolutionarily through different behaviors and strengths so it would only make sense that they would have developed into two very different entities.The InternetInstead of giving descriptions for these, I’m just going to list titles. You need to read ALL of them. Especially the ones marked with an *, as they are the ones the illustrate the darker side of the web.Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay ShirkyBrave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization* by John RobbThe Pirate’s Dilemma by Matt MasonYou Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto* by Jaron LanierThe New New Thing by Michael LewisFounders at Work by Jessica Livingston (interviews with technology founders from one of the best investors of all time)The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom* by Evgeny MorozovHackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham (or you can read his essays here)Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don TapscottThe Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by Eric S RaymondNarrative NonfictionSome of the most pleasurable books I’ve read in my life belong in the genre of narrative non-fiction—epic true stories and sagas that are almost too good to believe.The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant — Holy shit, this book is good. Just holy shit. Even if it was just the main narrative—the chase to kill a man-eating Tiger in Siberia in post-communist Russia—it would be worth reading, but it is so much more than that. The author explains the Russian psyche, the psyche of man vs predator, the psyches of primitive peoples and animals, in such a masterful way that you’re shocked to find 1) that he knows this, and 2) that he fit it all into this readable and relatively short book. The story is nuts: a tiger starts killing people in Russia and a team is sent to kill it (Russia is so fucked up, they already have a team for this). At one point, the tiger is cornered and leaps to attack the team leader…and in mid-air the soldier’s rifle goes into the tigers open jaws and down his throat all the way to the stock, killing the tiger at the last possible second. Wow.The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard — I thought I knew about Theodore Roosevelt. This book opens with him stranded in the Amazon jungle begging his son to let him kill himself so he wouldn’t be a burden on their exploring party any longer. And then it gets better from there. I mean, did you know he is credited with being the first to chart and navigate a totally unknown river as long as the Nile? And that he did that after he was President, just for fun? I’m not sure I need to explain much else, but if you needed more convincing, I will say that Candice Millard who wrote Destiny of the Republic (which I highly recommend) wrote this too and it’s better than her last book. Not only is there a bunch of great history and drama here, it shows a human side of Roosevelt I had not understood before.Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing — 50 plus years old, this is a story that more than stands the test of time. Sir Ernest Shackleton makes his daring attempt to cross Antarctic continent but his crew and boat are trapped in the ice flows. What follows are 600 days of harrowing survival, first from the elements, then from hunger, then from the sea as he makes a daring attempt in a small lifeboat to reach land 650 miles away, then again as he struggles over land and mountains to bring relief to his men. And when he finally arrives with it, Shackleton simply boards them on the boat and returns home as if nothing had happened. He was an immensely brave man in the midst of terrible adversity and we see this so clearly in a book based on the remarkable diaries of his men. He never quit, never seemed to despair. This book (and his life) were living proof of his family motto: “Fortitudine vincimus” (By endurance we conquer).Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson — This book is a work of art. It is like The Tiger-good. A diver (whose life principles we can all learn from) and a ship captain find the wreck of an unknown German U-Boat in 1991…on the coast of New Jersey. That’s a thing? Apparently. And they spend the next five years diving the wreck 230+ feet underwater until they identify it. This book is narrative nonfiction writing at its finest. Please read.ClassicsAs you have probably gathered, I’m a bit of a nerd. I didn’t graduate from college but I still love to read the classics and I’m slowly making my way through them. I thought I’d put together a quick list that everyone should check out:The Aeneid by Virgil (translated by Robert Fagles) — I made an effort to read some classical poets and playwrights few years ago. The Aeneid was far and away the most quotable, readable and memorable of all of them. There’s no other way to put: the story is AMAZING. Better than the Odyssey, better than Juvenal’s Satires. Inspiring, beautiful, exciting, and eminently readable, I loved this. I took more notes on it that I have on anything I’ve read in a long time. The story, for those of you who don’t know, is about the founding of Rome. Aeneas, a prince of Troy, escapes the city after the Trojan War and spends nearly a decade wandering, fighting, and trying to fulfill his destiny by making it to Italy. I definitely recommend that anyone trying to read this follow my tricks for reading books above your level (that is, spoil the ending, read the intro, study Wikipedia and Amazon reviews, etc).Candide by Voltaire — I read this book as I waited for my wedding to start. It might seem like a strange choice, given that it’s a 200 year old book mostly about unimaginable hardship, torture, death and misfortune. Somehow, despite this, the book is a light hearted satire that pokes fun at optimism, philosophy, politics, and power. In the end, Voltaire concludes, all we can do is tend to our own garden. Il faut cultiver nos jardins.The Epic of Gilgamesh by Unknown — I read this on my honeymoon (probably the only person on the beach reading it, if I had to guess). Especially when I learned after that a new introduction paragraph had been discovered only recently. His tomb may have been found recently too. Imagine if Homer’s works had only been discovered in the mid 1800’s after being lost to history for thousands of years. How crazy would that be? Reading the classic epics can feel like work but there is value in it. These works are timeless and universal. Such a great line“He will face a battle he knows not,he will ride a road he knows not.”Epigrams by Martial — These are hilarious. I have one hanging on the gate in front of my house. Martial also served as a partial inspiration for my writing on the Canvas Strategy.Hamlet by Shakespeare — Philosophy runs through this play–all sorts of great lines. There are gems like “..for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” which I used in my last book and “Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee.” was a favorite of Sherman.Satires by Juvenal — These are bitter, sarcastic attacks on Rome. They partially inspired my book Trust Me, I’m Lying.***That should be enough for now. Start with any of these and you’ll fall down the rabbit hole soon enough.Don’t forget to follow me as I read my way through life with monthly recommendations of books like these. Join the 200,000 other subscribers and sign up now!

The decoding of the Voynich Manuscript belongs to a special little niche in the world, and it shares this niche with the origin of life, the theory of everything, aliens, and the culprits of major unsolved crimes. To join this niche, a thing must have the following characteristics:It probably exists, and, at least in theory, could be proven to exist.However, we probably won’t have an answer, or solution, or proof, for it anytime soon.Someone with little expertise in the relevant subject area will inevitably claim to have solved it, entirely on their own, a minimum of once per year. This will receive news coverage at low to medium heat for a week or two, in turn spawning a cycle of poorly-written news articles on why the solution is correct, articles by actual experts on why it’s a load of bollocks, and poorly-written news articles on why the article they wrote last week was a load of bollocks, but that won’t matter anyway because it’ll only be seen by a fraction of a percent of the audience of the previous week’s article.I have been asked this question for the reason of the Third Principle of the Niche of Unsolved Things, which has manifested itself this past week. This is the story of the Voynich Manuscript and its many decodings; and while I’d like to say this ought to be the brief story, one that answers the question and only the question in the fewest words possible, I’m going to have to say that this is another sort of story entirely.rubs hands togetherSo, let’s just quickly run through what this thing is, now, shall we?A page from the Voynich Manuscript, showing some of its text and illustrations. Image from Wikipedia.This is the Voynich Manuscript. It was bought, sold, traded, ended up in a library for a couple centuries, lost a few pages along the way, and in the early 20th century found itself in the hands of a man named Wilfrid Voynich, after whom it’s named. It’s full of strange pictures, mostly of plants and animals, but also of people, often in inexplicable situations like the one above. Other chapters cover astrology and recipes.[1]Now, we don’t know where it comes from. We don’t know who originally wrote it. We don’t know why they wrote it. We don’t know what it says. We don’t know what language it was written in. We don’t even know what the alphabet is, or which alphabet it’s based on, or what sounds are supposed to go where.The illustrations are mysterious, too: we don’t know what the people in the pictures are doing half the time, and most of those plants and animals - and this is my favourite part - aren’t actually real.Fake plants in the Voynich manuscript. It can’t be a botanical or medicinal text, because nothing resembling these plants grows anywhere near Europe. Image from Wikipedia.What’s going on here? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Nothing in here makes any sense. It’s part of the fun, you see. Image from Wikipedia.What do we know? Very little. We can trace its ownership back to the 17th century, and its probable creation date, assuming it’s roughly the same age as the parchment it’s written on, to the 15th century. Some of the pigments are ones you’d get in Italy around that time, so it’s probably from Italy.That’s it. We know nothing else. Is it a hoax? If it is, then it must be an old one, and that only opens up more questions: why would someone put so much effort into faking this? What was their goal? Who were they? What, exactly, was the thing that they were trying to fake in the first place?Or, if it’s not a fake, then it must be a real text, with some legitimate purpose. Then just what was that purpose? Who wrote it, and why? What do these plants, animals, people, random diagrams represent? Are these real recipes? What are they recipes for? What does the astrology here predict? What language is this? What is this alphabet? Where do they come from? Why is this the only example of that alphabet? Why is it the only example of the language? Or is it the only example of this language?What, in short, is it?That is the mystery of the Voynich Manuscript.The cover of the Voynich Manuscript. Image from here.It’s an excellent mystery. It makes no sense, except where it does: everything is consistent with its being a 15th-century Italian manuscript. It can’t simply be dismissed as a later hoax, something Voynich himself made up. This is a book that had to have come from some authentic source.Better yet, there’s no context. There’s no context for anything. What are those plants? What are those animals? What are those charts? Why are those women in that bathtub? Why are there so many drawings of women bathing? It all seems so out of place.And even better than any of that is that you could have context, if only you can solve that ever-tantalyzing enigma: that language.But the best part, the part that makes this a fantastic mystery: it doesn’t really matter. Not really. If it were a mystery that really did matter very much, then we would be speaking in the realm of science. This one, though? The Voynich Manuscript? It’s just some old book. Experts have better things to spend their time on than trying to crack a random stack of parchment and ink.So now it’s not science. The experts have left. Now things are a little more level. Now it’s something you could solve at home, if you wanted. Could you? No, of course not, but it feels like you could, it does. That feeling is very, terribly, awfully, wonderfully attractive.This leads to the situation we have today. There’s too little expertise going in to truly progress, but there’s more than enough mystery to keep bringing in all those curious souls who believe that they are the ones who can finally bring about a solution.For the past one hundred and seven years, this has been the manuscript’s fate. Ideas have been tossed in, thrown out, stretched, spun, and abused as though by economists, countless theories running from ingenious through insane through impossible. Here are a few.1921: Soon after Wilfrid Voynich first bought the book at a church library yard sale in 1912, a number of hopeful translators had a go at it, among whom was William Romaine Newbold. The book, Newbold claimed, was written by the 13th-century English scientist and author Roger Bacon.There is a reason for Bacon’s implication in all of this. When Wilfrid bought the manuscript that now bears his name, he received more than just a book. It came with a letter tucked in among the pages, written from one friend as he gave it to another. The final part of the letter reads:Dr. Raphael, a tutor in the Bohemian language to Ferdinand III, then King of Bohemia, told me the said book belonged to the [Holy Roman] Emperor Rudolph [...] He believed the author was Roger Bacon, the Englishman. On this point I suspend judgement; it is your place to define for us what view we should take thereon, to whose favor and kindness I unreservedly commit myself and remain.Newbold believed the text was Latin, with the letters containing tiny markings that were only visible under a microscope. The text was a secret scientific work, predating Bacon’s contemporaries by centuries. Those strange plants and animals? Bacteria. Bacon had had access to the microscope 350 years before the date previously held to be its invention. Those swirly charts and diagrams? Galaxies. Bacon also had access to the telescope 400 years early.This gained a vague degree of acceptance for a few years after Newbold’s posthumously-published analysis until people started taking a closer look at it. Bacon could not have had access to a microscope nor a telescope for a very basic reason that Newbold even mentions within his text: because they wouldn’t be invented for another four centuries! To think otherwise was a wild assumption. Those dots and hooks on the letters were random, lacking any meaning.The Voynich Manuscript is not a microscopically-detailed Latin text written by Roger Bacon on scientific discoveries that wouldn’t happen for nearly another half-millennium.[2]1943: Yet the possibility that Bacon wrote the Voynich held on. This time the translator was a lawyer called Joseph Martin Feely. Feely had dubious experience in this dubious field: his books included The Cypher in the Sonnets, Shakespeare's maze further deciphered, and Electrograms from Elysium. In his 1943 book Roger Bacon's Cipher: The Right Key Found, he faced our favourite manuscript.Feely was hugely influenced by Newbold; in fact, he only saw one page of the manuscript: the one that had been reprinted in Newbold’s book. Feely agreed with Newbold that it was Latin, and that Bacon was the author, but not about the script itself. It was a cipher, Feely claimed, for abbreviated Latin.Feely applied the cipher inconsistently, limited to the information from Newbold’s book. Already this makes it blurry-spurious, but it does produce something approximating Latin if you don’t think too hard about it (and don’t speak Latin). One passage goes:PERHUMMIFT RMIN PODERUMIN POEMIN IN PVESL VEN. PVESIN POEMIN RUMMIN PERUMIN VEST VNEMIN. ISTNC PEMMIN MMVEN IFN MMMIN PRVEDINT PRVESCIS VNEMIN. NPERMMIN PVERSN IFN RMMIN PFEMIST MMMERMN OPERVT IUT FT PVESN FEMIN.That’s the abbreviated version. In full, it would read:Perhumifactum raminat; post-derumpitur minus; post-eminus in prae-vesiculam venit. Pervesiculinatum, post-eminus ruminatur; peruminatum vestitur veneminis. Istinc posteminus movent inferne; mamminas provediunt pervesciculus veneminarum. Inpermmiantur: perversuntur inferne; ruminantur; perfemiscitur mammerminis; operavitur itant fit praevestinntur feminas.If you don’t know Latin, this is believable. If you do know Latin, however, you’ll know that this ungrammatical vocabul-o-sludge translates to:Well humidified, it ramifies; afterward it is broken down smaller; afterwards, at a distance, into the fore bladder it comes. Then vesselled, it is awhile after ruminated; well humidified it is clothed with veinlets. Thence after a bit they move down below; tiny teats they provide in the outpimpling of the veinlets. They are impermiated; are thrown down below; they are ruminated; they are feminised with tiny teats. It is operated so that it happens that they are fully vested with femininity.[3]This is the generous translation. As for the grammar, the Latin - allegedly attributed to one of the greatest English writers and scientists of the 13th century - would offend Bing Translate. It’s safe to say Feely was rather off on this one.The Voynich Manuscript was not written by Roger Bacon in atrocious substitution-cipher Latin.1945: For the early decades of Voynichology, the second-greatest challenge Translators faced (besides, well, translating the darn thing) was gaining access to the manuscript, or if not, then to a copy. Leonell C. Strong, a respected oncologist at Yale and life-long fanatic of Renaissance literature, found himself in the same position as Feely: forced to work from a handful of reprinted pages and crude reproductions, chiefly Newbold’s 1921 work.Strong diverged from Newbold and Feely regarding both the language and the author. This was medieval English, Strong said, written by none other than Anthony Ascham, a 16th-centry author, astrologer, and herbalist. Strong found that it contained several herbal medicines and even a herbal contraceptive made of “oil of spindle, honey, and pitch”, or in his medieval English translation:I up a bol koten wet with oil spindl, compound honei, a pine recin spagges gains piler ose firm, err-stirt. Wanne orgie ebb, so koten bee remov'd.[4](He claimed it worked, actually.) In another passage, he translates this:When skuge of tune e bag rip, seo uogon kum sli of se mosure-issue ped-stans sku-bent, stokked kimbo-elbow crawknot.as this:When the contents of the veins rip (or tear the membranes), the child comes slyly from the mother issuing with the leg-stance skewed and bent while the arms, bent at the elbow, are knotted (above the head) like the legs of a crawfish.There are three big problems with this:Strong says little about how he translated the Voynich Manuscript into medieval English. Newbold and Feely described how they literally deciphered the text, but Strong only gave the most general picture of his methodology.Even if Strong was using a rigorous methodology, the English here is as nonsensical as Feely’s Latin, and the translation just as subjective. The grammar’s weird, the words are wrong, and it seems to belong to some dialect found nowhere else in history.Even if Strong’s code-breaking was consistent and the English was good, it, as M. E. d’Imperio wrote in 1978, “seems a highly unlikely thing for any writer of any age to have said, whether in cipher or not.”The Voynich Manuscript was not written by Anthony Ascham in an unrecorded dialect of Early Modern English through some system Strong hasn’t put forth.1978: After the manuscript was donated to Yale in 1969, becoming its MS 408, researchers there took an interest in it. The most famous of these Yale Translators was Robert S. Brumbaugh, who had a rather different view of the book: it was a clever hoax, designed in the 16th century to fool Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II into believing it was a legitimate work written by - here he comes again - Roger Bacon.At first, this seems plausible. Rudolph II had the book in his possession at some point, and it may have been a forgery. Why would you want to trick the Holy Roman Emperor into buying your book? Because, in that letter that was still tucked inside the manuscript when Mr. Voynich bought it, it mentions that Emperor Rudolph purchased the book for 600 ducats, or slightly over two kilograms of solid gold.Brumbaugh’s evidence: not much. Using his version of the cipher, he found the words Rodgd Bacon near the end of the book, which he claims the forger implanted to convince anyone with the key that it was Roger Bacon. That’s about it. Everything else, Brumbaugh says, was gibberish. This could mean that it really was gibberish, or it could mean that Brumbaugh translated it wrong. You could use the same logic to conclude that Egyptian hieroglyphs are gibberish.Additionally, more recent studies have shown this is unlikely: the letters and words follow the same distribution you see in natural languages. It’s probable that it’s a language, but which language it is, or if it’s a language we know about at all, remains unknown.The Voynich Manuscript was not written as a random forgery of a Roger Bacon book to convince Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II to part with two kilograms of gold in exchange for it.2005: The Translators I’ve named so far - Newbold, Feely, Strong, and Brumbaugh - have put forward theories that are reasonable, if not probable. They’ve been the normal ones. It’s not impossible that the Voynich manuscript is a secret scientific 16th-century medical text, or a medieval forgery. It’s improbable, for sure, but not unthinkable.This brings us to Dan Crain. Dan Crain, who also goes by Dan Burisch, is an odd fellow. In 2004, he publicly revealed his work, wherein he, for lack of a better phrase, cloned alien viruses at Area 51 with a prolific extraterrestrial being called J-Rod through a secret society called Majestic. He’s something of a celebrity in alien conspiracy theory groups.His translation of the Voynich Manuscript begins in the way most do. Like Newbold and Feely, Crain believes it’s a scientific text written by Roger Bacon, describing technology ahead of his time. Instead of Latin, Greek, or English, however, Bacon wrote the book in Hebrew. Crain managed to work the sentence elom el akim niad out of the manuscript: “The eternal God will establish knowledge”. That sentence, and only that sentence, but it’s a damn good sentence and we’re sticking with it.During his time at Area 51, Crain learned part of the Voynich Manuscript’s decryption from J-Rod, with most of it kept secret as part of File 21, a secret document hidden somewhere in Europe. What does it say? Or, er, well, what does Dan Crain think it says? It says alien science from the future is what it says. Among other things, this science includes:how to create DNA - with sound waves!how to make stargates - in France!the impending death of four billion people from an apocalyptic explosion of said stargate in France - in 2012!I’ve chosen Crain as an example of some of the farther-out theories about the Voynich Manuscript because it’s one of the better-documented, but, sadly, many of them are like this. For more, see Steve Ekwell, James Finn, Wayne Herschel, Dirk Schröder, John Stojko, and even Erich von Däniken.The Voynich Manuscript is not a Hebrew text written by Roger Bacon under the influence of aliens on alien science from the future, or anything of the sort.2017: This is the most recent translation to have reached the news. Well, I say “this”. I mean “these”. There were two in 2017, one by Nicholas Gibbs and one by Greg Kondrak, the former claiming it’s heavily abbreviated Latin and the later claiming it’s anagrammic Hebrew. Both of them are wrong.Gibbs says that the text isn’t a code at all: it’s just Latin run through a thick layer of idiosyncratic abbreviations. It comes out the other side as a plagiarized women’s health manual.Gibbs’s translation from script to abbreviation to Latin. Image from here.These two lines read:Folia de oz et en de aqua et de radicts de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 2 et de radicis semenis ana 1 etium abonenticus confundo. Folia et cum folia et confundo etiam de eius decocole adigo aromaticus decocque de decoctio adigo aromaticus et confundo et de radicis seminis ana 3.As with Feely, this Latin is contrived and ungrammatical, and, as is ever the problem with Voynich Manuscript translations, he only ever gives those two lines. The Latin itself, if you can wrestle a translation out of it, is along the lines of “Take some leaves and water, mix them with these leaves,” and so on. But which leaves? Gibbs says that was covered in the index, but the index was among the lost pages. His evidence? There is none. There’s no index. No reason to think there’s an index. He’s got two lines in bad Latin that only sort of correspond to abbreviations that only sort of exist.Kondrak, on the other hand, thought it was Hebrew. Why did he think it was Hebrew? More assumptions!: he assumes it’s a real language, and not a conlang or code; he assumes it may be an abjad, i.e., an alphabet with all the vowels taken out, which is the sort of writing system used for Hebrew and Arabic; and he assumes it could be an alphagram, an alphabetical anagram, where the letters of a word are rearranged alphabetically: the alphagram of “dog” is “dgo”, and the alphagram of “word” is “dorw”.Kondrak decides to take a computational approach. This isn’t an uncommon route in modern Voynichology. Kondrak turns the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 380 languages into alphagrams and tries to match the positions of the letters to words in the Voynich Manuscript. This is an uncommon route in modern Voynichology, and for good reason: there is no reason why you would do what he did.Kondrak finds that Hebrew matches the alphagram abjad letter positions better than the 379 other languages. In fact, he almost immediately finds a Hebrew sentence among the Voynich Manuscript: ועשה לה הכהן איש אליו לביתו ועלי אנשיו המצות. He puts this into Google Translate and it gives him “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house, and me and people.” Excellent! The Voynich Manuscript is Hebrew!Now, that’s what Google Translate says. What it translates to, once run through a human translator, is “And he made her the priest each man to himself to his house and on me his people the commandments.” Furthermore, since his experiment was designed for consistent roots and languages with abjads, it was inevitable that Hebrew came out on top.The Voynich Manuscript is not a plagiarized women’s health book written in heavily-abbreviated Latin, nor is it written in alphabetized Hebrew.Hmm…yes? Oh, there’s a new one, is there? Yes, I see! Well, he must be right this time, eh? I mean, it’s not like there have been dozens of other translations that have reached the news and been conveniently forgotten when the next translation comes around, right? Why, we would never expect the Inevitable News Cycle of the Third Principle of the Niche of Unsolved Things to take effect, could we? Why could we ever fall for it again, y’know?I mean, I would never think, say, one of the world’s most reputable news sources could publish a poorly-written news article on why the solution is correct, see articles by actual experts on why it’s a load of bollocks, and follow up with a poorly-written new article on why the article they wrote last week was a load of bollocks, as though that article would be seen by more than a fraction of a percent of the audience of the previous article.Could you imagine that?What an unfortunate occurrence that would be!Boy, am I ever glad we are wise enough as a species to be able to think critically about those members of the Niche of Unsolved Things before abandonly writing articles about the latest unfounded claims of a solution for said Unsolved Things all over the interconnected web of knowledge and in doing so misinform potentially millions of people!What an unfortunate -2019: His name is Gerard Cheshire. He did not translate the Voynich Manuscript. He believes he translated the Voynich Manuscript, though, and that’s the bit that’s got the news all excited right now.What do we know for certain about the Voynich Manuscript? It was written in the 15th century, probably in Italy. The language they spoke in 15th-century Italy was an early form of Italian, a transitionary state between Latin and modern Italian. Wouldn’t it make the most sense that that would be the language it’s written in?This is what Cheshire believes in this latest edition of the Voynich decoding, published this past week, by some miracle, in the peer-reviewed journal Romance Studies. In the abstract, Cheshire covers why he believes no one else had solved the mystery of the manuscript:1. [The Voynich Manuscript] uses an extinct language. 2. Its alphabet uses a number of unfamiliar symbols alongside more familiar symbols. 3. It includes no dedicated punctuation marks. 4. Some of the letters have symbol variants to indicate punctuation. 5. Some of the symbol variants indicate phonetic accents. 6. All of the letters are in lower case. 7. There are no double consonants. 8. It includes diphthong, triphthongs, quadriphthongs and even quintiphthongs for the abbreviation of phonetic components. 9. It includes some words and abbreviations in Latin.As a result, identifying the language and solving the writing system required some ingenuity and lateral thinking, but both were duly revealed. The writing system is rather more singular and less intuitive than modern systems, which may explain why it failed to become culturally ubiquitous and ultimately became obsolete. On the other hand, a significant vestige of the language has survived into the modern era, because its lexicon has been sequestered into the many modern languages of Mediterranean Europe. Here, the language and writing system are explained, so that other scholars can explore the manuscript for its linguistic and informative content.[5]The rest of the study is worked as awkwardly. On the content, Cheshire writes:Translations reveal that the manuscript is a compendium of information on herbal remedies, therapeutic bathing and astrological readings concerning matters of the female mind, of the body, of reproduction, of parenting and of the heart in accordance with the Catholic and Roman pagan religious beliefs of Mediterranean Europeans during the late Medieval period (Cheshire 2017a Cheshire, G. 2017a. “Linguistic Missing Links.” […] More specifically, the manuscript was compiled by a Dominican nun as a source of reference for the female royal court to which her monastery was affiliated.This isn’t too weird for a Voynich theory. On the language, he writes:The manuscript uses a language that arose from a blend of spoken Latin, or Vulgar Latin, and other languages across the Mediterranean during the early Medieval period following the collapse of the Roman Empire and subsequently evolved into the many Romance languages, including Italian. For that reason it is known as proto-Romance (prototype-Romance). It had long been hypothesized as the logical link between spoken Latin and the Romance languages, but no documented evidence had ever been found before.Now, I personally happen to know a little about linguistics, and this sticks out as something written by someone whose education in the field I would say is limited to the Wikipedia article on Latin, but that would be insulting: the Wikipedia article on Latin is brilliant, and this is not. This is bad.Nobody, nobody, calls Proto-Romance “prototype-Romance”. Proto-Romance, Vulgar Latin, and the early Romance languages are three different things, all of which Cheshire magnificently confuses within a single paragraph. Worse than all of that is this sentence:It had long been hypothesized as the logical link between spoken Latin and the Romance languages, but no documented evidence had ever been found before.I’m impressed. The journal is called Romance Studies, and claims to be peer-reviewed, and yet they let in a study with a sentence that is to Romance linguistics what “The Earth is flat” is to geology.First, there is no single “logical link between spoken Latin and the Romance languages”. I recently covered the faults in this line of thinking in a short answer here, which I’d suggest reading for more on how wrong this is. It’s a common misconception among non-linguists, so if you’re an average person and didn’t know that, it’s fine, but you’d expect someone publishing their study in a Romance linguistics journal to know the most basic principles of Romance linguistics.Second, there are records - records upon records upon records - of languages in intermediary states between Latin and any modern Romance language. These records are precisely those studied in introductory historical linguistics classes. You’d have to know nothing about Romance or historical linguistics to say something like that.As it turns out, Cheshire is not a linguist, or a cryptographer, or a historian. In fact, as mentioned under “author information” in the back of the study, Dr. Cheshire[…] has recently completed his doctorate, expounding an adaptive theory for human belief systems, and is now a Research Associate with University of Bristol. The solution to the codex of [the Voynich Manuscript] was developed over a 2-week period in May 2017 after he came across the manuscript for the first time whilst conducting research for his PhD dissertation. Having deciphered the writing system, he subsequently realized the significance of the manuscript to Romance linguists and Mediaeval historians, and so decided to publish the information.Gerard Cheshire has no experience in linguistics. I doubt he’s ever taken a linguistics class, or read a linguistics book. He spent two weeks, just two weeks, working on this. By himself.If Cheshire had taken a linguistics class, he would know that Proto-Romance was spoken around 500–1000 AD, in the most generous estimate. The Voynich Manuscript is from five hundred years later. He would know that the words, the grammar, the vocabulary, the phonology do not match up with Latin, Italian, Proto-Romance, any Romance language, or any language, period.He would know that this, the product of his translation, is not a Romance language:Pnaræos æmor doma pæos æina olarna nas omas omena na sor mēina pieena doleea sor ornais æiemea dor r æeena doleena roreeina nais eelar na ro rlaus or oleena dor rais orēia doleena ēina domais donais ēeela dolia dolais ēela dolar rais ēina olaror æina olasorosa næina dolia ēelea dolas æina ēia dolita dolina narna.[6]As André Müller mentions in his answer, this is closer to Elvish than any Romance, or even European, language. See also Daniel Ross’s comments here.The Voynich Manuscript is not a form of Proto-Romance written by a Dominican nun.The theory of everything has not yet been discovered. The last universal common ancestor has not yet been found. Aliens have not yet been contacted. As a member of the Niche of Unsolved Things, the Voynich Manuscript has not yet been deciphered.To answer your question, I think that it’s an excellent mystery, but not one we’re likely to solve for a long time yet. Every year, there will be another cycle of poorly-written news articles on how the Voynich Manuscript’s been solved, more articles by actual experts on why it’s a load of bollocks, and another cycle of poorly-written news articles on why the article they wrote last week was a load of bollocks. More Translators, from nigh-experts to the mentally ill, will try to solve it.They never will.And you know what? I think that’s okay. It’s not about the Voynich Manuscript anymore. It’s about the people, about the crazy theories they come up with, about the brilliant enigma of the text than the text itself. I’d rather it never be solved, if only so we have ever more of these stories.If you think you’ve got the answer, if you’d like to join the Translators, the book’s at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, with plenty of scans online; I’ve included one in the footnotes. Personally, I believe it must be Basque, because these things always turn out to be Basque in the end.And, of course, the relevant XKCD comic:This is the one theory I subscribe to, this one right here. Image from XKCD.Thanks for asking!Footnotes[1] The Complete Voynich Manuscript Digitally Enhanced Researchers Edition[2] https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a070618.pdf[3] The wrong key[4] A Verification of a Hitherto Unknown Prescription of the 16th Century[5] The Language and Writing System of MS408 (Voynich) Explained[6] André Müller's answer to Is Gerard Cheshire's deciphering of the Voynich manuscript correct, or yet another failed attempt?

As Mark Twain once said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”Most Americans (and Europeans, for that matter) rely on the news media to “educate” them about the topic of global warming/climate change.Which is exactly why I do NOT like writing these kinds of answers. In today’s social climate (pun intended), it’s much easier to just smile and nod. So I don’t answer these questions because I “enjoy” it — quite the contrary: I dread it.I answer them because I feel a sense of obligation to my fellow humans. Ideas have consequences; and bad ideas have BAD consequences.Unfortunately, the mainstream media is doing an ATROCIOUS job educating the public with any semblance of either science or truth, which is what’s creating the current social climate.But then, news media is not designed to educate, it’s designed to SELL ADVERTISING by entertaining you — or by outraging you, scaring you, thrilling you, etc. Not unlike a movie. Anything that gets an emotional reaction from us gets our attention, and THAT is all the news media really wants. Attention equals ratings — and ratings pull in advertisers; which is how the news business makes money.And the news is a business, first and foremost. It is NOT a classroom. It’s not trying to “inform” you, it’s only trying to get you to keep watching or keep reading.Remember that as we proceed. Because the purpose of this answer is NOT to “entertain,” but to try to get at the truth of things.So, for starters, the problem people have with the science of “global warming” is that almost nobody — PARTICULARLY the news media — seems to have any clue about even the recent history of temperatures. (“Recent” being the last 140 years or so). Which is odd, inasmuch as historical temperature data is not particularly hard to find.Yet despite that, every year is touted as “unusual” or “record breaking” regardless of whether that claim has any bearing on reality or not.“Unusual” gets our attention.“Record breaking” gets our attention.“Same old, same old, nothing to see here” does NOT get our attention.And the news business both wants and needs our attention.Problem is, if we don’t have a firm grasp of even recent climate history, then how on Earth can we judge if something is “unusual” or not? And when the media screams that it IS unusual, how many people actually bother to fact-check their claims? Not many. Most simply “take the media’s word” on it.So let’s do some historical digging. We’ll start with the EPA’s “heat wave index” for the history of heat waves over the past 140 years.(Some people don’t realize that the “global temperature record” only began in the 1880s— all other temperature data is proxy data, not actual temperature data — so, just like NASA et al, we don’t have a lot of data to work with, but we’ll use what we have.)Looking at the EPA chart, what jumps out at you as the decade of clear and indisputable record heatwaves?Obviously, no heat wave of modern times has even come CLOSE to the blistering heat of the 1930s. We haven’t had heat like that in our lifetimes (unless we’re over 90 years old!).In fact, since then, the worst heat waves of the past 80 years were only 20% as intense as the historic 1930s Dust Bowl heat.The horrendous climate of the 1930s was, in fact, immortalized in Steinbeck’s classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath.(Of course, that’s interesting information, because back in the 1930s, CO2 levels were still very close to “natural” pre-industry levels. But we won’t worry about that just yet.)On the EPA index, we can also see that before and after the 1930s, heat waves have oscillated in a fairly regular pattern. We can also see that if we calculated an “average” of the entire historical record, then modern heat waves (the most recent 50 years) are much LESS severe than the historical average.Now, next time you see the Heat Wave Index published in the news, pay very close attention to where their graph starts. 99% of the time, they begin it right near 1960. So what you see on the graph is this low line beginning in 1960, then the spikes of the 1980s and you think, “They’re right! It IS getting worse!”They do this because, viewed in complete context, clearly that historical data doesn’t argue in favor of “global warming getting worse.” In fact, it argues the opposite. But there’s a lot more data to examine.In a minute, we’ll dig further and see if Europe itself has a history of heat waves — but first, let’s compare, day-for-day, the recent heat wave in Paris, to the Paris heatwave of 1947:Well, there’s no significant difference there. Thus, while the 2019 heat wave is hot by very recent standards, we can see it’s not hot by historical standards.Let’s dig even deeper. In 1934, England experienced a horrible heat wave and the worst drought in 100 years. As we can see in the archive photo below, 1934 was considerably WORSE than 2019. Entire reservoirs evaporated and dried up:1934 also saw one of the worst droughts on record in the United States:Now, take a moment and imagine if the world were hit with the same climate of 1934, but NEXT YEAR. The news and the alarmists would tell us that it was MOST DEFINITELY being caused by CO2 — and yet CO2 in 1934 was very low.So France, England, and the USA have clearly had their share of heat and drought in the past. What else can we learn by studying history?Let’s look at another hot year from the past.Below, we can see that in 1911, a blistering three-month-long heat wave killed more than 40,000 people in Paris ALONE:How many Europeans have died in 2019 from heat? Nowhere near 40,000, we know that much. That kind of heat simply doesn’t happen today.But — was that 1911 heat wave limited to Paris somehow? Let’s dig some more. Below, we can see that nearly 600 people in London died from that same European heat wave of 1911:And in Germany, another 1,000 people died from the European heat wave of 1911:In fact, that same heat wave of 1911 ALSO impacted the United States, with “many fatalities reported.” New England was hitting temperatures of 100 to 104 degrees. That doesn’t happen very often today, does it?So we now know that the summer of 1911 saw an unbearable WORLDWIDE heat wave (or at least the entire Northern Hemisphere) — and again, keep in mind that CO2 in 1911 was MUCH lower than 2019 levels, almost at the “natural” background level:For more context, let’s directly compare the entire month of May in 1911 with the month of May in 2019 in the northeastern US:Once again, 1911 was not only hotter, but CONSIDERABLY hotter than 2019 — from a few degrees hotter to as much as 18 degrees hotter! Every single day of the month in 1911 exceeded the temperature of the corresponding day in 2019.Now that we have some historical context, I think we can all agree that the evidence shows that the heat of 108 years ago was decidedly WORSE than anything Europe is experiencing today.So now we’ve seen that incredibly bad heat waves happened in 1911, all throughout the 1930’s, and in 1947. There are many other years we could look at, but you get the idea: 2019 heat is NOT unusual.Unequivocally. This is what the data shows, regardless of how breathlessly the news media screams that “It’s getting worse every year!” We now know that simply is NOT true.Keep in mind that 1911 is what Earth looked like with a “low CO2 climate.” Armed with this data, we can scientifically conclude that lowering current CO2 levels is not going to return us to some imaginary “golden age of cooler temperatures,” because we know from history exactly what Earth’s climate looks like with lower CO2 levels.This conclusion is more obvious than it seems. If you’ve been getting all your information from the news, then you’re probably in an unpleasant emotional state of wrestling with cognitive dissonance, and the obvious truths are being lost to it.The simple reality is: Anyone who believes that taking CO2 back down to 1911-era levels will “cool the Earth” is engaging in superstition, not science. Science is based on evidence, and the evidence is extremely clear.But if we need more evidence, let’s look at more data. Many people don’t realize that there’s no such thing as an “average temperature record.” The historical temperature record only contains two data points:The minimum temperature for a given day.The maximum temperature for a given day.Thus, if we want to know if the planet is heating up, cooling down, or remaining static, then the relevant data set that we need to look at is historical maximum temperature. And when we do that, we discover something quite interesting:The data clearly shows that the percentage of hot days is growing LESS frequent, not MORE frequent.“But how can that be? I mean, the news tells us exactly the opposite! Plus I’ve seen other charts that show modern temperatures are hotter!”We’ll return to that in just a moment, but let’s talk about CO2 first.We know that mankind didn’t start contributing CO2 to the atmosphere until the Industrial Age, which began in 1790, on a Thursday at 4:25 p.m.Let’s look at one of those “scary” hockeystick CO2 graphs (these always begin the Y axis at 250ppm or higher, instead of at 0 ppm, for dramatic effect):Despite the 1000 year graph, the very first ACTUAL (non-proxy)atmospheric CO2 reading was in 1958. And in 1958, atmospheric CO2 stood at 316 ppm, just barely above the pre-industry level of 280 ppm.Of course, CO2 warming theory tells us that the more CO2 man releases into the atmosphere, the HOTTER Earth’s climate is supposed to get. This theory was originally called “Global Warming” (an accurate term), but then someone in the PR department hit on the brilliant idea of calling it “Climate Change,” because then you’re not just limited to hot weather! You can blame just about ANYTHING on “Climate Change,” and indeed they do, including, but not limited to:Heat OR coldFloods OR droughtBrexit (See: Climate change helped cause Brexit, says Al Gore)The creation of ISIS (See: 'Climate change created ISIS' is now #49 on the 'official list' of things supposedly caused by global warming)Heroin addiction (See: Climate change causes ... heroin addiction?)A “Shortage” of Prostitutes in the UK (See: Global Warming now hits brothels)The decline of circumcisions in Africa (See: Circumcision on Decline in Africa Due to Global Warming)Plus (obviously!): Climate Change will Cause CannibalismAnd a million other ridiculous things. As if climate is SO DIFFERENT today than it was in, say, 1911! Which, as we just discussed, it isn’t (okay, well, it’s cooler today, but that’s not their theory or their argument!). Anyway, you name it, and it’s probably been blamed on Global Warming/Climate Change. It’s become the modern catch-all superstition for anything and everything. People used to tell their kids that the boogeyman would get them if they didn’t go to bed on time. “Climate Change” has now become our cultural boogeyman.Thing is, “climate change” is a misnomer and isn’t really the foundational theory: The theory is that CO2 traps more heat in the atmosphere. (If that theory fails, then there’s no “climate change” to discuss.) Thus, since CO2 is higher than it was 100 years ago, the atmosphere (and the oceans) are supposed to be heating up.To put it all in perspective, here’s a pie chart showing the “massive amount” of CO2 that mankind has purportedly added to Earth’s atmosphere:Above: Doesn’t look quite as scary when you view the CO2 data in context of the entire atmosphere, does it?Anyway, what would it mean for CO2 theory if, say, the 1930s were hotter than today? Well, it would obviously be a problem, because CO2 levels today are CONSIDERABLY higher than they were in the 1930s and have been for decades now. So, if CO2 warming theory is correct, then 2019 should be markedly hotter than the 1930s.Is it?Well, it’s interesting that you bring this up, because back in 1999 (before global warming was the multi-trillion dollar industry it is today), NASA’s own data indeed showed that:The 1930s were hotter than the present, at +1.5 C over the baselineNASA also showed 1998 as +0.8 C over the baseline; cooler than the 1930s.If you look at the 5-year mean (the smoothed black trend), NASA’s data said that temperatures actually COOLED from the 1930s to 1999:Above: Uh oh, the 1930’s were the hottest decade on record! Even the 1950s were warmer than the 1990s. Goodness, that’s kind of a problem for CO2 warming theory.But luckily, there’s an easy solution to this “inconvenient data.”Some people might say that if the data contradicts your theory, then your theory is wrong — but those people just aren’t being creative enough!So here’s a lesson for all the budding young scientists out there: If climate data doesn’t match your theory, there’s really no need to change your THEORY, because that would require doing science and stuff, and science can be hard! The obvious “solution” (if you’re unwilling to let go of your theory) is:Instead of fixing your theory so that it accounts for the data, just change the data so that it matches your theory!And below, we can see that’s EXACTLY what they did:So we can see that the historic temperature data has now been changed, as follows:1930s temperatures have been lowered, from +1.5 degrees above the baseline to +1.1 degrees above, a decrease of .4 degrees Celsius (.72 degrees Fahrenheit)1998 temperature has been raised from +0.8 degrees above the baseline to about +1.3 degrees above, an increase of .5 degrees Celsius (.9 degrees Fahrenheit)Taken together, this data tampering represents a swing of 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit! Nearly two degrees of nonexistent warming have been entirely fabricated from whole cloth.So that fabricated change makes modern temperatures appear to be hotter than past temperatures. Problem solved!“CO2 is obviously heating the planet! Just look at this chart we drew! Now renew our funding or we’ll all die.”(The .gif above flashes back and forth between the real data and the altered data that NASA nowadays promotes to the public.)“But what about the oceans? Aren’t they warming?”Nope:And more recently, the latest push is to spread fears of “ocean acidification.” If this were a real thing, then it might be something to worry about — however, it turns out that the study that suggested ocean acidification was happening WAS ALSO COMPLETLY FABRICATED!Howard Browman, a marine scientist for 35 years, has published a review in the ICES Journal of Marine Science of all the papers published on the subject. His verdict could hardly be more damning. The methodology used by the studies was often flawed; contrary studies suggesting that ocean acidification wasn’t a threat had sometimes had difficulty finding a publisher. There was, he said, an ‘inherent bias’ in scientific journals which predisposed them to publish ‘doom and gloom stories’.Ocean acidification theory appears to have been fatally flawed almost from the start. In 2004, two NOAA scientists, Richard Feely and Christopher Sabine, produced a chart showing a strong correlation between rising atmospheric CO2 levels and falling oceanic pH levels. But then, just over a year ago, Mike Wallace, a hydrologist with 30 years’ experience, noticed while researching his PhD that they had omitted some key information. Their chart only started in 1988 but, as Wallace knew, there were records dating back to at least 100 years before. So why had they ignored the real-world evidence in favor of computer-modelled projections?When Wallace plotted a chart of his own, incorporating all the available data, covering the period from 1910 to the present, his results were surprising: there has been no reduction in oceanic pH levels in the last century.Ocean acidification: yet another wobbly pillar of climate alarmism | The Spectator(Are you growing horrified in our institutions yet? You should be.)So, we can see that this approach of creating false data is decidedly easier than doing actual science, because then you can pretty much make anything you want appear to be true — and only people who are willing to spend countless hours researching this topic (almost no one) will ever know what you’re doing.And even if a handful of people get wise to you, you can just dismiss those people as a bunch of “deniers.” And who’s going to believe someone who has a demeaning nickname like “denier”?Better yet, who would want to be LABELED as a “denier”?Nobody, that’s who.“The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” — George OrwellAnd that’s why it’s easier to smile and nod. But I refuse to do that any longer, because it’s become apparent that smiling and nodding is DANGEROUS. We are at a critical tipping point — not in climate, but in public opinion, with more and more people buying into the endless onslaught of propaganda.If there’s a “climate” that I’m most concerned about right now, it’s the climate of arrogance, hate, ignorance, and censorship that’s being created to force universal conformity to the doctrine of “global warming/climate change.”“But Jay,” I hear you object, “What POSSIBLE motive could anyone have for ‘warning’ us about climate change? Isn’t ‘Big Oil’ the real enemy, because THEY have financial motive?”I am repeatedly shocked by how few people know that global CO2 trading is a MASSIVE multi-billion dollar market:Value of global CO2 markets hit record 144 billion euros in 2018:...144 Billion Euros is $159,681,600,000.00 in U.S. dollars. That’s enough cash to attract LOTS of different kinds of people, and the carbon market is (not surprisingly) rife with criminal scandals:The great carbon trading scandalThe “great” thing about carbon trading is that unlike, say, gold or oil, there’s NO PRODUCT to warehouse and inventory, thus no overhead. If you buy gold futures, for example, and hold them until the contract date, then your counterparty actually needs to deliver physical gold to you.With CO2, nothing ever needs to be delivered, because there’s no physical product!Billions and billions of dollars are being made in carbon trading, much of it directly off the back of average working-class taxpayers.There’s a reason that the majority of billionaires support cap and trade. In fact, Enron and Goldman Sachs were the pioneers of cap and trade (see: Cap-And-Trade Is Fraught With Fraud).Remember Enron, which ultimately collapsed under the weight of its own criminality? Yep, those are the same guys who were instrumental in getting us to where we are today. And do you really think Goldman Sachs has “the environment” or your best interests at heart? (If you do, then I have some oceanfront property in Minnesota you may be interested in.)Now, it’s time to take a deep breath and think long and hard about the implications of all this new information.If you previously viewed “Big Oil” as a boogeyman with ulterior motives, then by your own logic, you must now recognize that Big CO2 is no different.If you were skeptical of Big Oil due to monetary incentive, then you must now therefore become equally skeptical of Big CO2, because the monetary incentive to be a “Climate Change” proponent is off the charts.Financial motive cuts both ways.Really, though, at this point, with the government funding billions of dollars in “climate research” AND offering billions of dollars in credits to “green energy” — and a $160 billion dollar global carbon trading market that can be traded from anywhere — AND plans to expand that market to America as soon as American citizens have been sufficiently “educated” (ahem) to accept paying for the same substance they exhale when they BREATHE, the REAL money to be made isn’t in oil, it’s in CARBON.And what will carbon markets mean for the average American?To understand this, all you have to do is understand ANY commodities market. You have to pay for gas. You have to pay for gold. You have to pay for coffee, tea, beef, oranges, and every other commodity. With carbon now being treated and traded as a commodity, mark my words: Unless American citizens wake up, it’s only a matter of time before you and I will have to pay for the right to simply exist. Because everything we do, including breathing, generates CO2. (Pricing Carbon - Worldbank)That seems to be the end game here.And with proposals like “the Green New Deal” now hitting the mainstream, it’s only a matter of time for America. The bad guys are winning. Unless enough citizens wake up and start fighting back.So now we know why billionaires are on board with “climate change,” but what about politicians? Well, I think some of them sincerely believe what they’re doing and just don’t know any better.Others seem to view it as a means to an end.The scary part is that some of the most vociferous alarmists are willing (or maybe hoping to?) to destroy our entire economy. Make no mistake: Proposals such as the Green New Deal, for example, would absolutely devastate the U.S. economy and send us into a depression that would make the Great Depression look like a walk in the park.And of course, even if you buy the climate change propaganda, US proposals still do nothing about the biggest CO2 emitter, which is China. China currently emits double the CO2 of the USA, and has plans to INCREASE their CO2 output every year heading forward, while the USA is already (without being forced!) decreasing its CO2 output every year.Drastic measures like the Green New Deal would ONLY HURT AMERICANS. They would do NOTHING to stop CO2 from increasing globally.Additionally, as anyone who understands basic science knows, plants NEED CO2 to live. Even NASA has reported on “the greening of the Earth” from carbon fertilization. More plants means more food for all forms of life. No plants means no life, obviously. Accordingly, one can easily make the argument that lowering CO2 levels would be VERY BAD for the planet:Anyway, proposals such as the Green New Deal, were they ever to be enacted, would bring REAL pain to REAL people, all in the name of “solving” the “hypothetical problem” of climate change, which (while it may sound good on paper) is soundly defeated by the actual evidence. (Unless the goal is to “roll back the clock” and get climate to return to the blistering heat and suffocating drought of the 1930s and earlier? Is that REALLY what we want? Not to mention, starving plants of CO2 isn’t exactly “green.”)History matters. History is scientific data, and should be treated as such.And even if we can’t yet shake the demonization of CO2 (in our own minds), we might really want to think long and hard about this push to return us to the climate Earth endured before the Industrial Age, when entire rivers in Europe RAN DRY:Just remember: The truth is what it is. And no amount of name-calling, mockery, or baseless accusations will change it.Many otherwise good and reasonable people have been taken in by the misinformation campaign that calls itself “climate change.” They remain trapped in that misinformation because once we form an opinion, human nature is to stick with it and to reject contrary evidence. Others are trapped by the desire to conform to “what everyone knows to be true.” Nobody, including me, wants to be “that denier.”But in the end, if we want to protect our children, our future, and the working families of the world, then we have to put aside our own personal needs for acceptance and approval from the herd, and speak up.Once we know the truth, then we are OBLIGATED to share it — no matter what it costs us personally. As Edmund Burke famously said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”EDIT: A number of people have asked about the “melting” Arctic — this is understandable, since the media loves to incite panic over the Arctic. It’s once again mind-boggling how underreported it was that the Arctic had near-record GAINS in ice mass in the 2016–2017 season, and again during the 2017–2018 season. Two straight years of FANTASTICALLY GOOD NEWS for those worried about “melting ice” — yet nary a peep from the media! If they actually cared about climate, don’t you think they would have been shouting that good news from the rooftops? So, for more on the Arctic, including charts from the preeminent authority on Arctic ice (the Danish Meteorological Institute) see: Jay Hauer's answer to How do you see the melting of 10 billion tonnes of ice sheets in Greenland in just 24 hours? What will be its implications?