From 1520 to 1770, according to Oster, spikes in witch trials coincided with sharp drops in temperature. Cold and harsh conditions may have devastated crops, she theorizes, leaving Europeans starving and looking for someone to blame.

The idea that witches lay waste to crops was once conventional wisdom. In a papal bull of 1484, Pope Innocent VIII wrote, ”It has indeed lately come to Our ears . . . many persons of both sexes . . . have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruits of the trees.” According to Oster’s research, crops really were devastated when charges of necromancy flew. The witches themselves, however, were simply climate-change scapegoats.

The New York Times > Magazine > Cold-Weather Theory of Witchcraft,

Replace the word witches with skeptics, and fast forward to 2012. The climate alarmist community is doing exactly the same thing. They assign blame for cyclical changes in weather to all people who don’t perceive the world in the same muddled fashion as themselves.

The hilarious part is that these same superstitious nutcases imagine that they are intelligent and wise.