By Joe Bastardi, CFACT |April 03, 2025
My late father used to love to get whatever I wrote and correct it. I would write something, Mom would print it out, and he would correct it. I tried to explain to him that it was not a 1000 word paper that I had a week to prepare in college, but to get thoughts out in some kind of form, which in my style is basically the way I talk, and yes it has to drive some of you mad, as it did my dad.
I have boxes of red inked blogs downstairs in my basement.But this is a piece, partly because of his love of Roman history and his knowledge of the past weather, he loved. When he would read it, he would laugh like I never saw him laugh, and I actually thought, wow I did something really good.This piece was written 14 years ago. His birthday would be coming up soon. Amazingly, all this is still going on now. But I thought it might make some of you smile. So here it is, resurrected on CFACT, my one hit wonder.
Dad, this one’s for you:
If Caesar Had Been a (Skeptical) Climatologist: Mark Antony’s New Speech
Many scientists believe parallel universes exist alongside ours. One such may have existed around the time of Rome, a time when the climate was warmer than today, and Romans were concerned about Caesar’s stubbornness in dealing with the issue of global warming. Here is an exclusive – Mark Antony’s speech in Act III Scene II of ‘Julius Caesar.’ In this world, Caesar was a climatologist and was apparently at odds with the climate models. The text deletes the responses of the crowd and deals with Antony’s words only.
Friends, Romans, citizens of the world, lend me your laptops.
For I come to bury the notion of cyclical warming, not to praise it.
The evil of global warming lives well after it goes;
The good of adaption to cycles is never brought up;
So let it be with the ideas of Caesar. The noble Climate Models
Hath told you that Rome is causing warming:
If it is so, it is a grievous fault,
And grievously are those believing differently paying for it.
Here, without the Models and their creators –
For the Climate Models are honorable entities;
So are all who follow them, all honorable men –
Come I to speak at the funeral of Caesar.
He was my friend, a great synoptician and climatologist:
But the Models say he was stubborn;
And the Models are honorable and always right. The system Caesar had brought much to Rome.
Whose people prospered like no other:
Was this in Caesar causing warming?
When there was no air conditioning, we created them:
It saved lives. Did this cause too much warming?
But the Models say Caesar caused global warming;
And the Models are all honorable and always right.
You all did see the evidence of warmer times.
It has happened once, twice, thrice,
And thrice it turned colder again: is this global warming?
Yet the Models say we cause the warming;
And the Models are honorable and always right.
And, sure, their creators are honorable and always right.
I speak not to disprove what the Models say,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
We all loved our way of life once, not without cause:
What causes you then not to mourn for its passage?
O balance of ideas, thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My ideas are in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till they come back to me. …
Yesterday the words of the past experience might
Have stood against the world; now there they lie
And no one does them reverence.
Oh readers, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to reading the facts,
I should do the Models and Modelers wrong.
But you know, they are honorable and always right.
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the past, to wrong myself and you
Than I would wrong the almighty, honorable Climate Models.
But here is a parchment with the seal of Caesar;
I found it in his closet, ’tis his doctorate in Climate Change –
Which I do not mean to read –
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar’s wounds
And dip their napkins in the oil of his SUV,
Yes, beg a hair of him for memories,
Which can be beautiful, and yetWhat’s too painful to remember, we simply must forget. …
[Apparently, Barbra Streisand assisted Shakespeare in this parallel Rome in writing this. How else could that last line exist ?]
Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it;
It is not meant, you know how Caesar studied this.
You are not wood, nor stones, but men;
And being men, reading the thesis of Caesar,
It will inflame you, which could lead to more human-induced global warming:
‘Tis good that you not know what his studies said;
For if you should, then what will come of it! …
Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile?
I have o’ershot myself to tell you of it:
I fear I wrong the honorable Climate Models
Whose results stab Caesar’s climate change thesis. …
You will compel me, then, to read his thesis?
Then make a ring about the classroom,
And let me show you what is in the thesis.
Shall I open this? And then will you give me leave? …
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do remember Caesar’s work on climate:
The first time he ever discovered cycles;
‘Twas on a hot summer’s evening, in his tent,
Southwest wind bringing the air mass in from Africa
Across the Mediterranean as the upper ridge got displaced north.
Look, in this place one Modeler ripped out that passage:
See what another did in trying to change his data:
Through this page, one of his students turned on him at a conference;
And as they twisted the data to fit the Model,
The thesis of Caesar was being torn to shreds,
And defending his ideas with evidence of past cycles
If the Models unkindly disputed, or no;
For the Models were something he welcomed:
Judge how open-minded he was about new information!
And that was the most unkind cut of all;
For when the Models he supported stabbed him,
Ingratitude, more strong than the traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty thesis;
And, no matter how he brought up the facts,
Even at the base of Pompey’s statue,
Which all the while knew he was right, his thesis was ripped.
And oh, what a rip that was, my countrymen!
There I, and you, and all the things we relied on fell down,
Whilst New Age ‘latest science’ flourished over the hard work of decades.
O, now you see; and, I perceive, you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold
The ideas of years and years in Caesar’s thesis?
Here it is, marred, as you see, with Model mayhem. …
[Knowing the facts, the citizenry erupts, but Antony speaks anew.] Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To a flood of mutiny.
The Climate Modelers are honorable and always right:
What incorrect data they have, alas, I know not,
That they say these things: they are always right and honorable,
And will, not doubt, with time, verify.
I come not friends, to steal your heart away:
I am no Modeler, and not high-tech;
But, you know me all, a plain, blunt synoptician
That loves the weather; and that they know full well
That gave me a chance to speak of cyclical warming of Caesar:
For I have neither the math, nor the Models, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of Hollywood … [How did he know back then? Amazing, eh?]
To make movies on global warming. I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you do know;
Show you the ideas Caesar had, poor poor dumb mouth:
That I was a Modeler, and had a Model
That showed the cycles to be as they are, facts,
The stones of Rome would rise up and mutiny. …
Yet hear me, countrymen; let me speak. …
Well, friends, you go to do you know not what:
Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves?
Alas, you know not: so I must tell you.
You have forgot the thesis I told you of…
Here is the thesis on climate change:
That it’s been warm before, it will be warm again
And it will cool from time to time.
Moreover, it will warm even further
Before it cools again, as that is what has happened.
Cycles in the ocean, solar cycles, volcanic activity
Are a just a few of many, many items that can determine
Our climate. We are in a warm cycle now.
Why do we have palm trees all over the place?
How have our armies conquered to shores once covered in ice?
Just how do men in togas get over the Alps?
Have you ever seen a Roman fight in an Arctic parka?
We don’t have to.
‘Cause it’s warm, as it was before.
But years from now, should
Rome not wake up and use a bit of common sense,
The empire will fall, and the snows will return,
All the way to Rome.
That is the thesis of Caesar.
Here was a Climatologist! When comes such another?
Joe Bastardi is a pioneer in extreme weather and long-range forecasting. He is the author of “The Climate Chronicles: Inconvenient Revelations You Won’t Hear From Al Gore — and Others” which you can purchase at the CFACT bookstore.
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