Why Nostradamus Followers Believe He Predicted The Rise Of Global Warming

Melting glaciers, hotter temperatures, rising sea levels — these are just some of the signs of global warming, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. While researchers have known about the phenomenon for decades, it wasn't widely known to the public until one particularly hot year in the late 1980s, which was the hottest year on record at the time, via Scientific American. But was global warming actually predicted hundreds of years earlier in 1555 by the French astrologer and physician Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus?

Some credit Nostradamus with correctly predicting several events, some that occurred during his lifetime and others years later. Among them: the death of the King Henry II of France in 1559, the Great Fire of London in 1666, the rise of Adolf Hitler, and the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs (via the Irish Mirror). Of course, plenty of others believe Nostradamus' cryptic writings leave the door open to almost any interpretation, so anyone can read into them exactly what they want to see.

While there are plenty of skeptics, many believe the famous prophet Nostradamus had amazing powers to predict the future, even warning about global warming. In his famous book "Les Propheties," Nostradamus wrote a poem that some see as a prediction about a warming climate, via the Daily Mail. It reads, "Because of the solar heat on the sea / Of Euboea the fishes half cooked / the inhabitants will come to cut them / When the biscuit will fail Rhodes and Genoa."

Fish may not literally be boiling in the ocean, but the death of coral reefs and declining fish populations could be signs that the predictions Nostradamus made are coming true (via Sky History). Another poem in the book may also portend droughts and devastating floods. The poem reads (via the Daily Mail): "For forty years the rainbow will not be seen / For forty years it will be seen every day / The dry earth will grow more parched / and there will be great floods when it is seen."

Whether Nostradamus was referring to climate change in his poems is really anyone's guess. But there are others who did correctly predict it. In 1938, English engineer and inventor Guy Callendar connected the dots between an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming (via NASA). Even earlier, back in 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius predicted that changes in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could affect temperatures.

So what was happening with temperatures seven hundred years ago, when Nostradamus was making his purported predictions about global warming? Well, back then, the world was experiencing a wet year, according to Weatherweb.net. That's a sharp contrast to 2021, which the World Meteorological Organization says was one of the seven warmest years on record. The group says global warming and long-term changes in climate are expected to continue due to record levels of greenhouse gases.