I’ve read this bit of climainsanity 4 times, and it gets nuttier each time
(Daily Beast) In the 14th century, four centuries of mild weather came to an abrupt halt in Europe. Famine and frigid temperatures ensued, and roughly 10 percent of the population died.
“‘Natural’ disasters are most disastrous when humanity gives them a push,†William Rosen asserts, and his lucid exposition of the fatal interaction of ecological, agricultural, economic, and political factors that led to the Great Famine of 1315-1322 should give pause to anyone who thinks we have outgrown such shortsightedness.
Long before the bitter cold winters and drenching rains of the early 14th century announced the end of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), Europe had expanded dangerously close to the limits of its resources. Four centuries of unusually mild temperatures (the highest in 8,000 years), prompted the continent’s farmers to plant crops on vast quantities of land previously unsuitable for agriculture; the increased food supply in turn fueled a population explosion that tripled the number of people in medieval Europe.
If you’re thinking “these nutballs aren’t going to Blame mankind for the LIA”, um, yeah, they try
To 21st-century skeptics who cite the initially beneficent effects of the MWP as proof that global warming is no big deal, Rosen responds by pointing out that the MWP was “a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon … there is still little evidence that worldwide temperatures were, on average, warmer than today.†Moreover, the growth fueled by the MWP proved to be unsustainable.
“More and more marginal land was producing a larger and larger percentage of [Europe’s] food,†the author notes. When those marginal lands ceased to produce due to frosts and floods, the millions of extra mouths to be fed remained. Rebellions and civil wars exacerbated the impact of an unprecedented quarter-century of terrible weather and deadly livestock diseases. Two consecutive harvest failures in 1314 and 1315 launched seven years of famine, resulting in the deaths of between 5 and 12 percent of the population of northern Europe.
Except, there’s plenty if evidence of the MWP being worldwide, but, really, I love the suggestion that the MWP was localized to the European area and all that great farming and human activities led to the LIA.
While vividly re-creating a bygone civilization, he invites us to look beyond our significant but ultimately superficial differences and recognize that we too live in fragile equilibrium with the natural world whose resources we recklessly exploit, and that like our medieval forebears we may well be vulnerable to “a sudden shift in the weather.â€
Strange how shifts to cool cause so many problems for Mankind while things go well when warm, eh?
