The Roman Climate Optimum lives
Quietly hidden in a paper about ancient pandemics is the most detailed estimate of Roman temperatures I’ve ever seen. For 800 years temperatures gyrated over a three degree range. The Climate Alarmists of Rome could have run the whole warming-cooling-warming-scare back to back for 400 years. But make no mistake, the good times, Pax Romana — were the warmest and wettest ones. The colder times are associated with aridity, plagues and collapse.
Two thousand years ago plankton bloomed and died, and the different ratios of warm and cool species left thick layers on the ocean floor just off the heel of the boot of Italy. Every ten years another centimeter thick layer of dead dinocysts collected on the sea floor, which makes for a remarkably detailed record. They report a jaw dropping “three year resolution”. The record was so rich they could pick out the seasons, and wow, by golly, they could compare it with modern air temperatures. (See graph A below) Though, for some reason they don’t make that easy, or say much about how those ancient temperatures compare to today. (Presumably, if they found things were hotter today, they’d have got a Nobel Prize.)
Cold times don’t guarantee a pandemic, but warm times do seem to discourage them:
Despite the expert predictions of doom in hot weather, the ancient Roman records don’t suggest mass outbreaks of malaria, flesh eating bugs, or viral pandemics.
Note the words “Present Day mean (1960-1990)” on the horizontal line on Graph B… it was hotter for 200 years in a row.
Fig 2A: (Click to enlarge) (A) Comparison between late-summer/autumn dinoflagellate cyst–based W/C ratio (black line + black points) of core GeoB 10709-5 and mean autumn Italian temperatures at 1000-m altitude (blue line). (B) Late-summer/autumn dinoflagellate cyst–based W/C ratio and relative abundance of discharge species (nutrient sensitive) reconstructions (black lines) and the occurrence of epidemics and pandemics in the Roman empire (blue blocks) as well as disease outbreaks in Roman Italy (gray lines) and major historical periods/events.
In the paper Graph B is strangely truncated at the hottest points as if their printer jets got clogged. Perhaps the heat broke some climate models? Just how hot was that spike in the era of Jesus? I’d like to get that data…
The plagues
The Antonine Plague, from about 165 to 180 AD was probably smallpox, no one is sure what the Plague of Cyprian was, from about 215 to 266 AD; it might have been measles, smallpox, or some relative of Ebola. At it’s worst 5,000 people a day were said to be dying in Rome. In Alexandria one historian estimates the population fell from half a million people to just 200,000. The Plague of Justinian was a form of Black Plague. It started from about 541 to 549AD, and they say rather somberly, lasted on and off until C.E. 766. Long live hygiene and antibiotics, eh?
The researchers can only speculate about why the pandemics spread more often in the cold. They don’t mention the word vitamin. But the first thing I would suggest is vitamin D3 — levels of which probably fall the minute people get out of their Toga’s and pull on their jackets.
The Antonine Plague of 165 A.D. — Smallpox
If you want to feel lucky, read Edward Watts description in The Smithsonian of what life was like in 165 AD:
Victims were known to endure fever, chills, upset stomach and diarrhea that turned from red to black over the course of a week. They also developed horrible black pocks over their bodies, both inside and out, that scabbed over and left disfiguring scars.
For the worst afflicted, it was not uncommon that they would cough up or excrete scabs that had formed inside their body. Victims suffered in this way for two or even three weeks before the illness finally abated. Perhaps 10 percent of 75 million people living in the Roman Empire never recovered.
The plague waxed and waned for a generation, peaking in the year 189 when a witness recalled that 2,000 people died per day in the crowded city of Rome. Smallpox devastated much of Roman society. The plague so ravaged the empire’s professional armies that offensives were called off.
And when communities began to buckle, Romans reinforced them. Emperor Marcus Aurelius responded to the deaths of so many soldiers by recruiting slaves and gladiators to the legions. He filled the abandoned farmsteads and depopulated cities by inviting migrants from outside the empire to settle within its boundaries.
Apparently things were so bad that in some cities so many aristocrats died they even filled the councils with “the sons of freed slaves”.
The temperatures from graph B above are marked in the figure below (just in case you don’t relate to phytoplankton ratios).
Core DP30PC and paleoclimatic records. Dark blue: Gulf of Taranto, late-summer temperature reconstruction based on dinoflagellate cyst composition (this study); orange: Northern Alps, June to August dendrochronological-based temperature reconstruction (3); red: proxy-based central European, June to August (JJA) temperature reconstruction (33)
The currents flow right down the side of Italy before depositing some phytoplankton in the Gulf of Taranto where the samples were collected..
…
For the record, here’s how they describe the calibration:
The calibration of our dinoflagellate cyst–based temperature proxy is based on the comparison of the cyst association of a reference dataset from multicore core GeoB 10709-5 (29) to mean Italian late-summer/autumn air temperatures (32).
For some reason the researchers have this magnificent temperature record, and they calibrate it with modern temperatures but said nothing at all about how the Roman Optimum compared to the 21st Century. Luckily, we already know from other studies it was hotter back then. Must have been all those Roman coal plants?
- 2,500 years of wild climate change in southern Europe: It was warmer in Roman Times than now
- Hottest summers in the last 2000 years were during Roman times
- Roman Warming (was it global?)
h/t Judith Curry and Tom Nelson
REFERENCE
K. A. F.Zonneveld et al (2024). Climate change, society, and pandemic disease in Roman Italy between 200 BCE and 600 CE Physics Today 77 (4), 17–18 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adk1033
Margaritelli, G., Cacho, I., Català, A. et al. (2020) Persistent warm Mediterranean surface waters during the Roman period. Sci Rep 10, 10431. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67281-2
Garcia-Solsona, E.; Pena, L. D.; Paredes, E. ; Perez-Asensio, J.N.; Quirós-Collazos, L. ; Lirer, F.; Cacho. I. (2020) “Rare Earth Elements and Nd isotopes as tracers of modern ocean circulation in the central Mediterranean Sea”. Progress in Oceanography, June. Doi:/10.1016/j.pocean.2020.102340
See also the write up in Physics Today.
*Figure 2 headline altered to clarify the role of the blue line. 19/04/2024.
In those days we could blame the gods.
Now that we have ‘Science’, we have only ourselves to blame.
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But we have ‘science gods’ – Mann, Flannery, Thunberg, Gore, Di Caprio, etc., etc.
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No, they are just the god’s spokespersons in the corporeal realm.
With Anthony Fauci being the corporeal in charge.
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Great article, Jo. How very unscientific for these facts and temperatures are hidden by scientists. Spoils the narrative I guess. I am sure the Medieval Warming Period was the same followed by the chronic misery, starvation and death that happened in the little ice age that followed. I still wonder about the activity of volcanos in the world climate, a fact that is rarely discussed. Probably spoil the narrative again.
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I was driving listening to the ABC (sorry!) which had a BBC broadcast discussing the affects climate change would have on volcanoes! Unsurprisingly a climate scientist said that there would be some affects. Not that volcanoes would get hotter, but that they might plug up and then erupt into the atmosphere where ash etc might act as a cooling mechanism. Also volcanoes might be located in more diverse topographic and geological environments!
Fascinated, I noted that never was the idea discussed that the question was back to front. It should have been what effects volcanoes have on the climate?
If you take climate change to extremes you will get extreme views on just about anything. What a waste of resources by the BBC and the ABC!
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Gold star to David today for listening to the ABC. He ventures where many of us fear to go.
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Thank you for listening to them so we don’t have to.
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I wrote several articles on Rome and changing climates and certainly ‘something ‘happened to cause dramatic changes in the climate. Two incidents are noted here in an article I wrote 15 years ago
‘Saint Cyrian was Bishop of Carthage around 250AD.* (see Note 1) He was talking about the huge increase in Rome’s population which had caused wars against Carthage and the building of 500 towns in North Africa to satisfy the eternal city’s ever increasing needs for timber, cereal, and exotic animals for its gladiatorial contests. Here is an account of lack of sustainability and climate change caused by a variety of factors, with the hints of a decline in the warm climate that had sustained Rome now starting to work against them as it intermittently turned cooler
‘The world has grown old and does not remain in its former vigour. It bears witness to its own decline. The rainfall and the suns warmth are both diminishing. The metals are nearly exhausted the husbandman is failing in his fields. Springs which once gushed forth liberally now barely give a trickle of water.’
Around 1560 the Rev Schaller, pastor of Strendal in the Prussian Alps wrote;
“There is no real constant sunshine neither a steady winter nor summer, the earth’s crops and produce do not ripen, are no longer as healthy as they were in bygone years. The fruitfulness of all creatures and of the world as a whole is receding, fields and grounds have tired from bearing fruits and even become impoverished, thereby giving rise to the increase of prices and famine, as is heard in towns and villages from the whining and lamenting among the farmers.”
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I suggest famine and conflict over food due to frosts and shortened growing periods may be a significant contribution to an unhealthy population susceptible to disease. Dan Andrew’s may have been aware of this when he locked old people in nursing homes and denied them the advocacy of their families. A poorly treated community be it plant or animal becomes a petrie dish for pathogens. That was why the cranked up PCR test was such an important component of the fear porn in 2020.
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Yes Broadie. Cold temperatures are one thing but the early or late frosts really can cut food production. Over the years a lot of research has gone into having shorter growing seasons for corn. My grandfather grew corn in the thirties that took about 115-120 days from planting to maturity, nowadays 105 days is common. After maturity the cob still has to dry which is slowed if there is less warm weather. If corn is not completely dry (12%) when stored it will deteriorate or mould. Cold and extensive winters lead to starvation.
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Funnily enough in parts of Canada, northern USA they sometimes wait until the first autumn frost to finish off corn harvest. The kernels freeze/ harden and actually make it easier to harvest.
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Famine gripped all of Europe because agriculture came to a standstill, brought on by a volcanic eruption in Iceland.
‘A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years.’ (Science)
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The Roman conquest of Britain was the Roman Empire’s conquest of most of the island of Britain, which was inhabited by the Celtic Britons {First Nation Peoples!). It began in earnest in AD 43 under Emperor Claudius, and was largely completed in the southern half of Britain (most of England and Wales) by AD 87
This was during the warm period from around 70 to 180 AD
It’s widely believed the Romans introduced winemaking to England as early as 43 AD when Emperor Claudius began the conquest of the British Isles. Now, new evidence suggests the existence of a previously unknown vineyard in Cambridgeshire that could date back to the years following the invasion.
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Tree rings from the Italian Peninsula in the late 3rd century BC indicate a time of mild conditions there around the time of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps with imported elephants in 218 BC
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Yes but the “Viking” Germanic Tribes from Scandinavian countries were arguably more dangerous than the Romans were, and following the defeat of a Roman Army in that area the Romans named “Germania” now Germany.
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I seem to remember reading about these much warmer times during the RWP and I think it was at the very accurate Co2 Science site.
But again the Holocene is much cooler today then the hotter Eemian inter-glacial that I’ve linked to before and even Wiki tells the truth sometimes.
About 120,000 years ago SLs were 6 to 9 metres higher than now and temps then were 8 C ( 14 F) HIGHER than our Holocene. See the excellent Co2 Coalition FACTS pages for more accurate data.
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Claudius’ landing site in Britain is now about 3.5 klms inland, so SLs then were much higher at that site in 43 AD.
https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/research/back-issues/roman-richborough/
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Inland now due to silting up, as the linked article says.
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Civilisation thrives during the natural warm periods such as the Minoan, Egyptian, Roman and Medieval climate optima.
Cold is always associated with famine, misery, war and disease.
I keep asking warmists what was bad about any of those times and … crickets.
Of course, the Elites of the Left who tell the useful idiots what to think know EXACTLY what was wrong with those times. What was wrong from the Elites’ point of view is that civilisations THRIVED.
A thriving civilisation is a happy, healthy and robust one and is not compatible with the totalitarian rule they are attempting to impose.
How will they (Elites) impose (further) totalitarian rule?
Apart from the cold, it is in times of misery from other causes, such as depriving the populations of the West of energy and freedom of movement and speech and economic opportunity and inexpensive food and meat and housing when people are prepared to accept dictatorship, much of which they did during the covid lockups in Australia and especially in Vicdanistan and are still doing.
It is no “conspiracy theory” in Australia that this is where the Left are taking us. Apart from the covid lockups with rights removed but never restored by the Uniparty (as predicted) look how the Uniparty is trying to impose Digital Identity legislation and the a Liberal Party legislation now being attempted to get passed by Labor on “misinformation” etc..
Look at how many of our politicians are sinophiles and look to the Chinese Communist Party for inspiration and ideas for social credit (of which the first step is a digital ID) and other ideas of dictatorship and total control.
And Australia now has globalist socialist governments in all states and territories except Tasmania and is really a model nation for others to follow into the totalitarian abyss.
It will only get worse, far worse, if conservatives and fellow rational thinkers remain silent.
Vote for conservative-oriented parties such as:
United Australia Party
Libertarian Party
One Nation
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Here’s what I wrote about the much warmer Eemian a few days ago and using Wiki as a source.
The previous Eemian interglacial was also much warmer than our Holocene and Hippos swam in the Thames and the Rhine in Germany during this much warmer period.
And trees grew up to and ABOVE the Artic circle then and today it is much colder in 2024 and only TUNDRA covers this area today. THINK.
Of course SLs were also 6 to 9 metres higher during the Eemian and co2 levels were about 280 ppm then and only very small numbers of Humans and Neanderthals etc.
Here’s the quote from Wikipedia.
“The warmest peak of the Last Interglacial was around 125,000 years ago, when forests reached as far north as North Cape, Norway (which is now tundra) well above the Arctic Circle at 71°10′21″N 25°47′40″E. Hardwood trees such as hazel and oak grew as far north as Oulu, Finland. At the peak of the Last Interglacial, the Northern Hemisphere winters were generally warmer and wetter than now, though some areas were actually slightly cooler than today. The hippopotamus was distributed as far north as the rivers Rhine and Thames.[15]”
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Here is a picture of an Arctic tree stump.
https://macleans.ca/news/canada/this-mysterious-arctic-tree-stump-could-reveal-ancient-secrets
Of course, the clueless “journalists” are clueless as to how it got there.
But we know….
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Interesting David and they state that it’s 600 klms above the latitude for trees today in our late Holocene.
Probably from the much warmer Eemian about 120,000 years ago when forests of trees alao grew in the high Artic coastline, but today just Tundra and ice exists in the same area.
But can we trust researchers today to properly test the tree stumps? Perhaps or perhaps not?
I keep thinking about Pilt down Mann and his so called research and using data UPSIDE Down.
Steve McIntyre called him “Upside down Mann” after his more dubious tree studies.
But so far Mann hasn’t sued Steve, so I think he is very unsure about taking on Steve in the courts.
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Most people, even hardened scientists or technologists, scanning through academic papers would see the title “K. A. F.Zonneveld et al (2024). Climate change, society, and pandemic disease in Roman Italy between 200 BCE and 600 CE” with references to phytoplankton etc would ignore it. Perhaps go back to completing their footy tipping or SuperCoach team. Not JoNova!!! Here she has probably taken a very dry written paper and written an article about it that just jumps out of the page. Done in a very entertaining. informative fashion with simple explanations and humour. So well done that even the most qualified climate scientist could actually understand it. Most of the other science journalists in the mainstream media couldn’t tie Jo’s bootlaces. She’s up there with the best.
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🙂
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Jo, great minds read alike: my local library gives away out-of-date books, so I’m now in the possession of
Greece And Rome At War
Peter Connolly, 1981
which references H H Lamb’s The Changing Climate, 1966.
“Between 4,000 and 2,000 BC … there was a warm dry period known as the ‘post-glacial climatic optimum’ … the world temperature rose to 2 – 3 degrees Centigrade above the present norm. In the succeeding millennium, however, the climate deteriorated.
“Between 900 and 500 BC the temperature fell rapidly to about 3 degrees Centigrade below its present level. This was followed by heavy rain … As a result, while the marshes advanced in the valleys, the glaciers increased on the heights.
“All over Europe tribes driven from their homelands began to move southwards [ ] until the conquest of Gaul by Caesar … From this period onwards there was a gradual increase in temperature which reached a climax between 800 and 1,000 AD. The temperature then began to drop again, bringing on the ‘Little Ice Age’.
” … there is now no argument that the temperature during the Roman empire and later was warmer.” [P. 157] Bold mine.
Up/down up/down repeat ad nauseam. Now awaiting the usual suspects’ cries of: But Hokey Shtick Mann Says…!
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I’m pretty sure the ‘dark ages’ made an appearance <500-900AD- minor events like the Black Sea, and the Nile delta freezing. And reading the written accounts from the MWP saying it was up and down like a yoyo. Read 1067- 1100, hard, hard, hard times. We are very lucky to be here. The MWP was no picnic- rivers often frozen solid down to their beds, the sea frozen for 3 miles off the Low Countries; every year, somewhere in China was drought or flood. Food miles can be very important, especially lack of them in hard times.
http://www.breadandbutterscience.com/
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The crux of the matter is whether cold times bring on plagues.
Justinian’s Plague (541-542 CE) – World History Encyclopedia
‘Originating in China and northeast India, the plague (Yersinia pestis) was carried to the Great Lakes region of Africa via overland and sea trade routes. The point of origin for Justinian’s plague was Egypt.’
It could be argued that new trade routes were to blame for Justinian’s plague and not necessarily the dark age climate.
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Trade between Egypt and Europe was nothing new in 500 AD.
Heck, the Port of Alexandria was built in 331 BC, by Greeks, precisely for the purpose of opening up sea trade back to Greece. The Silk Road kicked into action in the next century after Alexandria began to thrive. The ancient Greeks had a long history of contact with India, although China was still somewhat distant for them … the silk must have been coming in from somewhere, therefore a continuous path existed well before the rise of Rome.
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Go to books.google.com, click on Search Tools and then Full View and you end up in the fabulous library of historical literature that Google has digitized and allows you to read and download for free.
Enter “carbonic acid, atmosphere” in the search window and you’ll find scientists who were out in the field in the 1800s taking CO2 measurements all over the place—indoors, outdoors, in cities, over lakes, up mountains, in mines, at midday, at midnight, in rural areas…—most of which were higher than the 425 ppm figure hurled at us today. The second listing that pops up is a good place to start: “Air and Rain: The Beginnings of a Chemical Climatology” by Robert Angus Smith, published in 1872. He starts with a load of data collected by Theodore de Saussure, much earlier in the 1800s.
“Carbonic acid” was used synonymously for “carbon dioxide,” back in the day. You’ll find clear references about that, too. Chemistry books for instance that spell out that the formula for carbonic acid is CO2.
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Joanne,
When I look at graph A, I see lots of differences. Just seems to be another shonky proxy. Sure, there’s some appeal in warm species:cold species ratios, but please consider why this — carcasses of marine organisms lying in the seabed — should be tied to the mean Italian autumnal air temperature at 1000m.
Cynical, I know, but I suspect they tried a bunch of different mean temperature records and picked the one that fitted best. Then they felt free to extrapolate it off to buggery into the past.
It’s not that I disagree with what you’re saying about diseases and temperatures, but it’s best to be sceptical about all this pretense of *knowing* things we simply don’t know. Historical records are one thing, dinoflagellate species ratios, dendroclimatology, speliothems and ice cores are something else.
Further than that, how have we allowed *climate* to be represented by a single number? It’s nonsense.
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Did you read the paper Robert? I see Graph A and I don’t think I’ve seen such a good fit with a proxy before. It correlates with those Italian Temps at 1000m from 1870 to 1970 with remarkable detail. There are some odd mismatches but the turning points are good, and bear in mind the Italian air temps have probably been adjusted. It may not be accidental that the 1870s proxy is a bit warmer, and the 1990 years seem cooler. The proxy may be more accurate than the air temps (;-) )
Italy is not that big. Is it that hard to believe that water temperatures on a peninsula surrounded by water would not bear some connection with air temperatures?
What impressed me was how much trouble they went to, to get the temperature proxy working, and cross check with other proxies, only to say nothing at all about the temperatures themselves. Perhaps they were hoping to find pandemics that matched the hot days or that Roman times were not that hot. The feel of the paper is that this is years of work, yet the mechanisms of why pandemics might occur in cooler times was a mere afterthought.
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Joanne,
Thanks for responding.
That it was the best proxy fit you’ve seen doesn’t matter much; that’s exactly how one would cherry-pick a “proxy”.
I read some of the paper, but found it rather heavy going and confess it was mostly a skim after the language got dense a few paras into the introduction. I missed the point you highlight about cyst production being a summer/autumn event. That explains the choice of mean autumn air temperature.
I’m sure air temperatures at sea level are very heavily affected by water temperature, but 1000 metres up would typically be very different and depend greatly on other factors, especially wind direction.
I’ve taken another look at the paper this morning on this particular point. A little academese:
To me, that says they’ve just used a fixed 8.4 degree offset from 1000m air temperature to surface air temperature. Now maybe they mean it’s the average offset over the whole season, and it does vary day/night, sunny/rainy, etc., but I think they’ve averaged it over the whole 16 year calibration period too. How much did this 8.4 degree offset vary between 51, 52, … 66, 67? Now go back 500 years. Was it still 8.4 degrees?
Sorry that I’m a bit of a thorn in your side on these proxy things. At heart, I hold Rutherford’s view of statistics:
In the climate argument, there’s a deep wish — from both sides — for weather data from the distant past. And the people who know how to lie with statistics step in to help. Just find something correlated with temperature they say, we can calibrate that in the present and use it as a proxy for the past. The thing is, something *correlated* with temperature may be correlated with other things too. Tree rings are surely more related to rainfall than they are to temperature. And, as I mentioned to you last time on the Oxygen 18 stuff, being dependent on evaporation/condensation, those seem likely to be more related to wind than temperature. It’s not valid to just leave out the other factors because you really *really* want it to be a temperature proxy.
Now maybe these cyst proportions really *are* purely surface water temperature related, but I have doubts about calibration against 1000m air temperatures. Maybe they should calibrate against surface water temperatures instead. If a decade’s worth of that was in lock-step, I’d call it a far better proxy than any we’ve seen so far. Until then, I’ll stick to scepticism.
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No one now disputes it was much warmer in Roman times. But the seas did not rise rapidly, there were no mass extinctions and they were not wiped out by the weather, somehow. So why was it ever credible that a welcome few degrees of average is going to destroy the planet? And why are people to believe that a major downpour in Dubai is man made? Or snow in Cairo. Or a drought somewhere else? This underlying idea that humans rule the planet and directly control the weather is a major change in human thinking. It used to be the realm of the Gods.
Now weather seems to be an evil conspiracy, like a rain making cloud seeding system. You would think that the CSIRO should have invented one in the fifty years they spent trying to make it rain?
And the idea that we might get to be as warm as it was in Roman times is as a terrible thing, the end of our world. And it is coming straight from the UN. Send money.
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And as for plagues, we now understand them in great detail. The real danger though is really the rate of transmission in a modern era of rapid mass travel and the crowds. Rome as the biggest city in history was only a million people. That’s nothing in the modern world where the population density is extraordinary. And the proportion of older people completely unprecedented. That’s people over 30.
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cmon TdeF — Not only do they dispute that, they are trying to wipe out the holocene peak itself. That’s why studies like this are so important.
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It’s an interesting proxy but spatially limited and only one of many which make up global temperature reconstructions.
We know now that there were no globally consistent warm or cold periods over the preindustrial Common Era.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1401-2
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0400-0
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Globally consistent? That’s what I mean about science. Who needs it?
What does it matter what happened at the South Pole? Who ever lived there? Or Australia for that matter? Who needs proxies for the South Pacific? Uninhabited. And for artificial Global Temperatures, whatever they are?
We know the history of Rome and many countries. It is written.
We know the hot times when humanity boomed and the cold ones when crops failed and people starved and disease ravaged the lands. Did they have 24 hour fast electronic thermometers in a million locations? No, but we can still conclude it has been both hotter and colder than today. And that is all we need to know to ignore carbon dioxide completely.
The attempt to batter everyone with proxies for temperature is absurd. It has been hotter. And there was no problem.
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‘A substantial portion of pre-industrial (1300–1800 CE) variability at multidecadal timescales is attributed to volcanic aerosol forcing. ‘
Maybe, needs to be analysed more closely and of course you ignore the quiet sun theory.
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Yes, point taken. Michael Mann and friends would have you believe that recent slight warming is unprecedented and disastrous.
But I also think the warmth of every period of human growth speaks for itself, the coincidence of warmth and human flourishing.
The cold of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages and the Little Ice Age are well known in the written record. No science is required.
No phytoplankton.
We know there were wine grapes being harvested at 55 North, Hadrian’s wall. And ice festivals on the Thames. The boom in temperatures and crops gave us the Renaissance.
My point really is that we have been warmer and colder before and the world did not end. Tipping points did not happen. Nor rapidly rising seas. And no one worried about the Polar bears or the caribou or the penguins. In fact no one knew about the penguins. They are exclusively a Southern Hemisphere bird.
The ONLY scare is that the world is about to end if it gets hotter. CO2 is simply the alleged cause, but as there is no problem with a bit more heat, CO2 is irrelevant. And it is still not as hot as Roman times. We do not need scientists to confirm it. But it’s nice if they can.
The current warming is not unprecedented nor disastrous. As for rising seas, old Rome is 15 metres below current Rome.
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And seriously, have you seen the Roman military outfits? Pleated mini skirts on men? Sandals? No socks? In Germany and Romania in winter? Only a sadist would dress soldiers like that in today’s weather. They would join the other side just to get warm. It was warmer then.
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Check out Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization by David Keys in which he does a pretty good job of blaming the explosion of Krakatoa (senior) in AD 535 for lowering the world temperature for about a decade.
This led to (among many other VERY BAD things) an outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe caused by lower temperatures, which caused the digestive tracts of fleas to clog up, which caused them to bite everyone in sight out of overwhelming hunger.
Famine from the cold temperatures and reduced sunlight caused the migration of various peoples in Asia and Europe, rearranging many lines on the map, and laying the foundations of the world as we know it.
This was the subject of the first Secrets of the Dead episode on PBS (USA ) in the ‘90s: Secrets of the Dead, Catastrophe! (on YouTube).
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Geez, haven’t heard that one before!! Millions of people died because fleas were constipated. Wow.
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“which caused the digestive tracts of fleas to clog up”
Only the incompetent fleas.
‘Cos the competent ones were snuggled up in someone’s clothes, and at [mammalian] body temperature.
So their guts stayed unclogged!
Shirley!
Auto
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Interesting to have a look at the areas of Antarctica claimed by Australia and NZ ( over 50%) and Argentina, Norway , France, UK etc.
One day I think the oil, Gas and Coal will be exploited there and I’m sure it will be very lucrative to Aussies and NZ or…….?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_claims_in_Antarctica#/media/File:Antarctica,_territorial_claims.svg
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It was caused by Roman Chariot V8s
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Suppressing the fact that it was warmer in Roman times has been an integral part of the strategy. It completely destroys the ‘we are all going to die’ argument.
And after all, it is the average temperature. Who doesn’t want warmer winters? And earlier Spring and later Autumn/Fall? Who doesn’t want more food and more greenery and a better life? Who really likes being frozen?
And a few more degrees in summer, for whom is that a problem, even if it were true.
The whole point to man made fossil fuel caused Global Warming is that it has to be scary. Otherwise how could you get money out of people, let alone pass laws to steal from them and order them around. To save the planet.
History will show that the combined UN/EU attempt to control the planet is as bad as any totalitarian dictatorship.
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I find that even today people are worried about the melting ice caps. And they are angry when they realise that melting floating ice does not raise water levels. They have been deceived. As for Antarctica, an ice block 3.5km high the size of South America with a summer temperature of -25C, again angry and disbelieving.
It’s not whether Al Gore promised that the ice cap at the North Pole would be gone by 2014 (in summer) It’s that that would be a good thing, not a disaster at all, especially with Suez and Panama close to shut. And the polar bears do not live at the North Pole anyway. They live on land in summer and to give birth and hunt on the ice in winter.
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Hannibal was able to cross the Alps with elephants. And they weren’t wearing crampons.
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you need to be careful ascribing that to rising or falling sea levels – other things contribute to the relative levels of land and the sea – such as recovery from the impacts of ice loading due to isostasy. Southern England was not covered with ice and has actually been falling in level whilst sea levels have risen and fallen with warm and cold periods. its a complex matter.
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that was a replay to No6
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I propose … since the Roman warm period was nobody’s fault, not even the Romans …
that every LGBTQAI+2S* person has the right to be free from Climate Change.
*(I exclude the Cis people because their sexual orientation is the very reason we have anthropogenic climate change … which is the bad kind. Plus, they don’t even have a flag.)
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There’s a ‘conspiracy theory’ that Rome was destroyed by some kind of big cosmic or ecological catastrophe, rather than the way history says. Version by a late NATO socioligist Gunnar Heinsohn:
https://www.q-mag.org/gunnar-heinsohns-latest.html
It’s based on archeology (actual science rather than history written by winners), that shows distinctive layers – ancient layer, mud layer (catastrophic layer), and medieval layer.
Also the demographics of Rome changed with time – the oldest ones are similar to Anatolian Farmers, currently represented by Sardinians, Dodona Greeks, Cyprus Greeks, the ones from the time of Empire moved to middle-estern genes (immigrants, that brought with them and popularized foreign religions inlcuding Christianity, Mithraism, middle-easter means iranian genes, natufian genes), the latest ones are similar to modern italians – which means a return to mostly Anatolian Farmer Genes, but with more added barbarian ones (which means european hunter gatherer genes increase). It looks like the immigrant urban populations died off during the collapse, repoplulated by local farmers mixed with barbarians, but the imported religions stayed? The remaining urban Roman population might be Ashkenazi Jews who look like a Jewish-Roman mix with some Eastern European genes added later.
The difficult times of Empires End promoted simplified early Slavic economic model of survival, one with more self-reliance within your village or household, and limited reliance of trade routes, markets, specialization etc. to deliver goods, doing stuff on your own or with locals instead. Reliable lifestyle but at the cost of lower quality products. Slavic were in coalitions with invading Asians, which helped in a spread. Slavic civilization was based partially on low-cost government, with higher-cost centralized governments being able to appear only around good, hot medieval warming.
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Wow.
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So basically :
they interacted.
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I think the lesson of agricultural history is that good warm weather and longer seasons and more rain produced more than just survival but development of food surpluses, society, arts, military prowess and the ability to support a standing army. So conquest, expansion, larger governments, skills differentiation, civilization.
Cold weather does the exact opposite. At the time of the great cold and with cold drought brought down the French government in 1789 because the French people were starving. And mass destruction and murder followed across the place. As after the fall of the Roman empire.
Australians think of hot weather as drought weather, but in fact hot weather produces evaporation and rain. At an extreme, monsoons like those in India. It is Cold drought which is the big and regular problem in Europe. So we can plot the hot times when societies boomed and the cold times when it all fell apart. And now self labelled Climate Scientists are pretending the last 2,500 years have all been cold. That is obviously wrong.
I do not care much for Global Temperatures. They are not representative of any one place or season, artificial at best. What we do know more accurately are European temperatures which we can tie directly to European civilization and even to the Industrial Revolution which started in Europe, nowhere else.
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There were centennial solar minima from around 155 AD and from 250 AD.
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