4.11. Why a Warmer World is a Better Place to Live "That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?...Indur Goklany has assembled a massive collection of evidence to demonstrate two facts. First, the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide are dominant over the climatic effects and are overwhelmingly beneficial. Second, the climatic effects observed in the real world are much less damaging than the effects predicted by the climate models, and have also been frequently beneficial. I am hoping that the scientists and politicians who have been blindly demonizing carbon dioxide for 37 years will one day open their eyes and look at the evidence" Freeman Dyson There are only advantages to having more CO 2 and a marginally warmer world will make it a better place to live for the vast majority: •
Cooler and colder is always riskier as taught by the history of mankind. The great famines of 1315-22 (see note 120 p.102) (Baek et al., 2020) coincided with the end of the Medieval Warm Period and the Mount Tarawera eruption (Nairn et al., 2004; Hodgson and Nairn, 2005). Between 1310 and 1330, northern Europe saw some of the worst and most sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers. This 1315-1322 period was marked by a dramatic death tool of up to 25% of the population in the cities and extreme levels of crime, disease, mass death, and even cannibalism and infanticide, followed by the famines of 1661-62 (known in France as the crisis of advent of the King Louis XIV) and also of 1692-93. All were due to the rain and the cold, with a little scalding (1693). At the time, after favorable harvests, the number of seeds one could eat per seed planted showed a ratio that could be as high as 7:1, but after unfavorable harvests it was as low as 2:1, that is, for every seed planted, two seeds were harvested, one for next year's seed, and one for food. By comparison, modern farming has ratios of 30:1 or more thanks to an extraordinary agricultural productivity due to fertilizers, mechanization, good weather and CO2 bonanza. More generally, civilizations have historically endured hardships when the weather got cooler or worse became cold enough to create upheavals. The fall of the Ming dynasty 450 when the last Ming Chinese Emperor hanged himself in 1644AD (23 January 1368 – 25 April 1644) is a telling example, when the regime collapsed at the beginning of the 1640s, masses of Chinese peasants who were starving, unable to pay their taxes, and no longer in fear of the frequently defeated Chinese army, began to form into huge bands of rebels. In this early half of the 17th century, famines became common in northern China because of unusual dry and cold weather that shortened the growing season; these were effects of the Little Ice Age. The famine and drought (but also occasional floods) in late 1620s and 1630s contributed to the rebellions that broke out in Shaanxi led by leaders such as Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong. On 26 May 1644, Beijing fell to a rebel army led by Li Zicheng; during the turmoil, the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on a tree in the imperial garden right outside the Forbidden City. In Europe, the 1783 A.D. through 1784 A.D., Grímsvötn (Laki or Lakagigar) effusive eruption (14.7 km3 of basaltic lava) led to major disruptions, including famine and fluoride poisoning in several countries. In 1788 and 1789 there were poor harvests, this caused in France bread prices to rise in conjunction with falling wages, and hence led to further discontent and rural revolt. Even though the causes of the French revolution starting in 1789 and lasting 10 years are still debated among historians, the cold and unsettled weather for several years (Fuster, 1845) was the straw that broke the camel's back, as these events contributed significantly to an increase in poverty and famine. Noteworthy, in North America, the winter of 1784 was the longest and one of the coldest on record, a huge snowstorm hit the South; the Mississippi River froze at New Orleans and there were reports of ice floes in the Gulf of Mexico. There are other examples of a collapse of civilizations or of a meltdown of economies with massive societal disorders as colder is always risker for mankind. During the mid-seventies legitimate cooling scare, the CIA (1974) was perfectly aware of the risk and stated “The potential implications of a changed climate for the food-population balance and for the world balance of power thus could be enormous (...) In bad years, when the US could not meet the demand for food of most would-be importers, Washington would acquire virtual life and death power over the fate of multitudes of the needy. (...) More likely, perhaps, would be ill-conceived efforts to undertake drastic cures which might be worse than the disease; e.g., efforts to change the climate by trying to melt the arctic ice-cap”. Demiurgic geo-engineering ideas were already around the corner, though better justified;
450https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Ming_dynasty
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