Climate change in the past

We tend to look at climate changes in the past as very dramatic. Volcanoes spewing lava by the tons, meteors hitting us, tsunamis drowning us and everything in-between.

It makes good movies and History Channel can excel in it.

Let us look at something slightly less dramatic, very recent and very well-documented. The Little Ice Age.

Wiki: “The Little Ice Age was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region. Some experts state a timespan from about 1300 to about 1850.

Several causes have been proposed: cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt (orbital forcing), inherent variability in global climate, and decreases in the human population (such as from the Black Death and the epidemics emerging in the Americas upon European contact.

The list is really a mix of cyclical events which we can hardly do anything about, but there are some factors due to human activity. Who would have thought this?

Wiki: “The Baltic Sea froze over twice, in 1303 and 1306–1307, and years followed of “unseasonable cold, storms and rains, and a rise in the level of the Caspian Sea.” Farms and villages in the Swiss Alps were destroyed by encroaching glaciers during the mid-17th century.

Canals and rivers in Great Britain and the Netherlands were frequently frozen deeply enough to support ice skating and winter festivals. The first River Thames frost fair was in 1608 and the last in 1814.

“Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction and closed harbors to shipping. The population of Iceland fell by half, but that may have been caused by skeletal fluorosis after the eruption of Laki in 1783. Iceland also suffered failures of cereal crops and people moved away from a grain-based diet.

The Norse colonies in Greenland had starved and vanished by the early 15th century because of crop failures and the inability for livestock to be maintained throughout increasingly harsh winters. Greenland was largely cut off by ice from 1410 to the 1720s.

Crop practices throughout Europe had to be altered to adapt to the shortened and less reliable growing season, and there were many years of scarcity and famine. One was the Great Famine of 1315–1317.

And this was rather recent!

What impact did Little Ice Age have on our lives?

Wiki: “The violinmaker Antonio Stradivari produced his instruments during the Little Ice Age. The colder climate may have caused the wood that was used in his violins to be denser than in warmer periods and to contribute to the tone of his instruments.

According to the science historian James Burke, the period inspired such novelties in everyday life as the widespread use of buttons and button-holes, as well as knitting of custom-made undergarments for the better covering and insulating of the body.

Chimneys were invented to replace open fires in the centre of communal halls to allow houses with multiple rooms to have the separation of masters from servants”

The prolonged cold, dry periods brought drought upon many European communities and resulted in poor crop growth, poor livestock survival, and increased activity of pathogens and disease vectors.

“William James Burroughs analyzes the depiction of winter in paintings, as does Hans Neuberger. Burroughs asserts that it occurred almost entirely from 1565 to 1665 and was associated with the climatic decline from 1550 onwards. Burroughs claims that there had been almost no depictions of winter in art [until then].

“Episodes of social instability track the cooling with a time lapse of up to 15 years, and many developed into armed conflicts, such as the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648).

The war started as a war of succession to the Bohemian throne. Animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire added fuel to the fire. It soon escalated to a huge conflict that involved all the major European powers and devastated much of Germany.

When the war ended, some regions of the Holy Roman Empire had seen their population drop by as much as 70%. However, as global temperatures started to rise, the ecological stress faced by Europeans also began to fade. Mortality rates dropped, and the level of violence fell.

This helped lead to the Enlightenment, which witnessed the emergence of innovations in technology (which enabled industrialization), medicine (which improved hygiene), and social welfare nd made life even more comfortable.

The Little Ice Age was not particular spectacular after all. It was a modest drop in temperatures at a global scale, but the impact was massive.

What will happen to us today if all the prophesies are coming through?