Romm : Black Death Lowered Northern Hemisphere Temperature By 0.17C

Now we know what Al Gore meant by “The Earth Has a Fever.”

About Tony Heller

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23 Responses to Romm : Black Death Lowered Northern Hemisphere Temperature By 0.17C

  1. Jimash says:

    I do not know this Rommm fellow.
    He sounds like a thoroughly reprehensible creature.
    Perhaps he does not know that we are tipped to this game.
    At this point, such musings are distinctly unhelpful to his cause and deeply
    disturbing to the rest of us.
    Besisdes which it is probably poppycock.

    • ChrisD says:

      Romm is a blogger. He didn’t come up with this. The guy you want to annoy is the scientist who wrote the paper, not Romm.

      http://bit.ly/c856BB

      This idea, by the way, has been posited as one of a number of factors that may have contributed to the LIA (and a pretty minor one). It doesn’t seem particularly unreasonable to note that the reforestation resulting from the death of maybe half the population of Europe could have had some small effect on climate.

      • Jimash says:

        Thank you for the link Chris .
        Unfortunately my PDF reader plug is not working. I hate that.
        Anyway, isn’t 0.17c kind of miniscule to tease out of 500-600 year old data ?
        Seriously. I am asking. I really mean it.
        And what is the point of such observations ?
        Are we shooting for a new Ice Age for real ?
        Would that ease people’s minds , for far flung villages to live in fear of encroaching glaciers as they did then ?
        I confess I am having a hard time visualizing any end game here that is good .
        Just thinking out loud, or maybe typing very quietly.

      • ChrisD says:

        No, that number didn’t come from historical data, it’s a calculated value, almost a hypothetical. It’s clearly tentative, perhaps worth further study (note the “if” and the “assuming”). Steve’s page title makes it sound much more definitive than it actually is in the paper.

        As to what is the point of such observations, it’s just science. They see the LIA, want to understand what caused it, and start coming up with possible explanations for further study. This is what they do.

      • ChrisD says:

        BTW, if you have a regular PDF reader, you can probably read the paper by right-clicking the link and using “Save target as…” or something similar.

    • Romm writes lots of articles complaining about me too.

      • ChrisD says:

        I’m aware of that. We’re all entitled to our opinions. It just seemed like Jimash was blaming Romm for something he didn’t write, calling him “reprehensible” for passing along, with attribution, information that came from a research paper.

        I wonder where he got that idea.

  2. ChrisD says:

    Correction: The 0.17C figure is for the Northern Hemisphere, not “Earth” as stated in the page title.

  3. R. de Haan says:

    Several scientific and historic publications about the Little Ice Age report bad weather events caused by low solar activity and high volcanic activity causing large scale crop failures over longer periods of time.
    One of these reports mentioned that volcanic activity during the Maunder and Dalton Minimum was about five times higher compared to the past century.

    It was also stated that crops were also destroyed by the many wars that were fought
    during that period.

    We know that people who are in bad health lack the resistance to fight disease.

    Famine and black plague seem to have gone hand in hand.

    Remains the question why during solar minimum we see an increase in seismic and volcanic activity?

    Coincidence or an unvalid claim?

    Have a look at this article titled “Magnitude 7.0-7.9 earthquakes UP 90% in 2010
    http://modernsurvivalblog.com/earthquakes/mag-7-earthquakes-are-up-90-percent/

    If we will see a rise in seismic and volcanic activity and plummeting temperatures for the next decade, we are in for a treat.

    All we need is a Pinatubu like event during a cold period triggering wide spread crop failure for several growing seasons and we will see the biggest famine in human history. No need for pushing red buttons.

  4. Paul MacRae says:

    Ruddiman’s (not Romm’s) book Plows, Plagues and Petroleum argues that a fall in human respiration caused by the plague produced such a pronounced drop in CO2 levels that the northern hemisphere was cooled significantly and led to the Little Ice Age.
    But another Ruddiman book, Earth’s Climate: Past and Future, a very good university textbook, acknowledges that CO2 warming is logarithmic, something few other alarmists are willing to do, and that the maximum warming occurs up to about 200 ppm, and falls off to almost no warming by 800 ppm. So, while one book (Plows) claims a high warming sensitivity to CO2, the other (Earth’s Climate) would imply not (especially since we’re now well above 200 ppm, and were during the Black Death as well).
    In Earth’s Climate, Ruddiman also acknowledges that a warmer planet will be a wetter planet (drought fear-mongers might take note) and that earth’s long-term future, in tectonic terms, is cold, not warmth (all warmists take note). He also acknowledges, in Plows, that his hypothesis is highly speculative.
    Ruddiman is one of the very few alarmist climatologists who I feel, after reading many of them in the almost three years of research for my book False Alarm (OK, it’s a plug; so sue me), is trying to be honest. But in so doing, he comes off as a little bit schizophrenic (in the scientific, not medical sense). In other words, he seems to know the AGW hypothesis is nonsense, but can’t let it go.

    • Jimash says:

      “a fall in human respiration caused by the plague produced such a pronounced drop in CO2 levels that the northern hemisphere was cooled significantly and led to the Little Ice Age.”

      That’s a good one. Made me chuckle.
      The implications , however, for those that believe, in human extinction as a good thing, are encouraging. Not a good thing.
      http://www.vhemt.org/

      • ChrisD says:

        I think that’s an error. I wonder if he’s confused reforestation with respiration. I can’t imagine that respiration has anything to do with it. Certainly it’s not what Ruddiman talks about in the paper.

    • ChrisD says:

      Ruddiman’s (not Romm’s) book Plows, Plagues and Petroleum argues that a fall in human respiration caused by the plague….

      Respiration? Are you sure about that? I haven’t seen the book, but that isn’t what he says in the paper. He talks mainly about reforestation. I don’t understand how respiration would be relevant.

      acknowledges that CO2 warming is logarithmic, something few other alarmists are willing to do

      I’m very sorry, but I don’t know anyone who’s studied climate at all who disputes this. Certainly I’m unaware of any scientists who do. This is why sensitivity is always expressed as as “so much per doubling” (of CO2) rather than as “so much per 100ppmv” or some such.

      So, while one book (Plows) claims a high warming sensitivity to CO2….

      Again, I don’t know about the book, but in the research paper he uses a sensitivity of only 2.5C per doubling, which is sort of a middle of the road estimate. Not really what I would call “high”.

      Ruddiman also acknowledges that a warmer planet will be a wetter planet (drought fear-mongers might take note)

      Wetter overall, yes, but not everywhere. Changed weather patterns will almost certainly result in areas where rainfall will be significantly reduced. No one that I know of is suggesting that global warming would result in worldwide droughts or anything similar to that.

      I don’t know, it sorta seems like you’re attributing some stuff to climate scientists that they don’t actually say. Or are you not referring to scientists when you say “alarmists” and “warmists”?

    • R. de Haan says:

      “Ruddiman’s (not Romm’s) book Plows, Plagues and Petroleum argues that a fall in human respiration caused by the plague produced such a pronounced drop in CO2 levels that the northern hemisphere was cooled significantly and led to the Little Ice Age”.

      Right, it’s not our SUV’s, it’s human respiration that has to be controlled.
      We will see red buttons all over the place.
      These people are obsessed and crazy.
      Time to make lots of room in the high security departments of our psychiatric institution and order lots of straitjackets.

      We’re going to need them.

      • ChrisD says:

        Again, I believe that Mr. McRae has made a mistake. I do not think Ruddiman was talking about respiration.

        The word “respiration” does not appear anywhere in Ruddiman’s paper on this topic. “Reforestation,” however, does.

        Let’s apply a little common sense. You may disagree with the scientists, but that doesn’t mean they’re idiots.

  5. Jimash says:

    Cris writes
    “It just seemed like Jimash was blaming Romm for something he didn’t write, calling him “reprehensible” for passing along, with attribution, information that came from a research paper.

    I wonder where he got that idea.”

    More like I just read too fast. Romm’s name comes up as a rubble rouser, not just here.

  6. glacierman says:

    Ruddiman’s book was talking about reforestation. He uses some pretty interesting assumptions such as 0.03 – 0.09 km2 per person, and that all that died had a plowed farm field to come up with:

    #of people killed by disease X farmland abandoned X Carbon per km2 reforested

    to concluded that reforestation after each pandemic would have been large enough to account for the observed CO2 decrease of 4 – 10 ppm.

    I guess the devils in the details of his assumptions of how each dead person lived, how much of their land was farmland and what the differential in CO2 absorbtion would have been based on the assumed change in land use after their death.

    • ChrisD says:

      Thanks. I thought so. Respiration made no sense.

    • ChrisD says:

      Actually, let me clarify that. Human respiration, which is what Mr. McRae mentioned, made no sense. Plant respiration, also known as transpiration, is an entirely different process. Ruddiman does mention this kind of respiration, I’m sure.

      I hope that Mr. McRae didn’t confuse human and plant respiration in his book.

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