[hinckley buzzard]

The Roman Warming era has been well-known to historians. It is likely that the alarmists have cause and effect reversed. Warming has historically led to bursts of growth in civilization, and did so 2000 years ago. Odds are the methane came from some geologic event, possibly undersea, and may have contrbuted to the warming that nurtured the growth of Rome. Or not.

[expat2]

I agree. The warming period probably caused the methane emission, probably due to melting tundra, not the other way round.

[verum ago]

The Roman Warming era has been well-known to historians. It is likely that the alarmists have cause and effect reversed. Warming has historically led to bursts of growth in civilization, and did so 2000 years ago. Odds are the methane came from some geologic event, possibly undersea, and may have contrbuted to the warming that nurtured the growth of Rome. Or not.

The Roman Warming has long been a thorn in the side of AGW theory, as it represents natural warming on the scale of the current warming (if you trust the measurements), and thereby shows that the current warming can be natural.

Making the Roman Warm Period anthropogenic preserves the AGW orthodoxy. I'm going to go ahead and say that if the "scientists" working on this didn't set consciously set out to get the result they did, they at least wanted it to come out that way and were influenced by that.

[Cronos]

why would warming have contributed to the growth of Rome? Agriculture etc was already going on ahead.

I would think it actually led to the detriment of Rome, since a warming climate caused Germanic overpopulation so the Germanics came out of Denmark and Sweden and started invading the rest of the continent

[eddie willers]

I finally got around to reading Churchill’s “History of the English Speaking Peoples” which opens with the Roman invasion of Britain.

They abandoned the island around 440 A.D. and Churchill points out that it took 1400 years for Britain to again reach the same standard of living as it was when the Romans left.