Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/16/2011 9:19:55 AM PST by lbryce
An extensive study of tree growth rings says there could be a link between the rise and fall of past civilisations and sudden shifts in Europe's climate.
A team of researchers based their findings on data from 9,000 wooden artifacts from the past 2,500 years.
They found that periods of warm, wet summers coincided with prosperity, while political turmoil occurred during times of climate instability.
The findings have been published online by the journal Science.
"Looking back on 2,500 years, there are examples where climate change impacted human history," co-author Ulf Buntgen, a paleoclimatologist at the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape, told the Science web Ring record
The team capitalised on a system used to date material unearthed during excavations.
"Archaeologists have developed oak ring width chronologies from Central Europe that cover nearly the entire Holocene and have used them for the purpose of dating artefacts, historical buildings, antique artwork and furniture," they wrote.
"Chronologies of living and relict oaks may reflect distinct patterns of summer precipitation and drought."
The team looked at how weather over the past couple of centuries affected living trees' growth rings.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
My only question is:What will you do when your tree-ring world-cataclysm-prognosticator is found to be as much of a desperate hoax as global warming is? What will you do? What will you do?
When has the Earth’s climate ever NOT CHANGED?????.....
The problem comes when the AGW crowd ignores or tries to pretend that past natural climatic shifts never happened, as they try to label modern climate shifts as human-caused (and the infamous hockey-stick graph is a prime example of that).
Everybody knows that the climate change during the days of Rome were due to the SUV’s they were driving.
I don’t have a problem ascribing changes in human fortune to changes in the climate. Certainly the times when the climate is warm fosters agriculture, prosperity, and therefore peace: people don’t go to war when they have full bellies and burgeoning farms. The problem arises when they confuse cause and effect, imagining that we humans are causing the climate change that affects our lives. Clearly humans did not cause any climate change that took place thousands of years ago. The climate changes, and will always do so, for reasons entirely unrelated to human activity.
They’re claiming signs of climate change, date as recorded in the tree-rings coincide with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, civilizations, as if there’s any link, ergo
global warming will destroy us as well.
Makes perfect sense, unless you know anything about Roman history and 400+ years of decline, resurgence, etc.
Also that a severe winter allowed a significant germanic settlement across frozen rivers into Roman territory.
Certainly illegal immigration played an enormous role in Roman history.
Rome burned while Nero fiddled.
ALL THAT SMOKE CLEARLY HAD AN EFFECT.....
I live on a ridge in a redwood forest. On MY side (the east slope) the trees grow incredibly slowly, giving them very straight grain and very tight rings. Across the road from me (the west slope) the trees are much faster growing, due to the overabundance of coastal fog, giving those trees a very loose grain and far fewer rings. The eastern trees are much better quality as a result.
People can be such morons about the climate.
During the time of the Roman Empire, North Africa and Egypt were vast grain producing regions. The drying up of North Africa and reduction in grain production contributed to the fall of Rome.
Eggsackley so......
The most prescient of tree-ring prognostications is what scientists say are unambiguous markings of a slave-turned-emperor in the final days of the Republic.
I think.....can’t be sure though.....the Huns had something to do with the fall of Rome. Just a thought here. Maybe they had bigger and better SUV’s?
It’s not like we don’t know Roman history, we have lots of reports from that time of weather, as well as everything else. Roman history is not like trying to figure out what. Happened to the Mayans or something.
If anyone would read some Roman history, they’d realize how sad it is trying explain a 400 year time period with one factor like lead in cups.
The Roman history, including another 1200 years of the Eastern Empire, is facinating stuff.
Your point is well-taken, nevertheless, to link it to the fall of the Roman empire is a big much of a leap
BTW, just in case it's slipped someone's mind: Caligula was the THIRD Roman Emperor. He succeeded Tiberius, who was a monster himself. That's how fast totalitarianism degenerated into a hellhole.
Oh! And in case there's anyone who thinks it couldn't happen here, make no mistake: There are countless psychopaths and other monsters out there just salivating over the prospects of seizing control of the greatest, richest, most powerful nation the world has ever known!
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