Farmers tended vinyards in Britain during the medieval warming period, lasting from perhaps 900 to 1300 AD.
Tough work, these days.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Weather ≠ Climate.
It never does.
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Poetic justice. I posted about Al Gore yesterday. Poor Al.
Poor?
More like morally, politically, and ethically bankrupt. But poor? Not so much. That Jabba the Gore fellow spends more on his electric bill than I have income each year.
Poor is not an adjective that is applicable to the Goracle. Sad to say.
Ron Snyder … At least Al is going to be poorer than he planned on being, if our global cooling keeps up. He’s got all these fledgling companies in which he has invested his ill-gotten gains, which depend on the world getting warmer and the seas continuing to rise. And it’s really worrisome that it’s just not happening the way his Yale science class professor promised him. At least he can pride himself on ‘conning’ huge numbers of people into joining his ‘religion.’ And making a shocking amount of money doing it.
Marry Christmas and Happy New Year, by the way, Ron. My computer has been “hors de combat” in the hospital since before Christmas, so I didn’t get my Christmas notes sent out. Got it back yesterday, sadder but wiser. And clean — for awhile.
Marianne
Had a similar experience up here in the “north woods”, Marianne, with the exception that my computer wasn’t even repairable. Thanks to the benefits of year-end purchases and business tax depreciation schedules, I too, am “back on the air”. Glad be one among the blogosphere again and to be seen…
Marianne,
That’s the beauty of it – Al Gore’s companies do not depend on the world getting warmer and the seas continuing to rise.
Instead, they depend on the politicians acting as if that were the case… regardless of the reality.
Ahh, Marianne, you know how to brighten the day.
Very best Christmas wishes to you & your loved ones, and with the hope that you have a most rewarding New Year.
Warmest Regards,
HERETIC! BLASPHEMER! How DARE you bring history and facts into this! Submit yourself for reeducation, young man.
Here’s a quote from the NASA image page: “The extreme negative dip of the Arctic Oscillation Index in December 2009 was the lowest monthly value observed for the past six decades.”
Hmm… Maybe this satellite data can explain part of this: http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/ .
The slaying of a beautiful global warming theory by an ugly fact, that’s Science.
Wish I could track down the item about how the UK has been unable to cope with the heavy snows this season. Something to the effect that the wise people in charge of the purse strings bought into the “warming” BS and thus decided to save money and not acquire snow removal equipment.
Hey, Rivet… this may be the piece you’re refering to:
http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2010/01/thats-it-hunker-down-government-are.html
At least the truck is no different than most governments: Sideways with the line of flow.
Thanks PG. I remember trying to figure out what they were talking about when they referred to “gritters” when I first read about it. Aha…sanders. They could always retreat to that other money-saving snow control option – “It’ll melt by spring.”
I’m in the UK right now, living the dream. Being from Maine, this isn’t much of a cold spell to talk about, but it’s got the natives stirred up. Headlines since mid-December have been how the councils all over don’t have enough “grit” or salt on hand to deal with what was then seen as coming, and there simply wasn’t enough time for speculators to get it here. Now it’s dire predictions of major cities such as Glasgow being out of supply sometime this week. South of London got hammered as well, can’t seen them doing well, but here in the Midlands we’re just fine, bit of snow, bit of ice. I can see running out of salt, perhaps, but dirt? It’s everywhere, just shovel it up.
This warming period was then followed by a mini Ice Age that lasted several hundred yrs. People died, starved when the crops rotted in the fields because of too much rain. Both periods saw movement of peoples.
There’s a reason the country was called “Greenland” back then, and settled so easily. there’s another good reason that the colonies failed.
Climate changes. There is NOTHING that humans do which affects it. Absolutely nothing. It is criminally naive to believe that our species has any effect upon Earth’s climate, and those who purport that we do should, at the very least, have their right to vote stripped away before they do any more harm to our society and national interests.
I agree, Tim, and think it is the height of arrogance for mere humans to think they can “control” it.
It is interesting to note that people starved when crops rotted in the fields because of too much rain and too early snows during the mini Ice Age, but earlier people were starving while crops burnt up in the summer and winter wheat died to exposure from lack of snow cover.
Which, what makes us think there’s an *ideal* climate or temperature norm for the planet?
I am kind of curious as how crops could rot in the fields due to too much rain, though. They’d normally rot after harvest, due to too high a moisture content to be stored long-term in grainaries and such. That left in the field would get moldy but it’s not like that’ll kill you if you’re hungry. There were no mechanized methods of harvest back then, so it certainly wasn’t the fact that the fields were muddy that stopped the harvest.
Oddly enough, it’s below freezing in Florida, we have corn left in the fields in the upper Midwest due to heavy snowfall and a wet fall preventing harvest. What is here will be moldy and useful only for oil production.
When history repeats itself is that evidence of a crisis or of a cycle?
– Max
” curious as how crops could rot in the fields due to too much rain?” It certainly can — e.g. before even coming to maturity if weather doesn’t cooperate, some plants don’t like “wet feet” and need a bit of dry after starting or between watering, after being cut and lying out to dry a bit before before bailed (to prevent rot or moisture induce fires in storage) and so forth.
I guess we can’t all have family roots in flyover country. /heh
Let the rye (or wheat) get wet before harvest, and you can get ergot and mold and stuff growing on the grain.
Which can lead in extreme conditions to “loaves of bread, when cut, poured out a foul-smelling black fluid”. That sometimes being just a little ornamentation to unexpected behavior on the part of family and guests who’d eaten less icky-appearing bread.
Less severe cases of ergot caused by eating bread made with the contaminated grain could result in poisoning, causing nervous dysfunctions including pain, trembling and convulsions or fits. In some cases, this is accompanied by muscle spasms, confusion, delusions and hallucinations, as well as a number of other symptoms. (And you wonder why anyone would ever worry about witchcraft…)
Other effects on the peripheral circulatory system could even result in “gangrenous ergotism” with loss of ears or various parts of extremities of both humans and livestock.
Better to eat turnips.
Climate is weather that supports the speaker’s position. Weather is climate that doesn’t support the speaker’s position.
At least, that’s what it seems like in the debate on AGW.
As everyone else up thread has said: things change.
About as sucinct a summation of the state-of-play as I’ve seen. Extra credit for JimH.
Headlines since mid-December have been how the councils all over don’t have enough “grit” or salt on hand to deal with what was then seen as coming…
The councils bought into the Met Office prediction that it would be a mild winter because of “increased global warming” — the Met Office and the Motley CRU are a mutual admiration society.
The Brits are ready to start warming the place up by burning AGW cultists at the stake…
I am kind of curious as how crops could rot in the fields due to too much rain, though. They’d normally rot after harvest, due to too high a moisture content to be stored long-term in grainaries and such. That left in the field would get moldy but it’s not like that’ll kill you if you’re hungry. There were no mechanized methods of harvest back then, so it certainly wasn’t the fact that the fields were muddy that stopped the harvest.
*opening the door to the way-back machine*
You’re now a medieval farmer, Max. If the fields are rain-soaked, you can’t harvest anything — you sink in the mud halfway to your knees with every step, and a scythe won’t cut grain stalks, just flatten them. The cart you’re trying to pull bogs to the axle and stays there. You’re exhausted after three hours of slogging, you’ve covered twenty feet, and you have a half-bushel of wet wheat ears to show for it. And you’ve still got five acres of wheat (minus twenty square feet) to cut and only about a week to get it cut…
Grain gets moldy in the field and it *will* kill you — ever heard of ergot fungus? And ask someone of Irish ancestry about potato blight…
Max, this, of course, was before the domestication of the green deere.