When Winter Came for Kings

[phantom power]

In his epic "Global Crisis," Geoffrey Parker addresses the question of why long-oppressed populations during the 17th century—across Europe and elsewhere as well—rebelled in unprecedented numbers.

...At the heart of "Global Crisis" is an emphasis on climate change. Using a range of new methods and evidence concerning past meteorological shifts—a "natural" and human archive that includes dendrochronology (the science of dating from tree rings) and archaeology, as well as written records—Mr. Parker demonstrates that the 17th century experienced a period of sustained cooling, with prolonged freezing winters and colder and damper summers in much of Europe and China. Iran was scourged by more than its usual share of "droughts, high winds, violent hailstorms and earthquakes" in the second half of the century. There were four monsoon failures in India. Climatologists speak of a "little ice age."

The effects for 17th-century populations were often catastrophic. In some cases, whole societies were on the move to escape the weather or climate-related shortages. Across the globe, the crisis destroyed wealth, and the vulnerable starved. "The rich," as one contemporary Chinese aphorism had it, "become poor; the poor die." Disease, especially smallpox, the plague, typhus, measles and various fevers, carried off many who had been weakened by starvation. War, which both caused and aggravated many of these afflictions, did the rest. Mr. Parker reckons that the population of the world was reduced in this period by as much as a third.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323809304578430760038847962.html?ru=yahoo?mod=yahoo_itp

[pscot]

1. Sounds interesting

I have a library hold on it.

[Iterate]

2. Blowback from the Columbian exchange?

Columbus' arrival linked to carbon dioxide drop
Depopulation of Americas may have cooled climate

By Devin Powell

Web edition: October 13, 2011
Print edition: November 5, 2011; Vol.180 #10 (p. 12)

By the end of the 15th century, between 40 million and 100 million people are thought to have been living in the Americas. Many of them burned trees to make room for crops, leaving behind charcoal deposits that have been found in the soils of Mexico, Nicaragua and other countries.

About 500 years ago, this charcoal accumulation plummeted as the people themselves disappeared. Smallpox, diphtheria and other diseases from Europe ultimately wiped out as much as 90 percent of the indigenous population.

Trees returned, reforesting an area at least the size of California, Nevle estimated. This new growth could have soaked up between 2 billion and 17 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air.

Ice cores from Antarctica contain air bubbles that show a drop in carbon dioxide around this time. These bubbles suggest that levels of the greenhouse gas decreased by 6 to 10 parts per million between 1525 and the early 1600s.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/335168/description/Columbus_arrival_linked_to_carbon_dioxide_drop

This is supported elsewhere, and the drop in CO2 matches fairly well with reforestation estimates. When combined with a few known volcanoes it accounts for the measured temperature difference.

Simulating the impacts of disturbances on forest carbon cycling
in North America: Processes, data, models, and challenges
http://www.usgs.gov/climate_landuse/land_carbon/pubs/Liu_etall_2011.pdf

Houghton, R. A. (2010), How well do we know the flux of CO2 from land‐use change?,
Tellus,Ser.B, 62(5), 337–351, doi:10.1111/j.1600-0889. 2010.00473.x.

Deniers don't like this one bit, of course. They maintain their clarity when counting missing sunspots(1645 to 1714) and property values, but the sunspot effect would have been minimal.