interesting view on Risk for Humans in History; by Morris W. Dorosh Agriweek April 7 2014:
"There is little need to speculate about how violent climate change would affect agriculture, food production and
world food adequacy, were it to occur. Earth has been there. Numerous cyclical warming and cooling periods have
occurred quite regularly every few hundred years throughout human history, mostly lasting several decades. Between
such incidents global climate appears to have been quite stable. The last phase of exceptional departure from normal
temperatures was the Little Ice Age during the 17th century. Mean temperatures were between 1 and 2 degrees C
lower than in decades preceding and following roughly from 1620 to 1690. The economic, social and political consequences
are masterfully explored, based on meticulous research, in a recent book by Geoffrey Parker, noted historian
and professor, titled Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. It almost a
thousand pages (references alone are 78 pages) but it is worth the effort for anyone with a serious interest in the subject.
The 1600s represented the coldest century in modern history. The summer of 1641 was the coldest since reasonable
weather records began to be kept around the year 1100. Persistently cold weather led to droughts, floods and crop
failures, bringing famine, disease, wars and revolutions that may have wiped out, or contributed to wiping out, between
a quarter and a third of the human population.
Climatic changes during this period have been explained in various ways, with general agreement on three factors.
Volcanic eruptions increased dramatically in frequency and intensity. El Nino or similar episodes occurred twice as
often during the 1600s as the known historic average. Sunspots virtually disappeared for several decades, reducing
solar heat reaching the planet, possibly the single most important cause.
The rudiments of the market economy were established in Europe by the 1400s. By the 1600s it was well enough
developed that trade in staple goods was routine over long distances, even with transportation and communications in
primitive stages. Populations at first congregated in areas where crop cultivation was relatively easy and rewarding,
but population growth gradually extended habitation to places further removed. By the 1500s farming in Europe had
evolved from a state in which most people grew their own food to one in which class of farmers produced more than
their own requirements and sold the excess to people not in a position to grow anything. A cash economy rapidly developed.
The impact on food production from the first substantial climatic changes in the early 1600s was immediate and
profound. It steadily worsened for the next 20 to 30 years before weather conditions stabilized, then normalized. Severe,
multi-year droughts alternated with chronically wet and very cold episodes, in both cases causing near complete
crop failures. Crop growing in those times could proceed only when conditions were more or less ideal. Yields were
measured by the number of kernels harvested for each kernel planted. In the early 1600s a common ratio was 10 to 1.
By the mid-1600s it fell to two, one and then zero to one. Western Europe experienced the smallest harvest in history
in 1648. Farmers who previously were able to feed themselves and several others soon could only produce enough for
the needs of their families, and eventually not even that.
The now-unproductive farms were abandoned and their occupants moved to the cities in a usually futile search for
work. Most cities were walled for protection from attack, so more and more new arrivals were confined in finite
spaces, reaching population densities not seen again until the advent of high-rise buildings late in the 19th century.
Overcrowding, destitution, malnutrition, absence of basic sanitation and the sheer cold promoted disease outbreaks
such as smallpox and plague, compounding mortality from starvation. An atmosphere of savagery and barbarity was
created in which the weak, especially women, did not have a chance. However Parker does not make a convincing
connection between food scarcity and the wars, revolutions and uprisings that proceeded almost without interruption
throughout the 1600s. Few wars were started for the purpose of occupying still-productive agricultural lands and
many to satisfy maniacal ambitions of hereditary rulers.
No other outcome was possible given the primitive state of agriculture of the day. There are parts of the world, notably
Africa, where the catastrophic conditions of 17th-century Europe are still usual. However in the developed
world the economic resources and technology now available would overcome even long-extended crop production
shortfalls. The reason that changes in crop supply and demand have such large price and market consequences today
is that large changes happen relatively infrequently."
"There is little need to speculate about how violent climate change would affect agriculture, food production and
world food adequacy, were it to occur. Earth has been there. Numerous cyclical warming and cooling periods have
occurred quite regularly every few hundred years throughout human history, mostly lasting several decades. Between
such incidents global climate appears to have been quite stable. The last phase of exceptional departure from normal
temperatures was the Little Ice Age during the 17th century. Mean temperatures were between 1 and 2 degrees C
lower than in decades preceding and following roughly from 1620 to 1690. The economic, social and political consequences
are masterfully explored, based on meticulous research, in a recent book by Geoffrey Parker, noted historian
and professor, titled Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. It almost a
thousand pages (references alone are 78 pages) but it is worth the effort for anyone with a serious interest in the subject.
The 1600s represented the coldest century in modern history. The summer of 1641 was the coldest since reasonable
weather records began to be kept around the year 1100. Persistently cold weather led to droughts, floods and crop
failures, bringing famine, disease, wars and revolutions that may have wiped out, or contributed to wiping out, between
a quarter and a third of the human population.
Climatic changes during this period have been explained in various ways, with general agreement on three factors.
Volcanic eruptions increased dramatically in frequency and intensity. El Nino or similar episodes occurred twice as
often during the 1600s as the known historic average. Sunspots virtually disappeared for several decades, reducing
solar heat reaching the planet, possibly the single most important cause.
The rudiments of the market economy were established in Europe by the 1400s. By the 1600s it was well enough
developed that trade in staple goods was routine over long distances, even with transportation and communications in
primitive stages. Populations at first congregated in areas where crop cultivation was relatively easy and rewarding,
but population growth gradually extended habitation to places further removed. By the 1500s farming in Europe had
evolved from a state in which most people grew their own food to one in which class of farmers produced more than
their own requirements and sold the excess to people not in a position to grow anything. A cash economy rapidly developed.
The impact on food production from the first substantial climatic changes in the early 1600s was immediate and
profound. It steadily worsened for the next 20 to 30 years before weather conditions stabilized, then normalized. Severe,
multi-year droughts alternated with chronically wet and very cold episodes, in both cases causing near complete
crop failures. Crop growing in those times could proceed only when conditions were more or less ideal. Yields were
measured by the number of kernels harvested for each kernel planted. In the early 1600s a common ratio was 10 to 1.
By the mid-1600s it fell to two, one and then zero to one. Western Europe experienced the smallest harvest in history
in 1648. Farmers who previously were able to feed themselves and several others soon could only produce enough for
the needs of their families, and eventually not even that.
The now-unproductive farms were abandoned and their occupants moved to the cities in a usually futile search for
work. Most cities were walled for protection from attack, so more and more new arrivals were confined in finite
spaces, reaching population densities not seen again until the advent of high-rise buildings late in the 19th century.
Overcrowding, destitution, malnutrition, absence of basic sanitation and the sheer cold promoted disease outbreaks
such as smallpox and plague, compounding mortality from starvation. An atmosphere of savagery and barbarity was
created in which the weak, especially women, did not have a chance. However Parker does not make a convincing
connection between food scarcity and the wars, revolutions and uprisings that proceeded almost without interruption
throughout the 1600s. Few wars were started for the purpose of occupying still-productive agricultural lands and
many to satisfy maniacal ambitions of hereditary rulers.
No other outcome was possible given the primitive state of agriculture of the day. There are parts of the world, notably
Africa, where the catastrophic conditions of 17th-century Europe are still usual. However in the developed
world the economic resources and technology now available would overcome even long-extended crop production
shortfalls. The reason that changes in crop supply and demand have such large price and market consequences today
is that large changes happen relatively infrequently."