The Roman Warm Period

It is widely accepted by historians that there was a Roman Warm Period of a few centuries, straddling either side of AD 1. When it started to cool down, there were famines, unrest and wars for scarce (food) resources and the western Roman Empire in western Europe collapsed. The eastern Roman Empire aka. Byzantine Empire, being further east and south and a bit warmer struggled on for a few more centuries, but hey.

Then came the Dark Ages, when it was cooler and history is murkier, people were too busy fighting with each other or simply struggling to survive to leave much recorded history. Then was the Mediæval Warm Period, a time of exploration and expansion, formation of larger states (Vikings got as far as Greenland). The wheels fell off again in about AD 1300 when things cooled down (very quickly) and we had the Little Ice Age. Rinse and repeat, famines, unrest, wars etc, esp. in the 1600s.

The Little Ice Age ended in the mid- or late 1800s, since when we have had the Modern Warm Period. There have been few weather-related famines, and certainly no global ones, for the past fifty years or more, apart from the fairly local ones caused by wars and/or incompetent or downright malevolent governments (which in turn lead to wars…). It’s having plentiful food that we really care about. You can survive the cold if you are well-fed; warmth is no good to you if you are starving.

That’s what history teaches us. No links because I assume that this is all widely accepted. Sorry for the Euro-centric view, but that’s the history I learned. Chinese and Asian history, which is as well recorded as European history, seems to show a similar timeline of rises and falls of civilisations.

The Alarmists reveal themselves to be the true Climate Deniers and swear blind that temperatures remained unchanged for thousands of years until shooting up over past fifty or a hundred years (the Hockey Stick graph), with past temperatures being adjusted down and current temperatures adjusted up.

What is the point of this brief canter through history? The point is that the Alarmists now have the cheek, temerity and gall to use clear evidence of the Roman Warm Period as evidence that… there is sudden and unprecedented climate change:

From Reuters:

ZANFLEURON PATH, Switzerland, Sept 11 (Reuters) – A rocky Alpine path between two glaciers in Switzerland is emerging for what the local ski resort says is the first time in at least 2,000 years after the hottest European summer on record.

The ski resort of Glacier 3000 in western Switzerland said this year’s ice melt was around three times the 10-year average, meaning bare rock can now be seen between the Scex Rouge and the Zanfleuron glaciers at an altitude of 2,800 metres and the pass will be completely exposed by the end of this month.

In other words, it’s about as warm now as it was ‘at least’ 2,000 years ago. Which is not really Earth-shattering news, if you are prepared to learn from history. Whether the approx. 1,000 year warm/cool cycle since AD 1 is a coincidence or there is an underlying natural pattern, nobody knows. Records don’t go much further back than that, although there is some ice-core evidence of a Minoan Warm Period about 1,000 years before the Roman Warm Period.