Aug 10
30
Ideology threatens our ability to prepare for extreme weather period
Center for Global Food Issues – August 23, 2010
Growing More Per Acre Leaves More Land for Nature “Extreme Weather”? Not Yet!
By Dennis T. Avery
Churchville, VA – The death toll from recent “extreme weather events” has been sharply declining since the 1920s, as my valued colleague Indur Goklany has valorously pointed out. Air conditioning, flood control, earthquake proofing and better weather forecasting have all helped. Despite vast media coverage, extreme weather now causes only a half-percent of global deaths. A large part of the gains came through crop production increases using fossil-fueled industrial fertilizers and irrigation pumps. This meant the world had fossil-fueled food to share with countries suddenly caught by devastating (but short-term) drought or flood.
But Indur neglected one aspect of extreme weather events – the “little ice ages.” They are the flip side of the 1500-year warming cycle. The last one began in 1300 AD and ended in 1850, recent enough that many of our great-grandparents had to cope. We don’t know when the next one will come, perhaps not for another 300 years – but when it does, “Look out!”
As an example, civilizations collapsed around the world, simultaneously, 4200 years ago – in southern Green, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, and China. The nomads on the Asian steppes gave up their seasonal farming, put their huts on wheels, and simply followed their herds seeking ever-scarcer grass. This massive drought – driven by a “little ice age”- lasted 300 years!
Egypt had more food security through its early history than anyplace else, but it collapsed in famine and political chaos three times between 4200 and 1000 BC – all of them during “little ice ages.” The Nile floods were also far below normal during the cold Dark Ages (450-950 AD) and during our recent Little Ice Age.
How many people would starve if agriculture failed again, suddenly and simultaneously in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, India, and China – for 300 years? What future Huns would come knocking on the city gates? Would plague-infected rats again move in?
The “little ice age” climates are inherently less stable and more violent than the warming intervals. The Netherlands was hit by massive sea floods three times in 50 years as the Little Ice Age began. Each of these floods drowned more than 100,000 people. Will the Dutch levees hold in the next “little ice age”? What about New Orleans in a far less stable climate?
Read the complete article here.