H. Sterling Burnett
Latest posts by H. Sterling Burnett (see all)
- Surveys Show Many Support Climate Action, But Only If It’s Really Cheap - October 22, 2019
- Save the Planet: Reform the Endangered Species Act - October 22, 2019
- United Nations Misleads About Food Production and Climate Change - October 10, 2019
Truck and home covered in deep snow during a blizzard.
History has shown, time and again, it is the earth’s periods of cold, even modestly colder climate periods, not warmer periods that are the true threat to human flourishing and environmental abundance. Colder periods correspond to more chaotic weather, longer periods of drought, crop failures and glacial expansion.
Recent research studying the collapse of large native civilizations in the eastern heartland of North America reinforce this truth.
Truck and home covered in deep snow during a blizzard.Researchers reconstructed and analyzed 2,100 years of temperature and precipitation proxy data, as captured in finely layered lake sediments. The evidence indicates catastrophic climate change, in the form of colder conditions and extended droughts, doomed food production, resulting in the civilization’s decline.
According to study co-author Jeremy Wilson, “Archeologists have recognized that from 1300 onward, Mississippian villages started disappearing – one after the other – almost like lightbulbs in a string, but the question has always been ‘why?’ Dr. Bird [Broxton Bird, paleoclimatologist and lead author] and his students have shown from the lake-sediment evidence that during the period known as the Little Ice Age, from 1300 to 1800, there was a profound change in climate to colder and drier conditions, which would have negatively impacted the growing of maize in and around Mississippian villages.”
One more study showing nature, not man, rules the climate roost and colder eras are worse for civilization than warmer times.
