The great JoNova has put up a fascinating post up regarding climate change and pandemics and it includes valuable links to several related articles and posts. Her post draws from this study regarding temperatures and disease during Roman times. As is typical, the study is filled with all sorts of charts, references and other supporting material that can easily distract the main message. Therefore, I have extracted the key parts, as I see them, and included one of the charts at the most appropriate place in the condensed version of the report below (emphasis added):
The marine record documents four major phases in the temperature and precipitation history of ancient Roman Italy during the period covered by our study…
The first phase (~200 BCE down to ~100 CE), in the beginning of our record, is characterized by persistently higher and relatively stable temperatures in southern Italy compared to later periods…
While the label of the Roman Warm Period or Roman Climate Optimum has been nearly ubiquitous in the paleoclimate literature, it is inconsistently deployed and so general as to be of limited use…
Our record documents that this humid period was interrupted by episodes of short-term aridity in the early second century BCE and early first century BCE.
The second phase (~100 CE to ~215 CE) is characterized by a decreasing trend of temperature and river discharge; the warmer temperature levels associated with the Roman Climate Optimum start to change as early as ~100 CE but more notably after ~130 CE when temperatures drop below the range of variation observed during the first phase. Pulses of cooler temperatures are observed between ~130 to ~145 CE, ~160 to ~180 CE, and ~200 to ~215 CE.
This period is followed by a third phase (~215 to ~515 CE) in which southern Italian temperatures varied strongly. After a brief, somewhat warmer period from ~215 to ~245 CE, temperatures sharply declined, briefly reaching a low ~265 CE that lasted until ~275 CE and that would not be equaled again until ~518 CE.
During this third phase, river discharge rates continued to decline, reaching their lowest levels across the entire study period during the second half of the third century CE, followed by a modest trend toward somewhat higher rates between ~350 to ~390 CE and ~410 to ~490 CE. These conditions changed in the early sixth century, when southern Italy witnessed a strong abrupt decrease of autumn temperatures with minimum values at ~537 and ~590 CE.
On the basis of existing literature, we assembled a comprehensive catalog of attested epidemic disease outbreaks in Italy across the eight centuries covered by our record…
In our record, the three major pandemic events of Roman antiquity — the Antonine Plague (onset ~165 CE), the Plague of Cyprian (onset ~251 CE), and Plague of Justinian (onset ~541 CE) — are strongly associated with pronounced climate change, although in varying ways.
The Antonine Plague occurred during the cold pulse between ~160 and ~180 CE that followed several decades of trends toward cooling and aridity.
The Plague of Cyprian coincides with a second phase of severe cooling, with even more arid conditions, after the brief warmer period between ~215 and ~245 CE.
Last, the First Plague Pandemic originates at a moment of extreme cooling in the 530s to 540s, and recurrent outbreaks occur in the generally cooler sixth century, notably ~590 CE…
Above all, our reconstruction suggests an association between phases of climate change and episodes of acute health crisis…
Understanding the mechanistic links between climate and disease in our case is even more complicated by the fact that the three major outbreaks occurring in the studied time interval were true pandemics. These interregional events were not confined to Italy, and our climate record should ultimately be combined with others for a full understanding…
The Antonine Plague follows a few decades of cooling and increasing aridity…
The marine core–based reconstruction is consistent with the view that several decades of climate-influenced stress on the peninsula may have set the conditions for pandemic mortality, which was then exacerbated by simultaneous abrupt climate change…
A second phase of severe cooling with even more arid conditions occurred after the brief warmer period between ~215 and ~245 CE, overlapping the so-called Crisis of the Third Century (~250 to 275), a period of exceptional political turmoil characterized by monetary crisis, imperial fragmentation, and pestilence (the Plague of Cyprian). Our record lends strong support to the inference that climate change was a substantial stressor in Italy during this multifaceted crisis…
Last, the strong cooling of the Late Antique Little Ice Age in southern Italy coincided with the onset of the First Plague Pandemic, a disease outbreak caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, the biological agent of the medieval Black Death, and it is associated in many regions globally with a phase of crisis…
The plague reached Italy by 543 CE, and our record supports the hypothesis that local climate conditions would have played a role in amplifying the effects of the disease event…
While not all episodes of cooling in our record are clearly linked with known outbreaks of epidemic mortality (see the downturn at ~200 to 215 CE), the association now documented by the marine core–based reconstruction underscores that climate change on the order of 1° to 3°C on decadal timescales substantially stressed ancient societies and increased susceptibility to major health impacts…
The health impacts of climate change, including the threat of emerging infectious diseases, are increasingly recognized [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; 2022)]. However, it is inherently difficult to measure the risks posed by rare outlier events such as those that are triggered by contagious diseases. Nonetheless, our record emphasizes that climate change, pandemic disease, and the fate of human societies have been linked for thousands of years and that such links should be considered in evaluations of future risks to global well-being and stability.
No one can read the above and not come to the conclusion that cold climate contributes to pandemics. The authors of the study tried to soften the import of the conclusions by quoting the IPCC and including generic statements on the relationship of climate change to health. But, the IPCC surely isn’t promoting the idea that cold kills — that would be directly contrary to its mission — which is to hype global warming for purposes of the Big Green Grift and to consolidate power on behalf of global elites.
#Elites #ClimateChange #RomanTimes #Climate #Pandemics #Rome
Thanks - but what I get out of this is that cold weather makes Italians sick. But I think a study of the eskimos, who were always used to cold, would find that they rarely got sick until the white men brought diseases that they had no immunity to. I guess you're right, it's the change in climate, at least when it turns colder in a land that's usually warm, that can cause sickness. Thanks for a very unusual report.
I hate the cold 🥶! But I did read, if Yellowstone volcano ever erupts, most of the US will be in the ice age! Most of the world will be under ice and snow!