Edward Gibbon, the English historian who wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776 missed something very important, according to a new study.
Ulf Büntgen, a paleoclimatologist at the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape in Zurich says climate change played a role in the collapse of the centuries-old empire.
"Looking back on 2500 years, there are examples where climate change impacted human history," he said, according to an article at sciencemag.org.
Tree-ring samples suggest that while mild summers were key to the Empire's rise, cold snaps, prolonged drought and "other climate changes might have played a "role in the fall of the Roman Empire", in addition to the societal changes and barbarian invasions.
According to an article at New Scientist, the earth's climate flipped between dry and cool, and warm and wet from decade to decade between 250 and 330 AD.
"Such decadal changes seem to have the most impact" on civilisations, Büntgen says, because they harm agriculture but are not prolonged enough for people to adapt their behaviour.
One major difference between modern society and the ancient world is the use of fossil fuels. Ancient Rome did not have automobiles, nor did they drill for oil.
Modern environmentalists generally link "climate change" to humanity's use of petroleum. But if climate changes occur naturally, one can only conclude there is nothing modern humans can do to stop it.
If the climate changed during a time of no petroleum usage, how could modern use of fossil fuels be responsible?
As Halvard Buhaug of the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway notes that, "Modern societies are not nearly as dependent on the climate, because trade and technology can mitigate its effects."
In short, weather happens, regardless of man's activity.
And all the socialist policies dreamt of by all the U.N. "experts" and government bureaucrats will not be able to stop it.
Comments
Good article Joseph, keep em coming dude! Global warming is a scam cooked up by the global elite to control us. To get more of our money and enslave us to their will.
Thank you, my friend. I find it interesting they say the climate was changing before the invention of automobiles and the use of petroleum, but now we are supposed to believe that we are changing the climate by driving our cars. What???
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