THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 320, December 6, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
FICKLE SUN BROUGHT DOWN ANCIENT EMPERORS
By Dennis T. Avery
THE IMPACT OF SOLAR ACTIVITY ON WORLD POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, & SOCIAL HISTORY: RESEARCHERS STILL WORKING
TO LINK THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF NATURALLY OCCURRING GLOBAL WARMING/GLOBAL COOLING SHIFTS TO THE
EVENTS OF WORLD HISTORY
FULL STORY:
A North China cave stalagmite just produced an amazingly precise record of China’s rainfall over the past 1800 years,
proving that variations in the sun’s activity — through weaker monsoons and poor rice crops — helped bring down
three historic Chinese dynasties (the Tang, Yuan, and Ming dynasties).
In contrast, the sun sent abundant rainfall for the Song Dynasty, producing rich rice harvests, social stability, and
population growth from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Centuries — a period known to the world as the Medieval
Warming. The Chinese recorded the Song abundance in both historic documents and cave-wall paintings.
Paleoclimatologists used uranium-thorium dating of the layered deposits in the stalagmite, linking them to the rainfall
records within a remarkable 2.5 years — thus permitting the rainfall-dynastic analysis. Lawrence Edwards of the
University of Minnesota was a lead author of the study, published in the journal Science, November 7, 2008.
The China study found that the cave stalagmite rainfall record followed solar variability even more closely than it
followed the Northern Hemisphere’s temperatures. A strong correlation was also found between the weak monsoons of
the Late Tang Period in China and a Swiss record of Alpine glaciers advancing during the cold temperatures of the Ninth
Century. The European glacier advance was followed by Alpine glacial retreat from the late Ninth Century to the
Fourteenth Century, correlating with the Medieval Warming and the Song Dynasty’s prosperity.
Half a world away, the decline of the Roman Empire is reflected in the layers of a stalagmite from Soreq Cave near
Jerusalem. The stalagmite, analyzed with an Ion Mass Spectrometer at the University of Wisconsin, shows the Eastern
Mediterranean becoming drier as Roman and Byzantine power waned from 200 AD to 700 AD. The stalagmite record
shows especially sharp drops in precipitation about 100 and 400 AD.
Hunger, produced by the extended droughts of the late Roman Warming may have driven the barbarian tribes from
Eastern Europe and the Near East to the gates of Rome seeking food. But Rome itself may then have had grain shortages,
since the Roman “granary” in North Africa also tends to get less rainfall as the warm periods wane and the tropical rain
belts move back to the south. Without steady supplies of grain, the Roman hold on its Mediterranean Empire was
probably doomed.
The stalagmite cores “look sort of like tree rings in the cross-section,” says co-author Ian Orland, “Only instead of
looking at the ring widths, we’re looking at the geochemical composition of each ring.” Oxygen isotopes in the calcium
layers and organic matter flushed into the cave by surface rain — and trapped in the mineral layers — contain the climate
information.
This is a relatively recent way of looking at world history. Scientists have only known about the moderate, solar-driven
1,500-year climate cycle since 1984. Evidence found in ice cores, seabed sediments, ancient tree rings and fossil pollen,
as well as in cave stalagmites from every continent, show it has produced seven previous global warmings since the last
Great Ice Age ended 12,000 years ago. Maureen Raymo of Boston University found the cycle extending more than one
million years in the microfossils of the North Atlantic seabed south of Iceland. (Nature: 392, 1998)
Researchers are still working to link the physical evidence of warming/cooling shifts to the events of world history, while
the rest of us watch the unfolding story with awe and anticipation
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery is an environmental economist for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of the
Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a senior policy analyst for the United
States Department of State, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with
atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years (Blue Ridge Summit,
Pennsylvania: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). Avery's book, Saving the Planet With Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental
Triumph of High-Yield Farming (Washington, D.C.: Hudson Institute, 1995), continues to be popular as a readable overview
of realistic agriculture for the future and for today. Readers may write Avery at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421.
Email: cgfi@hughes.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity