Re: DARPA, at least, has a clue (maybe, sometimes)

In article <c409c476-79e6-4058-abd7-bb1dee78850e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Robert Myers <rbmyersusa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 20, 12:50 pm, Morten Reistad <fi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


If that energy chain implodes somewhere on the order of
85% of people will die, if not directly from the famine
then from the pestilence that will follow.

We have seen the Antoine Plagues and the Black Death
as direct examples of such events in recorded history.

I don't see the implied connection between what happened in
Scandinavia with primitive building methods and no central heating and
a proposed collapse of the world food chain. No one has proposed that
any of the agriculturally important areas of the Americas would be
significantly involved, at least so far as I know. Food production
may well go *up*. We're talking about a westward transport of heat in
the North Atlantic. How will that have a significant effect on the
world's food supply? Russia, maybe.

I am talking about the high energy content in agriculture. Currently
80% of that extra energy comes from fossil fuels. It drives everything,
from fertiliser to machinery to transport. If we were to back down to
1850ish methods we would have to resettle 30% of the population back
to the farms, but even then we would be very hard pressed to feed
all of the population. We, in the western world, would probably cope,
just barely, because we overproduce agricultural products by about a
factor of 5. 4/5ths of agricultural energy goes into livestock so we
can have meat.

Much of the rest of the world do not have that luxury. China, Africa
and India would have huge problems. I say this to illustrate how far out
on a limb we are for our food support. Global warming or cooling may
not affect this directly, but could have severe impacts indirectly.

Without more substantive information, this is all just wild scare
talk. Yes, there might be serious population dislocations in
Scandinavia. What else? I've nothing against Scandinavia. My
ancestors are all from Northern or Western Europe. Is this convoluted
and very uncertain theory about the Atlantic Ocean worth scaring the
world to death over? Especially when it is very unlikely that the
actual political and economic means exist to do anything meaningful.

We have seen two such contractions climate->pestilence->death. In
the first case, the end of the ancient warm period and the desert
that swallowed Carthage was followed by the Antoinine plague in the
3rd century. Population contracted by 20% in affluent Rome, but
probably by twice that in remoter parts of the empire. The former
empires in North Africe were wiped out.

The second one was the onset of the little ice age, followed by
the bulbonic plagues 1348-1680s. Populations contracted by 60% in
Europe north of Hannover, 40% further south.

We don't have recorded history for mainland Europe from further back
than around 1000 BC, so we don't know what happened when the great
warm period around 7000 BC ended. But there were probably so few people
in Europe then that they had space to regroup.

-- mrr
.

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