Opinion by Dr. Tim Ball
History is the devil’s scripture. Lord Byron
The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. Eric Hoffer
History is past politics; and politics present history. John Seeley
The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.” Friedrich Nietzsche
Someone to Blame
The Great Irish Potato famine began in 1845 and had severe social impact for some six years. Historians tell the story in many ways, but most assign blame to a few humans, particularly for failure to deal with the great loss of life and hardships of mass migration. There was a proportionally worse famine in 1741, but that is virtually unknown. Did the 1845 event get more attention because it provided a point of attack for the social atmosphere of the time? Some attributed overall weather conditions and harvest failures for the social unrest that gave rise to Marxism: 1848 is known as the “Year of Revolutions”.
The years 1848 and 2011 both followed poor harvests, a spike in food prices and an industrial recession. What we remember as the Irish Potato Famine was in fact a blight that struck the whole of Western Europe between 1845 and 1846. This was compounded by a devastatingly bad harvest in the latter year. It was impossible to meet the demand of a vastly increased population.
The same environment engendered the ideas of Malthus (Six Essays on population published between 1798 and 1826) and Darwin (Origin of Species published 1859). The quote indicates that parallels are already being made between then (1848) and now (2011). David Archibald posed a similar question in his article, “Two years to a 1740-type event? Will those using global warming for a political agenda switch to the threat of famine due to drought? Will the blame shift from, the rich and powerful causing the event, to their failure to deal with the crisis?
History shows that leadership reaction to crisis is always inadequate. Any chance of a better reaction is in a better understanding of the cause of the crisis – in this case, weather mechanisms. Government’ preparing for warming when cooling is the trend, has already reduced the chances of proper reaction. There is good news; technology has vastly improved our ability to recover after the events.
What caused the failure of the potato crop in 1845? What were the weather conditions for both events? What weather and climate lessons are in the two events? Archibald references Briffa and Jones (2006) conclusion that “climate might vary more than is commonly accepted.” An interesting conclusion, considering they were very involved at the time in the “hockey stick” claim of very low variability for some 600 years.
Food Supply
Hunger is one word that can summarize human history. People were almost always hungry or starving. It is still true for too much of the world, but completely unnecessary. Malthus misdirected the focus with his claim that population growth would exceed increases in food production. The Club of Rome and its offspring, Agenda 21, perpetuate and expand the misdirection by claiming overpopulation is overusing, abusing and causing shortage of all resources.
The world is not overpopulated. There is no shortage of food. It’s estimated we produce enough every year to feed 26 billion people. However, thanks to Malthus and neo-Malthusians, we ignore the real problems that are adequate storage and effective distribution.
Storage
Once we switched from hunter/gatherer to sedentary agriculture, the ability to store food over the non-growing season became a force for invention and innovation. Just one example was the entire spice industry, primarily used to preserve and make food palatable. It drove commerce for buyer and seller across the world. As one person wrote,
In its day, the spice trade was the world’s biggest industry: it established and destroyed empires, led to the discovery of new continents, and in many ways helped lay the foundation for the modern world.
Estimates vary, but about 60-70 percent of the food grown in developing nations never makes it to the table. The figure is 30-40 percent for the developed world. Most of the difference is due to refrigeration. Maybe a measure of how little knowledge or importance is applied to these facts, is that few know the name Clarence Birdseye II. Refrigeration also helped the distribution problems, especially when it combined with containerization.
Modern container shipping celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2006. Almost from the first voyage, use of this method of transport for goods grew steadily and in just five decades, containerships would carry about 60% of the value of goods shipped via sea.
Some crops were adopted and adapted for their relative ease of production and storage. These characteristics were well known about the potato in South America and gave its appearance in Europe such an impact. It is likely that the cool damp conditions of the Little Ice Age (LIA) pushed grain prices up, providing an opportunity for rapid adoption of the potato. Libby’s study of grain prices for four European countries illustrates the jump.
Figure 1.
Source: H.H Lamb, Climate, Past, Present and future, Vol.2. 1977.
The peasants could achieve a great yield in poor soil and store them for the entire winter. Ireland adopted and became more dependent on the potato than most other countries. It likely caused the surge in population as the census figures show.
1821: 6,801,827
1831: 7,767,401
1841: 8,175,124
The population declined to 6.6 million by 1851. The pattern of population for the Republic is shown in Figure 2.
There were famines again in 1877-78, 1885 and 1889-90 that are reflected in the increased decline of population in Figure 2.
The famine of 1740-41 is described on the cover of the book Arctic Ireland as,
“…more intense, more bizarre and proportionately more deadly, yet most history books acknowledge it with no more than a line or two in passing.”
The book is subtitled, “The extraordinary story of the GREAT FROST and FORGOTTEN FAMINE of 1740-41”, which underscores the different weather conditions of the 1740 and 1845 famines. In 1845, the weather did not directly kill people; rather, the cool damp conditions were favorable for the potato blight. Overdependence on a single crop made the people vulnerable. Other countries, like Norway, also suffered the potato blight, but were not as dependent. The Irish Potato famine was coincident with poor crop conditions throughout Europe. The 1840s are called the “the Hungry Forties” as cool wet summers combined with moderate wet winters. The combination causes harvest failures and malnourished people who are vulnerable to diseases that survive and even flourish through the winter. These conditions are similar to those predominant in the 14th century that Barbara Tuchman documented so well in her book a Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.
In 1740 the world was just emerging from the nadir of the Little Ice Age in the 1680s. As the author David Dickson notes,
On the eve of the crisis there had perhaps been some complacency as to the power of exceptional whether to upset normal life. Winters had been relatively benign over the previous thirty years. No one, not even those with distant memories of the terrible winters of the 1680s, was prepared for what became known as the Great Frost of 1740 or for “bliain an dir” the year of slaughter of 1741.
The 1740 weather illustrates what happens when events combine. We organized the conference on the impact of the Indonesian volcano Tambora[1] because John Eddy’s work on temperature sunspot relations and Hubert Lamb’s work on the Dust Veil Index were raising questions about cause and effect. Temperatures were already declining from the solar activity associated with the Dalton Minimum (1790-1830) when Tambora erupted.
It appears the cold trend of the Little Ice Age was turning. Volcanic activity, particular the eruption of Ichinsky in Kamchatka, triggered the Great Frost of 1741. Dickson claims,
Indeed, the time of the Great Frost remains to this day the longest period of extreme cold in modern European history.
This claim appears to depend on the definition of “modern European history”. The Central England Temperature (Figure 3) shows the cold of 1740 and a prolonged cold spell that exceeds anything after 1900. In the commentary to the Archibald article there is reference to blocking, the pattern that causes the normal west to east movement of the Rossby Waves to slow down and the Waves to deepen. This results in extreme, prolonged temperature or precipitation patterns that cause problems and is most likely the explanation as other similar events indicate.
Cynthia Wilson and I organized a workshop for the 1816 conference. We created very large global maps and asked people to indicate the temperature and precipitation patterns for their region. Using simple symbols for very high normal and very low, a distinctive map emerged that showed the extreme meridionality of the Circumpolar Vortex. (The maps are included in the published proceedings.) The pattern of wind was significantly different in direction and force. Similar changes in wind were noted in 1740. In Scotland the January wind was described as a piercing Nova Zembla (Novaya Zemlya) air” This means it was coming form the northeast, probably as part of the Polar Easterlies (Figure 4).
Figure 3
The pattern of deaths was different in 1741 than 1845. Most early deaths were due to the extreme cold, followed by a growing number due to starvation. Records are scarce but Dickson says,
How does 1740-41 measure up again later, more famous, Great Irish Famine? In terms of relative casualties, the older crisis was undoubtedly the more severe, even taking the lower bound estimate of 310,000 fatalities in 1740-41.
More important, these deaths occurred in a relatively short year and a half, while 1845 lasted some six years.
Discussion
Both time 1741 and 1845 experienced meridional conditions as the Rossby Waves deepened and slowed in their easterly migration. Generally, with zonal flow or even low amplitude meridional flow, mid-latitude weather patterns persist
Figure 4
approximately 4 to 6 weeks. As meridionality intensifies, Rossby Waves deepen and blocking occurs, causing weather patterns to persist for 8, 10 or even 12 weeks. This can cover entire growing seasons and result in excessive, damaging, hot, cold, wet or dry conditions.
Various permutations can occur. For example, in the 14th century there were long periods with cool and wet summers, with warm and wet winters – it was difficult to separate the seasons. Similar conditions occurred during the 17th century and again plagues devastated populations. During the period following Tambora, extreme meridionality caused prolonged conditions. A drought in central Canada, documented in detail by Peter Fidler, stressed the people with profound social and historical impact detailed in my 1992 paper, “Climatic Change, Droughts and Their Social Impact: Central Canada, 1811-20, a classic example”. It was also the theme of a public presentation at the Museum titled, “The Year without a Summer: Its Impact on the Fur Trade and History of Western Canada.” at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa. As usual, historians attributed the social impacts solely to colonial expansion.
It is the same pattern seen in reports of the 2011 uprising in Egypt that became “the Arab Spring”. The catalyst was dramatic increases in food prices. At best, these got secondary mention by a few reports.
Then, there is a secondary problem: a huge run-up in food costs in recent months. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the worldwide food price index is at an all-time high—surpassing its 2008 peak, when skyrocketing costs caused global rioting and pushed as many as 64 million people into poverty. The price of oils, sugar, and cereals have all recently hit new peaks—and those latter prices are especially troubling for Egypt, as the world’s biggest importer of wheat.
So the media, like historians, are telling stories, with bias, misinformation and the arrogant belief that humans are not environmentally or climatically determined. As Benjamin Bradlee said, ”News is the first rough draft of history.” Regardless, they are both driven by the need to blame someone, rather than something. Until we change that the chances of understanding and reacting properly to natural events is very unlikely.
[1] C.R.Harington (ed) The Year Without a Summer? World Climate in 1816. 1992, National Museum of Natural Sciences, Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa.
TheLastDemocrat
The usual myths and stories are being expressed here about the Irish potato famine. Look there was great indifference shown by the British to the famine as they showed toward the English during their Corn Laws fueled starvation. Furthermore the Western Highlands of Scotland suffered similarly from potato blight and had almost identical economy and dependency on the potato as Ireland; but only a very small number starved – why? Because the rich Scottish in the cities gave money to feed, cloth the starving and help with rent. The same was tried in Ireland but the well-off in Ireland (Protestant anx Catholic alike) turned their backs on their poor and fellow countrymen.
Stephen Richards says: “Now is not one of those eras. Name one leader capable of turning our current very tenuous position on energy.”
Too easy. I’ll name two: Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper and Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott. Want a third? Vlad Putin. What do you think his energy strategy is? Simple: build nuclear reactors for domestic electricity production and export as much oil and gas as possible for cold, hard cash. And it should be no surprise that these are three countries which currently have no truck with UNFCCC global dominance fantasies.
Uncle Vlad may be a bit (or a lot) of a political monster, but no one can seriously doubt the soundness of his energy policies.
But for you lot in Britain and the US, indeed, you’ve got a “potato blight” of leadership right now. Trying to get coherent energy policy out of the current White House is like trying to push string or nail Jello to a wall. But just because these countries are badly governed, it’s not correct to assume that everyone else is.
Winston Churchill said it best, “You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, after trying all the wrong things.”
As for your other remark about the scientific status of tree rings being baffling, that’s easy too. Tree rings offered data which could be tortured into producing the answers that Phil Jones et.al. wanted. Never underestimate the power of confirmation bias.
Skeptical_about_spuds says:
August 21, 2014 at 5:49 am
However, in 1922 they got carte blanche to run their affairs on their own, get their kids sodomised or impregnated by perverted priests and run their own grand civil war.
==========
Glass half empty kinda person aren’t ya.
Brute,
Here is a chart of population density verses arable acre of land in the countries of the world. You are correct, Morocco is 158 however, Egypt is 38, UAE is16, Oman is 8 and Qutar is 21. Without electricity what’s the most fun poor people can have at night? Your right again, and that will exacerbate their food problem.
It’s all our fault, and we must act now.
Skeptical_about_spuds says:
August 21, 2014 at 5:49 am
No, they didn’t all die. David Ross estimates that about a million Irish died, while another million emigrated. Christine Kinealy shows that the island’s population fell by 20 to 25% during the famine.
Also, see Henry George’s careful writing on Malthus, population, and future food supply “Progress and Poverty” (1879).
The elephant in the room here is not climate, but the Catholic Church.
It was Catholic doctrine that allowed the Irish population to climb to 8 million, twice the current level. And the social structure of Catholicism favoured the expansion of peasantry, rather than large productive landowners, to provide more foot-soldiers for the creed, and more shekels in the collecting plates (just like modern South America, where Catholicism, poverty and overpopulation again go hand in hand).
The combination of high population and inefficient peasantry farming was a recipe for disaster. And unlike the desperate claims of richard courtney et al, Malthus does rule, especially in 19 century Ireland. Yes, populations can and do sometimes outstrip their raw materials and productivity, causing populations to crash – it has happened to many civilisations and cultures.
But just like Palestinians, the Irish have always sought to blame others for their woes – normally the English. Their overpopulation of a small unproductive land, had nothing to do with it, apparently.
It is like the irish version of the Battle of the Boyne – which is portrayed as an English invasion of Ireland. But the battle was actually between an English king and his French army, and a Dutch king and his Anglo-Dutch army. The battle had f all to do with Ireland, bar it being fought on Irish soil. The Battle of the Boyne was actually a battle between the Catholic Louis XIV of France and his English vassal prince-king, and the Protestant confederation of the League of Augsburg, led by a Dutch king.
Ralph
The population of Britain grew about as rapidly as did Ireland’s after weather-related famine of 1740–41 caused the death of a third of the population in some areas. Despite this calamity, Irish population doubled from about 2.5 million in 1700 to 5 million in 1800, then around 8 million by 1848.
One important difference was the British Agricultural Revolution, which didn’t take hold to the same extent in Ireland. Among the reasons for this failure to modernize was the Irish tradition of subdividing family farms in each generation until the only crop which could sustain a family on such a small plot was the potato.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution
In Britain, the ag revolution was followed by the Industrial Revolution, making work for the growing landless rural population.
ralfellis:
Thankyou for the laugh you gave me in your post at August 21, 2014 at 12:01 pm where you write.
I make no “desperate claims” but I do point out that Malthus was plain wrong.
The potato famine was a result of a disease which destroyed the staple food combined with political incompetence in 19 century Ireland. It provided a local and temporary shortage of food: i.e. a famine.
Famines have often happened and they always will. The Irish were not obliterated by the potato famine but they did form a diaspora. The Irish population has recovered in Ireland to now be far more than Ireland’s population in the 19 century, and nobody is now starving in Ireland. The idea that Irish civilisation and culture crashed is ridiculous (as can be witnessed by any who have attended River Dance).
Simply, the Irish potato famine is an example of Malthus being plain wrong.
In case there are any reading this who are not aware of how and why Malthus was plain wrong, I again explain it as a postscript to this post.
Richard
POSTSCRIPT: HOW AND WHY MALTHUS WAS AND IS WRONG
The fallacy of overpopulation derives from the disproved Malthusian idea which wrongly assumes that humans are constrained like bacteria in a Petri dish: i.e. population expands until available resources are consumed when population collapses. The assumption is wrong because humans do not suffer such constraint: humans find and/or create new and alternative resources when existing resources become scarce.
The obvious example is food.
In the 1970s the Club of Rome predicted that human population would have collapsed from starvation by now. But human population has continued to rise and there are fewer starving people now than in the 1970s; n.b. there are less starving people in total and not merely fewer in in percentage.
Now, the most common Malthusian assertion is ‘peak oil’. But humans need energy supply and oil is only one source of energy supply. Adoption of natural gas displaces some requirement for oil, fracking increases available oil supply at acceptable cost; etc..
In the real world, for all practical purposes there are no “physical” limits to natural resources so every natural resource can be considered to be infinite; i.e. the human ‘Petri dish’ can be considered as being unbounded. This a matter of basic economics which I explain as follows.
Humans do not run out of anything although they can suffer local and/or temporary shortages of anything. The usage of a resource may “peak” then decline, but the usage does not peak because of exhaustion of the resource (e.g. flint, antler bone and bronze each “peaked” long ago but still exist in large amounts).
A resource is cheap (in time, money and effort) to obtain when it is in abundant supply. But “low-hanging fruit are picked first”, so the cost of obtaining the resource increases with time. Nobody bothers to seek an alternative to a resource when it is cheap.
But the cost of obtaining an adequate supply of a resource increases with time and, eventually, it becomes worthwhile to look for
(a) alternative sources of the resource
and
(b) alternatives to the resource.
And alternatives to the resource often prove to have advantages.
For example, both (a) and (b) apply in the case of crude oil.
Many alternative sources have been found. These include opening of new oil fields by use of new technologies (e.g. to obtain oil from beneath sea bed) and synthesising crude oil from other substances (e.g. tar sands, natural gas and coal). Indeed, since 1994 it has been possible to provide synthetic crude oil from coal at competitive cost with natural crude oil and this constrains the maximum true cost of crude.
Alternatives to oil as a transport fuel are possible. Oil was the transport fuel of military submarines for decades but uranium is now their fuel of choice.
There is sufficient coal to provide synthetic crude oil for at least the next 300 years. Hay to feed horses was the major transport fuel 300 years ago and ‘peak hay’ was feared in the nineteenth century, but availability of hay is not a significant consideration for transportation today. Nobody can know what – if any – demand for crude oil will exist 300 years in the future.
Indeed, coal also demonstrates an ‘expanding Petri dish’.
Spoil heaps from old coal mines contain much coal that could not be usefully extracted from the spoil when the mines were operational. Now, modern technology enables the extraction from the spoil at a cost which is economic now and would have been economic if it had been available when the spoil was dumped.
These principles not only enable growing human population: they also increase human well-being.
The ingenuity which increases availability of resources also provides additional usefulness to the resources. For example, abundant energy supply and technologies to use it have freed people from the constraints of ‘renewable’ energy and the need for the power of muscles provided by slaves and animals. Malthusians are blind to the obvious truth that human ingenuity has freed humans from the need for slaves to operate treadmills, the oars of galleys, etc..
And these benefits also act to prevent overpopulation because population growth declines with affluence.
There are several reasons for this. Of most importance is that poor people need large families as ‘insurance’ to care for them at times of illness and old age. Affluent people can pay for that ‘insurance’ so do not need the costs of large families.
The result is that the indigenous populations of rich countries decline. But rich countries need to sustain population growth for economic growth so they need to import – and are importing – people from poor countries. Increased affluence in poor countries can be expected to reduce their population growth with resulting lack of people for import by rich countries.
Hence, the real foreseeable problem is population decrease; n.b. not population increase.
All projections and predictions indicate that human population will peak around the middle of this century and decline after that. So, we are confronted by the probability of ‘peak population’ resulting from growth of affluence around the world.
The Malthusian idea is wrong because it ignores basic economics and applies a wrong model; human population is NOT constrained by resources like the population of bacteria in a Petri dish. There is no existing or probable problem of overpopulation of the world by humans.
@cc Squid
Your “chart” did not appear. However, put that “chart” together with one with data from a few decades back. It might give you an idea of what development looks like.
And, if you actually care to really look into it, the quality of live in any of those places has done nothing but improve (as has in the rest of the world) except in those regions where your endearing desire for war has met with success (fewer and fewer to your dismay).
Take a look at the data below on how the world is actually changing and please don’t hesitate to comment again:
http://www.ourworldindata.org/
richardscourtney says:
August 21, 2014 at 12:54 pm
The Irish population has recovered in Ireland to now be far more than Ireland’s population in the 19 century, and nobody is now starving in Ireland.
———————–
Nope.
Population of Ireland in 1841: over eight million.
Population of Ireland in 2014: ~6.4 million (~4.6 M in RoI + ~1.8 M in NI).
sturgishooper:
re your post at August 21, 2014 at 1:47 pm.
Yes. I stand corrected. Thankyou.
However, my salient point remains true. Nobody is starving in Ireland and the Irish diaspora happened; indeed, there are ~7 times as many American Irish than there are people in Ireland. Hence, Malthus was wrong.
Richard
ralfellis
August 21, 2014 at 12:01 pm
Your post is one of conjecture built on good solid conspiracy.
As has been pointed out to you by others the Irish famine as with most other famines are caused by a combination of misfortune and the inadequate distribution of resources.
richardscourtney says:
August 21, 2014 at 1:58 pm
True. Malthus didn’t appreciate the productive power of capitalism to create wealth.
sturgishooper says:
August 21, 2014 at 3:41 pm inre: rsc says: August 21, 2014 at 1:58 pm
“True. Malthus didn’t appreciate the productive power of capitalism to create wealth.”
The problem with communal property and centrally planned farming is that it makes innovation impossible.
Innovation and a wide variety of practices, animals, and crops requires private property and the ability to benefit privately from commercial activity. Change of any kind is prevented by the systems of collectivism, starting with Plato and Sparta.
Brute,
Check out this document you referenced with specific attention to the 2014 to 2100 data.
http://www.ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/
Then checkpoint this page out,
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2002/FindingtheBalancePopulationandWaterScarcityintheMiddleEastandNorthAfrica.aspx
Balancing Water Scarcity and Human Demand
MENA countries have increasingly been adopting new strategies for balancing their scarce water resources and growing demand for fresh water, although their options may be dictated by a number of different factors. For example, low-income countries, such as Yemen, would not be able to purchase the high-tech equipment available to high-income countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Even for high-income countries, purely technological solutions relieve only some of the demand for water. In the long term, slowing population growth in the region and creating effective policies and programs for improved water management are key to the region’s sustainable development.
I recommend that you read AND think about the two references. Water is scarce in the mid-east and the further a country is from the sea the more vulnerable that country is.
Your reference to my desire for “war” is obviously a projection of your own “feelings”. Robert Heinlein describes my feelings best about an ongoing discussion with you, “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.”
Best Regards
Zeke says:
August 21, 2014 at 6:03 pm
A big part of the 18th century British Agricultural Revolution was increased innovation from more capital intensive farming.
@cc Squid
It is you who brought war into the conversation. From the very start.
It is also you who prefers future projections over yesterday’s and today’s data.
This preference for hypothesis over reality seems to lead you to your first and only conclusion, namely, a desire for war. Consider, after all, that if your beliefs regarding possible scarcities in a hypothetical future were to be psychologically healthy, you would not be talking of war, you would be talking of work.
The truth is that your predilection for certain beliefs about potential scarcities in a hypothetical future manifests a desire for certain possible outcomes and, by your own words, you have no room for anything other than war.
I suggest you stop fantasizing about inexistent conflicts over yet to occur (if ever) scarcities and rather contribute productively to the betterment of our fellow humans. So far, scarcities have become fewer and fewer, thanks to hard working people and despite the warmongering ones. Based on the available evidence, the more likely probability is that we will defeat your lot every time even if you yourself continue to choose conflict over labor. But I want to encourage you to make the sane choice.
sturgishooper and Zeke:
I am replying to both of you in this one post because my answer is a single response to each of you. I intend no insult by providing the one response.
sturgishooper at August 21, 2014 at 3:41 pm you say to me
and Zeke adds to that at August 21, 2014 at 6:03 pm saying
Actually, as I explained in the postscript of my post at August 21, 2014 at 12:54 pm which is here
Innovation does release the constraints which Malthusians assume constrain resources, and I explained that.
Also, the removal of resource constraints permits the obtaining otherwise unobtainable wealth, and I explained that. But, and importantly, innovation – not the political system – provides the potential for acquiring the wealth of additional useful resources.
Therefore, it is reasonable to discuss methods which most enable and least inhibit the finding and adoption of innovation. One of those methods will always be the political system. But it is very arguable as to whether the adopted political philosophy is a significant promoter or inhibitor of innovation. Anecdotal evidence can be presented to support the idea that any political philosophy supports or inhibits creation and adoption of innovation.
For example, Hero of Alexandria invented a steam engine nearly 2000 years ago (and many other ‘modern’ devices) and it is described here, but it was only used as a toy. The societal reasons for this were related to the basic (slave owning) structure of that society. Those reasons had nothing to do with “capitalism” and/or “communal property and centrally planned farming” which did not exist.
Richard
What caused the failure of the potato crop in 1845? What were the weather conditions for both events? What weather and climate lessons are in the two events? Archibald references Briffa and Jones (2006) conclusion that “climate might vary more than is commonly accepted.” An interesting conclusion, considering they were very involved at the time in the “hockey stick” claim of very low variability for some 600 years.
There is little doubt that cooling and the spread of blight has a profound effect on the failure of the Irish crop. But it is important to note that there were other important factors that made Ireland particularly vulnerable that most people keep ignoring. The Irish suffered from a number of famines under English rule. The harmful effect was cumulative and the final knockout punch was finally delivered in 1845 as the weakened Irish tenant farmer had no way to protect his family from ruin.
The land in Ireland was owned by absentee Englishmen who used tenant farmers that were given no right to ownership over improvements that they made. Since the English Corn Laws protected the English absentee landlords from competition they got rich but the Irish did not. The typical farmer grew potatoes that they fed their families and animals. (A diet that consisted of oatmeal, potatoes, and buttermilk provides all of the essential nutrients necessary for a human being.) Since potatoes did not deplete the soil of nutrients the landlords benefited. That allowed a bigger portion of the estate to be planted with grain that would be destined for export to English markets. The higher prices encouraged the cultivation of additional farmland and that increased the demand for Irish labour. When prices for grains crashed after the Corn Laws were repealed the Irish began to starve because the population could not be maintained due to the collapse of output and demand for labour.
My point, and assure you that there is one, is that if people have property rights they will adjust to all kinds of changes that affect their daily lives. But if they have no such rights and have to do what government bureaucrats want the damage will be much greater and the recovery would take much longer. If we are serious about climate issues we have to argue that all governments need to lose their power to meddle in the economy and regulate voluntary economic and social transactions.
cd says: August 21, 2014 at 2:00 pm
As has been pointed out to you by others the Irish famine as with most other famines are caused by a combination of misfortune and the inadequate distribution of resources.
_______________________________
The misfortune was self-inflicted. The population rose to unsustainable proportions, due to a Dark Age creed, and the wealth distribution through the generations favoured dividing fields into hopelessly uneconomic plots. that is not misfortune, that is stupidity.
In England, we had Primogeniture, to ensure the property was not divided. Bleating liberals will say this system promoted a poor working class or even serfdom. But do you want a working class, or starvation? History demonstrates that the English social system worked, while the Irish system was an abject failure.
Ralph
richardscourtney says: August 22, 2014 at 1:02
The Malthusian idea is wrong because it ignores basic economics and applies a wrong model; Human population is NOT constrained by resources like the population of bacteria in a Petri dish. There is no existing or probable problem of overpopulation of the world by humans.
___________________________________
As usual, Richard, you are so wrong it is almost funny. How can you not see the illogicality of your pontification?
The irish population WAS constricted by (food) resources, just like bacteria in a petri dish. The food supply ran low, and the population halved – just as bacteria in a petri dish would. The population only recovered when new techniques increased the food supply in later centuries.
And your assertion that many irish exiled themselves to America, and so Malthus was wrong, is simply an absurd distraction. The fact remains that the Irish petri-dish was decimated – the population halved. The observation that some people found another petri-dish in another location is completely irrelevant, because bacteria can and do do exactly the same thing when a food supply runs low – they find another food source elsewhere.
And you fail to recognise and admit that human populations have stripped their resources and experienced population crashes throughout history. The fact that we have now developed new techniques to bolster our resources is simply 20:20 hindsight. There was no guarantee that would develop these new techniques, and mankind could easily have slipped back to the Stone Age.
And if you look at the world from space, you will clearly see that Malthus was right, and we are merely bacteria on the face of the Earth. The lights of cities and civilisations spread and blossom, and then they fade and die, as the centuries and millennia pass. Bacteria, crawling over the face of the Earth, no more, no less.
Ralph
rsc, I would rather turn our attention to how western civilization got out of the circumstances which led to events like the Potato Famine, rather than how Europe got into it. The discussion will be enormously helpful because there is a very present danger of repeating the conditions which will lead to famine. Today, potato production in the US and Europe is in the billions of pounds because of Fungicides. And as long as the European Union, a centrally planned economy, is not permitted to ban the use of Fungicides, then there is not likely to be a problem with late blight.
The only scientist I like any more: Leonard Gianessi on the use of fungicides:
Repeat of Irish Potato Famine Unlikely Thanks to Fungicides
Posted on November 23, 2012
The pathogen Phytophtera infestans causes a disease of potatoes called “late blight”. The pathogen grows in potato plants, breaking down cell walls so that it can use the nutrients found within them. Severely infected plants have an acrid odor which is the result of dying plant tissue. In the 1800s, Irish peasants subsisted almost entirely on potatoes. The late blight fungus arrived in 1845 and destroyed 40% of the Irish crop. In 1846, 100% of the crop was destroyed. Over 1.5 million Irish died of famine and a comparable number emigrated to America and other countries. Today, the fungus is still present in Ireland and would destroy the crop again if not for fungicides.
“Without the routine use of fungicides, large-scale commercial potato production in Ireland would be impossible. The cool, damp climate, which favours the cultivation of the potato and limits problems with virus diseases, is also ideal for the spread of blight. … In warm, wet weather when the humidity is high, P. infestans will lay waste an unprotected crop. … To prevent such devastating losses, the potato industry in Ireland has long been reliant on a substantial annual usage of fungicides.”
Zeke:
I agree all you say in your post at August 22, 2014 at 11:34 am which is addressed to me.
Also, I point out that it is a complete rebuttal to the ridiculous nonsense from ralfellis at August 22, 2014 at 10:54 am.
I think it interesting that – from opposite ends of the sane political spectrum – you and I agree the importance of human ingenuity and the methods to ensure ability to obtain its benefits, but ralfellis thinks these matters are insoluble.
Richard