My erudite friend Bryan Cook penned this guest post, reflecting on the happenstances that bring us to where we are and those of the future, especially volcanism.
Reflections
from the Gloom and Doom Sandwich Man
This Season of Giving and Hope, I reflect
on how lucky those of us with Anglo-Celtic roots are to exist. Whether by a
genetic resilience, fortune or immigration, voluntary or enforced, we are the
descendants of those who survived the major famines and plagues which
devastated the British Isles since the last Ice Age. Doubtless many branches of
our family trees have been lost to such radical pruning!
This is not to downplay the cumulative losses
in childbirth, to diseases from poor sanitation and to war, which certainly
exceed the pandemics such as the Black Death which alone culled the global
population from some 450 million down to 350-375 million in the 14th
century (between 30% and 60% of Europe’s population).
Between about 1005 AD and 1879, 15 famines
killed many millions in England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland due to blights afflicting
mono-cultures of non-native food crops, notably the potato, to agricultural
mismanagement and to seemingly cyclical poor harvests of crops and livestock
struck by inclement weather at critical seasons. Some of these famines were
severe enough to reshape agrarian landscapes throughout the British Isles. In the
subsequent centuries, the Isles have been famine free, due to the progress of
preventive and ameliorative science, transportation and international trade.
However, we are not immune from one Sword of Damocles, volcanism.
1258 AD was described by medieval
chroniclers as a “the year without a summer”. It was unseasonably cold with poor
harvests devastated by heavy floods. Thousands perished from famine and
consequent diseases to be buried without record in mass graves. The Samalas
volcano on Indonesia’s Lombok Island had ejected a 25 mile-high plume of dust
and sulphur dioxide which blocked sunlight and dramatically cooled the planet.
This dwarfed by an order of magnitude the eruptions of Krakatau in
1883 and Tambora in 1815. But was itself much smaller than the eruption of the
super-volcano Campi Flegrei in the boot-arch of Italy. Some 40,000 years ago,
it blasted 250 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere,
resulting in acid rain and cooler temperatures across of Europe, Asia, and even
parts of North America, likely giving the coup-de-grace to the last sparse
Neanderthal communities.
The scientific jury is hung when it comes
to predicting the next super volcanic event, the geological variables are
complex and estimates range in the tens to hundreds of thousands of years. But
this does not rule out one happening within the next century. It is reported that
there are at least 10 candidates globally which include the Campi Flegrei
(South Italy) and Yellowstone (Wyoming) calderas. The geologic record attests
to these having potentials to cast Euro-Asia, the Middle East and North
America, including parts of Canada, into a decade of perpetual solar winter and
mass extinction against which all the consequences of anthropocentric and
naturally-induced climate change will pale.
There will be seismically recorded warning
periods of perhaps decades; however it is doubtful that global safety nets will
be established due to costs and national self-interests. Global political power
will shift to nations or territories which are relatively unscathed which would
include Africa, China, India, Scandinavia, South America, Australia and
northern elements of the former USSR. I suspect that our world will go on with
business-as-usual until this inevitability happens, though we may well have
destroyed ourselves by some other means, been hit by an “extinction” meteorite
or be in some state of advanced artificial intelligence by then!
3 comments:
Excellent Bryan. I think the most amazing thing about my family history is that any of them actually survived what I know they went through ....... in rural Essex during an agricultural downturn which forced them into a city for the first time, in the east end slums of London, to another slum in Battersea, in the nasty mines of Ayrshire, in a one room 10 square foot charity cottage in a tiny village in Oxfordshire, to Malta with the army, to India and back many years later, etc etc. etc. Cheers, BT
Bryan, we have been talking about this since we stopped in Iceland on our way back from Spain in November considering that their Bárðarbunga volcano is showing signs of erupting! I am always amazed and grateful that somehow my ancestors survived the famines, plagues, volcanos and diseases that wiped out so many. Our time on this planet is to be celebrated until the darkness comes! Thanks for a great article - Les
Well, to paraphrase Max Quordlepleen from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"I think it's wonderful how all you family researchers strive to make better family history societies and struggle to get your pedigrees and timelines right. It gives one hope for the future of lifekind.
"Except, of course, we know it hasn't got one."
Happy New Year to you guys, too. Geeeeeez.
Post a Comment