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536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

sciencemag.org

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Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#291

Post by LukeEF »

indigo945 wrote: post #182
LukeEF wrote: post #166

I don't mean to be too precise, but the article is slightly undermined by the claim in the graphic that the 543 Justinian plague hurried the collapse of the eastern Roman Empire. The 'Eastern' Roman Empire fell in 1453 when the walls of Constantinople were breached by the Ottomans. Very difficult to claim that the Romans fell in the 6th Century. I mean nearly 500 years later Basil is rolling back into Syria on the ba…

The precise date of the fall of the Roman Empire -- and the point where it became Byzantium -- is a subject of debate. There is no unanimous agreement that referring to Constantinople as the Roman Empire is much more useful than, say, calling the Holy Roman Empire "Roman". Whatever your personal views may be on this matter, there indeed are some scholars that date the fall of the Roman Empire on the failure of Justin…

Byzantium is not a thing. Just Frankish propaganda that has enthralled the west for centuries. There is unanimous agreement among all scholars that referring to Constantinople as the Roman Empire is much more useful than calling the Holy Roman Empire "Roman" if "Roman" means the continuous Roman Empire that ruled from Rome and then several other (modern) Italian, French, German and Turkish cities. Certainly not the same as some overblown Frankish warlord calling himself 'Roman Emperor'. Unless you argue that Constantine the Great himself by virtue of setting up the Capital on the Bosporus became non-Roman, it is almost an impossible position to maintain. There is continuity of rule beyond the end of the 6th Century. Asia Minor and much of the East remains under Roman control.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#292

Post by LukeEF »

paganel wrote: post #280
LukeEF wrote: post #166

I don't mean to be too precise, but the article is slightly undermined by the claim in the graphic that the 543 Justinian plague hurried the collapse of the eastern Roman Empire. The 'Eastern' Roman Empire fell in 1453 when the walls of Constantinople were breached by the Ottomans. Very difficult to claim that the Romans fell in the 6th Century. I mean nearly 500 years later Basil is rolling back into Syria on the ba…

Technically you're correct, but IMHO the Eastern Roman Empire fell at the end of the 6th - the beginning of 7th century when the Danube "limes" fell in front of the incoming Slavs and Avars. Yes, there was a renaissance between let's say ~850 and the late 1100s (with the Eastern Roman Empire getting back to the Danube, among other things), but I think that at that point they were actually a Greek empire, nothing Roma…

It was already a Greek speaking Empire by the time of Justinian. The lingua franca of the Empire doesn't, imho, determine continuity. Hellenism and speaking Greek was popular from the time of Hadrian (and before). Marcus Aurelius wrote his meditations in Greek and Emperors before Justinian were more comfortable in Common Greek than Latin. Calling it a Greek empire is falling for a thousand years of Papal and Frankish propaganda. They want it to seem 'other' as they never wanted the (Eastern) Roman Empire to appear legitimate. It is the church in Rome that is other. It broke from the one true Orthodox faith, not the other way around.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#293

Post by LukeEF »

geowwy wrote: post #286
paganel wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically you're correct, but IMHO the Eastern Roman Empire fell at the end of the 6th - the beginning of 7th century when the Danube "limes" fell in front of the incoming Slavs and Avars. Yes, there was a renaissance between let's say ~850 and the late 1100s (with the Eastern Roman Empire getting back to the Danube, among other things), but I think that at that point they were actually a Greek empire, nothing Roma…

It's still the same empire. The Roman Empire was home to many different ethnicities and was ruled at various times by different ethnicities. Latins, Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, etc. Even the Ottomans considered their empire a continuation of the Roman Empire – one of the Sultan's title's was "Caesar of Rome". So you can add Turks to that list too.

This is a really important point - I am reminded of a story of the 'Greek' occupation of 'Rome' in 1912:

On 8 October 1912, the island of Lemnos became part of Greece after being captured from the Ottoman Empire. Peter Charanis, born on the island in 1908 and later a professor of Byzantine history at Rutgers University, recounts when the island was occupied and Greek soldiers stationed themselves in the public squares.

Some of the children ran to see what Greek soldiers looked like. ‘‘What are you looking at?’’ one of them asked.

‘‘At Hellenes,’’ the children replied.

‘‘Are you not Hellenes yourselves?’’ a soldier retorted.

‘‘No, we are Romans."

An identity that had at that point endured for more than 2,600 years. There is nothing that compares to Rome.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#294

Post by ragebol »

mark-r wrote: post #235
Nasrudith wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not too certain of the logic of the arguement - namely because fossil fuels are actually pretty damn advanced in terms of "actual technology and societal infastructure to access and exploit them". We already went through this long ago with surface deposits of copper ore as well essentially millenia ago. Effectively the time when it is useful is "when we don't have cheaper alternatives yet". We still should striv…

Good luck with those "renewable" solar farms when the next eruption happens.

So use that while we can and leave the fossil fuels for when renewable are cut off from the sun. I wonder how much wind there would be under these circumstances though.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#295

Post by carl_dr »

hnuser123456 wrote: post #282
tromp wrote: post #281

I couldn't help but notice an ambiguity in the phrase > Summer temperatures drop by 1.5°C to 2.5°C While I now understand that it means a drop of roughly 2°C plus or minus 0.5°C, my initial reading was that the temperature dropped from 4°C (in the previous Summer) to 2.5°C (in Summer of 536). Is the meaning of "a drop by A to B" always to be inferred from context?

Proposing the following modification to the English language: For your interpretation: "drop by X, to Y" For author's intention: "drop by X-Y"

In the timeline on the page, it uses both uses - "Summer temperatures drop by 1.5°C to 2.5°C" and "Summer temperatures drop again by 1.4°C–2.7°C in Europe".

It took a few reads and an internal debate over whether European summer temperatures could possibly have been 4°C in the 6th century to understand what the author meant.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#296

Post by zajio1am »

runarberg wrote: post #178
SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, UK kept harassing Iceland because of that mess with Icelandic banks. Then suddenly, volcano erupted, airplanes started having difficulties landing in Heathrow, and the harassment suddenly stopped.

12 Years since, and I still don’t understand why the UK went after Iceland for reparations. Landsbanki was a private bank operating in the UK, and one of the owners Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson is still doing business in the UK, and is now among the top 100 billionaires in the UK (even though he caused a 6 billion euro damage that the UK taxpayers paid).

As i understand it:

In EU/EEA there are are bank regulations specifying that banks may operate on a common market under supervision of regulating body where the bank is registered. As Landsbanki UK was branch office and not subsidiary company, it falled under Iceland regulation.

These regulations also require that there is a deposit guarantee scheme for protection of depositors up to 100k EUR, based on country where bank is registered.

So when Landsbanki crashed, all its depositors were entitled to deposit guarantee from Iceland deposit guarantee scheme. But this system cannot handle crash of such size. After that, Iceland government decided to reimburse icelandic depositors, but not offshore depositors (although both have the same claims after icelanding deposit guarantee system, the local ones have political power).

To avoid political windfall, UK (and AFAIK also Dutch) government decides to reimburse their local depositors and get reparation from Iceland based on Iceland government's failure of setup proper deposit guarantee scheme / sufficient regulation, which was condition for allowing its banks access to UK/EU banking market.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#297

Post by ericmay »

perl4ever wrote: post #253
ericmay wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t think it’s “overdue”[0]. I think that’s just a myth in popular culture. [0] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/yellowstone-overdue-eruption-when-...

If experts say we don't have good reason to think an eruption is close, then that sounds eminently reasonable. But that's not the same thing as saying we have good reason to think an eruption is not close. The link in fact says that predictions of an eruption are based on numerology and nobody knows.

What they are saying is we have no reason to think anything - there is effectively no data. Volcanos don’t accumulate magma and pressure at a constant, predictable rate. You should never say we are overdue for an eruption. There is no data to support that.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#298

Post by walleeee »

koheripbal wrote: post #230
walleeee wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Marine cloud brightening has also been proposed. IMO we'll almost certainly see either that or stratospheric aerosols as nations begin to feel the increasing effects of climate change and grow more desperate. Whether it might be uni- or multilateral is also interesting, given the possibly serious effects on e.g. agriculture in "downstream" geographic regions. It's not much of a stretch to imagine it kicking off…

Seems more likely that populations will just move to new stable areas.

I think this will happen, yes, but mass migrations and refugee crises aren't usually a stabilizing force on international relations

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#299

Post by iomind »

"What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says."

Considering when the ERE "fell", the plague did a pretty poor job of hastening it's collapse, no?

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#300

Post by kristjankalm »

restalis wrote: post #204
ardit33 wrote: post #160

Note, that after this period (536-600), there were huge swaths of Europe that was depopulated, and or decimated, and this enabled major migration movements... Eg. After this period, in the early 600's, Slavic tribes migrated south, all the way to Greece/Egean sea, but eventually were pushed back to current/modern areas.... So, these events contributed heavily to even modern borders and some events.... I know, there a…

"indeed, these were some of the darkest/harshest time in our recorded history" I'm still inclined to believe that this is just nowadays optics. The life was very harsh in general for pretty much all but recent history. There were a lot of life risk vectors all around and the capacity to do something about that was modest at most. For us looking back only the major events stand out -- the pandemics like the black deat…

pretty much any metric you could come up with to "measure" civilisation -- literacy, urbanisation, economic output, monetary economy -- went to historic lows.

slightly orthogonal to this, but the original motivation behind the 'dark ages' label was that for large parts of europe there are very few written records for the 5-7th centuries. e.g., we know practically nothing what happened in 5th century england because the only written source -- gildas -- is mostly concerned with pontificating about sinful behaviour in artful ways. even some actual people he mentions in passing get biblically coded nicknames so we have to make wild guesses who's he referring to. and that's our only source for pretty much a century.

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