Pirate's Cove

Climate hysteric Michael Smith at Slate, which, not that long ago, wasn’t an unhinged leftist outlet, asks a question

What Can Ancient Cities Teach Us About Surviving Climate Change?

I’m betting the answer is “climatic changes, both through warm and cool periods, was primarily caused by nature, just like today.” Because that’s what is at the heart of this. All these civilizations were impacted by natural climatic changes

Aztec Tenochtitlan began as a damp town in the middle of a swamp, but it managed to thrive across conquests, epidemics, droughts and floods to become one of the largest cities in the world today—Mexico City. When taking students to see the Aztec ruins next to the Zocalo, I used to wonder how places like Tenochtitlan, Beijing, or Rome (the “eternal city”) managed to thrive for centuries, while other cities failed.

In my archaeological fieldwork, I have encountered far more failed urban sites than cities that survived for centuries. It is now time to examine these early cities to learn how some of them adapted successfully to stresses and shocks, while others did not. Perhaps this knowledge can inform current work on urban adaptations to climate change. Researchers have identified a “knowledge gap” between what we need to know about planning cities for the future and we do know. The cities of the past can help fill that gap.

Hey, you know what really ended the Aztecs?

The tide began to turn, though, when the Aztecs were heavily defeated by the Tlaxcala and Huexotzingo in 1515. With the arrival of the Spanish, some of these rebel states would again seize the opportunity to gain their independence. When the conquistadors finally did arrive from the Old World sailing their floating palaces and led by Hernán Cortés, their initial relations with the leader of the Aztecs, Motecuhzoma II, were friendly and valuable gifts were exchanged. Things turned sour, though, when a small group of Spanish soldiers were killed at Tenochtitlan while Cortés was away at Veracruz. The Aztec warriors, unhappy at Motecuhzoma’s passivity, overthrew him and set Cuitlahuac as the new tlatoani. This incident was just what Cortés needed and he returned to the city to relieve the besieged remaining Spanish but was forced to withdraw on 30 June 1520 in what became known as the Noche Triste. Gathering local allies Cortés returned ten months later and in 1521 he laid siege to the city. Lacking food and ravaged by disease, the Aztecs, now led by Cuauhtemoc, finally collapsed on the fateful day of 13 August 1521.

That’s the condensed version. If they want to throw climate in, well, this was during the Little Ice Age. Back to the article

Historians and archaeologists have already started to weigh in on climate change adaptations. One popular genre is stories about disasters like the Classic Maya collapse (think Jared Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse, or The Next Apocalypse, by Chris Begley, 2021). While ancient catastrophes make good reading, such stories are both too complicated and too limited to draw firm conclusions. They promote a biased view of ancient societies. People wonder what was wrong with Maya cities: Why did they collapse? Yet those same cities flourished for many centuries, far longer than any city in the U.S. has yet endured.

The Mayans actually did well during the Dark Ages, but, started collapsing at the end, before the Medieval Warm period started around 950 AD (this was their Classic Period). The Post-Classic Period occurred during the Medieval Warm period, and was already a reduced civilization. And, surprise, it was all natural. Anyhow, blah blah blah, doom from climate, we need to adapt, and, unintentionally makes the case for mostly natural climate change.

Read: Ancient Civilizations Can Teach Us How To Survive Climate Apocalypse Or Something »

The models are wrong? Who knew? Of course, that doesn’t mean the climate cult will rethink what’s happening, oh, no

The Arctic Ocean began warming decades earlier than previously thought, new research shows

The Arctic Ocean has been warming since the onset of the 20th century, decades earlier than instrument observations would suggest, according to new research.

The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, found that the expansion of warm Atlantic Ocean water flowing into the Arctic, a phenomenon known as “Atlantification,” has caused Arctic water temperature in the region studied to increase by around 2 degrees Celsius since 1900.

Francesco Muschitiello, an author on the study and assistant professor of geography at the University of Cambridge, said the findings were worrisome because the early warming suggests there might be a flaw in the models scientists use to predict how the climate will change.

“The Arctic Ocean has been warming up for much longer than we previously thought,” Muschitiello told CNN. “And this is something that’s a bit unsettling for many reasons, especially because the climate models that we use to cast projections of future climate change do not really simulate these type of changes.”

Ya think?

Researchers found temperature and salinity, the saltiness of ocean water (where the Atlantic meets the Arctic), remained fairly constant up until the 20th century — then they suddenly increased.

“The reconstructions suggest a substantial increase in the Atlantic Ocean heat and salt transport into the Nordic Sea at the beginning of the 20th century, which is not well simulated by (climate models),” Rong Zhang, a senior scientist at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, who was not involved with the study, told CNN. “It’s important to understand the cause of this rapid Atlantification, as well as the discrepancies between the model simulations and the reconstructions.”

The problem with this whole thing is that they are, in fact, relying on simulations, reconstructions, and data from things like undersea sediment, rather than actual observations. Anyhow, if you think about it, what was causing this increase, if real? Certainly wasn’t the proliferation of fossil fueled vehicles, ships, and planes. Sure, they used coal in ships for a brief time, around 1871 to 1914, but, that’s not enough to kick out enough CO2 to warm the planet (if we’re to believe the fearmongering from the cult). You didn’t have the massive agriculture. You didn’t have most of the things Warmists complain about. This stuff really wasn’t around. So, of course, they blame the Industrial Revolution, from the late 1760’s to around the 1840’s. Nah. As they say in the movie Lethal Weapon, it’s thin, very thin.

No worries, though!

Muschitiello said it’s not clear how much of a role, if any, human-caused climate change played in the early Arctic warming, and more research is needed.

“We’re talking about the early 1900s, and by then we’ve already been supercharging the atmosphere with carbon dioxide,” he said. “It is possible that the Arctic Ocean is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought. This will require more research, of course, because we don’t have a solid grip on the actual mechanisms behind this early Atlantification.”

Sure seems like he went to human attribution, eh?

“When I talk to my students I always try to make them aware that the Arctic is warming very, very quickly, and much faster than any other area on the planet,” Muschitiello said. “It’s very unsettling and very troubling, especially because we still don’t have a full understanding of feedbacks at play.”

But, the climate cult has no problem Blaming mankind.

Read: Surprise: New Arctic Ocean Data Shows Problems With Climate (scam) Models »