jueves, 3 de septiembre de 2020

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850, de Brian Fagan.

" We are in a raft, gliding down a river, toward a waterfall. We have a map but are uncertain of our location and hence are unsure of the distance to the waterfall. Some of us are getting nervous and wish to land immediately; others insist we can continue safely for several more hours. A few are enjoying the ride so much that they deny there is any immediate danger although the map clearly shows a waterfall…. How do we avoid a disaster?

-George S. Philander, Is the Temperature Rising?"


"Even today, hypothermia can kill the elderly in dwellings without central heating when indoor temperature falls below 8°C. As many as 20,000 people a year died in Britain from this condition in the 1960s and 1970s, almost all of them elderly, many malnourished."


"Irish peasants were told to eat grain instead of potatoes, but at the same time the government did nothing to curb the export of grain from the starving country. Free-trade doctrines prevailed, whereby the exporting of grain would provide money for Irish merchants to purchase and import lowpriced food to replace the potato."


"By late September, the situation was desperate. People were living off blackberries and cabbage leaves. Shops were empty. Troops were sent to protect wagons carrying oats for export. Even if the exported food had been kept in the country, the people would not have been much better off, for they had no money to buy it. Proposals for public works to employ the hungry were stalled in Whitehall, then delayed by protests over task work and low wages. Even the government’s payments to the destitute workers were irregular because of a shortage of silver coin. The fields, combed by emaciated families, contained not even a tiny potato. Children began to die. The weather turned cold at the end of October, and fifteen centimeters of snow fell in County Tyrone in November. Adding to Ireland’s troubles, the North Atlantic Oscillation flipped into low mode, bringing the most severe winter in living memory.

Ireland’s winters are normally mild and the poor normally spent them indoors, where peat fires burned. This time they had to work out of doors to survive. By November, over 285,000 poor were laboring on public relief works for a pittance. Many died of exposure. Thousands more poured into towns, abandoning their hovels in ditches and near seashores. Inevitably, farm work was neglected, with few tilling the soil, partly because the peasants feared, with reason, that landlords would seize their harvests for rent. A Captain Wynne visited Clare Abbey in the west and confessed himself unmani,:d by the extent of the suffering: “witnessed more especially among the women and little children, crowds of which were to be seen scattered over the turnip fields like a flock of famished crows, devouring the raw turnips, mothers half naked, shivering in the snow and sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, while their children were screaming with hunger.“18 Even the dogs had been eaten."


"The British government, believing firmly in the sanctity of the free market, pursued the ideology of minimal intervention that dominated many European governments of the day. Ministers believed that poverty was a self-imposed condition, so the poor should fend for themselves."