[HN Gopher] Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018) ___________________________________________________________________ Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018) Author : mvexel Score : 102 points Date : 2023-01-01 18:44 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.science.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org) | alexfromapex wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20230101194203/https://www.scien... | rnk wrote: | And nothing prevents new volcanic explosions from doing this | again. How would the northern world deal with this today? Not | that well. | Archelaos wrote: | Most of the northern world would not have much trouble buying | its food wherever possible. For a high price, of course, but | USA, Europe, Japan and even China are so extremely wealthy | compared to others that they can outbid the majority of the | South on the global food market without much difficulty. Thus, | a decline in food production in the North would primarily | affect the global South. | quickthrower2 wrote: | The rich countries are also going to be outbidding each other | though. Some nations may decide not to sell it all because | they need to eat themselves. This would be worse due to | limited supply and no way to quickly ramp up. | jeltz wrote: | Much better than it did back then. Modern farming is much more | resilient than farming back then as is proven by how rare | famnes are today when they used to be common in the past. | xenospn wrote: | We have electricity and insulation. We won't starve. Will it | suck? Absolutely. | tjkrusinski wrote: | Yes, but our economy is flexible, demand for commodities will | fluctuate widely shortly after any catastrophic event, having | a likely negative cascading effect on the rest of the | economy. | chrisco255 wrote: | You can't eat electricity or insulation. There's close to 1 | billion acres of farmland in the U.S. alone. If we were to | suffer a decade of volcanic winter, large parts of the | midwest would become non-productive. If the reports of the | sun being as dim as the moon due to the ash are true, there | would be massive crop failure. One or two years like that, we | might be ok. But any longer than that and our stores would be | rapidly depleted. Famines can knock out huge percentages of | populations and have led to the collapse of civilization on | several occasions in the past few millenia. | ericmcer wrote: | It might be even more bleak because we have 100X the | population. I live near San Francisco and yesterday it rained | more than usual which resulted in some highways literally | shutting down and hours long traffic diversions. I have pretty | low faith in us. | tjkrusinski wrote: | Coordination of governing bodies at the regional level is | really bad in the US. A different agency manages the highways | than the roadways than the waterways, each having their own | incentives and budgets. | barbariangrunge wrote: | Greenhouses and vertical farms would make the famine less | severe; although our population is so high that it would get | complicated fast | gandalfian wrote: | More likely Quorn style fungus fermented/grown in dark vats | connected to nuclear reactors for power. Might be tricky to | ramp up in time but eventually could actually lower the cost | of food, if more boring food. Flavoured fungus burgers all | the time, kids might actually like it... | chrisco255 wrote: | You can't put greenhouses over entire states, which is what | would be necessary to prevent mass famine. | yetanotherloser wrote: | How many of these vertical farms do we have? How long do they | take to build? What do they cost to run? | AngryData wrote: | Modern LED grow lights require minimum 35 watts per square | foot to grow things beyond just lettuce, which is around | 1.5 million watts per acre. Americans currently consume a | bit over 2.5 acres of farmland produce per year, however | you could get that down to 1 acre without much problem by | cutting out some of the less land efficient crops likes | fruit trees, especially when talking indoor grow. | | So I would expect bare minimum energy requirements to be | near 1.5-2 million watts per person for 12-16 hours a day | for indoor food sustainability. | | This is of course not accounting for fertilizer which has | large energy requirements or anything more than the most | simple and basic of climate control. | yetanotherloser wrote: | wow, if that is all true then vertical farming is even | less relevant to this scenario than I thought. I'm not | sure I'm qualified to check your figures and I suspect | some of your assumptions are more pessimistic than mine, | but the fundamentals pass a reality check vs. amount of | energy delivered by the sun (lots). | | (Just to preempt some likely replies from other people: | I'm sure there is a big difference between "Americans | consume" (including livestock grazing, which can't be | magic-ed into anything else) and "You can get by on" | (measured in hypothetical perfect-acres) - it would take | esoteric casuistry to make these really comparable | anyway. Nevertheless the gap is so large that AngryData's | fundamental point is extremely robust: growlamp-ing | everyone's basic needs is fantasy-land. I thought that, | but didn't realise the case against it was as strong as I | now suspect it might be) | robocat wrote: | > but the fundamentals pass a reality check vs amount of | energy delivered by the sun (lots). Solar | panels produce about 150 watts of energy per square meter | since most solar panels operate at 15% efficiency this | translates to 15 watts per square foot. | | Which is 100 Watts solar energy per square foot, so 35 | Watts certainly has the right order. (LEDs are not 100% | efficient, sunlight is not 100% efficient with | chlorophyll, some edible plants grow in shade). | Mezzie wrote: | And how soon would their building be turned into yet | another polarizing issue, or their building farmed out to | contracting companies who would make most of the money | disappear? | barbariangrunge wrote: | A global response on the scale of Covid to build vertical | farms would reduce the severity of the famine dramatically. | | It would be expensive, but the alternative would be burning | cities and food riots. I can hardly imagine the USA | avoiding a civil war considering how divisive and hostile | things already have gotten | | You can get hydroponics going fairly quickly, the | bottleneck would be the supplies and supply chain -- | materials to build the with | yetanotherloser wrote: | Either {[[citation needed]]} Or {"Did you mean to post on | the Things Silicon Valley Doesn't Understand About | Agriculture thread?"} | pfdietz wrote: | The big backup is diverting certain animal feeds to instead | feed people. | Baeocystin wrote: | Yup. There's a reason corn subsidies are what they are, for | example, and it's not (just) politics. | VoodooJuJu wrote: | Microgreens and winter tomatoes aren't going to stave off | famine. | greesil wrote: | Beans beans the magical fruit | dmix wrote: | Yeah vertical farming/hydroponics only gets you a very | limited set of vegatables. | [deleted] | tamaharbor wrote: | We are just one volcano eruption away from global cooling. | ch33zer wrote: | > The team deciphered this record using a new ultra-high- | resolution method, in which a laser carves 120-micron slivers of | ice, representing just a few days or weeks of snowfall, along the | length of the core. Each of the samples--some 50,000 from each | meter of the core--is analyzed for about a dozen elements. The | approach enabled the team to pinpoint storms, volcanic eruptions, | and lead pollution down to the month or even less, going back | 2000 years, says UM volcanologist Andrei Kurbatov. | | How do they know for sure that the ice samples are chronological? | What happens if in a given year the top layer of ice melts away? | navane wrote: | They match the ice samples up with tree rings. There exists | tree ring data of 7k+ years, the ice contains more info, but | the tree rings allow for absolute pinpointing on a year. They | match them on common info. | | I am reading "tree story" by valerie trout. | jaggs wrote: | How interesting that a bunch of tech nutcases now want to | geoengineer the planet by dispersing sulphur into the | stratosphere to dim the sun to 'tackle' climate change. Mind- | blowing stupidity. | pfdietz wrote: | Because gradually injecting sulfur is the same as massive | uncontrolled natural injections, right? | aquaticsunset wrote: | Nobody knows. Which is why it's colossally reckless to | propose anything around this as a guaranteed solution, | instead of a proposal that needs more research. | pfdietz wrote: | This is irrational pearl clutching. If sulfur is added, it | will be done gradually, with the results monitored. There | would not be some sort of catastrophic cooling. | | The real sticking point would be that some countries would | not want the cooling. Russia, say. | MrOwnPut wrote: | Our proposed planet-scale terraforming will be done | gradually, don't be irrational! | | We'll just see how it goes... | | Are you serious? | pfdietz wrote: | So let me get this straight: in the face of a failure to | control global warming by other means, you'd prefer your | anxiety about possible risks to prevent any attempt to | counter the warming by this approach, dooming the world | to potentially catastrophic temperature increases? | | Are YOU serious? | MrOwnPut wrote: | Assuming your doomsday predictions are correct and all | this time... then assuming your counter to the prediction | is correct. | | Ya'know what... go right ahead and try to terraform the | Earth to whatever you think is... best. | | Your doomsday prediction may then come true actually. | Self fulfilling prophecy and all that. | | God speed in making your artificial ice age. | superluserdo wrote: | Without taking a side on sulphur injection, it should be | noted that we are already doing very rapid planet-scale | terraforming. | jaggs wrote: | Who knows? Nobody, especially on a global scale, which is | what they're suggesting. | pfdietz wrote: | We have natural experiments where sulfur aerosols were | injected. The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, for example. | It injected 17 megatonnes of sulfur dioxide into the | stratosphere, causing a global cooling of 0.4 C and a | northern hemisphere cooling of 0.5-0.6 C. This also | affected ozone, which suggests aerosols other than sulfuric | acid droplets might be a better idea. | mariuolo wrote: | Would we diffuse it in the same way at the same speed? If | not, would the results be any different? | quickthrower2 wrote: | Could we handle a similar eruption these days? Should we be | building more nuclear power stations as well as solar, because if | this happens, solar even with batteries is going to be useless? | irrational wrote: | Probably when, instead of if. | ummonk wrote: | The years after the Younger Toba Eruption would have been | objectively far worse than this. | dang wrote: | Related: | | _Volcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30621640 - March 2022 (39 | comments) | | _Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to | be alive_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26786838 - April | 2021 (117 comments) | | _536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565762 - June 2020 (356 | comments) | | _Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive'_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469891 - Nov 2018 (4 | comments) | | Others? | Adiqq wrote: | There's good document about 536: https://youtu.be/cKUz5Vjq9-s | optimalsolver wrote: | I hear 1348 wasn't too great either. | guerrilla wrote: | "By June 24 - The Black Death pandemic has reached England,[1] | having probably been brought across the English Channel by | fleas on rats aboard a ship from Gascony to the south coast | port of Melcombe (modern-day Weymouth, Dorset);[2][3] by | November it will have reached London and by 1350 will have | killed one third to a half of its population." | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1348 | | Dying of respiratory or cardiac failure is horrifying enough, I | just hope we never experience something like the plague on a | large scale again. | herrrk wrote: | So far! | irrational wrote: | Reminds me of the Calvin and Hobbes comic | | https://www.socomic.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ch140325.g... | vegetablepotpie wrote: | I'm amazed by the amount of historical information held in ice. | Activities from silver mining to volcanic eruptions thousands of | years ago can be found as chemical traces in the cores. | | There's just a few years where this kind of research will be | possible. I hope we can maximize our discoveries before the world | loses most of its ice. | chrisco255 wrote: | The ice in Antarctica and Greenland is not going to melt | altogether and it would take thousands of years for it to melt | away at current pace even if trends aren't reversed by another | series of similar volcanic events. | amanaplanacanal wrote: | But we will lose recent years first, so that could impact | what sort of research would still be possible | mjhay wrote: | Not at ice divides (like hydrological divides) where ice | cores are taken (ice cores are almost always taken at | divides because the ice flows apart, so the stratigraphy is | not as disturbed). It's too cold to melt out there anytime | soon. These are high-elevation locations, so there is | either no melting (East Antartica ones ~3000 m) or | extremely minimal melting, rarely, during the height of | summer (Greenland and some other places in Antarctica). In | Antarctica, surface melt is a rounding error everywhere, | and response to climate change is almost entirely due to | ice sheet-ocean interactions with a warming ocean and | changing currents, and a thing called the marine ice-sheet | instability. | | At any rate, these locations will always be accumulation | zones where more snow falls then melts (with the mass | balance preserved by diverging flow so as to continuously | thin the ice, to approximately compensate), with melt | events occuring only rarely. The concern there is that | meltwater could contaminate near-surface compacted snow | (firn) layers, but even then it wouldn't be enough to do | much. As such, stratigraphy will be reasonably preserved | even if the ice sheet as a whole draws down significantly | (including at divides). | | Really extreme climate change (which is in the cards long- | term) could eventually change this, especially if the ice | sheets reduce enough in height such that a significant ice | sheet-elevation feetback occurs. However, we'd have much | bigger things to worry about at that point. | chrisco255 wrote: | We have the most extensive data available for recent years, | though. Ice core samples are also nothing new, they've been | extensively studied for decades. Many of these cores are | carefully removed and placed in ice cold storage | warehouses: https://qz.com/1590747/an-antarctic-ice-core- | may-show-1-5-mi... | yterdy wrote: | *in Europe and Asia. | | I kind of weep for the loss of oral and comprehensible physical | histories in the Americas and Africa, since scholarship like this | shows that one can combine those with unlikely natural records | and scientific analysis to triangulate on remarkable narratives | about our past. | DoughnutHole wrote: | If 536 was particularly bad due to a massive volcanic eruption | blotting out the sun, they can't have been having a great time | in the Americas or Africa either. | | 536 would have stiff competition from every year of the century | following 1492 for the title of "Worst Year to be Alive in the | Americas". ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-01 23:00 UTC)