Climate change caused empire's fall, tree rings reveal

Dendrochronology provides a solid date to the collapse of Egypt's Akkadian Empire...and presents further implications!

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna...

Link

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck
Dendrochronology provides a solid date to the collapse of Egypt's Akkadian Empire...and presents further implications!

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna...

Link

I have to assume that 46% of the posters here will deny anything happened, or that these tree rings were put there by liberals.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Does science dogma still deny the possibility of rapid climate change?

There was just enough change in the climate to upset food resources and other infrastructure....

“The tree rings show the kind of rapid climate change that we and policymakers fear,” says Manning. “This record shows that climate change doesn’t have to be as catastrophic as an Ice Age to wreak havoc. We’re in exactly the same situation as the Akkadians: If something suddenly undid the standard food production model in large areas of the U.S. it would be a disaster.”

a reply to: LDragonFire

Tree rings are proof of an empire's demise? Really?? Quite a jump in logic, don't you think?

I could tell you that tarot readings are proof of clairvoyance or that orbs are proof of ghosts, but then you'd argue with me. I guess tree rings are indisputable evidence of all sorts of things.

Some people will believe anything, I guess.

a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

Big DEAL!!! - even if I believed this story....the empire fell, the planet continued on and man adapted. Other empires were created in its place!

Its called history. With or without climate change, empires fall and others rise.

Its called change and why should I fear it?

Tired of Control Freaks

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck
Dendrochronology provides a solid date to the collapse of Egypt's Akkadian Empire...and presents further implications!

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna...

Link

Maybe if the Egyptians would have stopped driving those SUV"s, they would still be around.

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
a reply to: LDragonFire

Tree rings are proof of an empire's demise? Really?? Quite a jump in logic, don't you think?

I could tell you that tarot readings are proof of clairvoyance or that orbs are proof of ghosts, but then you'd argue with me. I guess tree rings are indisputable evidence of all sorts of things.

Some people will believe anything, I guess.

Erm, did you actually read the link? It's all quite interesting.

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck
Dendrochronology provides a solid date to the collapse of Egypt's Akkadian Empire...and presents further implications!

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna...

Link

Stored in an old cigar box? No chance of contamination there, nope.

Radio carbon dating? I thought that was disputed as unreliable? Not for this, though, right?

There is nothing settled from this guy's hypothesis. He is just throwing more fuel on the climate change fire - what do you wanna bet he has a grant proposal sitting on some bureaucrat's desk right now?

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Great thread S&F because I think its a very important one. I wonder were the ice cores tested for this period they may well show exactly the same information.

Something struck men some time ago watching a programme about how the Maya was thought to have mysteriously disappeared. The programme investigators had examined a couple of bodies and found ut that they had suffered from malnutrition which had killed them. So presumably their climate may well have changed and they simply didn't up and move to more suitable climes etc.

Because our supermarkets are so well stocked we haven't faced serious shortages probably since WW2 and rationing. However, having seen the programme on the Maya who were very skilled and intelligent, it has always bothered me slightly that they didn't overcome this problem. Now reading your thread, as was pointed out, we don't need such a huge change and an ice age to disrupt our fragile food chains which we take for granted.

This last winter has seen huge swathes of land under water in the UK (I know other countries have had very bad problems with snow and the opposite side of the coin heat and draught) and it will inevitably affect some of our food production. I am wondering if this continues to worsen each year how long it will be before we have serious problems with the supply of food? Its actually a scary situation because it just seems to occur randomly, unless some scientist can produce a model to explain how our weather actually and really functions. It also only needs a couple of seasons for the weather to 'do its worst' and our food chain is kaput its that fragile.

a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

Of course he has a government grant and of course he is merely suggesting that the empire fell because of climate change. He doesn't know for sure.

But this will "add to the body of evidence" won't it?

Tired of Control Freaks

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit
Stored in an old cigar box? No chance of contamination there, nope.
Radio carbon dating? I thought that was disputed as unreliable? Not for this, though, right?

Dendrochronology is a a form of absolute dating based upon unbroken sequences of tree rings. Contamination is not an issue. Radiometric dating is considered very good, and tree ring dating can be used to calibrate/bolster C14 for even tighter accuracy.

Tree rings are proof of an empire's demise? Really?? Quite a jump in logic, don't you think?

Um no...not at all.

But the samples also showed a small, unusual anomaly following the year 2200 B.C. Paleoclimate research has suggested a major short-term arid event about this time. “This radiocarbon anomaly would be explained by a change in growing season, i.e., climate, dating to exactly this arid period of time,” says Manning. “We’re showing that radiocarbon and these archaeological objects can confirm and in some ways better date a key climate episode.” That climate episode, says Manning, had major political implications. There was just enough change in the climate to upset food resources and other infrastructure, which is likely what led to the collapse of the Akkadian Empire and affected the Old Kingdom of Egypt and a number of other civilizations, he says.

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck

Ok, so they take a sample from a box, made from a tree, that was supposedly located in Egypt. By the rings on that tree they come to the conclusion the climate changed and that it greatly impacted an empire.

We have droughts in one area and record rainful in another. When the central US was being flooded the South Eastern parts were experiencing drought. Who is to say that there was not a similar situation where this tree was located(prior to being repurposed). I could go so far to say that there was a river near this tree and it prospered greatly as a result until... Farmer joe who lives upriver decides to build a dam to irrigate his land, which in return reduces the size of the water basin where the tree is at. Now this tree has experienced a drastic change which would be reflected in it's growth. It really sounds like they are reaching.

Or we can take a different track and say they are just regurgitating what the bible has already told us.

Genesis 41:31
The abundance in the land will not be remembered, because the famine that follows it will be so severe.

Genesis 41:54
and the seven years of famine began, just as Joseph had said. There was famine in all the other lands, but in the whole land of Egypt there was food.

Genesis 41:56
When the famine had spread over the whole country, Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe throughout Egypt.

Genesis 47:13
There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine.

originally posted by: PsychoEmperor

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck
Dendrochronology provides a solid date to the collapse of Egypt's Akkadian Empire...and presents further implications!

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna...

Link

Maybe if the Egyptians would have stopped driving those SUV"s, they would still be around.

Nonsense.

It's because they weren't taxed enough.
And they didn't invest in Green Energy programmes.

While you may be tired of "Control Freaks" I am tired of rabid deniers. That things are changing and changing quick is undeniable, that man had a hand in this acceleration is undeniable.

That some people are so backwards and full of their selves to deny what 95% of the worlds scientists say is happening and why is the ultimate in ignorance.

I have a been a glider pilot and balloonist for 25 years. Having flown all over the world I can tell you with certainly that mankind has an effect on the climate. Where there was once a green field and no thermals there are now parking lots with lots of them. I have flown due to MANMADE heat being tossed into the air where previously there was nothing but a cool air mass. I have seen the effect of a single mini mall on the local air currents.

Once can see the smoke from deforestation fires from space, but mankind is not affecting the climate. We can see the pollution from industry from space and on the surface of glaciers that used to be white, but mankind is not affecting the climate. We can see the contrails of airplanes in the skies, but mankind is not affecting climate.

Fools.
Oh and I am educated beyond some Hillbilly, Christian, Republican. (All three groups are rabid deniers).

a reply to: Mamatus

That the climate is changing is not at issue. Climate changes and has always changed and will always changed.

The argument is whether this particular change at this particular time was caused by the burning of fossil fuels and how much everyone should donate to "preserve" the status quo - because, you know, change is always bad!

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: JohnnyCanuck


Hi johnnycanuk,

I thought I'd add this, from a thread I've started but never posted.

Abstract.  We  focus  on  one  of  the  most  important  events  in  human  history,  the  4.2  kiloyear  event,  when  great  civilisations  around  the  world  collapsed  into  anarchy  and  social  chaos.  From  this  moment  on,  climate  cooling  and  widespread  aridification  began,  lowering  agricultural  food  production  and  human  living  conditions.  Various  hypotheses  exist  about  its  cause;  the  most  promising  approach  links  the  4.2  kiloyear  event  to  a  cosmic  asteroid  crash  into  Mesopotamia.  The  asteroid  landed  in  a  densely  populated  area;  we  examine  at  first  major  translations  of  preserved  Sumerian  documents  on  details  and  progression  of  this  catastrophic  event.  We  quote  major  impact  features  as  observed  by  historical  Sumerian  eyewitnesses.  The  impact,  as  a  full  strike,  eradicated  the  Imperial  city  of  Akkad.  The  impact  damaged  all  other  Sumerian  towns  to  different  degrees.  Based  on  our  findings,  we  identify  the  location  of  the  missing  city  of  Akkad.  We  analyse  the  onset  of  global  cooling  and  severe  aridification  in  the  framework  of  our  cosmic  climate  footprint  analysis  for  a  selected  1,000  year  timeframe.  This  footprint  analysis  of  Holocene  climate  change  affirms  the  occurrence  and  date  of  the  impact  event.  We  also  identify  volcanic  mega-‐‑eruptions,  which  are  responsible  for  multi-‐‑decadal  global  temperature  dips  but  which  cannot  cause  centennial-‐‑long  climate  changes.  The  footprint  analysis  takes  5  climate  macroforcings  into  account  and  explains  global  cooling  and  aridification  based  on  impact-‐‑related  causes. Citation.  Seifert,  J.,  Lemke,  F.:  The  destruction  of  the  city  of  Akkad  by  a  cosmic  asteroid  impact  and  the  link  to  global  climate  change,  2013,  hp://www.knowledgeminer.eu/eoo_paper.html

And they think they have the location of Akkad




secure.shareit.com...[300586261]=1&DELIVERY[300586261]=EML&stylefrom=300586261&backlink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.knowledgem iner.eu%2Feoo_paper.html

"Body of evidence"? "Body of lies" I'd say.

The climate changes. Guess what? There are people at the equator. There are people in Antarctica. Doesn't get any more extreme than that. It's not going to affect humans, and it's not going to affect much else.

By the way, if the earth is warming up enough to melt arctic ice (it's not), then wouldn't it stand to reason that the atmosphere would contain more water? It would get more humid? There would be more atmospheric uptake in the precipitation cycle? Naah.. it's all gonna stay in the ocean and ruin your OBX vacation.

Please, pretty please stop believing this crap.

a reply to: ScientiaFortisDefendit

I think you hit the nail on the head!

if the atmosphere warms, than more water evaporates,
if more water evaporates, than more clouds form,
if more clouds form, the more the sun's rays are blocked,
the more the sun's rays are blocked, the more the atmosphere cools
and so on and so on

Tired of Controls

And this was said by whom? Manning? As in "Michael Manning" who is famous for "Hide the decline"? If only we could believe him, but, answering the lib above, I assume liberals will believe him without bothering to check the data. LAST TIME he made these claims it turns out his "tree ring data" was largely useless. A little background, then the story.

Tree ring data is often used as a so-called "proxy" for temperature records because we didn't have any accurate thermometers thousands of years ago. Tree-rings are convenient substitutes--when they work. The way tree-rings are confirmed as accurate proxies is by comparing tree-rings from the near present with thermometer readings for the same period. If the tree-ring thickness follows the thermometer readings, you know they are accurate FOR THAT PERIOD. The next step is to use tree-ring data from long ago and use the same kind of correlations to extrapolate previous temperature records. That's how Manning and others have "proven" climate change over time.

The controversies arise over 1) what trees they used, 2) where they are, 3) how many trees they used, 4) How they took samples, and 5) whether the tree-ring data is accurate in terms of 'predicting' past temperature. ALL these things are controversial, and if you care to look into it in depth, you'll see why. But basically the tree-ring data is 'rather thin' (no pun intended) and basing a world-wide theory on just tree-rings is highly suspect.

But it gets worse. It turns out the tree-ring data gathered to support the idea of global warming was not cooperating with the theory. In modern times, when they had accurate thermometers along side tree ring data for the same year, the data showed a decline in temperatures. This was obviously untrue because we had accurate thermometers showing the temperature really was rising, albeit nowhere near as fast as the computer models predicted (yet another problem with the overall theory). So what did our erstwhile expert climate scientists do about this unfortunate data?

They hid it:



Folks, that's fraud, pure and simple. These guys didn't want to explain the issue, so they "hid the decline" from all of us BECAUSE it contradicted their theory. Now WHY is this important? Because if the tree ring data is inaccurate for years when we have correlative data that absolutely proves without a doubt that it is inaccurate, HOW can we rely on tree ring data when it is the only data we have? Wouldn't you think that if they had iron-clad data that showed the tree ring data was inaccurate for the near present, that they would find some other way to figure out past temperatures? But no, they did it anyway and tried to hide it from us.

Now tree ring data by itself is highly suspect anyway. here are a couple of reasons:

+ First, thick and thin tree rings, which is basically all you have to go on, can be the result of moisture, not temperature. Lots of water yields thick rings. Drought conditions yield thin rings. Those two conditions do not correlate well with temperature.

+ Tree-rings are very 'gross' measurements. You have two rings per year, one for the growth season of the tree, one for the 'dormant' season for the tree. By reading this you can't really tell if high temperatures spiked over, say, a few weeks of time, or whether it wasn't quite as warm over a longer period of time. The "degree days" would be exactly the same so that the area experienced the same overall temperature in a vastly different set of time.

+ Tree-rings are highly individual and localized. A set of tree-ring data taken from one mountain is going to be vastly different than a set of data taken from another valley or the mountain next door. The presence or absence of water is an obvious point here. Trees growing by a stream are going to have thicker rings than trees a mile inland and today, with the stream entirely gone, you may not be able to tell the difference, but so is the individual micro-climate. In my area, for example, moving 10 miles north is the difference between 25 inches of rain a year and 50 inches of rain a year. The biggest cause for this is a mountain range that creates a "rain shadow" over the north part of the region. Where I am it rains a lot. Even further 50 miles north the climate is arid and dry requiring irrigation. It's a great retirement community.

So the point is when "they" go out and gather tree ring data they don't really gather a lot over a wide area. Budgets being what they are, they gather a small amount of data over a small area. Some of the tree-ring data used as part of the UN IPCC report last time were based on six trees from one mountainside in Siberia.

So here we have, once again, some very specialized scientists into tree-rings making vast pronouncements about the rise and fall of empires based on their narrow view of the world. But they really aren't qualified to do that. Life is more complex than staring at tree rings that have been proven to be unreliable proxies for climate in the first place. Making grandiose claims on such thin data would not be tolerated anywhere else, but since this is all politically correct, we all swallow it as gospel truth.

There are a lot better ways to determine climate change over time. Ice core data is one. The following is a graph that shows the long term trend. It was done NOT for the current debate on climate change, but as research for trying to explain the "Younger Dryas" cooling phase thousands of years ago. As the Earth was warming (shock!) recovering from the last Ice Age, the temperature suddenly dropped for a thousand years. The result was the extinction of mammoths, not to mention the tribes hunting them. There is controversy over whether this was the result of an asteroid strike, increasing vulcanism, or whatever. (Very recent studies claim it was NOT an asteroid, but the debate continues.) In any case, observe:



This shows a bit of recent warming, it sure does, but nothing particularly alarming compared to the overall record. What it DOES show is an overall cooling trend. Does this indicate the coming of another Ice Age? After all, we're right on schedule for the end of the current "inter-glacial" stage. Perhaps you all might want to pay attention to that phrase: "inter-glacial." What do you think another Ice Age will do to global civilization? Would you rather see it warm up a bit so you can grow grapes and produce wine in Scotland (like you could during the "Medieval Warming period") Or would you rather see a glacier cover Puget Sound a mile thick and scrape the top of the Olympics and the Cascades? The Thames freezing over in Winter (as it did during the "Little Ice Age" during the 1700s) would be the least of your worries.

But you won't do that, of course. Instead the sheeple will tow the party line and believe whatever the NWO says about climate change because they're "scientists" and "scientists" are always right. And even if the next Ice Age sweeps down upon us, you'll find a way to blame us for it anyway.

originally posted by: ScientiaFortisDefendit

originally posted by: JohnnyCanuck
Dendrochronology provides a solid date to the collapse of Egypt's Akkadian Empire...and presents further implications!

A handful of tree ring samples stored in an old cigar box have shed unexpected light on the ancient world, thanks to research by archaeologist Sturt Manning and collaborators at Cornell, Arizona, Chicago, Oxford and Vienna...

Link

Stored in an old cigar box? No chance of contamination there, nope.

Radio carbon dating? I thought that was disputed as unreliable? Not for this, though, right?

There is nothing settled from this guy's hypothesis. He is just throwing more fuel on the climate change fire - what do you wanna bet he has a grant proposal sitting on some bureaucrat's desk right now?

Contamination of what? This isn't the Shroud of Turin, I'd be willing to bet they didn't cut a few fibers off an edge. Radiocarbon dating is "disputed as unreliable" by young Earth creationists. There are limitations because of the variance in atmospheric carbon-14 and there is a flat spot, the Hallstatt plateau, that greatly affects the precision when dating material from about 800-400 B.C. Wiggle-matching is a technique used to improve dating (a brief synopsis is actually given in the source) see here.

If you weren't so busy being in denial, you might even take the view that it proves major short term climate change was happening thousands of years before the industrial revolution but really who has time for thinking when there's so many things to react to?

But the samples also showed a small, unusual anomaly following the year 2200 B.C. Paleoclimate research has suggested a major short-term arid event about this time.

The only implications for the discussion on climate change from this study are:

The tree rings show the kind of rapid climate change that we and policymakers fear,” says Manning. “This record shows that climate change doesn’t have to be as catastrophic as an Ice Age to wreak havoc. We’re in exactly the same situation as the Akkadians: If something suddenly undid the standard food production model in large areas of the U.S. it would be a disaster.

Seems like a reasonable, if not obvious, conclusion considering how short-term arid events (droughts) can certainly lead to crop failure and ultimately famine. If you doubt that, google "famine."