Thankfully We Live in an Enlightened Age

A Warning to Jews and Lepers

Atmospheric calamities provoke ignorant fears.  Scapegoats must be found.  In the early 14th century, Europe was troubled by very, very bad weather--somewhat akin to what the UK, Europe, and the United States have experienced over the past eighteen months.

The summer of 1314 was uncommonly cold and wet in Europe.  Crops rotted, harvests were late, and alarmed authorities placed price controls on farm products and firewood.  All these were routine disasters that had happened many times before. 

The awful weather of 1314, however, was just the beginning of a succession of catastrophes.  Bad crops seldom happen two years in a row, but the weather in 1315 was even worse than during the previous year.  Heavy and incessant rains caused flooding that smashed dikes.  Rising rivers destroyed villages.  Violent storms crashed onto the coasts [c.f. the floods and storms in the UK this winter, Ed.]  The tragedy stretched from Scotland to Italy and from the Pyrenees to the homes of the Slavs.  Food prices rose over fivefold and starvation was widespread.  Even that was not the end.  The weather wreaked havoc once again in 1316, causing the worst famine in European history.  People ate cats, rats, insects, and animal droppings, and then, lacking anything better, dug up corpses in the burying grounds.  Epidemics and violent crime were widespread.  Bloody and public self-flagellation was common.  Scapegoats--Jews, lepers, noblemen--were murdered without hesitation.  [Peter L. Bernstein, The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000),  p.97]

Some observations spring to mind.
  Clearly, the early fourteenth century was enduring climate change of the most extreme kind.  Equally clearly, at least to the enlightened modern scientific mind, the cause was global warming.  Equally, equally clearly, the fourteenth century global warming was caused by the excrescence of  copious amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  What else could explain it?


Secondly, the scapegoats of the day (Jews, lepers, noblemen) were alighted upon out of ignorant prejudice.  Thank goodness such days of alarmist ignorance have passed, and we live in a more enlightened, scientific, evidence-based age. 

Thirdly, let this warning suffice.  If we do not learn from history, we will be condemned to repeat it.  If we don't see the damage climate change can wreak, as illustrated so graphically in the fourteenth century, we will end up suffering a similar fate.  Our advice to Jews, lepers, and noblemen is to get out while you can.  And if you are approaching the terminus of your earthly life, maybe cremation is the way to go.  No-one wants the starving to feast on one's mortal remains.  Climate change and its dangers are both apocalyptic and very real.  The early fourteenth century proves it beyond doubt.  The science is settled.