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For many years historians depended on written sources to assess the calamity of such events as the Black Death. This yielded widely disparate conclusions claimi

by Mz 9y ago

For many years historians depended on written sources to assess the calamity of such events as the Black Death. This yielded widely disparate conclusions claiming that the death-toll lay between 30 to 50%... Now, a new study of annual to multiannual levels of lead in the Alpine glacier, Colle Gnifetti, in the Swiss-Italian Alps provides further validation of the calamitous character of the plague and the accompanying events in the 14th century. These new hard-core data demonstrates the impact which the Black Death had on society and economy. It's nice to have something that is potentially objective.

Retric 9y ago
It's still rather indirect. If the population drops significantly then many types of mining simply becomes redundant because there is so much material no longer needed by the dead.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Well, lead deposition dropped about two orders of magnitude in ~1350. That's far more than a proportional decrease, unless the death rate was over 90%. Societal collapse seems more likely.
  - ajross 9y ago
    Not collapse: recycling. In a steady state population, you need to be mining enough new metal to replace items lost to use or rust. If the population drops, people just start using dead uncle Harald's knives when theirs break. In such a situation, you'd actually expect expensive new production to drop all the way to zero until the recycling buffer was used up. The effect would be superlinear with the death rate, not proportional.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      Maybe so. But maybe the recycling argument doesn't apply so much for lead as for iron.
      - lostlogin 9y ago
        It applies more so for things I've dealt with. Iron rusts while lead doesn't. Flashings and windows etc that use lead last a very long time, iron doesn't.
      - ajross 9y ago
        The contention in the linked article was that atmospheric lead was the result of metal smelting. They're measuring the mining industry as a whole, not lead production.
        mirimir 9y ago
        Whatever they say, they're measuring production of lead and other metals that occur with it. Silver, copper and zinc would be the main ones, I think. Not iron, however.
  - sgt101 9y ago
    Perhaps centers of industrial production are more prone to damage from pandemics than rural areas meaning that mines and factories will be gutted out while farms and villages are maybe less damaged?
    - twobyfour 9y ago
      Farms and villages just get abandoned, decay, and are lost to time.
vm 9y ago
Central to the researchers' argument is that human livelihood causes pollution. I wonder what the "ideal" global limit is.
- Mz 9y ago
  I never finished my bachelor's, but I was an environmental resource management major for a time. The reality is that we keep seeing improvements in average life expectancy and overall quality of life while the global population grows. Meanwhile, everyone declares it the end of the world and decries the fact that humans are the cause of our own demise. While we certainly have the power to be the cause of our own demise, my opinion is that rumors of our death are exaggerated. I think there is still substantial room for improvement in how humans manage earth's resources such that we can adequately provide for our population. One of my favorite cartoons from one of my college textbooks showed a bunch of single celled organisms giving off oxygen to create Earth's oxygen rich atmosphere and some of them organizing to complain of how they were poisoning the environment with all this oxygen. It is no doubt true that humans impact the environment and some of the impacts are absolutely negative. But there is substantial reason to believe that it is far more complex than that, but humans have an incredible talent for taking positives for granted and dwelling overly much on the negatives. One of my favorite examples is that Y2K was predicted to be the end of the world. When it got solved beforehand and turned out to be very anticlimactic, with a few VCRs that couldn't be programmed and silly things like that (instead of global financial meltdown as our banking systems failed), people then acted like those who had prepped for the worse were idiots. These days, people often frame the entire thing like "Those fools! Why did they ever think they were in danger?" No one gets up daily and thanks their lucky stars that they aren't living in the Y2K Post Apocalypse. Instead, they read the news and complain about all the reasons the world is going to hell currently. If humans were not here, presumably crocodiles or something would be the top species on earth. I don't imagine they would husband earth's resources any better than we are. Not intended as snark. These are just some basic points I like to talk about when I get the chance. Thank you for giving me a good excuse and I apologize if my framing is in any way aggravating. Best.
  - vm 9y ago

by Mz 9y ago

Retric 9y ago

It's still rather indirect. If the population drops significantly then many types of mining simply becomes redundant because there is so much material no longer needed by the dead.

mirimir 9y ago
Well, lead deposition dropped about two orders of magnitude in ~1350. That's far more than a proportional decrease, unless the death rate was over 90%. Societal collapse seems more likely.
- ajross 9y ago
  Not collapse: recycling. In a steady state population, you need to be mining enough new metal to replace items lost to use or rust. If the population drops, people just start using dead uncle Harald's knives when theirs break. In such a situation, you'd actually expect expensive new production to drop all the way to zero until the recycling buffer was used up. The effect would be superlinear with the death rate, not proportional.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Maybe so. But maybe the recycling argument doesn't apply so much for lead as for iron.
    - lostlogin 9y ago
      It applies more so for things I've dealt with. Iron rusts while lead doesn't. Flashings and windows etc that use lead last a very long time, iron doesn't.
    - ajross 9y ago
      The contention in the linked article was that atmospheric lead was the result of metal smelting. They're measuring the mining industry as a whole, not lead production.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        Whatever they say, they're measuring production of lead and other metals that occur with it. Silver, copper and zinc would be the main ones, I think. Not iron, however.
- sgt101 9y ago
  Perhaps centers of industrial production are more prone to damage from pandemics than rural areas meaning that mines and factories will be gutted out while farms and villages are maybe less damaged?
  - twobyfour 9y ago
    Farms and villages just get abandoned, decay, and are lost to time.

vm 9y ago

Central to the researchers' argument is that human livelihood causes pollution. I wonder what the "ideal" global limit is.

Mz 9y ago
I never finished my bachelor's, but I was an environmental resource management major for a time. The reality is that we keep seeing improvements in average life expectancy and overall quality of life while the global population grows. Meanwhile, everyone declares it the end of the world and decries the fact that humans are the cause of our own demise. While we certainly have the power to be the cause of our own demise, my opinion is that rumors of our death are exaggerated. I think there is still substantial room for improvement in how humans manage earth's resources such that we can adequately provide for our population. One of my favorite cartoons from one of my college textbooks showed a bunch of single celled organisms giving off oxygen to create Earth's oxygen rich atmosphere and some of them organizing to complain of how they were poisoning the environment with all this oxygen. It is no doubt true that humans impact the environment and some of the impacts are absolutely negative. But there is substantial reason to believe that it is far more complex than that, but humans have an incredible talent for taking positives for granted and dwelling overly much on the negatives. One of my favorite examples is that Y2K was predicted to be the end of the world. When it got solved beforehand and turned out to be very anticlimactic, with a few VCRs that couldn't be programmed and silly things like that (instead of global financial meltdown as our banking systems failed), people then acted like those who had prepped for the worse were idiots. These days, people often frame the entire thing like "Those fools! Why did they ever think they were in danger?" No one gets up daily and thanks their lucky stars that they aren't living in the Y2K Post Apocalypse. Instead, they read the news and complain about all the reasons the world is going to hell currently. If humans were not here, presumably crocodiles or something would be the top species on earth. I don't imagine they would husband earth's resources any better than we are. Not intended as snark. These are just some basic points I like to talk about when I get the chance. Thank you for giving me a good excuse and I apologize if my framing is in any way aggravating. Best.
- vm 9y ago