5 ms·

Did American volcanoes deal the final blow to the Roman Empire?

27 points by mml 11y ago

paulhauggis 11y ago
It's interesting that this theory is that something naturally occurring, like a volcanic eruption, caused climate change during the time of the roman empire. I've seen so many studies online that claim that volcanic eruptions can't possibly cause climate change. Are we finally willing to admit that it might not all be man-made?
- brobinson 11y ago
  There have been other, more recent incidents along the same lines of what is proposed in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
- zzalpha 11y ago
  No one has ever claimed massive volcanic eruptions don't affect the climate. That's a well established fact. What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming. Please take your strawman elsewhere.
  - paulhauggis 11y ago
    "What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming." Like this article? This article is claiming just that. "What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming." So when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. When the same thing happens with a volcano eruption, nothing. heh, that makes sense. It's puzzling why mentioning volcanic eruptions and climate change is considered a "straw man" to you when the article is about volcanic eruptions and climate change. "Straw man" is used too often for things that people merely disagree with. I can't wait for the day when we can have actual open and honest scientific discussion, rather than silencing anything that goes against the popular narrative.
    - yongjik 11y ago
      > So when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. When the same thing happens with a volcano eruption, nothing. Let's see one recent volcanic eruption that caused quite some trouble: > The grounding of European flights avoided about 3.44×10^8 kg of CO2 emissions per day, while the volcano emitted about 1.5×10^8 kg of CO2 per day. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%... I.e., The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull had a net negative effect in CO2 emission because the effect of grounded European flights alone more than compensated for the natural volcanic emission. So, yes, when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. And pray that the same amount of CO2 is never spewed through a volcanic eruption, unless you long to die in a volcanic apocalypse.
      - paulhauggis 11y ago
        "unless you long to die in a volcanic apocalypse." If that were the case, we would already be dead from the amounts spewed from the European flights. No? I think one of my problems with it all is that we have been hearing the exact same thing since the 1970s. The sky will fall and all life on earth will be destroyed because of global warming, global cooling, and climate change. ~40 years have passed and nothing has happened. The predictions were wrong.
        yongjik 11y ago
        (Sigh) It seems I have to spell it out. > The Mount Pinatubo eruption emitted 42 million tonnes of CO2 (Gerlach et al 1996). Compare this to human emissions in 1991: 23 billion tonnes of CO2 (CDIAC). The strongest eruption over the last half-century amounted to 0.2% of human CO2 emissions in that year. [1] In other words, for volcanic eruptions to match human CO2 output, we need ~500 Mount Pinatubo's every year (or roughly two of them every day). Like watching volcanoes? [1] https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=50 https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=50 Edit: on second thought, if we have anywhere near that many volcanoes, most of us will be too busy starving to death to contribute anything meaningful to the anthropogenic global warming (which would be no more), so maybe one Mount Pinatubo every week or so would be enough to match human emission.
- jgrowl 11y ago
  I'm no expert or anything, but I think studies saying that volcanic eruptions not being a driver of climate change is based off of co2 release, not high altitude particulate. edit: Meaning normal volcanic activity (in a modern context) has been shown to not be the driver of recent observable climate change. However this does not mean that very large volcanic eruptions won't have an impact on global temperatures when ash is thrown up high enough to block out the sun.
- dang 11y ago
  "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - paulhauggis 11y ago
    This article is about climate change and volcanic activity during the roman empire. If you can't handle the topic at hand, please remove it and don't allow anyone to comment on it. It's not my fault that too many people in the HN community refuse to have actual scientific discussions and instantly go for the down vote (not very intelligent, in my honest opinion). If you look through my history, I've attempted to have discussions about climate change..and I'm shouted down and silenced. HN used to have intelligent people posting that actually wanted real discussions. It's driving more and more people away from it with this sort of mob-like behavior.
    - lutorm 11y ago
      If you wanted to have a real discussion, perhaps you shouldn't have started with the straw man that humans are the only thing influencing climate. No one seriously suggests that and, if you're interested in what the science is saying, you should know that.
- civilian 11y ago
  You may find this educational: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
oldmanjay 11y ago
The headline says trigger, but the article (and the subheading!) makes a case that a series of eruptions was a knock-out blow. I guess that's in keeping with Betteridge's law, so the answer to the headline's question can remain "no."
- dang 11y ago
  Ok, we replaced that bit with language from the subtitle. I believe Mr. Betteridge has retired.
- mlinksva 11y ago
  Makes even less sense than that. The Western Roman Empire finally fell in 476, these eruptions were in 535/6 and 539 and refer to events in the Eastern Roman Empire, which definitely did not suffer a knock-out blow at the time, or fall for another 900 years! Added: linked article justifies this being about the Roman Empire with "Historians have variously dated the final collapse to the sack of Rome in AD410 by the Visigoth king Alaric, the deposing of the last Roman emperor by the German chieftain Odoacer in AD476 and the death of Justinian I, the last Roman emperor to try to reconquer the western half of the empire, in AD565."
- joshvm 11y ago
  It seems like we've showed that the blackout in the sky that occurred around that time was almost certainly due to a volcanic eruption in North America. Whether it was a significant factor in the fall of the empire is still up for debate.
softbuilder 11y ago
Which volcanoes?
- the_watcher 11y ago
  I was looking for this too, simply so I could share it with the caption "America so powerful it ended the Roman Empire."
duaneb 11y ago
As with all speculations about the roman empire, it's complicated and the money really just moved east, while the west just turned into the catholic church and really struggled maintaining order for a few centuries. Was it the volcanoes? Or maybe the barbarians? Maybe the communist-like christians? Maybe the corporation-like regions? Talking about the fall of the roman empire is like talking about the rise of the PC: inevitable, and a mind-boggling number of variables were involved with the particulars.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  One of the most disturbing things I ever read was from here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/10n/why_safety_is_not_safe/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/10n/why_safety_is_not_safe/ >...The great civilizations of Europe and China were roughly on par, the former having almost caught up over the previous few centuries; yet Chinese oceangoing ships were arguably still better than anything Europe could build... Perhaps China might have reached the Americas before Europeans did, and the shape of the world might have been very different... >...By the 16th century, the fleets had vanished...to this day there is no consensus on the underlying factors... Some writers have blamed flat terrain, which others have disputed; some have blamed rice agriculture and its need for irrigation systems. Likely there were factors nobody has yet understood; perhaps we never will. >An entire future that might have been, was snuffed out by some terrible force compared to which war, plague and famine were mere pinpricks - and yet even with the benefit of hindsight, we still don't truly understand what it was. >Nor is this an isolated case. From the collapse of classical Mediterranean civilization to the divergent fates of the US and Argentina, whose prospects looked so similar as recently as the early 20th century, we find more terrible than any war or ordinary disaster are forces which operate unseen in plain sight and are only dimly understood even after the fact. >The saving grace has always been the outside: when one nation, one civilization, faltered, another picked up the torch and carried on; but with the march of globalization, there may soon be no more outside. >...we react instantly to the lesser death that comes in blood and fire, but the greater death that comes in the dust of time, is to our minds invisible.
meric 11y ago
All empires end. The cycle of all empires from birth to death is explained in this book by Sir John Glubb who commanded the Arab Legion many decades ago. http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/TheFateofEmpiresbySirJohnGlubb.pdf http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/... (a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced. (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness. (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations? (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be: The Age of Pioneers (outburst) The Age of Conquests The Age of Commerce The Age of Affluence The Age of Intellect The Age of Decadence. (e) Decadence is marked by: Defensiveness Pessimism Materialism Frivolity An influx of foreigners The Welfare State A weakening of religion. (f) Decadence is due to: Too long a period of wealth and power Selfishness Love of money The loss of a sense of duty. (g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors. (h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes. (i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.
- colanderman 11y ago
  Those stages are quite interesting. I suppose the United States is somewhere between Intellect and Decadence? Commerce being the turn of the last century (Industrial revolution) and Affluence being post-WWII.
MichaelMoser123 11y ago
Here they are listing 210 reasons/theories for the collapse of the Rome, would volcanoes make reason #211 ? https://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html https://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html
- MichaelMoser123 11y ago
  "The natural catastrophes led to widespread famine and was responsible for the Great Justinian Plague which wiped out one third of Europeans" that's strange - the plague of Justinan was the same as the bubonic plague, what do volcano erruptions have in common with the black death? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian
  - lutorm 11y ago
    That page says "The outbreak in Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by infected rats on grain boats arriving from Egypt.[7] To feed its citizens, the city and outlying communities imported massive amounts of grain—mostly from Egypt. Grain ships may have been the original source of contagion, as the rat (and flea) population in Egypt thrived on feeding from the large granaries maintained by the government."
Wildgoose 11y ago
This isn't a new idea. David Keys wrote a book "Catastrophe" 15 years ago dealing with the same subject, although in his case he picked a different volcano as the probable cause. He also looked at the effects on a world-wide basis, not just in Europe. To quote from the book's marketing literature: "In AD 536, a volcanic eruption meant our planet was enveloped by a cloak of lethal dust which changed the climate for decades. The sun's rays grew dim and total darkness reigned for days. It was a catastrophe of unparalleled proportions." http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catastrophe-Investigation-Origins-Modern-World/dp/0099409844/ref=sr_1_16 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catastrophe-Investigation-Origins-Mo...
panglott 11y ago
The eruptions happened in 563 AD? That is almost a century ~after~ what it regarded as the "Fall of Rome". Italy was being governed by Germans, at that point. What a clickbaity title. Maybe it made life harder for Constantinople, but the eastern empire was getting hammered on all sides just like the west, but managed to hang on. FYI, I've really enjoyed the History of Rome and the History of Byzantium podcasts. http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/ http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

27 points by mml 11y ago

It's interesting that this theory is that something naturally occurring, like a volcanic eruption, caused climate change during the time of the roman empire. I've seen so many studies online that claim that volcanic eruptions can't possibly cause climate change. Are we finally willing to admit that it might not all be man-made?

brobinson 11y ago
There have been other, more recent incidents along the same lines of what is proposed in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
zzalpha 11y ago
No one has ever claimed massive volcanic eruptions don't affect the climate. That's a well established fact. What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming. Please take your strawman elsewhere.
- paulhauggis 11y ago
  "What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming." Like this article? This article is claiming just that. "What has never been established is a link between volcanic activity and global warming." So when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. When the same thing happens with a volcano eruption, nothing. heh, that makes sense. It's puzzling why mentioning volcanic eruptions and climate change is considered a "straw man" to you when the article is about volcanic eruptions and climate change. "Straw man" is used too often for things that people merely disagree with. I can't wait for the day when we can have actual open and honest scientific discussion, rather than silencing anything that goes against the popular narrative.
  - yongjik 11y ago
    > So when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. When the same thing happens with a volcano eruption, nothing. Let's see one recent volcanic eruption that caused quite some trouble: > The grounding of European flights avoided about 3.44×10^8 kg of CO2 emissions per day, while the volcano emitted about 1.5×10^8 kg of CO2 per day. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_eruptions_of_Eyjafjallaj%... I.e., The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull had a net negative effect in CO2 emission because the effect of grounded European flights alone more than compensated for the natural volcanic emission. So, yes, when man spews massive amounts of CO2, the climate changes. And pray that the same amount of CO2 is never spewed through a volcanic eruption, unless you long to die in a volcanic apocalypse.
    - paulhauggis 11y ago
      "unless you long to die in a volcanic apocalypse." If that were the case, we would already be dead from the amounts spewed from the European flights. No? I think one of my problems with it all is that we have been hearing the exact same thing since the 1970s. The sky will fall and all life on earth will be destroyed because of global warming, global cooling, and climate change. ~40 years have passed and nothing has happened. The predictions were wrong.
      - yongjik 11y ago
        (Sigh) It seems I have to spell it out. > The Mount Pinatubo eruption emitted 42 million tonnes of CO2 (Gerlach et al 1996). Compare this to human emissions in 1991: 23 billion tonnes of CO2 (CDIAC). The strongest eruption over the last half-century amounted to 0.2% of human CO2 emissions in that year. [1] In other words, for volcanic eruptions to match human CO2 output, we need ~500 Mount Pinatubo's every year (or roughly two of them every day). Like watching volcanoes? [1] https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=50 https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=50 Edit: on second thought, if we have anywhere near that many volcanoes, most of us will be too busy starving to death to contribute anything meaningful to the anthropogenic global warming (which would be no more), so maybe one Mount Pinatubo every week or so would be enough to match human emission.
jgrowl 11y ago
I'm no expert or anything, but I think studies saying that volcanic eruptions not being a driver of climate change is based off of co2 release, not high altitude particulate. edit: Meaning normal volcanic activity (in a modern context) has been shown to not be the driver of recent observable climate change. However this does not mean that very large volcanic eruptions won't have an impact on global temperatures when ash is thrown up high enough to block out the sun.
dang 11y ago
"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- paulhauggis 11y ago
  This article is about climate change and volcanic activity during the roman empire. If you can't handle the topic at hand, please remove it and don't allow anyone to comment on it. It's not my fault that too many people in the HN community refuse to have actual scientific discussions and instantly go for the down vote (not very intelligent, in my honest opinion). If you look through my history, I've attempted to have discussions about climate change..and I'm shouted down and silenced. HN used to have intelligent people posting that actually wanted real discussions. It's driving more and more people away from it with this sort of mob-like behavior.
  - lutorm 11y ago
    If you wanted to have a real discussion, perhaps you shouldn't have started with the straw man that humans are the only thing influencing climate. No one seriously suggests that and, if you're interested in what the science is saying, you should know that.
civilian 11y ago
You may find this educational: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...

oldmanjay 11y ago

The headline says trigger, but the article (and the subheading!) makes a case that a series of eruptions was a knock-out blow. I guess that's in keeping with Betteridge's law, so the answer to the headline's question can remain "no."

dang 11y ago
Ok, we replaced that bit with language from the subtitle. I believe Mr. Betteridge has retired.
mlinksva 11y ago
Makes even less sense than that. The Western Roman Empire finally fell in 476, these eruptions were in 535/6 and 539 and refer to events in the Eastern Roman Empire, which definitely did not suffer a knock-out blow at the time, or fall for another 900 years! Added: linked article justifies this being about the Roman Empire with "Historians have variously dated the final collapse to the sack of Rome in AD410 by the Visigoth king Alaric, the deposing of the last Roman emperor by the German chieftain Odoacer in AD476 and the death of Justinian I, the last Roman emperor to try to reconquer the western half of the empire, in AD565."
joshvm 11y ago
It seems like we've showed that the blackout in the sky that occurred around that time was almost certainly due to a volcanic eruption in North America. Whether it was a significant factor in the fall of the empire is still up for debate.

softbuilder 11y ago

Which volcanoes?

the_watcher 11y ago
I was looking for this too, simply so I could share it with the caption "America so powerful it ended the Roman Empire."

duaneb 11y ago

As with all speculations about the roman empire, it's complicated and the money really just moved east, while the west just turned into the catholic church and really struggled maintaining order for a few centuries. Was it the volcanoes? Or maybe the barbarians? Maybe the communist-like christians? Maybe the corporation-like regions? Talking about the fall of the roman empire is like talking about the rise of the PC: inevitable, and a mind-boggling number of variables were involved with the particulars.

Houshalter 11y ago
One of the most disturbing things I ever read was from here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/10n/why_safety_is_not_safe/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/10n/why_safety_is_not_safe/ >...The great civilizations of Europe and China were roughly on par, the former having almost caught up over the previous few centuries; yet Chinese oceangoing ships were arguably still better than anything Europe could build... Perhaps China might have reached the Americas before Europeans did, and the shape of the world might have been very different... >...By the 16th century, the fleets had vanished...to this day there is no consensus on the underlying factors... Some writers have blamed flat terrain, which others have disputed; some have blamed rice agriculture and its need for irrigation systems. Likely there were factors nobody has yet understood; perhaps we never will. >An entire future that might have been, was snuffed out by some terrible force compared to which war, plague and famine were mere pinpricks - and yet even with the benefit of hindsight, we still don't truly understand what it was. >Nor is this an isolated case. From the collapse of classical Mediterranean civilization to the divergent fates of the US and Argentina, whose prospects looked so similar as recently as the early 20th century, we find more terrible than any war or ordinary disaster are forces which operate unseen in plain sight and are only dimly understood even after the fact. >The saving grace has always been the outside: when one nation, one civilization, faltered, another picked up the torch and carried on; but with the march of globalization, there may soon be no more outside. >...we react instantly to the lesser death that comes in blood and fire, but the greater death that comes in the dust of time, is to our minds invisible.

meric 11y ago

All empires end. The cycle of all empires from birth to death is explained in this book by Sir John Glubb who commanded the Arab Legion many decades ago. http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/TheFateofEmpiresbySirJohnGlubb.pdf http://www.newworldeconomics.com/archives/2014/092814_files/... (a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced. (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness. (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations? (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great nations seem to be: The Age of Pioneers (outburst) The Age of Conquests The Age of Commerce The Age of Affluence The Age of Intellect The Age of Decadence. (e) Decadence is marked by: Defensiveness Pessimism Materialism Frivolity An influx of foreigners The Welfare State A weakening of religion. (f) Decadence is due to: Too long a period of wealth and power Selfishness Love of money The loss of a sense of duty. (g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors. (h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes. (i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.

colanderman 11y ago
Those stages are quite interesting. I suppose the United States is somewhere between Intellect and Decadence? Commerce being the turn of the last century (Industrial revolution) and Affluence being post-WWII.

MichaelMoser123 11y ago

Here they are listing 210 reasons/theories for the collapse of the Rome, would volcanoes make reason #211 ? https://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html https://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html

MichaelMoser123 11y ago
"The natural catastrophes led to widespread famine and was responsible for the Great Justinian Plague which wiped out one third of Europeans" that's strange - the plague of Justinan was the same as the bubonic plague, what do volcano erruptions have in common with the black death? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian
- lutorm 11y ago
  That page says "The outbreak in Constantinople was thought to have been carried to the city by infected rats on grain boats arriving from Egypt.[7] To feed its citizens, the city and outlying communities imported massive amounts of grain—mostly from Egypt. Grain ships may have been the original source of contagion, as the rat (and flea) population in Egypt thrived on feeding from the large granaries maintained by the government."

Wildgoose 11y ago

This isn't a new idea. David Keys wrote a book "Catastrophe" 15 years ago dealing with the same subject, although in his case he picked a different volcano as the probable cause. He also looked at the effects on a world-wide basis, not just in Europe. To quote from the book's marketing literature: "In AD 536, a volcanic eruption meant our planet was enveloped by a cloak of lethal dust which changed the climate for decades. The sun's rays grew dim and total darkness reigned for days. It was a catastrophe of unparalleled proportions." http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catastrophe-Investigation-Origins-Modern-World/dp/0099409844/ref=sr_1_16 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catastrophe-Investigation-Origins-Mo...

panglott 11y ago

The eruptions happened in 563 AD? That is almost a century ~after~ what it regarded as the "Fall of Rome". Italy was being governed by Germans, at that point. What a clickbaity title. Maybe it made life harder for Constantinople, but the eastern empire was getting hammered on all sides just like the west, but managed to hang on. FYI, I've really enjoyed the History of Rome and the History of Byzantium podcasts. http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/ http://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/