Yahoo Finance On-line carried the following opinion article
on 3.2.2020:
A Climate Change Lesson from Scotland's Little Ice Age
Bloomberg Tatiana Schlossberg,Bloomberg 16 hours ago
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(Bloomberg Opinion) -- We’ve heard a lot over the last few
years about what Brexit might mean for the future of Britain and the United
Kingdom. Rather than prognosticate (enough people have already made enough bad
predictions) let’s instead look at what history teaches us about such a divorce
might mean in a time of climate crisis.
The place: Scotland. The time: 1695.
Already, much of the Northern Hemisphere was shivering its way through the
so-called Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1450 to 1850. The decade from
1695-1705 was the coldest of all, though, according to a recent study in the
Journal of Vulcanology and Geothermal Research. In fact, it’s still Scotland’s
coldest decade in the last nearly 800 years. The century 1612-1711 is the
coldest hundred-year period on record (1911-2010 is the warmest). Looking at
rings from centuries-old trees in the Cairngorms in northern Scotland, the
researchers and determined that this particular cold spell was caused by a few
significant volcanic eruptions in the tropics and Iceland from 1693-1695, and
possibly a shift in the North Atlantic/Arctic Oscillation, the atmospheric
pressure pattern that affects the climate of the northern hemisphere.
The study’s authors
lay out some of the consequences: Population loss in Scotland of around 10-15%
(25% in some places) because of crop failure and ill-advised export laws, and
over-enthusiasm about Darien, a proposed colony in Panama, which was a
spectacular failure. It lasted less than two years and resulted in the deaths
of about 2,000 colonists and the loss of about a third of Scotland’s wealth.
The effect of all of this — population loss, economic and
agricultural collapse — was that Scotland united with England in 1707 after
centuries of resistance, the authors write. And while no decades were as bad,
climate-wise, as the 1690s, once unified with England, Scotland never saw the
same kind of desperation again.
“By
joining England, Scotland became more resilient,” said Rosanne D’Arrigo, the
lead author and a tree-ring scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
at Columbia University. “The bigger message for today is arguably that as the
climate changes, nations will be stronger if they stick together and not try to
go it alone.”
There’s an obvious parallel to Brexit: going it alone in
difficult climatic times can result in disaster, particularly for smaller
countries with fewer resources, which is relevant for both the United Kingdom’s
relationship with the E.U., and for how its members relate to each other.
But it has relevance beyond the U.K. and Europe, since the
climate is changing not only on a regional or hemispheric scale, but a
planetary one. Though effects may be worse in some places and for some people than others — namely for poor black, brown
and indigenous women in the Global South — there are no parts of the world that
the climate crisis will leave untouched. There isn’t really a way to go it
alone — emissions anywhere have consequences everywhere.
The work these scientists have done
suggests that we consider ourselves and our economies separate from nature at
our own peril. And we err when we don’t understand the history of climate
change, pollution, and resource exhaustion.
The need to take from nature and the
belief that more can always be taken are part of what drove settlers to the
“New World,” and once in North America, pushed them to expand across the
continent. The American sense that natural resources have no limits — there has always been more — has allowed us
to think of nature and its limits as an abstract idea rather than a physical
reality, as much as our economic and geographic growth has physically depended
on our resources.
We have our own cautionary tales too: the near-extinction of
the buffalo and wild Atlantic salmon in U.S. waters, and the actual extinction
of the passenger pigeon and the eastern elk. We can’t (or shouldn’t) understand
the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 without considering the environmental costs and
transformations that came with coal mining.
Taking this long view helps us understand that while climate
change may be an especially intense and relatively recent problem, we’ve been
dealing with versions of it for centuries. We take the stability of our natural
world for granted, but it is always changing, both on its own and in response
to how we scramble time — burning ancient fuels to melt ancient ice to alter
our future.
We’re already seeing the imprint of the climate crisis on
events that may otherwise seem unrelated to it: Mass migration to Europe
following the Arab Spring and the Syrian Civil War can be attributed in part to
climate change. The arrival of immigrants in Europe has often been met with
hostility, and has triggered political changes — influencing the rise of
right-wing populism on the continent as well as in the British Isles.
We may be able to change the climate, but we should remember
that the climate changes us, too.
Translation
彭博（Bloomberg
Opinion）- 在過去幾年中，我們聽到了很多信息關於英國退歐對英國和聯合王國未來的意義。與其預言（足夠多的人已經做出了錯誤的預測），不如讓我們看看歷史告訴我們關於這種脱離在氣候危機時期可能意味著什麼。
地點：蘇格蘭。時間：1695年。北半球的大部分地區已經在所謂的“小冰河時代”（約從5050年到1850年）中顫抖。而根據Vulcanology
and Geothermal Research雜誌上的最新研究，從1695年到1705年的十年是最冷的。。實際上，它仍然是蘇格蘭近800年來最寒冷的十年。
1612年至1711年是有記錄以來最冷的一百年時期（1911-2010年是最溫暖的時期）。在查看了蘇格蘭北部凱恩戈姆州百年古樹上的年輪後，研究人員確定這一特殊的寒冷季節是由於熱帶地區和冰島從1693-1695年發生的幾次重大火山噴發，以及可能發生了北大西洋/北極濤動的變化，影響北半球氣候的氣壓模式。
該研究的作者指出了一些效應：蘇格蘭的人口損失約為10-15％（某些地方為25％）; 由於作物歉收和不明智的出口法律,
以及過度熱忱在巴拿馬提議建立的殖民地達里恩（Darien），造成一次规模大和後果明显的失敗。歷時不到兩年，導致約2,000名殖民者喪生，並損失了蘇格蘭約三分之一的財富。
這作者寫道，所有這些的後果 -人口損失，經濟和農業崩潰,
導致蘇格蘭在數個世紀的抵抗後於1707年與英國聯合。在氣候方面，再沒有比1690年代哪十年糟糕 。與英國統一後，蘇格蘭再也沒有看到過同樣的絕望。
哥倫比亞大學的Lamont-Doherty地球觀測站的樹木年輪科學家及主要寫作者Rosanne D’Arrigo說：“加入英格蘭後，蘇格蘭變得更具彈性。”
“今天更大的信息可以說是隨著氣候變化，如果各國團結在一起而不是獨自一人努力，它們將會變得更強大。”
這歷史與英國脫歐有一個明顯的相似之處：在氣候困難的時候獨自一人可能導致災難，特別是對於資源較少的小國家而言。這相似與英國和歐盟的關係息息相關,
而其成員之間的相互關係亦如是。
這亦與英國和歐洲以外地方息息相關，因為氣候不僅在區域或半個地球範圍內變化，而是在全地球上。儘管在某些地方和某些人身上的影響可能比其他地方更糟 -- 即是對南半球的貧窮黑人，棕色人和土著婦女 -- 世界上沒有任何地方不會遭受氣候危機的影響。在事實上真的沒法單獨解決
– 任何地方的排放物都会在另一處產生後果。
這些科學家所做的工作表明，我們犯險地認為人類和他們的經濟與大自然互不干涉。如果我們不了解氣候變化的歷史，與及污染和資源枯竭，就是犯下誤錯。
人們由大自然獲得所需,
以及在信念認為隨時可以搜括更多是驅使移居者進入“新世界”的原因，而移居者一旦進入北美，這信念促使他們在整個美洲大陸擴張。美國人認為自然資源是無盡的，而且一直都会有更多，這使我們將大自然及其極限視為僅是一種抽象概念，而不是一種大自然的現實，就像我們的經濟和地域增長實際取決於我們的資源。
我們也有自己的警示性故事：在美國水域，水牛和野生大西洋鮭魚近乎滅絕，而長尾北美鴿子和東麋鹿實際上滅絕了。我們不能（或不会）理解1914年的拉德洛大屠殺, 如果不去思考煤炭開採帶來的環境成本和改變。
從長遠的角度來看，這有助於我們理解到儘管氣候變化可能是一個特別激烈且相對較新的問題，但數百年來我們一直已在應對它。我們認為自然世界的穩定是理所當然的，但它本身,
和對我們倒乱時間所作出的反應,
都是在不斷變化 -- 燃燒古老的燃料引起古老的冰融化正在改變我們的未來。
在似乎與事件無關的事件上我們已經看到氣候危機烙印：在“阿拉伯之春”和“敘利亞內戰”之後向歐洲的大規模遷移可以部分歸因於氣候變化。 歐洲移民的來臨常常引起敵對情緒，並引發了政治變化，影響了歐洲大陸以及不列顛群島右翼民粹主義的興起。
我們也許可以改變氣候，但是我們應該記住，氣候也改變了我們。
So, according Tatiana Schlossberg, Brexit
may create uncertainty for the Britain people due to climate changes. As crime
crisis is a global issue, he believes that going alone in difficult climatic
times could result in disasters, particularly for smaller countries with fewer
resources. The rise of right-wing populism on the continent as well as in the
British Isles could be seen as an indirect result of crime changes.
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