Great Famine Of 1315 vs The Sun ‘Starvation And Cannibalism’

From the “Well that’s not good.” department…

All indications are that we are headed into a Grand Solar Minimum. The timing is right. The solar activity is right. The weather shifts are starting to match up (cold / wet in the UK and Europe, dry / hot in the US Midwest and East Russia).

So any historical examples of what happens then?

Solar Cycles

Several folks have done a lot of work to show repeating patterns of solar activity. One very useful chart is here:

http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/6

based on the (roughly) 179 year solar cycle and the periodic return of “chaotic” motion as the sun enters a retrograde orbital motion about the barycenter.

Solar Angular Momentum 1620 to 2180

Notice that the Maunder Minimum runs between the two green arrows at the start panel. Note, too, that the panels are aligned on a 180 year repeat. 1640, 1820, 2000 A.D. for alignment points of grand minima episodes. This is a nice feature for our use. We can make a ‘good guess’ about the past just by subtracting 180 from 1640 recursively to get prior “aw shit” alignments. Yes, it’s crude. Not nearly as good as actually running the computation backwards. But “good enough” for my purposes. I don’t care about a 10% change of intensity or a 1 year drift. I just want “rough decades” (since things seem to have a bit of a lag to onset of climate issues anyway).

So, 1640 then 1460, then 1280, then 1100, then 920, 740, 560…

But most likely there will be a little delay after those dates. On the graph we can see that the alignment is ahead of the onset of the minimum. There is a 10 – 60 year band. So 1470-1520, 1290-1340, 1110-1160, 930-980, 750-800, 570-620, 390-440 etc.

Notice that I am not paying attention to the Dalton Minimum type pattern at the right edge of each graph. So some of my “not a match” findings below might match on those dates / pattern.

Anything interesting in the history of those times?

The Famine of 1315 A.D.

The first one to stand out to me is the Great Famine of 1315 A.D.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315-1317

The Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315–1322) was the first of a series of large scale crises that struck Northern Europe early in the fourteenth century. From the Pyrenees to Russia and from Scotland to Italy it caused millions of deaths over an extended number of years and marks a clear end to an earlier period of growth and prosperity during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries.

Starting with bad weather in spring 1315, universal crop failures lasted through 1316 until summer harvest in 1317; Europe did not fully recover until 1322. It was a period marked by extreme levels of crime, disease, mass death and even cannibalism and infanticide. It had consequences for Church, state, European society and future calamities to follow in the fourteenth century.
[...]
European famines of the Middle Ages

Famine in the Medieval European context meant that people died of starvation on a massive scale. As brutal as they were, famines were familiar occurrences in Medieval Europe. As an example, localized famines occurred in France during the fourteenth century in 1304, 1305, 1310, 1315–1317 (the Great Famine), 1330–1334, 1349–1351, 1358–1360, 1371, 1374–1375 and 1390. In England, years of famine included 1315–1317, 1321, 1351, and 1369.

For most people there was often not enough to eat and life expectancy was relatively short since many children died. According to records of the royal family of the Kingdom of England, among the best cared for in society, the average life expectancy in 1276 was 35.28 years. Between 1301 and 1325 during the Great Famine it was 29.84, while between 1348 and 1375, during the Black Death and subsequent plagues, it went down to only 17.33.

So there was a warm “Really good time” (rather like the last 100 years or so) and then a few ‘local famines’ in France and some modest crop failures. Finally, a major Aw Shit hits with two back to back years of very poor crops over much of Europe.

Centered right over that low angular momentum interval.

Coming out of it, things get better but still have some ‘carryover’ for a generation after the event.

So what did the “onset” look like? Anything closer to 1280 or 1290 A.D. that might give an idea what early signs might be?

Geography

The Great Famine was restricted to Northern Europe, including the British Isles, northern France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Germany, and western Poland. It also affected some of the Baltic states except for the far eastern Baltic which was only affected indirectly. The famine was bounded in the south by the Alps and the Pyrenees.

So the warmer more southern parts of Europe do “OK”…

During the Medieval Warm Period (the period prior to 1300) the population of Europe had exploded, reaching levels that were not matched again in some places until the nineteenth century (parts of France today are less populous than at the beginning of the fourteenth century.) However, the yield ratios of wheat (the number of seeds one could eat per seed planted)Mb< had been dropping since 1280 and food prices had been climbing. In good weather the ratio could be as high as 7:1, while during bad years as low as 2:1 – that is, for every seed planted, two seeds were harvested, one for next year’s seed, and one for food. By comparison, modern farming has ratios of 30:1 or more.

The end of the Medieval Warm Period coincided with the onset of the Great Famine. Between 1310 and 1330 northern Europe saw some of the worst and most sustained periods of bad weather in the entire Middle Ages, characterized by severe winters and rainy and cold summers.

Changing weather patterns, the ineffectiveness of medieval governments in dealing with crises and a population level at a historical high made it a time when there was little margin for error.

So yields start to drop ( though modern yields are so much higher that we will likely have less ‘issues’ from any reduction of yield and we ship grains globally) in Northern Europe and the weather goes pretty cold and wet in the summer in the UK / Northern Europe.

In the spring of 1315, unusually heavy rain began in much of Europe. Throughout the spring and summer, it continued to rain and the temperature remained cool. These conditions caused widespread crop failures. The straw and hay for the animals could not be cured and there was no fodder for the livestock. The price of food began to rise. Food prices in England doubled between spring and midsummer. Salt, the only way to cure and preserve meat, was difficult to obtain because it could not be evaporated in the wet weather; it went from 30 shillings to 40 shillings.

Looks to me like water dominates the process, at least for Europe. Grains and foods that need drying conditions fail. Likely water loving and cold tolerant gardens would do better. Beets and Kale anyone?

OK, so from 1280 to 1315 is 35 years. Take 2000 and add 35 gives 2035. Smack on top of the predicted cold peak from Habibulo Abdusamatov. We’re getting similar results from divergent methods. ( Habibulo looks at solar diameter changes, Landscheidt is based on planetary positions / solar motion – but changes in angular momentum might well show up as diameter changes).

Good news / bad news time… Good news is that there’s still about 22 years (next solar cycle or two?) before it’s likely to be “bad”. Also, we have global food distribution so “good times” somewhere like Brazil might well offset for us, but not in 1300. Bad news is that things start getting colder, wetter, and having less yield before the couple of “Aw Shit” years.

If you think you will be around, and in North Europe, in the next couple of decades this might be a good time to investigate food storage systems. It’s pretty clear the the government will not be doing anything to prepare for ‘bad times’ and pretty much everyone is ignoring the Biblical directive to prepare for 7 bad years.

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/food-storage-systems/

I have a ‘rule of thumb’ that it takes about 1 lb of dry food per person per day. Rice, wheat, beans, whatever. That’s 360 lbs a year or a bit over 700 lbs for a 2 year crop failure. That’s about $400 for bulk grains. Hardly a bank breaker and can be stored in one large closet ( or make a rectangle out of it, put a cover over it, and call it a table

FWIW, Lentils can be stored for 10 to 15 years ( I have some that I’ve kept for 19 years and were still edible) but regular “common beans” and especially peas get hard in storage and it takes forever to cook them (think ‘fuel storage’…) or for peas they may never soften. ( Some bicarb of soda helps then to soften). So my ‘typical’ is jugs of wheat, rice, and lentils. I’m working on adding some quinoa and millet for variety.

At present, I’ve got about 3 months of “food storage” as I’ve been terribly lax about it. I grew up in a Mormon Town where the “norm” was a 1 year supply of stored food; but having moved to a “just in time” urban area, never did get enough ambition about it to go over about 6 months worth. (Which turned into 3 months when I got married IMHO, the time for being lax is ending.

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