Living in Peru : your everyday companion

The four centuries coincided directly with the rise of this startling, hyper-productive culture that at its zenith was bigger than the Ming Dynasty China and the Ottoman Empire, the two most powerful contemporaries of the Inca.

"This period of increased temperatures," the scientists say, "allowed the Inca and their predecessors to expand, from AD 1150 onwards, their agricultural zones by moving up the mountains to build a massive system of terraces fed frequently by glacial water, as well as planting trees to reduce erosion and increase soil fertility.

"They re-created the landscape and produced the huge surpluses of maize, potatoes, quinua and other crops that freed a rapidly growing population to build roads, scores of palaces like Machu Picchu and in particular the development of a large standing army."

No World Bank, no NGOs.

The new study is called "Putting the Rise of the Inca within a Climatic and Land Management Context" and was prepared by Alex Chepstow-Lusty, an English paleo-biologist working for the French Institute of Andean Studies, in Lima.  Alex led a team that includes Brian Bauer, of the University of Illinois, one of today's top Inca-ologists. The study is being published in Climate of the Past, an online academic journal.

Alex spends a lot of time in Cuzco and he told me the other day that the report "raises the question of whether today's global warming may be another opportunity for the Andes."

The core samples from the sediment of the little lake, Marcacocha, in the Patakancha valley above Ollantaytambo, show that there was a major cold drought in the southern Andes beginning in 880 AD lasting for a devastating century-plus through into 1000AD.  This cold snap finished off both the Wari and the Tiahuanaco cultures which had between them dominated the southern Andes for more than a millenium.

It was at this same time that the Classic Maya disappeared in Yucatan. It was also a time, on the other side of the Pacific when major migrations from East Asia took place into Polynesia, an indication of a major Niño event; a Niño sees western Pacific currents switch to flow from West to East.
Core samples from glaciers and from the mud beneath lakes in the Andes, the Amazon and elsewhere have built up a history of the world's climate and the message is crystal clear. It is that changes have taken place in the past, during the six or seven thousand years of our agriculture-based civilizations, that are just as big as the ones we are facing from today's CO2 warming.

The message may be, too, that climate change is especially forceful in the Andes. Here we are, sandwiched thinly between the world's biggest ocean and the world's biggest jungle. The peaks are so high that they have had until just a few years ago deep ice on or near the Equator.

The valleys and surrounding hills have formed the roof of the human world for at least three millennia, according to Alex Chepstow-Lusty's core samples. Nowhere else do millions of people live at or even near 4,000ms above sea level where it is cold, but getting warmer.

Today's warming is also following on a colder spell that started, the core samples say, not long after the arrival of the Spaniards in the 16th century.

For instance, the pollen in the cores says that there was maize being grown under the Incas around the lake at 3,300ms a.s.l. Until recently the upper level for maize around the Urubamba valley was 3,000-3,100ms. In the past few years the maize level has moved up and today there is maize being grown again above Marcacocha.

Alex's records show that hundreds of terraces were being built around the lake between 1100 and 1150 AD -"lots of mud followed by the heavy pollen of maize."

Enrique Mayer, at Yale, tells me that "the question of the expansion of maize together with the Inca state is now a proven archeological fact, notably in the Mantaro Valley (Tim Earle).

"The question of why terraces are not worked now as intensively as they could has been worked on (Bill Devevan) in the Colca Valley where the terraces are actually in franco retroceso.

"Also, you have John Treacy's book on Coporaque which is probably the most technically accessible to the argument that terraces are, like flower pots, expensive to maintain."

There is also, of course, the work of John Earls on the terracing at Moray.

Today there are thousands upon thousands of fine flights of Inca terraces all over the upper ends of the valleys of Central and Southern Peru but few of them are used on a regular basis.

Efforts have been made, among them by Ann Kendall, the English archaeologist, to rescusitate the old irrigation channels and the use of the terraces in the valleys above Machu Picchu. But most have been re-abandoned.

In the same vein the great forests of polylepis, the world's highest tree, which capture and conserve moisture, have mostly been cut down for firewood.

As they say, you only have to look in the mirror to see where the problem is.

Originally Published June 25, Caretas, Country Notes 

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I am glad to hear about this kind of articles because we can not believe what some politicians want us to believe about Global Warming is caused by CO2...the true is that the Sun has cycles, and when the Sun has a lot of spots, the weather in our planet goes up and the CO2 that is storage in the ocean is release for the increase of temperatue. When the sun doesn't have those spots, the weather changes and the temperature decreases...remember the Ice age or back in the 60's and 70's..temperature were cooler compare to beginning of 1900's.

I am in complete agreement with Tita as to this political football called "Global Warming" that is being thrown around to scare citizens of the world- in particular, the U.S.A.- into letting governments pass laws to restrict the use of carbon fuels by making everyone pay higher fuel and utility bills. There is a political agenda in the U.S.A. to destroy the free market system and increase the size of governmental bureaucracies, thereby socializing what has always been a free country. The cooler temperatures in the sixties and seventies were merely part of a continuing end of what is now called "The Little Ice Age". This "Little Ice Age" may have been part of the downfall of the Incas!  

Couldn't agree more with the foregoing comments--oddly enough, the "Medieval Warming Period" (about 1000 a.d. to about 1350 a.d.), which Anthropogenic Global Warming enthusiasts have claimed affected only Europe was ongoing at this same time--this is when they were growing grapes in England and the Norse were farming in Greenland. This was truly a global warming period North and South as shown by this new evidence. The "Little Ice Age" kicked off in the mid to late 1300's, and caused significant problems to human cultures in both northern and southern hemispheres.

I suspect that as they do more looking at the cores, they will find that conditions began to deteriorate earlier than the 1400s, since things became untenable  for the Norse in Greenland prior to the 1400s, and the Native American Cultures such as the Anasazi suffered a massive decline in the mid to late 1300's as well. 

Bottom line--climate change does occur--human caused climate change on the other hand seems unlikely, and is being used as the current boogeyman to push through certain interests' agendas. For a look at how this is beginning to unravel outside the U.S., see this recent article from the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124597505076157449.html.

    Just because one is able to identify past climatic fluctuations does not mean that human beings do not have an impact on our planet.  Placing blame on politicians when the real data is coming from climatologists is faulty logic.  People do have an impact on their environment.  Just ask the Passenger Pigeon, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, the Chesapeake Bay Sturgeon, or the American Cougar.  We spent several centuries killing indigenous animals, polluting our rivers, and cutting down forest land.  Do you really think that people have no impact on their environment?

    Just for the record socialization fed and gave work to millions of people during the Great Depression.  Socialization is what is allowing millions of people to have a period of quiet retirement after a lifetime of labor.  Find a more logical reason to deny global warming.

With respect to Neil Manson's comment (#4), I think he is missing the point.

Let us agree (purely for the purpose of this debate) that :
"People do have an impact on their environment.  Just ask the Passenger Pigeon, the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, the Chesapeake Bay Sturgeon, or the American Cougar.  We spent several centuries killing indigenous animals, polluting our rivers, and cutting down forest land."

How is this relevant? The post is a report that there has been a much warmer climate in the past in the Andes - and that this was co-incident with the undisputed warmer climate in North America, Greenland and Europe in the medieval period. Obviously there has since been a drastic cooling ("little ice age") in these regions, followed by the current warming to a somewhat lesser temperature.

The inference is that there are powerful natural drivers of planetary climate. The task (that Neil ducks) is to prove that the current episode of warming, from around 1700 onwards, is not due to these drivers, but to human caused emissions.

Simple Radiative Physics shows that CO2 cannot account for the observed temperature increase. In order to claim that CO2 is the driver, modellers have had to invoke "positive feedback" by water vapour. This is increasingly strained, with two peer reviewed papers this year which strongly debunk "positive feedback", showing that the feedback is most likely negative. Nor does the lower troposphere show the warming necessary for the postulated positive feedback from water vapour.

I don't understand Neil's comments about socialisation. They don't seem to have any bearing on the science. If the "positive feedback" hypothesis cannot be sustained (and it is now looking very shaky), then CO2 and the other minor gases cannot be the forcing agents.

Perhaps Neil can offer an alternative cause - overeating of watermelons perhaps?
 

Sorry, Colin for getting carried away by "agenda in the U.S.A. to destroy the free market system and increase the size of governmental bureaucracies, thereby socializing what has always been a free country" and "used as the current boogeyman to push through certain interests' agendas" (both quotes from above comments).  If the science shows that Global Warming is not really happening then I guess it isn't.   My mind is open to either point of view that has scientific merit and NOAA sanction.    My point was and is that pointing to a valid scientific debate and saying that it is politically motivated demeans the entire discussion.  Perhaps if you would go back and read the entire string you might understand my irritation with somebody belittling a system that kept my grandparents and parents (and perhaps yours, too) alive during a time of great trial for this country. 

Obama promised that politics would not outweigh science.  There are 2500 climate warming lobbyists in D.C.  They are sponsored by big companies, institutions, and government agencies looking to make billions off HR 2454.  For instance GE builds windmill turbines, solar panels, hybrid locomotive engines, etc.

Submission of well researched, peer reviewed reports by leading climatologists have been rejected by prestigious science publications because they disprove global warming.  The San Diego paper refuses to print any article or letter debunking GW, but does print contributions based on ten year old data that says that GW exists.  But then, San Diego hosts Scripps which is making tens of millions from the GW movement.

The EPA sequestered the report of a published physicist on its staff because it said that new data shows that GW does not exist.

Don't pretend this is not political!

 Neil:You will find at http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

95% of global warming is due to water vapor.

5% is due to green house gases.

Only 0.28% is due to green house gases generated by people.

 

If, as required by the bill, the whole world reduced green house gases generated by man by 17% (IAW HR 2454), then people’s green house gas contribution to global warming would be reduced to 0.0476%.

 

The people of the US generate less than 20% of the total for the globe.

 

Therefore reducing green house gasses generated by people in the US by 17% would reduce their contribution to global warming to 17% of 20% of 0.28% or 0.00952%. That is less than one thousandth of one percent or less than one part in ten thousand.

 

Furthermore, if the entire United States reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 83% below current levels by 2050, it would only amount to a reduction of global warming of less than three-thousandths of a ºC per year.

Whether your political ship lists to port or to starboard, the subject of the report is of great scientific consequence.

The "Hockey Stick" hypothesis, derived from statistical analysis of temperature proxies, claims that we are currently experiencing the warmest climate of the last thousand years.

This statistical analysis has since been shown to be flawed, but the hypothesis remains,broken perhaps but still on the field.

The above report joins several other unequivocal indications that the Medieval period was globally warmer than the present:

           a. Archaeologists are still digging norse cadavers out of the Greenland permafrost.
           b. Finnish researchers have shown that treelines existed further north in medieval times.
           c. Artefacts found in the recently opened Scheidenoch pass in Switzerland show that it was also open in the Bronze, Roman and Medieval periods.

These three pieces of evidence are from the North Atlantic area, and deniers of the Medieval Warm Period have been able to claim that perhaps this was a local North Atlantic phenomenon.

Well not any more! The new evidence is from the Southern Hemisphere and the Pacific area. The hockey stick is rejected, and with it a central plank of hysteria. We don't live in the warmest time, merely in the warmest time since the last warmest time which was about 800 years ago. And our warmest time is cooler that theirs.

I don't know if that causes political roll in any direction.

I will side with Colin. Niel Manson has made an unprovable assertion along the the "scientific" thought of global warming caused by us. "Perhaps if you would go back and read the entire string you might understand my irritation with somebody belittling a system that kept my grandparents and parents (and perhaps yours, too) alive during a time of great trial for this country." This is an assumption, not a fact. Neil you don't know what may have happened without your Socialism but empirical observation shows that Socialism always results in poverty so I must assume that your conclusion is faulty. I can back this up with the laws of physics that govern these matters. That could get lengthy. I am 84 and lived through this time. Many places in the world there is subsistent living which is not dependent on commerce or a job. But if you can't produce you go hungry. Socialism has no part in production but takes time and energy from production, resulting in less production. Inflation does not increase value but the price as measured by our money. I have been climate dependent all my life so the weather has been of special interest. You need to know your seasons and crops. There is no question that we have micro climates around cities because of the heat generated by the city and you can get a definite bump flying over a highway with a light plane. Yet, when we thought we could seed clouds to get rain on demand it didn't work. This has not translated into a global warming issue with appears totally political in nature. I have seen no mention about the volume of water vapor as opposed to rain. Our dew points measure the amount of water in our atmosphere. As long as the humidity is below 100 the air can hold more water. Above 100 and we have precipitation, condensation and fog. Our greenhouse gases cannot capture more heat energy that what is currently available and I am beginning to pick up information that, like the moisture in our atmosphere, it is generally well below saturation. Our refrigeration is based on the phase change from liquid top gas and gas to liquid. Do you know how much water vapor a cubic inch of water will produce? When that is reversed it will create a vacuum. I don't read anything about this in the weather forecasts but it is an active factor in our weather. Socialism does not produce the material we need for our living, it only consumes so there is nothing it can do to provide an opportunity to make a living. Don't get confused about planting a garden and harvesting that garden. The garden must be prepared and planted by someone. There is never a guarantee that you will harvest anything for that garden but if you don't want to do the work it is obvious that you will not eat from your garden. Isn't that what all this business of climate boils down to? Whit

"It is that changes have taken place in the past, during the six or seven thousand years of our agriculture-based civilizations, that are just as big as the ones we are facing from today's CO2 warming."

HA!  Wink wink, nod nod.  Yeah,  all kinds of wild global warming and cooling events occurred on their own back in 'those times' but .... we'd better be cautious and mention that we're 'on board' with the idea that CO2 is doing it right now because we don't want our paper to be thrown in with the denialist heap.

(I can't say I blame you for going this way though.)

TEST - I've received two updates that a new post was added here but I do not see any past the one I made on 10 July?