Paintings reveal how the Dutch adapted to extreme weather in the little Ice Age | Hacker News Reader

Paintings reveal how the Dutch adapted to extreme weather in the little Ice Age

smithsonianmag.com

140 pointsHooke41 comments

> During the Little Ice Age, which spanned roughly 1250 to 1860, average global temperatures dropped by as much as 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Serious question: When we say mean annual temperature rose because of man-induced climate change, what is the time span we use for comparison?

I think you'll find the graph in the "Little Ice Age" Wikipedia page telling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

Hah, that graph perfectly answers his question. Thanks. :)

And that’s only to y2k, we’re another 0.5 degrees C above the graph now, in 20 years. Wheeee.

That focuses on global temperatures where the little ice age only really impacted Europe. Is there a graph like that for just the areas impacted by the little ice age?

I'm confused. The Smithsonian article says mean global temperature dropped as low as 3.6 F (2 C). The Wikipedia image shows mean global temperature dropped at most 0.5 C. What's the cause for this large discrepancy?

I'm always wary about weasel words like "As Much As", especially with no direct reference to see how the original data was presented. I always just assume that means "By the most optimistic possible reading of the data that furthers the goal of this article" - so it may be that the value from the most extreme single data point of minimum->maximum is 3.6f.

The wikipedia graph even states in the description that "Little Ice Age was not a distinct planet-wide period but a regional phenomenon" - though that again in turn doesn't seem to be directly stated in the referenced citation and editorialization too....

It might be confusing global temperatures with European temperatures. The article it references doesn't say global for the 2C figure and probably means regional temps. The European 2C makes sense, and the global 0.5C matches other sources.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00281-8

> The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses a baseline for pre-industrial global mean temperatures that reference the earliest global instrumental temperature records. This period is around 1850–1900, when the first ship-based records of sea-surface temperatures became available.

There are many layers of questions. At what percentage climate change is man made? What timeframe should we consider for the basis of measuring temprature changes? And so on.

Personally i like xkcd's take: https://xkcd.com/1732/ - it really puts the scale in perspective.

That is one of the most interesting and frightening graphs I've ever seen. Way more impactful than the hockeystick graph, all of our efforts over dozens if not hundreds of civilisations leading to this, quick end.

Many countries changed from Julian to Gregorian calendar between 16th and 19th century.

When they did the switch - they skipped about 13 days (depends on when exactly they did it, for some it was 12 days).

And yes - the recorded monthly/quarterly/annual and hence min/max/avg temperature that we can find online [1] for the year particlar country switched is 0, NaN, YOLO, or maybe even negative ...

Hence combination of "average earth temperature" intially being set by just handfull of countries/records/rows would make you think that there was a small ice age, when it was just Christians (re)doing date math to catch up with actually natural seasons

PS [1] wife did some data analysis training during Covid lockdowns, students were given links to github "reference" annual temperature data and some outliers caught our attention

Why, of all the people who have researched this, is this the only time I’ve seen this theory and can’t find it anywhere online when I Google it.

Because it makes no sense. An event that took place over hundreds of years obviously can't be a math error due to a change in calendar on one specific year.

Peter Brueghel's "Hunters in the Snow" is a favorite of many movie directors.

https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/pieter-bruegel-elder-hunter...

Edit: for an ad-free alternative, as kindly suggested by a commenter, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunters_in_the_Snow

Animal Crossing gave me PTSD for this painting.

Link that isn't unusable ad-ridden crap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunters_in_the_Snow

If only they gave it the same extreme high-res scan treatment that they gave The Harvesters (if you click through to the wikimedia page it has a 30k by 22k pixel scan)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harvesters_(painting)

The paintings show some of the things they did in the colder climate. They don't show how they adapted, which was the same way human populations always adapt to things that affect food production one way or another: having fewer people to feed

FYI: A more recent hypothesis of the little ice age's cause has to do with the massive pandemic that hit American Indians: American Indians used fire to control vegetation, and European contact introduced diseases that caused a massive pandemic and general societal collapse.

Or, to put it mildly, the American Indians stopped massive burning projects, which introduced less carbon into the air.

Well that's pretty fascinating.

It also seems to be off by a few hundred years, alas.

Hmm? Contact happened in the early 1500s, it probably takes 50-100 years or so for forest to revert back to natural state. Doesn't seem that far off.

Temperatures were steadily declining from at least roughly 1280, though it didn't reach the point of being termed "little ice age" until later.

If changes to native burning due to contact-spread diseases are to be responsible, it wouldn't make sense for the temperatures to be declining for 250 years or more prior to contact.

Endemic*

Source?

Looks like mainly they played around on the ice.

Without helmets. And often in just shoes — did you ever try walking in shoes on an ice skating rink? I guess it gets simpler with practice, still I wonder how many more % concussions and damaged wrists the cold weather caused

Natural ice on lakes is usually rougher, because it typically has snow on top that partially freezes on. Esp if there's frequent melt+refreeze.

There's the odd winter where you get ice smooth and snowless like a rink, but rare.

Used to walk around on ponds and lakes quite a bit as a kid.

As someone who has curled - yes.

Ice that is rough is easier to walk on.

At the turn of XX century, in St. Petersburg they would lay rails on the ice of Neva and get a tram going across the river [1]

Will not possible nowdays due to a combination of climate change and the fact that megapolis makes its own weather - it now thaws regularly. Also not necessary due to all the bridges :)

1. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ледовый_трамвай_Санкт-Петербур...

Staring at my unused skis on my rack in the basement, and at a graph of climate averages for the last decade... and... A little ice age would be nice right around now.

Children in the Netherlands now learn to skate on man made ice when it's ten degree Celsius.

And we have this of course

https://www.snowworld.com/en

Life finds a way.

> Italian artist Gabriel[e] Bella, meanwhile, depicted the frozen canals of Venice in 1708.

Gabriele Bella's painting is quite interesting.[1] For the uninitiated it looks rather like a modern painting. Reminds me of Giorgio de Chirico.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Venice_frozen_lagoon...

You're right, the figures are very expressive and dynamic. It's a pretty hilarious painting. Has an almost Magritte sense of humour.

added these to my wallpaper file!

To think how many things occurred during 1250 to 1860. All that progress was made during the little ice age.

Time to start burning coal again!

That is a great comment.

Well, we haven't stopped.

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