It’s Getting Hot In Here
Well, I hope that the Roman environmental historians are all set for a bit of public engagement and explanation, because Reform UK, Durham Sturmbannabteilung, has decided to weaponise a bit of ancient history in its campaign against climate action.
During a sometimes fractious and bad-tempered debate on Wednesday, the Reform council leader, Andrew Husband, said the authority was now driven by data and common sense.
“During the Roman-occupied era not far away from County Durham, around 45AD, there is evidence of Roman vineyards along Hadrian’s Wall. This is because the Roman period in Britain is known for having a relatively warm climate which would have been conducive to growing grapes. Mind, how the climate has changed,” he said.
How to put this? Some parts of that statement are not completely untrue. Granted, the Roman conquest of Britain started only in 43, and it wasn’t until the early 70s that any army ventured north of York; so maybe this wasn’t one of the things the Romans ‘did’ for us, or maybe he’s shaky on dates. While there is substantial evidence for vine-growing in some regions of England, the Nene Valley in Northamptonshire for example, I’m not aware of any from as far north as Hadrian’s Wall, but I may simply be out of touch with current research.
What is correct is that the idea of a ‘Roman Warm Period’ starting c.250 BCE (the estimated end date depends very much on what evidence is being considered) is quite widely accepted by environmental historians and archaeologists, on the basis of plants (e.g. vines, dates) fruiting in regions where (until recently) they have not thrived in the modern period, and proxy data from pollen analysis, tree rings, sediment analysis and the like. I’m now actually rather surprised that I haven’t come across the Roman Warm Period being put forward, along with phenomena like the Little Ace Age of the early modern period, as an argument that climate change is completely natural and normal, has always happened, probably something to do with sunspots, and so the whining of muesli-eating eco-warriors can safely be ignored.*
But this is an argument at the level of “It was unseasonably cold and wet in May; global warming is a myth! Time to reopen the coal mines!” Two things can be true: the climate may have changed naturally in the past and be changing now due to human activity. Further, and most crucially, the balance of evidence indicates that the Roman Warm Period was a regional, not a global, phenomenon, whereas what is terrifying about the last hundred or so years is that average global temperatures keep on steadily rising – with local and regional variations, of course, but the overall trend is relentlessly upwards. This thing is not at all like that thing, British wine production notwithstanding.
A little learning is a dangerous thing? Or deliberate peddling of half-truths to promote a destructive far-right agenda? If the scientific data don’t actually support your ‘common sense’, find some other data that apparently do….
* This is probably why those Roman soldiers from North Africa felt so comfortable here. No, hold on, that was the sort of BBC virtue-signalling that noble culture warriors think is destroying our national history…
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