Human response to climate change - The Global Climate System: Patterns, Processes, and Teleconnections - page 268

introduced. Animals were used to provide manure on fields when crops were out
of rotation, further enhancing the quality of the soil. Farmers diversified away
from grain crops, which were too strongly affected by poor weather, into meat,
leather and wool. Whole new areas of rich farmland were created by the draining
of swampy areas in eastern England. Perhaps most importantly, the enclosure
of land was introduced, allowing agricultural specialization and crop cycling,
protecting the soil, and eliminating the centuries-old common-law access by the
public. Farmers were now tenants to landlords, although relief from severe
hardship did not occur immediately.
The tradition of subsistence farming meant that application of the new
methods was slow, but by the end of the seventeenth century, most of English
agriculture was reborn. In France, it took until a century later, mainly because of
disinterest from the monarchy, graft and corruption in the government, the social
chasm between the rich and the poor, and no support for innovation. Most
income went to support the wars of Louis XIV. The French ignored the benefits
of the potato, introduced from South America in 1570, and stubbornly main-
tained dependence on wheat and wine. As a result, famine and starvation
occurred regularly. In Norway the population diversified into forestry, to over-
come the problems of loss of crops and land from excess precipitation and glacier
advances. By 1700, Norway had developed a major merchant fleet, exporting
wood to all of Europe. But across most of Europe, despite major advances in
trade, exploration, science, and cultivation, the education needed to survive
periods of climate stress had not yet begun for the majority of the population.
8.4 ESSAY: Economic impacts of climate conditions
in the United States
Stanley A. Changnon, Illinois State Water Survey
8.4.1 Introduction
This essay examines how the climate has affected the United States economy
over the past 50 years and how these impacts have been changing in recent
years and may change in the future. Comparison of current economic impacts
of the nation's climate with the nation's economic status provides a basis for
assessing the significance of climate impacts. Climate conditions that pro-
duced major economic impacts in the United States have fluctuated over time
scales ranging from a decade to centuries. The 1930s and 1950s experienced
the worst droughts of the past 200 years, and the 1960s and 1970s had the best
Midwestern crop-weather conditions of the twentieth century (Thompson
1986 ). The United States experienced record high losses from numerous
extremes during the 1990s, a situation that severely impacted the insurance