Study Suggests Climate Change-Induced Drought Caused the Mayan Collapse

pigrabbitbear writes "The collapse of the Mayan empire has already caused plenty of consternation for scientists and average Joes alike, and we haven't even made it a quarter of the way through 2012 yet. But here's something to add a little more fuel to the fire: A new study suggests that climate change killed off the Mayans."

Comments

Advanced as They Were

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

They hadn't yet mastered their world woth "cap and trade" or the Prius.

That's why they were doomed, and we are assured.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wait when the Climate Change is coming from the left at the 21st of December! You have to run to the right to avoid the ripping jaws of the Climate Change. But do watch out for the changing directions as it might surprise you from the back. We all should keep our Priuses running to make that quick getaway when the action gets hot.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

The gist of the article is that a succession of droughts over several years meant that they no longer had enough water to support their population numbers. Which caused resource wars between different city states, resulting in the self destruction of the civilisation.

Now, for sure, droughts are not that in frequent an occurrence in the current era, and AGW will change the areas that are affected by droughts. But most of the developed wold won't care because they aren't in the worst areas, and it's mostly poor black people affected.

What will affect the developed world more is peak oil, with the result of their not being enough oil for the population. Or at least not the amount of oil they are used to. That's what's going to cause your near future resource wars. And indeed the Iraq war has been a forerunner of that.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[msobkow]

Your information is out of date.

Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked. Add in the fact that bio-diesel forms of fuel are up and coming, and we will have no shortage of fuel sources for the foreseeable future.

As the droughts have affected Saskatchewan and US mid-west farmers over the past few years, I fail to see how "it's mostly poor black people affected." Such a statement implies there is a racist mission where there is none. The simple fact is that as long as people can get their discount crap at the local stores, they really don't give a damn about the poor and starving in any nation.

It's not racism.

It's indifference and self-centeredness.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Internetuser1248]

Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked. Add in the fact that bio-diesel forms of fuel are up and coming, and we will have no shortage of fuel sources for the foreseeable future.

This is only partly true. It just softens the peak a lot. The theory still stands, what was debunked is the theory that peak oil means running out. We will not run out of oil, but the price will still rise, and it will get very high. This also means the wars will still happen.

It's not racism.

It's indifference and self-centeredness.

Don't forget imperialism

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

What he wanted to say is peak cheap-oil, the oil right out there at the surface of the earth, fields moisted in oil. Today they find new oil reserves at 3-4 km under sea. Do you know how much oil it takes to get that oil out? And with our demand growing exponentially we have a problem.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[vadim_t]

Your information is out of date.

Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked.

What a bunch of nonsense. There's a limited amount of oil in the ground anyway, even if shale oil increases the amount. That changes absolutely nothing about peak oil, except perhaps by postponing it by a little bit.

Also, things like shale oil are energy intensive to extract. Oil is only convenient because so far getting it has been easy. If you need to spend 2 gallons to dig up and progress 1 gallon, then it doesn't matter how much there is.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Shimbo]

Your information is out of date.

Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked. .

That's a ridiculous overstatement: shale oil makes an insignificant difference to the concept of peak oil. It might push it back a few decades: if you're a market analyst that can't think beyond the next bonus, maybe that makes a difference to you. For everyone else, it's just a question of when.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

Your information is out of date. Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked.

Nonsense. There's nothing new about shale oil. It's been known about and extracted in small quantities for centuries. It's extremely inefficient to extract. The very fact that the oil industry has begun to turn to that old crap source of oil is a demonstration that we're passing the peak. Shale oil is a source used on the way down the slope, after the peak, when high oil prices make it worthwhile.

Bio-fuels are outside of peak il theory, but are not a solution to it. The amount of vegetable matter that you need to produce the massive amounts of oil that humans use, would take up all the worlds arable land,leaving us nowhere to produce food for the every expanding population.

As the droughts have affected Saskatchewan and US mid-west farmers over the past few years, I fail to see how "it's mostly poor black people affected."

Broaden your fucking horizons. World news doesn't mean the 50 states. Think Africa.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

The theory still stands, what was debunked is the theory that peak oil means running out.

Peak oil never meant running out. Right from the coining of the term in the 1950s by Hubbert, it was always about peak of oil production, not the end of oil.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Leolo]

Correction, the fact it is now economically viable to extract shale oil is proof that we are in peak oil. Peak oil does not mean NO MORE OIL! It means OIL SUPPLY STABLE. Combine a stable supply with rising demand and you get rising prices. And hey, look, we are at/near all time highs for crude oil prices.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Which "peak oil" are you talking about? The one that was predicted in the 1930s? Or the one in the 1950s? Or the mid 70s? Or today's?
(Note, since 1975 we've used 3x the known oil reserves in the mid 1970s, and our reserves REMAIN greater still.)

Re:Advanced as They Were

[symbolset]

In the last 1200 years people have become more mobile. Back then in addition to suffering drought they were also surrounded by territorial cannibalistic slave-taking peoples with significant cultural differences and a lack of diversity appreciation training.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[rrohbeck]

US oil peaked in the early 1970s. North Sea oil peaked in the 90s. World oil production has been peaking since 2005. Saudia Arabia is probably peaking right now.
Yes there is/was more than one peak. Go read about Hubbert theory.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

And yet mankind's ability to wage war over resources hasn't diminished one bit.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[superwiz]

This is only partly true. It just softens the peak a lot.

Nah. At the current levels of energy consumption, natural gas from fraking alone satisfies all energy needs for the next 150 years. The technology for converting large fleets to liquid gas is already available. Personal autos will get there as an afterthought.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Debunked? Um. No. I understand that there's a spate of little happy-talk articles out now in the mainstream media. If you believe them, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. For a numerate discussion of what we're facing, start with the book referenced here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil.

Peak oil is complicated, and those new to the idea think it's all about quantity of oil left. It's a bit more than that. It's about being able to produce enough oil that's energetically and economically profitable enough to sustain the world's supply chains, particularly those most important supply chains, the ones that support the discovery, extraction, refining and distribution of petroleum. Feedback is a particularly nasty bitch here. When that one collapses, we're done with oil as a significant energy player, even as little stripper wells keep cranking out 1 barrel or two a day for a century.

And of course, if the energy supply chains collapse, so does everything else, more or less, until the folks who aren't starving bang what's left into something useful.

The two arguments against this, of course are: "Gee. We're so wonderful and smart, we'll think of something" or "There's a gazillion more barrels of oil out there. The [insert govt. agency or investment institution here] just said so in a *report!* Alas, innovation rarely happens on schedule and there are diminishing returns on technology. Notice that your PC hasn't sped up this last decade? As for government and investment company numbers... "Hey, I've still got that bridge right over here!" :)

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Warmist.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed they didn't. What they also forgot to do it watch their self confidence levels, imagining they're oh so advanced.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

But most of the developed wold won't care because they aren't in the worst areas, and it's mostly poor black people affected.

The question that should be asked here is does this alleged climate change make things worse? The "worst areas" are that way not because they're particularly vulnerable to climate changes, but because they're vulnerable to everything including the mere ticking of the clock.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[roman_mir]

Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked.

- yeah, like the concept of gravity has been debunked thanks to the hot air balloons.

The simple fact is that as long as people can get their discount crap at the local stores, they really don't give a damn about the poor and starving in any nation.
It's not racism.
It's indifference and self-centeredness.

- it's called pragmatism and life.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

The very fact that the oil industry has begun to turn to that old crap source of oil is a demonstration that we're passing the peak.

Was opening of fields in the North Sea proof that we were running out of oil in the 70's? Is the opening of fields in the South Atlantic proof that we are running out of oil now?

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to shale oil, the very concept of "peak oil" has been debunked

That's absurd. The concept that the extraction of a finite resource will peak at some point has not been debunked. Even shale oil will peak at some point. Bio-diesels and other alternative fuels does nothing to change the concept that at some point oil extraction will peak. Whether it's from extracting most of it or switching to another fuel it will peak.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[mathmathrevolution]

Last friday Brent Crude Oil was trading at $126/barrel. This is near the all time high in modern history. We are already at the point where oil supply has become much less responsive to the price and price spikes are commonplace. It's a curious time for somebody to be declaring peak oil "debunked".

Oil is finite and the price of oil is getting exponentially more expensive as was predicted decades ago. Meanwhile, solar technology has been benefiting from a Moore's Law rate of advancement and the price of solar energy is plummeting exponentially. Even without cap-and-trade, the price of solar energy is projected to achieve grid parity by the end of this decade. Given prevailing trends, we can expect that people will use energy to make petrochemicals synthetically from the carbon in the air, using Green Freedom or some other such technology in the next 20 years.

Solar is the power source of the near future. If we embrace that fact now we can begin to adapt and avoid a huge amount of economic dislocation and suffering. Or we can get dragged into the future kicking and screaming and burdening the human race with massive ecological damage.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[chrb]

The amount of vegetable matter that you need to produce the massive amounts of oil that humans use, would take up all the worlds arable land,leaving us nowhere to produce food for the every expanding population.

Indeed. Sustainable energy without the hot air contains the figures. It doesn't look good even for the "promising" plants:

For comparison, world oil consumption is 80 million barrels per day, which, shared between six billion people, is 23 kWh/d/p. So even if all of Africa were covered with jatropha plantations, the power produced would be only one third of world oil consumption.

The only thing that seems potentially viable is algae grown in water enriched with co2 captured from industrial plants. But obviously that requires some advanced carbon capture technology. It would also require land, though not as much as other biofuel ideas.

What about algae?

Algae are just plants, so everything I’ve said so far applies to algae. Slimy underwater plants are no more efficient at photosynthesis than their ter- restrial cousins. But there is one trick that I haven’t discussed, which is standard practice in the algae-to-biodiesel community: they grow their algae in water heavily enriched with carbon dioxide, which might be col- lected from power stations or other industrial facilities. It takes much less effort for plants to photosynthesize if the carbon dioxide has already been concentrated for them.

In a sunny spot in America, in ponds fed with concentrated CO2 (concentrated to 10%), Ron Putt of Auburn University says that algae can grow at 30 g per square metre per day, producing 0.01 litres of biodiesel per square metre per day. This corresponds to a power per unit pond area of 4 W/m2 – similar to the Bavaria photovoltaic farm.

If you wanted to drive a typical car (doing 12 km per litre) a distance of 50 km per day, then you’d need 420 square metres of algae-ponds just to power your car; for comparison, the area of the UK per person is 4000 square metres, of which 69 m2 is water (figure 6.8).

Please don’t forget that it’s essential to feed these ponds with concentrated carbon dioxide. So this technology would be limited both by land area – how much of the UK we could turn into algal ponds – and by the availability of concentrated CO2, the capture of which would have an energy cost (a topic discussed in Chap- ters 23 and 31). Let’s check the limit imposed by the concentrated CO2. To grow 30 g of algae per m2 per day would require at least 60 g of CO2 per m2 per day (because the CO2 molecule has more mass per carbon atom than the molecules in algae).

If all the CO2 from all UK power stations were captured (roughly 212 tons per year per person), it could service 230 square metres per person of the algal ponds described above – roughly 6% of the country. This area would deliver biodiesel with a power of 24 kWh per day per person, assuming that the numbers for sunny America apply here.

A plausible vision? Perhaps on one tenth of that scale? I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tmosley]

Oil is running up because of the multiple trillions of dollars dumped into world currency markets by central banks over the last two months.

Oil priced in gold is steady, and BELOW AVERAGE for the last100+ years.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

The question that should be asked here is does this alleged climate change make things worse? The "worst areas" are that way not because they're particularly vulnerable to climate changes, but because they're vulnerable to everything including the mere ticking of the clock.

The Republican 9 Step Global Warming Denial Plan

1) There's no such thing as global warming.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
8) ????
9) Profit.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[haruchai]

The phrase "shale oil" is both incorrect and misleading. You don't actually have any oil until it's converted and extracted. Under present circumstances, this is not very economical, is very wasteful of water if suing aboveground processing and produces a lot of waste that isn't easy to dispose of.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar is the power source of the near future.

If and only if we can create an efficient means of power storage. otherwise Solar power is a
daytime thing only. A severe handicap, making solar a third rate solution. Some nontrivial things
can be done now, but there is nothing "renewable and green" that saves the day. We need to keep looking,
while working as best we can with what we have.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[rubycodez]

but now oil has many substitutes, since we have centuries of fossil fuel supply, there will not be peak of fossil fuel. so "peak oil" theory is useless and of no import.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[chrb]

If and only if we can create an efficient means of power storage

We already have one: Pumped storage. The existing pumped storage systems are 75% efficient, and scientists think they can make future ones that are 90%+ efficient. You don't even need land: "Thinking further outside the box, one could imagine getting away from lakes and reservoirs, putting half of the facility in an underground cham- ber. A pumped-storage chamber one kilometre below London has been mooted."

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

Imbecile.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Well for all the crying over pollution, if anything this story should remind us that "mother" nature is a raw knuckled bitch when she wants to be.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[chrb]

natural gas from fraking alone satisfies all energy needs for the next 150 years.

I doubt it. The average American consumes about 250 kWh per day. Natural gas accounts for something like 20% of that. Also, energy need is not constant, it will grow over the next 150 years because the population will grow. You can't just take total potential supply and divide it by the existing consumption, when demand is constantly rising.

Where does this 150 year figure come from anyway? The last time someone claimed 100 years, it turned out to be bogus:

By the same logic, you can claim to be a multibillionaire, including all your "probable, possible, and speculative resources."

Assuming that the United States continues to use about 24 tcf per annum, then, only an 11-year supply of natural gas is certain. The other 89 years' worth has not yet been shown to exist or to be recoverable.

Even that comparably modest estimate of 11 years’ supply may be optimistic. Those 273 tcf are located in reserves that are undrilled, but are adjacent to drilled tracts where gas has been produced. Due to large lateral differences in the geology of shale plays, production can vary considerably from adjacent wells.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Runaway1956]

I was given a link to the relative "values" of gold and oil recently over at G+ Obviously, the problem here in the US is, our money is losing value. And, the problem in Europe is, the euro is also losing value. I think I want my boss to start paying me in Chinese currency - what is that, yen? He may laugh at me today, but as time goes on, he'll laugh less and less.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[chrb]

oil has many substitutes, since we have centuries of fossil fuel supply, there will not be peak of fossil fuel.

Fossil fuels are a finite resource. There is no way there can not be a peak. Hubbert "concluded that no finite resource could sustain exponential growth. At some point, the rate of extraction will have to peak and then decline until the resource is exhausted."

Many countries have already experienced fossil fuel production peaks. The UK hit peak coal in 1913. Since then, production has fallen from 287m tons to 15m tons today. The same thing will eventually happen to China and all of the other coal producing nations. Fossil fuels are a finite resource; there are no new fossil fuels.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Runaway1956]

Scroll up to tmosley's post. Rather than experiencing all time highs in oil prices, we are experiencing all time lows in the value of the dollar. It's called "inflation" I believe. Historically, that has been a problem with all fiat money systems.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[WrecklessSandwich]

War... war never changes.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[mathmathrevolution]

The price of oil is near a record high in inflation-adjusted real terms, not nominal terms. Inflation, which has been running 2 to 3 percent annual for several years, has nothing to do with the skyrocketing oil prices. Oil is spiking because the fragile supply chain can no longer respond to supply disruptions. Under these circumstances even the threat of war with Iran is sufficient to cause the price to spike.

As rising oil prices threaten global economic growth and the fragile American recovery, gold is spiking and copper is plummeting. Gold is the traditional safe haven for poor economic times while demand for copper is driven by economic activity. Both are being driven by oil prices in the opposite direction. Let me reemphasize: none of this has anything to do with inflation which is running at 2 to 3%.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[MartinSchou]

At the current levels of energy consumption, natural gas from fraking alone satisfies all energy needs for the next 150 years.

That's very interesting, but the main issue with that is "at the current levels". The trend is ever increasing energy consumption. Even if the US, Japan and Europe cut their energy consumption by 50%, there'd still be 6 billion people trying to get up to our levels of consumption.

So, if we reduce our levels by those 50%, that'd extend the coverage to 300 years. But then you'd have to take into account that there are 6x as many people who wants to get to our level, and that'll cut it right down to 50 years.

And in 150 years, with an average population growth of 1%/year, the worlds population will have increased from 7 billion to 31 billion.

Any time you see anyone saying things like "at the current levels of consumption" you need to smack them over the head.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese currency is the yuan. The yen is Japanese. Big difference :)

Re:Advanced as They Were

[ravenshrike]

The yuan is pegged to the dollar, so no you wouldn't want that. If the Chinese were to unpeg it from the dollar's value, its value would spike, hastening the coming Chinese collapse, and then would crash.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[hamburger lady]

shale oil? there's only a few billion barrels of that. a few months' supply at current US consumption.

if you're talking about 'oil shale', there's about 2 trillion barrels' worth of that stuff in CO and WY, but it isn't even oil. it's a waxy nasty precursor to oil that has to be strip mined, cleaned and cooked under pressure, then processed to create syncrude. 3 tons of rock makes 1 barrel of syncrude.

think we can produce 15 million bpd of that?

Re:Advanced as They Were

[dryeo]

While inflation is officially running at a couple of percent the important stuff like food staples, electricity, and gasoline are going up closer to 10%, at least here in Canada. Shit, in the last week, locally, gas went from $1.12 to $1.28 a litre. As most everything depends on gas and diesel for transport etc I hate to think what groceries are going to cost in the near future. Still the iphone is twice as good so it's calculated as dropping in price by 50%

Re:Advanced as They Were

[dryeo]

Inflation only matters if the price of stuff is going up without wages also going up. When I first went to work in the mid '70s I could buy about 5 gallons of gas for an hour of work at minimum wage. I now make about 3 times minimum wage and can buy about 4 gallons for an hour of skilled work. I'd hate to try to survive on minimum wage now.
This is Canada which should be similar to other places

Re:Advanced as They Were

[dbIII]

but now oil has many substitutes

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with peak oil, only with mostly deliberate misunderstandings of the term. Even alternative and much harder ways of getting liquid oil (shale, from coal etc) are something else. It was always about mineral oil and not about peak energy.
It's not useless it just doesn't mean what many (apparently including yourself) pretend it means. It's like calling the beige box under the desk the "hard drive" and the thing with pixels you look at "the computer". It's still a useful term because there are a lot of things that are easier with liquid mineral oil than with anything else - we don't have the Star Trek generic "energy" but instead live in a more complex world.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

That's very interesting, but the main issue with that is "at the current levels". The trend is ever increasing energy consumption. Even if the US, Japan and Europe cut their energy consumption by 50%, there'd still be 6 billion people trying to get up to our levels of consumption.

Maybe, maybe not. It's not as clear-cut as you're making out, here. In fact, worldwide energy use actually decreased in 2009, by just over 1%, due to the economic downturn. And while the US population is growing, energy consumption per capita has actually decreased over the last 20 years.

We will have to find alternatives eventually, but it's doable, we have time, and the transition can happen over time. We don't need a New World Government to take control of everything to do it.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

And with our demand growing exponentially we have a problem.

It's not, AC. Not even close. In fact in the US, it growing slower than the population.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

The price of oil is near a record high in inflation-adjusted real terms, not nominal terms. Inflation, which has been running 2 to 3 percent annual for several years, has nothing to do with the skyrocketing oil prices.

OMG that was so ignorant it makes the rest of your post entirely irrelevant. That government statistic of 2 to 3 percent that you have quoted doesn't reflect any sort of reality, and certainly not even close to the case regarding the E3 and global commodity markets. The saber rattling over Iran is serving the same purpose as fake "uprisings" in the middle east that somehow seem to blow up natural gas pipelines multiple times: It's done intentionally to drive up prices. But the single most significant factor in the price of oil (and gold, silver, wheat, rice, coke, ore, etc., etc.,) is the decrease in purchasing power of the US dollar on the global commodity market. You simply cannot inject over $16 Trillion into the global finance system in such a short time (as the Federal Reserve did last year) and not experience a devaluation of the currency.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

While we're at it....
Given 1% pop growth:

33 years until limit of earth's agricultural land to support every person with 1st world diet
229.9 years until limit of earth's arable land to feed every person on megre diet assuming energy to power tractors is available, horses require additional area for feed. Also note that almost every other land species is extinct at this point
885 years until 1 person per square meter of agricultural land (pastures included)
1357 years until 1 person per square foot on earth
3438 years until all mass on earth is a big ball of naked humans
9880 years until entire visible universe made of humans including black holes but excluding dark matter

Something has to give.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

Wow Republicans need 9 steps? What a bunch of idiots. Al Gore did it in only 3:

1. 1) Create a slide show about the End of the World if we don't DO SOMETHING
2. 2) Invest in companies that get DO SOMETHING grants
3. 3) Profit.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[dbIII]

For offshore wind there's also the possibility of compressed air storage in balloons as a different sort of pumped storage.
Pumped storage is very useful for covering peaks because it can be run up to full capacity in under a minute. Peaks are far more of a problem than base load for nearly every electricity network. That's what makes even things that are very expensive per MW viable. When you only need 75MW that expensive little wind or solar farm can still be up to ten times the cost per MW of a coal fired 750MW unit and still be worth building. There's also things like gambling the entire grid on how much rain you are going to get each year or having some sort of energy source that doesn't rely on that (eg. in my region soon after the sea water cooled power stations were retired). The only people that push "one true energy" are salesfolk or people that have been tricked by them.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[mathmathrevolution]

I see. In your view the magic mystery inflation is hiding and it only shows up in select highly volatile commodities like oil. We can't see inflation in "government statistics" like CPI. We can't see large inflation in independent metrics like the BPP. We can't see inflation in agricultural commodities or base metals, both of which are cheaper than they were a year ago. But in the minds of some those facts don't "reflect reality" anymore than those "fake 'uprisings' in the middle east".

Might I suggest that perhaps your limited understanding of the global economy and the Federal Reserve fractional lending system could have a few blindspots? Seems a bit more likely that your "invisible inflation" theory.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen some algae fuel research on science shows, also in some magazines. It can be grown in very tall cylinders. That needs drastically less space. With the potential money involved the first company to figure it all out will make a fortune.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[CAIMLAS]

Bio-fuels are outside of peak il theory, but are not a solution to it. The amount of vegetable matter that you need to produce the massive amounts of oil that humans use, would take up all the worlds arable land,leaving us nowhere to produce food for the every expanding population.

The use of most "biofuels" is, in and of itself, likely a contributor to the existing state of Peak Oil.

Most corn grown in the US today is put towards biofuels. If they were not growing that corn, they would not be consuming astoundingly copious amounts of petroleum to plant it (#2 diesel), fertilize it (petroleum-based nitrogen), herbicide it, harvest it (#1/#2 diesel depending on when it's harvested), dry it (#1 diesel), and then convert it to ethanol or another "biofuel" (50% energy loss), we wouldn't have nearly as much consumption of petroleum. (There is still debate whether so-called biofuels are even net-benfit, with up to 30% loss in energy being likely, resulting in the burning of the straight plant oils as diesel likely being more efficient.)

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

The Republican 9 Step Global Warming Denial Plan

Were you supposed to be arguing against the "denial plan" with that talking point list? After all, that bolded talking point #4 just by itself destroys the case for catastrophic global warming.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell me when you are ready to run your mom's life support on solar, and I will believe you.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Sigg3.net]

"Or we can get dragged into the future kicking and screaming and burdening the human race with massive ecological damage."

Oh, come on. You say that like it's a bad thing!

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tehcyder]

It's not racism.

It's indifference and self-centeredness.

It's a lot easier to justify to yourself being self-centred and indifferent to others' suffering, if you perceive of those others as being inferior to you.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tehcyder]

Fossil fuels are a finite resource; there are no new fossil fuels.

I find that kind of talk defeatist. We should be out there chopping down trees and killing large animals and vurying them to create new fossil for our descendants!

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tehcyder]

Solar is the power source of the near future. If we embrace that fact now we can begin to adapt and avoid a huge amount of economic dislocation and suffering. Or we can get dragged into the future kicking and screaming and burdening the human race with massive ecological damage.

As long as that near future is more than about fifty years away, those in charge won't give up any of their current priveleges, but will just leave their children to clear up the mess.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

...until reality forces you to move on to step 5.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

Yes Repubs are idiots. Gore saw the future was and has made money out of combatting it. Clever man.

It's a national and world tragedy that Bush got in as President rather than Gore.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

Unless, of course, like every other talking point on the list it's completely false.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

From the "BPP Project":

we do not cover 100% of CPI goods and services. The price of services, in particular, are not easy to find online and therefore are not included in our statistics.

Oh, my, and look how well they track the government's CPI. Pretty close. And they're "independent", so it must be true! Hmmm... no details on what they track though, and apparently it only includes stuff they find online. Say, do you know how money gets into the system? Do you get where inflation shows up first, how it flows down?

This pair of charts isn't from some conspiracy, it just shows the difference in today's CPI, and the same statistic the way the CPI was calculated in the 1980's. Interesting, if inflation were calculated consistently, it would be much higher. Actual inflation using non-cooked numbers is 10.5% in the year from Jan. 2011 to Jan 2012 People that work for a living and shop for their own groceries understand this. Why can't you?

We can't see inflation in agricultural commodities or base metals, both of which are cheaper than they were a year ago.

We can, you're just not looking. This looks like some pretty hefty inflation to me. You can also go here to draw your own chart. Pick anything traded on the global market. Prices on wheat, grain, and many other commodities are rising right in step with gold and crude oil

You're wikipedia posting is really clever. What you seem to have missed is who is behind most of it, and why it's happening.. Do you really think that some band of Libyan "rebels" were all about human rights when their first actions as they took over government was to create an oil company and a central bank?.

Might I suggest that perhaps your limited understanding of the global economy and the Federal Reserve fractional lending system could have a few blindspots?

You can suggest it, but you would be wrong. I think you're just buying the PR from the mainstream and avoiding doing any critical thinking for yourself. Understandable - that's how they train people in the public schools these days.

Seems a bit more likely that your "invisible inflation" theory.

I never said anything about "invisible inflation" - it's not invisible at all. It's just that you're blind or refuse to see.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

No country has hit the fossil fuel peak, the UK has discovered huge reserves of new fossil fuels in the form of shale gas and oil. Peak Fossil fuel will never come, because technology keeps pace, and we will be using hydrogen as a common fuel long before fossil fuels hit peak. We haven't even started using methane from the sea yet.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Unless, of course, like every other talking point on the list it's completely false.

Which isn't the case here. It indicates part of the problem with modern political discourse, that disagreement doesn't stop when near total defeat is at hand. There's always some new straw to grasp at to perpetuate bad ideas, be it drawing analogies with the ancient Mayans or whining about Republican talking points.

When people just complain about the style of arguments of the political opposition rather than the actual issues, then that's a good indication they've soundly lost.

I think part of the problem is simply ignorance. There's a vast spectrum of belief on this issue from that humans can't possibly have an effect on the climate to that the human race is at imminent threat of extinction from AGW. Those beliefs are often held in ignorance of the facts, so ignorance plays a role right there. But it also plays a role in peoples' understandings of other peoples' beliefs.

The so-called "Republican Denial Plan" is a representation of a good part of the opposition to a particular flavor of AGW theory, catastrophic AGW (or "CAGW"). The premise of this theory is that AGW not only happens, but is so severe in consequences that we must act to curb the consequences of AGW now. For some reason, some proponents of CAGW seem to think that any opposition to the theory can only come from ignorant people steered by lists of talking points.

They miss the critical problems with the CAGW theory, namely, that it hasn't been demonstrated, many of the proponents are remarkably unethical and demonstrate poor judgment, and that there are huge conflicts of interest and biases among the research and backers of CAGW. Even reasonable people can be concerned and are so about what's going on in climatology and related public policy today. Until those problems are addressed and CAGW demonstrated, the "Republican Denial Plan" will prevail.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

...until reality forces you to move on to step 5.

The sad thing is that, if we actually demonstrate catastrophic global warming is a problem by say, 2500 AD, then proponents are going to claim that they were right for half a millennium, even though the opposite was true.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

OK, so we have global warming now. Your scenario is that it continues for the next 500 years, and then becomes catastrophic.

Yet somehow, in you mind, that means the people who wanted to protect the environment and halt global warming were wrong.

Strange logic.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Most corn grown in the US today is put towards biofuels.

I don't think there is anyone who seriously believes that using corn for biofuels does anything productive. It's just a massive wealth transfer to various agricultural and industrial interests.

petroleum-based nitrogen

Natural gas-based nitrogen. The fertilizer industry may well be using methane pulled from petroleum refining, but I doubt it's a significant source of hydrogen for nitrogen-fixing.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

OK, so we have global warming now. Your scenario is that it continues for the next 500 years, and then becomes catastrophic.

Yet somehow, in you mind, that means the people who wanted to protect the environment and halt global warming were wrong.

Strange logic.

The logic is strange only to those unfamiliar with economics.

The fundamental concept here is "time-value". It's usually mentioned in reference to money ("time-value of money"), but it applies to anything of value or cost. The idea is that paying a cost in the future costs less than the same cost today while it's more valuable to have something of value today rather than the same value at some future date.

In particular, costs 500 years down the road have to be a number of orders of magnitude greater than current costs in order to justify doing things now. That's most certainly not the case for proposed cures to CAGW which requires both a radical restructuring of human society now (at great cost) to evade a nebulous and rather insignificant cost later (mostly involving moving people around who would move anyway and protecting species which probably wouldn't survive anyway).

My view is that the idiots of that future time probably won't rue our actions any more than we rue the actions of the robber barons of the 19th century. Our legacy is assured unless, of course, we somehow are still kicking 500 years from now and provide a convenient target for scapegoating. But they will be more able to assuage their concern/hysteria about the environment with the wealth we build up now.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

Gore depicted an unrealistic and frightening prediction of the future and has made money out of scamming idiots that buy into his tripe

FTFY

Oh, oops - never mind we won't take responsibility for that failed prediction! Obviously there's a lot of money to be made, considering a tiny nation like the Maldives is worth a $50 million payment just to get them to go along with the scam.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[CrimsonAvenger]

Inflation only matters if the price of stuff is going up without wages also going up.

Inflation matters as long as you don't spend every penny you make every month.

Anything you save is worth less next year than this year.

This encourages people to not accumulate significant wealth, since most anything significant will require you to save money until you can afford it. And any money you save is worth less as time progresses.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

I don't think you understand my point, if point 4 is false, then it has no impact on global warming. It's something you really need to think about. The consensus of researchers and economists who are not paid by the Heartland Institute is that taking moderate actions now will dramatically reduce the costs of global warming if there are no catastrophic consequences. If catastrophic consequences do occur the cost benefits of preventive action increase.

Generally speaking most of the plans to reduce global warming are also good ideas on their own merits. The primary reason it is opposed by groups like the Heartland Institute is that acknowledging it is really an issue brings their very identities into question. Asked privately, several of the directors of the Heartland Institute actually believe in climate change, they just can't stand that widespread acceptance of it would reduce their influence and that of their allies in the Republican party. They can't stand to lose the power they've accumulated, so they fight it. You see they recognize that acceptance of climate change will shift the political balance towards statism, because it a problem that can't be addressed by libertarianism. Their end goal can be a simple as preventing governments from dealing with the issue until it is a huge problem, then they can safely blame the government for not acting sooner to keep their flock securely under control. They'll say something "Look this is something the government could have fixed, but it couldn't even do that, how can we trust it do anything else?" and continue forward with their flock blissfully unaware of how they are being manipulated.

Is it a coincdence that most of the prominent climate change deniers are paid by the Heartland Institute? Some people might point out that they're not paid a whole lost, but we've seen the books for just one such organization. There are a number of other groups who also be funding these so-called "skeptics". The problem is that now that they are paid to hold a particular view in public, that view can not change. They can't admit that they are wrong until after the funding dries up, or else they risk losing money, prestige and power. A wise man once said "it is very difficult to get a man to believe something if his livelyhood relies on him not believing it".

We have documented evidence of bias and of failure to disclose conflicts of interest from the leaders of the climate change denial movement. The only thing that can change the status quo is for people like you to wise up to the fact that you are being manipulated with talking points from paid shills. Before you engage in false equivalency, the climate change side also has tonnes of evidence and thousands of studies and research papers which all point to the same conclusion. Now you can doubt the effects of climate change, but beware as the other poster pointed out, it's part of the plan that you do so.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

The logic is strange only to those unfamiliar with economics.

I'm familiar enough with economics to know that it's mostly bollocks. There's never a consensus of economists, and where most economists do predict one thing they are usually proved wrong. It takes a particular kind of idiot to believe what economists say and reject what scientists say.

In particular, costs 500 years down the road have to be a number of orders of magnitude greater than current costs in order to justify doing things now.

By the time the 500 years is approaching it wouldn't just be too expensive to do anything, it would be too late to do anything.

The time for action is now. And naive economic arguments don't change that. Money is a fiction of man, a fiction that has no preference for doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing. The environment is real.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

Gore depicted an unrealistic and frightening prediction of the future and has made money out of scamming idiots that buy into his tripe

I am a crackpot

Yup.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[radtea]

The gist of the article is that a succession of droughts over several years meant that they no longer had enough water to support their population numbers. Which caused resource wars between different city states, resulting in the self destruction of the civilisation.

So what you're saying is that scarcity "caused" them to behave in a manner that is certain to create more scarcity.

How does that work, exactly?

How does scarcity "cause" people to say, "I know the solution to scarcity: it is to take people and resources out of productive economic roles and put them into roles where at best they are a deadweight loss and at worst will result in the active destruction of productive economic resources amongst our neighbours!"

It isn't scarcity that is causing this behaviour, but stupidity.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[drsquare]

Nah. At the current levels of energy consumption, natural gas from fraking alone satisfies all energy needs for the next 150 years.

Thank god our economic model doesn't depend on endless, compound growth then.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

Gore depicted an unrealistic and frightening prediction of the future and has made money out of scamming idiots that buy into his tripe

I am a crackpot

Yup.

The sig is there as a convenience for people that can't argue my points, and so need to resort to ad hominems instead. Works great, doesn't it? You can continue to avoid thinking.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

I'm familiar enough with economics to know that it's mostly bollocks.

Exactly my point.

There's never a consensus of economists, and where most economists do predict one thing they are usually proved wrong. It takes a particular kind of idiot to believe what economists say and reject what scientists say. You'll have to point out an example where that happens sometime.

By the time the 500 years is approaching it wouldn't just be too expensive to do anything, it would be too late to do anything.

Except adapt. That's the ugly problem with AGW. It's cheaper and more effective for society to adapt in the distant future than to prevent now.

The time for action is now. And naive economic arguments don't change that. Money is a fiction of man, a fiction that has no preference for doing the right thing or doing the wrong thing. The environment is real.

And in maybe 500 years, you'll be proven right. As far as making naive economic arguments, we can fix that right now. I suggest reading Wikipedia articles on economic subjects to get a feel for the concepts of real economics. Things like time value of money or opportunity cost. Bjorn Lomborg has a great book on this particular subject, "The Skeptical Environmentalist".

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

I don't think you understand my point, if point 4 is false

I don't think you understand your point either. I see a conditional here. My take is that you should provide evidence for that conditional or stop wasting my time.

The consensus of researchers and economists who are not paid by the Heartland Institute

So why bring up the Heartland Institute?

is that taking moderate actions now will dramatically reduce the costs of global warming if there are no catastrophic consequences. If catastrophic consequences do occur the cost benefits of preventive action increase.

I agree. It's worth noting here that "do nothing, but build wealth" is one such moderate action. It conveniently works whether or not there is a problem with global warming. Carbon dioxide emission reduction is not moderate. That requires evidence of substantial problems or costs in the not very distant future to justify.

We have documented evidence of bias and of failure to disclose conflicts of interest from the leaders of the climate change denial movement.

Citation please. I'm curious how this compares to the equivalent on the other side of the argumetn.

Before you engage in false equivalency, the climate change side also has tonnes of evidence and thousands of studies and research papers which all point to the same conclusion.

Bias and failure to disclosure conflicts of interest? Because that was where I was going to go with this. It's worth noting at this point that a huge share of recent environmental law (at least in the developed world) has made particular business interests a lot of money.

Now you can doubt the effects of climate change, but beware as the other poster pointed out, it's part of the plan that you do so.

I have no doubt that climate change exists. I live currently in an area that used to be under perhaps a kilometer of ice. I don't even have doubts that some degree of anthropogenic global warming exists (AGW being "climate change" as it is currently promulgated). What I doubt, because there isn't scientific evidence to back it up and economic evidence to discount it, is that AGW is urgent enough that we need to do something about it now.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[maple_shaft]

Inflation only matters if the price of stuff is going up without wages also going up.

Inflation matters as long as you don't spend every penny you make every month.

Anything you save is worth less next year than this year.

This encourages people to not accumulate significant wealth, since most anything significant will require you to save money until you can afford it. And any money you save is worth less as time progresses.

Isn't this why the banks exist? So that they can sell us capital and wealth? God forbid we have a dollar pegged to gold because then we can save for things like a new house or a new car and we wouldn't need the banks nearly as much anymore would we?

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

My take is that you should provide evidence for that conditional or stop wasting my time.

My point was that you need to actually consider the negatives and positives. Current research points to far more negative effects than positives.

I agree. It's worth noting here that "do nothing, but build wealth" is one such moderate action.

Actually, no that would be inaction. Increasing efficiency and applying a moderate carbon tax would be moderate actions, in part, because with peak oil looming, prices are rising and supply is not increasing to match, so reducing our rate of oil consumption would be a smart hedge against rising prices. Following the current trends, the world needs at least 43 million barrels a day of new production by 2030. That's to replace 1/2 of our current daily production which will decline over the next 20 years. We have no idea if that production can be found and if so, where that production will come from and that's for the low growth scenario.

Here's a interesting quote (from Bradley Plumer):

I've noted before that pretty much every environmental regulation that's ever been enacted has been greeted with predictions of economic doom—yet those dire warnings have never panned out. Pollution restrictions invariably turn out to be much cheaper than expected, in part because they trigger the development of new technologies. (By contrast, nature isn't nearly so forgiving when we try to muck with it.)

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

Bjorn Lomborg has a great book on this particular subject, "The Skeptical Environmentalist".

Thanks for underlining just how much of a gullible idiot you are.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

So what you're saying is that scarcity "caused" them to behave in a manner that is certain to create more scarcity.

No, that is neither my summary of the article, nor the point of the article. It's YOUR assumption that warfare creates more scarcity. It might or might not be the case that that is the outcome. But warfare is never undertaken with full knowledge of the outcome. As your modern example take Iraq. The US and Britain probably wouldn't have invaded if they'd have known how long and harmful their stay after "mission accomplished" would be.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Anonymous Coward]

Droughts have not been the issue with production in Saskatchewan the last few years. Flooding has been the problem.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Thanks for underlining just how much of a gullible idiot you are.

Reading "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is going to be a better use of your time than continuing to make a fool of yourself.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

The sig is there as a convenience for people that can't argue my points

You didn't make a point. You seem to think misquoting someone is making a point. Hence, your sig is fitting, whatever purpose you had in mind for it.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

Referring to the long list of errors in the statements of that book would be a good use of your time.

http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/

Lomberg's background isn't in environmentalism, let alone climate science. He's field is political science. He visited the USA where he discovered how much money there is in lobbying. That's where the "Skeptical Environmentalist" and the newspaper articles that predated it came from. It's how he chose to make himself a lot of money, by lobbying.

As I said, you're gullible. You eat this stuff up because it's what you want to hear.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

My point was that you need to actually consider the negatives and positives. Current research points to far more negative effects than positives.

The link you gave is grievously flawed. Here's the economic "benefit" it cites:

Increased cod fishing leading to improved Greenland economy (Nyegaard 2007)

No word about the vast wealth generated by not restricting human industry on a global scale or the add-on effects of increasing human poverty.

When one makes a decision of this magnitude, one should consider the big global costs, not just Greenland's economy.

I agree. It's worth noting here that "do nothing, but build wealth" is one such moderate action.

Actually, no that would be inaction.

So what? Find a better strategy rather than connotation games on my strategy's name.

Here's a interesting quote (from Bradley Plumer):

I've noted before that pretty much every environmental regulation that's ever been enacted has been greeted with predictions of economic doomâ"yet those dire warnings have never panned out. Pollution restrictions invariably turn out to be much cheaper than expected, in part because they trigger the development of new technologies. (By contrast, nature isn't nearly so forgiving when we try to muck with it.)

The first thing to remember about this remarkable display of ignorance and shallow blitheness is that one doesn't see opportunity costs. One doesn't see the industry and productivity the developed world could have had, if they hadn't chased that industry off to China and elsewhere.

Well, there's a lot of bitter, powerless people on Slashdot who complain ineffectually that the business world treats them unfairly, employing cheap Chinese or whatever workers in an unregulated environment rather. Well, that's a consequence of environmental regulation. They also complain that they don't get the free shit that they picked up a right for. Well, that's a psychological consequence of environmental regulation, that what petty thing you want is actually some high-minded principle.

We have the huge liability costs that greatly increase the cost of many things we buy, such as ladders, fire extinguishers, cars, etc. These are another consequence.

Yet another venomous ideology that uses law and state power to modify human behavior? That has so many followers that believe the ends justify the means? Well, that's another consequence.

Sure, these sorts of actions haven't ended human civilization. But Bradley Plumer is whistling past the graveyard. This is typical of the blindness that surrounds so much of environmentalism.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Lomberg's background isn't in environmentalism, let alone climate science.

It's in economics. Which is why I suggested him. And with that book? He now has a background in environmentalism and climate science too. Funny how that works.

Mark my words. Economics will destroy environmentalism as it is currently practiced. I don't mean here the fuzzy beliefs of the economists. Instead, I mean the actual, real world dynamics of human systems of trade and value exchange.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

You didn't make a point. You seem to think misquoting someone is making a point. Hence, your sig is fitting, whatever purpose you had in mind for it.

Yea, okay, ignore the parts of the post you don't want to address. And ignore your own hypocrisy of defending the activities of someone engaged in a money-making and rent-seeking for personal gain when they match your ideology.

Like I said - it's easier than thinking.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

The link you gave is grievously flawed.

I'm sorry, but you're going to have to do better job than cite one study out of 54 and claim it's not broad enough for your liking.

No word about the vast wealth generated by not restricting human industry on a global scale or the add-on effects of increasing human poverty.

Of course, climate change may already be making human poverty worse. Please remember the policy I gave you does not restrict human industry. That is a potential solution to the problem, but one which I would place in the "extreme" reactions. We could pass laws that restrict the ability of industry to release carbon dioxide. However, it's highly probable that it would cheaper and less disruptive to introduce a carbon tax. A carbon tax doesn't restrict human industry, it puts a price on the externality of carbon dioxide emissions and thus corrects a fundamental flaw in the marketplace. Implemented in a revenue neutral way, a carbon tax can shift the tax burden from activity we want to encourage (investment, employment) to activity we want to discourage (carbon emissions).

The first thing to remember about this remarkable display of ignorance and shallow blitheness is that one doesn't see opportunity costs. One doesn't see the industry and productivity the developed world could have had, if they hadn't chased that industry off to China and elsewhere.

That's a pretty simplistic analysis of the Chinese situation. Lax environmental regulations are a common reason for offshoring to China. Low wage rates is usually the primary motivating factor, although Apple, of course, appreciates the fact that Foxconn basically employ slaves who can be literally worked to death.

Well, there's a lot of bitter, powerless people on Slashdot who complain ineffectually that the business world treats them unfairly, employing cheap Chinese or whatever workers in an unregulated environment rather. Well, that's a consequence of environmental regulation. They also complain that they don't get the free shit that they picked up a right for. Well, that's a psychological consequence of environmental regulation, that what petty thing you want is actually some high-minded principle.

I've heard more people shocked be how bad the environmental degradation in China has become than I've heard people claiming they're out of job because of that. Frankly, I don't think I've ever heard someone complain that their job was shipped to China because China has no environmental regulations. Interestingly enough, China is going through a bit of an environmental revolution. It turns out that Chinese workers don't like living in smog covered cities any more than Americans do.

This is typical of the blindness that surrounds so much of environmentalism.

And killing people so long as it can't be directly linked to your actions is a hallmark of unfettered capitalism (see cigarettes, asbestos, dow chemicals*). As it turns out, most people would like a middle ground where businesses don't poison their neighbours and kill their employees but still provide a robust capitalistic system.

* As it turns out cigarettes, asbestos and climate change deniers have one thing in common: the same PR firms.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Please remember the policy I gave you does not restrict human industry.

Let's look at your policy:

Increasing efficiency and applying a moderate carbon tax would be moderate actions

Yes, restricting human industry.

so reducing our rate of oil consumption would be a smart hedge against rising prices

Reducing rate of oil consumption? Restricting human industry.

And killing people so long as it can't be directly linked to your actions is a hallmark of unfettered capitalism

No, that's a hallmark of a lot of human systems. Capitalism, fettered or not, isn't even notable in this respect.

Environmentalism is another such system in which this applies. For example, there are numerous times when human safety has been compromised for some environmental concern. A number of environmentalist arguments favoring radical carbon dioxide emission reduction are based on such a calculus. Being willing to harm billions of people merely to achieve narrow-minded environmental goals is not the calling card of unfettered capitalism.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

Increasing efficiency and applying a moderate carbon tax would be moderate actions

Yes, restricting human industry.

You don't really know what restricting is, do you?

so reducing our rate of oil consumption would be a smart hedge against rising prices

Reducing rate of oil consumption? Restricting human industry.

Really, so every time a company discovers a more efficient way to do something, they are being restricted?

And killing people so long as it can't be directly linked to your actions is a hallmark of unfettered capitalism

No, that's a hallmark of a lot of human systems. Capitalism, fettered or not, isn't even notable in this respect.

Oh, it is very notable. You just have a big libertarian shaped blind spot that hides it from you.

Environmentalism is another such system in which this applies. For example, there are numerous times when human safety has been compromised for some environmental concern. A number of environmentalist arguments favoring radical carbon dioxide emission reduction are based on such a calculus. Being willing to harm billions of people merely to achieve narrow-minded environmental goals is not the calling card of unfettered capitalism.

Of course, the same people who favor reducing carbon dioxide emissions usually also have evidence that indicates that their course of action will be less harmful than business as usual. Their case is actually based on improved human safety, now you are free to disbelieve them, but it's hardly fair to claim they are willing to harm billions when they are making the case to reduce harm to billions. You're going to have to find some convincing evidence that your allegations have any basis in reality. I've already provided some evidence on the balance of effects, and the actual consensus is that in the short-to-medium terms that (the next few centuries) the effects will be overwhelming negative. You, on the other hand, have provided nothing but your opinion that profit should trump every other consideration.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Increasing efficiency and applying a moderate carbon tax would be moderate actions

Yes, restricting human industry.

You don't really know what restricting is, do you?

Look up the definition and stop wasting my time. A carbon tax is a limit on human industry. You have to pay more money than before to emit carbon dioxide. Similarly, increasing efficiency happens by limiting someone's behaviors that are considered wasteful. Reducing oil consumption? Same deal.

Really, so every time a company discovers a more efficient way to do something, they are being restricted?

There's the bit about forcing people to use that way. If this were all voluntary (which I don't buy in the least), then we're already doing it and nothing more needs to be done or said on the matter.

Of course, the same people who favor reducing carbon dioxide emissions usually also have evidence that indicates that their course of action will be less harmful than business as usual.

Hence, my complaint that no that's not the case.

Their case is actually based on improved human safety,

Hence, why we need to routinely sacrifice human safety for environmental causes.

now you are free to disbelieve them,

It's not that I disbelieve them as I don't believe they exist as other than an illusion. There's a lot of such people who think they might be improving the world, but they don't have clue one as to whether they actually are.

but it's hardly fair to claim they are willing to harm billions when they are making the case to reduce harm to billions.

Sure it is. Outcome not intention is what matters. Nothing else is fair to the people subject to and harmed by such measures.

You're going to have to find some convincing evidence that your allegations have any basis in reality.

Such as a long, long history that provides many examples where ideology failed to improve the lot of life? There's also that ugly phrase, "unintended consequences" that comes up frequently in such studies.

I've already provided some evidence on the balance of effects,

And I pointed out that your evidence completely ignores economic effects. That's the elephant in the room. If whole civilizations refuse to or can't comply, it doesn't matter how wonderful your fix is.

and the actual consensus is that in the short-to-medium terms that (the next few centuries) the effects will be overwhelming negative.

A consensus of fools means nothing.

You, on the other hand, have provided nothing but your opinion that profit should trump every other consideration.

Well, there is what I actually wrote, which nowhere mentions "profit" much elevates it to highest priority. Why say things that are easily shown to be false? What does that do for you?

It's also worth noting that natural disaster is far less harmful to society than the man-made ones. And that's the problem here. Global warming could be a global natural disaster, while the fix for AGW is a global man-made disaster. Both are global in scale with global warming, if it hurts us, does so in the distant future while the fix hurts us, drives our people into poverty, and cripples our industries now.

I think the current "consensus" on the effects of global warming will fall apart. Economics is the rock upon which this will break and fail. You can get economists to say whatever you want them to say. You can't get societies to do whatever you want them to do.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[BasilBrush]

It's in economics.

So there's the first lie. In the title of the book. It should have been called "A political scientist sceptical of global warming". Or according to your interpretation "An economist sceptical of global warming".

And with that book?

It's the only thing he's known for. It's what he makes his money from. Whenever he's wheeled out for an opposing view on TV, the strap-line will say "Bjorn Lomborg, Author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

Mark my words. Economics will destroy environmentalism as it is currently practiced. I don't mean here the fuzzy beliefs of the economists. Instead, I mean the actual, real world dynamics of human systems of trade and value exchange.

It may well stop AGW being tackled. And if so it'll be responsible for the shit state of the world. Even idiots like you will realise the error of your ways, if you live long enough.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

It may well stop AGW being tackled. And if so it'll be responsible for the shit state of the world. Even idiots like you will realise the error of your ways, if you live long enough.

Right. My "ways" have to be in error first for that to be relevant.

As to AGW, if you can't provide a reason for AGW to be tackled, then don't be surprised when it's not tackled.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

It's also worth noting that natural disaster is far less harmful to society than the man-made ones. And that's the problem here. Global warming could be a global natural disaster, while the fix for AGW is a global man-made disaster. Both are global in scale with global warming, if it hurts us, does so in the distant future while the fix hurts us, drives our people into poverty, and cripples our industries now.

Except of course, as indicated in quote I presented you earlier, idiots like you say that every single time one of these issues comes up and you've always been wrong. Without even looking at the details, chances are you're wrong again. Many economics say you're wrong, the only "experts" who agree with you are directly in the pay of libertarian propaganda think tank. You have no credible evidence to back up your hysterionics just your biases and hand waving. You make many claims but consistently fail to back them up with any evidence to support them. And you think other people are fools becuase they present evidence to support their assertions? You really are a waste of time and space.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Let's give an example. The most costly natural disaster in the past decade was the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami which did somewhere around $235 billion estimated in damage (the more lethal 2004 Indian Ocean killed much more people but less economic cost due to the relatively low value of the regions affected).

In comparison, the US has lent somewhere in the neighborhood of three to four trillion dollars recovering from the real estate financial crisis. A good portion of that isn't coming back and I think it's reasonable to assume that the US government alone will experience losses of hundreds of millions just from this crisis. Many other governments are also experiencing losses as a result.

I doubt anyone understands the scope of this disaster because a lot of it, particularly the US government's "quantitive easing" is still ongoing and for which the damage will take a long time to be revealed. And some sort of cost must be assigned to the shuffling of priorities as a large portion of the world finds that they have investments that dropped radically in value due to this.

I think it possible that this particular financial disaster may have done more economic damage than every natural disaster globally of the past ten years combined.

But what about body counts? Isn't it rather hard to compare a mere financial crisis to an earthquake which is though to have killed 230,000 to 280,000 people? Yes, but not for the reason you'd think.

We probably never will know how many people have died prematurely due to the rigors of this crisis. For example, suicide rates typically go up. People skimp on food, health care, home and transportation repairs. Losing jobs or working hard to keep one can increase the stress in one's life. Businesses and governments can take short cuts in safety and infrastructure maintenance to lower costs. These all kill people.

But when you have such burdens spread over most of the world's people, I believe we'll eventually find that it kills a lot of people, perhaps even resulting in hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of premature deaths (most in the less developed parts of the world) per year at the worst parts of this recession.

That's why I say that the man-made disasters are worse than the natural ones.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

Of course Anthropogenic Climate Change is, by definition, a man-made disaster.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tmosley]

Who said it was invisible? Go to the store. It's EVERYWHERE.

Also, one should note that in ~100% of past inflationary and hyperinflationary episodes, the fastest moving prices are in energy, food, and precious metals. That is why it is a good idea to examine prices in terms of gold, as that will tell you whether the tail is wagging the dog with regards to inflation.

But no-one wants to look or think that deeply. Those who fail to are in for a rude awakening.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[khallow]

Eh, true. I should come up with a better name then. What I termed "man-made disasters" are disasters caused by failings of human social, political, and economic systems. They break how civilization works. Even the largest "natural" disasters of human history don't typically do that. Even the Black Death didn't wipe out European civilization, for example, and there's nothing offered by AGW that would come close to that.

The more routine harmful predictions made for the effects of AGW just aren't that significant to humanity either: slightly higher sea levels, modestly less rainfall in some locations, slightly higher temperatures (except in the upper northern hemisphere) slightly more acidic oceans, slightly more extreme weather, etc. Most of that can be solved just by having people move out of less safe or productive areas over the decades or centuries.

OTOH, when you impose restrictions or increased costs on carbon dioxide emissions, you're increasing the cost of transportation and energy production. If that has genuine external costs associated with it and the restrictions/costs are in line with the externality, then I wouldn't complain. Obviously, I dont see the suggested imposed costs as being in line with the externalities in question.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[tbannist]

Even the Black Death didn't wipe out European civilization

And some man-made disaster did? I suspect you underestimate the effect of the Black Death:

The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30–60 percent of Europe's population,[2] reducing world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in the 14th century. The aftermath of the plague created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history. It took 150 years for Europe's population to recover. The plague returned at various times, killing more people, until it left Europe in the 19th century.

I find it interesting that you seem to think a carbon tax would be much worse than losing 30-60% of the country's population.

The more routine harmful predictions made for the effects of AGW just aren't that significant to humanity either: slightly higher sea levels, modestly less rainfall in some locations, slightly higher temperatures (except in the upper northern hemisphere) slightly more acidic oceans, slightly more extreme weather, etc. Most of that can be solved just by having people move out of less safe or productive areas over the decades or centuries.

That view represents a failure to appreciate the magnitude of the changes. The difference between glacial and interglacial is about 5 degrees. The predicted warming by the end of 2100 is about 4 degrees. That means in a little over a century we will be as far removed from our 20th century climate as it was from a climate where much of North America was under a mile thick sheet of ice. We don't know precisely what the effect of going up another 5 degrees will be, but we can try to estimate the impacts.

Obviously, I dont see the suggested imposed costs as being in line with the externalities in question.

The experts disagree with you, they say the costs of inaction greatly exceeds the cost of taking action. Only 2.1% of the economists surveyed indicated that the thought the U.S. shouldn't take action to address climate change, presumably that means only 2.1% of the economists thought the costs of action would be equal to or higher than the costs of inaction.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[mathmathrevolution]

No, inflation is not in the stores. If it was in the stores then we would see it in the aggregate statistics. And pricing things out in terms of a singular arbitrary volatile commodity isn't "thinking deeply", especially when you deliberately ignore reasons that commodity is spiking.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[mathmathrevolution]

Agricultural commodities are down over the last year. Base metals are down. Just google commodity etfs (dba, dbb) and you can verify this real quick. And if you're going to be tossing around inflammatory rhetoric like calling people "devoid of critical thinking" and "blind" then maybe you should at least bother examining recent data. Just so you don't look like a ignorant blowhard. Just a suggestion.

Look at your own graphs. Your graph of commodities is showing an increase between 2009 to 2010. That was two years ago. So if that was a harbinger of inflation then where is the inflation? Still not showing up in any aggregate statistics, ie: still invisible.

Gold is up, but just plunged an incredible 4% because its a volatile commodity. Oil is up because we are going to war with Iran. Nothing to complicated about it. And if you want to bother with fringy sources like "shadowstats.com" or "truthistreason.net" go for it, but there's no way I'm wasting my time critiquing conspiratorial crap.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

And if you want to bother with fringy sources like "shadowstats.com" or "truthistreason.net" go for it, but there's no way I'm wasting my time critiquing conspiratorial crap.

Shadow stats is far from "fringy", but why you feel the need to throw out ad hominems is beyond me, when all the information I posted has multiple sources for confirmation. Are you claiming that it's NOT true about the Libyan rebels oil company and central bank? It's general knowledge and there are many other sources. Sorry if that fact blows away the approved narrative that you were buying into before.

As for the inflation, the commodities graph of inflation that I posted is the same time period that the Federal Reserve distributed $16 trillion in fiat money around the world, so that's the correlation.

Yes, oil is up because we (or our proxies in the Middle East) are going to war with Iran. At least you acknowledge that it's a done deal and there is no amount of protest or outrage that will stop the elites from making sure that war happens. But that's not only an intentional move, but mostly a short-term blip with less influence than the long-term trend caused by MASSIVE INFLATION that will eventually become hyperinflation once the other major economies (Europe, China, etc.) have divested themselves of US reserve currency and start trading commodities instead, just like has already started happening.

If you really believe that the inflation numbers quoted by the Federal Government are accurate, you are truly naive. Not even Ben Bernanke himself believes it, although he doesn't come out and say so, he certainly won't defend those numbers.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[mathmathrevolution]

Commodities go up in value and then come back down. Now there are two ways of looking at that. The simple explanation is that this happens all the time with volatile assets like commodities in response to basic market forces. The other explanation is that they were precipitating massive inflation/hyperinflation but then they mysteriously stopped rising and then most of them started to decline. But hyperinflation is still just around the corner. Commodities are zigzagging, wages are stagnant, goods and services are going nowhere, but any minute now ninja inflation is going to strike. You can believe whatever you want, but you explanation is in contradiction with the price history of assets.

I'm not sure why you linked to that YouTube video since it's just several minutes of Ron Paul ranting about the Gold Standard with maybe 30 seconds of Bernanke reminding Paul that people can own whatever asset classes they want. And nowhere does Bernanke critique or hedge on the CPI.

Re:Advanced as They Were

[Curunir_wolf]

And nowhere does Bernanke critique or hedge on the CPI.

Well sure he does - he disavows any responsibility for them, and never tries to defend them. He knows what Paul is say is right - that the CPI is false - it's smoke and mirrors. He won't say that, either, but he certainly knows better to defend them as accurate in that hearing.

Besides, you're making the same mistake that Paul points out that many other people do about inflation: It's not really about prices, that's just a side-effect. It's better defined as a measure of the money supply and the purchasing power of currency.

The South will rise again!

[TWX]

From the article:

The Yucatan is apparently highly sensitive to water reductions, a hypothesis supported by current data, and that means that reduced tropical storm action was likely enough to trigger the downfall of the Mayans, thanks to a quickly-depleting water supply.

With the massive increase in severe tropical storms, the Yucatan will have some of the wettest weather in history, The Mayans will reemerge, and will take over the Americas again!

Not the South normally expected to rise...

Re:The South will rise again!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Mayans will reemerge, and will take over the Americas again!"

The new Mayan chief will be heard to ask, "What year is it?" Followed by, "Dang!"

Re:The South will rise again!

[TWX]

I don't think the Mayan calendar referred to this year as the end of the world, just as the end of an era. The Mayan culture resurging and taking over would certainly be a startling way to begin the next era...

Re:The South will rise again!

[Sarius64]

When they start slinging the 400 ton rocks around, I'll listen!

Re:The South will rise again!

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Mayans will reemerge, and will take over the Americas again!"

The Sons of Anarchy will prevent that.

as opposed...

[w.hamra1987]

... to they killed the hell out of themselves?

Re:as opposed...

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who actually fucking walked around Tikal in the 70's, I have to say my opinion is the psychopathic Aztecs were an expanding force to be reckoned with, and they basically killed the Mayans, put their heads on sticks and chased the rest of them out into the fuckin Jungle, where they either got killed off by the wildlife, or now show up in Guatemala, Antigua, etc.

But you know, go ahead and give your sovergnity, rights, and money away to the globalist banks, globalist government. Just remember green-tards when you come knocking on my door, demanding a globalist carbon tax, I will put your fucking heads on sticks.

Re:as opposed...

[tmosley]

I don't think you have your timeline right. The Nauhatl didn't arrive in Tenochtitlan until well after the start of city-state abandonment in the Mayan Regions.

A more likely scenario to me seems that the high priests promised that they could bring back the rains if they were able to give enough blood and living hearts to the Gods. Eventually, the people would rebel against this bloody treatment, and, after slaughtering the priest class for the lying mass murderers they were, abandon the temple complex cities.

Make all the comparisons to modern day "environmentalists" you like. Many of them will be true. They aren't lying when they say they are lead by the spirit of Maya.

Re:as opposed...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just sayin, when they come to my door with this globalist carbon tax crap, they ought to be shooting down the aerial spraying jets over the USA, and cutting the power to HAARP techonologies for the domestic terrorism they have caused. But the globalists don't talk about weather modification, they used hegelian dialectic in the most evil way politically used specifically for power money, and to deceive the people.

the run out of food thing they been saying that since the 70's, just now they have a "study" what a joke.

If it was lack of rain, then why is there a rain-forrest/jungle for thousands of miles?
where are the people from egypt, Easter Island etc?

climate change propaganda leads to agenda 21 and the psychopaths we have running shit now. IF this was the climate change you talk about then the WHOLE earth had to be spinning differently. And if that's the case no fucking green bullshit is going to fix that

Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate when people cite academic papers and don't provide a link to it...

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6071/956.full

Re:Source?

[PRMan]

Because then it would be too easy for you to debunk the obviously PC-inspired paper...

Re:Source?

[Thugthrasher]

The article (particularly the title of the article) was "PC-inspired," assuming you mean what I think you mean (that it was putting a spin on things to make it look related to the man-made climate change debate occurring today).

All the paper actually says (when you get down to it) is that the droughts during the end of the Mayan civilization (which are often cited as one of the causes of the collapse of said civilization) represented up to a 40% reduction in precipitation and were likely caused by a reduction in the number and intensity of tropical storms.

"Climate change" in this case is exactly that. A change in the climate. Not a change caused by man...just a change.

Served them right

[oldhack]

Driving hummers, flying all over the place spewing carbon out the wazoo. Fools.

Re:Served them right

[DesScorp]

Driving hummers, flying all over the place spewing carbon out the wazoo. Fools.

So the truth is finally out. What ended the Mayans? The SUV.

Re:Served them right

[Zorque]

Specifically, the Pontiac Aztek.

Re:Served them right

[LongearedBat]

Weren't they plying free trade with aliens and running space ports? Think of all that pollution.

Duh.

[rs79]

This happened in Mesopotamia too. It's called "biological succession" - forest gives way to grassland which gives way to scrub which becomes desert. It happened all over Africa and Mesopotamia is now called Iraq. Environmental biology 101.

We haven't been screaming for people to take care of the soil, flora and fauna for nothing. But carry on.

Re:Duh.

[Krojack]

That's why we started crop rotation.The great Dust Bowl woke us up to that in the early 1930's.

Re:Duh.

[dkleinsc]

In different climates the biological succession works the other way. For instance, right now, in New England, if you leave bare rock undisturbed, it starts growing lichens. The lichens eventually trap enough material to make the wetter spots suitable for mosses which move in next. Then come the grasses, which turn the place into a field. Eventually, the field builds up enough soil that shrubs and pioneer tree species can show up. And finally, the larger canopy trees move in, and you have a forest again. This process actually happened over about 150 years, as the farming that used to happen in New England moved westward leaving land behind.

Re:Duh.

[mc6809e]

We haven't been screaming for people to take care of the soil, flora and fauna for nothing. But carry on.

Taking care of the soil isn't going to prevent changes in the the tilt of the earth's axis.

Re:Duh.

[Internetuser1248]

Crop rotation has been around for hundreds of years

Re:Duh.

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Thousands of years actuallty. As far back as the roman empire - or maybe even earlier then that - mankind has used crop rotation.

But as always, those that dont learn from history will repeat the mistakes. So its been forgotten many times.

Re:Duh.

[istartedi]

In Virginia it's even faster. When I was a kid they cleared a piece of land for development. Then they stopped the process for a few years. By the time they were actually ready to break ground for construction some of the sapplings were 10 feet high. Maples are particularly aggressive there. If you don't clean your gutters for two years, 3 foot maples will sprout and thrive on the moist leaf litter.

Re:Duh.

[O('_')O_Bush]

I just want to point out that what the parent was talking about was the changeover of most the flora of an ecosystem, not how fast it takes a tree to grow in fertile ground.

I live in Virginia, and there are grassy plots over a hundred years old (historically grazing land) that haven't accepted shrubs or trees thanks to thin topsoil.

Re:Duh.

[aynoknman]

We haven't been screaming for people to take care of the soil, flora and fauna for nothing. But carry on.

We will!

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But as always, those that dont learn from history will repeat the mistakes. So its been forgotten many times."

quote for a quote..."there's always hope for the past because is always changing"
History is a fiction loosely based on fact....

Re:Duh.

[DerekLyons]

Here in the [US] Pacific Northwest too... You can have two inches moss/lichens in as little as two years.

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

This happened in Mesopotamia too. It's called "biological succession" - forest gives way to grassland which gives way to scrub which becomes desert. It happened all over Africa and Mesopotamia is now called Iraq. Environmental biology 101.

We haven't been screaming for people to take care of the soil, flora and fauna for nothing. But carry on.

So, your thesis is that everything ultimately becomes desert,

There's a planet here that disproves your thesis.

Re:Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, if Rome knew to rotate crops, why didn't Parthia?

Re:Duh.

[CAIMLAS]

Yet things seemed to get to fairly fruitful states (eg. Mesopotamia) prior to man's intervention, quite randomly, without much intervention.

What makes you think that the Mesopotamia, "all over Africa" (specifically, the Sahara) became desolate due to Man's intervention/destruction? There's no corroborative evidence whatsoever, and quite the contrary in South and Central America. (Hell, the United States is more fertile and densely grown than it was 100, 200 years ago...)

Re:Duh.

[CAIMLAS]

I live in the Dakotas, and the situation is much the same: nothing but scrubbrush and grass. We humans (evil white men) destroyed the native fauna when we brought destructive eastern weeds with our grain crop seeds, which pushed out the weaker native grasses. We've also planted trillions of trees, which help keep the winds low and the soils from eroding. Shrubs are now common and have (wherever the land is not completely flat) allowed for all kinds of shrubs and trees to take root.

Further south in Nebraska, where there is nothing but sand (except along a 20-odd mile swath by the Missouri), the situation is the same. Why is there only sand throughout most of the state? Some blame glaciers from millennia ago, which scraped the topsoil southward. The land still produces some shrubbery, but there's not much organic matter aside from what man has put there over the past 100 years through ranching and very mindful land management.

Re:Duh.

[mcgrew]

Crop rotation wouldn't have stopped the dust bowl. The native plants (mostly grasses), which had evolved to fit that environment where there were frequent droughts, were plowed under and crops planted. When the drought came and the crops wouldn't grow the dust bowl happened.

From your own link:

Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.

During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastward and southward in large dark clouds.

Re:Duh.

[istartedi]

LOL, a small fraction of acres poorly managed in Virginia, a little buildup from some other posters, and I wonder how many people who have not visited both states will start to think they look similar.

We don't need to worry

[arcite]

We have the WHEEL! Those silly Mayans didn't have the wheel! If they had the wheel they could have just hopped on their cart and quickly roll away in the opposite direction of climate change, walking just isn't fast enough.

Jared Diamond

[Anonymous Coward]

New? Wasn't this described in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond years ago?

They could move to Las Vegas!

[G3ckoG33k]

They could move to Las Vegas! They have plenty of ... Wait http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4719473.stm No, they shouldn't go to Las Vegas.

Re:They could move to Las Vegas!

[ibsteve2u]

Who the hell goes to Las Vegas to drink water?

Re:They could move to Las Vegas!

[NFN_NLN]

They could move to Las Vegas! They have plenty of ... Wait http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4719473.stm No, they shouldn't go to Las Vegas.

"Right now, 6,000 people a month are moving to this valley because the weather is good, the taxes are low and there are plenty of jobs," she said.
Mr Van Ee laments that the town he arrived in some 20 years ago is now the fastest growing urban area in the country.
- Friday, 29 July 2005

Little did they know a couple years later their urban expansion problems would be solved. Who says Las Vegas isn't lucky :)

Evil Climate Change

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate change caused by Big Oil works back in time to kill Mayas. Mayas prophecy will kill us all.

Sanity, where art thou?

Killed off all the mayans.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps "Caused the collapse of their civilization".
Given the millions of mayas who still live in the area.

Not a new idea at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall reading in Jared Diamond's "Collapse" that this idea has been tossed around for quite some time.

And when you have a hammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Every problem looks like it can be resolved with a nail...

Ok, ok, we're dead

[lolococo]

sorry for the inconvenience

The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Kohath]

The Mayans are still there, living in the land their ancestors lived in. They were not "killed off". Any study that suggests they were "killed off" can be ignored as propaganda.

The Mayans made a transition from living in large, centralized cities to a more dispersed, less organized society. This is likely because their centralization was expensive and only supportable based on specific agricultural conditions and faith in their leaders to be able to sustain them. When those conditions changed, that faith could no longer be justified and the expense could no longer be afforded.

When your society is built on the idea of all-powerful mystic kings, then your society falls when the population loses faith in those kings' power.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[TheRealMindChild]

Propaganda from Wikipedia: "Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position."

Ok, I'll bite. Why would there be motivation to spread propaganda about the Mayans being killed off?

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[TWX]

Same can be said for the Romans, the Byzantines, Mongols, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and every other major collapsed empire that had thousands upon thousands in cities that were lost to time or to diaspora.

If my descendants live in a country that is no longer the United States of America, even if they live in the same geographical area as I live now or anywhere else within the extant borders, they're no longer Americans. Their nation and culture define that encompassing label, and if that nation or culture goes away, then the label no longer applies.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[tomhath]

Why would there be motivation to spread propaganda about the Mayans being killed off?

See references to AGW, poor black people, and peak oil up above. Everybody has an agenda

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Anonymous Coward]

Propaganda from Wikipedia: "Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position."

Ok, I'll bite. Why would there be motivation to spread propaganda about the Mayans being killed off?

It suggests that a once prominent people were wiped out by climate change. Its supposed to scare you into buying a smaller car and buying products marked as environmentally friendly.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mayans are still there, living in the land their ancestors lived in. They were not "killed off". Any study that suggests they were "killed off" can be ignored as propaganda.

So what is a comment to Slashdot called, pretending that a study says exactly what a story on a non-scientific website says? Also propaganda? Can it be ignored, or does on have to point out what is being done, just in case not everybody notices?

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[GameboyRMH]

So in other words, it destroyed their civilization.

"Killed off" is mostly incorrect (I doubt their societal collapse was bloodless...especially considering they liked to sacrifice people to the gods when times were hard) but the point stands.

Also centralization and organization are more efficient and cheaper per-person...I think you mean urbanization which requires high resource concentration. I could call your post propaganda over this minor wording error but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[mathmathrevolution]

"Killed off" is a broadly accurate term. Nobody has ever suggested that 100% of the Mayan population died. It is sufficient that the vast majority of the Mayan population died while the rest were forced to abandon the ruins of their cities to eek out a primitive existence in the jungle.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[khallow]

Ok, I'll bite. Why would there be motivation to spread propaganda about the Mayans being killed off?

Three incentives off the bat: protecting an ideological sunk cost, status signalling, and money/power.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Kohath]

Centralization and organization are cheaper and more efficient except when they're not. When a farmer can't harvest enough for his family to eat, he isn't going to be too eager to save a share for his king.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Kohath]

I should also specifically add that sacrificing lots of people to the gods is very expensive, in several different ways. Presumably, when the priests and kings weren't able to magically produce bountiful harvests, the populace gave up on them. Such an event would necessarily lead folks to be distrustful of priests and kings. And without an alternate model of centralized civilization, that leaves a more rural subsistence-oriented lifestyle as the remaining option.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[cowboy76Spain]

The Mayans are still there, living in the land their ancestors lived in. They were not "killed off". Any study that suggests they were "killed off" can be ignored as propaganda.

The Mayans made a transition from living in large, centralized cities to a more dispersed, less organized society.

And surely these changes were ordered, pacific and without bloodshed. Their culture survived, as did their way of life and society. In fact we do not need archeologists for learn anything about the Mayans, because we just can ask the contemporary Mayan scholars who know everything about their culture.

And there was neither famine nor infighting for the resources that suddenly had become scarce. And even better, from being an unsuccessful society with some degree of science and organization they became a bunch of happy-ever-after farmers, just like YOU want to be.

This is likely because their centralization was expensive and only supportable based on specific agricultural conditions and faith in their leaders to be able to sustain them. When those conditions changed, that faith could no longer be justified and the expense could no longer be afforded.

I do not follow you. Changes in the agricultural condition caused the changes, but anyone claiming that climate changes lead to changes in agriculture conditions that lead to the collapse of their society is a fear-mongering propagandist of AGW? I know many people in /. are urbanites, but most of us remember that most vegetables are grown outdoors/...

When your society is built on the idea of all-powerful mystic kings, then your society falls when the population loses faith in those kings' power.

Yes their problem was not that they did not have enough food. It is just that they did not have the right moral values. How clever of you!

And now, since you are the one who brought the subject of AGW: Even in the worst Nuclear War scenarios, some people would survive. The question is how many of them and in which conditions. So I do not fear that AGW will wipe out mankind. That does not mean that it should be ignored, though...

If you want to know what man can do to his environment, search for the history of Pascua.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Kohath]

[Lots of oddly contentious strawman arguments deleted] ...

And now, since you are the one who brought the subject of AGW...

Nope. I didn't.

You might be better at discussions if you'd focus on what a guy said rather than complaining about stuff he didn't say. You'd probably be worse at communicating propaganda though, so I guess it depends on what you're trying to do.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[cowboy76Spain]

When asked, you just let tomhath answer for you (you have not given an alternative explanaition, so until then I will rightfully take it as that you agree with him). Anyway you are right that you don't explicity explained why this is "propaganda".

Anyway, you still have a few more rebuttals to answer (sorry, but just calling them names does not invalidate them).

I would like to know if you think that what happened to the Mayans is what you would like to happen (or would not care if it happened) to you.... as you are so eager to minimize it.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[nbauman]

Those devious scientists!

And all along I thought they were warning us because they thought global warming would mess up the environment.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[rocket rancher]

Same can be said for the Romans, the Byzantines, Mongols, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, and every other major collapsed empire that had thousands upon thousands in cities that were lost to time or to diaspora.

If my descendants live in a country that is no longer the United States of America, even if they live in the same geographical area as I live now or anywhere else within the extant borders, they're no longer Americans. Their nation and culture define that encompassing label, and if that nation or culture goes away, then the label no longer applies.

A national identity is more than the socio-cultural matrix that gives rise to it -- ask any sociologist or anthropologist. Better yet, go see "300," and then ask yourself if the "Spartan" label has lost any of its power, even though Sparta itself has been swallowed up by history. If you actually believe "American" is a mere label, I think you are in for a really rude awakening. I'm not trolling you, I'm telling you straight up: Americans have the technological and economic means to utterly dominate this planet politically, even if they didn't already dominate it culturally. Tell me, does your model still hold up if the "extant borders" of the country happen to encompass the entire planet and its population?

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Hognoxious]

eek out a primitive existence

I thought they ate maize, not mice.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[CAIMLAS]

Nobody has ever suggested that 100% of the Mayan population died.

Sure they have, multiple times. Haven't you been paying attention? The Mayans, and many other historical cultures like them, have been utterly killed off. The answer is obvious: whitey did it. Whitey needs to stop living in excess so he doesn't kill off more more of the hard working industrious people of wherever, and make amends for his evil ways. Reverting to a pre-hunter society where we graze off the land like cows is a recommended Good First Step, typically.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[khallow]

And all along I thought they were warning us because they thought global warming would mess up the environment.

You may well be right in the end and in addition that priority (there are other things we want than just a less messed up environment) may well end being a good choice. We'll just have to see.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Rogerborg]

Straight up? Most of the "scientists" that you'll hear "warning" you that ZOMFG GOLBAL WARMIGN GUNNA GITYA!!!!!11!!! are selling a book, SyFy Original Movie plot, or chasing next year's funding.

Climatology used to have to sit at the kiddie table at Science Camp, now it's all drunk and angry and groping the counsellors.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[mcgrew]

That was insightful, especially the last two paragraphs. I wish I had a time machine so I could take these ignorant kids back to Sauget, IL in 1965. They'd stop hating the EPA. Or maybe not, Ron Paul was an adult then, which is why I could never vote for him. Nobody who was alive then and ever drove past a chemical factory could possibly be against the EPA unless they were heavily invested in polluting industries like Big Oil or Monsanto.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[mcgrew]

eek out a primitive existence

I thought they ate maize, not mice

Well, after the maize crops were gone from the drought, they probably had to eke out an existence eating mice.

Re:The Mayans were not "killed off"

[Kohath]

I would like to know if you think that what happened to the Mayans is what you would like to happen (or would not care if it happened) to you.... as you are so eager to minimize it.

No. I would not like to be sacrificed in a futile attempt to prevent climate change. I don't believe in leaders who demand large sacrifices from others but fail to sacrifice themselves. I don't believe in power-seeking doomsayers.

Unlike the ancient Maya, we have a modern transportation infrastructure that includes inventions like the wheel. Food can be efficiently transported over large distances. We have large commodity markets for food, with a wide array of alternatives if supply of something is constrained by a localized drought -- even a prolonged one.

I don't believe we need to make enormous personal sacrifices to prevent climate change. And no one genuinely believes we can avert climate change with small personal sacrifices. Our best bet is to be prosperous and flexible and inventive. Then if we face climate change, we won't be too mired in desperate poverty and corrupt government central planning to adapt. And if we don't face climate change, prosperity is good for that too.

Same thing

[Vinegar Joe]

Took out Angkor Wat.

Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ???

[Salgak1]

Nobody bothered to notice that the time of fall of the Maya segues into the Medieval Optimum ??? If you look at this graph, you'll see that the temps start their rise around 800AD, and the Optimum is well established by 950AD.

In other words, a planetary climate change contributed to the fall of the Maya. Which just goes to prove a point: climate is NOT a fixed value, but a variable with a substantial-enough range to cause major ecological changes in relatively short periods of time. . . .

these peak oil

[Anonymous Coward]

posts and climate-change nutjob posts are funny as shiite! boy, Slashtard has really gone down the tubes in the last 15 years! where in the heck you do all dredge up these OWS nosepickers?

How is that new?

[loufoque]

Hasn't this been public knowledge for decades?

Re:How is that new?

[zootie]

Second parragraph (in essence, putting numbers to the "amount" of climate change):

That’s been posited for some time, but this report adds the twist that the change in question amounted to about a 40 percent drop in rainfall. Researchers argue that, if that’s indeed what set up the final blow, the Mayans succumbed to climate change that was much less severe than previously expected

Therefore

[AdamJS]

Human-influenced global warming is fake and Ron Paul is immediately president. Take THAT, Fartbongolibs.

Re:Therefore

[Anonymous Coward]

Human-influenced global warming is fake and Ron Paul is immediately president. Take THAT, Fartbongolibs.

I am flatulated by your brilliance.

Bullshit headline.

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline: "Climate Change-Induced Drought Caused the Mayan Collapse"
Body: "The authors are quick to note that climate change isn’t the only factor in the Mayan collapse, but it likely played a role."

Al Gore can save them.

[BobandMax]

If we can find a way to send Al back in time, he can save the Mayans from climate change. PLEASE find a way.

Re:Al Gore can save them.

[ColdWetDog]

If we can find a way to send Al back in time, he can save the Mayans from climate change. PLEASE find a way.

If that works with Al, then we can send the rest of the politicians back in time. Way back in time. Like before oxygen atmosphere time.

Re:Al Gore can save them.

[irtza]

so they can take credit for the oxygen atmosphere?

Re:Al Gore can save them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to send Al to the future, where he can't mess with the present.

Re:Al Gore can save them.

[tmosley]

They tried that, he wound up destroying the universe, and was then forced to play D&D for eternity.

Re:Al Gore can save them.

[ColdWetDog]

Well, I was hoping they would just curl up and die, but since Politicians (like Zombies) seem indestructible, they probably would take credit for the oxygen in the atmosphere.

And then try to tax it.

Re:Al Gore can save them.

[Spykk]

No, Sam is the one we send back in time. Al just appears to him as a hologram with information from the future.

Don't piss off the Becabs.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that one can stand at the bottom of the stairs of Chichen Itza and hear rain falling (from people going up the steps) indicates that they really pissed off the Becabs, and Chac in particular. After that no rain, Loraine. http://www.ocasa.org/MayanPyramid2.htm

It didn't kill off the Mayans

[Fieryphoenix]

It just wrecked their civilization.

We need to get off this planet.

[Anonymous Coward]

That way we can exploit other worlds. There are just too many people living here today. With 6 Billion plus people, how is it that we could not affect the global climate. Now whether that is a good thing or a bad is another story. I personally think the Earth could be a few degrees warmer. These liberals all want another ice age. Either way, it will work out in the end. If the climate changes, and we can no longer support everybody, that will mean there will just be less climate change, and the status quo will return. I just can't fathom why liberals want to do away with every modern convenience so that we can go back to the way things were 1000 years ago. I say fuck mother Earth. She hasn't done anything for us except give us earth quacks and typhoons. It is about time we started taking the fight to her. We need to probe deep into her bowls, so that we can extract all her juicy oil. Make her our bitch instead of the other way around. Plain and simple mother Earth will not respect humanity, unless we can shove her around a bit. Then she will show us her gapping chasms just waiting to be plumbed. Or we can just continue to be liberal whiners, and she will leave you for some other species, that isn't afraid to get down and dirty.

I

Re:We need to get off this planet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Home sapiens evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization occurred about 6000 years ago. Humans were better equipped to survive before civilization than they are now. Since the sudden advent of writing, currency, agriculture, war, and other modern conveniences we have plunged the planet to the edged of ecological collapse. Who will survive will not be humans.

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[ColdWetDog]

Correlation, especially single variable correlation when the data is on an entirely different continent, doesn't imply causation.

Further the word 'optimal' in the phrase "Medieval Optimum" usually refers to temperatures in Europe. Whatever caused warmer temperatures in Europe might well create droughts in the Yucatan peninsula. Then again, it might not.

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[GameboyRMH]

Who said it was fixed?

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[rrohbeck]

If it is everywhere; wouldn't it be connected to everything?

Salination too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if this applies to the Mayans, but I seem to recall that some of the advanced South American tribes figured out how to irrigate. What they didn't figure out was how to prevent the accumulation of salts in the soil due to irrigation coming from slightly saline sources. As a result, irrigated fields became unproductive and were abandoned. Presumeably civilization moved, fought wars and/or collapsed in some way.

I think we understand this problem now; but i'm, not so sure if we're actually doing anything about it. I've heard California's highly productive central valley might be vulnerable.

omg

[Anonymous Coward]

If that happens to me i'll no longer be able to walk to my hunting grounds from my yurt and kill wild buffalo. Quick, all power to statist enviros.

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said it was fixed?

Good question. Sceptics argue that statist enviros are selling their schemes with arguments that have as implicit the assumption of some optimum climate. Should we fail to preserve this optimum climate by rapidly arresting any human induced changes the biosphere on which we depend will collapse. The truth is that the biosphere is very capable of withstanding change, as it has many times.

Mayans exhaled

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn Mayans were exhaling CO2. It's their own fault.

just look at our current civilization

[FudRucker]

agriculture totally depends on petroleum, to make fertilizers, herbicides & insecticides, from beginning to end the entire process of modern industrialized farming depends on oil, if something happens to either the supply of oil or just a few bad growing seasons for one reason or another it could cause a big chunk of civilization to starve, and if that happens it wont be pretty, (i sure dont want to be around to witnesses it)

"New study"? It was published in 2001!

[SysKoll]

Some new study. It was "new" when it was first published in Science in 2001? http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5520/1367.short

This is one of many papers showing that 1. The Mayan empire was subject to a series of droughts that finally offed them, and 2. That variations of solar activities caused these droughts.

It doesn't "suggest" anything, it forcibly affirms it with tons of data to accompany it.

Advanced as they where

[Old Wolf]

From TFA:

As our study suggests, the TCP rainfall reductions where not of catastrophic proportions,

Their proof-reading is the only catastrophic thing here. There's no "h" anywhere near "w" or "e" so it can't be a typo (unless they have a dvorak keyboard?)
This error didn't exist in the 1980 and 1990s, it seems to have started up more recently than that.

Re:Advanced as they where

[Anonymous Coward]

recency illusion much?

Mod parent "Poe's Law"

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's a beautiful instance of the archetype: Poe's Law

Re:Mod parent "Poe's Law"

[rubycodez]

it's also true, we DO need to use our minds to manage/farm/utilize the world for our own ends. the earth is an essentially immortal rock, and as for the biosphere and there are plenty of organisms that can survive it being much colder and much hotter than it is now (fossil record proves it). And the universe is largely uninhabited, we can certainly justifiable use any of the lifeless asteroids, planets, comets, stars, nebula we happen upon.

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[GameboyRMH]

The biosphere sure is, human civilization, not so much. There is an optimum range for human civilizations.

Mayan's are not Dead!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I was born in Mayan land and grew up speaking a Mayan language quiche to be exact. The freaking Popol Vuh was written in that language. I moved to USA at the age of 16 and ever since I been hearing of my people's disappearance I even argued once in school about it with one of the history teachers, and putting myself as evidence.

speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

It is so sad to see all everyone engage in idle speculation and call it science. They ridicule religion, and witch-kings, and god-rulers, and then indulge in garbage like this. If there is any intelligent life in the universe, it wouldn't bother with this rock covered largely by water and plant-life, and over-run by organisms less intelligent than the plants.

The worlda can't sustain

[BudAaron]

When I was born in 1927 (fairly recently in cosmological terms) the world population was a piddling 2 billion. In my life the population has grown by 5 billion and now stands at 7 billion. It's simplistic to me - we don't now have enough of anything to supply the world population's needs. That includes food, fuel and every other commodity you can name. Something has to happen even if it's mass starvation.

New study is old

[tomhath]

Droughts occur frequently in this region, the Mayans had reservoirs but it wasn't enough. Most likely is that the population had grown during a wet period, then couldn't be sustained in a drought cycle.

The 760 AD drought signaled the end of a 200 year ‘wet’ period in the Yucatan, during this time the cities prospered, but populations grew to such great numbers that agricultural production became over stretched.

some pro-tips, friends

[Anonymous Coward]

1: Maya people, Maya culture, the Maya. Mayan is the language, written or spoken. ONLY the language, written or spoken. Mayan = Language

2: "The Maya collapsed" makes poor shorthand for: "The Late Classic Maya period evidenced major demographic shifts from large cities to smaller communities and southern city centers to nothern city centers, with strong continuity of material culture, daily practice, structures of governance, language, and genetic population, although some southern city centers experienced depopulation not unlike current conditions in downtown Detroit, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and perhaps a hundred other city centers in the U.S. as a response to shifts in resources, industries, and economic structures." See the work of: Scott Fedick, Rosemary Joyce, Jim Aimers, Patricia McAnany, Quetzil Castaneda, John Henderson, Marvin Cohodas...

3: Contemporary scholarly literature on "collapse" focuses on mining the past for either cautionary tales or modes of resilience. Either way, scholars are in agreement that 1) the transformations in the current climate are occurring at an unprecedented rate, 2) the impacts of globalization are felt across human society at an unprecedented scale, and 3) current human behaviors and trajectories (nuclear armament, biological transformations, global warming, etc.) put us at far greater risk, as a species, than any other scenario experienced in human history. See the work of: Jared Diamond, Norman Yoffee, Joseph Tainter, J.Brett Hill, Christopher Fisher, Terry Hunt, Arthur Mol, Alan Robock...

4: "humankind" not "mankind". Unless you are literally discussing only (slightly less than) 50% of the world's population.

5: Although there are heated anthropological debates on whether "stages" of society are valid semantics or metrics, by no standard was the collection of pre-Contact Maya city states ever an "empire".

signed,
your friendly neighborhood archaeologist

Re:some pro-tips, friends

[Anonymous Coward]

thank you

Re:some pro-tips, friends

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another tip: There is no "Mayan language"; but a whole family of Mayan languages, like Mam and Tzotzil.

Oh, and no one ever used "mankind" to mean just the males. Everyone knows what the word means.

signed,
your friendly neighborhood linguistics minor

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[WhiplashII]

But in the face of a variable climate, surely the solution is the expand the optimum range for human civilizations - not decrease the liveable range in order to delay climate change?

That's what makes me think the AGW crowd is not "living in the real world." We can't keep the climate from changing! At this point, if AGW is right, it is too late to do anything and all those drastic measures being taken will not have any effect on the climate (which is what makes it sound like a religion, by the way). The only effect will be to transfer power to politicians and decrease society's technological base from where it could have been. Even if AGW is wrong, there better not be a scientist on Earth that believes the climate is going to be stable for the next 100,000 years.

So, my take is this: climate change is inevitable, AGW or otherwise. We should work as hard as possible to increase human technology so make the blows softer. The AGW crowd is working against that.

Crop rotation in the 14th century was ...

[zawarski]

... considerably more widespread after John Lloyd invented the patent crop rotator.

Re:Crop rotation in the 14th century was ...

[zmollusc]

Which year was that, Neil?

Let this be a lesson

[Curunir_wolf]

Those damn Mayans just couldn't give up their SUVs. And it killed them. Let that be a lesson to you, denialists!

Shale is even worse than you think

[dbIII]

Shale oil is very difficult and expensive to extract, so it's very unlikely that it will ever be produced in the sort of quantities that mineral oil is being produced in now. Barring some breakthrough that has eluded us in the continuous research since the 1960s it's looking far less effective than even the WWII oil from coal efforts.
The in-ground production experiments designed to attempt to drive down the price result in a lot of acidic material and a lot of expansion - so you get acid in the ground water and big mounds. You can't go deep because you have to give it room to expand. Add to that a very small extraction rate and that means a large surface area gets changed into loose acidic gravel for relatively small amounts of oil. That means for any sort of volume the cheap and nasty approach is just too nasty so expensive digging has to be done but that still leaves a vast amount of difficult to store tailings (very serious acid runoff) for a relatively small amount of oil.

wish to live?

[Anonymous Coward]

above all else, adapt.

adapt.

The Climate's Manifest Destiny.

[Anonymous Coward]

*FACEPALM*!

The fucking SPANISH caused the Mayan Collapse! This crap has gotten downright retarded. . . REALLY? ? ? So the big bad climate slaughtered the native Americans from Central and South America and made them slaves, subjugating them to European culture rather than their own? REALLY?

Re:The Climate's Manifest Destiny.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Classic Maya civilization collapsed some five centuries before the first Spanish conquistadors reached Central America.

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[LongearedBat]

We can't keep the climate from changing!

Of course not. But we most likely are pushing the change to be much faster than usual, to the point where ecosystems won't be able to adapt fast enough. And that's will have all sorts of consequences to humans as well.

it is too late to do anything

Perhaps it's too late to avoid big changes. But why allow ourselves to make matters worse? Now that we know that there's a problem, we can try to lessen the impact.

We should work as hard as possible to increase human technology so make the blows softer.

I agree.

The AGW crowd is working against that.

There are extremists of all kinds. Extremists are usually loud and seldom sensible. Try to ignore them.

However, in my experience, most of the "AGW crowd" are everyday sensible people. Basically, people who accept that there's a problem and are prepared to adapt (to a greater or lesser degree).

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[CAIMLAS]

Of course people have noticed this. Many intelligent people with a broad base of knowledge have. The problem is that this article, as well as the so-called research it is based on, was written by myopic ideologues who have an agenda. Facts do not coincide with the agenda (which, they suspect, will undoubtedly grant them prestige and power when it becomes fruitful), and are therefore rejected.

I hate academia at large. It is painfully myopic: it's the useless thinking which results in this kind of study, as well as the short-sighted economic and political theories which result in the complete clusterfuck we're in now. It's got no basis in reality simply because the people who are in academia are complete detached from "reality", cloistered up in their sectarian communities, digesting ideas from others throughout the world in similar isolation. It's as bad as the self-feeding mindset of religion: devoid of outside input, self-selectively isolated, and stagnant (though they do not know it). They're like an unclean petri dish: they're getting results, but they're not results based on a factual basis but a subset understanding thereof.

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[CAIMLAS]

If I had not already commended and I had mod points, you'd be getting some (mod points). You distilled the idea quite well: it comes down to a religious system of belief which begets power to the elite. Making less of what we have doesn't fix things; making further progress in efficiency, on the other hand, can only help.

And ehrein lies the problem

[aepervius]

"At the current levels of energy consumption, "


See the problem is that more or less our energy consumption over the world has steadily raised. To the point that anybody using that sentence I quoted above looks *silly*. I am sorry but that is so : If you take into account the real energy usage trend there is no plateau of energy consumption, beside economic crisis. That is why when you see somebody predicting the amount of reserve of something in years we have left and saying in the same paragraph "at the actual level of consumption" you can call bullshit. Both info should be given : at current level, and also if the consumption continue to rise as it has in the past decades. That paint a much bleaker picture, true, but a more real one.

The calendar is not enough...

[Sigg3.net]

.. now we're gonna need the Mayan Almanac.

And when does THAT end?

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[GameboyRMH]

Climate change is not a binary condition (even if going out of the "optimal range" is, if we can quantify it). It's true that even if we stopped burning fossil carbon after lunch today there would still be some change (everything projected from to-date emissions), but because it's changed from the pre-industrial state is no excuse to continue releasing fossil carbon rampantly. The more change we cause the harder it will be to adapt to and/or reverse the condition, and at a certain point we may reach a catastrophic and practically irreversible condition, such as a mass extinction of marine life due to ocean acidification, or a runaway methane clathrate release. Also keep in mind that we don't want the rate of climate change to outpace our ability to deal with it.

Reducing fossil carbon release doesn't require decreasing society's tech base and burning more fossil fuels won't help us adapt to, or geo-engineer our way out of global warming in any way. If anything preparing for global warming will improve tech and better prepare us for the future, instead of complacently resting on our fossil fuel reserves that we can never get back.

Re:frist

[flyneye]

Sorry, I have it on good credit that they died from complications brought about by copyright on maize by Cargill, pyramid design by Egypt and poor gold smelting practices licensed by Union Carbide.

It was being hassled by "the Man" that killed them in the end. Won't we ever learn?

I shall think of you

[maroberts]

...whilst us English are stupid enough to be paying £1.45 (about $2.40) a litre.

Re:I shall think of you

[dryeo]

Really you have to look at purchasing power. A pound sterling buys about the same as a dollar here and gas is now $1.42 so close to the same. Also in England a vehicle isn't needed the same as here. The closest regular bus service to me is close to 30 km away and I'm lucky it's so close. Back in England a car was a luxury and my family got by fine without one.

Re:frist

[MacDork]

Clearly. They didn't have coal fired electrical generators and gas guzzlers back then, so obviously it couldn't be climate change. The climate only started changing when we invented electricity.

;-)

I blame their mode of transportation

[Anonymous Coward]

It must have been all those Pontiac Azteks they were driving around. Good thing they stopped making those. Don't they know that only the rich elists can drive around in luxury cars and fly in private jets.

Re:frist

[Eponymous Hero]

obviously this proves that mayans has such significantly advanced technology that their vehicles were biodegradable but not the fuel that ran them.

Re:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ?

[Anonymous Coward]

correlation does not imply causation

Re:frist

[flyneye]

If they can have glyphs depicting astronauts ( here http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/ancientman/03_maya.html and here http://www.blingdomofgod.com/ancientmayandjpic.jpg for being a good sport) , they can have generators, gas guzzlers, pyramid scams, titty-bars and all mod conveniences and inconveniences. Falling civilization must be an enormous inconvenience for an up and coming Jai Ali star. Makes ya think, donut?

Re:frist

[stifler9999]

Sorry, RTA: The scientist tell us they ran out of water, therefore could not produce a slurry using clay. The writing instruments produced with this technique (today we call them crayons) were at an all time shortage, stopping the production of a 'calendar' The dissolution caused widespread panic, they did build some of the best music festival venues ever - just look at the Ballcourt in Tikal (could you imagine the speaker stacks (Drum stands) in that place!) When will the 2013 music festival, they asked. At some point, depression set in because they may never see 7/7/2077 (Mayan numerals people, please keep up = laying down, laying down, standing up, looking lower, twins laying down) which was meant to be the the be all of all music festivals. That was it, Mayans over - the current model of Maykia phone they had created could not keep up since the they used exactly 365 days for calender. People missed birthdays, dates (with girls) and funerals. Society crumbled.

Re:frist

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, it crumbled into what we know today as Tijuana and Juarez, the Sodom and Gomorrah of Mexico. Featuring Drug wars, Prostitution, Mule shows, narcotic cough syrup, cheap booze, organic psychoactive drugs, stolen U.S. Hummers converted to lowriders and any ex-football star can run a drug cartel. Viva La Maya!