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

[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

[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Your information is out of date.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

[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Your information is out of date.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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[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

[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.

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...

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

Served them right

[oldhack]

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

Re:Served them right

[Zorque]

Specifically, the Pontiac Aztek.

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.

[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.

Jared Diamond

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:They could move to Las Vegas!

[ibsteve2u]

Who the hell goes to Las Vegas to drink water?

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"

[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"

[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.

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. . . .

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: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.

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?