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]

Your information is out of date.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

[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.

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.

[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: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"

[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. . . .

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?