Study Suggests Climate Change-Induced Drought Caused the Mayan Collapse 243
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."
Duh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Jared Diamond (Score:3, Insightful)
New? Wasn't this described in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond years ago?
The Mayans were not "killed off" (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Advanced as They Were (Score:2, Insightful)
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:The Mayans were not "killed off" (Score:4, Insightful)
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:Advanced as They Were (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
We need to get off this planet. (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Advanced as They Were (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet mankind's ability to wage war over resources hasn't diminished one bit.
Re:The Mayans were not "killed off" (Score:5, Insightful)
"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:Duh. (Score:4, Insightful)
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:The Mayans were not "killed off" (Score:2, Insightful)
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:Advanced as They Were (Score:5, Insightful)
Last friday Brent Crude Oil was trading at $126/barrel [bloomberg.com]. This is near the all time high in modern history [wtrg.com]. 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 [oreilly.com] 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 [nytimes.com] 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:Climate Change: is there ANYTHING it can't do ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.