Mayan ruins in Guatemala.
This is an email I recently received from statistician Dr. Richard Mackey who writes:
The following appeared on Gore’s blog of Nov 19, 2008:
Looking Back to Look Forward November 19, 2008 : 3:04 PM
A new study suggests the Mayan civilization might have collapsed due to environmental disasters:
These models suggest that as ecosystems were destroyed by mismanagement or were transformed by global climatic shifts, the depletion of agricultural and wild foods eventually contributed to the failure of the Maya sociopolitical system,’ writes environmental archaeologist Kitty Emery of the Florida Museum of Natural History in the current Human Ecology journal.
As we move towards solving the climate crisis, we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental concerns seriously.
If you haven’t read already read it, take a look at Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse.”
This is a most curious reference.
It means that Gore is advocating the abandonment of the IPCC doctrine and barracking for the study and understanding of climate dynamics that ignores totally the IPCC/AWG doctrine and focuses on all the other variables, especially how climate dynamics are driven by atmospheric/oceanic oscillations, the natural internal dynamics of the climate system and the role of the Sun in climate dynamics.
Brian Fagan in Floods, Famines and Emperors El Nino and the fate of civilisations Basic Books 1999, shows that the Maya collapse, whilst having complex political, sociological, technological and ecological factors, was largely driven by the natural atmospheric/oceanic oscillations of ENSO and NAO. The book is one of three by Brian Fagan, Prof of Anthropology UC Santa Barbara, that documents how natural climate variations, ultimately driven by solar activity, have given rise to the catastrophic collapse of civilisations. The book has a chapter on the Mayan civilisation which collapsed around 800 to 900 AD.
Here are some quotes from his book:
“The “Classic Maya collapse” is one of the great controversies of
archaeology, but there is little doubt that droughts, fuelled in part
by El Nino, played an important role.”
“The droughts that afflicted the Maya in the eighth and ninth
centuries resulted from complex, still little understood atmosphere-
ocean interactions, including El Nino events and major decadal shifts
in the North Atlantic Oscillation, as well as two or three decade-long
variations in rainfall over many centuries.”
“Why did the Maya civilisation suddenly come apart? Everyone who
studies the Classic Maya collapse agrees that it was brought on by a
combination of ecological, political, and sociological factors.”
“When the great droughts of the eighth and ninth centuries came, Maya
civilisation everywhere was under increasing stress.”
“The drought was the final straw.”
“The collapse did not come without turmoil and war.”
Brian Fagan describes how the ruling class (the kings had divine powers, they were also shamans and there was a vast aristocracy and their fellow-travellers that the tightly regulated workers toiled to maintain) encouraged population growth beyond what the land could carry; how the rulers enforced rigid farming practices which were supposed to increase food production and the ruler’s incomes but had the effect of undermining farm productivity and diminishing the quality of the poor soils of the area. When there were heavy rains the soil was washed away. In times of drought the soil blew away.
More quotes from Brian Fagan:
“The Maya collapse is a cautionary tale in the dangers of using
technology and people power to expand the carrying capacity of
tropical environments.”
“Atmospheric circulation changes far from the Maya homeland delivered
the coup de grace to rulers no longer able to control their own
destinies because they had exhausted their environmental options in an
endless quest for power and prestige.”
Gore says that we should use our understanding of the Maya collapse help us solve the climate crisis, noting that “we need to remember the consequences to civilizations that refused to take environmental
concerns seriously”.
Given what we know of the Maya collapse, what is Gore really saying?
He is saying that we should take all the IPCC/AWG publications and related papers to the tip and bury them there and put all our efforts into the study and understanding of the reasons for climate dynamics that address every theory except that of IPCC/AWG doctrine.
Specifically, we should understand as well as we can how climate dynamics are driven by atmospheric/oceanic oscillations, the natural internal dynamics of the climate system and the role of the Sun in climate dynamics.
In an overview of his work Brian Fagan concluded: “The whole course of civilisation … may be seen as a process of trading up on the scale of vulnerability”. (Fagan (2004, page xv)).
We are now, as a global community, very high up on that scale.
Allow me to quote a little from my Rhodes Fairbridge paper because of its relevance to Brian Fagan’s work and what Gore is really trying to say, but can’t quite find the right words.
(My paper is here: http://www.griffith.edu.au/conference/ics2007/pdf/ICS176.pdf ).
“In his many publications (for example, NORTH (2005)), Douglass North stresses that if the issues with which we are concerned, such as global warming and the global commons, belong in a world of continuous change (that is, a non-ergodic world), then we face a set of problems that become exceedingly complex. North stresses that our capacity to deal effectively with uncertainty is essential to our succeeding in a
non-ergodic world. History shows that regional effects of climate change are highly variable and that the pattern of change is highly variable. An extremely cold (or hot) year can be followed by extremely hot (or cold) year. Warming and cooling will be beneficial for some regions and catastrophic for others. Brian Fagan has documented in detail relationships between the large-scale and
generally periodic changes in climate and the rise and fall of civilisations, cultures and societies since the dawn of history. The thesis to which Rhodes Fairbridge devoted much of his life is that the
sun, through its relationships with the solar system, is largely responsible for these changes and that we are now on the cusp of one of the major changes that feature in the planet’s history. As
Douglass North showed, the main responsibility of governments in managing the impact of the potentially catastrophic events that arise in a non-ergodic world is to mange society’s response to them so as to
enable the society to adapt as efficiently as possible to them.
Amongst other things, this would mean being better able to anticipate and manage our response to climate change, to minimise suffering and maximise benefits and the efficiency of our adaptation to a climate that is ever-changing – sometimes catastrophically – but generally predictable within bounds of uncertainty that statisticians can estimate. At the very least, this requires that the scientific community acts on the wise counsel of Rhodes W Fairbridge and presents governments with advice that has regard to the entire field of planetary-lunar-solar dynamics, including gravitational dynamics.
This field has to be understood so that the dynamics of terrestrial climate can be understood.
References:
North, D. C., 2005. Understanding the Process of Economic Change
Princeton University Press.
Fagan, B., 2004. The Long Summer. How Climate Changed Civilization.
Basic Books.”
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Leif Svalgaard (15:17:07) :
I don’t think you’re disputing that the sun speeds up and slows down due to planetary influence. What’s preventing the gas and liquid in the sun from accelerating at different rates? I think we’re only envisioning different frames of reference. I agree with you if the frame of reference is the sun. I disagree if the frame of reference is the barycenter. I think the sun has to orbit the barycenter, right?
Tidal forces are a different discussion.
Alphajuno (19:55:28) :
I don’t think you’re disputing that the sun speeds up and slows down due to planetary influence. What’s preventing the gas and liquid in the sun from accelerating at different rates?
If you are in car that changes speed and direction, your head and your feet feel the changes the same way: your head does not go one way and your feet another way [at least mine don’t]. This is under the assumption that they feel any forces at all. You don’t seem to grasp that in free fall they don’t feel any forces. So, going along with your pseudo-science [which is actually silly to do] one could ask: what causing then the gas [there is no liquids] in the Sun to accelerate at different rates? Gravity works on a body as if all the mass was concentrated at a single point, the center of gravity. Or do you deny that as well? Good ole Wikipedia reminds you that: “The center of mass of a system of particles is a specific point at which, for many purposes, the system’s mass behaves as if it were concentrated. […] In the context of an entirely uniform gravitational field, the center of mass is often called the center of gravity — the point where gravity can be said to act”. Tidal forces [which we agree to omit] results from the gravitational field not being uniform across a body. Omit tidal forces is tantamount to accepting a uniform field.
The policies as espoused by Al Gore if taken to their conclusion would be to the world what Soviet Farm Collectivization was to the Ukranians.
Powerful editorial opinion from the mainstream print media from Australia’s only daily (from the Murdoch stable):
Science must always be contested – even climate change
“IF climate change is real — and “if” is the operative word — every aspect of the phenomenon needs to be picked over and analysed with the utmost rigour. It is too important for anything less. But in parts of the community, rigour and climate change have become mutually exclusive terms.
“Distressingly large numbers of people have elevated climate change to something verging on a fundamentalist religion. True believers draw comfort from endlessly repeating the dogma to each other. Those who demand proof are shunned as heretics.
“This approach might be fashionable, but it is dangerous. It is a reversion to a pre-enlightenment mindset that rejects the essence of the scientific method. And without the mental toughness of science, any public policy on climate change will have all the effectiveness of burnt offerings.”
Unthinking dogma
The Australian – 29 November, 2008
Peter,
Yes, we do have shipping, and so we are indeed better able to adapt. But that does not make us invincible either. Much like we saw this past summer, when there was plenty of food, is that one can be priced right out of it. When you have numerous other factors like the cost of gasoline, or the cost of electricity, that forces the asking price up, demand will drop. We also have the credit markets to consider too. This is a tad hyperbolic, but there are about a thousand ways we could all die, which we could do precious little about, and it is a wonder we are not all dead already.
Doubt me? Consider this. There is a super-volcano in Yellowstone Park in the northeast corner of Wyoming. According to the best scientific information available, it is overdue for an eruption. That could be alarmist propaganda (not AGW alarmist, but just in general), but then it might not be. I cannot see a reason why anyone would want to say it were it not true. However, all that aside – whenever it does explode and if we are all around for it – it will take out most of the food production in the Mid-West, and what it will release into the atmosphere in terms of gases and dust (leading to global darkness) I do not like to think. At that point, all the Big Brown trucks in the world are not going to help anyone. Minor crises we can handle. We can entrap ourselves in crises too such as with the food panic of this past summer. But also, when Nature decides it is our turn, there will be nowhere to run.
Like I said, it is amazing we are not all already dead.
Tony,
You wrote:
1. “Many societies can adapt-look at the Byzantine empire from 386 to 1453.”
Really! That’s exactly what I was saying too. Climate does not bring down societies. Mismanagement does. Good management allows you to adapt to adversity.
2. “…severe weather helped to cause the collpase of the Western Roman Empire and…”
You use the word “helped”, but the root cause of the fall of the Roman Empire was in the end MISMANAGEMENT, a failure to adapt. Using your logic, you are saying the Roman Empire was being run just fine until they had a spell of bad weather. This is utter nonsense. It’s like saying my roofless house was just fine – until it started to rain!
p.s That should be: “Australia’s only national daily”,
( Roger Carr (22:38:38))
Concerning Greenland:
“The demise of the Vikings wasn’t due to poor government-they had nowhere to go when the sea lanes started to close up again.”
Also nonsense. It was a bad management decision to set up camp at the edge of a glacier…like the so many fools today who decide to built big homes on beachfronts in the Southeast.
You can’t blame moderate climate change like that we’ve seen during the Holocene for destroying societies. The fall of societies was precipitated by mismanagenent and corruption – failure to adapt.
Unfortunately, many political leaders today are blaming climate change for hardships, when in fact the blame lies squarely on their utter incompetence. Now you know why “climate change” is such a popular topic with these political buffooons – it provides excellent cover for their failings.
Yup! Just blame everything on climate change!
Anyway, thanks for your impressive history lesson. I am awed by your knowledge.
The key with Gore is his assertion that we are not adapting. “We have to act now!”
But for Gore adapting means mitigation. The guy actually thinks we can stop climate change. Thus I think he’s nuts.
In fact, what Gore proposes to rescue the world, would actually lead to its demise.
And what he proposes is being energetically pursued by the numerous idiot world leaders. How sad.
“The Earth’s surface radiates heat it got from the Sun back into space, some of that is absorbed by a greenhouse gas, e.g. H20, which re-radiates that right away in a random direction, half upwards into space where it is lost, but the other half downwards back to the Earth where it heats the surface again.”
Sorry for asking a possibly dumb question – but I’m fairly good at it, for I’m just a luthier AND an ex-green party tool & activist… 😉
Now, I do understand that the CO2 molecules “react” with certain wavelengths of light and that results in (not very much) heat – but what puzzles me is that how can these tiny, fairly rare molecules – and while most of them are quite high up in the air – further heat the surface of the planet – for isn’t heat supposed to go up rather than down?
The problem is that Gore can’t even demonstrate that a crisis is actually occurring, so he has to manufacture one.
Bobby Lane (02:18:14) :
Do you have a link or name behind that “best scientific information available?” The USGS spends lot of time studying Yellowstone’s many hazards and what appears to me to be very good scientific information in Preliminary Assessment of Volcanic and Hydrothermal Hazards in Yellowstone National Park and Vicinity says this on page 28:
Please, please, please spend the extra few minutes to verify “common knowledge” before presenting it here as “best scientific information.” WUWT and its readers is highly regarded because of the quality of its posts, and that requires verify that “facts” are factual.
BTW, an extra few seconds of checking would disclose that Yellowstone is in the northwest corner of Wyoming and adjacent parts of Montana.
Freezing Finn (03:33:27) :
how can these tiny, fairly rare molecules
H2O is not that rare
and while most of them are quite high up in the air – further heat the surface of the planet – for isn’t heat supposed to go up rather than down?
The heat from the Sun goes down. Radiated heat goes in the direction of the radiation, up, down, sideways, …
‘If Mayan land use policies were destructive, then that could be considered anthropogenc. They didn’t change the climate, but they made themselves vulnerable to changes that took place.’
It would be instructive to read Roger Pielke, Sr on this subject.
‘Tidal forces [which we agree to omit] results from the gravitational field not being uniform across a body. Omit tidal forces is tantamount to accepting a uniform field.’– Leif S.
Recommended reading (not for Leif, but for laymen): Richard Feynman’s essay in __Six Easy Pieces__ on why there are two tidal cycles per day and not one.
What should the Mayans have done to stop the climate change? Did they fail to sacrifice enough humans or perhaps they sacrificed the wrong humans?
I understand that this thread is about Mayan adaptation during climate change, but Al Gore is going beyond adaptation by demanding that we prevent the climate from changing in the first place. He is not admitting that the climate will change and we must adapt. The AGW crowd is trying to sell us on the idea that human prosperity is to blame for global warming and we must make drastic sacrifices to stop the warming. Some of the sacrifices include humans, though there will be no formal ritual that I am aware of.
One of the flywheels of history in Eurasia has been the periodic eruption of nomadic peoples out of the Great Plain of the interior into ‘the sown’, the agriculturally-based societies from China , through India and the Middle East to eastern Europe. It is not difficult to imagine that sudden climatic shifts, producing, e.g. extended droughts in pasture-lands, might have been a crucial factor in these Volkerwanderungen (am I missing an umlaut?).
Hi Pierre
I suggest you read Gibbons rise and fall of the roman empire plus more contempoprary accounts. The Romans were outflanked by german tribes who managed to cross over frozen rivers and attack from the rear.
http://www.roman-empire.net/articles/article-016.html
This was a relatively short interlude of climate change but rendered them a blow from which they never fully recovered. However hundreds of years earlier they had managed to maintain control of their empire during a warm period by traversing high level passes that are largely impenetrable today because of ice.
The Vikings set up in what was a perfectly logical place at the time because of the shletered anchorage and the availability of cultivable flat land .
Not twenty miles away from my home is a bronze age camp that was placed pefectly logically at 1600 feet altitude-logical that is until the climate cooled!
Similarly the Medieval dwellers close by farmed the same contour pefectly satisfactorily for 400 years until the cklimate took a turn for the worse and they were forced down the hills into the more marshy land at the bottom- a proces that took thirty years-each year they musty have thouight they would be able to return to their previous fields.
The Dogger neolithic people used to inhabit an area just to the east of Britain in the north sea now called the dogger bank-today it is completely under water. When they first started farming in the area it was a perfectly logical place to be. Nothing to do with poor government but a sensible decision correctly taken that was later to cause problems as the climate changed.
Hindsight is all very well but at the time these people were doing the right thing.
However I agree with your comment;
“The key with Gore is his assertion that we are not adapting. “We have to act now!”
But for Gore adapting means mitigation. The guy actually thinks we can stop climate change. Thus I think he’s nuts.
In fact, what Gore proposes to rescue the world, would actually lead to its demise.”
To say that all climate change caused problems is untenable, to say that climate change is only due to poor government is also untenable. However I think in large part we can avoid the mistakes of the past as we have a much better understanding of what is going on around us. The trouble is we need to ensure we are on our guard and looking in ALL directions. IF the sun stays inactive and IF we were to have another cold spell I think we are vulnerable
as we are looking towards the consequences of a warm spell and it would take decades before we realised we were now looking at a different problem
Warm spells have rarely caused humans trouble-in fact our great civilsationsa from mesopotamia onwards have initially thrived in them. It is cold I fear much more than warmth!
TonyB
If you want a really fast way to see what happens when too much is taken from climate resources, check out the results from cloud seeding experiments.
The expected behavior is that of a predator in a school of fish. After catching a few quick meals, the school of fish parts away from the predator.
You get enhanced precipitation the year of seeding, but the following 2 years you get less than normal, so that the end result of 3 years is a loss of average precipitation.
That’s not an encouraging result, but the experiments continue nevertheless at scale, with disastrous consequences imminent.
Leif Svalgaard: “The heat from the Sun goes down. Radiated heat goes in the direction of the radiation, up, down, sideways, …”
If you light a match – most of the heat goes up, less goes sideways, yet a lot less goes down, not?
Now, why would heat radiated by a CO2 molecule behave differently?
“H2O is not that rare”
Well, in the atmosphere even H2O is relatively rare – nevertheless, I was talking about CO2 – not H2O… but thanks anyway. 😉
Freezing Finn (09:21:14) :
No. Heated air is convected upwards, to be sure. Radiant heat (IR and visible light) goes “up, down, sideways, …”
It is interesting that Gore is blaming the Mayans’ improper use of their environment for their own demise. We should remember that Mayans are Native Americans, who according to “progressives” are, unlike Europeans, holistic thinkers who are inseparable from and have profound respect for their environment.
Freezing Finn (09:21:14) :
Well, in the atmosphere even H2O is relatively rare – nevertheless, I was talking about CO2 – not H2O
Well, you started by asking about greenhouse gases in general, and the greater amount of the greenhouse effect is due to H2O, not CO2.
Arthur Glass (06:55:31) :
why there are two tidal cycles per day and not one.
This was known already by Newton, and can be expressed in a few lines of text: The center of the Earth is closer to the Moon than the ‘backside’ [as seen from the Moon], hence is being pulled away from the water back there. Anyway, planetary tides on the Sun [and on the Earth, too] are negligible.