Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Huffington Post author and historian Evaggelos Vallianatos, climate wisdom ended when the rise of technology displaced Renaissance appreciation of the Greek Gods.
Global Warming Is a Slow-moving Civilization-ending Catastrophe
12/26/2017 02:38 pm ET
Evaggelos Vallianatos, Contributor
Historian and environmental strategist
Ancient Greeks worshipped the Earth. In the fourth century BCE, Plato’s cosmological dialogue, Timaeus, left us a picture of a mathematical, rational, and beautiful cosmos, including a spherical Earth, “the maker of day and night and the first and oldest of the gods.”
However, eight hundred years after Plato, the world changed dramatically. With the support of Roman emperors, Christianity triumphed over the many gods of the Greeks. It denounced Plato and nearly destroyed Greek civilization.
After nearly a millennium of darkness, Europeans put a break on Christianity, which gave birth to the Renaissance. This meant scholars rediscovered Plato’s vision of the heavens and Greek learning.
The Renaissance brought our modern world. Unfortunately, modernity sidelined Greek wisdom for narrow technical achievements like burning fossil fuels (petroleum, coal and natural gas) for energy. In fact, in the twentieth century, “civilized” Europeans and Americans fought WWII with unimagined savagery that culminated in the development and use of nuclear weapons.
The savage thinking that legitimized nukes also legitimizes the burning of fossil fuels. In both cases, human hubris triumphed.
…
The federal government is now hiding the risks of global warming. Indeed, it is resurrecting the “1984” terror world of George Orwell. The Trump administration “sees burning more fossil fuels as the path to global energy dominance.” This kind of thinking and policy defies reason and national security. It delays actions against fossil fuels. It fails promoting life-saving conversion to solar power and other technologies that might minimize the violence of global warming.
How are Americans reacting to this macabre reality? Unfortunately, not as they should. After all, they elected Trump. Fact has been drowned by the fiction of the Trump administration, the industry and its media. But not everything is lost.
…
Why are they not leaving fossil fuels in the ground? Don’t they love their grandchildren?
The Renaissance was in many ways a flowering of Western civilisation, but it was also an age of early death, near constant warfare, slavery, disease and brutish poverty. A good time to live if you were a member of the elite, with the idle wealth and leisure time to explore the wonder and beauty of newly rediscovered Greek culture – at least until you got sick. Not so good if you were one of the far more numerous menials or slaves, who mostly lived their short miserable lives hoping for a painless death.
A transition time, so much better than what came before, but so much worse than what most of us have now.
This romantic worship of pre-technological “goodness”, an imaginary golden age before we spoiled the Earth with progress, in my opinion is endemic in the green movement. Many of them would roll back progress and modernity if they could.
In my experience, the people who imagine returning to an idyllic peasant lifestyle living off the bounty of the Earth are mostly people who haven’t tried it for themselves.
Growing a few weeds in the back yard is not the same as trying to feed your hungry family from a small patch of farm, without the benefits of modern farm equipment, fertiliser and pesticides. Working the land with hand tools on any kind of scale is hard work, a constant back breaking contest against weather, weeds and pests. Fall sick a few weeks, injure yourself, or simply suffer a little bad luck, and all your hard work is for nothing.
Update (EW): Clyde points out that providing people survived infant mortality, military service or the dangers of giving birth, people in the Renaissance lived to a similar age to today.
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Anthropogenic “Choice” is a progressive (i.e. monotonic) civilization-ending catastrophe.
Conflating logical domains is a corruption of science and a first-order forcing of dysfunction.
Evaggelos is living in a prosperous time..where people have leisure time to pontificate about all this nonsense…“idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
Wild in Woods: Myth of the Noble Savage all over again. I see they don’t mention Rome had almost all of Spain under olive groves to provide the energy to meet their lighting needs.. and for labor there was enslavement of animals and people. Ignorance lays a pretty world before the thoughtless.
I agree Karl.
Before fossil fuels, there was slavery of man and beast – one of the great evils of human history.
Slavery still exists in different forms in our world today.
The most obvious form of slavery exists in some parts of the world – where you can still own people.
Less obvious is the subjugation of humanity under the tyranny of “bully regimes”, which constitute about 90% of the countries in the world, There, the wealthy few lord it over the many poor.
The remaining ~10% of “free countries” are under threat from “progressives”, who are actually Marxists but are often too stupid to realize it.
Alan “slavery of man and beast”. I think you are guilty of judgement from a present day viewpoint. What was early mankind to do as an alternative? They nevertheless advanced cultures and technology to wondrous lengths. They went from rowing ships to sail. They built colossally with beasts and humans, created settlements, agriculture, civilization. Hey, wars have been fought to the present day with conscripted “labor” – they pay the soldier a few bucks instead of bags of salt, I’ll grant you. Slaves, horses, bullocks built the civilizations and worked the fields. Settlements couldn’t operate without them and settlements gave leisure to thinkers to think and plan and design and to come up with enlightenment and industrial revolutions. I think it a rather miraculous history. Don’t go getting all soppy on us now. The neo-left already wants us to give back pay with interest for all this slave labor.
100% agree
Will nobody think of the children?
Ha ha, which pub? Yes these abortion loving PP eugenicist, vagina people and friends should just move to Nth Korea where they can pick non-Monsanto pieces of corn out of the human feces they use on their crops as the many orphaned children of that dark ages society enjoys doing for a feast.
That was the way we rolled back then, and is literally what they are reduced to in Nth Korea, according to the poor bastard that crossed the border with a few bullet wounds recently, and if these mindless nutcases have their way, that’s exactly where we will eventually end up once again.
I doubt their children will appreciate socialism in quite the same way as Kate Blanchet, Dicrapio or the other Hollyweird glitterati who don’t give a shit for anyone just so long as they are loved by all….and that’s the way they roll.
We know better, and we actually do care. Keep meeting them head on guys throughout the new year and to those in the US….please vote in the midterms!!
PS I see Merkel is trying to get a UN Olympic team up…as a way to destroy National pride….!! WTF Germans? Did you actually vote for this ex Stasi maniac? Please tell us why?
Yes, Merkel has been a disaster for Germany and Europe. Unfortunately, she has plenty of company in the other foolish politicians running Germany and the EU. They all focus on their own narrow vision and never on the Big Picture. The Big Picture is that Europe is in great danger, but its politicians can’t see it coming.
Don’t they love their grandchildren? In fact we do, and that’s because we live long enough to love them. Where I come from, the average life expectancy is about 80 years. Compared to the “good old days” when life expectancy was short and brutal – about 35 years or so – you would be lucky to live long enough to see your grandchildren, let alone love them. At the risk of being repetitive, longevity is due in no small measure to the availability of cheap, abundant energy, and that means fossil fuel energy. Renewables don’t cut it.
Public school employees shur do.
“More money, … more money, …. more money, …. it’s for the children, you know”, …… is the yearly cry of the Administrators and Teachers employed by US Public Schools.
“However, eight hundred years after Plato, the world changed dramatically. With the support of Roman emperors, Christianity triumphed over the many gods of the Greeks. It denounced Plato and nearly destroyed Greek civilization.
After nearly a millennium of darkness, Europeans put a break on Christianity, which gave birth to the Renaissance. This meant scholars rediscovered Plato’s vision of the heavens and Greek learning.”
The Dark and Medieval Ages were brought to you by the errors of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen, and other Greeks. Scholastics and monks perpetuated the Greek writings for centuries, and it was only by abandoning these ancient philosophies and breaking the monopoly of the dead languages that Northern and Western Europe was able to move on to make new observations and see the world for what it really is.
In fact, even modern philosophers in rare moments of honesty and clarity admit that any one who has ever discovered anything has had to overturn some error of Aristotle.
And Ptolemy’s geography was as inaccurate as his astronomy. It kept Europeans from crossing the Atlantic or going around Africa for centuries. The reverence for the Classical World and the Greeks in particular, demonstrates almost perfectly the staying power of a wrong idea. How they miss it.
As for Christianity stopping advancement there is a modicum of truth, but that’s not the whole story. Corruption in the Catholic church was a hindrance but monks like William of Ockham ignored the corruption and continued to follow the Bible’s instruction to ‘increase knowledge.” He is responsible for inventing the scientific method.
It was not a failure of Ptolemy’s geography. It was the inadequacy of naval technology. It is noteworthy that the Europeans circumnavigated Africa and traveled to the Americas literally as soon as ships had advanced sufficiently to permit it.
cgh says, “It was not a failure of Ptolemy’s geography. It was the inadequacy of naval technology. It is noteworthy that the Europeans circumnavigated Africa and traveled to the Americas literally as soon as ships had advanced sufficiently to permit it.”
One of the features of Ptolemy’s Geography was that there was no passage under the land mass of Africa. This meant that the entire educated European continent believed that there was no passage. This is an illustration of the incredible inertia of a false idea. This is what history is saying, if we slow down and listen.
And the Vikings certainly traveled to the New World with their ships before 1000 AD, revealing that it was possible even then. According to standard histories, no one else journeyed in that direction for another 500 years. Not only that, the Canaanites/Phoenicians were known to have rounded Africa in 600 BC. By all this, we see that the journeys could be made.
And perhaps Africa may have been rounded by Henry the Navigator, who thought that it was possible, or at least worth trying. But none of his captains or sailors would complete the trip; they always turned around with excuses. May I suggest the barrier was in the minds of people in ships, and the barrier’s name was Ptolemy.
We should accept and respect Aristotle for what he was and understand what he was not.
The great thinkers were leaps and bounds ahead of their predecessors for attempting to understand reality. However, science was in its infancy. Of COURSE they made great errors. The problem was that even their immediate successors raised these thinkers to nearly divine levels instead of progressing their work further.
Also, the Greek circumference of the Earth was fairly close since that was based off basic geometry. If America hadn’t been here, the first Europeans trying to cross the Atlantic would have died out in the middle of the gigantic ocean that the Greeks predicted.
Finally, the Church rose due to the failure of Rome, not the other way around. Constantine accepted Christianity to gain support during the endless civil wars, and the collapse of the western empire was due to politics, not religion. The loss of so much learning was due to war and the need for survival, not some medieval hatred of learning. There was no Maoist purge of intellectuals. There simply was no time or resources for any experts of things that weren’t immediately practical.
This is not correct. Augustine of Hippo brought Platonic philosophy into Christianity as the philosophical underpinning of Christian faith. By contrast, Aristotle was completely lost to western scholasticism until the 13th century when it was discovered in its only surviving texts preserved by the Arabs after they conquered Egypt from the Romans in the 7th century.
“Scholastics and monks perpetuated the Greek writings for centuries,”
No. Greek was an unknown language in western Europe. They preserved only those writings in Latin. Many of the monks doing the transcription were illiterate in Latin, let alone Greek. In many cases, they were copying what for them were pictures, not a language they understood. Hence there were enormous translation errors which the Church subsequently spent centuries tracking down and correcting. Clerical illiteracy was an enormous problem for the Church well into the 14th century.
“it was only by abandoning these ancient philosophies and breaking the monopoly of the dead languages that Northern and Western Europe was able to move on to make new observations and see the world for what it really is.”
No, as more and more Greek writing was discovered from its preservation in Eastern Roman and Arab texts it was incorporated into Christian theology and medieval science. Ockham’s Razor is as Aristotelian as it gets. So too is Thomas Aquinas’ epistemology of knowledge and faith. In so doing, the incorporation of rediscovered Greek scientific and philosophical writing laid some of the main foundation stones of modern science. Isaac Newton regarded his Principia Mathematica as coming directly from the intellectual and scientific thinking which had preceded him.
See the book (online) ‘The Discarded Image ‘ by C S Lewis. as a professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature. He gives the philosophical background used by the scholars of the Late Roman Period on which Mediaeval Philosophy ( including basic science) was founded. The Pagan and Christian philosophers were more alike than unlike.Given to enquiry about spirits and renouncing the World
I’m interested in the archaeology of the Dark Ages and so am interested in Climate in the First Millenium.
I have issues with translations from languages to others by people who have had “crash courses” in those languages for instance Hebrew > Latin > English. Somewhere along the line somethings must be lost in translation.
Zeke says, “Scholastics and monks perpetuated the Greek writings for centuries,”
cgh says, “No. Greek was an unknown language in western Europe. They preserved only those writings in Latin.”
Clearly, what I meant is, that the Scholastics were perpetuating the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy. The missing historical key is that these Greek philosophers were the basis of all Medieval learning. The term any one here can use to look it up is “Scholasticism.” All learning and universities and Europe were based on training in the Greeks. So the educated royals memorized a bunch of the ancients, and the Scholastics perpetuated them as dogma, and it was exceedingly difficult for anything that contradicted them to be accepted.
And I also pointed out that the Roman Church, in the 1200s, forbade any translation or reading of the Bible outside of Latin. It could not be translated into native languages any where in Europe. Many in England tried to make Bibles in the English language, and paid for it with their lives — even before the printing press. So indeed the Roman Church kept all learning in a dead prestige language, Latin. That is why it is very important to look at the effects of the printing press. This allowed people to read, and to read in their own language. Literacy began its work in places that were throwing off the Latinists.
Why bother talking about this? Because it comes down to literacy. And it so happens that in the Protestant countries all classes of people began to learn to read. And this is also where the wonderful developments in modern technologies and fuels began to be developed; the whole secret is, that the inventors came from all walks of life, but very many of them were farm boys or working in their parents’ shops, and took an interest in reading and learning. It turned out, general literacy and good books were far, far more productive than the snobbish courts of the Continent, stuck studying Greeks and Romans!
Thank you, cgh, you put it all much better than I did!
What an absurd piece!
Plato was certainly a mathematician, but not a scientist: his idealistic philosophy looked down on the material world– which was only the palest shadow of his realm of ideas ( he’d have capitalized it: the Ideas).
Aristotle tried to deal with what we consider the real world. As a scientist he certainly was wrong on many things, sure. But he was, recognizably, a scientist and not just a philosopher, unlike his teacher Plato. (But Aristotle didn’t seem to like math, unfortunately.)
Certainly Aristotle drew on observations– he just got a lot wrong! Maybe he so overawed lesser minds that they never tried to go beyond what “the Master” said? (“The master of those that know” was what Dante called him, 1600 years later.) Perhaps there just weren’t enough other great minds in ancient Greece to continue, and correct, Aristotle’s work? Or to shoot down Plato’s extreme idealism (and Plato had much greater influence, at least until at least 1000 AD).
Quite right, Peter. All of this came down to the differences in ‘essences’ between Plato and Aristotle. Indeed Aristotle did get a lot wrong, but in large part that was the failure of observation and wrong assumptions of the time. I would only quibble that Plato’s extreme idealism lasted much longer than 1000 AD. One could well argue successfully that the Soviet Union was modeled on a Platonic Republic. The fact that it was a Platonic does not mean it was ideal; quite the reverse. But then, Plato’s perfect world is one of a complete absence of liberty.
Evaggelos Vallianatos needs to get a real job.
The Definitive DeBunking of AGW that you won’t find on the HuffPost. Be sure to share it with all your climate alarmist friends.
How to Discuss Global Warming with a “Climate Alarmist.” Scientific Talking Points to Win the Debate.
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/how-to-discuss-global-warming-with-a-climate-alarmist-scientific-talking-points-to-win-the-debate/
Excellent Web site. Very useful information. Well done and thanks!!
Thanks a million, please share it with others.
Is there any real return from the effort of winning a debate when you already know you are right before beginning the debate process? Can a debate against generalized dogma ever be “won?” Is it worth the effort to win when nothing is changed? Is there anything preventing anyone who wishes to make use of solar energy to provide for all their energy needs from just going ahead and just do it?
Is there a specific, definable, understandable process by which dogma is dogmatized?
LOL, great points.
Yes, but the explanation is far too long for a comment box.
Eric,
You remark, “The Renaissance was… an age of early death,…” You support a common misconception about death rates in history. It is true that there was high mortality among infants and children, women giving birth, and young men of military age. However, those children who survived childhood diseases and carried antibodies in their blood, and escaped death from giving birth or serving in the military, tended to live about as long as those of us today. That is, AVERAGE life expectancy AT BIRTH was quite low for everyone during the Renaissance. But, perhaps more importantly, actuarial tables show that the tough (and lucky) ones that survived their first three or four decades of life, were harder to kill in their later years than the obese, out-of-shape, diabetic, users of tobacco and recreational drugs, who constitute many of our citizens of the modern world.
Clyde, you make a good point. Most people do not understand average life expectancy and how it is calculated. Few people appreciate just how high infant and childhood mortality was in the USA through the 19th Century and even up through the early 20th Century. Children commonly died of whooping cough, typhoid, tetanus, etc until mandatory vaccination programs were made widespread.
Actually, Clyde, I tend to disagree and published some reasons in ebook Gaia’s Limits. True that childhood mortality had a huge impact on Life Expectancy (LE). Also true that female childbirth mortality had an impact. But, take the remaining cohort (adult males) and compare Greece, Rome (physician Galen) and modern male adults, and you will find a major extension in life expectancy since the advent of modern evidence based medicine. Infectious disease (pneumonia), cardiovascular disease, cancer, osteoporousous, …
Ristivan: see below for numbers.
Thanks Clyde for reminding me infant mortality was the big killer.
And so was the birthing of infants due to unsanitary practices by the attending Doctors who never sterilized their hands or instruments.
More Civil War deaths are attributed to unsanitary practices than to munitions wounds.
Samuel: Forget sterilizing instruments. Ignaz Semmelweis was demonized and eventually institutionalized for noting that hand washing after an autopsy and before aiding in childbirth could prevent some illnesses. It seems those doing autopsies were the rich doctors who didn’t like being told they were doing something wrong. It’s never easy to change minds where huge sums of money are involved.
Shur nuff, the same as they didn’t like Pasteur telling them his cure for rabies.
Exactly right, Sheri, and that is what keeps the “warminists” fighting for their troughfeeding paychecks.
Because of the involvement of the Church of Rome and the Dark Ages, ….. the Roman Legions of 2,000 years ago had far, far better medical care than did the soldiers fighting the US Civil War in the 1860’s.
Clyde Spencer: You are only partly correct. Life expectancy at every age has increased markedly in the last 120 years. The following information is from official sources. cdc.gov is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which is an operating component of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States Government. ssa.gov is the Social Security Administration, an independent agency of the U.S. Federal Government.
United States Life Tables 1890, 1901, 1910, and 1901-1910
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/lifetables/life1890-1910.pdf
Table 1: Life expectancy at 20 was 42.8 years, at 65, 11.9 years.
National Vital Statistics Reports
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/nvsr.htm
United States Life Tables, 2014. NVSR Volume 66, Number 4. 64pp. (PHS) 2017-1120.
Life expectancy at 20 was 59.7 years, at 65, 19.4 years.
Life Tables for the United States Social Security Area 1900-2100
Actuarial Study No. 120 by Felicitie C. Bell and Michael L. Miller
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/as120/LifeTables_Body.html
E. Historical Trends and Projections
“An examination of the age-adjusted central death rates reveals several distinct periods of mortality reduction since 1900, as shown in Table 5. During the period 1900-1936, annual mortality reduction summarized for all ages, averaged about 0.7 percent for males and 0.8 percent for females. During the following period, 1936-1954, there was more rapid reduction, averaging 1.6 percent per year for males and 2.4 percent per year for females. The period 1954-1968 saw a much slower reduction of 0.7 percent per year for females and an actual increase of 0.2 percent per year for males. From 1968-1982 rapid reduction in mortality resumed, averaging 1.8 percent for males and 2.2 percent for females, annually. From 1982-2001, mortality rates decreased an average of 1.0 percent per year for males and 0.4 percent for females.”
Life expectancy would be expected to increase over the last 120 years because most measures of human health show the industrial revolution was amongst the worst of times for humanity. Size and life expectancy bottomed out, health was terrible compared to pre IR. https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/economic-history-0 Clyde is correct that aside from those who died during the common peak periods of mortality, it was not unusual to live to a ripe old age as clearly documented in the Domesday book. And all throughout civilization cities have been cesspools and deathtraps, only excepted in the very modern era.
The historic photo collection at the attached URL is quite extensive with a sidebar index. Many of the pictures contain “hints” about why life expectancy may have been skewed downward in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the U. S.
http://www.shorpy.com/
BCBill: The only choices are to remain locked in the present and never progress, or to have a life expectancy decrease while people adjust.
The tables of 1901 show definite improvement over the American Experience tables compiled in the middle of the 19th century. What ever life was like in Victorian London, and I am sure it was horrific, life in rural areas was little changed since pre-industrial times. in 1850, the US was 85% rural. Industrial conditions would have a small impact on statistics over the entire population. Even in 1900, the US was 60% rural.
The life was better in pre-industrial times trope is pure romantic fantasy.
“… ones that survived their first three or four decades of life,…”
That’s longer than the average life expectance of the time.
I wonder how the users of medicinal drugs are doing?
Does this guy even know history? Many of the Christian church fathers were Neo Platanists . What a clown this guy is
I’m also a neobotanist and proud of my herbs. 😉
Of course these greenie genius’ are blissfully unaware of one of the major benefits of fossil fuels: saving the forests, saving wildlife, and saving whales..
Prior to the use of coal and other fossil fuels, the primary source of heat for cooking and warmth was burning wood. This was the major cause of the massive deforestation of Europe and the Mediterranean region. In addition, this massive deforestation caused massive climate change, from hot and humid, to hot and dry. Not to mention the extermination of numerous animal species that had lived in the forests.
I guess it would be indiscreet to mention the whaling industry: whales were hunted for the oil they produced. This oil was used to fuel the oil lamps which provided light after the sun went down. With the introduction of fossil fuel driven lighting, whales were saved from extinction.
But the genius of the left is that they can prosper in total defiance of reality and facts. A PhD in Women’s studies goes a long way.
“Global Warming Is a Slow-moving Civilization-ending Catastrophe”
Let’s correct that for them..
Global Warming AGENDA Is a Slow-moving Civilization-ending Catastrophe
It has destroyed scientific integrity, it HATES the fundamental building block of all life on Earth
It is anti-progress, anti-plant-life, and anti-human.
This time I agree with you. Don’t listen to Ehrlich, unless you want destruction. We have nothing to worry but the greenies that panic and ‘greenies’ such as lying Al.
Reading (skimming) the entire huffpost article reveals that it is just an emotional advert for a book by a 90 year old psychiatrist. The wacko author of the subject article is just schilling for another wacko author.
I always wonder; do they really believe, with all their heart? or are they simply trying to take advantage of the over active emotional states of their friends to make a buck? or is it something like a compartmentalized 50% each.
I don’t know anyone like these guys. It just completely blows me away that they exist as self sufficient entities.
I have met people who believe. They mostly seem to find ways to justify their own lifestyles in the context of their beliefs. For example, someone I used to know from school who advocated income equality as a means to help reduce unfairness and save the climate refused to give the majority of his income to poor people in Africa, because he felt his income was a reasonable target for the equality he advocated. He thought I should give some of my income away because I made more money than him.
I pointed that out to my mother, who one time said people should not be allowed to make too much money. What is “too much”? Generally, it’s more than the person making the statement makes (as was the case with my mother). Few, if any, ever think they are making too much money.
It is totally untrue to say that the ancients denounced Plato- rather most lived in thrall of the ancient greek- recycling their knowledge over and over. The so-called dark ages were only dark as far as the collapse of the Western Roman Empite. Christianity may have overrun Greek gods rather the Roman equivalents that had already replaced the Greek gods but that means nothing as far as knowledge goes.
Nimwism! Not in my wallet…
Goh. That was for Eric above.
Chortle.
So, we should “feather the nest”
rather than try to get the kids and grand kids off this marble
….and out to Alpha Centauri and the universe?
I view this as a tad bit less than intelligent.
The Greeks were such lovers of the earth, peace and harmony, that they cut down the forests of the eastern Mediterranean world to build vast naval forces with which to dominate trade and conquer empires.
‘Environmental strategist’????
Lol….
Gives the game away.
“Many of them would roll back progress and modernity if they could.”
Well, the “Greens” would likely roll back progress and modernity for everyone else if they could, but not necessarily for themselves as they are special and care so much. Also, the reason many skeptics do not support “renewable energy” as it is currently deployed is that they very much love their Grandchildren and don’t want them to be stuck with trying to cope with a lifestyle based on the current crop of “unreliables”.
Energy usage expressed as kW/capita, plotted (estimated for earlier scenarios) is a long, slowly rising curve until the renaissance and eventual machine age. If you have ever seen natives climbing on a wheel as a driver for lifting water into irrigated fields, you suddenly can appreciate steam or internal combustion. The correlation between this (more slowly, at first) rising energy usage and what we think of a standard of living looks to me to be virtually exact.
They need a camel or a bull for lifting water from a well:
Tears and Fears
A changing climate always was
But now it is a left-wing cause
Seems it’s warming, once it cooled
Politicians all are fooled
Cee oh two must be the cause
Despite a recent warming pause
And now the trillions must be spent
While carbon users can’t pay rent
Now I’m frozen to the bone
While record cold surrounds my home
My lights no longer burn at night
Cold water baths leave me a sight
The winter weather doesn’t care
That models claim there’s warmer air
It howls and whistles round my ears
While media scream their warmist fears
Climate fraudsters smirk and grin
While raking all that cold cash in
Their mascot is the polar bear
Well suited to it’s arctic lair
Neath piles of quilts, I’ll spend the night
Shivering with my hot air fright
Or could it be my quaking tears
Are really caused by frozen ears
The Huffington Post historian does not know history. The Renaissance was not about rediscovering Plato’s vision of the heavens. It was about world exploration, arts, the advancement of science and technology. The greatest Renaissance Man was Leonardo da Vinci who worshiped arts, science and technology, not Plato’s heavens. He designed airplane, helicopter, cannons, various machines. He was 300 years ahead of his time. Had he been clever enough to build a steam engine, we would have the industrial revolution in 1500.
If someone had thought to improve on Hero’s aeolipile, we might have had the industrial revolution by AD100.
Metallurgy hadn’t advanced sufficiently to make steam engines yet.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me the ancient Greeks almost certainly learned how to burn wood and did so quite regularly.
And did they not invent a form of napalm known as “greek fire”.?
“After nearly a millennium of darkness, Europeans put a break on Christianity, which gave birth to the Renaissance. This meant scholars rediscovered Plato’s vision of the heavens and Greek learning.”
If anything, the Renaissance was the rediscovery of Aristotle’s vision of the heavens and Greek learning, not Plato’s vision of the heavens. Plato’s vision of the heavens was pretty strange as it said that the objects we see are just a shadow of the “perfect” version of those objects that we can not see. Plato also believed that the common people should be ruled by a small, elite group of people that were to be kept separate from the common people, so that would fit in with Huffpo’s general vision of government.
Bingo! Plato was a huge fan of the caste system ruled by a philosopher king and his elites and sub-elites. He preferred Spartan society, an early version of applied eugenics and communal property.
“How are Americans reacting to this macabre reality? Unfortunately, not as they should. After all, they elected Trump.”
Ain’t we deplorable ? ; )
“After all, they elected Trump.”
A little sanity in an insane world.
That makes it sound like Europeans told the Church “enough,” and moved off in a different direction. That was hardly the case.
So this historian wishes we would go back to a time when people got guidance to make important decisions from an Oracle that lived in a cave emitting toxic fumes claiming to be speaking for Apollo. Me thinks the author has been inhaling vapors.
Hmm, that sounds a lot like a description of the 1960’s hippie culture when lots of toxic substances were emitted and inhaled. It also included caves and Oracles if I remember correctly. A lot of the current elites were part of that scene back then so that may explain them wanting to recreate it. now
From the examples we know the oracle seemed to be remarkable prescient, the author and AGW seers track record is so bad it makes pigshit smell like perfume.
“After nearly a millennium of darkness, Europeans put a break on Christianity, which gave birth to the Renaissance. This meant scholars rediscovered Plato’s vision of the heavens and Greek learning.”
I’d like to put in a good word for the printing press. The Renaissance did not actually spring out of the foreheads of Classical scholars as some will assure you — it was actually preceded by the invention of the printing press and by the Protestant Reformation. The northern and western European nations immediately began printing Bibles in their own language (as well as primers) — which had been outlawed by the Roman Church for centuries. This also meant that some countries in the north developed a somewhat free press and a literate citizenry.
The southern and eastern European nations did not have anything like the same experience. France for example cracked down the first book makers, some of whom fled to Holland. And yes, these southern states tended to publish the Greeks and Romans, when they did allow books to be made.
So the best way to think of the Renaissance is as period which started at different times for each country — an enormous patchwork of different national experiences. England and other Protestant countries quickly developed local and national literature and music and technology. In that light, the Renaissance really is also the time of the rise of “nationalism” — another scary bogey man (along with technology and fossil fuels) of the writers of the above types of UNESCO histories.
Also, the Greek knowledge which was saved by Islamic Scholars and translated into Arabic was rediscovered by Europe when Muslim Spain fell and the knowledge was then translated from Arabic into Latin and spread throughout Europe and had a profound impact on Europe and what would eventually become the Renaissance.
Interesting use of the word ‘saved’!
I used the word “saved” because the parts of Greek Thought that were copied and passed down by the RC Church during the Dark Ages were fragmentary and garbled. The information that was translated into Latin after the fall of Spain was much more complete and had been extended by the Islamic Scholars and combined with information from other countries and was a windfall of information for Europe as it emerged from the Dark Ages. It likely would have eventually been recreated, but it would have taken a while and would have delayed the start of what eventually became the Renaissance.
Well, your theory is also supported by Boris Johnson but it’s somewhat disingenuous to put it mildly.
After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 Byzantine Greek scholars fled west with the original Greek texts. There were also direct translations into Latin following the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
This article from British Library has more detail.
https://www.bl.uk/greek-manuscripts/articles/the-transmission-of-greek-philosophy-and-medicine
This bit is not correct.
“and by the Protestant Reformation.”
From the outset, the various protestant sects, particularly Calvinism and Anabaptism in the 16th century condemned Copernicanism and all other scientific thought that was not in accord with strict interpretation of the Scriptures. By contrast, the RC Church initially supported Copernicanism. Its disagreement with Galileo came long after all this and was in essence a condemnation of Galileo for stating things he couldn’t prove.
Source?
cgh says, “By contrast, the RC Church initially supported Copernicanism. Its disagreement with Galileo came long after all this and was in essence a condemnation of Galileo for stating things he couldn’t prove.”
The Roman Church was defending the doctrines of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Galileo said so.
Not only that, there were about eight — eight!! — doctrines of Aristotle’s that Galileo was contradicting. He was vehemently opposed on all of these false statements of Aristotle’s, and these had nothing or little to do with anything in the Bible.
One of the doctrines was the “perfection of the heavens” — which ruled out sunspots, comets, and mountains on the moon!
This is Aristotle’s world and the educated classes were all convinced of it, as well as Rome.
I’ll take my bets with the kid from his dad’s shop who created the first kerosene and lamps, which replaced whale oil.
Or the young bookbinder who liked to take notes at lectures and try new things with magnets.
http://www.learn-math.info/history/photos/Faraday_7.jpeg
F. Leghorn, the following direct quotes will do:
Calvin denounced those “who will say that the sun does not move and that it is the earth that shifts and turns.”
Luther remarked, ‘So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever … must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. … I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.’
Zeke says, “The Roman Church was defending the doctrines of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Galileo said so.”
Galileo said many things, many of which turned out to be wrong even in his own time. For example, he condemned both Tycho Brahe and Kepler in their astronomical observations, insisting that comets were only optical illusions. The fact was that what Galileo wrote in the Starry Messenger he could not prove. Being contrary to the Bible, it was thus heretical. What the Church was defending was its sole right to interpret scripture.
As I said before, the RC Church did indeed in the 16th century accept Copernicanism where the Protestant sects did not, as I referenced above. However, the Church reversed its acceptance of Copernicanism under two external stresses: the Religious Wars of the late 16th Century, and the 30 Years War of the 17th. This was the time of the Counter-Reformation, and it had nothing to do with abstractions about Greek philosophers vs. a modern scientific view.
I recall a line from over 30 years ago, humans stop dieing like
Flies. Fossil fuels and clean water or to be clear, wealth, put and end to childhood deaths.
Cities could never sustain their populations. Until modern times they had to be replenished with a steady influx from the countryside. Sanitation (sewage, garbage removal and clean water) were the most important factors in allowing ordinary people to reach normal reproductive capacity in cities. I am not sure if you can call those factors wealth. They were based on science and brought about by better government.
Until there was sufficient wealth, all the above improvements were unaffordable. Government had nothing to do with it.