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.
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.
Without fossil fuels, we’d have all frozen to death and had no grandchildren to love.
This why I never click on Huffpost.
The common observation about these virtue signaling folks is that by and large they are hypocrites. They want to roll back modern progress and civilization but in no way want to start with themselves. Underline this for the big living Hollywood style elites.
If they had their way, they’d need totalitarian governments to accomplish their form of eco-tyranny. Or the blind to facts collusion of a willing media to sway opinion to their own mutual doom.
As I drove to work this morning it was 9 below zero (F). I was quite thankful for our cost efficient, just pump it from the ground, fossil fuels. I was driving a volt and while in electric mode it runs the gas engine to heat the car. It’s its own hypocrite 🙂
No mention of the destruction wreaked by Islamic imperialism on the Hellenic civilisations of the Mediatorranean and Mideast. Huge hole there.
True enough. Like all civilizations, they had their times when they beat their swords into plowshares and their times when they beat their plowshares into swords.
The Renaissance like the Greek times prior where when those with the time and money could afford to think and experiment. The others were doing the work to keep the system running or just survive.
Like then the elite now don’t understand or have any idea of the support structure that exists to keep them warm, clean and fed.
James Bull
“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”.
Errr, yes…but given the child mortality rate [ up to 15yrs] in Elizabethan England was around 30%
and 20% of women who made it past 15 died during, or from complications of, childbirth life was still a bit more risky than in current western cultures.
And then there was the problem of avoiding smallpox, bubonic plague, tuberculosis, syphilis, tetanus and the numerous minor infections that can [now] easily be sorted with antibiotics
Yes, a low dig at us couch potatoes from Clyde. I suspect that any Renaissance asceticism was making a virtue of necessity. Shakespeare gives a couple of clues in Caesar’s distrust of Cassius’ “lean and hungry look” and the fifth age of man “In fair round belly with good capon lined”.
Plenty of renaissance men around these parts of course!
You’re quite right. In fact the life expectancy was little different in the 16th century than it was in the 13th. There were many variations but the two principal ones were better diet, a result of the mass slaughter of the 14th century Black Death (more food for a smaller population) balanced against the poorer urban sanitation caused by the Church’s condemnation and closure of public bathhouses in the 14th-15th century. There are many other factors such as the post-Black Death general breakdown of government and collapse of urban infrastructure such as sewage and water systems. By comparison with earlier centuries, the 16th century was an age of personal filth.
It should also be noted that the bubonic plague came into Europe in 1347, and became ENDEMIC. It cropped up every 30-50 years or so, with the last large outbreak being in 1710. The only public health measure that controlled it was ruthless quarantine, possible only after governments had enough power and capability to enforce such measures.
As Orson Wells said in the film “The Third Man”, something like : ” In Italy they had 300 years of war, revolution and dictatorship and they produced the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had 300 years of brotherly love and produced the cuckoo clock” , Not an exact quote perhaps but you get the gist.
Switzerland also produced the Swiss Pikemen, the most efficient military machine in the World which broke the power of the medieval knights and was used by those italian renaissance rulers to win their wars.
It was the gun that broke the power of the medieval knights.
Wrong, Mark. The Duchy of Burgundy had both guns and knights, and yet in the 1470s he went crashing down to defeat repeatedly at the hands of Swiss militia armed with pikes. tty is quite right in what he states.
Heavy armoured cavalry had already been made obsolete by the English in the Hundred Years War. The Swiss pike simply finished it off long before gunpowder became effective. It was gunpowder that ended the dominance of the Swiss pike.
“After all it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
Harry Lime trying to justify the deaths of children from fake penicillin. Not good morally or even historically since the cuckoo clock originated in southern Germany. An excellent film nonetheless.
http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6494.full.print
Not only do sceptics love their grandchildren they also love their fellow human beings in third world countries who the AGW movement is trying to deny the use of cheap energy . There is only one side of this argument which has true compassion for future generations and all humans.
I think that the people writing these articles have lived very urban lives and have never worked on the land. .I was born in New Zealand in a country area during WW2 and brought up on a small hill farm with 4 siblings .Draught horses were the motive power for farm work and manpower did the rest .
I have cut hedges with a slasher dug drains with a shovel .spread fertilizer and grass seed by hand .
Dug post holes and placed and rammed posts and ran out the wire and erected the fences all by hand .
I can remember my farther sawing trees down and helping him on the end of a crosscut saw at age 6 to 10 years..They then cut them into post lengths and then drilled holes into the lengths to fill with blasting powder to blow them apart and then axes were used to shape the posts and the same process was used to produce fence battens to staple on the wires to keep sheep from pushing through the wires..
A large garden and orchard was part of life and there was little time for recreation .
I remember a city relation asking” what do you do in your spare time ” and the answer was” I sleep ”
It sounds Idyllic to grow your own food and live off the land but the only way to make ends meet was to milk a small herd of cows so that there was a monthly cheque to cover all the expenses between when the wool and lambs were sold ..The cows calved in August and dried off in May so that for 10 months the cows had to be milked night and morning No days off .
We did have milking machines and a separator that skimmed off the cream that was picked up at the end of the road in cream cans to be transported to the butter factory
The first milking machine in the world was invented by a New Zealand’er who sold the patent to Alpa Laval .
The difference now is amazing with tractors and machinery and a lot of computerized components that have lifted the output and productivity and cut down the long hours worked that was accepted as normal in the past .
And my grandchildren help on the farm and my oldest grand daughter is enrolled at Lincoln University to study Agriculture in 2018.
The original piece fails to understand that it was fossil fuels that ended slavery – we enslaved oil and coal instead.
The world needs a certain amound of work to be done, to make life tolerable. You can either get slaves to do that work, or machines powered by fossil fuels (or more latterly, nuclear). Each barrel of oil contains 10,000 man-hours of labour – or the work of one slave for 3 years.
It is fossil fuels that gave us the benign civilised world of today, that can afford to look after nearly all of its citizens.
R
Why do we learn nothing from history, we keep doing the same things but expect different outcomes
It’s who we are.
The talk is about history but there is no mention of the effect of climate changes in the past. Around 2,200 in a period of cooling the Old Kingdom of Egypt fell and the Harrappan Civilization of the Indus Valley disappeared in a long period of drought. Around 1200BC, 5 of the 6 advanced civilizations around the Mediterranean Sea collapsed during another episode of cooling and increased tectonic activity. The sharp cooling of 536 BC was the final death knell of the Roman empire with major depopulation of the known world of that time. The wars, famines and plaques of the Little Ice Age are well documented with episodes of over 50% death rates. Fossil fuels have certainly helped give us an amazing civilization, but do you really believe that they can sustain our massive, already stressed population when huge areas of our grain growing area come out of production from cold, drought or incessant rain as they did in the past?
“The sharp cooling of 536 BC was the final death knell of the Roman empire”
Make that AD.
wonders what happens to all the cherries that get picked – do they get eaten.
So.
Fossil fuel ended slavery. Fine
But recently we heard here somewhere that there is 200 years of coal ‘somewhere’ for ‘present rate of usage.
Hence, running out of coal is not gonna be *my* problem
But equally we hear that maybe half the world’s population needs energy to escape poverty.
Does that not mean there is then 100 years of coal?
Also that world population is gonna rise by maybe 50%
Am I right in saying that gives us 66 years of coal?
So, many fewer women died in childbirth. Seems nice.
I’d suggest, as did a history program on the telly recently, that that is/was mostly due to antiseptics and antibiotics. Giving birth is a fairly major ‘wound’ (for lack of a better word) so that’s exactly where antibiotics score.
So lets hear it – the most recent advance in antibiotics was when?
40 years ago by accounts
Fewer children die before age= 5
Being really really mercenary here, is this not Ma Nature thinning out the non-viables?
By example: I’ve been mid-wife to hundreds of bovine births.
Occasionally, the new mother. instead of doing all the usual motherly things, just gets up and walks away and despite all my best efforts, refuses to accept her new baby. So I take the place of mother, feeding it colostrum and milk. Yet within 10 days, that calf will be dead despite all my best efforts and those of a veterinary.
What did that mother cow ‘know’?
She was actually doing her new baby the best it could and speeding it to a rapid death before it even knew it was alive. Spooky innit.
Similarly, human monogamy.
Get real people. Its a device to force people to be ‘settled’ so that taxes can be collected.
YMMV on that but it is having the effect of reducing diversity.
So again, fewer children are being born, they’re all being kept alive and getting into the gene pool.
It is the very fact that ‘Caveman’ took a new wife every 6 or 7 years. Its why babies *always* resemble their mothers until age= 5 or 6. When they get older, the supposed father realises he’s been bringing up someone else’s children and leaves.
Nowadays the girls, not least as they are genetically programmed to seek diversity. Their sense of smell is in overdrive on first dates, they are sniffing out an immune system as far and away different from their own as can possibly be.
Of course, Coco Chanel et al have corrupted that one.
But after a while (7 year itch anyone) they realise the incompatibility and leave.
So. Roll all these things together and we’ve entirely stalled our own evolution while, via antibiotic resistance, vastly accelerated the evolution of our competitors.
Still looking rosy? (Remember, only 66 years of coal to keep us warm)
Right then.
What’s “Low Density Lipoprotein” all about?
Have you got it? Has someone you know got it? Maybe more accurately, has anyone you know NOT got it?
What is it if not your own liver struggling to make fat ‘water soluble’ (Cholesterol)
And it does by bolting protein molecules onto fat molecules.
Given lots of the right sort of protein and limited fat, it will make High Density Lipoprotein = very water soluble.
Given lots of fat and limited amounts of the right sort of protein, it will make Low Density Lala = not so very water soluble. Guess what happens next.
Sometimes the liver hangs onto the fat in the hope some protein will come along – Non-Alcoholic-Fatty-Liver-Syndrome anyone?
We are starved of the right sort of protein.
Do you have a sibling that is 4 years (or less) younger than you?
Bad news.
By that simple definition, you have Kwashiorkor.
Your brain is not fully properly developed.
Hence: You have poor memory. Poor reasoning skills. Low intelligence. Are easily irritated.
Oh no I haven’t goes up the cry!
I went to school. I passed exams. I do ‘clever stuff’. Everyone has always said how bright I am.
Yeah right.
Compared to what.
What if *everyone* has Kwashiorkor?
How would you know? If everyone at a party, self included, is drunk or stoned, how does anyone inside that party know that?
Until one of the party tries to drive a car home? Or a train? Or lead a a civilisation?
Now getting scary innit?
Lets just choose one example of bad civilisational leadership?
Climate Change Science perhaps?
Back to the younger siblings. If you have one less than 4 years younger than you, YOU were The Deposed Baby. You were yanked off your mother’s breast, by definition before you were (ideally) 30 months old. The time when your brain is being constructed. You have Kwashiorkor.
Ah you say, I was bottle-fed on the very best that modern science can provide.
Yes you were because breast feeding is THE original and best contraceptive for most mammals. But especially us
Fine. So you were bottle fed.
But we all know what goes on inside babies’ nappies do we not not?
We all have a sense of smell.
So why are bottle fed babies nappies invariably full of The Most Appalling Stink that there ever was?
Breast fed babies produce next to nothing and it does not smell.
That sense of smell is there for a reason.
If something smells bad, It Is Bad. End
Yet, is it Kwashiorkor at work when we believe what we’re told by doctors, scientists & bureaucrats when it comes to doing something that is patently wrong.
Why are these folks telling us to do something that is so bad?
Because they are ‘The Elite’ are they not? They depend on tax revenue to exist/live.
Hence they want/need lots of taxpayers and now look what they’ve got – Working Mothers.
Young women who are deliberating, encouraged by Government, deposing their own babies so they can go out and earn money. Which in the UK, 70% of which is taken, by mandate, by Government.
To do what. Plant windmills? Buy supercomputers?
recently the EU got itself concerned about the numbers of people who died before they got to ‘retirement age’
Very lovely you think. They’re concerned about us. Maybe build a few hospitals or something.
No. Some did some digging and the faceless ones inside Brussels were actually concerned about the loss of Tax Revenue brought about when people of ‘working age’ die.
And you thought they cared………………….
I wouldn’t know where to start on answering your comment…..
“It is the very fact that ‘Caveman’ took a new wife every 6 or 7 years.”
Would you care to support this claim?
deliberating = should be ‘deliberately’ or ‘on purpose’
Have I got Kwashior? Maybe.
But young brother was 6 years my junior and I was reared on raw cow’s milk and rabbit.
Haven’t got LDL neither so looking good. ish
My mother did though. One of 5 sisters born inside 6 years.
My father’s best man did actually suggest to him, “Don’t marry into that family, something’s ‘wrong’ in there”
As events have unfolded over that last the 50 years that I’ve been aware, my father should have heeded that advice.
Quite the optimist, ain’tcha?
I made this comment elsewhere-reacting to green concern for children, but it may fit:
When I moved into my current environmentalist’s nightmare home, I was in my twenties.
The smokestacks of the local and visible coal burning power plant did leave us soot on north wind mornings,
but power was plentiful and cheap. Manatee shrived in the outflow. Fisheries renewed themselves in the mangroves in the backyard estuary, and birds nested in our garden. Thankfully, we live in a region of modest regulation and some common sense.
In my seventies, I still look upon the stacks, now water vapor stacks. The north wind cools, but there are no other consequences.
Power is still plentiful and cheap, the coal comes from a dedicated mine via a unit train that makes the journey twice a week, pulled by “hybrid” diesel-electric locomotives that have made commercial sense since the end of the age of steam. There are more fish and the water is cleaner, as cities have finally treated their sewage rather than dumping it, 25 years after requiring the same of everyone else.
There are more birds and some of their spaces are protected….we voted on that. Manatee still thrive in the heat from the power plant — there are more of them too. The regulators forced the utility to build a solar plant, thankfully this multimillion dollar virtue signal is adjacent to the coal plant without replacing it, raising rates a bit without hurting dispatch.
We still live in a region of comparatively low regulation, small government, and some common sense.
As a result of our fiscal and environmental successes, the federal folks call us stupid rednecks, dumb crackers, and yes, deplorables.
If you have a PhD AND a southern accent, you’re still stupid, ya know.
By the way, our state and city pension funds are fully funded, and bonded debt is a small fraction of cash flow. Stipulation: we do tax the heck out of the tourists, but they come anyway. Its warm. WARM. People Like WARM. Plants like WARM. And CO2.
Life’s lessons are hard for authoritarians; why are those who complain about our “undereducated, future-constrained” children worried about their dying ones?
Still speeding on the Road to Serfdom, I guess.
I suspect the historian is conflating the Renaissance with the Enlightenment.
“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.”
One must hold an advance degree to write such nonsense. First of all, the Early Church didn’t destroy Greek Culture. By the time Christianity was being preached in Greece and Turkey, the civilization of Plato and Socrates was long gone. Rome ruled most of Europe, and its legions occupied most of Greece, Romania and were pushing towards Armenia. Before the Romans conquered the Balkans and Greece, most of the Mediterranean was Hellenized, this included Judea. Saint Paul himself was highly educated, and by all accounts studied Greek and was exposed to Greek philosophy. When he evangelized the Greeks, he did it from Mars Hill and used the language of Greek philosophy in order to break through several barriers.
Later, Saint Augustine, a Roman pagan, who was very well versed in both various Roman and Greek philosophies, was heavily influenced by Greek Antiquity, and his writing’s today are considered masterpieces. It was the fall of the Roman Empire that caused Greek and Roman Antiquity to be erased from the public consciousness. Six hundred years later, Saint Thomas Aquinas rediscovered Aristotle. He used the logic and influence of Aristotle to systematize Catholic thought and theology. Thomas’s rediscovery relight intellectual and artistic efforts in Europe. The great centers of learning during the High Middle Ages are indebted to him. As are concepts of the Dignity of Man, the application of logic in the pursuit of Truth, etc…
Quite right, JP. My only quibble is that it was erased in the Western Empire only, not the Eastern. In the Eastern Empire it was erased more slowly and incompletely over time primarily by religious quarrels and the burning of libraries by fanatic sects within the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Great Library in Alexandria was purged by various bishops at least four times before 700 AD. So what we were left with was a highly incomplete bibliography of what the Greeks and Romans actually wrote.
Climate change believers do not love their children or grandchildren. Their actions tell us that. They love only themselves. No wonder they project that lack of concern on others. It makes them look selfish and evil, not kind and caring.
Europeans put a break on Christianity, which gave birth to the Renaissance.” Incredible ignorance. It was not Europeans but refugees from the fall if Constantinople who instigated the Renaissance. And the “narrow technical achievement” of burning fossil fuels is not the reason why Evaggelos Vallianatos is able to print his extravagant fantasies. What makes him possible is a scientifically ignorant management who still believes in the magical power of fossil fuels to heat up the world. It says something about the quality of education in high places.
I am befuddled that such an obvious bias and agenda can be passed off as history. Evaggelos Vallianatos seems a true believer of the most dogmatic sort.
I’ve never seen a word written in the Huffington Post that, in a sane world, would not be the very definition of ‘hate speech’.
They just have a stereotyped scapegoat that they tell all their marching brooms is OKAY to hate.
Gosh – where have I seen that sort of thing before?
The grandchildren? I don’t have any but at least one of my brother’s grandsons has a nice big diesel burning pickup truck and is quite happy about it, the grandson is happy that is.
Uhhh…the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and Chinese and Nordics and Aztecs and etc, etc, etc, worshiped a lot of “gods”. Some today “worship” their own brains and egos and self-righteousness.. “Romans 1:25 who changed the truth of God into the lie, and worshiped and served the created thing more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”
PS If I’m not mistaken, these so pure “Ancient Greeks worshipped the Earth” AND:
Achelous
The patron god of the “silver-swirling” Achelous River.
Aeolus
Greek god of the winds and air
Aether
Primordial god of the upper air, light, the atmosphere, space and heaven.
Alastor
God of family feuds and avenger of evil deeds.
APOLLO
Olympian god of music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, plague, medicine, sun, light and knowledge.
ARES
God of war. Represented the physical, violent and untamed aspect of war.
Aristaeus
Minor patron god of animal husbandry, bee-keeping, and fruit trees. Son of Apollo.
Asclepius
God of medicine, health, healing, rejuvenation and physicians.
ATLAS
The Primordial Titan of Astronomy. Condemned by Zeus to carry the world on his back after the Titans lost the war.
Attis
A minor god of vegetation, fruits of the earth and rebirth.
Boreas
A wind god (Anemoi) and Greek god of the cold north wind and the bringer of winter. Referred to as “The North Wind”.
Caerus
Minor god of opportunity, luck and favorable moments.
Castor
One of the twins, Castor and Pollux, known as Dioskouri. Zeus transformed them into the constellation Gemini
Cerus
The large and powerful wild bull tamed by Persephone and turned into the Taurus constellation.
CHAOS
The nothingness that all else sprung from. A god who filled the gap between Heaven and Earth and created the first beings Gaia, Tartarus, Uranus, Nyx and Erebos.
Charon
The Ferryman of Hades. Took the newly dead people across the rivers Styx and Acheron to the Greek underworld if they paid him three obolus (a Greek silver coin).
Cronos
The god of time. Not to be confused with Cronus, the Titan father of Zeus.
Crios
The Titan god of the heavenly constellations and the measure of the year..
CRONUS
God of agriculture, leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans and father of the Titans. Not to be confused with Cronos, god of time.
Dinlas
Guardian god of the ancient city Lamark, where wounded heroes could find comfort and heal after battle. He was the son of Aphrodite.
DIONYSUS
An Olympian god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, religious ecstasy and theatre.
Erebus
Primordial god of darkness.
EROS
God of sexual desire, attraction, love and procreation.
Eurus
One of the wind god known as Anemoi and god of the unlucky east wind. Referred to as “The East Wind”.
Glaucus
A fisherman who became immortal upon eating a magical herb, an Argonaut who may have built and piloted the Argo, and became a god of the sea.
HADES
God of the Dead and Riches and King of the Underworld.
HELIOS
God of the Sun and also known as Sol.
HEPHAESTUS
God of fire, metalworking, stone masonry, forges and the art of sculpture. Created weapons for the gods and married to Aphrodite.
HERACLES
The greatest of the Greek heroes, he became god of heroes, sports, athletes, health, agriculture, fertility, trade, oracles and divine protector of mankind. Known as the strongest man on Earth.
HERMES
God of trade, thieves, travelers, sports, athletes, and border crossings, guide to the Underworld and messenger of the gods.
Hesperus
The Evening Star – the planet VENUS in the evening.
Hymenaios
God of marriage ceremonies, inspiring feasts and song.
Hypnos
The Greek god of sleep.
Kratos
God of strength and power.
Momus
God of satire, mockery, censure, writers and poets and a spirit of evil-spirited blame and unfair criticism.
Morpheus
God of dreams and sleep – has the ability to take any human form and appear in dreams.
Nereus
The Titan god of the sea before Poseidon and father of the Nereids (nymphs of the sea).
Notus
Another Anemoi (wind god) and Greek god of the south wind. Known as “The South Wind”.
Oceanus
Titan god of the ocean. Believed to be the personification of the World Ocean, an enormous river encircling the world.
Pallas
The Titan god of warcraft and of the springtime campaign season.
PAN
God of nature, the wild, shepherds, flocks, goats, mountain wilds, and is often associated with sexuality. Also a satyr (half man, half-goat).
Phosphorus
The Morning Star – THE PLANET VENUS as it appears in the morning.
Plutus
The Greek god of wealth.
Pollux
Twin brother of Castor, together known as the Dioskouri, that were transformed into the constellation Gemini.
Pontus
ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god of the deep sea, one of the Greek primordial deities and son of Gaia.
POSEIDON
Olympian Greek god of the sea, earthquakes, storms, and horses.
Priapus
Minor rustic fertility god, protector of flocks, fruit plants, bees and gardens and known for having an enormous penis.
Pricus
The immortal father of sea-goats, made into the Capricorn constellation.
PROMETHEUS
Titan god of forethought and crafty counsel who was given the task of moulding mankind out of clay.
Proteus
Early sea-god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water referred to by Homer as the “Old Man of the Sea”.
Tartarus
The god of the deep abyss, a great pit in the depths of the underworld, and father of Typhon.
Thanatos
A minor god and the god of death.
TRITON
Messenger of the sea and the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite.
TYPHON
The deadliest MONSTER in Greek mythology and “Father of All Monsters”. Last son of Gaia, fathered by Tartarus and god of monsters, storms, and volcanoes. He challenged Zeus for control of Mount Olympus.
URANUS
Primordial god of the sky and heavens, and father of the Titans.
Zelus
The god of dedication, emulation, eager rivalry, envy, jealousy, and zeal.
Zephyrus
A wind god (Anemoi). God of the west wind and known as “The West Wind”.
ZEUS
God of the sky, lightning, thunder, law, order, justice, King of the Gods and the “Father of Gods and men”.
(I guess didn’t know about about “Alobamamannhansius” or they would dumped all the rest!)
“Don’t they Love Their Grandchildren?” Yes I love my 8 grandchildren very much and that is why I oppose wasting money on a problem that does not exist. And we are talking big bucks not just a few million here and there. We are spending money we don’t have for a problem that exists because majorly flawed computer models say will exist a 100 years from now.
Most or those who are promoting “CAGW” are looking for Profit, either their personal gain or an ideological gain. If the former care about their own grandchildren, it’s to leave them cash. If the later care about their own grandchildren, it’s to leave them power and control.
But I doubt they really care much about much beyond themselves.
“Unfortunately, modernity sidelined Greek wisdom for narrow technical achievements like burning fossil fuels (petroleum, coal and natural gas) for energy…”
Narrow technical achievements!? This is evidence of the form of historic revisionism which is neither scientific (i.e., providing new historically significant evidence which demand re-examination of current historic interpretation) nor a legitimately historic re-interpretation through accepted special cultural or ethnic lenses.
Historian Forrest McDonald, often critical of revisionism said:
“The result, as far as the study of history was concerned, was an awakened interest in subjects that historians had previously slighted. Indian history, black history, women’s history, family history, and a host of specializations arose. These expanded horizons enriched our understanding of the American past, but they also resulted in works of special pleading, trivialization, and downright falsification.”
For Evaggelos Vallianatos, a supposed historian, to characterize burning of fossil fuels as , “narrow technical achievements” is clearly, as Forrest McDonald stated a “downright falsification” of history.
One young leftist that I know once declared that the worst mistake mankind ever made was inventing agriculture. (yes, he truly believed that the ideal state for man is the hunter/gatherer.)
Evaggelos would appear to be Greek. Now that stuff is nostalgic indeed, Im sure! Only thing Ev old boy, the pap of this essay supports the idea that you wouldn’t be one whose name survived to be in the history books from the time. I trust you recognize that you can barely, only semi-literately, extol the philosophical prowess of the greats of these times (and few names from that fabled land have been heard from for over a millennium – ruins indeed) but you would have been definitely in the dweebe plebe ranks. Even my grandchildren would have groaned and put some barbs to you if this is what goes on in your classroom. It was the “Don’t they love their grandchildren?” homey homily that underscored the grade school drivel and attracted HuffPuff folks to it. I’m even disappointed in Huffpost for lowering their standards for this.
It’s the plague of the arts majors again.
It also, I think, helped greatly that the English escaped the Classical Justinian Law of southern Europe, and developed parliamentary democracy and individual rights. The technological and scientific developments can hardly be thought of as disconnected from the freer societies, where inventors enjoyed the rights to their discoveries and useful arts.
Oh how they would love to turn back time on that one.
I agree with you completely on this one. The English had their political revolutions early: the first by holding King John up at sword point and demanding he ratify the Magna Carta, and the second by the English Civil War and beheading Charles I. Ideas are one thing, but ultimately changes are only made because of results on a battlefield.
Zeke said:
“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.”
Zeke wouldn’t be a Protestant by any chance? He certainly likes perpetuating myths long-peddled by Protestant apologists.
He should try a number of things.
Look up how many translations of the Bible into the vernacular language there were before 1517. Hint 1: Look up Bede and Bible. Hint 2: Luther’s translation was not the first into German.
Nobody in England paid for their life by translating the Bible into English. Tyndale, for example was executed and he translated the Bible into English but that does not mean the two things are related. His problem was that he went round publicising heresies. That’s what got him into trouble, not translating the Bible. Yes, there were objections about his translation as he deliberately mistranslated the Bible to support his heresies but it was the heresies that got him into trouble, not the act of translating.
It wasn’t the Church that forced Latin onto everybody else. That was the language used by everybody who could read and write. Even Luther used it. His 95 Theses were originally published in Latin. When I was at school you had to pass an exam in Latin before gaining admission to many University courses.
The printing press was invited some time before the Protestant Reformation. The printing presses were churning out all sorts of religious texts that were used by Catholics who could read.
Zeke should try reading “The Stripping of the Altars” by Eamon Duffy. This book shows that most of the myths about the state of religion in England prior to the Protestant Reformation are completely wide of the mark.