31–40 of 80 posts
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“Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age.” - John Martin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(oceanographer)
What’s the downside to that strategy? It seems like a no-brainer at first glance
If indeed ancient farmers (that were like 1/100 our population) already had "profoundly changed Earth's climate", so much for the "human activity couldn't be the reason for climate change today" argument...
nobody making those arguments is making them in good faith and no amount of evidence will stop them from making it.
One could very well imagine (and some of us actually know) people that legitimately believe that the climate change we're through is not man made -- they say it cause they believe it, they don't try to knowingly deceive anyone.
It's another thing to say something because you do not trust scientists (including scientific consensus) because e.g. you believe that they extrapolate from incomplete data and not enough understanding, or to prefer this or that fringe researcher to the majority opinion, and another to be in bad faith.
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Imagine the entire planet fighting for the thermostat
This is not impossible. There are a bunch bunch of ideas for how to build a "thermostat." Some of them might be affordable for even a mid sized economy. We could find ourselves in a world where 26 different countries have competing climate control agendas and toolkits. Presumably Vanuatu has a different take that Latvia. Perhaps this will be the 22nd century's alternative to resource wars.
Anyone fascinated by this article, I highly suggest reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I just recently picked it up after seeing it recommended on a couple of threads here and it did not disappoint. Humans have been affecting ecology for a long long time. If you are like me, you're probably wondering what you can do to mitigate some of the effects, while legislation and societal action is important. I also recomme…
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Mainly because of deforestation (one of the causes mentioned in the article). French Gaul in Roman times had already been largely deforested in the previous centuries, some historians even suggest that the process had been underway since Neolithic times, that’s about 4,000-5,000 years ago. It’s relatively unconmplicated to get rid of large swaths of forrest without having to have access to modern industrial tools, yo…
Sure, but the study places the "pivot point" much back in time in the 7,000 to 5,000 years ago range (probably give or take a thousand years): >"I noticed that methane concentrations started decreasing about 10,000 years ago and then reversed direction 5,000 years ago and I also noted that carbon dioxide also started decreasing around 10,000 years ago and then reversed direction about 7,000 years ago," says Ruddiman.…
Anyone fascinated by this article, I highly suggest reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I just recently picked it up after seeing it recommended on a couple of threads here and it did not disappoint. Humans have been affecting ecology for a long long time. If you are like me, you're probably wondering what you can do to mitigate some of the effects, while legislation and societal action is important. I also recomme…
https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Progress-Ronald-Wright/...
Anyone fascinated by this article, I highly suggest reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I just recently picked it up after seeing it recommended on a couple of threads here and it did not disappoint. Humans have been affecting ecology for a long long time. If you are like me, you're probably wondering what you can do to mitigate some of the effects, while legislation and societal action is important. I also recomme…
Anyone fascinated by this article, I highly suggest reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I just recently picked it up after seeing it recommended on a couple of threads here and it did not disappoint. Humans have been affecting ecology for a long long time. If you are like me, you're probably wondering what you can do to mitigate some of the effects, while legislation and societal action is important. I also recomme…
Sapiens seemed very pseudo-scientific to me. It seemed like Hariri had one agenda and was trying to push that desperately.
I think you may be confusing "agenda" with "perspective". He was pushing one perspective: his own, as all authors do. But it's our job as readers to understand the author's perspective and recognize it as such.
Neither history nor anthropology permits storytelling without a perspective. There's always a perspective. Reading for learning means understanding that perspective and determining which aspects (if any) we'll choose to adopt ourselves.
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> Running experiments on the planet we live on is usually frowned upon. We are in a big fucking experiment right now: what happens if we release fucktons of CO2 into the atmosphere? Most of the developed world doesn't give a fuck.
Purely anacdotal of course, but most of the really bad incidents I've been involved in with production systems were actually caused by a rushed response to an initial problem that seemed serious at the time....