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In the timescale that human civilization has grown we've had the Bering land bridge. I don't think we've had a relatively static status quo climate. Past few h

by soperj 5y ago

In the timescale that human civilization has grown we've had the Bering land bridge. I don't think we've had a relatively static status quo climate. Past few hundred years has had the greatest change in temperature in the last 10 thousand years according to tree studies. I don't think you can have it both ways here.

spankalee 5y ago
"modern civilization"
throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
> last 10 thousand years AKA roughly 3% of the times humans have been on earth. Or .0002% the age of the earth. But on the other hand, that probably doesn't matter much. The difference between human made and natural climate change is just the moral implications. If there was another (natural) ice-age on the horizon, it'd be in humanities best interest to try and prevent it.
- moistly 5y ago
  AKA roughly 100% of the times humans have lived in settled communities. I would prefer to not live a roaming hunter-gatherer life. Edit: disclaimer—“first settlement” doesn’t seem to be a settled fact. How permanent must it be? How many families? Is purposeful agriculture a requirement?
kannanvijayan 5y ago
The infrastructure, agricultural optimization, crop cultivation and breeding, city growth, and other technology that supports the several billion people that are alive today was built over the last century. The capacity growth is also exponential, so the relevant infrastructure is on an even shorter timescale than that. Global ecosystems are also far more stressed from the load of humanity than they were 100 years ago. The regenerative capacity of biological systems responding to that system is not simply "barely at capacity", it is in a negative state. On top of that, we will be accelerating the rate of average temperature changes, in a time when access to weapons of mass destruction (ones that are orders of magnitude higher than what existed 100 years ago) are higher than ever. The nature of exponential growth and what it does to fixed capacity regenerative systems is certainly difficult to internalize. Cracks form over time as stress is absorbed. Collapses happen fast. The transition between the two is hard to time.
graeme 5y ago
The Bering land bridge disappeared 11,000 years ago. The earliest human major settlements were formed about 6000 years ago, in Mesopotamia. Your whole timescale is wrong. We’re not talking about humans. We’re talking about settled civilizations. Things didn’t fluctuate very much since 9000 BCE, when the Bering land bridge went away. All of recorded history is since then. As for recent history it’s only really since 2000 we’ve burst out of that range. There was fluctuation before but within the post 9000 BCE norms. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

by soperj 5y ago

spankalee 5y ago

"modern civilization"

throw_nbvc1234 5y ago

> last 10 thousand years AKA roughly 3% of the times humans have been on earth. Or .0002% the age of the earth. But on the other hand, that probably doesn't matter much. The difference between human made and natural climate change is just the moral implications. If there was another (natural) ice-age on the horizon, it'd be in humanities best interest to try and prevent it.

moistly 5y ago
AKA roughly 100% of the times humans have lived in settled communities. I would prefer to not live a roaming hunter-gatherer life. Edit: disclaimer—“first settlement” doesn’t seem to be a settled fact. How permanent must it be? How many families? Is purposeful agriculture a requirement?

kannanvijayan 5y ago

The infrastructure, agricultural optimization, crop cultivation and breeding, city growth, and other technology that supports the several billion people that are alive today was built over the last century. The capacity growth is also exponential, so the relevant infrastructure is on an even shorter timescale than that. Global ecosystems are also far more stressed from the load of humanity than they were 100 years ago. The regenerative capacity of biological systems responding to that system is not simply "barely at capacity", it is in a negative state. On top of that, we will be accelerating the rate of average temperature changes, in a time when access to weapons of mass destruction (ones that are orders of magnitude higher than what existed 100 years ago) are higher than ever. The nature of exponential growth and what it does to fixed capacity regenerative systems is certainly difficult to internalize. Cracks form over time as stress is absorbed. Collapses happen fast. The transition between the two is hard to time.

graeme 5y ago

The Bering land bridge disappeared 11,000 years ago. The earliest human major settlements were formed about 6000 years ago, in Mesopotamia. Your whole timescale is wrong. We’re not talking about humans. We’re talking about settled civilizations. Things didn’t fluctuate very much since 9000 BCE, when the Bering land bridge went away. All of recorded history is since then. As for recent history it’s only really since 2000 we’ve burst out of that range. There was fluctuation before but within the post 9000 BCE norms. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/