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Climate Change(d)?

Loren Pechtel said:
steve_bank said:
Watched a show today on Pre-Columbian cultures in the Americas.

Evidence indicates there were several cases where over consumption of resources led to decline.

In particular the Mayans. They had a complex sophisticated culture. Over time a plain was deforested to support a massive building program. Deforestation led to infiltration of c;lay into swampy soil used for agriculture.

The difference today is the effects are global.
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Yup. Survivor bias--a society that destroys itself leaves no cultural record of having done so. Thus the cultural history of every society is surviving any hardship. As technology has increased the size of the group that would get taken out is larger--the worst case predictions (high warming + high decomposition of methane hydrates) could take out enough of humanity that we couldn't support our tech base--and if we fall there's no stopping point before the early stone age.
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More like this I think:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Meeting_at_Corvallis
 
There's a lot of iron and steel just lying around in any plausible post-apocalyptic world. The entire Iron Age (including the Roman era) produced less iron than can be found in a single modern Panamax container ship.

The lowest plausible level of technology in such a world, assuming a large enough number of survivors to form a viable population at all, is roughly medieval - steel and iron tools, timber framed buildings, little or no window glass, handmade textiles, mostly agrarian communities with scattered small towns where produce can be traded. Animal drawn transport, with riverine and coastal transport by sail or animal drawn barges.

A big fall from today's OECD lifestyle, for sure; But a big step up from the Neolithic, which itself was a considerable step up from the Palaeolithic.
 
bilby said:
There's a lot of iron and steel just lying around in any plausible post-apocalyptic world. The entire Iron Age (including the Roman era) produced less iron than can be found in a single modern Panamax container ship.

The lowest plausible level of technology in such a world, assuming a large enough number of survivors to form a viable population at all, is roughly medieval - steel and iron tools, timber framed buildings, little or no window glass, handmade textiles, mostly agrarian communities with scattered small towns where produce can be traded. Animal drawn transport, with riverine and coastal transport by sail or animal drawn barges.

A big fall from today's OECD lifestyle, for sure; But a big step up from the Neolithic, which itself was a considerable step up from the Palaeolithic.
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Disagree--I think most of that iron will soon be in the form of iron oxide and widely dispersed.
 
Early man had access to a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, fish, etc. Extinctions and destruction of habitat may be big problems for post-apocalyptic man -- bigger than lack of iron. What did man want iron for that sparked the early Iron Age anyway? Am I wrong that weapons were the major use?

Is it not possible to smelt iron or steel from rusted iron (though the details are different from smelting ordinary iron ore)? Mainly it takes knowledge. Won't knowledge or its lack be a big variable in the post-apocalyptic world? Will anyone be able to read books anyway? Will books quickly be used up for kindling?

Even if treasured, how long could paper books survive? For mankind to "bounce back" from apocalypse, he may need to act very quickly. I suppose rummaging through ancient towns (and reverse-engineering gadgets) will be a major industry.
 
robnisch said:
More like this I think:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Meeting_at_Corvallis
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That's Corvallis, Oregon, a place that I've visited several times when I lived closer to it.

 The Emberverse series
The novels depict the events following a mysterious—yet sudden—worldwide event called "The Change" that occurs at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, March 17, 1998. The Change alters both the course of history and all physical laws when it causes all the electricity, firearms, explosives, internal combustion engines, steam power and most forms of high-energy-density technology on Earth to permanently no longer work. Most of the action in the series takes place in the Willamette Valley of Oregon in the United States. The series primarily focuses on how the characters survive the loss of 600 years of technological progress.
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Loren Pechtel said:
bilby said:
There's a lot of iron and steel just lying around in any plausible post-apocalyptic world. The entire Iron Age (including the Roman era) produced less iron than can be found in a single modern Panamax container ship.

The lowest plausible level of technology in such a world, assuming a large enough number of survivors to form a viable population at all, is roughly medieval - steel and iron tools, timber framed buildings, little or no window glass, handmade textiles, mostly agrarian communities with scattered small towns where produce can be traded. Animal drawn transport, with riverine and coastal transport by sail or animal drawn barges.

A big fall from today's OECD lifestyle, for sure; But a big step up from the Neolithic, which itself was a considerable step up from the Palaeolithic.
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Disagree--I think most of that iron will soon be in the form of iron oxide and widely dispersed.
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It takes a LONG time for a thick piece of steel to rust away, unless you expose it to a lot of salt.

There might well be a shortage of unoxidised metal after several hundred years, but even then, there will be rich sources of iron oxide that can be processed even more easily than iron ores can - and turning iron ore into iron isn't a particularly high tech process. All you need is charcoal, iron ore, and clay.
 
Swammerdami said:
Am I wrong that weapons were the major use?
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You're not wrong that weapons and armour rapidly became the major use; But if you ever try cutting down a tree with a bronze or stone axe, you'll quickly appreciate that a bronze age toolmaker who invented a way to produce iron tools was going to be a very popular toolmaker indeed.

I suspect that the benefits for working timber were the initial inspiration, and that military applications came shortly thereafter (and rapidly became dominant).
 
Swammerdami said:
Mainly it takes knowledge. Won't knowledge or its lack be a big variable in the post-apocalyptic world? Will anyone be able to read books anyway?
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Most people at the start of the Iron Age couldn't read books.

Even into the Medieval era, most people couldn't read and write, and even when they could, they didn't write down how to make iron and steel, because that was a secret kept entirely to the guild members who did it. The information was passed by practical hands-on training of apprentices, who were certainly not required to read about it.

Most medieval writings were religion, law, and politics - practical knowledge wasn't safe to write down in an era before intellectual property law.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
bilby said:
There's a lot of iron and steel just lying around in any plausible post-apocalyptic world. The entire Iron Age (including the Roman era) produced less iron than can be found in a single modern Panamax container ship.

The lowest plausible level of technology in such a world, assuming a large enough number of survivors to form a viable population at all, is roughly medieval - steel and iron tools, timber framed buildings, little or no window glass, handmade textiles, mostly agrarian communities with scattered small towns where produce can be traded. Animal drawn transport, with riverine and coastal transport by sail or animal drawn barges.

A big fall from today's OECD lifestyle, for sure; But a big step up from the Neolithic, which itself was a considerable step up from the Palaeolithic.
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Disagree--I think most of that iron will soon be in the form of iron oxide and widely dispersed.
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Depends on the nature of said apocalypse.
Those container ships’ hulks might be most of what’s left of iron if nukes take out all major cities. Some of them will prob’ly bob around out on the oceans for a while :)
Supervolcanoes, nuclear war, major impact events and pandemics all have different technological resource retention expectations. In the case of pandemic, I’d expect relatively rapid technological recovery. If it’s supervolcanoes caused by a massive impact event, not so much. Nuclear war? Probably somewhere In between.
Just a guess.
 
Listened to a BBC report on a British paper State Of Nature. Can't find the paper but

naturalengland.blog.gov.uk

State of Nature

Dr. Pete Brotherton, Director of Science Yesterday saw the publication of the fourth State of Nature (SON) Report, the product of a collaboration of environmental NGOs, academic institutions and government agencies, including Natural England. The report provides the most comprehensive …
naturalengland.blog.gov.uk naturalengland.blog.gov.uk

The talk was about insects and how insects tie everything in the ecosystem together. With the increasing rate of loss of insect populations it is looking apocalyptic.

The BBC radio show.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC World Service - The Real Story, How do we stop rapid insect decline?

Insects are crucial to life on earth but are disappearing at an unprecedented rate
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
IIUC, methane level in the atmosphere has risen about 20% in the last 45 years, but some scientists are particularly concerned about the rise since 2006.
“Methane is both a driver and a messenger of climate change. We don’t know why it is now rising so rapidly, but the pattern of growth since late 2006 resembles how methane behaved during great flips in Earth’s climate in the distant past,” Euan Nisbet, study author and Professor of Earth Sciences at the Royal Holloway University of London, wrote for The Conversation.
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The study doesn't report the levels of methane in Santa Monica, but being a key ingredient of hominid flatulence we might assume it's on the rise there as well.
 
www.marketplace.org

Climate crisis impacting global trade through Panama Canal

New passage restrictions in the Panama Canal could particularly harm the U.S. economy — since it's the nation that uses the trade route most.
www.marketplace.org www.marketplace.org

Blah blah, just a cult. Only 6% of all global trade. Granted, they can use Canada in the summer. But it is all a lie. The weather is fine.

Speaking of which, the leaves are turning and I might not need to be raking leaves after fucking Xmas this year!
 
From a news report.

In 75 years areas of the mid west will be uninhabitable.
 
Temperature. There are places in Texas that are close to it.

Phoenix grew because of air conditioning before climate change.

A major effect in the mid west will be food production. Cattle is being affected in Texas today.
 
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