Bummer: Climate Change Implicated In Tibet Collapse 4000 Years Ago

Doooooooom!

(Science 2.0) Climate change may have been be responsible for the abrupt collapse of civilization on the fringes of the Tibetan Plateau around 2,000 B.C. – but it wasn’t the modern political connotation of climate change, with man-made carbon dioxide causing warming, it was global cooling.

At the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, a 4,000 year period of warm weather, it was no longer possible for ancient people on the Tibetan Plateau to cultivate millet, their primary food source, and after productivity declined most left. Not forever, a few hundred years later they were growing wheat and barley. That’s because wheat and barley have higher frost tolerance and a lower heat requirement than millet, making them better suited for the high altitudes and suddenly colder weather of eastern Tibet. In a new paper in PNAS, a team argues that the change in climate led to the change in culture still evident today. 

Damn that climate change….wait, what? An article actually mentioned that it was cooling that caused this problem? That’s weird. They usually just mention “climate change” without mentioning which type. I actually just deleted a few articles out of Pocket that were doing just that in regards to the end of the Mayans.

Intriguing speculation is that if the climate heats up the way leading computer models say it will, millet may be en vogue again.

So, what they’re saying is that it was much, much warmer previously? Huh.

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6 Responses to “Bummer: Climate Change Implicated In Tibet Collapse 4000 Years Ago”

  1. Phil Taylor says:

    The telltale signs of propaganda is that the stories from the various promoters do not jive. This may be an example.
    These scientists were on a different waive length than the IPCC.

  2. Jeffery says:

    The telltale signs of propaganda is that the stories from the various promoters do not jive.

    Is this claim based on your knowledge of propaganda? Can you give a couple of examples of where this is the case?

    Can you point out in the story where the “stories… do not jive”?

    Teach typed:

    they’re saying is that it was much, much warmer previously

    “… much, much warmer” than what? And where? It’s improper to assume that temperature changes in the Tibetan plateau represent the mean global surface temperature. If the Tibetan plateau responded then as it is now, it warmed more rapidly than the global average, so it may have warmer 4000 years ago than the global average.

  3. drowningpuppies says:

    Climate change may (or may not) have been be responsible for the abrupt collapse of civilization on the fringes of the Tibetan Plateau around 2,000 B.C. …

    YAWN!

  4. Phil Taylor says:

    >Is this claim based on your knowledge of propaganda? Yes, I am considered to be an expert. 🙂

    I said this MAY be an example, based on the story implying that millet once was grown on the Tibetan Plateau, and it cannot be now.
    I do not know if millet can be grown now or not, but if not, then it certainly was warmer then, than now. That does not mean that the whole world was warmer then.
    But it might mean that.

    There are many examples of Warmer press releases contradicting each other. One that we both agree on was that 2014 was not the warmest year on record!

    The following quote was from a previous email whereby you sent me contradicting statistics.

    “***Now if each black DOT represents a year as it appears to do so, it goes right up to 2014 or 2015. Those dots show that 2014 or 2015 are not the warmest year on record, so who is right, the Skeptical Science graphs, or the NOAA press releases?”

    Answer: The Skeptical Science graphs. Why? Because NOAA has been known in the past to release press releases based on only their stats. KNOWING that they are misleading to the general public, who assume that the temperatures claimed are based on all available measurements. Not just NOAA. But NOAA does not care. Misleading is OK to get consensus, for the greater good.

    Currently the general public think’s that AGW is conclusive. They do not realize that it is still a theory that many think is likely true. (or so we’re told)

    As Michael Crichton states:
    “There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. …Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.

  5. Jeffery says:

    Theories stay theories until they are refuted/falsified.

    Gravity is still a theory, but the scientific and popular consensus is that the theory will not falsified, even though we have no idea by what mechanism gravity works. Why do you accept the theory of gravity even though it can’t be explained? What is the actual physical force that keeps the Earth orbiting the Sun and the Moon orbiting the Earth?

    And how do you or “sciency fiction” writer Michael Crichton* “know” the Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun? I doubt that either of you have measured it. Consensus. You trust the few scientists who have measured it. And is it exactly 93 million miles, and constantly? No, but the consensus is that it’s about 93 million miles away and no corporations at present see how to make money off it.

    *Crichton also “believed” in paranormal phenomena such as astral projection and clairvoyance without any supporting evidence. How could you trust him on any scientific issue?

  6. Phil Taylor says:

    Gravity is not a theory. It is verifiable by indisputable evidence based on trial and error experimentation. Yes, we may not know how it works, we only know that it does. Every time. The sun’s distantance is also not a theory. It can be reliably measured. Every time.

    >You trust the few scientists who have measured it.
    Yes. I do. Like Newton. Who do you trust? But if the government proposed a gravity tax, it behooves me to check it out to see for myself. What if i noticed that objects did not fall as claimed. Then I may cast doubt on Gravity and the reason to pay a Gravity tax.

    >Crichton also “believed” in paranormal phenomena such as astral projection and clairvoyance without any supporting evidence. How could you trust him on any scientific issue?
    I DON’T. I only quoted him on a very articulate response to consensus.

    Fact checking finds a lot of reasons to cast doubt on AGW. Current observation seems to suggest that the atmosphere is not as sensitive to C02 as predicted. Predictions based on C02 climate models have not panned out as expected, but we are still engaged in government regulations as if they did.

    In the 1990’s AGW was a concern based on OBSERVATION that the climate was warming. What would happen if the world continued to warm at that rate? Now we observe that it has slowed or stopped warming, yet we behave like it has not. Great efforts are also made to prevent the general public from knowing it has paused. Why? Science tells you the facts. Not hide them from you for your supposed own good.

    In the 1990’s we were told we must prepare to adapt. 4c was the threshold of what the world could tolerate. 360PPM C02 was also the theashold.
    A political agenda was based on this. Now our observation has discovered “the pause.” However, the politiacal agenda marches on. The thresholds were changed to 2c and 400PPM to make it more likely to occur.

    Warnings that we must adapt were shoved aside for extremist cries of Armageddon. Fear mongering has been used to create a consensus to enact a political agenda before the cat is out of the bag, and everyone realizes that the doom and gloom predicted has not materialized now that we have reached 400ppm.

    Carbon Tax and CAP and Trade has been decreed by European and Canadian politicians who can’t even tell you the word’s temperature. They do not need to. It’s only an excuse. It is the tax that matters!

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