Jared Diamond says we have 50 years left??!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

I'm watching the Colbert repeat from last night, did I just hear Diamond right?

I heard "I think we might have 50 years left"

[Tom Joad]

1. so optimisitic.

[man4allcats]

8. Damn!

You beat me to it! ;-)

[XemaSab]

2. He's a poor scholar

I really don't like his books.

[JI7]

3. what don't you like about his books ?

i just finished the third chimpanzee and am looking forward to Guns, Germs, and Steel.

[XemaSab]

6. Too much supposition,

too few citations.

I think the moment he really lost me was his INSISTENCE in Collapse that the Easter Islanders cut down all their trees, when he also says there was a huge rat infestation at the time and they haven't found any viable seeds that weren't damaged by rats. Like, maybe the rats ate all the seeds and the trees couldn't regenerate? :shrug: Especially since a lot of the trees were palm trees, which aren't even really trees at all but big grasses, and almost worthless for wood.

A few holes like that and the good ship Diamond is looking pretty leaky.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

14. He's saying it was a combination of over-population and rodents

eating the few remaining seeds, and birds no longer coming to roost (because the trees were being cut down)...

All of these contributed to the forests demise. (btw, those palms were over 80 feet tall and 6ft around. completely useful as wood)

"Pollen records show that destruction of Easter's forests was well under way by the year 800, just a few centuries after the start of human settlement. Then charcoal from wood fires came to fill the sediment cores, while pollen of palms and other trees and woody shrubs decreased or disappeared, and pollen of the grasses that replaced the forest became more abundant. Not long after 1400 the palm finally became extinct, not only as a result of being chopped down but also because the now ubiquitous rats prevented its regeneration: of the dozens of preserved palm nuts discovered in caves on Easter, all had been chewed by rats and could no longer germinate. While the hauhau tree did not become extinct in Polynesian times, its numbers declined drastically until there weren't enough left to make ropes from. By the time Heyerdahl visited Easter, only a single, nearly dead toromiro tree remained on the island, and even that lone survivor has now disappeared. (Fortunately, the toromiro still grows in botanical gardens elsewhere.)

The fifteenth century marked the end not only for Easter's palm but for the forest itself. Its doom had been approaching as people cleared land to plant gardens; as they felled trees to build canoes, to transport and erect statues, and to burn; as rats devoured seeds; and probably as the native birds died out that had pollinated the trees' flowers and dispersed their fruit. The overall picture is among the most extreme examples of forest destruction anywhere in the world: the whole forest gone, and most of its tree species extinct.

The destruction of the island's animals was as extreme as that of the forest: without exception, every species of native land bird became extinct. Even shellfish were overexploited, until people had to settle for small sea snails instead of larger cowries. Porpoise bones disappeared abruptly from garbage heaps around 1500; no one could harpoon porpoises anymore, since the trees used for constructing the big seagoing canoes no longer existed. The colonies of more than half of the seabird species breeding on Easter or on its offshore islets were wiped out."

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/042.html

[XemaSab]

15. He just seems too happy on the cause and effect there...

I had a few problems with GG&S, but Collapse was badly written, badly edited, and I lost faith in what he was saying.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

16. his theory fits the archeology

I have problems with some of his other ideas, but these seems sound to me. :shrug:

[XemaSab]

17. All I'm saying

is that my bullshit detector was working overtime during that book. :P

[Viva_La_Revolution]

20. I'll read Collapse with mine turned on then.

:)

[Kiouni]

23. You'll like Collapse

a lot more then GGS, I did. He speaks much more from his personal experiences and not so academically.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

4. poor scholar how?

:shrug:

[brokensymmetry]

5. Probably about right.

A little global warming, some peak oil, a few wars...

Yeah, 50 years.

[hatrack]

7. Sheesh. Freakin' Pollyana.

Growth Rate Of Global CO2 Emissions Since 2000 Already Beyond IPCC Worst-Case Scenario - NAS
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x97306

IHT - Overall Chinese Environment Continues To Deteriorate Rapidly
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x97333

Biofuel Producers Unlikely To Meet Even Half Of Bush Targets - Dow Jones
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x97189

McConnell, Byrd Squarely Behind $35 Billion Federal Loan Proposal For More Coal Plants
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x97330

NOAA Spending Up To $4 Million On PR While Cutting $700K From Hurricane Research - Boston Globe
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x96911

Japan Meteorological Agency - Sea Temperature Rise Near Japan Nearly 3X 100-Year Average Increase
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x96608

New Scientist - Antarctic Surface Thaw "Most Significant In 30 Years"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x96623

And that's just the past week.

[Strelnikov_]

13. We have no leadership

As our fifth strand, we have to wonder why the kings and nobles failed to recognize and solve these seemingly obvious problems undermining their society. Their attention was evidently focused on their short-term concerns of enriching themselves, waging wars, erecting monuments, competing with each other, and extracting enough food from the human peasants to support all those activities. Like most leaders throughout human history, the Maya kings and nobles did not heed long-term problems, insofar as they perceived them.

. . .

Like Easter Island chiefs erecting ever larger statues, eventually crowned by pukao, and like Anasazi elites treating themselves to necklaces of 2000 turquoise beads, Maya kings sought to outdo each other with more and more impressive temples, covered with thicker and thicker plaster, reminiscent in turn of the extravagant conspicuous consumption by modern American CEO's. The passivity of Easter chiefs and Maya kings in the face of the real big threats to their societies completes our list of disquieting parallels.

From Chapt. 5, 'The Maya Collapses', from 'Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed’ by Jared Diamond

[ProgressiveFool]

9. Is that the Subway guy? nt

[Viva_La_Revolution]

11. nope - evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer and nonfiction author.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond

He introduced some really new ideas in Guns, Germs and Steel.

[Bucky]

10. Breathe. Relax. He was making a joke.

His larger point was that we could go the way of the Mayans, which only a fool would dispute. But if you're familiar with Diamond and his theses about civilizations, you'll know he's hardly a doomsayer or a nihilist or a determinist. Citing "fifty years" was a stab at humor. The things that could hurt are society are all variables that we as a nation and as a civilization control by our policy choices.

The point here is to get involved, not to panic or start drinking up all those vintage wine bottles you've been saving.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

12. whew. I was hoping it was a joke...

I haven't read Collapse yet, so I'm glad to hear it's not analogy for OUR collapse.
Thanks.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

18. On second thought... perhaps he wasn't joking...

Every day newspapers report details of famished countries-Afghanistan, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, Zaire-where soldiers have appropriated the wealth or where central government is yielding to local gangs of thugs. With the risk of nuclear war receding, the threat of our ending with a bang no longer has a chance of galvanizing us to halt our course. Our risk now is of winding down, slowly, in a whimper. Corrective action is blocked by vested interests, by well-intentioned political and business leaders, and by their electorates, all of whom are perfectly correct in not noticing big changes from year to year. Instead, each year there are just somewhat more people, and somewhat fewer resources, on Earth. It would be easy to close our eyes or to give up in despair. If mere thousands of Easter Islanders with only stone tools and their own muscle power sufficed to destroy their society, how can billions of people with metal tools and machine power fail to do worse? But there is one crucial difference. The Easter Islanders had no books and no histories of other doomed societies. Unlike the Easter Islanders, we have histories of the past-information that can save us. My main hope for my sons' generation is that we may now choose to learn from the fates of societies like Easter's.
August 1995
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/042.html

[Kiouni]

19. What was he on the show for?

I like that guy but he gives pretty boring lectures. He's an excellent author. Didn't know he was into global warming studies though. Most of his books have been on small scale environment disasters and he hasn't put out anything recently as far as I know.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

21. He was the Guest on The Colbert Report

It was good, and he was even a little funny. Comedy Central has the clip up if you're interested. :)
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_colbert_report/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml

[Kiouni]

22. Thanks, but

kind of late for an interview about this book his collapse book is even in paperback already.