Hi peoplez !!!

This iz very pertinent & most excellent !!!

Bookmark it or put it in your favorites for future reference or for
your children's children (if they make it through the coming
cataclysmic natural & man-made events, that iz !!!! )

HOOROO

UNCLE WALLY

----------

http://www.theglobalist.com/dbweb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4046

The Long Summer

By Brian Fagan | Wednesday, August 18, 2004

The entire history of civilization can be viewed as an intricate
series of challenges and responses involving changing eco-systems. As
Brian Fagan argues in "The Long Summer," humanity has chosen to trade
up -- accepting vulnerability to large climate stresses in exchange for
resistance to smaller ones.

Ultimately, the cause of global warming is only a side debate.



Unprecedented disasters

We live within the capsule of a global economy seemingly oblivious to
climatic events with the potential to kill thousands -- in a time when
human populations have exploded and cities are the dominant form of
human settlement.



We have become a supertanker among human societies -- and only a tiny
fraction of the people on board are engaged with tending the engines.




With the Industrial Revolution, we took a giant stride into an era in
which we are frighteningly exposed to potential cataclysm, enhanced by
our own seeming ability to warm the earth and increase the probability
of extreme climatic events.


The potential scale of disaster is almost unrecognizable in historical
terms. At least 20 million people died of hunger and famine-related
epidemics resulting from El Niņo/Southern Oscillations (ENSOs) and
droughts during the 19th century.



A world at risk

Today, over 200 million people live on agriculturally marginal lands
in northeastern Brazil, the Saharan Sahel, Ethiopia and many parts of
Asia.


Deforestation -- to the tune of about the acreage of Arizona annually

strips the earth bare. Millions of us dwell in high-rise buildings, in
suburban housing and slums in heavily industrialized cities that are
extremely vulnerable to the violent storm surges of hurricanes.



Imagining the future

Unlike the Cro-Magnons, the Chumash or even the Maya, we do not have
the option to move elsewhere. Today, the neighboring lands are filled
with our neighbors.



Climate has helped shape civilization -- but not by being benign.




What would happen, for example, if the Greenland ice sheet were to
release so much meltwater into the North Atlantic that the Gulf Stream
abruptly shut down -- just as it did in the Younger Dryas?


Would Europe be plunged into near-arctic conditions within a
generation or less? Where would the present inhabitants of
Scandinavia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, the Baltic
states and Russia go -- and what would they eat? There are scientists
who believe such a climactic switch is entirely possible.



Reality defies adaptability

Optimism assumes that we will adapt to this new, more vulnerable
world. We humans do indeed have a striking ability to adapt to
changing environmental circumstances.


Yet, optimism fades in the face of demographic reality. Of the six
billion of us who now inhabit the earth, hundreds of millions still
subsist from harvest to harvest, from rainy season to rainy season --
just as Stone Age and Bronze Age farmers did in Europe 5,000 years
ago.



Millions are barely surviving

Famine is a remote danger in Europe and North America, with their
industrial-scale agriculture and elaborate infrastructures for moving
food over long distances.



We can only imagine the death toll in a future era when climatic
swings may be faster, more extreme, and completely unpredictable
because of human interference with the atmosphere.




Subsistence farmers and city dwellers on other continents, however,
still live under the constant threat of hunger.


Every year, the media carry stories of famine and flood, of thousands
perishing quietly in northeast Africa or Bangladesh, while the world
remains oblivious. The numbers are hard for us to assimilate in the
prosperous, seemingly invulnerable West.


They will become harder still to comprehend if global temperatures
rise far above present levels, rising seas inundate densely populated
coastal plains and force millions of people to resettle inland -- or
far more severe droughts settle over the Sahel and less well-watered
parts of the world.



Broad and catastrophic consequences

We can only imagine the death toll in a future era when climatic
swings may be faster, more extreme -- and completely unpredictable
because of human interference with the atmosphere.


The millions who died in the Irish potato famine of the 1840s or the
tens of millions who died from the Indian monsoon failures of the late
19th century will pale to insignificance.



Surprise in a bombshell

Climate has helped shape civilization -- but not by being benign. The
unpredictable whims of the Holocene stressed human societies and
forced them to either adapt or perish.



Few of those in command believe the gathering clouds have any relation
to their fate -- or are concerned that there are lifeboats for only one
in ten passengers.




The collapses often came as a complete surprise to rulers and elites
who believed in royal infallibility and espoused rigid ideologies of
power.


There is no reason to assume that we have somehow escaped this shaping
process.


Agriculture is less visible to us now -- the number of people growing
food has shrunk from 90% of the labor force in Europe 500 years ago to
less then 3% in the United States today -- but we still need to eat.



More vulnerable by the day

And now our vulnerability extends far beyond just growing food. Our
crowded coastlines with densely packed high-rises and apartment
buildings, our communication and transport systems, our abstract
worlds of finance and scholarship and entertainment, are beholden to
the world's climate in ways both obvious and hidden.


Like many civilizations before us, we have simply traded up in scale,
accepting vulnerability to the big, rare disaster in exchange for a
better ability to handle the smaller, more common stresses -- such as
short-term droughts and exceptionally rainy years.



Widespread ignorance...

But if we have become a supertanker among human societies, it is an
oddly inattentive one.



Unlike Cro-Magnons, the Chumash or even the Maya, we do not have the
option to move elsewhere.




Only a tiny fraction of the people on board are engaged with tending
the engines.


The rest are buying and selling goods among themselves, entertaining
each other or studying the sky or the hydrodynamics of the hull. Those
on the bridge have no charts or weather forecasts -- and cannot even
agree that they are needed.



...and a fundamental lack of foresight

Indeed, the most powerful among them subscribe to a theory that says
storms do not exist, or if they do, their effects are entirely benign
-- and the steepening swells and fleeing albatrosses can only be taken
as a sign of divine favor.


Few of those in command believe the gathering clouds have any relation
to their fate or are concerned that there are lifeboats for only one
in ten passengers. And no one dares to whisper in the helmsman's ear
that he might consider turning the wheel.


Adapted from The Long Summer by Brian Fagan, pp.250-252.

=================
HOOROO

UNCLE WALLY

-----

Hi peoplez !!!

This iz very pertinent & most excellent !!!

Bookmark it or put it in your favorites for future reference or for
your children's children (if they make it through the coming
cataclysmic natural & man-made events, that iz !!!! )

HOOROO

UNCLE WALLY

----------

http://www.theglobalist.com/dbweb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3D4046

The Long Summer

By Brian Fagan | Wednesday, August 18, 2004

The entire history of civilization can be viewed as an intricate
series of challenges and responses involving changing eco-systems. As
Brian Fagan argues in "The Long Summer," humanity has chosen to trade
up -- accepting vulnerability to large climate stresses in exchange for
resistance to smaller ones.

Ultimately, the cause of global warming is only a side debate.

Unprecedented disasters

We live within the capsule of a global economy seemingly oblivious to
climatic events with the potential to kill thousands -- in a time when
human populations have exploded and cities are the dominant form of
human settlement.

We have become a supertanker among human societies -- and only a tiny
fraction of the people on board are engaged with tending the engines.

With the Industrial Revolution, we took a giant stride into an era in
which we are frighteningly exposed to potential cataclysm, enhanced by
our own seeming ability to warm the earth and increase the probability
of extreme climatic events.

The potential scale of disaster is almost unrecognizable in historical
terms. At least 20 million people died of hunger and famine-related
epidemics resulting from El Ni=C3=B1o/Southern Oscillations (ENSOs) and
droughts during the 19th century.

A world at risk

Today, over 200 million people live on agriculturally marginal lands
in northeastern Brazil, the Saharan Sahel, Ethiopia and many parts of
Asia.

Deforestation -- to the tune of about the acreage of Arizona annually --
strips the earth bare. Millions of us dwell in high-rise buildings, in
suburban housing and slums in heavily industrialized cities that are
extremely vulnerable to the violent storm surges of hurricanes.

Imagining the future

Unlike the Cro-Magnons, the Chumash or even the Maya, we do not have
the option to move elsewhere. Today, the neighboring lands are filled
with our neighbors.

Climate has helped shape civilization -- but not by being benign.

What would happen, for example, if the Greenland ice sheet were to
release so much meltwater into the North Atlantic that the Gulf Stream
abruptly shut down -- just as it did in the Younger Dryas?

Would Europe be plunged into near-arctic conditions within a
generation or less? Where would the present inhabitants of
Scandinavia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, the Baltic
states and Russia go -- and what would they eat? There are scientists
who believe such a climactic switch is entirely possible.

Reality defies adaptability

Optimism assumes that we will adapt to this new, more vulnerable
world. We humans do indeed have a striking ability to adapt to
changing environmental circumstances.

Yet, optimism fades in the face of demographic reality. Of the six
billion of us who now inhabit the earth, hundreds of millions still
subsist from harvest to harvest, from rainy season to rainy season --
just as Stone Age and Bronze Age farmers did in Europe 5,000 years
ago.

Millions are barely surviving

Famine is a remote danger in Europe and North America, with their
industrial-scale agriculture and elaborate infrastructures for moving
food over long distances.

We can only imagine the death toll in a future era when climatic
swings may be faster, more extreme, and completely unpredictable
because of human interference with the atmosphere.

Subsistence farmers and city dwellers on other continents, however,
still live under the constant threat of hunger.

Every year, the media carry stories of famine and flood, of thousands
perishing quietly in northeast Africa or Bangladesh, while the world
remains oblivious. The numbers are hard for us to assimilate in the
prosperous, seemingly invulnerable West.

They will become harder still to comprehend if global temperatures
rise far above present levels, rising seas inundate densely populated
coastal plains and force millions of people to resettle inland -- or
far more severe droughts settle over the Sahel and less well-watered
parts of the world.

Broad and catastrophic consequences

We can only imagine the death toll in a future era when climatic
swings may be faster, more extreme -- and completely unpredictable
because of human interference with the atmosphere.

The millions who died in the Irish potato famine of the 1840s or the
tens of millions who died from the Indian monsoon failures of the late
19th century will pale to insignificance.

Surprise in a bombshell

Climate has helped shape civilization -- but not by being benign. The
unpredictable whims of the Holocene stressed human societies and
forced them to either adapt or perish.

Few of those in command believe the gathering clouds have any relation
to their fate -- or are concerned that there are lifeboats for only one
in ten passengers.

The collapses often came as a complete surprise to rulers and elites
who believed in royal infallibility and espoused rigid ideologies of
power.

There is no reason to assume that we have somehow escaped this shaping
process.

Agriculture is less visible to us now -- the number of people growing
food has shrunk from 90% of the labor force in Europe 500 years ago to
less then 3% in the United States today -- but we still need to eat.

More vulnerable by the day

And now our vulnerability extends far beyond just growing food. Our
crowded coastlines with densely packed high-rises and apartment
buildings, our communication and transport systems, our abstract
worlds of finance and scholarship and entertainment, are beholden to
the world's climate in ways both obvious and hidden.

Like many civilizations before us, we have simply traded up in scale,
accepting vulnerability to the big, rare disaster in exchange for a
better ability to handle the smaller, more common stresses -- such as
short-term droughts and exceptionally rainy years.

Widespread ignorance...

But if we have become a supertanker among human societies, it is an
oddly inattentive one.

Unlike Cro-Magnons, the Chumash or even the Maya, we do not have the
option to move elsewhere.

Only a tiny fraction of the people on board are engaged with tending
the engines.

The rest are buying and selling goods among themselves, entertaining
each other or studying the sky or the hydrodynamics of the hull. Those
on the bridge have no charts or weather forecasts -- and cannot even
agree that they are needed.

...and a fundamental lack of foresight

Indeed, the most powerful among them subscribe to a theory that says
storms do not exist, or if they do, their effects are entirely benign
-- and the steepening swells and fleeing albatrosses can only be taken
as a sign of divine favor.

Few of those in command believe the gathering clouds have any relation
to their fate or are concerned that there are lifeboats for only one
in ten passengers. And no one dares to whisper in the helmsman's ear
that he might consider turning the wheel.

Adapted from The Long Summer by Brian Fagan, pp.250-252.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

HOOROO

UNCLE WALLY

-----

Hi peoplez !!!

This iz very pertinent & most excellent !!!

Bookmark it or put it in your favorites for future reference or for
your children's children (if they make it through the coming
cataclysmic natural & man-made events, that iz !!!! )

HOOROO

UNCLE WALLY

----------

http://www.theglobalist.com/dbweb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3D4046

The Long Summer

By Brian Fagan | Wednesday, August 18, 2004

The entire history of civilization can be viewed as an intricate
series of challenges and responses involving changing eco-systems. As
Brian Fagan argues in "The Long Summer," humanity has chosen to trade
up -- accepting vulnerability to large climate stresses in exchange for
resistance to smaller ones.

Ultimately, the cause of global warming is only a side debate.

Unprecedented disasters

We live within the capsule of a global economy seemingly oblivious to
climatic events with the potential to kill thousands -- in a time when
human populations have exploded and cities are the dominant form of
human settlement.

We have become a supertanker among human societies -- and only a tiny
fraction of the people on board are engaged with tending the engines.

With the Industrial Revolution, we took a giant stride into an era in
which we are frighteningly exposed to potential cataclysm, enhanced by
our own seeming ability to warm the earth and increase the probability
of extreme climatic events.

The potential scale of disaster is almost unrecognizable in historical
terms. At least 20 million people died of hunger and famine-related
epidemics resulting from El Ni=C3=B1o/Southern Oscillations (ENSOs) and
droughts during the 19th century.

A world at risk

Today, over 200 million people live on agriculturally marginal lands
in northeastern Brazil, the Saharan Sahel, Ethiopia and many parts of
Asia.

Deforestation -- to the tune of about the acreage of Arizona annually --
strips the earth bare. Millions of us dwell in high-rise buildings, in
suburban housing and slums in heavily industrialized cities that are
extremely vulnerable to the violent storm surges of hurricanes.

Imagining the future

Unlike the Cro-Magnons, the Chumash or even the Maya, we do not have
the option to move elsewhere. Today, the neighboring lands are filled
with our neighbors.

Climate has helped shape civilization -- but not by being benign.

What would happen, for example, if the Greenland ice sheet were to
release so much meltwater into the North Atlantic that the Gulf Stream
abruptly shut down -- just as it did in the Younger Dryas?

Would Europe be plunged into near-arctic conditions within a
generation or less? Where would the present inhabitants of
Scandinavia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Poland, the Baltic
states and Russia go -- and what would they eat? There are scientists
who believe such a climactic switch is entirely possible.

Reality defies adaptability

Optimism assumes that we will adapt to this new, more vulnerable
world. We humans do indeed have a striking ability to adapt to
changing environmental circumstances.

Yet, optimism fades in the face of demographic reality. Of the six
billion of us who now inhabit the earth, hundreds of millions still
subsist from harvest to harvest, from rainy season to rainy season --
just as Stone Age and Bronze Age farmers did in Europe 5,000 years
ago.

Millions are barely surviving

Famine is a remote danger in Europe and North America, with their
industrial-scale agriculture and elaborate infrastructures for moving
food over long distances.

We can only imagine the death toll in a future era when climatic
swings may be faster, more extreme, and completely unpredictable
because of human interference with the atmosphere.

Subsistence farmers and city dwellers on other continents, however,
still live under the constant threat of hunger.

Every year, the media carry stories of famine and flood, of thousands
perishing quietly in northeast Africa or Bangladesh, while the world
remains oblivious. The numbers are hard for us to assimilate in the
prosperous, seemingly invulnerable West.

They will become harder still to comprehend if global temperatures
rise far above present levels, rising seas inundate densely populated
coastal plains and force millions of people to resettle inland -- or
far more severe droughts settle over the Sahel and less well-watered
parts of the world.

Broad and catastrophic consequences

We can only imagine the death toll in a future era when climatic
swings may be faster, more extreme -- and completely unpredictable
because of human interference with the atmosphere.

The millions who died in the Irish potato famine of the 1840s or the
tens of millions who died from the Indian monsoon failures of the late
19th century will pale to insignificance.

Surprise in a bombshell

Climate has helped shape civilization -- but not by being benign. The
unpredictable whims of the Holocene stressed human societies and
forced them to either adapt or perish.

Few of those in command believe the gathering clouds have any relation
to their fate -- or are concerned that there are lifeboats for only one
in ten passengers.

The collapses often came as a complete surprise to rulers and elites
who believed in royal infallibility and espoused rigid ideologies of
power.

There is no reason to assume that we have somehow escaped this shaping
process.

Agriculture is less visible to us now -- the number of people growing
food has shrunk from 90% of the labor force in Europe 500 years ago to
less then 3% in the United States today -- but we still need to eat.

More vulnerable by the day

And now our vulnerability extends far beyond just growing food. Our
crowded coastlines with densely packed high-rises and apartment
buildings, our communication and transport systems, our abstract
worlds of finance and scholarship and entertainment, are beholden to
the world's climate in ways both obvious and hidden.

Like many civilizations before us, we have simply traded up in scale,
accepting vulnerability to the big, rare disaster in exchange for a
better ability to handle the smaller, more common stresses -- such as
short-term droughts and exceptionally rainy years.

Widespread ignorance...

But if we have become a supertanker among human societies, it is an
oddly inattentive one.

Unlike Cro-Magnons, the Chumash or even the Maya, we do not have the
option to move elsewhere.

Only a tiny fraction of the people on board are engaged with tending
the engines.

The rest are buying and selling goods among themselves, entertaining
each other or studying the sky or the hydrodynamics of the hull. Those
on the bridge have no charts or weather forecasts -- and cannot even
agree that they are needed.

...and a fundamental lack of foresight

Indeed, the most powerful among them subscribe to a theory that says
storms do not exist, or if they do, their effects are entirely benign
-- and the steepening swells and fleeing albatrosses can only be taken
as a sign of divine favor.

Few of those in command believe the gathering clouds have any relation
to their fate or are concerned that there are lifeboats for only one
in ten passengers. And no one dares to whisper in the helmsman's ear
that he might consider turning the wheel.

Adapted from The Long Summer by Brian Fagan, pp.250-252.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

HOOROO

UNCLE WALLY

-----