Dave Fernig @DaveFernig@social.cleverlibre.org

Accidental attacks should be met with accidental counterattacks, article 5.420.

@DaveFernig @peterbrown @ClimateHuman Um, archaeologist who studied climate change impacts here -- and that is absolutely NOT what we say.

Yes, individual polities have been decimated by climatic events, and many historical crises have an environmental component. (I myself have made that exact case regarding the role of megadrought in the rapid decline of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.)

But as nearly any archaeologist who is versed in the subject will tell you, "collapse" is kind of a meaningless and badly-defined term. There are literally dozens of articles and books out there which explicitly lay out WHY "collapse" is a bad term, because it creates the false impression of a total destruction that almost never happens. (Karl Butzer's PNAS piece is a great introduction to that literature: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1114845109)

Case in point, for example: obviously the *polity* of the Roman Empire is dead and gone. But is Roman culture really "dead" when the Latin language, Roman philosophical and legal ideas, Roman iconographies of power, Roman religion (at least from the later Empire), Roman architectural style, and so on, are very much still with us? Even the word "empire" is itself a Roman term still in use today (just like the titles "kaiser" and "tsar" were in fact direct continuations of "Caesar"). So is Roman culture and/or Roman "civilization" (whatever that means) actually "dead," or not? Well, that kinda depends on who you ask, and how you define "dead".

Anyway, my point is this: polities come and go, sure. But "cultures" rarely die unless they are actively killed by other human cultures (as in the case of Spain's brutal colonial conquest of the so-called "New World", for example). And even in those cases, at least some cultural habits or preferences tend to stubbornly cling to life in the new sociopolitical order.

@s3nnacherib @DaveFernig @peterbrown @ClimateHuman

Hi Adam, complicated topic! I think I agree with most of what you said.

Defining collapse is tough. One of the things I find ironic, is most of the "collapses" we see archaeologically are a collapse in elite material culture, yet elites think they might escape modern climate change

I need to time in my life, because Id love to write more on that!

@s3nnacherib @DaveFernig @peterbrown @ClimateHuman

i personally think archaeology and history is very relevant to our own moment, but at the same time (as usual) our own moment is unique. So, it won't provide direct answers, but perhaps a larger context with which to understand our world and the potential impact of the decisions we make

i certainly think it goes to show that we won't "science" ourselves out of this. It's a cultural shift we need, if we will get out of this intact

@peterbrown @s3nnacherib @ClimateHuman @FlintDibble @DaveFernig
So yes, it’s a culture thing. And the cultural perception has to change from “We don’t want to deal with this, it’s too expensive and it’s too late anyway,” to “Holy shit, why did we waste half a century? We need to get cracking on this NOW, and no expense is too great vs annihilation.”
Or something like that.

@ArdentArchivist @FlintDibble @DaveFernig @peterbrown @ClimateHuman Do you mean a paradigm shift about how we think about historical climate change impacts, specifically? (Or relatedly, how the past informs our thinking about the modern climate crisis?)

@FlintDibble @DaveFernig @peterbrown @ClimateHuman Hah, yeah... it's funny how that works, isn't it? Almost like they don't realize how dependent they are on the rest of the rest of the world... 😏

And yeah, collapse is SUPER complicated. But it's *definitely* not the sort of straightforward, monocausal nonsense Jared Diamond depicts in his book (which is sadly way more influential than it should be because it's... not great).

@ClimateHuman @peterbrown @s3nnacherib @FlintDibble @DaveFernig
How the past informs our thinking is of vital importance, you’re right, but my thinking was much more basic: too many people are too ignorant of the problems (and solutions), and of those who aren’t, too many are burying their heads in the sand. Humanity wants to continue the status quo, but Mother Nature has other ideas. We must accept that & act.

A photo of an engineer wiring an early IBM computer, 1958 by Berenice Abbott.

@davidallengreen I'm sure you've also been made aware of the Norwegian Dag = day

But hey, it has marketing potential: "Det er klart som dagen" = clear as day = clear as if DAG were to explain something?

"If you hate watching a billionaire destroy the place you live online, wait till you hear what they’re up to with planet earth."
- Meghna Jayanth

The message is simple
“Stop pumping sh*t into our waterways”.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/13/raw-deal-discontent-is-rising-as-water-companies-pump-sewage-into-uk-waters?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

PRAGUE EXPRESS…. Checked in for the 09:31 Eurostar to Paris, en route to the European Rail Tourism Awards in Prague. Eurostar started running from the newly-rebuilt St Pancras on 14 November 2007 - 15 years ago today.

@ClimateHuman I agree totally, however I think that exponential curve is flattening. And since it is cumulative it’ll take a long time to go back down again.

The people on the bird site were aghast that we thought it cool these LED dance poles were powered by Raspberry Pi.

We got in a lot of trouble. It was most unexcellent.

Are Pi-powered poles cool here?

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/polefx-livens-up-acrobatic-dance-with-raspberry-pi-magpi-123/

So far, 27 years of COP meetings have been a complete failure; you can't argue with physics. Anyone saying otherwise has fossil fuels or books to sell. #EmergencyMode

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