From: Christophe Mckeon Date: 2009-04-23T23:57:59+09:00 Subject: Re: Goodbye Ruby - Hello Earth ok, somebody got pretty peeved at me and listed my IP with spambag.org which is a pretty funny name for an RBL, however i am not a spambag, and consider that to be fairly low blow (although harmless as i can easily change my IP), when i am hardly the only poster on this very lively thread, and had no warning. btw one person in private correspondence has indicated to me a major change in the direction of their lives, so it may not be as OT as is assumed. in any case this is 100% the last message from me on this thread, i promise. so if you argue further you will just be aggravating an itch i won't be able to scratch :) > Phlip wrote > For every civilization that failed, it grew at a sustainable rate until > it created a positive population effluence. so you are saying that population is a problem? if so then we are in agreement. > And every one of those failures happened because of a change in the > climate. again, climate is one of the forces i was talking about. but that misses the point. it is not change in climate that kills off civilizations, it is how resilient their agricultural systems are when the climate happens to change. deforestation & monoculture lead to salinity, poor water retention, localized draught, desertification, soil erosion, ecological poverty, etc... > Rome collapsed not because of overpopulation or high taxes or > Christianity > or any historical revisionism like that; it collapsed because a volcano > in > the India Ocean created a series of long winters. The global > agricultural > bases collapsed. of course rome collapsed over a long period of time, hundreds of years in fact, there were volcanic eruptions, barbarian invasions, etc... it did not do so within the course of a few bad winters, that's just bad history. in fact soil erosion and infertile land was one of the major forces in the demise of rome. at the start of the empire farming was respected and even noblemen were proud to be farmers. farms were small about 2-5 acres and proper husbandry was taken seriously. even with small scale careful farming practices however erosion was already a problem sometimes even causing outbreaks of diseases due to clogged waterways. by the end of the empire as it descended into decadence, the farms had become huge slave labour driven monstrosities which tried to squeeze every last drop of cash out of the land disregarding proper husbandry and soil fertility was severely affected. small scale farmers were driven off their land and a few city-dwelling fat cats made all the profits at the expense of everyone else and the health of the land (sounds familiar). rome had lost her main source of energy, her agriculture, and hence her resilience against the volcanoes, the droughts, etc... if you want to truly understand what you are talking about i suggest reading the book 'dirt, the erosion of civilizations'. > Historically, civilizations did not collapse because they despoiled > their > environments. That's a relatively new phenomenon. nonsense. soil erosion due to agriculture has been a major detriment to the health of civilizations since the bronze ages. soil erosion from bronze age agriculture was even correctly identified by aristotle, almost 3000 years after the fact, and of course 2000+ years ago. an example of deforestation as recorded in ancient literature can be found in the epic of gilgamesh where he cuts down wood from the cedar forests of iraq. that story is almost 5000 years old. when's the last time you saw cedar forests in iraq? > Oh, and the Inka civilization in the Andes collapsed from a smallpox > plague... yes the incas were destroyed by european diseases amongst other causes largely brought on by europe. europe was of course plundering away in the search for resources. > Jon A. Lambert wrote > ... find 400 species of critters, they maintain 800 species have gone > extinct. I simplify, but not by much. the problem is that all the land is being cleared. so in you opinion, where did the critters run, mars? > Look I'm a conservationist, a bird watcher, and a nature lover as well. right, well in my brainwashed state, call it misguided humility if you will, i'll go with the *majority* opinion of biologists and their collective junk science, thanks, and if i want to build a nuclear missile i'll speak to some PHDs in physics, not my local model rocket club. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.