EcoAlert: "Climate Change Dictated Fate of Easter Island" --Is it a Message for the Planet?

 

          

Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.  “We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island," he says.

If past is prolgue, 70,000 years ago the human population was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis by researchers at Stanford University. The estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA." Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. 

The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal. The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.

The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently. Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: 

"Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction." Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Frank Fenner, emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University (ANU), says homo sapiens will not be able to survive the population explosion and “unbridled consumption,” and will become extinct, perhaps within a century, along with many other species. United Nations official figures from last year estimate the human population is 6.8 billion, and is predicted to pass seven billion next year.

Fenner told The Australian he tries not to express his pessimism because people are trying to do something, but keep putting it off. He said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization (a period now known to scientists unofficially as the Anthropocene) rivals any effects of ice ages or comet impacts.

Fenner said that climate change is only at its beginning, but is likely to be the cause of our extinction. 
“We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island,” he said. More people means fewer resources, and Fenner predicts “there will be a lot more wars over food.”

Easter Island is famous for its massive stone statues. Polynesian people settled there, in what was then a pristine tropical island, around the middle of the first millennium AD. The population grew slowly at first and then exploded. As the population grew the forests were wiped out and all the tree animals became extinct, both with devastating consequences.

After about 1600 the civilization began to collapse, and had virtually disappeared by the mid-19th century. Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond said the parallels between what happened on Easter Island and what is occurring today on the planet as a whole are “chillingly obvious.”

While many scientists are also pessimistic, others are more optimistic. Among the latter is a colleague of Professor Fenner, retired professor Stephen Boyden, who said he still hopes awareness of the problems will rise and the required revolutionary changes will be made to achieve ecological sustainability.

“While there's a glimmer of hope, it's worth working to solve the problem. We have the scientific knowledge to do it but we don't have the political will,” Boyden said. 

The Daily Galaxy via Stanford University

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Comments

[Heber Rizzo]

I was about to say bullshit!...

but then I begun to understand the poor chap: he is getting old, money is scarce and he wants to keep his earnings somehow. And seeing that he can´t do good science anymore, well, then, he is adding to the gravy train of this AGW scam.

Yes, that explains all this BS.

[KSW]

just more neomalthusianism dressed up as science

[GD2]

The meek shall inherit the earth ,the strong shall escape to the stars.

[JW Frogen]

His owns examples disprove his theory, as we know humans did indeed survive the African climate disaster and though the civilization on Easter Island collapsed humans did not go extinct there, small groups survived and adapted without the aid of science.

We may be in for some very rough times but humans reveal an extrodinary ability to bounce back again and again and again.

[rabar]

73,000 years ago, the Toba volcano eruption in Sumatra triggered a cold millennium that merged into the beginning of our last ice age (peaking at the Last Glacial Maximum, 25,000-15,000 years before the present). Some experts postulate that these two events pushed humans to the brink of near-extinction. See George Weber’s Toba Volcano - http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/originals/Weber-Toba/textr.htm
My own thoughts about this event are on the URL I posted:
http://www.raysender.com/maybebliss.html

[www.daleharvey.com]

Thanks Heber, KSW,GD2 and Rabar you are all correct!

While history does 'repeat' itself, there are huge differences in the advancement of Humankind now to when the first glimmers of civilization were advancing during the Stone Age. Truly we are in the midst of major Climate Change, but every single period of major Climate Change as recorded in the past has produced as many positive effects as negative extinction events. Some densely populated regions are almost surely going to experience increasing storms, turbulence, rising seas and drought to a crisis level.

Yet Climate Change will also open up many continental Polar Regions to advanced and permanent habitation. And many desert areas will once again become bountiful, green and verdant as they were in the past.

This ‘doomsday’ research seems to disregard the fact that during this ancient period of Climate Change-driven drought, the Polar Regions were covered in bountiful grasslands and forests; plus Sahara Desert and now barren regions of the Middle East were then the Biblical Garden of Eden!

[www.daleharvey.com]

It is true that Humankind is wasting valuable time as the building clouds of imminent Climate Change gather. But our Civilization is now much more advanced and Humankind is just beginning to advance into the Anthropogenic Era.

If we were to use Anthropological and Geological history as our yardstick to predict future trends, then we might assume that the dominating species entering a new Era should have a reign on Earth measured in millions of years, not thousands. Thus Humankind, as the newly developed dominant species is most surely only beginning to attain the throne. Our time has now come and truly we will advance across the Planet and then to the heavens above.

This is not the end, it is just the beginning.

To learn more about the remarkable History of Climate Change and what we can do about this in a very positive way, please visit www.daleharvey.com or www.daleharvey.co.nz Look for the Black Oak Tree logo and read 'Born This Way, A History of Life on Earth through Climate Change'.

Truly, this is not the end, it is just the beginning.

[Andrew]

Population pressures on Earth are a concern, but as JW Frogen pointed out above Professor Fenner's examples all resulted in "mere" dramatic population reductions rather than extinction. I see four ways to reduce the human population on Earth: the three Malthusian ways of war, disease, and famine, or the technological alternative of relocating a large part of the population. While there is hard work ahead, the latter is by far the most humane alternative. When implemented, this is also the alternative that best guarantees the survival of humanity. I'm with GD2 on this -- that the strong will go to the stars -- and I'm working to figure out how to make it happen.

[Francesco]

Aren't we a bit cynical?
Humanity will survive for sure, but if we don't act to better use earth resources, the cost will be staggering.
History prove that humanity can shrink to a small population then rebound, so we care nothing if billions of people will die?
It will be the law of the strongest again.
As for the star, we are technologically so much far away from that goal that we cannot dwell on that thought.
The earth and sun are the only provider of resources to keep us living, best stop to act like so many spoiled children.

[GD2]

@ andrew invest some of your money ( the grease on the wheel ) in space based technology . It doesn't matter how little or much spread what you have (or can afford) amongst as many as you can find . Put your skin in the game . NASA is broke and broken by near sighted morrons . ESA is a close second it's up to us to do the heavy lifting . Like Tyson says a few pennies is all it takes. Whether it's garmin or virgin or spacex .put up or stfu.

[abercrombie madrid]

Su propietaria ejemplos refutar su teoría, como sabemos los seres humanos, efectivamente, sobrevivir al desastre climático en África y aunque la civilización en la isla de Pascua se derrumbó seres humanos no se extinguieron allí, pequeños grupos sobrevivieron y sin necesidad de usar la ayuda de la ciencia.

Podemos estar en unos tiempos muy duros, pero los seres humanos muestran una capacidad de extrodinary a rebotar una y otra vez y otra vez.

[GD2]

There are 7 billions of us on earth now . if we all put in a .0001 of a penny in the kitty. we could refine the content of a neo in a few years .so far we haven't even napped a flint in space in fifty years . We need a space etf but so far no one has the vision not even a charlatan.Except perhaps those mars terra forming gravitywell bear trap guys.

[Bob Greenwade]

I agree that Dr. Fenner is way off base here. Others have pointed out several of the most significant holes in his theory, such as the more advanced technology we have these days and the hope for extraterrestrial colonization, so I won't belabor them here.

For myself, it's not just that humanity will shrink and then rebound (and Francesco's concern about that is well founded); rather, we'll be able to adjust according to the changing climate. Our growth may slow; we probably find ways to ship large numbers of people to live off-world; and, yes, large numbers of people will die uncomfortably, but not at the grand scale described by Dr. Fenner.

And certainly, we all need to do our part of conserve our resources, reduce our carbon emissions, and contribute to the search for colonization sites. We also need to contribute what we can to help those in vulnerable positions -- both Third World people, and the underprivileged at home -- to reduce the suffering that's going on right now, let alone what's likely to come when climate change really does become serious.

(And yes, I don't believe that it's that serious right now. As I've stated many before, geological records tell us that it's been worse several times within the past three to four millennia. We're just experiencing more of it now, because there are more of us to experience it.)

Somewhat in Dr. Fenner's defense, he's a virologist, not a climatologist, sociologist, or even futurist. I don't know that he even has much background in the broader field of "General Science." So, as when Dr. Stephen Hawking, a cosmologist, speaks on the topic of exosociology, it's understandable that he doesn't really know what he's talking about.

(The main reason I bother posting on multiple topic like this is that, as a science fiction novelist, I have to delve into researching *everything* to make the stories feel real. Even so I often get things wrong, as I discovered not two months after publishing, regarding the appearance of dinosaurs.)

[gkochanowsky]

Dr, Fenner is stating the obvious. I'm pretty sure the people at the height of Easter Island thought their technology conveyed some sort of invincibility on them as well. If humanity is ever to think of itself as immune from the limitation of planet Earth it will only be on the day that mankind had made itself independent of planet earth. And that day is a very long way off. So as a species we are in a race. Can a technical species with no restrictions on its population growth reach the ability to survive and thrive in the common environments found in reachable space before the inevitable crash from overpopulation?

[Gary D]

I call BS on the climate change deniers. You have to be pretty blinded by ideology not to see the evidence what unfettered corporations and too many humans are doing to the planet. I do think extinction is unlikely but an over 80% population die off and much of highest technology and resources gone will be disaster enough.

[DwarfGalaxy]

Again, I repeat, it's too late now. And the abuse towards the planet will still get worse, I'm afraid.

[Raj]

Our instinct for survival and fear of extinction color our arguments in favor of optimism. But the way nations prioritize their economic and political interests in short term over protection of environment, our extinction seems more likely.

The past climatic and other catastrophic events were largely localized in space and effect. That left some people alive, but now the whole planet gets impacted slowly but surely.

We focus our attention on population problem, which indeed is critical. But let us not forget unbridled commercialism and consumerism. UN data show that 70% of planet’s resources are consumed by 20% percent of humanity in the developed countries, while 80% of population in the developing and least developed countries use 30% of global resources. So head-count is not a complete picture of our problem.

Hence,we need to work collectively at both sets of issues to improve our chances of survival.

[Phillwill]

I don't understand why all the comments say that this article is wrong for this reason or that. New research from Nov of 2011 shows that our species has until 2035 until Climate Change kills us all. Yes, we do all live on Easter Island.

[Terry]

I notice that the mention of Jared Diamond here, his book 'Collapse, how societies choose to fail or survive' comes highly recomended or check out this free talk on TED http://www.ted.com/talks/jared_diamond_on_why_societies_collapse.html

There are examples of societies that solve their problems and survive long term. The societies/civilizations that fail to do so seem to be depressingly more numerous. Hope the global civilization turns out to be in the former category and remember it IS a choice. Protect the planet AND go into space, no reason we can't have our cake and eat it...

[JR]

For a clearer picture, stop thinking in terms of human politics. The question isn't whether technology will save us (it won't) or if politics will destroy us (they won't, not any more than other factors). Stop looking at the people holding all these different perspectives as self-aware autonomous beings. They are agents of genes, both genetic and cultural. The real question is whether the right genes are taking hold in a fashion that produces adaptive behavior. What set of traits does our society elevate to the top, and what does it silence? Are we elevating the right traits to the top to ensure our survival? Or is culture reinforcing negative traits to ensure our extinction? The only real way to engineer positive change in this situation is to look at ourselves as what we are: animals. It's kind of weird, but it's true.