H.Crispa, interesting, the Mars info.
There's been some speculation among classical linguists, of all folk, that the sun may have long-term cycles.
Your settlements in Greenland were set down just before the Little Ice Age---when the Little Ice Age began, they failed and left the remnants of their buildings. This, again, may be due to a volcanic eruption, but a really big one. Can't recall which.
On the classical linguist front: there's a periodicity in European invasions. Every 500 years, give or take, the barbarians would come howling out of the steppes or wherever, and civilization would get invaded. Eventually civilization learned to fight off the invaders [we call this period the Roman Empire] and then, again, civilization went down in a period of weakness. 2000 bc, wave A indoeuropeans break into Greece; 1500 bc, minoa goes down; 1000 bc, wave b invaders enter Greece, Trojan War, etc; 500 bc, Celts invade Rome; 0, Rome invades Celts, who are wreaking havoc in the north and threatening to upset the applecart; 500 ad, Rome goes down. 1000 ad, Normans; 1500 ad, well, we're getting close to the black death and a nasty period and the Little Ice Age. 2000...the north pole melts.
What tended to happen, according to this theory, was a weather disruption, be it El Nino cycles, whatever, that result from solar instability, and both agriculture and nomadic cultures take a hit. The reason that the barbarians kept invading the south was that the grasslands were going dry, and the tougher barbarians would kick the weaker ones south, taking their land. This happened until Rome knocked heads; and then when Rome couldn't sustain its northern border against a particularly bad set of their own management and a nasty lot of horse-equipped, much higher-tech barbarians, they collapsed. They rode through the one in 0 by having the ability to ship food to areas of scarcity. But they couldn't get it organized in 500. And then we have the nice Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, who had their own cycles of boom, bust, and invasion.
It's an interesting theory. Some data bears it out. It's unrelated to the thermohaline conveyor, in the sense that the only data on it comes after the last time the conveyor collapsed, but then again, we could be the recipient of a triple-witching-hour event, in which our overuse of fossil fuels runs bang up against 500 year event...
I agree with you that the planet tends to correct itself. The middle of the path of the correction tends to be an uncomfortable place to be.
But we tend to squeak through, as a species; and I'm not a pessimist at all. What I tend to think we're courting is a Little Ice Age event, not a major one. That will challenge our inventiveness, but not be a global catastrophe. If one really big volcano goes off at this point, as they do at random, [the Europeans of the day were living under a pall of wood smoke and cutting down the forests hand over fist, plus 'charcoaling' wood for more portability, before something blew in the south Pacific in their day] we just might see interesting times ourselves. The conveyor might stutter, and then we'll run ourselves ragged trying to figure out how to fix it.
And personally, I remember the skies before smog took over, [it's not THAT long ago] and I have hopes I'll see the Milky Way in city outskirts again. I like technology: I'm first in line for new whizbangs. I just want what's coming to be more efficient than the 1920's gas engine.
There's been some speculation among classical linguists, of all folk, that the sun may have long-term cycles.
Your settlements in Greenland were set down just before the Little Ice Age---when the Little Ice Age began, they failed and left the remnants of their buildings. This, again, may be due to a volcanic eruption, but a really big one. Can't recall which.
On the classical linguist front: there's a periodicity in European invasions. Every 500 years, give or take, the barbarians would come howling out of the steppes or wherever, and civilization would get invaded. Eventually civilization learned to fight off the invaders [we call this period the Roman Empire] and then, again, civilization went down in a period of weakness. 2000 bc, wave A indoeuropeans break into Greece; 1500 bc, minoa goes down; 1000 bc, wave b invaders enter Greece, Trojan War, etc; 500 bc, Celts invade Rome; 0, Rome invades Celts, who are wreaking havoc in the north and threatening to upset the applecart; 500 ad, Rome goes down. 1000 ad, Normans; 1500 ad, well, we're getting close to the black death and a nasty period and the Little Ice Age. 2000...the north pole melts.
What tended to happen, according to this theory, was a weather disruption, be it El Nino cycles, whatever, that result from solar instability, and both agriculture and nomadic cultures take a hit. The reason that the barbarians kept invading the south was that the grasslands were going dry, and the tougher barbarians would kick the weaker ones south, taking their land. This happened until Rome knocked heads; and then when Rome couldn't sustain its northern border against a particularly bad set of their own management and a nasty lot of horse-equipped, much higher-tech barbarians, they collapsed. They rode through the one in 0 by having the ability to ship food to areas of scarcity. But they couldn't get it organized in 500. And then we have the nice Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, who had their own cycles of boom, bust, and invasion.
It's an interesting theory. Some data bears it out. It's unrelated to the thermohaline conveyor, in the sense that the only data on it comes after the last time the conveyor collapsed, but then again, we could be the recipient of a triple-witching-hour event, in which our overuse of fossil fuels runs bang up against 500 year event...
I agree with you that the planet tends to correct itself. The middle of the path of the correction tends to be an uncomfortable place to be.
But we tend to squeak through, as a species; and I'm not a pessimist at all. What I tend to think we're courting is a Little Ice Age event, not a major one. That will challenge our inventiveness, but not be a global catastrophe. If one really big volcano goes off at this point, as they do at random, [the Europeans of the day were living under a pall of wood smoke and cutting down the forests hand over fist, plus 'charcoaling' wood for more portability, before something blew in the south Pacific in their day] we just might see interesting times ourselves. The conveyor might stutter, and then we'll run ourselves ragged trying to figure out how to fix it.
And personally, I remember the skies before smog took over, [it's not THAT long ago] and I have hopes I'll see the Milky Way in city outskirts again. I like technology: I'm first in line for new whizbangs. I just want what's coming to be more efficient than the 1920's gas engine.
lol
Soon very soon.
