Originally Posted by Justin '77

I was wondering when someone would decide to toss this one up and see if it sticks.

Here's a little graphic for you, in response.




You'll note, perhaps, that both in number (число) and area (площадь), 2010 is hardly a stand-out year for forest fires in Russia's 11 timezones. They make a big deal this year primarily because of the proximity this time to the capitol.

And here's another fun picture for you:

Moscow and eastern Russia are warm; Central Asia, on the other hand, is having a hell of a cold summer. Then again, so are we out here in the Pac NW.

But yeah; whatever. Weather is not climate, except when AGW-fanatics want to prove a point, right?

And as for the now-falling-off global temp finally crossing an upward-trending 'dotted line' some people drew on a graph years ago... the fact that a stopped clock is right periodically has little bearing at all on it's utility as a timepiece.

1. Forest fires reflect either droughts or serial arsonists. if the FSB busted some serial arsonist in April who has since gone through the criminal justice system and sent to a place where access to a combination of matches, kindling, and a forest is unlikely... well, that can explain much. if people are taking warnings that read

"NO CAMPFIRES TODAY DUE TO EXTREME FIRE DANGER"

... however that translates, then forest fires lose some of the cause.

2. Anomalies in a place may reflect a local chilling or a local heat wave due to the passage of a frontal boundary. Temperatures can change rapidly even during the summer, but not as much as during a winter.

Here's a local observation: where I live, winter weather typically ends in April. We usually get one very heavy snowstorm in early April, and often the severest snowstorm of the year as sultry air juiced with water vapor is squeezed out as it meets a cold wave from the Arctic. Our last spring snowstorm came in the winter, which really is odd. Late April was unseasonably hot -- not warm -- hot.

Justin must have forgotten that so far this has been the hottest year on record, localized cool areas notwithstanding. But please, keep spouting the lies invented by the Oil and Coal industries...

Originally Posted by Justin '77

But yeah; whatever. Weather is not climate, except when AGW-fanatics want to prove a point, right?

Um... I would count the charts you posted as 'weather.' Have you suddenly become an AGW fanatic?

The NY Times reviews two books, one, Weather of the Future, extrapolates a warming future. The other, The Climate Wars, reviews the recent politics. Weather of the Future is focused less on rebutting denialists, but focuses more on detailing the effects of inaction. The Climate Wars digs into the mechanics behind the politics going nowhere.

For discussion purposes...

“In their least guarded moments,” Mr. Pooley writes, “the climate campaigners would tell you what they had always known in their bones: their work was necessary but not sufficient. Climate action was going to happen sooner or later, but they couldn’t make it happen. It might be inevitable — the true believers still believed it was — but it would only become real when enough people demanded it and shouted down the lobbyists and the professional deniers and demanded it again. Alexis de Tocqueville long ago said that in the United States, events ‘can move from the impossible to the inevitable without ever stopping at the probable.’ Was that still true? How bad did things need to get before the moment came? Would the prospect of a clean-energy economy, and the jobs it would bring, mobilize enough people to make a difference? Or would some sort of monstrous, galvanic weather event — epic heat and drought, Katrina on steroids — be needed to shake America fully awake?”

Originally Posted by Odin

Justin must have forgotten that so far this has been the hottest year on record, localized cool areas notwithstanding.

"localized" cool areas like.. 3/4 of the continental USA? At least, according to NOAA...

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Um... I would count the charts you posted as 'weather.' Have you suddenly become an AGW fanatic?

Nah. Odin just decided he wanted to argue weather, so I was trying to be accommodating. I'm sure once wintertime rolls back around, he'll toss weather to the side and return to his old fallback.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

"localized" cool areas like.. 3/4 of the continental USA? At least, according to NOAA...

Here is another short term map showing variations from norm...

Temperature anomaly at 1000 hPa during the first half of January 2010
with respect to the period 1968-1996. Warm anomalies in the Arctic and
cold anomalies in Northern Europe and parts of North America are clearly
visible.

One point... if you cherry pick which part of the globe you look at, short term weather patterns let you choose any trend you'd like to show. Here, we have obvious warm and cool trends in different parts of the world.

Second, global warming predicts over all changes on the order of two degrees per century... or point zero two degrees a year. Picking out the .02 degrees from true climate change from the 10 degrees of weather randomness isn't a task to be done by guesswork just glancing at a map.

Especially when strong values are involved. Someone with strong values will cherry pick his data then see what he wants to see.

For example, in the first map, the yellows oranges and reds seem to my eye to cover roughly half the map. I do not see the greens and blues covering 3/4s of the map. Values do effect perception.

Has Russia's Heat Wave Changed Stance on Climate Change?

Perhaps this is not the right part of the forum to ask this question, since it did not elicit a response yet and has slipped into the archives, but I'll try this one more time because I'm really interested in folks' thoughts on this matter. Here's the question, pasted from p. 73:

Jared Diamond's book, Collapse, provides a much more cogent analysis [than the Fourth Turning] of the ups and downs of any given culture simply because it provides a framework that is much more testable and anchored in the real world. I am drawn to the whole concept of zeitgeist, which seems very important to the Fourth Turning framework, but it really helps to ground such formulations in the empirical world. Otherwise, such concepts, while capable of being very rich and deep, are no more testable or predictive than your horoscope, which you might resonate deeply with, but is based on the resonant characteristics of language itself, and as such has no grounding in reality. I mean, the houses of the zodiac are based on where they were thousands of years ago, not where they are today, due to precession of the equinoxes.

Does this make any sense to others? The reason I bring this critique up is that I see very little attention being paid to the reality of global climate change in the Fourth Turning description of reality. The changes that have started and will continue will not go end at the end of the generational cycle, and yet it will heavily influence any future cyclical processes that you might be trying to identify with the Fourth Turning.

Just wondering out loud....

Originally Posted by DougCounty

Does this make any sense to others? The reason I bring this critique up is that I see very little attention being paid to the reality of global climate change in the Fourth Turning description of reality. The changes that have started and will continue will not go end at the end of the generational cycle, and yet it will heavily influence any future cyclical processes that you might be trying to identify with the Fourth Turning.

Just wondering out loud....

My sense is that the S/H formulation has more to do with how we react to the crisis than what the nature of the crisis will be. At any rate, I doubt global warming will be a part of the "crisis" whatever it turns out to be or to have been. The effects of global warming are far in the future. People will be driven by something much more immediate.

S/H have several possible crisis events, but I don't think that is the heart of their work. The key point is that when the crisis arrives, the generational constellation of that time (ie 4T) will make the crisis into an existential moment and use it to solve the unresolvable problems of the past saeculum.

James50

Originally Posted by DougCounty

Jared Diamond's book, Collapse, provides a much more cogent analysis [than the Fourth Turning] of the ups and downs of any given culture simply because it provides a framework that is much more testable and anchored in the real world. I am drawn to the whole concept of zeitgeist, which seems very important to the Fourth Turning framework, but it really helps to ground such formulations in the empirical world. Otherwise, such concepts, while capable of being very rich and deep, are no more testable or predictive than your horoscope, which you might resonate deeply with, but is based on the resonant characteristics of language itself, and as such has no grounding in reality. I mean, the houses of the zodiac are based on where they were thousands of years ago, not where they are today, due to precession of the equinoxes.

Does this make any sense to others? The reason I bring this critique up is that I see very little attention being paid to the reality of global climate change in the Fourth Turning description of reality. The changes that have started and will continue will not go end at the end of the generational cycle, and yet it will heavily influence any future cyclical processes that you might be trying to identify with the Fourth Turning.

Just wondering out loud....

Makes sense...

I looked at your question and tried to formulate an answer, but got distracted. I see it as somewhat messy. Let me give it a shot.

S&H is not the only scheme for finding patterns in history. I myself commonly use three. The fastest is S&H with their cyclical pattern of about four score and seven years. In this scheme, one would expect new values to be proclaimed in the awakening, with a transformation of the culture implementing the new values taking place in the crisis. This does potentially fit the global warming crisis. The First Earth Day occurred in the awakening time frame. If major action on global warming is part of the crisis resolution, we’d have vindication of the theory. That, however, is a big if.

The medium time scheme is the rise and fall of civilizations. Diamond’s Collapse uses this time scale. He is not the only one. Toynbee’s A Study of History is a well known example. Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is another. Diamond focuses on collapses due to increased population exceeding the land’s ability to sustain it. Diamond focuses primarily on ecological collapse. Toynbee and Huntington are less focused, including on value shifts as well as ecological factors.

The longest term scheme is Ages of Civilization. Toffler’s The Third Wave is one of several books on the subject, and not necessarily a perfect work. It suggests that there are distinct patterns of civilization that result from different degrees of technology and knowledge. The patterns might be hunter gatherer, agricultural empire, industrial democracy and perhaps some future sustainable computer networked civilization. The theory is that with the development of the steam engine, printing press and practical gunpowder weapons, the basic pattern of how societies shape themselves is going to shift big time. It seems plausible that sustainable energy, computer networks and weapons of mass destruction might also force a profound pattern shift.

Global warming is a large enough problem that it can be viewed from all three perspectives. If we fail to adapt a sustainable pattern of energy use, we go into Diamond’s collapse of civilization pattern. If we do develop a sustainable pattern of energy use, it will require a distinctly different pattern of civilization, a sustainable information age.

At a values level, the Second Wave Industrial Age civilization drove primarily on economic values of consumption. Individuals, corporations and nations competed for wealth, and in that competition were willing to expend resources and pollute the environment without limit. A Third Wave Sustainable Information based system would have to put ecological values ahead of economic values. Limited resources will have to be used responsibly. This is a traumatic shift to those still immersed in a culture of consumption.

From a S&H perspective, the new ecological sustainability values ought to have been proclaimed in the awakening, and argued about futility during the unraveling. The crisis would see new policies put in place for a sustainable life style. A lot of new infrastructure should be built during the following high.

The question is whether we missed the boat. Global warming did not become a big deal until well after the awakening. The time required for new values to bubble up through the culture hasn’t been there. We have values locked individuals more concerned with maximizing consumption and wealth now rather than having a long term sustainable pattern. Thus, we might easily not transform the culture for sustainable energy stable climate this crisis. If we don’t get the values shift done during the crisis, it might not get done until next crisis.

Which might well be too late. A delay of another four score and seven years would make the Collapse scenario more likely than an advance to the next pattern of civilization.

Collapse uses a different time scale than the S&H cycle. And I agree that resource crunches trigger declines. They also trigger expansionist phases.

More later. Breakfast is ready.

Originally Posted by DougCounty

I've just attended a fairly detailed review of the Fourth Turning book and poked around the related websites, so can't say that I've read the books and know a lot of detail, but my impression is that the Howe and Strauss hypothesis is a bit thin on incorporating ecological contexts for human historical cycles.

Just wondering out loud....

From reading Howe's blog I suspect that we are generally dealing with a chicken and egg situation. I write this because think that he hasn't commented much on the issue as it hasn't sparked anything near a catalyst like reaction. So far the closest thing we've had to that was the post Katrina speculation that climate change may be making hurricanes more common and/or more powerful. As there hasn't been confirming evidence of this yet, it hasn't risen high on the 4T agenda.

As for the related question of economic performance and the saeculium, S and H have written more or less along the following lines.
There is a pattern of slower economic growth happening after an awakening begins. For example. American economic performance after 1973 has not been anywhere near where it was from 1948-73. The boom awakening still happening when the oil embargo of 1973 took place.
An argument can also be made that the closing of the frontier in the 1890's, just as the missionary awakening was taking place locked in the rural-urban division that hardened during th prohibition dominant 3T. Going further back, economic differences between the north and south became more critical during the trancendental awakening--which was just when the north was gaining an industrial economy.
As for me, I suspect that these events are related. I believe that a lot of what drives down economic growth sometime after a 2T starts is the reality that the economic basis that allowed the solving of the last 4T begins to fail as conditions change. Certainly the loss of cheap oil and cheap land that allowed the sprawl based post WWII economy to become The American High forced changes in consumption patterns after 1973. The same can be argued for those earlier saeculi. After 1890 the 'safety valve' of good western land was no longer available to rural Americans whose prospects were not good in small eastern towns.

You have in short, a declining pattern setting in soon after the 4T/1T cusp.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

There is a pattern of slower economic growth happening after an awakening begins... (snip)

You have in short, a declining pattern setting in soon after the 4T/1T cusp.

These seem to be in conflict. Is the second a typo? Does the decline start after the 1T / 2T cusp?

Thank you for everyone's serious attempts at discussing this issue, i.e. what is it that drives the S&H cycle and how those dynamics relate to the empirical, ecological realities of the planet. Without these connections, it does not detract from our ability to glean deep insights from the works of S&H, but it does indeed relegate the theory to the same level of deep insights that can be gained from studying the horoscope: interesting and truthful dynamics about the human psyche and the nature of language, but not directly related to the real driving forces of a situation at all.

This does not make things such as the horoscope necessarily irrelevant or useless, but it is important to understand that a common mistake of such philosophies is the mistaken view that these conceptual worlds drive change or are the driving mechanisms that underlie change when, indeed it can be fairly clearly shown that other things drive the dynamics of a situation.


To put it another way, it seems that the S&H theories are more a type of divination that an attempt at describing causality. And that is not necessarily a negative statement: the I Ching is an example of a type of randomizing divination which honors the mysterious, inexplicable nature of causality, i.e. that part of reality that we don't/can't incorporate into our most sophisticated attempts at describing the complexities of the universe.


But I digress. Diamond attributes collapse to three things at least: military, economic, and environmental barriers that create conditions that make the status quo unsustainable. His focus in Collapse is on the environmental, which he points out that in the past the environmental consequences of ignoring the limits of the local environment are enough to take down a society through resource depletion, build up of toxins, undue stress on the ecosystem, and, currently, climate change. Therefore the examples he includes are on all three levels you discuss, Bob. Rwanda and Darfur are examples of local genocidal patterns that are largely triggered over inadequate land creating competition between two groups. Easter Island, Viking Greenland, and the Anasazi are entire cultures on the margins of larger civilizations that were unsuccessful in sustaining those practices due to critical incongruities between the traditional societies and local environmental conditions. And the entire Mayan, and some Middle Eastern civilizations collapsed due to their practices which depleted the local carrying capacities of the land. Toynbee reflected this understanding in his own way by saying that civilizations were not murdered, but committed suicide.


Personally, I prefer the understanding of such Historians as the regionalist James Malin, who rejected the subjectivist philosophy of humans creating their civilizations by making their own meaning out of the chaos of the universe. Instead, he said that you can't impose your reality onto the chaos of the universe without playing by the rules!


Hence the crux of the matter: if our conceptions of climate change do not match the ecological realities of climate change, things will only get worse, because those are the rules. Scientists in their modeling thought we would not see the climate changes we are currently observing (degree of ice cap melting, increased acidification of the oceans, methane releases from tundra, continental shelf, etc.) until CO2 concentrations reached 450 or 500, and we are only at 392. Irreversible triggers will occur at a much lower CO2 concentration than we imagined, and yet we have yet to develop the political will to fundamentally change the way we do things, and even if we do, it may be too late to prevent many if not most of the dramatic consequences from occurring.



These are the real rules, and unless S&H acknowledges these fundamental rules in its conceptions, then it is much like the story of the fly on the head of an elephant. The fly thought it was all powerful as it looked out from the head of the elephant: it was lord over all it saw, and went effortlessly across great distances, pushing trees aside with its glances. The elephant knew better, of course, but didn't bother to correct it as the fly was largely harmless, until it became bored with it and dispatched it with her trunk!


I say this with no disrespect, rather as a kind of challenge for clarity and connection between the cycles of S&H and the underpinning rules of reality that support us all. I think this is our reward and our life calling; whether we choose to pursue it or not is up to us.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

These seem to be in conflict. Is the second a typo? Does the decline start after the 1T / 2T cusp?

It isn't intended to be.
To elaborate, the American high paradigm was at its peak in 1945. Never again would there be as much cheap oil, land ect. Yet it hasn't, at least in America, been noticed by most people until an oil embargo of 1973 or maybe a panic of 1907 takes place.

Also, there's the expectations factor.
Many American have come to realize since the 2008 crash that future prosperity shouldn't be expected. If the public mood follows suit low expectations will be most common until at least late in the 1T. And if the 1T is somewhat austere, the coming of the next 2T could be regional. After all, if the civil war crises really did last until 1877, then at least part of America had only a 9 year 1T because the Haymarket Event sparked the 2T in the north.
Unless 1865 can be considered the end of the 4T in the north. To be sure, the south was 2T by the time of the Bryan campaign in 1896, but Haymarket and even Pullman in 1894, didn't really effect the south.

But I'm beginning to stray from the topic. This thread is about climate change. Let me close by writing that I suspect that we will confront an increasing number of climate related problems in the years to come. This thread is likely to get much longer.

I think I smell JimDiGity's term paper. Who wants to bet he starts waving it about?

Originally Posted by DougCounty

Hence the crux of the matter: if our conceptions of climate change do not match the ecological realities of climate change, things will only get worse, because those are the rules. Scientists in their modeling thought we would not see the climate changes we are currently observing (degree of ice cap melting, increased acidification of the oceans, methane releases from tundra, continental shelf, etc.) until CO2 concentrations reached 450 or 500, and we are only at 392. Irreversible triggers will occur at a much lower CO2 concentration than we imagined, and yet we have yet to develop the political will to fundamentally change the way we do things, and even if we do, it may be too late to prevent many if not most of the dramatic consequences from occurring.



These are the real rules, and unless S&H acknowledges these fundamental rules in its conceptions, then it is much like the story of the fly on the head of an elephant. The fly thought it was all powerful as it looked out from the head of the elephant: it was lord over all it saw, and went effortlessly across great distances, pushing trees aside with its glances. The elephant knew better, of course, but didn't bother to correct it as the fly was largely harmless, until it became bored with it and dispatched it with her trunk!


I say this with no disrespect, rather as a kind of challenge for clarity and connection between the cycles of S&H and the underpinning rules of reality that support us all. I think this is our reward and our life calling; whether we choose to pursue it or not is up to us.

Perhaps not just the crux but the trump as well. If we don't square this circle then we descend to semi-primitivism and other generational cycles obtain (as discussed in the beginning of the Fourth Turning). Additionally, your metaphor is hard to fathom. Would you clarify please?

Oh and welcome to the fray!

I too welcome your contribution Doug.

I think S&H theory, as others can also explain, does have a causative idea in it, not just conceptual ideas; and that is the generational dynamic. Things like the attitude to children by one generation affecting the next.

S&H theory says that a crisis will occur in the 2010s and 2020s, according to their cycle of generations. But it does not specify exactly what the crisis (the fourth turning) will consist in. I've been saying since the T4T book came out that the crisis would be environmental and climactic. You don't need to read S&H to know about this crisis. But the cycle tells you something about timing, and how people of different generations then alive at different ages might respond to the general situation of a fourth turning.

Of course today's 4T was primarily a financial crisis in its immediate inception (if you consider 2008 as the start, which I would because that was when the mood shift occured). Some people look at Katrina as the start; at least it did help set people thinking about global warming, probably thanks to Al Gore. But you are right; global warming and ecology is our main challenge, and we aren't responding to it. So it looks like the crisis will get worse and far outlast the current 4T itself, which may be a breaking point in our civilization.

Even the great oil spill has not spurred action, which to my mind makes it a completely irrelevant and useless event. People now are focused only on cleaning up the spill and holding BP accountable, not the obvious implication that we need to get off oil right away and change the way we produce energy. And unprecedented weather events continue. Americans are just not with it, and we will pay for this big time. Many of the poorest people will pay the most, although they didn't cause the problem.

One thing Strauss and Howe did say in T4T is that the fourth turning occurs because people have not payed enough attention to "secular problems" in the previous two turnings. In a general (but not specific) sense this is what you are talking about.

Right. As I said, the environmental thing may well be the Megacrisis of the late 21st Century.

Doug, I can’t help but notice more than a little condescension in your comparisons of S&H to the I Ching, astrology, etc. You are polite about it but your message seems clear to me. However I think you are wrong in assuming a divinatory perspective powers generational theory. Possibly you’re just laying bait to spark debate. Nothing wrong with that as it works well.

I’m a huge fan of Diamond, and I have a great appreciation for S&H as well. Frankly I think they’re barking up the very same tree. Contrary to your assertions both perspectives use loads of primary source material and empirical data to make their respective cases. I believe, in both cases the evidence presented shows a pattern that leads to the development of the theory, not the other way around. Such is not the case with divinatory practice.

Though Diamond speaks largely to the environmental causes, and human responses in collapse, he also gives great attention to economic and cultural relations with neighboring civilizations: something that resonates with S&H. Diamond starts with the question “what went through the mind of the person who chopped down the last tree on Easter Island?” Such a question provides a lot of fodder for S&H fans as one can suggest a number of answers, depending on what generation that logger might have come from. The Easter Island story, as well as that of the Greenland Norse are well suited to understanding both Diamond’s perspective and S&H’s as well. Diamond begins the book with a description of Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, and some good examples of differing generational perspectives on the situation. Familiar with S&H’s work, I found that opener a fascinating example of how Diamond’s work dovetailed with theirs, rather than how it differed.

There are true believers in both camps. On this forum you will find debates raging over a one year difference in where folks believe the cutoff should be placed for a generational endpoint. You’ll also find folks who will toss Diamond out the door wholesale based on having read only the chapter on the Greenland Norse as “research” for an undergraduate term paper. So much of what goes on here, as with any forum that is not effectively moderated, is a mash of intellectual masturbation, fundamentalist ranting and cynical partisan sniping. It is a lot like one of the anthropology forums I used to frequent. Imagine that! When people believe they have the answers they stop looking and remain unwilling to accept new ideas, honor differences as valid and worst of all they stop exploring. Some of us on here have more questions than answers and so the battle is not yet lost.

I believe Diamond and S&H are markers of a much larger and still developing body of thought that will congeal over the next two decades into a new worldview better suited to understanding the way forward, into the next set of generational cycles, and away from Diamond’s potential collapse outcome. I’m an optimist, have faith in the power of synthesis and enjoy exploring, cobbling together and experimenting. Such is the way forward under either Diamond or S&H. No?

Having said that, I’m also an Xer and live with the realization that global thermal nuclear war, pandemic disease, or a comet could render debate on both Diamond and S&H moot. Thus, discussion of concrete examples of the theories as they play out in the current day, (current experiments in organic agriculture, green power, self-organizing systems, etc.) i find interesting and useful. Examining current happenings gives life to both theories whereas debating whether or not the Greenland Norse could effectively store cheese does not.

Welcome to the fray.

Skabungus, Eric, others,
Sorry for initiating a new turn of conversation, then disappearing--such is the nature of our multi-faceted lives: we are not always linear, thank goodness!

It was not my intention to be condescending in my critique of S&H's work, rather to challenge folks to do the work of establishing/clarifying the threads back to ground of reality, which, if nothing else are the rules by which everything on our planet must play by.

Many things, such as astrology, don't do that either, but there are also many forms of wisdom whose focus is on describing being, not becoming, and as such do not concern themselves with those reality rules in ways that are predictive. Instead, they illuminate relationships that are in many ways eternal and enriching to our lives. Take this stanza of Keats' poem, To Autumn:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulnessClose bosom-friend of the maturing sunConspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.Season of mists and mellow fruitfulnessClose bosom-friend of the maturing sunConspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Keats' lines extol the relationships between the shortening days, the past-the-peak season of ripening fullness, and his own life in a type of eternal framework, one which is at once recognizable today as it was when he wrote it down. As such, it provides a wonderful repose in which to ponder our lives and our relationship with nature. While this is very worthwhile because it enriches our understanding of our life and its relationship to the rest of creation, it does not concern itself with trying to be predictive and proscriptive in any exact way, nor should it. As such, it is distinguished from astrology as it is often practiced, which purports causality in our fates from the motion of the planets, when instead, if used like the I Ching or a good poem, asks us to reframe our questions about our lives by placing it on a grander stage, and inso doing, enables us to perhaps glimpse something that we were unable to see without it.

So the choice is simple yet challenging: either ground the S&H into the rigours of causality, i.e. the hard and fast rules of ecology, energy exchange and biology such as Diamond does in his Collapse thesis, or recognize the work as a theory about our relationships of being-ness and glean the wisdom that comes from that font. Both are worthy pursuits; it is folly to try to have the latter substitute for the former in the long run, though.

So what would it look like to try to ground the S&H into the rules of reality? Demographics precludes the validity of most of the S&H thesis as a predictive tool if you think about it very long, for we are not a uniformly aged population. If you look at the age of the US peoples, the population over time starts like many countries with the population pyramid being wide at the bottom/young end, coming to a point at the top with the few, older members of society. As time has progressed, this pyramid shape has become more rectangular with the aging of America, so that there is a much higher percentage of older folks than there used to be. So what are the generational mechanisms that make the S&H stages emerge when you have such a blended population age-wise? How do regional differences play in? And perhaps most importantly, how do the stages play into the local specifics of place, of technology, of food production, of surpluses, of economic spheres of influence? All of these things go into shaping the values that we hold to be true about ourselves, but it is much more difficult to trace the lines of causality the other way.

This is what it seems that the S&H thesis is trying to claim by saying it is both predictive and proscriptive. This is a huge leap in my mind, one that results in clamors for proof of causality, testability, criteria for measuring against the hard rules of reality. I'm not saying this is impossible; I'm just saying that I don't see evidence that it has happened on any meaningful level, and, most importantly, needn't happen if there is honor in pursuing wisdom as a tool for our living our lives more fully.

apologies for the unformatted nature of Keats' poem in the post above that has rendered it difficult to read! I pasted it into the reply box but it apparently lost its formatting when it was posted. For an easier read of the poem follow this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Autumn

I was wondering if anybody here feels the Dust Bowl of the last 4T was also caused by some type of global negligence. The fossil fuel onslaught has clearly manifested itself of this 4T's equivalent of the Dust Bowl. I do believe when I saw something on one of the TV stations about it, that it may have been caused by the practice of farmers planting the same crops and the same land plots year after year. And that the idea of crop rotation, thus restoring some nutrients to the soil, became norm in post-Dust Bowl agricultue.

The spectre of global warming is being recycled because the eastern half of the nation has been experience a warmer and more humid summer than normal. But what did they have to blame last summer's record cool weather on?

Originally Posted by DougCounty

It was not my intention to be condescending in my critique of S&H's work, rather to challenge folks to do the work of establishing/clarifying the threads back to ground of reality, which, if nothing else are the rules by which everything on our planet must play by.

A careful reading of Diamond and S&H finds both to be very well grounded in reality. Diamond speaks broadly and clearly on cultural predispositions, technology, custom, religion, etc. These have little to do with the "hard science" aspects he gives attention to other than it becomes clear that ecological , human behavioral and cultural components play complementary parts in demonstrating the case that Diamond makes. To assert that Diamond contains his observations to cold hard scientific / ecological data alone, and makes no predictive models in his work, begs a rereading of Collapse particularly with both the beginning chapters where he lays out his thesis and his rather sloppy ending chapters where he spends twice as many pages as I'd think necessary to discuss where answers may be found. Diamond sees patterns of action, tendencies and cycles, even if in the case of Diamond's cycle you either succeed or don't. He's not the first to see it either.

S&H note ecological and meterological data as it applies but this is not the core purpose of their work. It isn't Diamond's either for that matter. This is pretty clear from any full reading of either author. Both focus on societies and their selective responses to circumstances. Both make observations on the social, and ecological factors that feed into these responses and both make predictions about the future, based on their predictive models. Both make room for one another (whether intentionally or not) in explaining how societies adjust, change, adapt, or fail to adapt to the environmental challenges that confront them be they ecological, cultural, etc.

From what you've said thus far in your questioning challenge you see a clear either/or choice between Diamond and S&H and see Diamond as clearly grounded in a "hard sciences" "proof positive" approach while S&H based on squishy assumptions. I feel I'm in good company as I think Diamond would be the first to disagree with you on both counts.

So the choice is simple yet challenging: either ground the S&H into the rigours of causality, i.e. the hard and fast rules of ecology, energy exchange and biology such as Diamond does in his Collapse thesis, or recognize the work as a theory about our relationships of being-ness and glean the wisdom that comes from that font. Both are worthy pursuits; it is folly to try to have the latter substitute for the former in the long run, though.

Well, I have a hard time with a couple things here. First is the continuing strain of black and white thinking the seem to pepper your "challenge". A scientist, ecologist, historian, or other well versed in the topics both Diamond and S&H have addressed would not go this way so willingly. As the authors and their many students, both here and on many sites that address Diamond's work directly, these subjects are not so clearly black and white, but rather are very gray in an exciting way. There is room to think about these ideas. Diamond invites that, but do you? Second, in boiling down the "challenge" showing how S&H answer to ecology, energy exchange and biology as "hard fast rules" you take Diamond's work and make it into a mechanistic excercise that robs it of most important things Diamond seeks to convey. That represents a rather selective approach to both Diamond and S&H. You are not reading everything that is there by either author.

So what would it look like to try to ground the S&H into the rules of reality? Demographics precludes the validity of most of the S&H thesis as a predictive tool if you think about it very long, for we are not a uniformly aged population. If you look at the age of the US peoples, the population over time starts like many countries with the population pyramid being wide at the bottom/young end, coming to a point at the top with the few, older members of society. As time has progressed, this pyramid shape has become more rectangular with the aging of America, so that there is a much higher percentage of older folks than there used to be. So what are the generational mechanisms that make the S&H stages emerge when you have such a blended population age-wise?

The above represents an understanding of social statistics and demographics that is lacking at best.

How do regional differences play in? And perhaps most importantly, how do the stages play into the local specifics of place, of technology, of food production, of surpluses, of economic spheres of influence? All of these things go into shaping the values that we hold to be true about ourselves, but it is much more difficult to trace the lines of causality the other way.

Hey now, did you even read T4T, or did you venture to read Generations? I think not. Possibly your best start on answering these questions would be to go read the damn things. Most all the above questions are addressed repeately at many points throughout. If not directly then by inference to those with a basic understaning of these questions and some background in history, political science, sociology, economics, statistics, the sciences.

It is one thing to come to this forum with doubts about the theory, doubts about supporting ideas etc, and then pose some serious challenges. That is to be expected. It is another thing to come to the forum, pooh pooh the theory and the ask the forum members to trot out all the facts and arguments to explain the bloody theory to you. My suggestion is to do what most every credible person on this forum has done. Read and re-read, and read other materials as well (like Diamond) and then come back with some serious and pointed questions about one or more aspects of the theory and the work supporting it. You're taking a lazy approach. Go read the stuff, formulate some serious questions and then come back and we'll have a talk.

This is what it seems that the S&H thesis is trying to claim by saying it is both predictive and proscriptive. This is a huge leap in my mind, one that results in clamors for proof of causality, testability, criteria for measuring against the hard rules of reality.

There you go again. "hard rules of reality". Possibly you will find in your second reading (I'm giving you credit for a first) clear acknowledgement of reality in S&H's writing. I can see it fairly well, and I know some wildlife biologists and water resource scientists that can see it pretty clear as well. Maybe you need to take a post or two and lay out what you consider to be the hard rules of reality that go amiss in S&H's work.

I have an issue with your use of proscriptive. Noting trends, predispositions, etc. is not a proscription. Possibly you should take a post or two and lay out what you mean by proscriptive inclinations in the theory.