Is this a collapse of Civilisation?(they’ve happened before)

Do Civilisations collapse? Do elaborate trade networks fall apart? Giant cities turn into uninhabited ruins? Ancient systems of law, education and custom vanish entirely ? Leaving nothing but an illiterate dark age, racked by violence and disorder? Yes, they can. We’ve alluded once or twice here to the collapse of the Greco-Roman world (LSS 10 3 21; 17 12 22) Professor Harper makes a convincing case for climate change and disease pandemics as the causes of that one. We in western countries are haunted by the Fate of Rome; it was relatively close in time. But there have been others.

The Bronze Age collapse 1200 BCE is further back in time, and has left fewer records, That it occurred there is no doubt. [2] For several centuries a large network of trade had built up across regions which we now call the Near East and Europe. There were cities, elaborate systems or wring and belief, Considerable prosperity; for some, and by the standards of the time. Around 1200 BCE all this was suddenly and violently cast down, with waves of wars and invasions. It took four or five hundred years at least for order of a sort to be restored and progress to resume, Further afield , the collapse of the Shang dynasty in China (c. 1050 BCE) and the Olmec Civilisation of Central America (c, 400 BCE) are chilling reminders that civilisational collapse is not unique to the West.

Art this distance in time it is possible to see a pattern. The natural human instinct to trade and ma make a bit of spare cash gradually leads to the growth of larger and larger cities. These require common systems of law to maintain the rising levels of prosperity. The resulting peace is very pleasant to live under for a few generations. But lurking in the trade routes are the pandemic diseases which can shake societies to their foundations. When you combine that with the ability to cause massive changes in climate(no one would dream of blaming the Myceneans for that!) the potential for sudden catastrophic failure is multiplied exponentially.

Such an event would confront the educated classes(of which the readers of this blog are such valuable members) with a number of inconveniences. We will look at possible responses in the next few blogs,

[1]Kyle Harper The Fate of Rome Princeton University Press 2017

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse

#olmecs #shang dynasty ##kyle harper #pandemic #climate change #global warming #collapse

Do glaciers have political opinions? and some other mystery questions do get you thinking

Instead of all those discourses on things like microbiology or economic history, we thought we’d offer you something a little different today, gentle readers. We’ve decided to come up with one of those puzzle exercises, you know, brain teasers they call them. So here are 11 questions designed to get you thinking, to stretch the old grey matter as t’were. And the good news is: Most of the answers will be available somewhere on the Interweb, or via the websites we have so helpfully posted below.

1 How do you explain the change in the ratio of C₁₃ to C₁₂ in the atmosphere since 1850? Why did this ratio seem have fallen especially quickly after 1950?

2 Since 1750 about 2400 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide have been added to the atmosphere. If this call came from volcanoes, why is the isotopic signature of atmospheric CO₂so different from that from volcanic sources?

3 Do glaciers retreat because they share the political opinions of the Green Party, or is all this melting caused by something else?

4 Why have global surface temperatures increased by 1.2% since the late nineteenth century, but stratospheric temperatures actually fallen?

5 Why is the ocean warming faster than the land? Why would the land warm fastest first if all this were caused by the Sun?

6 Why does spring arrive earlier and earlier in the Northern hemisphere?

7 Do fish conspire with extremists,or have their migrating patterns changed for other reasons?

8 What is causing all these temperature rises anyway?

9 Why is the atmosphere of Venus so hot? And why is the atmosphere of Mars so cold?

10 Do you think rises in sea levels will drive increases in human migration?

11 If scientists are right about cures for cancer, physics, astronomy computers and many other things, why are they suddenly wrong about climate science?

[1]https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/

[2]https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/evidence/

[3]https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/what-evidence-exists-earth-warming-and-humans-are-main-cause

#climate change #global warming #climate science #carbon dioxide #ecology #pollution

Capturing Carbon from the sea-a new idea to contain global warming

One thing we know for certain: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere isn’t going down any time soon. Last time we looked, it was about 420ppm, which is 50% higher than it was before the industrial revolution. [1] People are not cutting back fast enough. Natural “sinks” like oceans and forests are being destroyed. And despite all the valiant efforts to replace these natural systems with technologies that capture CO₂ from the burning atmosphere, they are not happening fast enough. We are going to crash through the 1.5^O safe limit. Is there any hope of a short cut which might give us a lifeline?

According to Professor Tom Bell of Exeter University there is indeed. Seawater holds 150 times as much carbon dioxide as air does. And so he and his teams have devised a Cunning Plan to start pulling all the extra deadly gas form the water, and putting it to safe storage. We’ve two versions of the story today. One from Jonah Fisher of the BBC[2] if you’ve only got time for a quick espresso. For the double latte and piece of cake crowd, there’s a really clear set of pages from Exeter University itself.[3] We found the graphics to be rather good on this one.. so give it a go.

All of which brings a wry smile to those of us with long memories. Notice, good reader, how the project is being funded by the UK Government. Back in the 1970’s it used to run hundreds of initiatives like this. Many of which later spun off into successful products which in turn founded the fortunes of many a successful export company. (An elderly member of our Editorial Board can bear personal testimony of this from the world of Forensic Science) Then along came the free marketeers, bleating their mantra “Private sector good; public sector bad” like so many sheep from Animal Farm. You can see the results of that “thinking” in the UK Trade Gap, which has been widening steadily ever since. Professor Bell thinks his project can be scaled to capture 14 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It could be a major industrial and export success for Britain. Surely this one should be left to the pragmatists?

[1]https://www.ibtimes.com/atmospheric-co2-more-50-percent-higher-pre-industrial-era-3529972#:~:text=Concentrations%20of%20carbon%20dioxide%20in%20the%20atmosphere%20in,

[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr788kljlklo

[3]https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/seacure/

#global warming #carbon capture #atmosphere #oceans

24 Deadly Diseases that could land on our shores

Of all the ways to go, Ebola Fever is one we’d prefer to avoid. First, your temperature shoots up to an unhealthy 39 C. This is followed by agonising bowel cramps and uncontrolled bloody diarrhoea. Finally the patient starts vomiting blood. Death, which usually follows in 80-90% of such cases, may begin to seem a mercy. Readers with long memories may recall an epidemic of this disease in Africa between 2013 and 2016. Fortunately it was contained, due the efforts of public health officials and brave, skilful medical professionals. Who managed-just- to confine the death rate to 11 323 unfortunate souls. It doesn’t bear thinking about what might have happened had they failed. But according to Professor Harper, a pandemic caused by a similar disease broke the back of the Roman Empire and effectively ended the civilised world[1]

Now a report by the UK Health Security Agency[2] [3] lists Ebola as one of a group of 24 deadly diseases which could land on the shores of this sceptr’d isle at almost any time. As most readers will recall, Ebola is part of the Filoviridae family(an honour shared by the mortiferous Marburg virus) But travelling companions include the Flavoviridae (dengue, zika) Coronaviridae and all sorts of bacteria including the ones for bubonic plague and anthrax. Kat Lay of the Guardian has a nice quick take on the story. And its proximal causes, most of which come down to climate change and habitat destruction.

And our take? It’s good to have some sort of professional public health body that can at least take note of, and warn about, these sorts of things. But the poor old UKHSA has been starved of funds, largely to finance tax cuts to pay for the purchase of Bright Shiny New Things. The production of which leads to climate change, habitat destruction, and…………….you get the picture. If today’s seems a bit of a UK-centric blog, so be it. We are a pretty representative average sort of country, and you face the same threats that we do. If these diseases are appearing on our threat list. they’ll be coming up on yours soon. They have the same ultimate causes.

[1] Kyle Harper The Fate of Rome Princeton UP 2017

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/25/uk-experts-urge-prioritising-research-into-24-types-of-deadly-pathogen-families

[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-highlights-pathogens-of-greatest-risk-to-public-health

#pandemic #virus #bacteria #epidemic #climate change #global warming

Sustainable building materials? UK Hempcrete shows the way ahead

For those of us who spend our working lives worrying if the next generations will even survive, the global building and construction industry is a source of some angst. Yes, all those people have got to have places to live, and work, and to get cured of diseases caused by lack of antibiotics (LSS ad nauseam) The trouble with Construction is that it’s so eye-wateringly carbon expensive. Here’s one long fact for one short blog: if you add all their carbon costs together (resource extraction, transport, construction, demolition, recycling, plus cooking all those enormous English Breakfasts they all eat), it all adds up to a whopping 37% of global emissions. Any ideas?

One way ahead is to make the materials they use for things like floors, ceilings, walls and so on, a lot more planet- friendly. Which is why we want to showcase the work of a British firm called UK Hempcrete. [1]Hempcrete is an exciting new type of biocomposite made from the stalks of hemp plants, as well as more traditional materials such as lime and sands. [2] But the new mix carries two key advantages. Firstly , and unlike traditional building materials it actually acts as a sink for CO₂ over the course of its use. Secondly, it’s hygroscopic, allowing for much better moisture balance in buildings made from it. Every year we burn billions of tonnes of fuels trying to keep our buildings warm and damp- free. This new material gets around that problem almost entirely. But you can read a lot more about this company and its subsidiaries from their website and our other links; they’re much better at it than we are.

And, as you’re asking, do we have an interest in this company? Financially, no-we’d never even heard of them, or hempcrete, until our researchers flagged them up this morning. But we do have an interest in survival. And long ago we decided that it would not come from making people more virtuous, but by setting up ways to let people make money from progress. Which is why we plug, shamelessly, the work of all sorts of companies here, from net zero aviation folk to Biotechnology enthusiasts in the heart of the Cambridge Science Park. (LSS passim) Of course we keep the usual media/PR links to these outfits when we’ve finished. But that’s more on your behalf, gentle readers, not ours. Any attempt to get our construction industry onto a more sustainable, cleaner and rational footing will always earn the support of this blog. Good luck, UK Hempcrete-and keep it coming.

[1]https://www.ukhempcrete.com/

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hempcrete

[3]https://www.ukhempcrete.com/services/material-supply/

#global warming #carbon emissions #ukhempcrete #sustainability #consrtuction industry #building

Is Carbon Dioxide already killing us? An old blog revisited

About five years ago we published this blog called is Carbon Dioxide the new Passive Smoking?

We already know that rising levels of carbon dioxide from global warming are bad for the planet. They are ruining the climate, causing floods raising sea levels, and making fertile areas uninhabitable. But are they already starting to kill us individually?

Before global warming, the average level of CO₂ in the atmosphere fluctuated around 280 ppm (parts per million). Now it hovers around 410 ppm; by the end of the century it could be around 670 ppm or even higher.

The human body can sustain low levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere-we’ve adapted to it. High levels are normally only a problem for people like building workers, astronauts and captains of nuclear submarines. Research shows that there is no question that the sorts of levels these people can meet will do you serious harm, but most of the work is concentrated around very high CO₂ concentrations at thousands of ppm, with very short exposure times , both for obvious reasons.

But as CO₂ levels rise, what happens to all of us as we breathe in steadily rising levels day in day out, without a break? Especially in places like offices, where it tends to become more concentrated.

Now a paper from Nature Sustainability by Tyler Jacobsen, Jasdeep Kler* and their co-workers looks at this question. Some of their findings are disquieting, to say the least. Firstly chronic CO₂ exposure does seem to have health risks. There’s a long list, but the main stand outs are on cognitive ability, kidney calcification and endothelial dysfunction. Secondly, this is a preliminary paper, as the authors admit. A very great deal of work remains to be done. And that will mean setting up research programmes, signing up scientists and re-budgeting whole departments.

There is a worrying historical parallel. When the first early papers on the effects of cigarette smoking were published, they were largely ignored. Which only gave the danger time to grow. And at least individual smokers were able to mitigate the risk by giving up. But for passive smokers the risk was everywhere. If you lived or worked or socialised with a smoker, you couldn’t help breathing the stuff in. It’s the same with carbon dioxide-there’s no getting away from it

We are aware of the dangers of crying wolf, and of course it’s perfectly possible that this may not be as serious as some of the other problems currently besetting the world. But isn’t it time we researched a little, just to make sure? (LSS 11 2 2020)

Since when very little has changed, Except perhaps that atmospheric levels of CO₂ have almost certainly risen a little. Again, we stress that we don’t know the answer, and are calling for research, not immediate action. But this this blog has a lot more readers now. We include the reference below. Do you know anyone who thinks this ought to be investigated further, by practising scientists or doctors?

Direct Health Risks of Increased Atmospheric CO2

Tyler A Jacobson, Jasdeep Kler, Michael T Herneke Rudolf K Brown, Keith C Meyer and William E Funk

Nature Sustainability Review Article Vol 2 August 2019 pp 691-701

#globalwarming #climatechange #co2levels #health risks #environmental health #passive smoking #health #medicine

Microplastics: Let’s be cautious with the data

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider

It was Francis Bacon , the founder of the scientific method who recorded those words in his famous work Of Studies. We have always followed them assiduously, as you know well gentle reader. So today we present a diptych of stories on our old bugbear microplastics pollution, because togethe, they illustrate the Baconian approach very well.

All of you share our worries about the dangers of microplastics. We tried to count the blogs we’ve done on it but ran out of patience early on. And today’s first story, from the learned Damian Carrington of the Guardian fits well into the gloomy canon.[1] Damian reports some truly alarming studies which suggest that microplastics are seriously threatening photosynthesis among our most vital food crops, such as wheat and rice. Get this for a killer quote

Asia was hardest hit by estimated crop losses, with reductions in all three of between 54m and 177m tonnes a year,

Although they are hitting food production everywhere and not just crops: seafoods are particularly vulnerable as well. Case proven again: microplastics are hell, right?

But we would not be LSS, we would not be Baconians, if we didn’t then go to this story in Nature Briefings Micoplastics Research Needs Ironing Out

Last month, Briefing readers recoiled from the news that human brains seem to be full of plastic bits — with a recent study of autopsied bodies finding our brains might contain as much as 4.5 bottle caps’ worth of plastic. But some of the most shocking studies about microplastics in human tissues rely on small sample sizes, lack appropriate controls or “are not biologically plausible”, write four health researchers. “Without more rigorous standards, transparency and collaboration — among researchers, policymakers and industrial stakeholders — a cycle of misinformation and ineffective regulation could undermine efforts to protect both human health and the environment,” they argue.Nature | 8 min read
Reference: Nature Medicine paper

And the point? It’s this need for our side to be rigorously scrupulous wherever and whenever we can. When climate scientists offered the slightest room for doubt, Big Oil and its well-funded armies of deniers and manipulators pounced, casting doubt, insinuating, opening the door to denial. We are the smaller, weaker side and must tell the truth if we are to be believed. During the Second World War, Goebbels and the Nazis flooded the media with and endless stream of new claims, false facts, non sequiteurs and fake news. And at first it worked. But the BBC played a different game. Carefully to admit Allied losses and defeats as well as victories they slowly built trust among even their German audiences. In the end, their radio broadcasts were the main source of news for millions of Hitler’s followers.

We will play the long game,. And reality will justify us.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/10/microplastics-hinder-plant-photosynthesis-study-finds-threatening-millions-with-starvati

#microplastics #francis bacon #pollution #hunger #food production

Clean, Green Copper?

One of the downsides of making the change to a clean, renewable economy is the enormous cost of some of the technologies. And we are talking energy and pollution here, not money. It’s an uncomfortable truth which enemies of progress gleefully point out wherever and whenever they can. Take copper for example. It’s going to be central to any green ecosystem, showing up as vital component of anything and everything from electric cars to eco power plants. But, as the superlative Robin McKie of the Guardian points out, mining it demands enormous quantities of energy. As for the waste left behind- we almost dare not think.

Yet Robin is nothing if not hopeful . In this article he reviews a whole set of hopeful new technologies which are designed to find cleaner, more sustainable ways of pulling out this vital metal. Demands of brevity force us to extract only one(no pun intended) as it fits with the vaguely biological ambience of this blog

a company, RemePhy, has been started by Imperial PhD students Franklin Keck and Ion Ioannou……They have used GM technology to develop plant-bacterial systems that have an enhanced ability to extract metal from the soil. “Essentially, you will be able to grow these crops on land contaminated by waste left over from the mining of metals such as copper, and they will extract that metal,” (explainer-London’s Imperial College is nurturing many of these initiatives-ed)

The oldest trope on this blog is our admiration for when clever people tweak existing ideas and suddenly do something really useful in a new und unexpected way. Imagine the strategic benefits to a country that not only supplies itself with copper, but cleans itself up as it goes along. The benefits of Science and Reason, we suppose?

[1]tps://www.theguardian.com/global/2025/mar/02/copper-scientists-london-energy-electrical

#copper #metals #mining #pollution #imperial college #renewables #clean energy

World Government #2: the end of mass migrations

The world heats, driving waves of refugees in search of survival. Nationalism, religious identitarianism, ethnic exclusion grow. The resulting conflicts throw more waves of refugees onto the shores of societies with neither the psychological nor economic means to cope. Those societies in turn experience fear and destabilisation, as people understandably try to cling to the mental assurances of the past, leading to more nationalism, identity politics………… This spiral downwards will require big thinking indeed if we are to survive at all as a species.[1]

The problems we have identified-(climate change and mass migration) are closely connected. They are rooted in deep inequality. People migrate along economic lines from poor to rich, just like ions in an electric field. They always have done. The solution is a mass transference of sufficient wealth from richer countries to poorer ones to build up their economies. This would not only reduce the incentive to migrate. It would also slow the endless production of status goods like luxury cars and fashionable clothes in the rich countries. The ending of such frivolous production, distribution and consumption would enable an enormous reduction in carbon emissions.

Yet how can a world constructed on hundreds of lines of sovereign and religious identities ever achieve this transfer? There is too much incentive to cheat. To let other nations make the transfers, while guarding local advantage. To allow funds to be hidden in “sovereign” jurisdictions. To allow quick fossil fuel booms to grab short boosts of wealth. To think short term, to think parochially. Perhaps future generations will even decide it was criminally, like the Slave-owning Planters of the US South in the nineteenth century. Whereas a single world Government would cut through all these problems at once. And we haven’t begun to mention the advantages in things like health, space exploration and cleansing pollution, which would follow easily. Once again, the situation is now so desperate, that it’s time to consider something utterly different. We begin to suspect that something to be a World Government, however bizarre that sounds.

In the next post in this series we shall look at the history of the idea of world government, and find it’s not such a new idea after all.

[1] Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change? – BBC Future

#world government #migration #climate change #pollution #inequality

Hollywood Fires: Global warming on a screen near you

We confront the endless coverage [1] of the fires raging through Hollywood in California with nothing but profound melancholy. For we had two of our most enjoyable holidays ever in that distant State of America, and many times experienced the kindness and intelligence of enlightened people. The trouble is that they were motoring holidays. We toured around vast areas, heedlessly filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other pollutants, and thereby contributed to the disaster that has befallen these unfortunate people.

And more disaster is to come. Any hopes that this trouble is exceptional and can be put down to an El Niño event, now look forlorn. Read this from Nature Briefings; and click on their link if you dare:

Is Global Warming Speeding Up? Earth shattered heat records in 2023 and 2024, with temperatures rising further than expected on the basis of previous trends and modelling. A mysterious reduction in cloud cover, combined with an El Niño weather pattern, could be responsible for temperature increases in 2023. However, scientists expected temperatures would decrease again in June 2024 when the El Niño subsided, which didn’t happen. Now they are racing to work out whether this sudden spike is just a blip in the climate data, or an early indicator that the planet is heating up at a faster pace than they thought.Nature | 6 min read
Reference: Science paper

Why, and how, are we bringing this catastrophe upon ourselves? One man who seeks to understand is John Vaillant. Fire Weather is his his study of the catastrophic fires that raged for a year in certain regions of northern Canada, regions that had devoted themselves to the extraction of fossil fuels. You can read a review of his work here from Wired [3] But it’s a weary chronicle of greed, short termism, butch manliness and wilful destruction; the substrates in which climate denialism thrives.

However we cannot close without a slightly hopeful thought. Every so often one still comes across, at least in this country, members of the proletariat who ask questions like”this climate chinge fing-der yew fink iss rilly ‘appenin?” Such people, hypnotised as they are by all things American, Celebrity and Hollywood, may now have to confront a reality. Yes, it really is.

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5y81zyp1ext

[2]https://www.wired.com/story/fire-weather-book-canadian-wildfires/

[3]https://www.wired.com/story/fire-weather-book-canadian-wildfires/

#california #hollywood #global warming #fire weather #fossil fuels