On Sun, 08 Apr 2018 10:34:52 +1200, Eric Stevens
Post by Eric StevensA very interesting article
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/07/easter-islands-ecological-suicide-myths-and-realities/
The effect of the Little Ice Age on Easter Island.
3 papers which broadly agree.
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FROM GENOCIDE TO ECOCIDE: THE RAPE OF RAPA NUI
Benny Peiser
Liverpool John Moores University, Faculty of Science, Liverpool L3
2ET, UK.
Email: ***@livjm.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The decline and fall of Easter Island and its alleged
self-destruction has become
the poster child of a new environmentalist historiography, a school of
thought that
goes hand-in-hand with predictions of environmental disaster. Why did
this
exceptional civilisation crumble? What drove its population to
extinction? These
are some of the key questions Jared Diamond endeavours to answer in
his new
book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. According to
Diamond,
the people of Easter Island destroyed their forest, degraded the
islands topsoil,
wiped out their plants and drove their animals to extinction. As a
result of this selfinflicted
environmental devastation, its complex society collapsed, descending
into
civil war, cannibalism and self-destruction. While his theory of
ecocide has
become almost paradigmatic in environmental circles, a dark and gory
secret hangs
over the premise of Easter Islands self-destruction: an actual
genocide terminated
Rapa Nuis indigenous populace and its culture. Diamond, however,
ignores and
fails to address the true reasons behind Rapa Nuis collapse. Why has
he turned
the victims of cultural and physical extermination into the
perpetrators of their
own demise? This paper is a first attempt to address this disquieting
quandary.
It describes the foundation of Diamonds environmental revisionism and
explains
why it does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.
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The last glacial maximum climatic conditions on Easter Island
G. Azizia, J.R. Flenleyb,
aDepartment of Physical Geography, Faculty of Geography, University of
Tehran, Iran
bSchool of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, New
Zealand
Available online 19 September 2007
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to refine previous estimates of last glacial
maximum (LGM) climatic conditions for Easter Island. Samples
were analysed for fossil pollen from the lower half of a 13.40m
sediment core (RRA5). This part of the core includes a time span from
ca.
28,00010,000 14C BP. The results show that during this period there
were three different climatic conditions: first, a time span from ca.
28,00023,200 14C BP with slightly cooler and probably drier
conditions relative to present day. Second, a more cool and dry
climatic
condition from ca. 23,20014,700 14C BP. The second time span had two
peak points at ca. 22,100 and 17,150 14C BP. It seems that the
coolest and driest conditions occurred at 17,150 14C BP. Third, a warm
and wet climate started at ca. 15,000 14C BP and continued until
the end of the period studied (10,000 14C BP). In all the time covered
in this study, there was an inverse relationship between values of
Palmae and Poaceae, while Poaceae and Tubuliflorae shrubs show similar
variations. The temperature estimations that are presented by
different authors based on oxygen isotopes are for approximately 4 1C
cooling at the LGM. However, the empirical values derived from
the pollen evidence suggest only ca. 1.9 1C cooling. This is in
agreement with recently obtained values from tropical lowlands.
r 2007 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.
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The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus
Model of Renewable Resource Use
By JAMES A. BRANDER AND M. SCOTI TAYLOR*
This paper presents a general equilibrium model of renewable resource
and
population dynamics related to the Latka-Volterra predator-prey model,
with
man as the predator and the resource base as the prey. We apply the
model to
the rise and fall of Easter Island, showing that plausible parameter
values generate
a "feast and famine" pattern of cyclical adjustment in population and
resource stocks. Near-monotonic adjustment arises for higher values of
a resource
regeneration parameter, as might apply elsewhere in Polynesia. We also
describe other civilizations that might have declined because of
population overshooting
and endogenous resource degradation. (JEL Q20, N57, JIO)
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