Of all the homo subtypes only humans survived. We began to colonize the entire planet sometime between 300,000 and 60,000 years ago.
Scientists Have a Bold New Hypothesis For Why We’re The Only Humans Left on Earth
Depending on who you ask, we’ve shared the Homo genus with six other species across the millennia. And those are just the ones we know about. One by one they’ve all vanished. Around 30,000 years ago, the last of the Neanderthals disappeared…– Science Alert
Homo erectus spread from Spain to Indonesia, but stuck to forest and grassland. Neanderthals specialized in cold northern realms and survived hundreds of thousands of years of ghastly ice ages. They coped better than we do with cold but we are the ones still living in Siberia. Tell the world: we’re adaptable!
Maybe it’s time to stop trying to adapt the planet to us, and get back to adapting us to the planet instead?
Some of the ecological challenges faced by Pleistocene H. sapiens. a. The Thar Desert of northwest India at the site of Katoati. Credit: James Blinkhorn. b. The highlands of Lesotho at the site of Sehonghong. Credit: Brian A. Stewart. c. The Siberian steppe of Russia. Credit: Yuri Demyanov. d. The tropical evergreen rainforest of Sri Lanka in the vicinity of one of the earliest occupied sites in the region. Credit: Patrick Roberts.
As Popular Mechanics puts it: Humanity’s Secret Weapon Is Surviving in Tough Climates
David Grossman
Other animals are stronger, more resilient, and faster than humans, who cannot fly, can only inhabit water for a limited amount of time, and who are lacking in natural weapons. Yet, if humanity was threatened by animals, poor crops, natural disaster, or some other problem in an area, it could leave and leave easily. Not just from one green field to another, but to extreme conditions like mountains and deserts.
A new evolutionary theory claims humans ended up out-surviving all the other hominids because we adapted ourselves to extreme niches and they didn’t. We pushed ourselves into cold mountain peaks, arctic tundra, and the sahara desert. Where most species are either a generalist or a specialist, we are both — the ultimate generalist specialist. Today there are permanent human settlements in places as cold as minus 50 C and as warm as plus 40C. We survive across a ninety degree range (and panic about two degrees of warming).
And if we did spend half a million years evolving into extreme adaptability, can we evolve into snowflakes in just one generation?
Homo-adaptus? Homo Sapiens Prevailed Over Others Because He Went Boldly Where They Didn’t
Ruth Schuster
Rather than obsessing over our artistic or lingual or technological abilities – which are incredibly hard to demonstrate, let alone prove – the team suggests that being “human” meant going boldly where no hominin had ever gone before: conquering challenging environments, and thriving there.
It’s a worthy prospect to test (and refreshingly the researchers discuss how). I suspect the old theory is that our extreme adaptability is the result of our creative intelligence (but apparently the development of art, or at least the evidence of it, comes too late.). But it’s a chicken-egg type problem. Did we get the mental tools to adapt and then do it, or did we have the sense of adventure and curiosity, and then we found ourselves in extreme situations that made us what we are?
Anyhow, spread the word — humans ought to know that extreme climates and environments may be our defining feature. Some are spinning the story that humans can only make it in a perfect preindustrial climate where seasons all start on the same day each year and 32 degree C is a heatwave.
From the plateaus of lofty Peru,
To the deserts ’round Timbuktu,
Where folks have survived,
Adapted and thrived,
Could teach warmists a lesson or two.
— Ruairi
Source: Max Planck — The press release:
Our species’ ability to occupy diverse and ‘extreme’ settings around the world stands in stark contrast to the ecological adaptations of other hominin taxa, and may explain how our species became the last surviving hominin on the planet.
A new study argues that the greatest defining feature of our species is not ‘symbolism’ or dramatic cognitive change but rather its unique ecological position as a global ‘generalist specialist’.
The paper, by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Michigan, suggests investigations into what it means to be human should shift from attempts to uncover the earliest material traces of ‘art’, ‘language’, or technological ‘complexity’ towards understanding what makes our species ecologically unique. In contrast to our ancestors and contemporary relatives, our species not only colonized a diversity of challenging environments, including deserts, tropical rainforests, high altitude settings, and the palaeoarctic, but also specialized in its adaptation to some of these extremes.
Ancestral ecologies – the ecology of Early and Middle Pleistocene
Although all hominins that make up the genus Homo are often termed ‘human’ in academic and public circles, this evolutionary group, which emerged in Africa around 3 million years ago, is highly diverse. Some members of the genus Homo(namely Homo erectus) had made it to Spain, Georgia, China, and Indonesia by 1 million years ago. Yet, existing information from fossil animals, ancient plants, and chemical methods all suggest that these groups followed and exploited environmental mosaics of forest and grassland. It has been argued that Homo erectus and the ‘Hobbit’, or Homo floresiensis, used humid, resource-scarce tropical rainforest habitats in Southeast Asia from 1 million years ago to 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, respectively. However, the authors found no reliable evidence for this.
It has also been argued that our closest hominin relatives, Homo Neanderthalensis– or the Neanderthals – were specialized to the occupation of high latitude Eurasia between 250,000 and 40,000 years ago. The base for this includes a face shape potentially adapted to cold temperatures and a hunting focus on large animals such as woolly mammoths. Nevertheless, a review of the evidence led the authors to again conclude that Neanderthals primarily exploited a diversity of forest and grassland habitats, and hunted a diversity of animas, from temperature northern Eurasia to the Mediterranean.
Deserts, rainforests, mountains, and the arctic
In contrast to these other members of the genus Homo, our species – Homo sapiens– had expanded to higher-elevation niches than its hominin predecessors and contemporaries by 80-50,000 years ago, and by at least 45,000 years ago was rapidly colonizing a range of palaeoarctic settings and tropical rainforest conditions across Asia, Melanesia, and the Americas. Furthermore, the authors argue that the continued accumulation of better-dated, higher resolution environmental datasets associated with our species’ crossing the deserts of northern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, and northwest India, as well as the high elevations of Tibet and the Andes, will further help to determine the degree to which our species demonstrated novel colonizing capacities in entering these regions.
Finding the origins of this ecological ‘plasticity’, or the ability to occupy a number of very different environments, currently remains difficult in Africa, particularly back towards the evolutionary origins of Homo sapiens 300-200,000 years ago. However, the authors argue that there are tantalizing hints for novel environmental contexts of human habitation and associated technological shifts across Africa just after this timeframe. They hypothesize that the drivers of these changes will become more apparent with future work, especially that which tightly integrates archaeological evidence with highly resolved local palaeoecological data. For example, lead author of the paper, Dr. Patrick Roberts, suggests, “although a focus on finding new fossils or genetic characterization of our species and its ancestors has helped rough out the broad timing and location of hominin specifications, such efforts are largely silent on the various environmental contexts of biocultural selection”.
These researchers are saying that looking for art, language or tools may be misleading us, and instead we should test their theory by looking for the spread of other hominins into areas where few are alooking like the Gobi desert
The ‘generalist specialist’ – a very sapiens niche
One of the main new claims of the authors is that the evidence for human occupation of a huge diversity of environmental settings across the majority of the Earth’s continents by the Late Pleistocene hints at a new ecological niche, that of the ‘generalist specialist’. As Roberts states “A traditional ecological dichotomy exists between ‘generalists’, who can make use of a variety of different resources and inhabit a variety of environmental conditions, and ‘specialists’, who have a limited diet and narrow environmental tolerance. However, Homo sapiens furnish evidence for ‘specialist’ populations, such as mountain rainforest foragers or palaeoarctic mammoth hunters, existing within what is traditionally defined as a ‘generalist’ species”.
This ecological ability may have been aided by extensive cooperation between non-kin individuals among Pleistocene Homo sapiens, argues Dr. Brian Stewart, co-author of the study. “Non-kin food sharing, long-distance exchange, and ritual relationships would have allowed populations to ‘reflexively’ adapt to local climatic and environmental fluctuations, and outcompete and replace other hominin species.” In essence, accumulating, drawing from, and passing down a large pool of cumulative cultural knowledge, in material or idea form, may have been crucial in the creation and maintenance of the generalist-specialist niche by our species in the Pleistocene.
Implications for our pursuit of ancient humanity
The authors are clear that this proposition remains hypothetical and could be disproven by evidence for the use of ‘extreme’ environments by other members of the genus Homo. However, testing the ‘generalist specialist’ niche in our species encourages research in more extreme environments that have previously been neglected as unpromising for palaeoanthropological and archaeological work, including the Gobi Desert and Amazon rainforest. The expansion of such research is particularly important in Africa, the evolutionary cradle of Homo sapiens, where more detailed archaeological and environmental records dating back to 300-200,000 years ago are becoming increasingly crucial if we are to track the ecological abilities of the earliest humans.
It is also clear that growing evidence for hominin interbreeding and a complex anatomical and behavioural origin of our species in Africa highlights that archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists should focus on looking at the environmental associations of fossils. “While we often get excited by the discovery of new fossils or genomes, perhaps we need to think about the behavioural implications of these discoveries in more detail, and pay more attention to what these new finds tell us about new the passing of ecological thresholds” says Stewart. Work focusing on how the genetics of different hominins may have led to ecological and physical benefits such as high-altitude capacities or UV tolerance remain highly fruitful ways forward in this regard.
“As with other definitions of human origins, problems of preservation also make it difficult to pinpoint the origins of humans as an ecological pioneer. However, an ecological perspective on the origins and nature of our species potentially illuminates the unique path of Homo sapiens as it rapidly came to dominate the Earth’s diverse continents and environments”, concludes Roberts. The testing of this hypothesis should open up new avenues for research and, if correct, new perspectives as to whether the ‘generalist specialist’ will continue to be an adaptive success in the face of growing issues of sustainability and environmental conflict.
REFERENCE:
Roberts and Stewart. 2018. Defining the ‘generalist specialist’ niche for Pleistocene Homo sapiens. Nature Human Behaviour. 10.1038/s41562-018-0394-4.
Every time I see a picture of Michael Mann, Stephan Lewandowsky, John Cook, Al Gore, David Karoly or any of the usual suspects, I just think ‘Homer’ Sapiens. I don’t know how that ties in with survival of the fittest but I guess dealing with the likes of that lot keeps the rest of us match fit.
It is written that the species got kicked out of Paradise for eating the forbidden fruit. I reckon it might have been for being bone lazy, selfish and thoughtless eating the lowest hanging fruit which the Almighty had intended for sheep and goats. That would certainly explain the presence of the above mentioned in our midst who would still struggle competing with sheep and goats.
232
I believe you’re referring to the subspecies Homostupidus. That subspecies puffs itself up so it looks more important than the rest of us hoping we fall for them as experts and leaders.
Isn’t it too bad that deep down under all their clothing they’re buck naked just like the rest of us?
It equalizes things a lot if you keep them in perspective. With nothing on they look rather silly, same, same as you or I would look by sticking our necks out without adequate means of support.
191
My mother used to say that if someone seems to be a bit overwhelming in any way, just remember that that person was once a baby, produced dirty nappies and regurgitated sick over its mother’s shoulders!
82
Amen to that. We all started life rather pitiful if you compare what a newborn human must go through with anything else in the animal kingdom. Then from there we must struggle to make something of ourselves and make our name mean something. Donald Trump came up the ladder of success by hard work and determination.
Some of us climb the right ladder and some cimb the wrong one.
And human societies (plural) have come and gone because they failed but the human being is more resilient than any force against it and always recovered — up to now with that little jerk in North Korea rattling his missiles.
41
Or possibly that other post-modern critter, the Harangue-outang.
Harangue, n., 1. A loud, forceful or angry speech. 2. Climate-craft: any speech by an opponent of the orthodoxy. 3. Syn., harangue-outang. See harassment.
Reference: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/21/friday-funny-the-devils-dictionary-of-climate-change/
92
There are more of those than I can count. But I got my morning laugh out of it. 🙂
31
Survival of the craftiest. This is also a human survival tactic.
TO be honest, we all find our niche in life. Everyone gravitates to what they can do, or what they are interested in doing.
102
I know this, Greg. We have been Homo-saps for following the leaders we have elected for ourselves. I reserve judgment on Donald Trump because the Jury isn’t in yet with a verdict. But he could blunder and make a mistake right along with the rest.
52
Enough of this talk about homos.
We live in a politically correct society you know – and isn’t it fun???
60
Frankly, and despite my making jokes about some of it, no. It’s not fun to see society torn apart the way it is. 🙁
40
For years I would wonder how the iterations of Homo survived with every animal seemingly more savage, assuming that our large brain is Darwinian, ergo not always so big. But then I look at the humble quail which can fly better than a fox and run better than a hawk.
But a light switched on when I read an explanation, at least in part. Man lost body hair and developed sweat glands so they could run down even fast animals in the heat of the day when the game not not so equipped would reach total exhaustion. Man could then use the hide to survive the cold. Someone here said “survival of the cunning”.
10
Neanderthal Man is a very interesting case because he was built for life in The colder regions.
That was O.K. during the last interglacial over 100,000 years ago, but when the last ice age began he was forced towards the equator to escape the developing ice accumulation.
It is interesting to recall that at the peak of the last ice accumulation, New York region was covered by an ice Field about 1500 metres deep.
With a very large brain, over 1400 cc capacity and a large hooked nose and a rugged body, Neanderthal was ideally set up for the cold North.
When forced South by the encroaching ice he eventually reached near to Gibraltar where he ran into a species better adapted to the warmer tropics. The cold adaptations were a hindrance there.
There is also speculation that Neanderthal, because of the large head may have had problems during birth that led to survival problems as a Group.
KK
101
‘…..the large head may have had problems during birth ….’
It appears to have become a genetic bottleneck.
91
Ouch!
41
Spoken like a mother. 🙂
00
There are people today with as large if not larger heads yet they didn’t have problems being born 🙂
60
Some can’t find a hat to fit
60
Do you have the occipital bun?
40
It was only a suggestion and no definitive conclusion was made.
European descent about 1350 cc as compared to Neanderthal at 1500 cc.
Given evolutionary adaptivity you would expect it to Not be an issue but it was raised as a potential issue.
21
PeterS commented @ #2.2:
ROTFL!
Oh dear. 🙂 PeterS …
No. I can resist.
Honest.
I can … mmpff … resist.
The invention of effective anaesthetics and antiseptics during the 1800s made Caesarean Sections much much safer, enabling a high rate of survival for both mother and child. Discovery of blood groups at the start of the 20th century and the successful development of blood transfusion therapy up to WW2 removed most of the remaining risk.
30
And there you have the collective result of several of the evolutionary advantages of H. Sapiens Sapiens.
I would rate them as:
-Speech, the ability to express and thus pass on knowledge.
-Tools, we are the ultimate tool-maker. We quickly learnt knowledge was a tool and the scientific method is probably our greatest and most effective tool. It’s purely intellectual but without speech, it couldn’t have been communicated, to others and properly debugged. (I know: there are those who can’t use it correctly … or won’t.)
20
I’ve always thought communal living/hunting combined with language must be significant.
10
Looking at one of the artefacts found with the Neanderthal in a cave in Southern Spain was a couple of pieces of flat ?antler.
On these is a series of horizontal scours.
The anthropologists decided this was an example of two sticks, beaten together, as part of a shamanistic ritual.
The sets of grooves, when rubbed would also produce sound.
To my eyes they are a set of early hemostats.
At the time these were found the Neanderthals had a resurgance.
Theoretically they were on the brink of extinction.
My hypothesis is that they found a way of reducing infant mortality by placing these bones across the
umbilical cord at birth, and lashing them tightly together.
They could have used sinews to do the tying, which would be now decayed and so not found.
The Neanderthal DNA still exists in us.
I read recently that 50% of their DNA can be found accumulated across our species.
In the warm caves of Spain they must have inter bred with our ancestors, at the same time sharing this technology.
The hemostat has evolved over centuries to the current self locking, articulated device.
It is just two bits of flat metal with grooves on them that locate on an artery.
The Neanderthals were truly human.
There is a skeleton unearthed of a 35 year old with major heritable skeletal disease that was clearly nursed.
They were the first to start nursing homes at home.
They buried their dead.
90
KK,
” because of the large head ”
I’ve always though Al G. and Mike M. have large heads.
40
Homo Destructus: A recent sub species that exists completely off the efforts of others in a parasitic lifestyle made possible by projecting the idea of a higher intellect.
90
Is that a synonym for big business by any chance? 😉
40
Socialists.
Communists.
Dictators.
Self Righteous.
Know-it-alls.
Busybodies.
Social-justice Warriors.
And a whole slew of destructive personality types, murderers and thieves for example.
80
Since we have mastered the climate from the far frozen north where for centuries people lived in shelters carved out of blocks of snow (remember igloos from your study of geography) to the tents of the nomads who live still today in the hottest deserts of North Africa and still more of us live in the Amazon jungle or what’s left of it, where the humidity and the temperature can be nearly the same, I do wonder why Jo had to say that. But these days it escapes the notice of so many that Homo Sapiens still exist in and cope with those extremes of environment that perhaps not even Jo’s saying it will drive the point home.
61
I recall the on-going specialist/generalist debate back in the early ’70s. I was regarded as a smartar$e for insisting I was both, eg Renaissance Man, wide-ranging talents rather than narrow and deep.
Finally, nature follows art …
70
They just came to this conclusion? From the Eskimos to the natives of the Kalahari desert and everything in between, we appear to have survived and thrived from temperatures of +50C to -80C, and worse.
And we still keep going to northern climes in Winter to escape the cold and embrace the heat.
120
It’s interesting to contemplate what life would be like if more than one human species survived today.
Also there are traces of Neanderthal genes in all non-Africans and traces of Denosovian genes in Australian Aboriginals and Melanesians.
31
The Denisovans didn’t beed with homo sapiens until they crossed the Wallace Line, between Lombok and Bali. At the LGM they eventually set up camp around Lake Carpentaria and mated with the local humans, which is why their DNA signal is quite strong in Cape York people.
71
My comment went into moderation but Denosovian genes are strong in Australian Aborigines and Melanesians.
82
You might have heard of the Flores hobbit, who was not related to homo erectus or homo sapiens. Their tools have turned up in Luzon, predating humans by a long margin.
81
I knew Mike Morwood at UNE, he was acknowledged as the “discoverer” of Flores Man. I was on the cusp of accompanying a party to the island for a dig some years back but got Malaria. Mike is deceased now and I have not heard any more determination on the species. Much contretemps between individuals and academic institutions.
100
Some people have such interesting lives.
I always wanted to be an archeologist when I was young.
70
el gordo… that is completely made up isn’t it? Unless you’ve been doing some archaeology and genomics on the side and have found evidence for this new range of Denisovans along with access to unpublished sequences.
42
Wiki shows the map their migration route. Though I have no idea where the Wallace Line is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denisovan#/media/File:Spread_and_evolution_of_Denisovans.jpg
40
Doh, Wallace line is on the map in yellow. (couldn’t see it).
40
‘… that is completely made up isn’t it?’
No.
50
Here is the latest.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-08-03/pygmy-people-flores-not-ancestors-hobbit-homo-floresiensis/10065214
00
Due to the Leftist rewriting of history virtually no one now knows about the now-extinct Pygmy Aborigines of Northern Queensland even though they were known about by people in the 1940’s to 1960’s and were mentioned by Manning Clark in History of Australia in 1962.
The Left have written them out of history because the existence of these people is incompatible with the Left-approved version of history of only one Aboriginal migration to Australia when in reality there were several.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/
71
That was very well worth reading…fascinating. Thank you David M.
00
Wow, two comments of mine went into moderation…
21
Key words get caught in the mod claw, so use phrases like ‘the earliest Australians.’
80
A bit O/T but – –
”
A Canadian
August 1, 2018 at 8:50 am
Reminder that:
1. The more the left scream about an alleged problem, the more likely it is that the problem does not exist or is being blown out of all proportion.
2. The bigger the problem really is, the more likely the left are to hush it up.
3. The bigger the problem is, the more likely it is that the left caused it in the first place.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/08/01/buzzkill-2/#comment-1134781
90
And
”
Kenji
August 1, 2018 at 2:56 pm
Extremists tend to seize control of any and all organizations … until … they run the endeavor into the ground … then … the calm, reasoned, thinking, adults pick up the pieces (when possible) and returns the endeavor to sanity. Extremists tend to make the most NOISE, and play on the shallowest emotional feeeeellllings of the members. They use the least common denominators of human nature to leverage their EXTREMISM.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/08/01/buzzkill-2/#comment-1134871
60
4. The more likely the left caused the problem in the first place.
00
The Bushmen of the Kalahari have an interesting genetic adaptation, they can survive seven days without water.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4411212.htm
51
But not one day without a game of cricket.
Oh, sorry, that’s the legendary Batsmen of the Kalahari!
The Batsmen of the Kalahari
Tony.
(Sorry, couldn’t help myself)
150
That’s us. Skilled nomads who can be skilled sedentarists.
Mind you, Popular Mechanics are always good for presenting what we are currently supposed to think on matters of science and development. And there’s always that sharp little green pill slipped into the porridge of information and speculation. So you get this at the end of the PM article:
Of course, the finding has another implication: Humanity has taken its first step into another ecological threshold, one of harsher natural disasters caused by global warming. As fires and storms get worse, the new study offers a sliver of hope that humanity has bonds strong as any animal on Earth.
You wait for that green message like a chime. It’s the price PM has to pay the temple priests if it is to report on the latest cave or excavation. The reference contains a hot link to the recent fires. Yes, PM, we promise not to think too many naughty thoughts about adaptation and actual climate change and stay in a decent range of fear and conformity. And we promise to see the current ho-hum warming as somehow unique. We’ll even pretend that recent fires and droughts have no matches in detailed 19th and 20th century accounts. We’ll pay the price.
Whenever I look at high-cost, high-gloss media these days I always feel I’m being handled by people who are themselves looking back over their shoulders. Speculation is fun and necessary, provided there are good grounds for it, provided it always announces itself and it is left free. But good luck with all that.
100
Otzi’s last meal was a balanced mix of carbohydrates, proteins and lipids — fitting for coping with the demands of life in an Alpine region.
“Otzi seems to have been aware of the fact that fats represent an excellent source of energy.
The high-Alpine region [3,210 metres] where the Iceman lived and was found some 5,300 years after his death, presents a definite challenge for human physiology,” Dr Maixner said.
This is the first time scientists have been able to fully reconstruct a Copper Age meal.
The period is considered to have lasted from about 3500 to 2300 BCE.
He lived roughly 5,300 years ago and died on a frozen glacier.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-14/stomach-contents-of-iceman-show-diet-copper-age/9993968
50
The elephant in the room remains the MO, why move? Looking for better environments with a greater abundance of resources or some compromise between several requirements seems reasonable. But what of the social pressures? Moving one’s family group or community away from a larger extant community in search of enhanced social circumstances and well being, where perhaps one might be freer from the oppression of cannibalism, ritualistic slaughter, a perpetual debilitating threat of some nasty predator or some vicious hereditary hierarchy?
Perceived social pressures derived of internal or external stressors drive great compulsion to seek new ecological niches, particularly as intelligence gained evolutionary selective wattage. Conjugated with exploration, the desire to move is irresistible. It may also have provided an emergent and additional dimension to survival of the fittest – not only do you HAVE to survive in your new environment, you have neither the option nor the will to return to your old environment, or simply expressed ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t‘. What stronger drive to keep moving, or having arrived, stay put?
Aside from the authors misplaced certainty about their results when they articulate their hypothesis together with its implied requirement for further funding,
their theory appears eminently sensible when expressed,
but the globalist narrative emerges, typically creating and magnifying issues and problems, to furnish not only an overarching SJW raison d’être but the required Trojan horse of justification for a final, immutable, non-debatable, ideological ‘solution’,
In this the authors inadvertently refer to a contemporary illustration of the behavioural implications of seeking an enhanced ecological niche.
It is obvious that natural selection including the immediacy and adaptive plasticity of epigenetics has little to offer when required to survive a socialist inspired, murderous dead-end globalist philosophy of neo-Marxism identity politics and its unholy trinity of division, inequity and exclusion. That’s enough to drive most to seek new ecological niches, which why there is a mass exodus from California and Venezuela, why people die trying to flee N.Korea, why there is a growing populist nationalist retraditionalisation in Europe, why people once died trying to cross the Berlin Wall. The list is a litany, as much of death as it is of hope and belief in a better niche.
As pre-history and history have shown, as needs must, one looks beyond oneself and one’s community to the freedom of a desert, or the tundra, for there is no price too great for liberty, prosperity and happiness, for the freedom of one’s soul.
As valid and constant today as it has been over the last 500,000 years.
71
Make way for the next stages of evolution.
Homo-wimpus, Homo-facebookus and Home-oblivious… all destined for very short lifetimes.
130
Homo-Turnbullus is leading the Australian variety, at least until he is naturally unselected at the next election.
110
It seems we have been declassified
and now become “hominim Verbalensis”
or
“the only talking offshoot of the hominid group”.
KK
20
you did it. I knew you could find a way.
32
Jo, I hate to be annoying but the first sentence
is wrong; there are lots of extant species of hominids. The word is used very loosely outside of taxonomy but within science hominid is exactly the same as “great apes excluding gibbons” ie chimps gorillas orangs and all their species. The human classification, as wiki correctly notes is this
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Genus: Homo
So “hominid” is the family level of classification
Annoyingly for you to edit your first sentence you can’t even just insert Hominins for hominids since the tribe includes Pan which is also extant.
51
That’s useful Gee Aye, so what modifier would make that sentence accurate?
I see the terminology has changed, and The Australian Museum thinks that Hominim is the word I should use?
Wiki tells me ” homininan” so I’ll do that for now.
UPDATE: Nope. What a mess that nomenclature is. I decided on Homo subtype.
50
Yeah yeah, Hominid or the new-fangled Hominin.I reckon that one has to go back to university to learn all the changes in nomenclature.
40
HI Jo… I reckon you chose wisely as your choice covers most of the period you are writing about and it is clear enough what you mean.
There is a persistent debate, based around comparative genetic diversion that Pan is splitting too much and chimps and bonobos should be Homo which, if accepted, would mean your correction will lose currency. Many of the genus names for fragments of fossils of human side lineages – if they are indeed side lineages and not derived from types that preceded the chimp/human common ancestor – are just hopeful guesses. Species? Genus? Split or lump? Yawn.
20
From the plateaus of lofty Peru,
To the deserts ’round Timbuktu,
Where folks have survived,
Adapted and thrived,
Could teach warmists a lesson or two.
41
Good grief! Someone gave you a red thumb for your clever, well-composed limerick?
How bizarre….
41
Roy Hogue wrote above the jury is still out on Donald Trump – that he could “make a mistake”. no doubt he’s made many a mistake already, like all of us, but the jury might still be out on this choice!
1 Aug: Senator James Inhofe Press Release: Inhofe, Lankford Applaud Presidential Appointment of Oklahoman
U.S. Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) today applauded the President’s nomination of University of Oklahoma Vice President Kelvin Droegemeier to be Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“Kelvin Droegemeier is a proven leader in science and technology and an excellent choice to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy,” said Inhofe. “From his time as a professor and service on the National Science Board to his leadership as the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma, he has demonstrated a commitment to the scientific process, an appreciation for investing in research and a dedication to advancing technical achievement. I congratulate Kelvin on his nomination and look forward to his swift confirmation.”
“Dr. Droegemeier is an incredibly capable researcher and a highly qualified scientist,” said Lankford. “He has served Oklahoma well at the University of Oklahoma, and I am confident that he will serve our nation well as the new Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The nomination process is long and difficult, but I am proud that a fellow Oklahoman has stepped up to help lead our nation at this time.”
Dr. Droegemeier currently serves as Vice President for Research and Regents’ Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma and as Oklahoma Cabinet Secretary of Science and Technology. He co-founded and directed the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Science and Technology Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and the NSF Engineering Research Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere. Dr. Droegemeier served two six-year terms (four years as Vice Chairman) on the National Science Board, under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He earned his BS in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma and MS and PhD in atmospheric science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Droegemeier is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
https://www.inhofe.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/inhofe-lankford-applaud-presidential-appointment-of-oklahoman
uhoh – Holdren PLUS many others approve, one has to wonder. MSM coverage all looks favourable too.
read it all:
31 Jul: ScienceMag: Trump’s pick to head White House science office gets good reviews
By David Malakoff; With reporting by Adrian Cho, Eric Hand, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Paul Voosen.
The long wait for a White House science adviser is over. President Donald Trump announced today that he intends to nominate meteorologist Kelvin Droegemeier, a university administrator and former vice-chair of the governing board of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The OSTP director traditionally, but not always, also holds the title of the president’s science adviser…
“He’s a very good pick. … He has experience speaking science to power,” says environmental policy expert John Holdren, who served as science adviser under former President Barack Obama and is now at Harvard University. “I expect he’ll be energetic in defending the R&D budget and climate change research in particular.”…READ ALL
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/trump-s-pick-head-white-house-science-office-gets-good-reviews
41
Yep! All the right credentials and in the mix is climate change research as sure as the sun comes up in the east.
I’ve said before that Trump knows the dollar signs and sees that Paris is a bad deal for that reason. But I see no indication that he understands the science issue at all.
Thanks for being your usual sharp reporter self.
Roy
10
Yep! He has all the right credentials and in the mix is climate change research as sure as the sun comes up in the east.
I’ve said before that Trump knows the dollar signs and sees that Paris is a bad deal because there’s nothing but money sent to the rest of the world while we get nothing. And being a businessman he knows better than to get into such a thing. It amounts to just punitive measures against the U.S., Australia and the EU. But I see no indication that he understands the science issue at all.
Thanks for being your usual sharp reporter self.
Roy
20
24 Jul: Digital Journal: Arctic people were spinning yarn before the Vikings arrived
By Karen Graham.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/science/arctic-people-were-spinning-yarn-before-the-vikings-arrived/article/527785
Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume 96, August 2018
Dorset, Norse, or Thule? Technological transfers, marine mammal contamination, and AMS dating of spun yarn and textiles from the Eastern Canadian Arctic
Under a Creative Commons license
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030544031830092X
21
Jo, hopefully your fellow West Australian homo sandgropers were adaptable enough to survive yesterday’s
global warmingcool change –http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-02/perth-weather-snow-bluff-knoll-cold-front-power-wa-homes/10064746
“Bluff Knoll, 350 kilometres south-east of Perth, attracted snow chasers this morning who were rewarded with a layer of crusty white on the side of the mountain. Dozens of people eagerly climbed the knoll after snowfall in the early hours.” Looks like there’s another dose of ‘carbon fallout powder’ on the way Saturday too… cool!
42
Wild indeed. I got caught in a squall last night. Stepped out into a dark carpark where no rain was falling. Then saw a wall of horizontal rain coming. Tried to run, got drenched in 20m, and had to double-over in the sudden wind, saw a power pole explode in a shower of sparks. Wind-blown trolleys suddenly gained a poltergeist type of animation and I had to run to stop one hitting the parked car. Was a wild moment. All around buildings were blacked out. Rain was so hard it filled my shoes and got through a padded jacket. Hottest July my foot…
111
Yikes!
Was climate change that done that.
32
Jo, on my first reading of your reply I read: saw a polar bear explode in a shower of sparks, and thought to myself, it’s definitely worse than anyone thought! Glad you made it to the safety of your car, especially with those poltergeist trolleys cutting loose – an all too often occurrence here in the Roaring Forties. Put your feet up, enjoy a nice cab sav, for tomorrow is… TGIF.
60
Glad you escaped any harm.
I’ve been in horizontal rain before (Saigon) and it blew water right into the barracks and the end 2 bunks were just puddles of water before it was over.
I saw a transformer burn up from about half a mile in front of me once. Even at that distance it was blinding. I was driving toward it and had to slow down until my eyes were back to normal. There was high wind that day but no rain.
Those things are no joking matter.
Stay safe. We need you.
30
‘Cool’…literally and metaphorically.
41
So far Ive experienced an outdoor range from +45C to -15C , hasnt got me yet. Although I dislike heat, I fear relentless cold a lot more. You go downhill very quickly if caught unprepared.
71
I dislike either extreme. In the middish ’80s in Wiltshire in England we had blizzards and temperature of -18C one night in December (I used it to dump the freezer contents outside in a black polythene bag so that I could defrost and clean the freezer!) and in mid-May 2003, on our first proper visit to Dubai, we went to Hatta for a picnic (Mad dogs and Englishmen?!) where the temperature was 46C. However, we survived, thanks to heating in the former case and being able to travel in an air-conditioned vehicle in the latter. Three cheers for Man’s ingenuity and electricity.
Local populations survived such extremes despite not having those advantages but is noticable that they are very pleased to have them now. That is why I think it is wicked to mess with the electricity supply where it has been running efficiently (using coal, gas, nuclear) and thorough evil to deny reliable supplies to the 1.3bn who still lack it.
62
Try telling that to the 31,800
excess coldpower impoverished related deaths in the UK (2016 – 17)40
For generations we were told that Neanderthals and more modern humans couldn’t crossbreed, now they say they did and I’m sure the evidence is pretty clear.
Back around 1990, I was outside a Sydney hospital waiting for my patient to escape. There was a dude hanging around in the car park, with heavy brow ridges, a slight stoop and all manner of genetic malpractice that really got my attention. I’ve seen 2 such people now.
I’m not sure that Neanderthals actually went extinct at all.
112
I have to agree. Occasionally one is confronted by what might conceivably be regarded as a genetic throw-back. I once knew of an engaging Caucasian individual of healthy robust intellect, resplendent hirsutism, stoop, cavernous cranium, supraorbital ridges, severe myopia, immense strength, large nasal and labial morphology, shambling gait and extraordinary upper extremity limb length when compared with his trunk dimensions.
He was a truly extraordinary sight and as gentle and passive as he was unusual.
60
It’s increasingly apparent that at the end of the last glaciation about 11,700 years ago there were already advanced civilisations in existence responsible for structures such as Gobekli Tepe and the Sphinx. Most traces of them would have been lost, however, as mostly they would have occupied coastal areas and when the glaciers melted the sea level rose 120 metres flooding a land area three times greater than Australia. Graham Hancock talks extensively about this and his videos can be found on YouTube.
71
Yes, but can we survive peak stupidity run amok both left, right, and in the muddled middle? Ir will be an extreme challenge, to say the least.
71
Who bankrolls you?
[This is the fourth repeat of the auto-bot request which I answered the first time. Curious that someone would bother writing that program? – Jo]
23
I posted about this forecast on jo’s “Global warming means a global fall in in wildfires” thread – in comments #32 (AFP story) ans #33 (Sky News):
1 Aug: WUWT: Over-reliance on computer models causes a forecast for extreme heat to be retracted
by Anthony Watts
Portugal’s Met Office has retracted its prediction that temperatures in the country could reach 50ºC — the hottest ever recorded on mainland Europe — this week, drastically revising the forecast down by 10 degrees.
In a statement, the IPMA said forecasts published to its website and app on Tuesday had been “overestimated” for the region between Melides and Vila Nova de Milfontes, and in particular the city of Sines, where temperatures were predicted to reach 50ºC on Thursday and 46°C on Friday…
The forecasts were the result of a “statistical method” applied to numeric models, it said.
The IPMA said the actual temperatures expected for these days were between 40°C and 42°C…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/08/01/over-reliance-on-computer-models-causes-a-forecast-for-extreme-heat-to-be-retracted/
Murdoch’s Sun also carried the story:
Updated 1 Aug: UK Sun: FEELING THE HEAT Heatwave warning for Brits in southern Spain as experts predict Europe could see HOTTEST EVER day with temperatures topping 48C
By Sofia Petkar and Emma James
Europe is set to experience its hottest day ever as Spain and Portugal look likely to reach 48C later this week…
Spain’s current record high is 47.3C and Portugal has previously seen highs of 47.4C.
The all-time continental European maximum is 48C, recorded in Athens, Greece, in July 1977…
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6910780/heatwave-warning-southern-spain-europe-hottest-day-ever/
20
now we have Murdoch’s Sun – and much of the FakeNewsMSM – carrying this story:
1 Aug: UK Sun: WHAT A SIZZLER! Death Valley records the hottest month EVER on Earth with an average temperature of 42C throughout July
During July 25 to 27 temperatures in the Californian desert rocketed to an oven-like 127F (52.7C) degrees, setting records for each of those four dates
By Patrick Knox
DEATH Valley in California recorded the hottest ever month this July with an average of 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42C).
The remarkable temperature broke the all time monthly high clocked at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center last year.
While you might think visits to Desert Valley might be down because of the heat, the exact reverse has happened, with thousands of tourists flocking to experience Earth’s hottest place.
During July 25 to 27 temperatures rocketed to an insane 127F (52.7C) degrees, setting records for each of those four dates.
***And that came close to the highest accurate temperature of 129F (53.8C ) on June 30, 2013.
Death Valley’s horrific heat is caused by a combination of a chronic lack of rain, dry air and the fact it is a below sea-level basin which means the high mountains either side trap heat…
It come as it was forecast that Europe was to be hit by its hottest day ever as Spain and Portugal look likely to reach 48C later this week.
In the UK temperatures are tipped to hit 36C.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6916022/death-valley-hottest-place-earth-record-temperatures-monthly/
***23 Dec 2012: NYT: A Record Worth Wilting For: Death Valley Is Hotter Than …
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
FURNACE CREEK, Calif. — For Death Valley, a place that embraces its extremes, this has long been an affront: As furnace-hot as it gets here, it could not lay claim to being the hottest place on earth. That honor, as it were, has gone since 1922 to a city on the northwestern tip of Libya.
Until now. After a yearlong investigation by a team of climate scientists, the World Meteorological Organization, the climate agency of the United Nations, announced this fall that it was throwing out a reading of 136.4 degrees claimed by the city of Al Aziziyah on Sept. 13, 1922. It made official what anyone who has soldiered through a Death Valley summer afternoon here could attest to. There is no place hotter in the world.
***A 134-degree reading registered on July 10, 1913, at Greenland Ranch here is now the official world record.
And while people were not quite jumping up and down at the honor, ***the 134-degree reading has inspired the kind of civic pride that for most communities might come with having a winning Little League baseball team…
The opening wall panel in a new exhibition at the National Park Service visitor center off Highway 190 has been unveiled with a burst of superlatives: “Hottest. Driest. Lowest.” (Lowest refers to a spot in Death Valley, Badwater Basin, which at 282 feet below sea level is the lowest place in North America.)
Promotional leaflets that still boast of Death Valley as being merely the hottest place in the United States are being rewritten, and resort owners say they are girding for a crush of heat-seeking visitors come next summer. There is even talk of having an official 100-year celebration of the record-setting measurement next July.
“It’s about time for science, but I think we all knew it was coming,” said Randy Banis, the editor of DeathValley.com, an online newsletter promoting the valley. “You don’t underestimate Death Valley. Most of us enthusiasts are proud that the extremes that we have known about at Death Valley are indeed the most harsh on earth.”…
Randall S. Cerveny, a geography professor at Arizona State University who holds the title rapporteur of climate extremes for the World Climate Organization, appointed a committee of 13 climatologists, including himself and Mr. Burt, to resolve what can often be tricky disputes.
“There are a lot of places that do like these records,” he said. “It can be a source of pride for that country or a source of contention for other countries. Politics unfortunately is going to play a role sometime in the determining of these records.”
It took a year to investigate the claim — the inquiry was hampered by the revolution in Libya, which resulted in the temporary disappearance of a Libyan scientist who was central to the work. The final report found five reasons to disqualify the Libya claim, including questionable instruments, an inexperienced observer who made the reading and the fact that the reading was anomalous for that region and in the context of other temperatures reported in Libya that day.
“The W.M.O. assessment is that the highest recorded surface temperature of 56.7 degrees C (134 degrees F) was measured on 10 July 1913” in Death Valley, the report said.
The announcement was made on Sept. 11, the same day as the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and thus drew little notice.
Though it is easy to forget on days when it is so hot that people dare not step out of their cars, part of the allure of Death Valley has always been — besides the staggering beauty of its canyons, mountains and sunsets — the sheer challenge of visiting it.
“I think there might be such a thing as a weather tourist,” Mr. Burt said. “I may be one.”
Ben Cassell, who runs the Panamint Springs Resort on the west side of Death Valley, said that even before the long-awaited official recognition, his summer rooms typically were booked up by the spring, mainly by Europeans seeking temperatures they cannot find back home.
“The Europeans love to visit in the summer when it is the hottest,” he said. “The Americans tend to go in the spring for the flowers.”
The European tourists, he said, “definitely are looking for the extreme.”
“We get people who get upset that today it’s 120, and the day before they got here it was 121,” he said. “They want to have bragging rights.”…
A version of this article appears in print on December 29, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Record Worth Wilting For: Death Valley Hotter Than …
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/science/earth/death-valley-temperature-record-is-restored.html?referrer&_r=0
20
There is an interesting book to be published soon by Cambridge (https://bit.ly/2lgfaSY,) by an Australian anthropologist (Ian Gilligan) who proposes the interesting theory that Homo Sapiens survived the Ice Age because we learnt how to make clothing -. An interesting theory considering the present discussion.
40
The Ice Man carried a lot of equipment as well, including embers and moss so he could light a fire.
http://www.iceman.it/en/equipment/
50
Point taken AZ. The link is not relevant to this post but I’m gladdened to see some progress has been made by someone in authority to expose the climate hoax. Got to tell everyone. Opening para to the article.
Court Finally Unlocks Climategate Scandal Email Stonewall
“At long last, an Arizona Court has finally ruled to end actions by the University of Arizona (UA) to obstruct requests for public release of e-mails which can shed light upon scientifically dubious and intentionally misleading climate research practices which have had enormously far-reaching and costly government policy consequences.”
50
Pete D –
can’t see what u r responding to on this thread, but realise you are referring to:
30 Jul: Newsmax: Court Finally Unlocks Climategate Scandal Email Stonewall
by Larry Bell
https://www.newsmax.com/larrybell/fmelc-ipcc-kyoto-ua/2018/07/30/id/874460/
good time to re-read in full:
29 Oct 2011: Forbes: Larry Bell: Climategate II: More Smoking Guns From The Global Warming Establishment
As if the first round of e-mails purloined from the U.K.’s East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) network weren’t damning enough, the new batch of about 5,000 more obtained through an anonymous source identified as “FOIA” are truly stunning. Many clearly confirm that top IPCC scientists consciously misrepresented and actively withheld important information…then attempted to prevent discovery. Included are CRU’s Director of Research, Phil Jones, the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) climate’s analysis section head, Kevin Trenberth; and beleaguered Penn State University “hockey stick” originator, Michael Mann…
“If there were any doubts remaining after reading the first Climategate e-mails, the new batch of e-mails that appeared on the web today [November 22] make it clear that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an organized conspiracy dedicated to tricking the world into believing that global warming is a crisis that requires a drastic response,” said Myron Ebell, Director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center on Energy and Environment. “Several of the new e-mails show that the scientists involved in doctoring the IPCC reports are very aware that the energy-rationing policies that their junk science is meant to support would cost trillions of dollars.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/11/29/climategate-ii-more-smoking-guns-from-the-global-warming-establishment/#75c895ed1323
40
Excellent post Jo.
60
time to remember…
27 Aug 2003: Daily Mail: Heatwave kills 1,000
by JENNY HOPE
Global warming is expected to mean hot summers become much more common. And now an expert on the effects of climatic extremes has called for people to be taught how to cope with them.
***Professor William Keatinge, of Queen Mary’s College, University of London, said: ‘We can adapt.
‘In North Carolina, where summers are hotter and more humid, they don’t have extra deaths because there’s more air conditioning and people know how to behave.
‘People here need better information about dressing in light clothes and making sure all the windows in the house will open.
‘In the hottest weather, lightly spraying your clothes with water causes evaporation which has a cooling action on the body.
‘Drinking more is important, but so is eating, because many people tend to drink only when they have food.’
He added: ‘In Athens, there are no more heat-related deaths than in the north of Finland because people have learned what to do.’…
This year’s weather is now being compared to the record summer of 1976, when temperatures peaked at 97.5f (36.4c), but the sunshine went on longer…
12 Mar 2009: UK Telegraph: Global warming will save millions of lives
Dire predictions about climate change and health omit the cost of cold, says Bjorn Lomborg
Across Europe, there are six times more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths. We know this from the world’s biggest cross-national, peer-reviewed studies under the aegis of ***Professor William Keatinge of the University of London…
For the UK, the Keatinge studies show heat-related deaths caused by global warming will increase by 2,000. But cold-related deaths will decrease by 20,000. The only global study suggests that this is true internationally: by 2050, there will be almost 400,000 more heat-related deaths a year, and almost 1.8 million fewer cold-related deaths. Warmer temperatures will save 1.4 million lives each year. The number of saved lives will outweigh the increase in heat-related deaths until at least 2200…
17 Jun 2018: WSJ: The Social Benefits of Fossil Fuels Far Outweigh the Costs
Inexpensive power enables technological marvels, and even global warming has positive effects.
By Joseph L. Bast and Peter Ferrara
Finally, if fossil fuels are responsible for a significant part of the warming recorded during the second half of the 20th century, then they should also be credited with reducing deaths due to cold weather. Medical researchers ***William Richard Keatinge and Gavin Donaldson assessed this effect in a 2004 study. “Since heat-related deaths are generally much fewer than cold-related deaths, the overall effect of global warming on health can be expected to be a beneficial one.”
They estimate the predicted temperature rise in Britain over the next 50 years will reduce cold-related deaths by 10 times the number of increased heat-related deaths…
R.I.P. Professor Keatinge:
Royal College of Physicians: ***William Richard Keatinge
b.18 May 1931 d.11 April 2008
MB Cantab(1955) BChir(1956) PhD(1960) FRCP(1991)
William Richard Keatinge (‘Bill’) was professor of physiology at the London Hospital Medical College and Queen Mary and Westfield College, London. His most significant work was to show how to prevent death from extremes of temperature. Using science and a range of volunteers such as students, colleagues and members of his daughter’s swimming club, he proved that people who lived in countries with either very hot or very cold climates were less likely to die of either hypothermia or heat stroke because they had adapted their way of life…
At the thermal physiology research unit at Queen Mary and Westfield he carried out research, partially funded by the European Union, on the body’s response to extreme temperatures and why some people seem able to survive swimming in icy waters which would cause others to die of hypothermia. His advice was often quoted in the national press and disseminated by charities such as Help the Aged. In 1991 he was elected dean of medicine…
Much of his later working time was spent in Russia. He had many friends there as he spoke the language well and loved Russian literature…
http://munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/5985
30
behind paywall:
8 May 2008: UK Times: Professor W . R. Keatinge
Scientist who showed that denizens of temperate climes are more likely to die of heat or cold than those in torrid or icy zones
A distinguished physiologist, Bill Keatinge was best known for his pioneering research on the effects of cold and heat on human health and on the mechanisms controlling blood vessels.
Cold weather is probably the greatest global cause of ill-health and death, yet it is the most easily countered. People who know that they will face extreme weather conditions in remote places normally learn how to avoid death from a catastrophic loss of body heat. They will, for example, make sure that they build a shelter against the wind if they are at risk of being caught out in a blizzard. Surprisingly, most deaths from cold weather result from relatively mild exposures during everyday life in cities.
In the early 1980s the media shocked society by reporting that in Britain 100,000 elderly people chilled to death in their homes every winter…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/professor-w-r-keatinge-2t009d60rn9
30
In terms of history of the world, why don’t Greentards understand that over the last 2 million years, glaciation has been the standard climate for around 85 percent of the time? Interglacials such as we are now in are rare and rapidly coming to an end. I knew this when I was in primary (US = elementary school). It was common knowledge among educated people (including children) in the 60’s an 70’s. How did this idea that climate was unchanging come about?
30
“(and panic about two degrees of warming)”
Don’t you mean “two degrees of imagined warming”?
41
The article is nonsensical in the extreme, blank-slatism run amok.
Homo sapiens (a bad, polyphyletic taxon) is not broadly adapted. Homo is a collection of subspecies and actual species that are individually adapted to different, narrow ranges on environment. No human subspecies or species other than the Tibetans is adapted to the Tibetan plateau, nor do they become acclimated through long-term exposure. And no European is adaptable to the African tropics.
00
I am 100% European heritage and I am perfectly happy in the tropics. I also survived a winter in Ballarat.
In the 20th century Italian migrants came to the north to cut cane manually. They did it so well they bought the farms and towns like Ingham became “little Italy”. They then became brickies, carpenters and any other building trade. The Poms were the least adaptable, not because of physiology but psychology: They refused to dress appropriately and thought sweating to be beyond the pale. To live here, if your shirt is stuck to your back you drink water and carry on.
00