The Ancients knew better: Sun changes the climate

reply to post by jjf3rd77


The ancients knew better.

I've been looking for a name for that fallacy for a while now because I see it rampant all over ATS. The ancients knew better my left snip. Yeah, that's why they practiced blood-letting, believed in magic, thought diseases were caused by demons, rejected heliocentrism and burned people as witches. I could go on and on and on for pages listing all the stupid things human beings have believed and practiced in the distant past (not that we don't have our share of stupidity today, of course we do).

By the way, the ANCIENTS didn't know what a giant pollution spilling factory looked like. Greenhouse effect is pretty straight-forward of course but since the ancients weren't pumping out fossil fuels like there was no tomorrow I doubt they would have caught on. For them, OF COURSE, the sun was a big driver of climate, no scientists are DENYING the sun drives climate - BUT, it'd take a moron to pretend that the sun was the ONLY important factor.

Originally posted by Titen-Sxull
reply to post by jjf3rd77

 

The ancients knew better.

I've been looking for a name for that fallacy for a while now because I see it rampant all over ATS. The ancients knew better my left snip. Yeah, that's why they practiced blood-letting, believed in magic, thought diseases were caused by demons, rejected heliocentrism and burned people as witches. I could go on and on and on for pages listing all the stupid things human beings have believed and practiced in the distant past (not that we don't have our share of stupidity today, of course we do).

By the way, the ANCIENTS didn't know what a giant pollution spilling factory looked like. Greenhouse effect is pretty straight-forward of course but since the ancients weren't pumping out fossil fuels like there was no tomorrow I doubt they would have caught on. For them, OF COURSE, the sun was a big driver of climate, no scientists are DENYING the sun drives climate - BUT, it'd take a moron to pretend that the sun was the ONLY important factor.

The word you are looking for might be Auctorite. However I too remember a word that deal specifically with unchallenged acceptance of earlier writing, ie old writing is 'golden'

reply to post by SaturnFX


well the predictions failed, or at the very least were way over exaggerated.

reply to post by Titen-Sxull


haha....thats a good one.
thats called the materialistic dialectic fallacy...
it all getting better isn't it?
we are progressing to utopia.
ha. guess what?
that has been debunked.

i would argue that with our mono crops green deserts are produced.
with hysteria to be greener, even more habitat is destroyed.
and all these greens are closet anti nuclear activists, so our only truly green innovation is locked away by the high and mighty.
biodiesel? that was and will be the worst shock for mother nature. ever. and wildlife.
all thanks to screaming climate warming scientists who refuse to acknowledge rational thinking.


at least our primitive ancient left a habitable planet.
what are we going to leave for our grandchildren?
a pipe dream of wishful watermelon (green outside, red inside) thinking and destruction.

and when the new global cooling rolls around, I guess no one will apologize for raping the earth.

reply to post by BBalazs


I never said it was ALL getting better or progressing toward utopia. Utopia, in my opinion, is an impossibility when dealing with human beings.

I was merely shooting down the fallacy that the ancients knew more about climate than we did. The human species has much more knowledge at their disposal now especially with the average citizen of most First World countries having access to the internet. That doesn't mean we're going to use that knowledge more wisely however.

reply to post by jjf3rd77


Yes, the ancients were fully aware of the destructiveness of their habits, right?
The Noble Savage :

I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

Hmmm, then you look what happened on Easter island, and you say, somewhat ironically "Ja right, the ancients knew everything"

Around 1400 the Easter Island palm became extinct due to overharvesting. Its capability to reproduce has become severely limited by the proliferation of rats, introduced by the islanders when they first arrived, which ate its seeds. In the years after the disappearance of the palm, ancient garbage piles reveal that porpoise bones declined sharply. The islanders, no longer with the palm wood needed for canoe building, could no longer make journeys out to sea. Consequently, the consumption of land birds, migratory birds, and mollusks increased. Soon land birds went extinct and migratory bird numbers were severely reduced, thus spelling an end for Easter Island's forests. Already under intense pressure by the human population for firewood and building material, the forests lost their animal pollinators and seed dispersers with the disappearance of the birds. Today, only one of the original 22 species of seabird still nests on Easter Island. With the loss of their forest, the quality of life for Islanders plummeted. Streams and drinking water supplies dried up. Crop yields declined as wind, rain, and sunlight eroded topsoils. Fires became a luxury since no wood could be found on the island, and grasses had to be used for fuel. No longer could rope by manufactured to move the stone statues and they were abandoned. The Easter Islanders began to starve, lacking their access to porpoise meat and having depleted the island of birds. As life worsened, the orderly society disappeared and chaos and disarray prevailed. Survivors formed bands and bitter fighting erupted. By the arrival of Europeans in 1722, there was almost no sign of the great civilization that once ruled the island other than the legacy of the strange statues. However, soon these too fell victim to the bands who desecrated the statues of rivals.

Easter Island - 1
Easter Island - 2

and there are many more such situations.