Excerpts:
November 25, 2007
Integrated Patterns of Civilization
Summary:
Facts and data are the fundamental building blocks of intelligent thought and action, but in themselves, have little value until first, they are vertically integrated into patterns of useful information, and then second, these patterns of information are further vertically integrated into useful knowledge. Value rises exponentially with each degree of integration, and sometimes -- when accompanied by a bit of experience and intelligence -- a bit of wisdom can result.
Unfortunately, partial integration of limited facts data and information can sometimes be misleading and fail to identify the full significance of a number of important issues. Several issues of great importance currently exist, and integration of the relevant facts involved in each can result in exceedingly positive consequences.
For example, the recent integration of fragmented data from diverse paleontological and archaeological sources has revealed a remarkable interrelationship between reoccurring periods of global warming (none of human origin), and the periodic emergence, and then demise, of many rudimentary forms of civilization. About every 100,000 years, great ice-age ending periods of global warming have made the Earth temporarily more habitable for life. The Earth currently is involved in the most recent of these 100,000-year periods.
However, sedimentation data from the Sargasso Sea now reveal that a subsequent set of shorter term periods of global warming (also not of human origin), have occurred for the first time ever, during just the last 5,000-year era. This is a remarkable phenomenon, which is apparently unique in the earth's history. The result has been that an advanced civilization has finally been allowed to progressively evolve past a rudimentary agrarian stage, to the point where a possibility now exists that the current technology-based culture might even be sustainable through the next ice age, and allow the continued evolution of the human species. It would seem important that this unique civilization not be allowed again to disappear.
However, perpetuation of civilization and the continued evolution of the human species, even through a next ice age, will be dependent upon the elimination of our current capability for massive self destruction. The dangers of weapons-of-mass-destruction are multiplied by the fact that they are readily available to rogue segments of the 80 percent of world populations who live in politically unstable under-developed countries. The accelerated economic development of those countries could be critical for survival of civilization. Fortunately, remarkably successful independent strategies for coping with control of WMDs and for acceleration of economic development are available, and their mutual integration into a coherent strategy for survival, also is feasible.
Global Warming Patterns:
Global warming has recently emerged as a critical societal issue, although it has been periodically recurring for many hundreds of thousands of years. The integration of recently developed data and information from mutually supportive, but very diverse sources in the scientific literature, has unexpectedly resulted in the realization that this phenomenon is perhaps of much greater significance than currently realized. (1) See also here.)
The reason is that an adventitious confluence of circumstances over the last 5,000 years has, for the first time, allowed an advanced form of civilization to emerge on Planet Earth. This might have happened a million years ago (but did not). Integration of data sampled from ice cores in the Antarctic Ice Cap and the Sargasso Sea, from stalagmites, from ocean up-wellings and from the shells of crustaceans, now reveal the unique set of circumstances needed for an advanced civilization to have developed.
Evolution is a fitful process. It has been intermittently accelerated by periodic 100,000-year great ice age-ending warming periods, each of which has also been coincident with enormous surges of carbon dioxide and methane (2) from the ocean waters. (3) These surges, lasting about 15,000 to 25,000 years, are massively greater than those currently generated from fossil fuels. Each of these ice-ending phenomena have temporarily made Earth's life more habitable, allowing rudimentary hunting and gathering civilizations to repetitively appear and disappear.
Currently, the Earth is involved in the latest of these 100,000-year warming periods. But uniquely, over just the last 5,000 years, it also has been involved in a number of shorter 200 to 300-year periods of warming, (also not of human origin). Of even greater importance is the fact that each of these shorter warming periods has been coincident with the rise and decline of a major civilization. Fortuitously, the spacing between these sequential warming periods is of inestimable importance, since advances made in one civilization have not been lost to the next. This set of conditions apparently has never occurred before.