Social and Natural Systems in the Decline of North America's Megafauna

One of the most striking characteristics of humans is that we are adaptive generalists. Unlike most species, which are adapted to specific ecological niches, humans have radiated out to populate virtually every land-based ecosystem on the planet. We can do this because we build shelters, transport food and otherwise make arrangements for the necessities of life in those parts of the globe that would otherwise be inhospitable.

It is this capacity, the ability to transform situations to meet our needs, that lies at the root of the interconnection between social and natural systems. The most obvious example of this interconnection is climate change, where humans are pumping the carbon stored in the ground as fossil fuels into the atmosphere and, hence, fundamentally altering both atmospheric chemistry and the global climate.

But what lies at the root of this human capacity? The standard answer is technology. Through technology we transcend the limitations and constraints placed on other species. But a recent article by Christopher Johnson in Science (Science 20 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5956, pp. 1072 - 1073) detailing the process of magafaunal decline in North America casts doubt on this account. Here is the story in brief:

Twenty thousand years ago, North America had a more impressive array of big mammals than Africa does today; by 10,000 years ago, 34 genera of these mammals were gone, including the 10 species that weighed more than a ton. Many other drastic changes occurred in this interval, all of which have been advocated as possible causes of megafaunal extinction. The climate flipped from cold to warm, then back to cold in a 1000-year chill (the Younger Dryas), before rapidly rewarming. There were more, larger fires, and the structure and species composition of vegetation changed drastically. People arrived, and the Clovis culture—with a characteristic style of beautifully crafted stone spear points—flourished for less than 1000 years. Some scientists have argued that an extraterrestrial object struck Earth ~13,000 years ago, triggering the Younger Dryas, starting fires, killing the megafauna, and putting an end to the Clovis culture. ....

What about people? It has long been argued that Clovis artifacts signal the first arrival of people in North America south of the boreal ice sheets and that the Clovis people were specialized big-mammal hunters who caused a crash of megafaunal populations from prehuman abundance to extinction within a few hundred years. This “blitzkrieg” scenario is supported by the fact that terminal dates on megafaunal fossils range from 13,300 to 12,900 years ago, which coincides almost exactly with the Clovis period. But the new data show that the megafaunal decline had begun more than a thousand years earlier. If people were responsible for that decline, they must have been pre-Clovis settlers. The existence of such people has been controversial, but archaeological evidence is slowly coming to light and is consistent with their arrival around the beginning of the megafaunal decline. It is beginning to look as if the greater part of that decline was driven by hunters who were neither numerous nor highly specialized for big-game hunting. Clovis technology may have been a feature of the endgame, possibly reflecting an intensified hunting strategy that developed once megafauna had become rare, possibly wary, and harder to hunt. ...

Before 14,800 years ago, the environment around the site studied by Gill et al. was an open savanna or parkland, probably with scattered spruce and rare broad-leaved trees growing over a short grass-dominated pasture, and almost no fi re. As the megafauna declined, woody biomass increased, mainly by growth of broad-leaved trees that had presumably been suppressed by the large herbivores. The result was a transitory spruce/broadleaf woodland, the like of which does not exist today. Big fires broke out ~14,000 years ago, and for the next few thousand years, major fires returned every few centuries. These changes were widespread: Fire increased throughout North America ~14,000 years ago, and the transitory “no-analog” woodland extended over a vast area.

In short, we begin with an ecosystem dominated by open savanna and numerous species of megafauna. Humans arrive, and apparently without the aid of significant technology, kill off the majority of the megafauna thus setting loose a cascade of ecological changes that ultimately result in the replacement of the savanna by a "no-analog" woodland. Thus we have a clear, early example of the interconnection of social and natural systems, but one that seems not to implicate technology as the fundamental driver.

What Global Warming?

We sure had a cold summer here in New Brunswick. I didn't even go swimming until the heat finally hit in August. Summer was unusually cold not only in this Province, but all over the United States. Isn't that proof that we're moving toward a cooling period?



Right . . . If you were in North America this year, you were in the spot with the most abnormally cool temperatures on the planet. Nonetheless, NASA reported 2009 as the hottest June to October temperatures on record, tied only with 2005.

"What makes these record temps especially impressive is that we’re at “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” according to NASA."

But it was in the Arctic that temperatures were above normal by up to 5 degrees Celsius. Most of the surface warming is happening at the Poles, especially in the Arctic Circle, where Alaskan and Siberian permafrost, and Greenland's glaciers, are melting at ever increasing rates.

The problem is that temperatures in the temperate zone (like the US) have such a wide range of natural variability that it becomes difficult to sense--from every day experience--that the planet is warming.

But aside from increasing surface heat, the greatest global temperature rise comes from a warming of the ocean.

Still, it's easy to understand why people get confused. It also makes it hard to get the planet's largest carbon emitter, the United States, to do something about climate change when people are wearing sweaters on summer evenings in July.

Vandana Shiva on Transition Towns and Global South

Vandana Shiva on how Transition initiatives in the North can best help the South

Transition Berlin asked Vandana Shiva how Transition Towns of the North could help the people of the South. She said, surprisingly, that growing vegetables in the North would relieve some of the consumer pressure leading to the confiscation of land and resources in the South.

Climate Change and Agriculture in East Africa

In the context of the earlier post discussing expected changes in global agricultural productivity by 2050 (in which the southern hemisphere suffers hugely), it is reassuring to see the recent article "Adapting to climate change: Agricultural system and household impacts in East Africa" in the journal Agricultural Systems.

While East Africa is likely to be one of the least affected regions on the continent, the article notes:

Yields of staples like maize and beans will double in the region's highland areas as a result of rising temperatures, as warmer climates make crops mature faster.

But the reverse is likely to occur in both drier and more humid areas, with crop harvests decreasing significantly in these places.

In the worst-affected areas, the researchers recommend farmers keep more livestock, switch to more drought-hardy crops such as sorghum, or abandon crop cultivation altogether. New sources of income might include carbon sequestration, they say.

In areas where the effects of climate change are likely to be less severe and crop losses more moderate, the authors call for the adoption of new technologies and agricultural techniques — such as water harvesting — that will enable farmers to continue growing crops.

While it is somewhat comforting to know that mitigation techniques are plausibly successful in such the region, there remains the pressing issue of providing the resources necessary to make such adaptation possible.

Greening UNB

As you are probably aware, UNB is in the process redoing its strategic plan. Greening UNB is one theme in the 'Building a Better UNB' portion of the plan. Here is some information on how to participate in that process.

1) There will be a meeting Tuesday, November 17, at 2:00 p.m. in the Dean's Conference Room, #202, Forestry/Geology Building. This is a pre-planning session where people with interests in environmental matters will get together and brainstorm ideas for influencing the process in a positive direction. In the email I received, they requested that you let Liz Whamond know (whamond@unb.ca) if you will be able to attend, but feel free to just show up.

2) On the Fredericton campus, the strategic planning process itself will commence with some break out sessions on December 4 and 5. Here are the details:

You are cordially invited to attend the Strategic Planning Breakout Sessions hosted by the University of New Brunswick on Nov. 20 & 21 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday) at the Hilton Hotel, Saint John or on Dec. 4 & 5 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday) at the Wu Conference Centre, Fredericton.

There will be a breakout room for each of the nine white paper topics. You may choose to focus on one session or engage in any number of sessions, space permitting. You may spend an hour in a session, or up to a full day, depending on your interest and availability.

Facilitated by co-chairs from the UNB community, these sessions will focus on how the UNB community views UNB's strengths, challenges and its future related to each white paper topic.

Please RSVP to Melissa Dawe, Project Manager (mdawe@unb.ca) to indicate the date(s), times and sessions you plan to attend. Please also indicate if you plan to take advantage of transportation between Fredericton and Saint John. RSVP is not mandatory, but appreciated to help with room and food planning, and other logistics.

Additional details regarding the breakout sessions and background information will be available on the website at http://www.unb.ca/strategicplan as they become available.

All members of the UNB community are encouraged to attend at least one of these sessions. Your insights are very important to the strategic planning process and the future of UNB. We look forward to seeing you there!

The Ebenezer Scrooge Carbon Reduction Plan

The Ebenezer Scrooge Carbon Reduction Plan

1. Am I obliged to give you a day off every 15th of December so you can go to Copenhagen to protest at the climate change conference? I suppose if I didn’t you would think yourself ill used.

2. The Middling Classes should buy as much stuff as possible so the Rich will be rich enough to afford all that expensive technology, like carbon capture and storage. So get back to work, you ungrateful slug.

3. Shut down the coal-fired power plants? Are you mad? Coal-fired power plants spew millions of tons of sulphur dioxide and ash into the air, which everybody knows causes global dimming. We should build as many coal-fired power plants as possible, at least one a week.

4. The poor should stay as poor as possible so the Rich can continue to be industrious. Any increase in consumption by the poor would only turn the rest of us into toasted Welsh Rabbit.

5. Climate change is caused by overpopulation. There are simply too many people on this planet, billions too many. Mass starvation is Mankind’s best Natural defence. If they are going die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

6. There is nothing more to be done about the mass migrations of Unfortunates driven from their homes by climate change. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

7. Binding reductions? Bah, humbug!

Copyleft 2009 Shaun Bartone

New Book: Thinking in Systems

A manuscript by Donella Meadows, the lead author of 1972's Limits to Growth, was published in August as a new book on systems theory called Thinking in Systems: A Primer. It's a posthumous publication (Meadows died in 2001) edited by Diana Wright of the Sustainability Institute.

"In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet— Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001.

Meadows’ newly released manuscript, Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life."

It's in paperback and available at Canadian booksellers for about $17.00.

Meadow's article, "Places to Intervene in a System" was first published in Whole Earth magazine in 1997, but received little attention. It is available to download here, reprinted by the software developer blog, Developer.dot.star. Software developers picked up on her theory because it has implications for software modelling of complex systems.

UPDATE: I just read "Places to Intervene in a System" and I have to tell you, if you don't have the time or inclination to read anything else about systems theory, you should just read this article. It's 19 pages long, and it's the most brilliant analysis of how to pragmatically change systems, and fundamentally, how they work.

Historical Change in US Crude Oil Estimates

Shaun recently posted material noting that the IEA had revised its world oil reserve estimates downward and suggesting that the US had put pressure on the agency to keep them artificially high.

That post took me back to my long lost past, when I wrote my PhD dissertation on social factors affecting estimates of how much oil was left in the ground. The diagram at left shows some of the data from my dissertation, illustrating that the pattern of estimates fell into distinct historical periods. Each dot represents a particular estimate of how much oil is left in the ground in the US plotted against the year that the estimate was published. As you can see, revisions are a fairly common occurrence :+) And, as I argued, significantly political.

Unfortunately, I can't embed the pdf of the article on the blog. But anyone that is interested in can take a look at the original here. If you aren't at a location that will allow access to the journal, the citation information is: Gary Bowden, "Estimating U.S. Crude Oil Resources: Organizational Interests, Political Economy, and Historical Change" The Pacific Sociological Review (the journal changed its name, now it is Sociological Perspectives), 25(4): 419-448. October 1982.

Transition Towns and Resilience

The current issue of Resurgence magazine is timed to come out with the Copenhagen talks on climate change.

Inside is an article by Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins titled "Resilience Thinking. Why ‘resilience thinking’ is a crucial missing piece of the climate-change jigsaw and why resilience is a more useful concept than sustainability."

Whistleblower Says IEA Inflated Oil Estimates

An unnamed whistleblower at the International Energy Agency claims that the IEA's previous and current "World Energy Outlook" ('08 and '09) inflated the estimated amount of oil reserves in the world. The Guardian UK has the story, which includes a 3-minute audio segment by journalist Terry Macalister, a nice quick summary of the situation. The whistleblower inside the IEA says that the United States pressured the agency to make oil reserves look better than they really are to avoid panic in the markets and worsening of the financial crisis.

The current WEO states that world oil supplies can reach 105 mbd by 2030.

The whistleblower told The Guardian, "Many inside the organization believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million barrels a day would be impossible, but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further.”

Currently, the world output is 83 mbd.

"A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the 'peak oil' zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added." (Guardian UK)

An October report by the UK Energy Research Council says that world oil production will go into permanent decline before 2020, in less than ten years. UKERC is a consortium of academic partners from 15 different UK institutions. Its headquarters are based at Imperial College Londonand at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford.

The World Energy Outlook '09 was just released today.