Global Warming

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by IslandScout

Interesting.

We have some advantages they didn't have and they have some advantages we didn't have. We have better technology and so more of us could likely survive a harsher ice age than our paleolithic ancestors did.

Only those with access to that technology would survive. And they are outnumbered by a majority growing both proportionately and in quantity.

Wanted to say one other thing about this. I wasn't really talking about *high* technology. I'm talking about technologies that are more recent than the HGF toolkit but are on the other side of the iPhone/computers/exotic materials science/etc. technologies. I'm talking about simple things like steel tools (something we've been making for 4000 years), bronze (which we've been doing the best part of 6000), writing, literacy, agriculture (which is a technology whether we realize it or not), printing, gunpowder, steam power, long-distance sailing technology, scientific method, etc. All of those predate the 20th century by a very comfortable, multi-thousand year margin and *none* of them were available to humans 50000 years ago. So the fact that we could work steel and bronze, preserve what we learn through writing things down, and the rest of the suite of tools humans had *fully* up and running before anyone even thought about the Industrial Revolution, would mean that we were far ahead of our long-forgotten ancestors.

We tend to underestimate the power of literacy, writing and scientific method, in particular, because they are so ubiquitous and they work so well that they've just become part of the infrastructure of life. Yet these are all very powerful technologies. We wouldn't have to, just to take three examples, reinvent agriculture, steel or bronze working because we've written down how to do those things. It means we can preserve knowledge across generations in a very durable form. Those are the kinds of technologies I was speaking of and should have been more specific about them.

Cheers
Aj