Towards a rigorous understanding of societal responses to climate change (2020)
Degroot et al.
rating okay
type article
concepts climate history sociology
2021/04/10 More rigorous analysis of the Jared Diamond proposal that civilizations like the Mayans and Easter Island collapsed due to destructive effects of climate change reveals five alternative pathways by which these societies survived and thrived in the face of climactic pressure.
- History of climate and society (HCS) → best represented by archaeology, geology, history, paleoclimatology
- Methodological challenges → HCS systematically over represents disastrous response of societies to climate change
- Often overlook heterogeneity of cultures, diversity within and overlap between societies
- Reconstruction of climactic events not rigorous & show lots of variability
- Statistical methods conflate correlation and causation, suffer from “streetlight effect” (ignoring unquantifiable data), don’t treat differing time scales appropriately
- Qualitative methods biased towards crisis and collapse
- Introduce new framework to more consistently establish causal connections between climactic and human histories
- Series of binary questions addressing the four key challenges of HCS: 1) interpreting evidence, 2) bridging dynamics across time scales, 3) establishing causal mechanisms, 4) estimating uncertainty
- Can’t move on with a “no” answer → don’t reach irrational conclusions
- Consider series of case studies that suggest five alternative pathways of response
- Exploiting new opportunities
- Resilient energy systems
- Resources of trade and empire
- Political and institutional adaptations
- Migration and transformation