Homesteader wrote:Good lord you get tiresome. Go figure it out, and if you can't too bad for you.
You're running up hill for no reason and complaining that it's tiresome?
Stop running ol chap.
[Warning to the tired - stop reading here]
No idea what you mean by "go figure it out."
There's really nothing to figure out.
In short, in my experience, I find that a lot of people doing social research tend to hunt for conclusions that support their world view.
For example, most of the people doing "research" into daycare are people who, themselves, believe wholeheartedly that daycare is a good thing. Their "research" is really nothing more than their best efforts to assuage nervous working mothers that they aren't screwing up. It's a validation of self-interest. You see it everywhere. New study that says that spanking kids is bad for them? Done by people who hate spanking. New study saying that smoking really doesn't give you cancer? Done by cig companies.
This article seems to me to be potentially tainted by somebody who desperately wants the world to understand that cutting down forests is, in the end, really bad for people.
So when he/she looks back into the archeological record, he/she desperately wants to find proof that human behavior caused climate change which then wiped out the humans. A stretch, to say the least.
Are you tired yet? Perhaps you should go watch some Scooby Doo in order to relax.
Here's another example.
Guy publishes well supported article that says Easter Islanders likely wiped themselves out by chopping down all their trees. Very clearly possible, very clearly likely. No need to invoke climate change - just simply a very small island with a small forest that was rapidly cut to stumps.
But, wait! Lo and Behold! There's somebody with a competing interest who comes out of the driftwoodwork and refutes the very well supported "they did it to themselves" theory.
Who would venture such a loser of an argument?
Answer - a native islander!!! Brilliant! The guy did not like the conclusion that his ancestors/close relatives/non-whites had screwed up their own island, so he came up with a competing theory that Europeans brought disease with them and that the island was fine when they got there.
Just one more person doing "research" couched as science to further a political belief.