They did find and colonize Easter Island, establish a new agriculture and fishing, raise a civilization , create the means of carving and transporting those heads, etc. They found Easter Island, less than a hundred square miles of dry land, across more than 1200 miles of open ocean, and colonized it with the full complement of agricultural and technological and societal (they brought women, almost certainly children) requirements of their civilization. The great seagoing peoples of Europe were hundreds of years from being able to find the North American continent at that distance, and when they did eventually achieve that feat found the hospitality of the residents necessary for survival. Inability to imagine the future does not seem to have been the Islander's problem.
"Many islanders went about stark naked, but with their entire body artistically tattooed in one continuous pattern of birds and strange figures." I shouldn't be too cynical, they probably had schools as well in their 'civilization'. After all, a school doesn't have to be a classroom filled with uniformed children studying for exams, it could be a load of naked savages sitting around on rocks listening to the ululations of some deranged bird-man as he recounts creation stories. Who the hell am I to judge? Of course, they bumped into it by chance. How else? I'll give them credit for bringing women, since that does demonstrate some forward planning. But cutting down all the trees? The results are slightly more abstract and history suggests they really didn't grasp them. Can't you just imagine the Chief staring vacantly up into the sky, his mouth half open, as one of the tribe asks him where all the birds have gone? So necessary that when most of the indigenous population died as a result of disease they all died as well? They thrived, with or without help. I doubt they even had a concept of the 'future' beyond a simple agrarian one - certainly nothing like we have in the modern world - and even that would have been completely infused by their bizarre idol worshiping beliefs. I don't think you can seriously suggest that our modern understanding of what passes as intelligence is something they possessed.
Easter Island's native inhabitants were the victim of man-made ecological disaster. They cut down all the trees. It's not too different from our addiction to oil. We are too stupid to do anything else.
So you claim that they bumped into a 70 square mile island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 1200 miles from the nearest possible - not likely, possible - launch point (3,14159 X 1,440,000 square miles of ocean to search in, minimum) with a fleet of boats carrying a colonizing quantity of chickens, food crops, agricultural implements, fishing gear, women, fresh water, and everything else they needed to support themselves for weeks at sea and set up a permanent living human community at landfall, by chance. It had to be by chance, because they were stupid and incapable of imagining the future. And the regular trade routes set up across hundreds of miles of open ocean among the hundreds of islands of the South Pacific - discovering and navigating them was a matter of chance, too, we are to presume. Something stupid people would stumble on by accident. This being at a time when the Europeans, with a thousand year head start and all the learning and all the technology of three continents of civilization at their disposal, were creeping around the Mediterranean from anchorage to anchorage, because heading out across that fearsome and legendary expanse of ocean to other shores was beyond their capabilities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mediterranean_Relief.jpg (Fans of the superior intelligence of Western civilization inhabitants can trace and admire the 27 year Odyssey across - or around, rather - that storm-tossed expanse. The Greek habits of decorating their bodies and walking about naked are to be overlooked, however, in evaluating their intelligence). The area of open ocean around Easter Island is about four times the open ocean area of the Mediterranean Sea, if that Sea were a perfect circle. A couple of the early colonies that lost the aid of the locals died out, yes (Jamestown, et al). The rest were kept alive by regular supply shipments from Europe.
This has to be one of the finest examples I've seen in this forum of ignorant stereotyping. "They were ignorant savages, who couldn't possibly have understood anything beyond simple ideas of gathering food, worshipping idols, and making babies." The Pacific diaspora that started in Asia apparently, and spread East from modern-day Taiwan, was accomplished by people who learned to navigate by the stars over distances of thousands of miles, and had far superior seagoing skills than the palefaces. You could say they were centuries ahead. Oh wait, you can say that, because they were.
Probably you haven't been paying attention watching Gore's piece of trash? AIT says: "The relationship is very complicated, but there is one relationship that is far more powerful than all the others, and it is this: when there is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer." Heck, Gore's whole evangel and financial imperium is based on carbon dioxide...
I have. You have apparently completely missed Gore's point, as well as the major factors of the entire argument. That is so. It is predicted from the physics involved, and visible in the records and evidence. But you appear to be assuming that such a fact implies that CO2 is the instigator, or cause, of all those past warming trends. It does not, and no one - not Gore, not anyone - says it does.
Anyone sailing out of Pitcairn Islands, who simply sets a course following the natural curve of that island chain, would automatically be heading towards Easter Island. Not rocket science. Since Easter island already had flora and wildlife, as well as fresh water, your preconditions are unnecessary and are, therefore, rejected. Behold your precious civilization. And take note of the deceiver Diamond. C......i.......v.......i.......l......z......a......t......i......o......n. Trade routes? Are you really this much of a fool, or are you just using these terms to wind me up? Just like when a poster on these forums tried to convince us that spear making in Africa was a result of specialization of labor. I guess they had huge cargo ships traversing these 'routes', using satellite navigation. Here is a wonderful example of the intelligence of Pacific Islanders, pay close attention because you are in need of an education: Even better... Chortle. Don't be cruel. Hey, I just had an idea. Do you think Easter Islanders painted birds on their bodies and wore feathered headgear because they thought it would attract more birds to the island? It seems like the done thing in the Pacific. Maybe they went around sqwarking and flapping their arms as well whilst they scoffed down their neighbours? Aside: I typed 'birdman' into google, hoping for a suitable image to use here. Fate strikes, and nearly all the images are of a black rapper who calls himself 'birdman'. It's all falling horribly into place. No. They did it the right way, at the right time. And the stupidity of a self-righteous white liberal is to be overlooked as he tries to sell us savagery as a way of life.
Oh yes he does ! If Gore does not think it is the cause, then why does he show the periodic waveforms of temp and CO2 tracking ? His implication is clear. CO2 causes warming. Again ..... If temp drives CO2, then there is no case for human induced climate change. But if CO2 drives temp, then there is a case. But no one knows anything but apparent correlation between the two. There is no evidence for causation. And if there is no causation, then again there is no case for human induced climate change. And if CO2 is the cause, how does one explain the data before industrialization ? BTW, I am not saying human induced global warming and climate change is impossible. It just has not yet been proven with any real credible arguments or evidence.
What difficulties do you have reading: "...that is far more powerful than all the others..."? Or is it just a mental block? This "evidence" is not much more than a bunch of flawded correlations and GCM's. Bristlecones, anyone?
I read it fine. It seems to be the fact of the matter. The physics and the evidence agree. So ? Plus a set of mechansims, of course. A large number of independent correlations plus verified mechanisms makes a reasonable argument, IMHO. One needs a counter-argument, similarly buttressed, for dismissal. Your "implication" is my BS, as I have pointed out. He does not say, anywhere, that past warming trends have been instigated, set off, begun, "caused" in your "implication" sense, by CO2 accumulation. There are a couple of past warmings that do seem to have been begun, caused, etc, by CO2 accumulation - the one that brought us out of the "snowball earth" eon has been attributed to CO2 from volcanoes slowly building up over millions of years and instigating a warming - but that is not Gore's argument.
So? Well you already forgot what you wrote earlier: "No one, especially not Gore, has ever claimed that increases in CO2 concentration have caused more than a few, if any, of the past warmings." If CO2 did not cause more than a few, if any of the past warmings, then what did it and why is it that important to Gore?
And of course, savagery is something the European "races" never had to bother with, thank goodness. What a crock, man. I bet you can't even define "savage".
Explanations vary from Milankovitch cycles to asteroid impact recoveries to effects of continental drift and several others. It's important to Gore because they seem to illustrate the effects of boosting CO2 - once caused, or started, warming trends that set off or are accompanied by CO2 boosts get much warmer than others. The CO2 boosts amplify small solar and other effects, and the greenhouse effects of CO2 seem to be very large.
Oh yeah, that's how they did it. "Setting a course" following a "natural curve" somehow deduced from a chain of islands themselves hundreds of miles apart, across 1200 miles of open ocean to a single, isolated chunk of dry land. Nothing to it ! They didn't have satellite navigation. That's something smart, civilized white people need so they won't get lost from entire continents as soon as they lose sight of land (as the Mediterranean traders routinely did, and feared). The stupid savages, trading their shells and stones and feathers and food and so forth, whaling and fishing and arranging marriages and visiting the relatives all over the South Pacific, were coming upon their little island destinations days over the horizon by stumblebum luck. And the Irish are reputed lucky. These people built a civilization on it.
Put it this way, whether or not we compute and "figure out", that is: put into those figures we like to play around with, what is happening and what might happen, the planet is going to go ahead and compute its own "result". So are you waiting until you need to start swimming, or what? What would be "proof" arriving on your doorstep - a newspaper with a story in it? A documentary on the box? Changing weather patterns, and mass migrations of species (we happen to be one of those)? What's your poison?
How do you connect those two things with someone not "making up their mind"? ??:bugeye: You seem to be saying: "because no-one has claimed that CO2 has caused warming in the past except for a few times that means it can't have an effect". That doesn't follow even remotely, if that is what you are asking them to make up their mind about...?
