New Evidence Supporting "Collapse"

Another Science article states:

A 1.2-meter-long chunk of stalagmite from a cave in northern China recorded the waning of Asian monsoon rains that helped bring down the Tang dynasty in 907 C.E., researchers report on page 940. A possible culprit, they conclude: a temporary weakening of the sun, which also seems to have contributed to the collapse of Maya civilization in Mesoamerica and the advance of glaciers in the Alps. "I think it's one of the coolest papers I've seen in a long time," says paleoclimatologist Gerald Haug of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. This latest cave record also points to the potentially devastating effects that climate change--even change that's mild when averaged around the globe--can have on vulnerable local populations.

Although hardly the final word in such controversial fields, the cave record--which other researchers describe as "amazing," "fabulous," and "phenomenal"--provides the strongest evidence yet for a link among sun, climate, and culture.

Comment: This sounds like Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. I think Diamond's position was that many societies evolved in such a way that the utilized more and more of the available resources, and that climate changes which reduced resource availability for a period longer than the society's stored resources could withstand then often triggered the fall of their civilizations. The warning is clear, and in fact we know that climate change will come, if not exactly what changes and when. JAD