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First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.
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Zhu et al. is something I’ve kept arguing about for years. The prevailing attitude in the Cologne archaeological department is to estimate carrying capacity from average values of productivity. When estimates of Palaeolithic population density fall well below this, it’s taken as a sign for efficient voluntary birth control mechanisms at work. I always maintained that what counts are not averages but recurring minima. For annual data I tend to place the relevant value at about minus 1.5 sigma. A rare 2 sigma event every 40 years can be absorbed by a community, so it has to be less than that.
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Emblemsvåg can be seen as the direct parallel to Zhu et al.. It is not sufficient for electricity to be generated some time in the year. It’s not a harvest crop that can be stored, but needs to be available right when needed. With heat pumps and electric cars this need will shift more and more towards winter nights. Given efficient and abundant storage that might change one day, but it hasn’t yet.
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For a species to have a measurable effect it’s not enough for it to exist, it needs to do son in sufficient numbers and density. So extinction times might be a misleading measure here. I meant to go into this at length, but Monteath et al. describe the important caveats to their somewhat overblown headline themselves.
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From all I’ve read so far the transition towards the Neolithic mode of subsistence is expected to have diminished dietary breadth and availability of protein and other important nutrients. So what Itahashi et al. are demolishing here seems to be a straw man of their own making. Nevertheless what they offer is an important contribution to an ongoing discussion.
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