Thread by @JadeArchaeobot

I'm an archaeologist, and in this thread, I’m going to tell you why our current climate crisis is so terrifying to me. 1.) In this paper, Xu et al demonstrate that humans have concentrated in a really narrow subset of earth's climate.
pnas.org/content/117/21…

2.) The production of our current crops and livestock is really limited to this "niche" and has been so for millennia (at least the past 6000 years) when farming and foddering of animals really took off.

3.) We should be terrified by this figure in the paper, which basically shows mean temperatures experienced by humans over the past 6000 years, and predictions for 2070. Its way outside of anything we have known during the period that the economies we rely on today developed.

4.)This should scare us too. It shows the expansion of extremely hot regions (the shaded areas) in a business-as-usual climate scenario. These areas will be home to 3.5 billion people by 2070, who simply cant do what they are doing there today if we dont curb our Co2 emissions

We should be asking the question of how our entire farming and subsistence systems which developed over the past 6000 years can possibly adapt to temperature conditions they have never experienced. I don't think they can.

Tagging some of the authors of this great paper here @JCSvenning

We cant afford to be apathetic about this any longer. The continuation of everything about life as we know it: living in cities, relying on domesticated crops and animals all depends on us dialing back our carbon emissions. We must dismantle the fossil fuel industry NOW!

5.) The crops on which humanity relies have a pretty limited niche. We cant grow bananas in Iceland and that's because plants have pretty limited temperature requirements. Just like they cant handle too much cold, they also cannot handle too much heat.

6.) My own research on the Tibetan Plateau showed that a cooling and drying episode that took place 4000 years ago was enough to knock the crops that were traditionally cultivated in the area, millets, out of the niche. Take a look at what happens here:

7.) Can heat create also cause crops to lose their niche? Absolutely! It is already having an impact. pnas.org/content/114/35…

7.) extreme weather events like the heat dome that just happened in the PNW will continue to increase in frequency with global warming. Look at the impact just three days of this event created . 2 billion in damage to us corn: ifpri.org/blog/heat-dome…

8.) and that’s just corn. Look here at what happened to blueberries and cherries : google.com/amp/s/www.oreg…

9.) under a business as usual scenario, RCP 8.5, these high heat conditions ( above 40 c) could become the norm for areas like the PNW. It’s clear our crops cannot cope.

So folks, now that I have your attention. What can we do about this. I think one of the things we can do right now is stop the fossil fuel industry from EXPANDING. They are building a new pipeline and we’ve got to shut it down #StopLine3

This website has a list of plenty of ways you can help: from showing up to the protests to calling your politicians. Please help! We can’t remain apathetic any longer stopline3.org