Essay on COllapse by Jared Diamond

Task 2 Investigate an environmental issue of significance in Australia Global Warming and climate Change

The Vikings were a very successful group of warriors from Scandinavia. They started raiding and violently attacking other places because of their lack of resources. The Viking homeland was rural and people worked as fishers or farmers. Scandinavian people got their fish from the sea, but because the soil in that area was not very fertile, there wasn’t enough grain being grown to feed the rising population. “As Scandinavia's population grew, food shortage became a common problem. Looking for new sources of food and wealth, some Viking leaders decided to take what they needed from other people” (Doc. A). When the Vikings attacked cities, they took everything they could and then burned what was left of the destroyed city. “And the Vikings came on them just like a storm and cut them down, carried off everything, and burned the place” (Doc. B). Because of this, there was no one left to come after them, or anyone to avenge

The western prairies provinces (WPP) have an area of two million km2, these regions are the main agricultural and food producing regions in all of Canada (Schindler, 2006). As global warming increases, more water will be used for irrigation for crops. Every year, 2.5 km3 of water is used for irrigation on 1 million acres of land. The water comes from reservoirs and lakes that trap snowmelt run-off from the Rocky Mountains, however only twenty percent of this water is returned to the rivers. The WPP temperatures have increased by 4 degrees since 1970 (Schindler, 2006. Most of the rural areas are not receiving 14-24% of their previous annual precipitation in the 1900’s. The summer flows have decreased 20-84% due to the increased warming through its effects on evapotranspiration and evaporation (Schindler, 2001). Low water flows can cause an escalation of water retention that results in increased nutrient retention, thus proliferating Eutrophication. (Helmer,1999). This imbalance between water evaporation, water usage and water replenishment will create scarce resource for Western Canada’s near future.

Some of the motivational factors that initiated the Viking invasions were: The death of Charlemagne, the consecutive weakening of the Frankish Empire and a Baltic Sea with a fragile and broken down trade. But one of the main factors for the actions of the Vikings was the growing population of young Vikings looking for settlement, adventure and wealth.

Jared Diamond is a world renowned scientist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and currently a geography professor at UCLA. Of his six books published, we will be looking at the last chapter of his fourth book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In this book Diamond utilizes the comparative method to find resemblance in past societal collapses with our current society. In the chapter entitled, "The World as Polder: What Does it Mean to Us Today," Diamond points out that there are indeed many parallels between past and present societies and that our modern day society is currently on a path of self destruction , through examples such as globalization and the interdependency of each country.

The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall by Mary Elise Sarotte explains the causes and events leading up the opening of the Berlin Wall. By first describing the state of Eastern Europe, Sarotte leads the reader into descriptive chapters about the people and events that lead up to November 9, 1989. The story of the opening of the Berlin Wall, or the Iron Curtain as some call it, is compelling told by using a profusion of sources and actions that all play a major role in this watershed moment in history.

This initial wave of movement westward sparked a larger movement over time of larger Norse populations towards Iceland, where at one point, there were "as many as 12,000 Viking immigrants ultimately settled there, taking their farm animals with them" (Lemonick and Dorfman 2). This mass migration and settlement outside of the native Scandinavian territory mimics the conquest and expansion of other great Empires, the only difference in the Vikings situation is that they did it by sea and all other nations did it by land; that, and the fact that the more westward they moved, the less they had to deal with other nations and more with the fury of the

Europeans settling in Australia allowed Europe to utilise the diverse land, aiding Europe and in turn the first world. Australia is 7,692,024 km², that amount of land can be used for production, habitation, and also increased European knowledge of the world. They may have learnt it the hard way, but Europe learnt a vast amount about seasons, weather, and crop farming in different places around the world when the settled in Australia. They learnt that plants need very specific conditions to grow that could not be met in Australia, and they were forced to adopt new plants from the area. Although well known European crops did not cope well with the excessive heat and lack of rain, there were alternative crops in Australia that they would have to take advantage

Beginning in about A.D. 800, many Scandinavians sailed south from their homelands to seek their fortunes. These seafaring warriors began by raiding coastal sites of the British Isles but soon grew more ambitious. During the next three centuries, they left their mark as traders, pirates and settlers on much of Britain and the European continent. These raiders became known collectively as Norsemen, or “Northmen,” though they are better remembered by another name: Vikings.

In Jared Diamond’s novel 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed' he discusses many civilizations that moved away from their homelands, grew in population, and then either failed or succeeded in their new environments. Throughout this essay I will attempt to explain the Collapse of the Greenland Norse, one of the many societies to rise and fall. The Greenland Norse faced multiple challenges including economical, agricultural, and unfriendly neighbors. Alongside Greenland other North Atlantic islands faced geographical challenges that lead to some of their falls as well. Yet, first I will discuss why the Norse left Scandinavia in search of new terrain.

The era of history known as the Viking age lasted from the late eight century to the late eleventh century A.D. The society to which we refer to as Vikings represented different groups of merchants, warriors and explorers, including the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes, who were often divided into smaller kingdoms. Vikings were people who spent most of their time on the ships, and thus the history usually describes them as the masters of the sea. They are considered as the ruthless and fierce pirates, pagans, ravagers and despoilers who inhabited Scandinavian territory during the medieval times. However, it is important to say that the view of Vikings is sometimes usually misunderstood and misinterpreted. Although they were ruthless raiders,

Indigenous Australians could live an adaptable and sustainable lifestyle. This was achieved by utilizing seasonal hunting techniques, totems protection and rejuvenation of the land programs. Green, Billy and Tapim (2010, p. 343) state the effectiveness of Indigenous nations on understanding the weather patterns to aid in their hunting or gathering. This knowledge of the environmental conditions allowed Indigenous Australians to sustainably hunt and gather resources for their community without damaging the ecosystem. As a result, Indigenous communities broke the weather seasons down into their fundamental conditions. These fundamental conditions dependant on their location of the Indigenous community such as the Indigenous community of Nyoongar

Different countries have people that hold many different views and beliefs. In Nigeria the Igbo area is located in the southern area of the country. And within this area is Umuofia, which is where the Ogidi tribe lives. These people have beliefs that rest strongly on religion and faith in god. "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe takes a look at the life of an African tribe that has been isolated from the outer more technologically advanced world where science has become a part of religion proving that certain things live sickness are not caused by evil spirits. But the African tribe has no knowledge of this and they live in a society where there traditions, beliefs and there forms of communication differ from are own.

People destroyed mountain reservoirs, fertilized land, killed many animals, cut many trees, and overused the natural resources of the soil, according to Marsh (1864). Many ancient civilizations in places like the Meditterean Sea, parts of Europe, southwest Asia, and northern Africa cut many trees to clear new land for farming and exhausted the soil. This physical degradation changed the physical landscapes. The lands became bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plants. Also, Marsh (1864) point out that vast forest disappeared in mountain spurs and ridges; the alpine pasture soil, which skirted and indented the woods, and the upland field mould, became washed; fertilized irrigated meadows, became unproductive;

I agree with Coupland’s argument that the vikings were just another Germanic tribe. The Vikings do not deserve their reputation of being violent and cruel. When compared to the early Germanic tribes, they seem very similar. Because the information is from a secondary source and not directly from the Vikings, it can have an exaggerated or biased view on them. This is comparable to how Tacitus wrote on the Germanic tribes without meeting or interacting with the Germanic tribes.