Talk:Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

message: how many pages is the book?
:575 in my copy (including Index, of course). -Senori 21:57, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
::576, including Illustration Credits. and up to xvi (16) in the front bit. 218.102.221.84 08:39, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Page count?

message: We're supposed to take Diamond seriously when he makes the loopy assertion that Greenland Norse died-off because they wouldn't eat fish?
The 3rd or 4th generation descendants of Norse---who ate fish in Scandanavia, ate fish in Iceland, ate fish in Ireland, the Faeroes, the Orkneys, L'anse aux Meadows...  Right on through to Minnesota and Seattle---gave up fish-eating and embraced starvation in Greenland?
Prime example of an academic more concerned with cherry-picking evidence to support a thesis than with reality.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.56.240.147 (talk) 16:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've read the book, this is not the reason Diamond gives as to why the Norse were unsuccessful in Greenland. We can delete this comment above. Mjdon67 (talk) 18:14, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Why the Norse were unsuccessful in Greenland

message: The current description of the Easter Island section of the book seems a tad oversimplystic, I've just bought a copy of his book to see how he explains away or ignores the evidence for slave raiding and disease, and found that far from denying this he mentions an extra Smallpox epidemic that I wasn't aware of. Any objection if I rewrite that section to make it clear that he is referring to the initial 17th century collapse on Easter island?Jonathan Cardy 11:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Go ahead, sounds good to me. Tracerbullet11 06:42, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Easter Island

message: Readers of Collapse might like to comment on the question about the collapse on Easter Island raised by Stormie at Talk:Conspicuous consumption.  -- JimR 02:59, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Conspicuous consumption]] and [[Easter Island]]

message: Wikipedia has 2004 in a number of places, but from everything Ive seen outside of Wikipedia it is 2005. Which is correct? -- Stbalbach 01:57, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If you look at the copyright page of the hardcover edition, by going to Amazon and following the Copyright link, you find it says "First published in 2005 by Viking Penguin".  So 2005 seems to be correct: I will change the article to that.  -- JimR 03:54, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: My physical hard copy also says 2005 multiply on the copyright page. 69.87.199.163 00:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  2004 or 2005? 

message: Added the line "Particular attention is given to the Dutch polder model as a way how a society can resolve its challenges." 
My earlier entry was rejected with the criticism that it was a POV, which it wasn't, but perhaps this is acceptable. Diamond's reference to the polder model is a key part of the book, perhaps we can agree to that.
Interestingly, the polder model page is also resisting a change to a more realistic description...
Colignatus 22:09, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added more again as Diamond's conclusions and his reasons for his final view (versus say Ronald Wright's) are exceptionally important for all of us. 122.148.173.37 (talk) 19:08, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polder model 

message: Page A1 of the Wall Street Journal from Tuesday October 24, 2006 Left hand column
Greener Pastures - To Stop a Dust Bowl, Mongolia Builds "Great Wall" of Trees
By Patrick Barta
Desperately poor Mongolia is spending 150 million on a 30 year project to build a 2000 mile long tree fence/forest to protect itself from the Gobi Desert's Dust storms.
Perfect example (Dominic Republic like effort) of a poor nation to act in its best interest long term even when it has pressing short term needs.
:adding the external link:
:To Stop Dust Bowl, Mongolia Builds 'Great Wall' of Trees -- Planting Project Aims To Quell Gobi Sandstorms; Critics Cite Threat From Salt by PATRICK BARTA -- Oct. 24, 2006
:—Haim Berman (talk) 09:04, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Similiar Reading 

message: I will  remove the final external link in the page because it links to an article which requires a fee to be accessed.  I understand this to be soliciting.
That is fair. Mjdon67 (talk) 18:15, 24 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing External Link 

message: There is also a version called "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive" (e.g., http://www.amazon.de/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Survive-Science/dp/0713992867/ref=sr_1_2/303-4825653-9289848?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1179784026&sr=1-2)
What's the difference? Is it British or is it a newer version?
:Seems to me to be a mere typo. Seemns to me that there is only one book even if the title was for some reason or some market changed. 122.148.173.37 (talk) 16:08, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  ''How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive''? 

message: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed redirects here and spells out the complete title of the work. Seems nigh-infinitely preferable to this gotta-be-piped Collapse (book) title. This article should be moved over the aforementioned redirect post haste out of a love of common sense and to match the previously ammended text in the WP:LEAD. MrZaiustalk 14:17, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Subtitles, it could go either way.  This all depends on whether we consider the phrase "How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" to be long or short.  NJGW (talk) 14:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That seems rather silly when a dab is the alternative, but you're right - Something to take up there, not here. MrZaiustalk 14:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Given the altered comments above, and, upon further review that reached much the same conclusion on my part, I am just going to call for a definition of "short" at the guideline. In the meantime, the four-word (ignoring prepositions) subtitle seems far preferable to the disambig. MrZaiustalk 15:34, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noncontroversial move request 

message: I will remove the following sentence from the subsection "Criticisms" :
:Isotopic analysis of bones has shown that Greenlanders ate large amounts of seafood, with seafood supplying 20% of their diet initially, rising to 80% at the end.
This fact is reported as is in the book itself. Diamond argues that this 80% of "seafood" is most probably seal, while there is virtually no trace that Viking Greenlanders were eating any of the abundant fish (in contrast to other settlements in Greenland and elsewhere). In the same subsection, the sentence just before also looks dubious to me :
:This sounds like someone not taking into account the different preservation rates of large marine mammal bones versus small fish bones.  Consdering that the rest of the Norse world relied extremely heavily upon fish --- even in non-coastal areas --- the notion that the Greenland Norse were averse to eating fish is simply preposterous.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.152.97.195 (talk) 10:58, 8 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: It might sound like someone not taking into account the different preservation rates of large marine mammal bones versus small fish bones, but it isn't. Diamond lists the results of archaeological research in the vanished settlements. What was found included small bones from the feet of small birds and rabbits, fruit flies, the bones of dogs, but no remains of any large marine mammals (except seals, which could be hunted on the shore): no whales or walruses, as eaten by the Inuit, nor of fish (or fishhooks, for that matter). By the time the settlement collapsed they were no longer building boats, either.Thomas Peardew (talk) 16:37, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

text: Jared Diamond's thesis that Easter Island society collapsed in isolation entirely due to environmental damage is contested by ethnographers and archaeologists who argue that the introduction of diseases carried by European colonizers and slave raiding, which devastated the population in the 19th century, had a much greater social impact than environmental decline and that introduced animals, first rats and then sheep, were greatly responsible for the island's loss of native flora which came closest to deforestation as late as 1930–1960.
Considering that I cannot check the source cited, I will refrain from removing it. Yet Diamond never claims that diseases carried by European colonizers had no effect. Rather, he argues that the decline was already very pronounced before the first Europeans arrived. Finally, rats were introduced by the first inhabitants themselves... Elwwod (talk) 17:57, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

text: Surely there are better and more substantial criticisms of such a tendentious book than b) a paragraph that seems to be about an entirely different book and a) a paragraph that seems at best confused and at worst deliberately misleading in its descriptions of both the Easter Island society's collapse and Diamond's arguments and conclusions regarding said collapse.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.75.37.169 (talk) 05:30, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  On "criticisms" 

message: See also: Jay Forrester, World Dynamics, Wright-Allen Press, 1971.144.85.240.91 (talk) 19:01, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Related articles and books 

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thread_title:  External links modified