Somebody else that does not buy the idea Easter Islanders soiled their own nest as proposed by environmentalists a few years ago. It's getting pretty clear they invented the idea to sell their politicised theory that humans are breeding so fast we will shortly run out of resources and there will be global warfare as nations compete for the dwindling raw materials vital to modern life (and that is without taking into account the food issue). At http://phys.oprg/print390725539.html … an article in the archaeological journal Antiquity (August 2016) says that the idea Easter Islanders ran out of resources and then engaged in civil war over the remnants of them, leading to societal collapse, is wrong. Thousands of obsidian triangular objects found strewn across the surface of the island, almost everywhere, and known as mata'a, were said to be weapons, by reason that obsidian is glass like and can be sharp. Carl Lipo and his archaeological team analysed many of these objects and concluded they were probably not a lot of use as weapons and neither were they particularly lethal. Lipo suggests the mata'a were used in cultivation and that is why they are so common. Population of Easter Island appears to have been successful all the way down to the arrival of Europeans. It was an amazing society, Lipo says. It doesn't look that way to us as we see fields that are mostly what looks like a rocky surface – but these people were successful over a long period of time and were able to grow things in what we see as virtually a Moon surface. The article would be a good read but Antiquity is an expensive journal to subscribe to, which is more the pity. It is also a journal that environmentalists, especially the Doom mongering variety, are unlikely to read – so has this bit of common sense reasoning fallen on rocky ground?
At www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ginormous-goldfish-are-invading-austra… ….people depositing their unwanted pet goldfish into streams, ponds and rivers have been a problem around the world for a long time. Goldfish stay small if the tank they are kept in is not too large but released into the wild they take on a triffid-like transformation and grow into quite large fish, with the diet of a big fish. Environmentalists are complaining they stir up the water and make it cloudy and un-Australian. Goldfish are a problem in parts of Canada too – anywhere where clear water is the norm. As a relative of the carp they would have been eaten in the past – but we do our shopping in the supermarket nowadays.