Before ‘Dune,’ Frank Herbert learned from native Americans
First of all any article referencing Brian Herbert as an authority on Dune is suspect as a result.  Those atrocious fanfiction additions are best used as cat litter box liner, period.<p>Secondly, if you read the Appendices of Book I of Frank Herbert&#x27;s Dune series, you&#x27;ll see that he more or less invented the concept of &#x27;planetologist&#x27;, which in the late 1990s became a recognized academic discipline under the umbrellas of &#x27;planetary sciences&#x27; and &#x27;earth system sciences&#x27;.  This was in response to a sense that the academic study of the subject had been too fractured, i.e. disciplines such as oceanography, geology, ecology and atmospheric chemistry and physics were actually highly interrelated, to the point that the historic divisions didn&#x27;t make as much sense as they once did.  This is now seen in, for example, the scientific study of Jupiter&#x27;s moon Europa.<p>As far as the current impacts of human civilization on Earth&#x27;s climate and ecology, see the original Dune book:<p>&gt; &quot;The thing the ecologically illiterate don’t realize about an ecosystem is that it’s a system. A system! A system maintains a certain fluid stability that can be destroyed by a misstep in just one niche. A system has order, a flowing from point to point. If something dams the flow, order collapses. The untrained might miss that collapse until it was too late. That’s why the highest function of ecology is the understanding of consequences - Pardot Kynes in &quot;Appendix I: The Ecology of Dune&quot;<p>Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of &#x27;native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature&#x27; a la Avatar?  One real refreshing aspect of the film and the book is that the Fremen were often more technologically advanced than offworlders, having superior stillsuits and so on, and they had their own long-term agenda - i.e. slowly terraforming the planet to make it more suitable for human life.  Note also that the infantilization of native cultures was often used as a justification for enforcing &#x27;civilization&#x27; on them, as well.  Enough already, they were people with goals just like all other peoples.