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Reasons Our Civilization Will Soon Collapse
- itsyaboi 3y agotl;dr: ctrl+f "climate" => 67 results
- lowbloodsugar 3y agoFirst use of the word "climate" in the article: >How do I know this? Let’s start with humanity’s biggest problem. No, it’s not climate change. It’s something most people have never even heard of.
- itsyaboi 3y agoYou know what, maybe I did judge a book by its cover. Let's take a look a the next several sequential usages of "climate", no cherry picking! > This is something the average climate activist doesn’t seem to understand. Even if we could stop climate change, our civilization would still have the problem of dwindling resources. > To accomplish that, the damage we’ll do to the environment could potentially outweigh the damage done by climate change. > If you don’t believe me, I’m going to quote a letter written by experts in Earth science and delivered to the United Kingdom’s Committee on Climate Change a few years ago. > And unfortunately, climate change is making it harder to grow these trees. Droughts and floods are making them struggle to survive, and tapping too much of the sap (which is used to make rubber) can kill them. Plus, they are very vulnerable to white root disease, and climate change is making leaf blights like that more common. ...and its exactly what you would expect from the title.
- rhelz 3y agoUseless as a guide to predicting the future, but quite useful for future Elon Musks, who looked at the inevitable end of cheap fossil fuels and saw a business opportunity. If something is a must-solve problem, well, tautologically, that means it must be solved, and there will be willing buyers for solution venders.
- schmookeeg 3y agoWhich may explain why my newsfeed seems like nothing but problems. :) Spadework for a future product offering.
- underseacables 3y agoWe've been hearing about the collapse of civilization for a very long time, for a variety of reasons. This doesn't really offer anything new other than another prediction that it will happen soon.
- kagakuninja 3y agoWhat it does is explain why society didn't collapse in the 70s / 80s like some predicted. We have been living on borrowed time, relying on over consumption of finite resources. Unless we invent miracle tech, we are fucked. And then there is the climate crisis, which will require massive geoengineering because we waited too long. No one knows if we can avert that crisis or how bad it will get.
- xboxnolifes 3y agoThat explains why collapse will happen without change. It doesn't explain why it'll happen "soon". Borrowed time from limited resources can last a while.
- RetroTechie 3y ago> Borrowed time from limited resources can last a while. In the past 30y more fossil fuels have been consumed than at all time before. Ok maybe peak oil has occured around now. But that's certainly not the case for overall fossil use. Or GHG emissions. That's still increasing. Cutting down rain forest? Fishing? Many minerals & metals: all similar stories. The list goes on. Every civilization that operated like that in the past, did collapse. It's only a matter of time. For these civilizations, effects were localized. And a good # of people may have gotten out & moved elsewhere. But this time it's global. Good luck staying safe if logistics & social structures break down around the world.
- zosima 3y agoAll life (with very few exceptions) is living on and dependent on overconsumption of resources on the sun.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoAnother victim of Vaclav Smil's intententional deceptions: > But gasoline is just one small part of our precarious civilization. As explained in the book, How The World Really Works, there are at least four other things we need: cement, steel, plastic, and ammonia. And they all require fossil fuels. Key falsehood: "And they all require fossil fuels". Luckily, no they don't. At least this guy probably doesn't have the same reach as Vaclav's richest dupe, Bill Gates, so the damage will be more contained.
- polotics 3y agoCould you point us to examples of Vaclav Smil's evil doings? I was under the impression he's a very strict honest scientist. Thank You!
- pipes 3y agoAnd also point to how they don't require fossil fuels too!
- mmh0000 3y agoCement is well known for requiring gasoline for the smoothest pours.
- antisthenes 3y agoPlastics can be synthesized from most carbohydrate gases. You can make most carbohydrate gases from water & CO2 from the air. The problem is that it's very energy-intensive, so the best way to create such plastics is by using excess renewable energy (e.g. peak solar) to create renewable carbohydrates. Currently, the tech has not been economically scaled yet, due to being new, and also not enough renewable capacity being available.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoHe's the Jordan Peterson of climate change. Spends half his time making snide digs at his opponents and then goes right into sophistry and word salad when he finds himself on tricky ground: > Interviewer: “Tell me more about what’s happening on the energy front.” > Smil: “We haven’t made a single correct move in energy.” […] > Hydroelectricity is the best, the most sustainable—I hate that word, sustainable. That’s the best form of renewable energy there is today, right? Because it runs all the time. Wind—well, you know, even in Manitoba, it’s not there 75 per cent of the time…. People feel constrained to be publicly correct to build a wind turbine farm…. Why do we do these stupidities, right? Well, because we feel renewable energy is only solar and wind, right? Not hydro apparently. Most people don’t think that way.” > Interviewer: “You mentioned you dislike the word sustainability.” > Smil: “Yeah, absolutely hate it [the word sustainability] because there is no such thing. Sustainability cannot be defined. Sustainable for what? Over next year? Over 10 years? Over a millennium? On a local basis, on a planetary basis? I mean, there are so many time and space dimensions to it you cannot define what is sustainable. If somebody is boasting that what they are doing is sustainable, it’s a total laugh. There is no sustainable thing.” https://www.desmog.com/vaclav-smil/ https://www.desmog.com/vaclav-smil/
- RecycledEle 3y agoI encourage everyone to read Merchants of Despair by Robert Zubrin. https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Despair-Environmentalists-Pseudo-Scientists-Antihumanism/dp/159403737X/ https://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Despair-Environmentalists-P... IMO, this is the most important book written in the 21st century. Don't read the whole thing, just read the first chapter. The first chapter will give you what you need to know. Here's a summary: Every new person born has a mouth to eat, but they are not a useless eater. They are also born with hands to work. They work to produce what they consume. We ensure they consume no more than they produce with a system called money. The more dense a population, the higher the per-capita income. This is because the main thing that determines your standard of living is the technology your society has access to. The technology your society has access to is directly proportional to the total number of man-years lived before that date. This is because humans create tech at a constant level. For every X man-years lived, a new invention will be created. Every person is both with a mouth to eat, hands to work, and a brain to invent. But won't we run out of resources? Sure, we ran out of whale oil. That did not matter. We invented a bad replacement (town gas) which killed a lot of people, then we invented a better replacement called electric lights. Humanity marches on.
- baxtr 3y agoYou might like this episode: https://nav.al/david-deutsch https://nav.al/david-deutsch
- iancmceachern 3y agoAnd we solved problems using methods we hadn't even conceived of yet. I'm confident we will figure out new and innovative ways to solve problems in ways that aren't really even imaginable
- ASalazarMX 3y agoThis is the same problem, borrowing from future generations. Why solve our problems now when we can inherit them to the next generation?
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- Havoc 3y agoKinda surprised that nobody has figured out a solution to the sand one. If we end civilization let it be for something more substantial than "my sand grains are the wrong shape".
- effed3 3y agosand?.. for houses, there are many others materials to build (clearly forget burj-khalifa), sand can be left for bridges and others infrastructure.. Wood, to mention one, and: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujian_tulou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw-bale_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw-bale_construction
- wilsonnb3 3y agopresumably it just hasn't been economically viable to find a solution yet
- effed3 3y agobetter ideas about the argument are like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth For every problem (verly likely) there is one (or more) solution, human evolution teach this, but anyway human nature is the best candidate for the causes of any trouble... "two things are infinite, universe and human stupidity, about the first i still have doubts - A.Einstein"
- friend_and_foe 3y agoAh yes, a hyperobject, a system so big for your head that you should take our word for it, but not so big as to preclude us from asking you to do so. Do these people have superhuman brains or something? Everything is a hyperobject. The sun, the atmosphere of Jupiter, the asteroid belt, the human brain even. We don't just shut up and stop trying, we grasp what we can. And we are pretty good at it. A man references the hyperobject as the reason it's hopeless to try, and then continues to use the interplay between climate, economics, human behavior, the biome, the water cycle, and predicts concrete predictions. He must be one of those big brains that we should just shut up and listen to.
- Reki 3y agoIts ok to admit you cant truly grasp something, in fact its a mark of wisdom. The collective output and understanding of the world's scientists is equivalent to that of a superintelligence, you alone will never come close. I have an uncle who knows a lot more facts about climate change than I do, and uses them to great effect in arguing that its not real. My uncle is also an idiot.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoCollective output? How does that work, each one looks at a different part? Might we do the same? I can admit when I don't grasp something. But I'm not going to defer to someone else who says that it's incomprehensible to anyone but them. A statement like that should set your bullshit detector off immediately, unless you like being sacrificed atop a pyramid.
- Tadpole9181 3y agoSo there's no confusion, there's a distinction between "nobody but me can understand" and "nobody but me currently understands", right?
- friend_and_foe 3y agoA hyperobject is supposed to be something so large and complex that no human mind is capable of grasping it. I'm not the one invoking this unfalsifiable definition, some of those claiming to understand it however, are. That's obviously disingenuous and should immediately set off your bullshit alarm.
- codersfocus 3y agoI think it will collapse due to widespread agricultural failure way before stored resources are used up. It only takes a couple days of temperature being inhospitable for the plants and animals we rely on to die en mass. The resulting food shortages will destroy humanity in parts around the world. This will effect advanced and primitive economies alike.
- 20after4 3y agoThe comments here clearly illustrate why it's hopeless. Most people, when confronted, are unwilling to even believe that any of this is really happening.
- westcort 3y agoOn the other hand, it is better to know what the future may hold earlier than others do. The effect of elevation on climate is especially interesting for those looking for a viable place to live at 600 ppm CO2 levels: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333837663/figure/fig2/AS:770974559506432@1560826067355/Vertical-profiles-of-temperature-in-radiative-convective-equilibrium-Dashed-dotted-and_W640.jpg https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333837663/figure/fi...
- harryquach 3y agoOr perhaps it's psychologically easier to live in denial in the face of hopelessness, especially if you have small children.
- anon-sre-srm 3y agoThe problem is three-part: - A lack of clarity about actual problems. This list conflates too many things together that aren't existential threats and are aspirational values. The actual root-cause threats are climate change, politi-economic inequality, industrial meat & dairy agriculture, antibiotic resistance, pandemics, and war. - Chicken-little learned helplessness attitude, excusing inaction. - Lack of leadership resulting in Tragedy of the Commons from unwillingness to be the "adult". Overpopulation isn't an existential threat. It's been bemoaned since the 1960's. It's bullshit. The world is already at 30% generation of all energy from renewables and climbing rapidly. FF extraction won't be as "necessary" and will be replaced by alternative products and processes. Reality is the reality. Making the future better will take being honest, making difficult decisions soon, and enforcing specific policies to avoid real catastrophes, not academic ones.
- mharig 3y agoHe forgot one thing: logistics. At least in the industrialized nation states, an interruption of the supply with food or other basic goods, may be even a significant disturbance, will lead to collapse.
- hgs3 3y agoWould redefining the value of currency in terms of the natural resources available help curb their depletion? Kind of like the gold standard [1], but in terms of Earth's resources in general? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard
- amai 3y agoNo mention of a pandemic? We might not always be as lucky as with Covid-19.
- namlem 3y agoThis is why we need AGI. Civilization is unsustainable. Without a godlike intelligence to fix things, it will collapse, probably within the next 200 years. Maybe much sooner.