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Is global collapse imminent? (2014) [pdf]
- tinym 12y agoOne hopes Betteridge's law is in effect
- jqm 12y agoThis seems something like the (constantly failing) climate prediction models. There are the lot of interrelated factors, many of which are not well understood and any number of possible unforeseen events arising.
- sambe 12y agoWhich constantly failing climate models? How do you define failing?
- jqm 12y agoIf I have to define failing we are just playing silly games. You have google. You can find no shortage of climate change models that failed to mirror reality. For instance, many models have over-forcast surface warming and it hasn't happened. Probably because the deep oceans have acted as heat sinks. Not because the basic principal of the earth heating in response to CO2 is incorrect. That's what happens when you try to models complex systems with incomplete understanding... which was my original point.
- Daishiman 12y agoBut your point is moot because the "failings" of models have been very quickly corrected, and they still show that the prevailing conclusions are true. Models have been "failing" for the past 20 years and they still provide useful information. No one in their right mind is questioning the conclusions. If anything the issue is whether we're facing an apocalypse by 2040 or if things are merely going be catastrophic by 2100. And just to note: even though the above conclusions show that models have very wide margins, what is indisputable is that no one is claiming that things will get better or that we are not in for major catastrophe. If that isn't a useful model, I don't now what is.
- jqm 12y ago"whether we're facing an apocalypse by 2040 or if things are merely going be catastrophic by 2100" Right... like the hundreds of thousands of refuges fleeing rising sea levels that was to happen by 2010. Pardon my scepticism. We don't know what is going to happen by 2040 and retrofitting models then saying "oh, now it's all figured out!" doesn't take future things you haven't figured out into account.
- Daishiman 12y agoCan you even cite one peer-reviewed model that said that, or are you just speculating? Because the only place I've read garbage of that sort is in conspiracy theory web sites, not an IPCC report.
- jqm 12y agoI wouldn't call a major UN report un-reviewed or Der Spiegel a conspiracy site... http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/feared-migration-hasn-t-happened-un-embarrassed-by-forecast-on-climate-refugees-a-757713.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/feared-migration-h... So in answer to your question.. no, I'm not speculating.
- Daishiman 12y ago
- Daishiman 12y agoConstantly failing? Have you actually read the literature in climate science? The models have been predicting pretty much everything that's been happening in the past 20 year. Collapse of Antarctic ice shelves? Predicted. Ice cover of the Arctic? Surprisingly well predicted. Atmospheric CO2 ppm? Same thing.
- lemming 12y agoThe predictions have been off in one important aspect - they've completely failed to predict the rate at which these things are happening. Even the more exaggerated estimates have been way too low compared to how quickly the Arctic ice is actually disintegrating.
- jqm 12y agoAtmospheric CO2 ppm a prediction? Ok. You don't know what you are talking about do you?
- Daishiman 12y agoYup. Do you?
- jqm 12y agoI'm thinking that if you did know then you would be aware of how many (often quite prestigious and well funded) models have failed to predict global climate change outcomes, especially in timing... That's my point about models. For such a complex system they are very difficult to make with any accuracy, and there are any number of factors that can throw them off. I see this same lack of dimensionality in this article. Has nothing to do with man affecting the climate which most reasonable people agree is likely occurring.
- jqm 12y agoHmmm... maybe I came across as someone who doesn't believe in human induced climate change. That's not it at all. I'm pretty sure human induced climate change is happening. Not a denialist. Unlike those for instance who refuse to acknowledge so many climate change models have completely failed to mirror reality.
- 3327 12y ago"The end of easy oil, and subsequent global collapse" The paper might not be right on all points or might be completely wrong entirely. But it is right on one thing. If you have have ever taken care of plants, what happens with a plant before it dies is something very odd - nothing. It will look a little weak, but then it will suddenly completely die - almost overnight, shedding all leaves and going dry.
- zaroth 12y agoThe most interesting thing about the market is how everything you think you know can be wrong. Like how bad news is good news right before a Fed meeting, or how suddenly cheap oil is now bad because it's reducing investment in new pipelines and rigs. I think these quirky inversions are reliable signals of something, I just haven't figured out quite what. One thing's for sure, these predictions are exactly like a broken clock.
- enupten 12y agoIsn't the cheap oil the result of the Saudis arm-twisting the Russians and Iranians ? P.S: Shell is starting an exploration of oil in the Arctic, after Obama's executive order. I don't think the bit about investment in new rigs is well-founded.
- vixen99 12y agoMaybe in your neck of the woods the expression has a different meaning but I thought 'arm-twisting' meant getting someone to do something they initially didn't want to do. Hardly the case with the Russians and the price of oil.
- nl 12y agoThe implication is that the Saudis are a US proxy, and the arm twisting is that they should change their policy on Ukraine. In the case of Iran it's more just to try to hurt their economy.
- 12y ago
- nickbauman 12y agoSocieties do not collapse. They're merely abandoned.
- faizshah 12y agoThis is incorrect, societies have collapsed regularly throughout history. A collapse doesn't have to be a total destruction of the society, it's most often a fast transition to a lower level of social complexity. One of my favorite books (and a book referenced by the link above) is "The Collapse of Complex Societies" by Joseph A Tainter, he gives a great study on the nature of collapse with lots of examples (note, some of the examples are a little dated and dubious like the Ik). He also gave a few presentations on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI
- nickbauman 12y agoA society is a way of life that has a broadly-stroked narrative everyone shares. It's not a geography or civil engineering artifacts. When that narrative stops working, some perish but generally the people don't just evaporate, they leave.
- faizshah 12y agoWith such a broad definition of a society you would not classify as a collapse what Tainter classifies as a collapse: a fast loss of social complexity. Additionally your definition might be better as a definition of culture rather than society.
- nickbauman 12y agoCompletely agree. Tainter's definition of society is deeply biased to the one he currently inhabits as being perforce "better" (the title having the word "complex" in it is a dead giveaway). This is a superstition. I'd argue that a society that is actually better is not necessarily at all a more complex one. It is the one that reacts more favorably to change.
- currentoor 12y agoThey don't even have a conclusion/tl;dr section...
- anton_tarasenko 12y agoThe author is missing the point that technology R&D responds to oil prices. Strictly speaking, if oil becomes scarce and expensive, alternative energy develops more rapidly. It's the cheap oil that creates developmental risks.
- dredmorbius 12y agoYes, but there's only so much power in research -- humans can find and exploit existing entropic gradients. We cannot create them. And people have been looking at the exhaustion of fossil fuels since the late 18th century. Yes, 18th, not 19th, with the first questions arising over how long Britain's coal would last. In that time, the three big developments have been accessing petroleum (1859), commercial electricity generation (1870s), and nuclear fission (1935). Petroleum replaced one fossil fuel with another (albeit a vastly more useful one). Electricity allowed for energy generation and use to be decoupled by thousands of miles, if necessary (transmission losses for long-distance electricity are quite low). And nuclear fission offered one possible out, though it's been a highly problematic option. Wind and water power have been utilized by humans for centuries, if not longer. Solar power has progressed hugely in recent decades, but it's far more fundamentally limited than many people realize. Raw availability at Earth's surface is ~8,000x present human energy consumption. Factor in land area (30% of total), population and per-capita energy growth (roughly doubling energy demand even at a small fraction of present US energy use levels), total conversion efficiencies (you're left with about 1% of the available incident energy after PV conversion, capacity factor, spacing factors, and inverters), and we're down to a 20x surplus of solar energy as available capacity if you pave over the entire Earth's landmass. You start rapidly arriving at the conclusion that either we're 1) not going to see levels of resource consumption comparable to those of the advanced world, or 2) not for projected populations, or both. You can hypothesize alternatives, but most are assuming tremendous advances which have been exceptionally non-forthcoming.
- kazagistar 12y agoNuclear being "problematic" is vastly overblown. That's why I think the answer to the title is a resounding no: we still have a lenthy nuclear buffer before a proper energetic collapse, so at the very least it is not imminent.