from the we're-doomed,-I-tell-you,-doomed dept.
Anonymous Coward writes:
"I've heard this theme repeated many times in debates and economic discussions, but this NASA-funded study seems like one of the more well researched studies in this area. This article contains more links to other studies that provide more empirical and less theoretical models."
The report continues:
A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilization could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.
Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that 'the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.' Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to 'precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common.'
The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:37AM
You can't trust predictions based on modelling by think tanks because there is no way of knowing whether it's honest or not. Irreversible collapse is a great way to scare politicians into supporting whatever program NASA will announce in coming months to address this prediction. Bad news and fear are so overused as tools of statecraft that they are losing their potency.
(Score: 4, Funny) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:02AM
So NASA will finally fund the SS Botany Bay?
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sir Garlon on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:48PM
They lost me at "famine." There is a major difference between the G8 and these historical empires: agricultural yield per hectare, or more generally, productivity per worker. Mechanization, fertilizer, refrigeration, pesticides ... overlooking the effects of these differences makes me more than a little skeptical that the authors have checked the validity of their model.
TFA raises an interesting question but does a poor job answering it. I would not call it click-bait; it was worth reading, if only because rejecting the author's thesis made me think.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:33PM
So let's just say, for the sake of argument, that massive amounts of arable land were the victim of major droughts for many years in a row, as has happened in the Southeast US as far west as Texas. That will eventually make your arable land not arable. If the majority of your arable land isn't fertile any longer, then that will eventually turn itself into a more serious supply problem.
Right now, American farmers can produce something like 4500 calories per person per day. If 2/3 of the formerly productive land is no longer productive, then they'll produce something like 1500 calories per person per day. Adults need 1800-2000 calories per day to be healthy, so people are going to be starving, and do what starving people do, which includes taking other people's food by force.
Just because we live in modern times doesn't mean we're immune to serious problems. Nor can we always get out of difficulties by improving technology.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:20PM
This is silly on multiple levels. It looks like you pulled your 4500 number out of your ass, but even if you did not, not all calories are the same. It takes a lot more farmland and energy to produce a kcal of beef than it does of chicken or a vegetable. If we are headed to less farming capacity, our food supply will simply need to change with it. Either we go with different foods or technology to provide food.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by velex on Wednesday March 19 2014, @10:36PM
After briefly perusing the paper somebody else linked below, my impression was that the problem is primarily political. I.e., it won't be a drought or climate change or some other natural disaster that undoes the current civilization, but politics.
If it were merely an engineering problem, we might solve a loss or lack of arable land by farming vertically [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @03:05AM
You don't even need a drought. Groundwater depletion will do the job just as well.
We are sucking the bread basket dry [usgs.gov].
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Friday March 21 2014, @12:40PM
We need to vote this up.
AC - So let's just say, for the sake of argument, that massive amounts of arable land were the victim of major droughts for many years in a row, as has happened in the Southeast US as far west as Texas.
You don't even need a drought. Groundwater depletion will do the job just as well.
We are sucking the bread basket dry.
Groundwater in the known aquifers in North America has been depleting, through added use, and dry conditions we've been seeing for the last 10-15 years. Any engineer will tell you a lot of small changes will add up to a large change provided enough time.
And we've only gotten started on depletion. Sure Farming uses most of it, but domestic use is up, and use by industry has risen due to Gas and Oil Fracking. (and i will note that Aquifers in areas with fracking are getting contaminated - some will never be useful again)
(Score: 2) by hatta on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:22PM
There is a major difference between the G8 and these historical empires: agricultural yield per hectare, or more generally, productivity per worker.
Increased productivity might increase the population density we're able to achieve before collapse, but that would only delay the collapse, not prevent it.
Mechanization, fertilizer, refrigeration, pesticides ... overlooking the effects of these differences makes me more than a little skeptical that the authors have checked the validity of their model.
And when fossil fuels run out, how are we going to run our tractors, fix nitrogen for fertilizer, power our refrigerated shipping containers, etc., etc.?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:41PM
"And when fossil fuels run out"
All you need to do is make it impossible to extract and distribute enough of it. Say the financial markets go crazy (or crazier) and its no longer financially viable to operate a traditional capitalist resource extraction empire. Well, then you don't.
Another interesting dynamic is as the slide picks up speed, the remaining producers become more brittle and less likely to be able to continue production. Partially due to general collapse of course, but also specifically due to lack of economy of scale.
An example of this is the near future shutdown of the Alaskan pipeline.
No need to literally empty the earth of all potential fuel.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:06PM
I don't think it's necessarily a famine of production. I believe the world produces more than enough to feed everyone now and yet there are plenty of starving people. I think a famine of inequality is possible.
That said, I'm not how much worry to attach to the article. From a historical perspective, they are almost certainly correct that there will be a collapse. I have much less faith on the when (10s, 100s, 1000s of years?) and how (resource depletion, meteorite, nuclear destruction, fusion gone bad?, aliens, heh).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:25PM
That's partly the problem. The biggest problem is people, in general, expect the think tanks to think for them. Do the research for them. Educate them. Google for them. It's the minority of people who would actually think "hmm.. I wonder if I can find any evidence to support that claim?" and then actually do it.
We wouldn't have a lot of the problems we do if more people would embrace concepts when only directly supported by concrete evidence. If there is no strong evidence, embrace critical thinking and try to find some to support either end of the argument.
sadly, it's much easier for people to just sponge up whatever comes across their media feed. This also makes them the primary target for manipulation, and the manipulators are very good at.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @01:00PM
FUCK Elsevier. FUCK them up their stupid asses.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:55AM
it won't be long before we create one. It's as if doomsday scenarios are built into our brains.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jt on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:11AM
Perhaps because our personal 'doomsday', our death, is a fundamental concept we take into account in many decisions daily. Extending this individual concept to a tribe scope is an obvious step.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:08PM
Find me a historical or prehistorical human civilization that has never collapsed, then get back to us.
Even if uneducated people don't know any history (perhaps intentionally) that doesn't mean the meme isn't spread thru culture.
Aside from having experienced a collapse in their direct ancestry, most civilizations have expanded at the cost of previous declining civilizations. See the post 1492 experience of native american civilizations. Or the ottoman empire in europe. Post colonial experiences since the collapse of the british empire. Germanic civilization in the former roman empire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:11PM
Right, because atheist regimes have always been places of plenty and progress with no human rights abuses. Perhaps we could just accept that the whole of humanity (ourselves included) have corrupt tendencies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:36PM
I'm not sure religion is equivalent to "doomsday scenarios". I think you're overexposed to Christianity and Islam, the main religions with that aspect in the modern world.
They're completely tacking in say: Taoism, Buddhism, and a lot of now-dead western religions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mendax on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:56AM
No one needs any kind of computer modeling to know that our civilization is doomed to collapse. The resources will run out eventually unless we become a space-fairing species. The only good thing about this prediction is that I won't live to see the chaos that is created by the collapse.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:16AM
Not so sure that resources will run out until the sun dies.
Everything else is recyclable. Even you. We area all soylentils after all.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by crutchy on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:12AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg [youtube.com]
well worth 35 minutes
no bs, just mostly straightforward logic with a bit of stats figures thrown in
quite chilling
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:23AM
That was just depressing. I'm going to curl up in a corner now and cry for a bit...
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Thursday March 20 2014, @05:46AM
While I have read the vast majority of this in little snippets here and there, it was fantastic to see it all put into one single place and in a very well laid out format, intuitive construction and sound logic being applied to extrapolate the right message. Well done for posting that link!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lx on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:19AM
So we'll enter the post industrial age. Human culture will survive without access to oil or Netflix as it has done for the past twenty thousand years or so.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mendax on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:15AM
You do have a point. But I think the post-industrial age is a pre-industrial age, not exactly something for a person of our time to look forward to, unless you're a luddite or someone who already lives off the grid.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:55PM
It's considerably worse than that. At least in the process of getting from here to there. I expect over a 90% death rate. How much over I wouldn't want to guess, but 99.9% isn't impossible, and it could get worse than THAT if nuclear weapons are used to fight over the last scraps, as doesn't seem really unlikely. (Irrational, yes, but people have been known to become irrational when they are threated.)
OTOH, it seems quite plausible that a good plague could save us long before the end. Multi-drug resistant diseases are becoming more common, so it's not really unlikely, even without intent behind it. I'd be surprised if it killed off enough people, though. I think it would need to kill off an essentially randomly selected 70% of humanity to allow us to avoid the collapse.
That said, if we can hold out for 30 more years we will possibly be saved from that end by strong AI. Whether it will be friendly AI, however, is another question. And this may depend on it being possible to synthesize complete circuits out of almost nothing but silicon, carbon, and nitrogen. It can almost be done in the lab now, though, so it's not an unreasonable requirement.
P.S.: The mode of AI take-over that I'm seeing is AI(s) replacing all middle management in government, and turning the heads of governments into figureheads. And this mode of conquest doesn't depend on whether it's a friendly AI or not. It does, however, require that the AIs have a non-human goal structure...but this will almost certainly be true, even the the path to AI leads through uploads (which I don't expect).
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:12PM
As long as they don't have to eat, they'll do fine. Unfortunately we eat crude oil and natgas, however indirectly.
Note that cultural complexity can collapse. Unless you meant culture as in "just a bunch of people". The Romans of 700 AD were not quite the same cultural level as the Romans of 100 AD. Not just merely different culture, but at a lower level, a lower quantity, and more so than correcting for population.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:54AM
'Civilisation' in a NASA Article? George Washington weeps.
Are studies like this the reason we're relying on Russians to get us into space? Or is this all we can do with the leftover money?
Of these, Population and Energy stand out as most valid. For Climate Change, modern modes of transportation, short of a significant sea level rise, will only disrupt people enough to migrate to better areas. For water and agriculture, we have the chemistry to purify water and fertilize soil, and baring an economic collapse, will be able to feed people enough that they won't revolt.
Energy is the cushion against climate change (dams, air conditioning, heat, transportation), water purification plants, and even industrial processing of fertilizers. It's not simply electricity, but gas (petrol) that helps move these things around.
Population is the most likely cause of disruption, and not for the planetary impact itself, but of the mass migration that leads to friction, and to clashes of peoples. As far back as the ancient Greeks, people fought one way against those in the same group, and another way against outsiders. As recently as WW2, which was a race war, demagogues among the better-than-you crowds in German and Japan led to horrific atrocities. Italy, despite being on the Axis side, were not so enthralled by the better-than-you attitude, and committed numerically fewer atrocities.
There are several areas in the world where demographic changes could lead to ethnic friction:
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(Score: 5, Informative) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:27AM
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:18PM
"If China sends 10 million people into Siberia, what would Russia do?"
Wait for them to die, probably. Almost everyone who's ever gone to Siberia has either eventually given up and come home, or quickly died there.
"Russia" under numerous types of governments for centuries, millenia, has tried to do something with Siberia and other than resource extraction, prison camps, and dumping toxic waste, they have never found a use for it.
USA people think the American West is a tough land for tough men, but the worst parts of the west are pretty luxurious by Siberian standards.
There does exist land that is quite literally uninhabitable, at least long term sustainably.
(Score: 3, Informative) by elgrantrolo on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:13PM
Really? Siberia is a very large territory, I'd be surprised if it were all inhospitable. According to Wikipedia, things are not that bad [wikipedia.org], especially in the region that is closest to China.
Climate:
Almost all the population lives in the south, along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate in this southernmost part is Humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb) with cold winters but fairly warm summers lasting at least four months. Annual average is about 0.5 °C (32.9 °F), January averages about −15 °C (5 °F) and July about +19 °C (66 °F), while daytime temperatures in summer typically are above 20 °C.[26][27] With a reliable growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile chernozem soils, southern Siberia is good enough for profitable agriculture, as was proven in the early twentieth century.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:24PM
With global warming, Siberia will likely get warm enough to be somewhat habitable soon.
The main problem in the American West is water; it's arid, so it's hard to live there without lots of irrigation. That's why the Anisazi and Hohokam built canals in Arizona well over a millenia ago. [waterhistory.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:59PM
> With global warming, Siberia will likely get warm enough to be somewhat habitable soon.
And lots of yummy frozen mammoth steaks will be uncovered! Mmmmmm..... mammoth! :-9
(Score: 5, Informative) by gishzida on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:58AM
There is no link in the article to NASA or Goddard. A search at NASA.gov does not return any links to this study. There is not even a link to this report on the alleged producer of the report nor does a search of that site return any results for "HANDY"... and if there was I [an ol' tree huggin' voodoo flower child] would question it -- most of what appears on that site seems to sound like an alarmist tabloid written by Chicken Little.
In fact one wonders where The Guardian got their hands on this report as they are the only one that actually may have seen it [all of the other news outlets are quoting TFA without any links to the actual article].
Without seeing the report it is hard to judge if this is science or just someone shilling for more research dollars... I strongly suspect the latter since it apparently does not appear to have been peer reviewed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by melikamp on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:27AM
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:30PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by microtodd on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:36PM
Well, the news articles say "NASA-funded", not NASA implemented. It was actually done by these dudes.
http://www.sesync.org/ [sesync.org]
The PI was listed as Safa Motesharrei in the article but the SESYNC site only lists two completed reports (both in 2012 which is what the news article says it was written) and he's not the PI on either of them.
So....yeah. Its out there somewhere. Supposedly its being published in http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-econom ics/ [elsevier.com] but I don't have time to dig any deeper right now. It would be interesting to at least read the abstract. Maybe someone else can find it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by microtodd on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:46PM
OK, here's the paper.
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ekalnay/pubs/lyapbredams final_files/handy-paper-for-submission-2.pdf [umd.edu]
Or at least a draft version.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Sunday March 23 2014, @07:11PM
For the Guardian to describe this study as "funded" and "sponsored" by NASA is misleading.
The study itself "was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity" - http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/march/nasa-statemen t-on-sustainability-study/ [nasa.gov]
The journalist responsible tries (and fails in my view) to defend that aspect here [theguardian.com].
Still, regardless of funding claims, I think the scenario presented is more likely than us achieving any kind of post-scarcity society (like you sometimes see discussed here, and on the old site). We have to work to change that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:01AM
Our stupidity will doom civilization way before we run out of resources.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheSage on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:06AM
I am not an expert on all the civilizations that are mentioned in TFA (Roman, Han, Mauryan, Gupta, and assorted Mesopotanean), but the ones I am familiar with did not end in a bang, but in a whimper. It usually took centuries of slow decline for the empires to finally fall - usually by being conquered. This seems to be a wholly different process than what is suggested will happen this time around. I did not read the original paper, but if this is the kind of reasoning they do, I am not impressed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheLink on Wednesday March 19 2014, @10:58AM
I think modern civilization is quite a lot more "brittle" than Roman and other ancient civilization. It'll take some effort[1] to break, but once it breaks it might shatter to bits.
1) The developed world still mostly "eats" petroleum. No oil and gas = massive die-off.
2) High specialization (and centralization) - one farmer supports 100+ nonfarmers. One specialist can't do properly what another specialist does even if it might be very important for modern civilization to operate.
3) High interdependencies. Look at the supply chains/webs stretched across the globe for various things.
4) Low reserves - in the pursuit of $$$$ and efficiency you have stuff like "Just In Time manufacturing" and low redundancies. Don't keep as much spare supplies or personnel (even in warships they're cutting down on personnel http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-03-520 [gao.gov] despite concerns by the "old school").
[1] We are more able to move around resources than Roman civilization. But once we really lack resources or "stuff happens" many of those farmers may stop supporting 100+ nonfarmers. And those nonfarmers might stop being able to fix/make/supply parts for the water and electrical supply, mine resources, or provide other important services/products. In contrast a Roman civilization affected by resource problems would mostly only die off where the resource problems are. People in a resource starved Roman city could move somewhere else and forage to support themselves. Many would die of course, but in contrast consider how many of the millions in NYC are going to be able to forage and feed themselves? Where can they go? I think a far higher percentage would die in the latter case.
Globally we may not be quite as interdependent and specialized as cells in a human body yet, but we may wish to consider carefully the paths we are taking. Compare a human body vs a tree/plant. The human body can take a fair bit of damage but not as much as a tree, plus the human body does not recover as well. You can cut off a branch, stick it into the ground and there's a chance it can grow again. Similar for a tree regrowing from a stump/coppicing. Chop off a human's head and the rest of the body usually dies soon after.
(Score: 1) by TheSage on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:14AM
The point about brittleness is well taken. A good book on that topic is Antifragiliy by Nassim Taleb (or any other book by Taleb for that matter). However, I still believe that you underestimate humanity's inventiveness and its ability to route around problems.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:38PM
"humanity's inventiveness and its ability to route around problems"
Our best and brightest have been working on the destruction of the middle class for a generation or two. "Tough conditions" are merely going to accelerate the process in the direction that those in charge want it to go anyway.
Well, I'm starving. But I can't plant vegetables in my yard because the home owners association would have the remaining police and justice system take away my land, house, remaining food, and children. Besides I don't have a license to grow tomatoes and the local "big-agribusiness" purchased a .gov regulation to make the license cost more than buying a lifetime supply of tomatoes from them, if they weren't out of business, if I had a job to make the money anyway. And what few retail shops still open to buy seed and supplies have been zoned to be tens of miles away across sprawl and we no longer have gas for cars and I don't have hiking boots, and the post office has shut down to improve competition between private delivery services which have also shut down so no delivery. Besides we had to have our well removed when we connected to city water which has also shut down, so the only irrigation is hand carrying buckets to a polluted river a mile away, and praying for rain of course, although rain catchment is illegal and the police will take away my land, house, remaining food, and children if they find out I collect rainwater from my roof in a barrel. Well, I'm done talking about this because American Idol is on, at least if the electricity is still on, and its all the fault of the OTHER political party, not my party. Maybe the government will rescue us tomorrow (LOL), oh wait, aren't they the guys who got us into this mess intentionally?
This is not all that unlikely of a scenario.
(Score: 1) by TheSage on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:08PM
Actually, I find your scenario quite unrealistic indeed (but that may be just the eternal optimist in me). It seems like you just took all the negative trends that are visible today and exaggerate them while ignoring all the positive trends that exist too.
So far the doom-and-gloom prophets do not have a very good track record predicting the future, while science, technology, and inventive tinkering continues to improve efficiency and to find new solutions to our problems.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:21PM
The sad part is that the components are already there. It is already illegal in some states to capture rainwater. There are MANY places where converting your yard to agriculture is against some ordinance or another. It is technically illegal to repair your own car in your driveway in many places.
I don't know that it will extrapolate quite to the point of the GP, but I can easily imagine mindlessly enforcing ordinances even when circumstances would suggest dropping them.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Thursday March 20 2014, @04:06AM
People talk about rainforests etc being fragile ecosystems but the "developed world" has built a fragile tech-ecosystem where the loss of even a single "species" (aka specialist) could have a severe impact on everything, and it's a very energy and resource hungry ecosystem.
Compare a tropical jungle with a temperate forest and the arctic. Compare the numbers of species and animals. Now figure what happens to our tech-ecosystem when energy and resources becomes hard to get in the amounts our ecosystem needs. There may still be humans around, but it won't be a "tropical rainforest" anymore.
And if we run out of fossil fuels AND do not succeed in finding good enough replacements, lots of people will die and it's likely the current modern civilization that depends on airliners, CPUs, etc will die with them. It would be like a jungle suddenly not getting as much sunlight rather than gradually over many centuries (and thus evolving without a sudden die-off).
There's no way to route around the problem of not having enough food to eat and water to drink. There are lots of people in the USA living in desert regions where if modern tech stops working most will start dying pretty fast. If it's not sudden people might be able to move away - but to where?
Even if you're using PV solar panels and think you're "off-grid" you're still dependent on those who build solar panels - you can't build those with a small village of people. You need a factory in China to build it, a ship made in Korea to transport it, and oil rigs and mines to extract fuel and resources for both. And where do you get your food from? http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/18/calif ornias-drought-hurting-farmers-helping-environment alists [theguardian.com]
Same for modern wind farms - where do you get those rare earth magnets they need from? You need cities of people to build everything that's needed. And how are those cities fed? Most are still fed by fossil fuels. Some German's solar panel and it's supply and transport chain might depend on cheap nasty coal in China and oil from Saudi Arabia.
Can solar panels be used to build more solar panels cheaply enough? Maybe, but can we switch over in time? Nuclear plants are being shutdown worldwide... So we're losing even those as backups/buffers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:26PM
You make good logical static analysis points, but the dynamic forces are more critical.
In the late roman era things declined so slowly (on average) that generational turnover took care of economic / cultural / educational conversion. However, you need to eat, at worst case, in lets say a month not a generation. Despite cultural stereotypes farming is a rather complicated intellectual pursuit requiring a long period of training, or you can trade brute force and raw energy in place of knowledge at some loss in efficency. Of course in a collapse you'll have none of the above, no knowledge, weakbodies in a new job, and no oil/gas/fertilizer/herbicide/pesticides, and no back up plan to tolerate reduced efficiency. In a decade, maybe as short as 3 years, you could probably transition if it was an absolute peak societal priority. Won't be given that much time... They'll all be dead by the next spring or late winter.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheLink on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:09PM
See my [1].
The other problem is it seems likely that many (most?) of the OPEC countries are lying about their oil reserves for short term advantage. So we might not have enough time to adapt and switch from "eating oil".
Going from 100:1 nonfarmer to farmer ratio to a lower ratio in a short time means a lot of people will die and many of the rest will stop doing what they used to do. Imagine building mobile phones, cars, oil rigs, airliners, ships, nuclear reactors, power stations or CPUs and CPU fabs, once lots of specialists are farming or doing other "old style stuff" and no longer have the time and resources to do their old jobs.
So if nobody is doing it because nobody else is doing it, after a decade or so a lot of tech will be gone. And if the technological base is destroyed it will take a long while to rebuild it.
For example: tools to build stuff to certain tolerances/accuracy require calibration and adjustments, and need to be built using more expensive tools with better tolerances/accuracy.
NASA has lost a lot of the Apollo and Saturn V tech. http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc030100.html [uga.edu]
And also:
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:17PM
Its interesting to think about technologically interesting things from 40 years ago that simply cannot be made. For example we are very close with CRT screens for everything from o-scopes to TVs to monitors. I suspect a VCR could no longer be made as designed. Sure the tracking circuit could be trivially emulated in a fast DSP, but the actual ckt as designed would I think mean building old-style IC fabs. Ditto any non-high power vacuum tube for radio gear, although 50 years ago is rapidly nearing the era of full transistorization. Core memory is another likely impossible to re-create technology.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by WillAdams on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:38PM
Pretty much the comment I was going to write.
Some further thoughts:
- for every 1 calorie of food energy which is produced we're burning 10 calories worth of petro-chemicals
- Malthus would've been right except for the development of techniques for fixing atmospheric nitrogen to make fertilizers --- what's the next cat-out-of-the-hat going to be? Single-use genetically modified seeds from Monsanto?
- we can probably stretch things out a bit further if we limit cattle and horses to only what's needed for agriculture: http://www.xkcd.com/1338/ [xkcd.com] (and it's horrifying to think that there's more tonnage of ships in the ocean than fish --- that's in one of the What ifs)
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @05:21PM
Someone has a different estimate of fish -10 billion tons ( http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/14020 7083830.htm [sciencedaily.com] )
vs 1 billion for previous estimate ( http://phys.org/news151251277.html [phys.org] ).
xkcd estimate = 2 billion tons of ships ( http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/ [xkcd.com] ).
Eating fish is good for humans according to much scientific research, however I wonder how long we can continue to have decent levels of fish in our diet. With all the bycatch wastage/atrocities, and the lack of political will to fix stuff (impose science based quotas vs politics based ones).
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:13PM
And it's not even that simple. Different countries use different estimates on what they should catch. And then there are the "pirates", who fish without reporting their catch. Their numbers are huge, but not accurately known.
Also, we've been using poor approaches to legal fish catches. Their should be a maximum size catch, and any larger fish (of that species) should not be caught. The current approaches have been evolving species to not grow as large, but smaller fish are less productive, and produce fewer offspring.
Also, when an area is "fished out" of some species, then other kinds of life move in. Kinds that it isn't worth catching. Like jellyfish. And their presence often means that the prior varieties of fish don't come back just because you've stopped catching them.
Additional stress is applied because the oceans are warming, resulting in lower levels of oxygen, etc. Some varieties of fish solve this by moving towards the poles, others can't.
It's looking rather like the entire ocean is near to a tipping point where jelly fish become the most common species, and teleosts (the kind of fish we normally eat) are rare. Not from just one reason, but from a confluence of reasons, of which fishing is only one, though an important one.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Thursday March 20 2014, @11:53AM
It's a shame we're not anywhere near being able to build the ``Raindrop'' envisioned in Hal Clement's short story (and anyone who hasn't, should read his work)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:09PM
The supply chain is a big problem. The current obsession with just in time everything leaves us in a very fragile state. Eventually something important will be late and there will be no reserves to cover the gap.
Consider some of the large transformers that take a year to build. Consider the lack of spares.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jt on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:01AM
Big difference is that today we effectively have one global civilisation. If we screw it up then it is not clear what alternative civilisation would grow tp take its place.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 19 2014, @04:28PM
Well assuming everyone doesn't die, a new civilization will eventually rise up. Just look at what happened when Rome fell: everyone left the cities and became serfs for feudal lords, and it took over a millenium to get back to their former level of technology and development.
When our global civilization collapses, it'll be much the same. Most people will starve to death, a few will manage to survive with the reversion to feudalism and going back to simple agriculture, and in 3-5000 years a new civilization will arise.
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:28PM
I don't expect everyone to die, but when things get scarce, countries will fight over what's left. Nuclear and biological warfare is a probability. I would not be surprised by a 99% death rate. Or more. A return to the stone age is probable, and nothing that has been learned since then would survive. Next time around the only easy access to metals would be in the junk yards...and those would be nearly impossible to refine. So it would be a stone-age with metals in an ecologically devastated world. Those who prepare by stockpiling had best be prepared to fight off an assault that will last for decades with no chance for them to either farm or learn the art of farming. By the time they can "relax" everyone else will have adapted as hunter-gathers, and they won't have, and also won't have the skills to survive any other way.
OTOH, the life of a hunter-gatherer is supposed to be rather pleasant, until something horrible happens. Some of them live as long as anyone does now, and they generally work fewer hours. But breaking a leg, e.g., is a sentence of death. (There are advanced groups, who have domesticated horses or cattle, and can build a travois in which this isn't necessarily true, but that's not in the early days. And I expect most horses to be eaten during the hard times immediately after the collapse.)
N.B.: If we can avoid fighting over the scraps, then this scenario is unduly pessimistic. But nothing I have seen WRT our current civilization implies to me that we can avoid such an event.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:46PM
Hunter-gatherer lifestyles were generally good I understand, and healthier than the agricultural lifestyles that followed (humans lost a foot in height when they switched to agriculture, and it took thousands of years to get back to the heights that were common during hunter-gatherer times).
However, those hunter-gatherer lifestyles existed in a world that was mostly pristine and entirely unpolluted. We can't just revert back to that now, even if we suddenly had fewer people. Maybe in some more remote locales it'll be possible; those are the people who'll probably survive and become the ancestors of the next civilization.
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Thursday March 20 2014, @09:05PM
Yes, but most animals have a shorter generation time than do humans. And if there's a warfare driven collapse, I would expect a 99+% dieoff of humans. And I'm talking about a period in the area of 50 years after the collapse. Time enough for a new generation of humans...and if there's a 99+% dieoff, what percentage of the survivor do you think will be women? I expect the population to continue to contract after the burst of dieoff until the new generation gets to reproductive age. And I don't expect any women who get pregnant in the first couple of years after the collapse to survive. (There probably will be a few, but only a small proportion.) This means that there will be a very small starting population...and carnivores (e.g., packs of wild dogs) will recover a lot faster than will humans.
Please note, however, that if this is a resource shortage driven collapse, there won't be many dogs surviving, either. Most dogs will be eaten during the collapse, and most of the survivors will be neutered. And even packs of house-cats aren't much of a threat to a human with a stick. (Other cats will eventually recover, but after the collapse their population will also be too small to be worrying.) Raccoons will be common. Rabbits, deer, squirrels, etc. They will start with reasonably large populations, and they recover quickly. And they can live on grass (well, not the raccoons or squirrels, but they'll manage). A larger question is cattle. Most of them are so specialized that they may well not be able to survive, but some of the varieties of beef cattle will be able to survive...if there are enough young males who haven't yet been castrated. Wild pigs will survive, though they'll be starting from a small initial population. (And hunting them will be dangerous. They'll be nearly as likely to hunt you.) I don't know about sheep, but I suspect some will survive. And of course foxes, etc. The smaller animals will recover relatively quickly.
That said, it's also true that the most fertile land has cities built on top of it. Many of our food crops have been so highly modified that they cannot survive without human assistance. Etc. So hunting-gathering will not be as easy as it was in prehistoric times. But carrots will survive, and perhaps potatoes. Tomatoes will survive, unless Monsanto eliminates those that can reproduce. Etc. Lots of people grow gardens. Some of those plants will try to go wild. Some of those will survive. But the wild varieties that develop won't be optimized for people to eat them.
So I don't know. I expect that 50 years after the collapse being a hunter-gatherer won't be too difficult. But that will be because nearly everyone has been killed during a hard passage.
OTOH, I also suspect that if an AI decided to run our society to be stable, it could do so. And I expect that within fewer than 50 years our civilization WILL be run by AIs. What their goals will be I couldn't say. They may not care about preventing a collapse. But I think that we are probably in the last dangerous period before either a collapse into hunter-gatherer or a stable civilization. Or something totally different as decided by the AIs.
To me the problem appears to be that humans aren't built to run a large civilization without destroying the environment that maintains it. However, within 50 years will will transition to a civilization being run by a different type of intelligence. Perhaps it will do a better job (from our point of view). It is, however, not a sure thing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by NezSez on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:49PM
For a more modern example, emphasizing cost inflations (notably the cost of bread) due to war debt, and class conflicts leading to a revolt and collapse, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution [wikipedia.org].
Also note the irony of Robespierre being guillotined after the initial revolt.
No Sig to see here, move along, move along...
(Score: 5, Informative) by gishzida on Wednesday March 19 2014, @07:23AM
Safa Motesharrei [sesync.org] is a grad student with the official title of "Graduate Research Assistant" rather than "applied mathematician"... I'd say that was a bit of "Fancification" by the Guardian... and all the other news aggregators just gobbled this story right up without a full fact check.
I seem to recall that back in the 70's it was predicted we'd all starve because of the "population explosion" [wikipedia.org]. So far we seemed to have dodged that bullet.
(Score: 1) by microtodd on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:58PM
Yup. Its really just another paper written by some dudes who built some interesting math models.
One thing I learned when I was a grad student...papers are a dime a dozen. Not to downplay Future-Dr. Motesharrei's work, and his colleagues, but like a zillion papers are published roughly every 12 minutes (I'm just estimating here). Doing literature searches and literature reviews for your field was always a crazy task. There's seriously just a GLUT of material out there. Finding the gems is always the hard part.
Maybe this is one. The cynic in me says that mission accomplished for these researchers. Now that they have press exposure they can find grants and funding for future papers more easily, probably.
(Score: 5, Funny) by LowID on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:39AM
Quick! Someone has to establish two foundations at opposite sides of the galaxy!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:17PM
I think that a lot when hearing something to the effect of "we can't do anything like that anymore because it's too expensive" when referring to innovations.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:19PM
(Score: 1) by gishzida on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:28PM
And don't forget to shoot any mules that get in the way...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jt on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:14AM
Maybe civilisation will collapse, maybe not. As a backup plan, we should record and preserve the last few thousand years of accumulated knowledge and literature in some low-tech format that will be accessible and understandable to future civilisations. This would accelerate restoration of our current level of development. Or maybe we could be a useful warning to those following us, such that they might avoid the same mistakes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mascot on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:15AM
Civilization will collapse- I guarantee it. Just don't ask when............
It's been 2,000 years since Jesus and we've come a long way. 10,000 years since the earliest writing. We have hundreds of millions of years of life-support left on this planet. Thats a long time. I think it's pretty clear that modern capitalist civilization isn't going to last that long.
Capitalism is unsustainable! News at 10!
Personally I expect some sort of trans humanist communism with resource rationing, but again- don't ask me when.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:45PM
Here you go: http://opensourceecology.org/ [opensourceecology.org]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:50PM
We're doing some stuff in that regard: For example, the Svalbard Seed Vault [wikipedia.org] is there to ensure the preservation of plant life forms that are good for us to eat.
As far as preserving knowledge, there's simply too much of it to hammer onto stone tablets. Paper isn't durable enough or small enough either. My best guess is that we'd be better off with hard drives duplicated all over the world, along with hard copy instructions (possibly in picture form) engraved on some kind of plastic showing how to read those hard drives. In other words, a cloud-hosted Wayback Machine or Google Cache.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 19 2014, @09:35PM
Be sure to keep it well hidden from the IP lawyers. (I'm only half kidding)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Wednesday March 19 2014, @10:48AM
I think in a resource scarce world we'll need far more energy than we do currently, especially when fossil fuels eventually dry up.
It strikes me that we've really messed up our priority with energy. Nuclear power could have been the staple of world energy needs for the last fifty years, and such widespread adoption would surely have accelerated research into avoiding meltdowns - we already have some passive safety technology (molten salt etc.), it just hasn't been implemented yet.
We could be getting into Thorium reactors by now, and thus easing the resource scarcity problems involved with uranium. In 50 to 200 years time, we could then have the realistic chance of developing fusion power.
I could be wrong, but it feels like the decay of large government research budgets and the enormous commercial force of the fossil fuel industry has hampered research and development.
As for equality, we could start changing that tide tomorrow. The US and Europe for a brief time had fairly equal societies in the post war years. There's no reason it can't happen again. It isn't an issue of technology but rather one of political idiocy and the pervasive power of elite ideology.
In my opinion, that same ideology has been such a collossal, inept failure worldwide that positive change is inevitable.
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:01PM
My model of society is that everywhere smart control freaks eventually get to prevail in influential positions. Once there they have a choice: help developing ways to get cheap energy in the hand of everybody, so that everybody can say: "Let's see I have cheap energy and cheap information, I can sustain myself without outside INTERFERENCE". Or build a worldwide web of interconnected dependencies and everybody says "I am unable to do anything without outside HELP".
What will their choice be?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 19 2014, @03:34PM
There's another policy approach that the US in particular plainly could have used and utterly failed to do so: Energy conservation.
For example, the United States basically gives away at least $10 billion a year to major oil companies, not counting the money spent on wars to gain cheap access to oil supplies and pipelines. For that $10 billion, we could have set up a program for homeowners to improve the insulation of about 4 million homes annually (covering every single-family residence in the US in about 25 years), not only reducing our energy usage but also a lot of gas or electric bills.
That's not even getting into the atrocious (lack of) urban planning that creates lots of unnecessary car traffic and the associated emissions and accidents.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2, Funny) by emg on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:35PM
Conservation is for suckers.
For $10,000,000,000 a year, we could be getting off this rock, at least if the money was given to folks like SpaceX rather than NASA.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:21AM
Thomas Malthus [wikipedia.org] published the original version [wikipedia.org] of this study a few years ago. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:23PM
Doesn't take a space cadet to figure out we're headed towards some rough waters. But a total collapse seems far-fetched. Just consider the 90's north Korea as an example: It doesn't take a whole lot to stabilize a nation suffering from food shortages and power rationing even when it's almost completely isolated from the rest of the world.
No, if anything the West follows Rome's example of a slow decline over the course of a few centuries. The unavoidable consequence of the massive unemployment automation will produce is more Obama-like political candidates that will offer ever-increasing subsidies of food, medicine and housing. 50 years into that and you'd get parasitic cites with licensed parenting for those willing to study and work.
For some a utopia while for others a dystopia... Either way the only real risk of collapse then will be that the low birth rates coupled with syntactic benchmarks will corrupt the gene-pools significantly until some virus will catch up and clears out 2/3 of the population, Black Plague style... And even then Europe has some instability but they didn't fallback to the stone age.
TLDR: NASA declares anything that threatens it's next year's budget The collapse of civilization.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by weeds on Wednesday March 19 2014, @12:45PM
This reminds me of some work that was done before (or in the future.)
Was Hari Seldon the primary investigator?
Get money out of politics! [mayday.us]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by umafuckitt on Wednesday March 19 2014, @01:02PM
If you think these models are a bit over the top, then I suggest you read Collapse by Jared Diamond. He describes why past civilisations have collapsed and what these tell us about our own. He doesn't say collapse is inevitable but he does feel that if we don't take certain steps then it will likely happen. It's soberly written and so worth a read.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Boxzy on Wednesday March 19 2014, @02:46PM
If our species wants to survive long term, We Absolutely Have to Get Off This Rock!
Even just a small Mars colony would be enough, an incentive, an example to make people stop and think.
We need some good news and hope for the future.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday March 19 2014, @06:40PM
Amen to that, been saying so myself for some time. We as a species need an "off-site backup": full redundancy of critical manufacturing/food production capabilities, knowledgebase, and a sustainably large gene pool in an independent biosphere ASAP.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @11:05PM
Even in Antarctica, humans can't survive without continual provisioning--and your idea is to go somewhere that is even less human-friendly than the most inhospitable place on this rock. {Shakes head and rolls eyes}
-- gewg_