[dohboi]

[dohboi]

Ed Greisch, over at RealClimate, in response to some troll's idiocy, provided a nice list of sources on impending collapse (warning--the bravenewclimate sites are notorious nests of pro-nuke propaganda--Greisch is an enthusiast):

Barton Paul Levenson, did a different kind of analysis and found that agriculture will collapse some time between 2050 and 2055. Bart later withdrew the dates. It could happen sooner or later. But 40 years is a much better estimate than 196 years.

There are other reasons to believe that civilization is on the brink of collapse or that the collapse has already started.:

Reference “Overshoot” by William Catton, 1980 and “Bottleneck: Humanity’s Impending Impasse” by William Catton, 2009. Catton says that we humans are about to experience a population crash. The population biologist, Catton, I think says that we are due for a population crash without GW and without aquifers running dry.

Collapse within 15 years.:
“A Minimal Model for Human and Nature Interaction” by Safa Motesharrei, Jorge Rivas and Eugenia Kalnay November 13, 2012

Collapse any time now.:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/10/28/h ... p-quickly/

http://conservationbytes.com/2014/10/28 ... p-quickly/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/19/p ... cc-fix-p1/

“Limits to Growth was right. New research shows we’re nearing collapse”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... ch-shows-w…
“As more and more capital goes towards resource extraction, industrial output per capita starts to fall – in the book, from about 2015.”
“Health and education services are cut back, and that combines to bring about a rise in the death rate from about 2020. Global population begins to fall from about 2030, by about half a billion people per decade. Living conditions fall to levels similar to the early 1900s.”
“Wars could break out; so could genuine global environmental leadership. Either could dramatically affect the trajectory.”

The original paper:
http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/f ... r_2014.pdf
“Is Global Collapse imminent?”

[dohboi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kQgb1w792M#t=169

William Reese on overshoot and footprint. (Brief interview video.)

[ennui2]

Capitalism is at its core, dependent on growth, whether it is green, liberal, conservative or even new agey. It will scour the planet in pursuit of that.

I don't think there's ever been a time when civilization as a whole operated sustainably. That's not to mean I'm anti-civ, but singling in on "capitalism" is still not looking at the overall narrative since at least the neolithic revolution.

[americandream]

Capitalism is at its core, dependent on growth, whether it is green, liberal, conservative or even new agey. It will scour the planet in pursuit of that.

I don't think there's ever been a time when civilization as a whole operated sustainably. That's not to mean I'm anti-civ, but singling in on "capitalism" is still not looking at the overall narrative since at least the neolithic revolution.

That is a rather broad and debateable point. However, social economists would argue the point given our position on materialism and its objective dynamics which I have discussed on here at length and which you have clearly failed to grasp for as I recollect, you have been lurking around here for quite a while.

[Tanada]

Capitalism is at its core, dependent on growth, whether it is green, liberal, conservative or even new agey. It will scour the planet in pursuit of that.

I don't think there's ever been a time when civilization as a whole operated sustainably. That's not to mean I'm anti-civ, but singling in on "capitalism" is still not looking at the overall narrative since at least the neolithic revolution.

The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones, it ended because some Bronze age genius figured out how to cast bronze and make not only spear points and arrow tips but also helmets, shields and other devices that gave them a huge competitive advantage over the neighboring tribes who were still using wood and stone exclusively for their tools.

The Iron age supplanted Bronze because wrought iron is much tougher than bronze. It is also much easier to get small quantities of 'bog ore' to make iron than it is to mine copper and tin and mix the two effectively. London was founded by the Phoenicians in the several hundreds BC as a port to export Tin from the interior of Great Britain when the mines in Turkey could no longer keep up with demand.

Probably the closest we came to sustainability was in the Middle Ages when European iron age authorities caused the common folk to have delayed marriage to slow down the birth rate and match it up with the death rate. That is where the whole idea that a husband must have a steady job where he could support himself, wife and family before marriage comes from. In the early Middle Ages it was considered normal for 12-13 year old people to get married and start having children of their own, by the late Middle Ages the marriage age had increased by a decade which acted as a population growth brake.

[dohboi]

"The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones"

Actually, iirc, the easily accessible veins of flint (the most important 'stone' of the stone age) had in fact been mostly tapped out by the end of the paleolithic, iirc. But your general point, I think, is still valid.

Also do note that the ancients considered these ages to each be a diminution from the last, and thought that their current age was a low point in a long series of falls from a golden age--sort of the opposite of our assumptions of eternal progress. (See for example Hesiod's Theogony.) These days, I'm feeling much more like the ancients than the like the technofantasists.

[dorlomin]

"The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones"

Actually, iirc, the easily accessible veins of flint (the most important 'stone' of the stone age) had in fact been mostly tapped out by the end of the paleolithic,

Source please.

[dohboi]

Thanks for asking. It sent me back to TOD archives, because I was pretty sure I had heard something like that there.

This is what I dug up from reply to a post by "Rembrandt":

" Energy age will not end because of the lack of energy " but the Flint age - well I'll have to dig up some links but in the UK I was reading how the flint mines were getting deeper and deeper and more difficult to find good flint ..... mind you if you read this link ...

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9685

(Fourth comment, by forbin.)

Not much to go on, but at least now I know I didn't make it up completely!

[Subjectivist]

Thanks for asking. It sent me back to TOD archives, because I was pretty sure I had heard something like that there.

This is what I dug up from reply to a post by "Rembrandt":

" Energy age will not end because of the lack of energy " but the Flint age - well I'll have to dig up some links but in the UK I was reading how the flint mines were getting deeper and deeper and more difficult to find good flint ..... mind you if you read this link ...

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9685

(Fourth comment, by forbin.)

Not much to go on, but at least now I know I didn't make it up completely!

I watched some flint knapping videos out of curiosity and Flint was only one of the three main materials they used. Chert and Obsidian/glass were the other two. Obsidian is natural glass so a number of demostrators used plain old scrap glass. One of my favorites was a guy who collected old TV sets people were throwing out. The picture tube glass is quite thick so they bust it up into about six inch wide by inch thick pieces and treat it like Obsidian to make spear points or stone knives. I wonder if any of the Bronze Age types tried melting down their obsidian chips to make a new source rock?

[dohboi]

OK, now I have a picture in my head of post-apoc hunters making arrowheads from tv's !

[ralfy]

I don't think there's ever been a time when civilization as a whole operated sustainably. That's not to mean I'm anti-civ, but singling in on "capitalism" is still not looking at the overall narrative since at least the neolithic revolution.

It's probably because the problems raised in the thread are connected to the use of fossil fuels and the population boom of the twentieth century.

[Subjectivist]

OK, now I have a picture in my head of post-apoc hunters making arrowheads from tv's !

This will kind of give you an idea of how it works. Skip forward about three minutes, this guy likes to talk before he actually gets started.

http://youtu.be/b32SeQFI3fg

[wake]

Chert is flint. Though I grew up in the US, and always heard flint, I believe American/US geologists call it "chert" and the brits, or others "flint"

You can also get wicked sharp obsidian scalpels if you like

Obsidian Scalpels

Blade Shape: Straight
Alloy / Material: Obsidian Blade / Wood Handle
Obsidian is a type of volcanic glass that produces a much finer blade than conventional steel. It is ideal for applications where an extremely fine cutting action is required or where trace metals from ordinary scalpel blades cannot be tolerated. The relatively inexpensive obsidian scalpel is a good substitute for an expensive diamond knife.

Cautionary note: Obsidian is a very fragile material. Great care should be taken not to exert any lateral pressure on the blade during cutting. Each blade is hand-fashioned, so sizes, shapes and points will vary. While all the blades will have at least one sharp edge, some will have two.

http://www.finescience.com/Special-Page ... lang=en-US

I watched some flint knapping videos out of curiosity and Flint was only one of the three main materials they used. Chert and Obsidian/glass were the other two. Obsidian is natural glass so a number of demostrators used plain old scrap glass. One of my favorites was a guy who collected old TV sets people were throwing out. The picture tube glass is quite thick so they bust it up into about six inch wide by inch thick pieces and treat it like Obsidian to make spear points or stone knives. I wonder if any of the Bronze Age types tried melting down their obsidian chips to make a new source rock?

[Cid_Yama]

In Earth Abides by George Stewart, the generation that grew up not having known civilization, used coins, dimes and quarters, depending on the size of the game being hunted, to fashion arrowheads. Virtually limitless in a post apocalyptic world.

An excellent book, one of my favorites, and it tracks 3 generations of an extended family, the first generation adults at the time of the pandemic, the second generation who were kids, and the third who never knew civilization.

It follows the changes in the Oakland Ca area from the time just after of the pandemic, when nearly everyone was already dead till the last of the original survivors dies.

I can't recommend this book enough.

It is available for free in e-book form all over the internet.

[dorlomin]

Thanks for asking. It sent me back to TOD archives, because I was pretty sure I had heard something like that there.

This is what I dug up from reply to a post by "Rembrandt":

" Energy age will not end because of the lack of energy " but the Flint age - well I'll have to dig up some links but in the UK I was reading how the flint mines were getting deeper and deeper and more difficult to find good flint ..... mind you if you read this link ...

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9685

(Fourth comment, by forbin.)

Not much to go on, but at least now I know I didn't make it up completely!

So its not true. You did not need to mine flint in the neolithic. It was still so common in the 1800s it was a building material.

tapped out by the end of the paleolithic,

Paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic. Roughly old stone age, mid stone age, recent stone age. The neolithic peoples were the early farmers and people who began working metal. Paleolithic roughly ran from Homo Habilis to the end of the last glaciation.

[dohboi]

"You did not need to mine flint in the neolithic"

Ummm, yes you did, at least in some places.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimes_Graves

[dohboi]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/2771 ... ng-extinct

Are Humans Going Extinct?

Coal will likely overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017, and without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change.

This is dramatically worse than even the most dire predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predicts at least a 5-degree Celsius increase by 2100 as its worst-case scenario, if business continues as usual with no major mitigation efforts.

Yet things continue growing worse faster than even the IPCC can keep up with.

Scientific American has said of the IPCC:

"Across two decades and thousands of pages of reports, the world's most authoritative voice on climate science has consistently understated the rate and intensity of climate change and the danger those impacts represent."

...it's hard for me to imagine we make it into the 2030s as a species.

[dorlomin]

Coal will likely overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017, and without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change.

Total and utter nonsense peddled by clownshoes.

[dohboi]

This was published a while ago, and linked to by Graeme, but is worth another look, I think:

Nasa-funded study warns of ‘collapse of civilisation’ in coming decades

...Using theoretical models to predict what will happen to the industrialised world over the course of the next century or so, mathematicians found that even with conservative estimates things started to go very badly, very quickly.

Referring to the past collapses of often very sophisticated civilisations – the Roman, Han and Gupta Empires for example – the study noted that the elite of society have often pushed for a “business as usual” approach to warnings of disaster until it is too late.

In the report based on his “Human And Nature Dynamical” (Handy) model, the applied mathematician Safa Motesharri wrote: “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history”...

Motesharri explored the factors which could lead to the collapse of civilisation, from population growth to climate change, and found that when these converge they can cause society to break down because of the “stretching of resources” and “the economic stratification of society into ‘Elites’ and ‘Masses’”.

Using his Handy model to assess a scenario closely resembling the current state of the world, Motesharri found that civilisation “appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among the Masses that eventually causes the collapse of society”.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 95668.html

Study and abstract at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0914000615