ralfy wrote:Collapse may refer to catastrophic failure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophic_failure
asg70 wrote:AdamB wrote:what are running out of by, say, mid-century?
The biggest ones I'm concerned about are: topsoil, freshwater, pollinators, stable enough weather and rainfall to support agriculture where it's being practiced. (We're not just gonna suddenly move the world's breadbasket toward the poles.)
asg70 wrote:You're good when you're riffing on the continued resistance of the peak-oil movement to cede failure on their predictions but when you try to downplay the rest of limits to growth you really do come off as a corny.
Newfie wrote:What are we running out of?
Options
Time
AdamB wrote: Pollinators strikes me as the tricky one. I'm betting that just as we are in for some clean disruptive technology as Tony Seba lays out, there is more lurking on the agricultural science side, but I spend no time really researching in that arena, so it is just a guess based on the idea that people, we don't stand still much. And that is exactly what made both Malthus and Ehrlich look bad, and we certainly haven't gotten worse at innovation.
Outcast_Searcher wrote:What's most disturbing to me is how, increasingly, so little focus on the long view is apparent. Maybe in the age of smart phone apps and twitter, peoples' minds are increasingly incapable of serious long term focus (on average). (Hell, I'm guilty of this, and I don't even HAVE Twitter or a smart phone).
That study was not from NASA:Cliffhanger1983 wrote:NASA Study: Industrial Civilization is Headed for Irreversible Collapse (Motesharrei, 2014)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 0914000615
NASA Statement on Sustainability StudyNASA Statement on Sustainability Study
The following is a statement from NASA regarding erroneous media reports crediting the agency with an academic paper on population and societal impacts.
"A soon-to-be published research paper 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota’s Jorge Rivas 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.
"As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions."
AdamB wrote:I am NOT familiar with the detailed components of agricultural, pollinators, basically the entire biologic side of the world.
AdamB wrote:ultimately the program always came back around to the limiting systems that the exponential was operating against.
Newfie wrote:Because we can’t b sure of the timing it’s best to find preps that you enjoy.
asg70 wrote:AdamB wrote:I am NOT familiar with the detailed components of agricultural, pollinators, basically the entire biologic side of the world.
So why don't you take some of the time you currently waste shaming PStarr for taking photos next to dead sea mammals and bone up on this stuff rather than casually shrugging off these concerns?
AdamB wrote:ultimately the program always came back around to the limiting systems that the exponential was operating against.
asg70 wrote:I know I slam perma-doomers' when they start talking about zombie hordes and what not, but in the end I think something like that is inevitable. It's just not "nigh".
mmasters wrote:If it were just Oil we might only have 10-15 years left (as the OP is saying) but we also have at least 20 or 30 years worth of Natural Gas (especially in the USA). Not to mention decades worth of coal (plenty in China) and when the oil crisis hits there's also the possibility of an upcoming Nuclear renaissance. So the bottom line is there is not going to be a collapse any time soon.
dolph wrote:Collapse is a process, not an event. On a long enough timeline, all of us collapse.
There was never any future, under any scenario, in which you personally live to 150 years old and feel like a 22 year old adonis the entire time. All of us grow old and decline.
Collapse just brings reality back, back to where it always was.
But, that aside, I'm looking at the general 2020 to 2040 timeline as one of progressive breakdown of our system. I'm not pushing it out indefinitely, I'm just analyzing certain trends and thinking, how long can this go on.
AdamB wrote:I can only "shrug off" concerns about the topics mentioned because I honestly admit that I don't have enough lifetime left to reach the level of expertise I possess elsewhere
AdamB wrote:I don't THINK something bad is inevitable...I KNOW it is. The only difference between your uncertainty, and my certainty, is time.
mmasters wrote:If it were just Oil we might only have 10-15 years left (as the OP is saying) but we also have at least 20 or 30 years worth of Natural Gas (especially in the USA). Not to mention decades worth of coal (plenty in China) and when the oil crisis hits there's also the possibility of an upcoming Nuclear renaissance. So the bottom line is there is not going to be a collapse any time soon.
asg70 wrote:AdamB wrote:I can only "shrug off" concerns about the topics mentioned because I honestly admit that I don't have enough lifetime left to reach the level of expertise I possess elsewhere
Expertise is not required.
asg70 wrote:All you have to do is park your ass on google news and use humans' pattern-matching abilities to notice...a trend.
asg70 wrote:When you pat yourself on the back for not being concerned about this and not being concerned about that, you're actually not being sincere, since obviously you are engaged with the topic enough to joust with the more comical representations of doomerism.
asg70 wrote:The question then becomes...why?
You've been on this board for a while and I think what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Be willing to ask yourself why you put your energy into this or that discussion. What is the ROI? If it's simply the guilty pleasure of pointing out a stupid man's idiocy, well, then it's probably no more worthy a use of your time than boning up on ecology to the point where you might actually be able to weigh in on that side of the equation with some authority.
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