pstarr wrote:Anyway, as per the topic. Peak oil will be the death of us all.
The problem I have with the Peak Oil choice with this poll is the word "Immediate". Even if Peak Oil actually happened tomorrow (or has aleady occurred), it would likely take decades for COLLAPSE to follow. (Substitution, making do with far less, etc. are viable coping strategies that will get used if necessary, even if doomers refuse to admit it).
This has been my primary objection to the constant drumbeat of short term doom. It's not that the pessimists are wrong that we have several to many long term problems we're doing little or nothing about (except fanning the flames by growing the population and producing/consuming more globally). It's that the likely problems aside from something like nuclear war are unlikely to be quick.
I picked economic chaos (as an outlier), as that could be quite sudden and ripple around the world within a day -- although it would take awhile for industrial collapse to truly follow -- assuming that TPTB and magical money printing, etc. couldn't somehow forestall the worst of the consequences.
The nuclear war bit is certainly the scariest. With all the big and/or very badly behaved players.... If it became widespread it would certainly change the AGW curve.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.