Society Collapse Imminent

Guardian

New Member
Hi, I'm new here. Originally I posted all my debunks and thoughts on cosmophobia. But this is different...

I don't know where this fit's in but I have place this here for my own safety,

http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/16/nasa-...eversible-collapse-in-coming-decades-4605677/


Although when I first heard the headline "Experts have warned that the world as we know it could be doomed to suffer ‘irreversible collapse’ in the coming decades."

The first word that came to me was weasel words... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
 
Hi, I'm new here. Originally I posted all my debunks and thoughts on cosmophobia. But this is different...

I don't know where this fit's in but I have place this here for my own safety,

http://metro.co.uk/2014/03/16/nasa-...eversible-collapse-in-coming-decades-4605677/


Although when I first heard the headline "Experts have warned that the world as we know it could be doomed to suffer ‘irreversible collapse’ in the coming decades."

The first word that came to me was weasel words... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word
Here is the study in question . . . http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ekalnay/pubs/handy-paper-for-submission-2.pdf

It uses four math models to simulate future scenarios one of which is based on a predator vs prey interaction. Interesting but based on many assumptions that we understand the interrelationships and assume to have accurate historical information to base the analysis on. It assumes two controlling factors 1) Ecological Strain and 2) Economic Stratification.
 
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Wouldn't a new society be built if the one we live in collapses? People aren't going to sit around and watch humanity crumble....
 
Wouldn't a new society be built if the one we live in collapses? People aren't going to sit around and watch humanity crumble....
Well so far that has been the outcome. If it were not true, we would not be here to discuss the theory. ;)
 
Thanks :) Awesome site by the way.
You are welcome and yes Mick West has done an excellent job with his creation here at Metabunk.

It is very common by-the-way for each generation to think their's may be the last and eventually one of those generations might be correct. Is our present situation anymore dire than those of the past? I would personally say no! Why? Because we are aware of the problems, we have world wide recognition of them for maybe the first time in history and the capability and the technology to make quick and massive changes in resource use and behavior. So I am actually optimistic of the future!
 
Just in case posting in inappropriate boards gets you a warning or a ban, haven't got used to the in's and out's of the site so far..

The focus should be on asking very specific questions about individual bits of evidence. A very complex claim like "society is heading for collapse" cannot be answered briefly - so we need to break it down. What is the evidence? Pick one piece of that evidence, does it stand up?
 
The focus should be on asking very specific questions about individual bits of evidence. A very complex claim like "society is heading for collapse" cannot be answered briefly - so we need to break it down. What is the evidence? Pick one piece of that evidence, does it stand up?

"society is heading for collapse"

Been hearing that hysterical notion for more years than I care to mention.
 
I would probably say that overpopulation is probably the best solid evidence. But I could say finding a suitable planet to live on or living underground would be the best solution. And for something like a demand for resources I would leave that for science to fix up a solution..
 
"society is heading for collapse"

Been hearing that hysterical notion for more years than I care to mention.

It's not all hysterical. However it is very complicated. It's not exactly something you can just debunk. There are a large number of factors that are in themselves complex and chaotic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed

Diamond identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, collapse of essential trading partners, environmental problems, and failure to adapt to environmental issues.

He also lists 12 environmental problems facing humankind today. The first eight have historically contributed to the collapse of past societies:

  1. Deforestation and habitat destruction
  2. Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)
  3. Water management problems
  4. Overhunting
  5. Overfishing
  6. Effects of introduced species on native species
  7. Overpopulation
  8. Increased per-capita impact of people
Further, he says four new factors may contribute to the weakening and collapse of present and future societies:

  1. Anthropogenic climate change
  2. Buildup of toxins in the environment
  3. Energy shortages
  4. Full human use of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity
Diamond also writes about cultural factors, such as the apparent reluctance of the Greenland Norse to eat fish.



Diamond says Easter Island provides the best historical example of a societal collapse in isolation.
The root problem in all but one of Diamond's factors leading to collapse is overpopulation relative to the practicable (as opposed to the ideal theoretical) carrying capacity of the environment. The one factor not related to overpopulation is the harmful effect of accidentally or intentionally introducing nonnative species to a region.
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Not that we should avoid talking about it. As it's quite important.

I think the bunk in the original link is the framing of the study as if collapse is inevitable in our lifetimes. The study gives probabilities. There is also the probability that the earth could be hit by an asteroid in the same time frame. Unless we can put numbers to the "could be..." it's just scaremongering.
 
I think the bunk in the original link is the framing of the study as if collapse is inevitable in our lifetimes. The study gives probabilities. There is also the probability that the earth could be hit by an asteroid in the same time frame. Unless we can put numbers to the "could be..." it's just scaremongering.

That is my point and what has been hysterical about it all along.
 
Getting to the bunk here (which is the misrepresentation of the study as indicating a likely short term collapse).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...f-civilisation-in-coming-decades-9195668.html

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”.

The report stressed, however, that the worst-case scenario of collapse is not inevitable, and called on action now from the so-called real world “Elites” to restore economic balance.

“Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion,” the scientists said.
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How long is "quite a long time"? If you look at the actual paper (thanks for the link @George B )
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~ekalnay/pubs/handy-paper-for-submission-2.pdf
They don't really simulate the current state of the world, just some very simplified models, and their results indicate ranges of hundreds of years, not decades. They model two types of collapse, one taking 500-900 years and one taking 250 years.

This scenario is precisely the same as the equilibrium without Elites case presented in 5.1.1 except that here we set xE(0) = 1.0 × 10−3. This is indeed a very small initial seed of Elites. The two scenarios look pretty much the same up until about t = 500 years after the starting time of the simulation. The Elite population starts growing significantly only after t = 500, hence depleting the Wealth and causing the system to collapse. Under this scenario, the system collapses due to the scarcity of workers even though natural resources are still abundant, but because the depletion rate is optimal, it takes more than 400 years after the Wealth reaches a maximum for the society to collapse. In this example, Commoners die out first and Elites disappear later.
....
The Wealth starts declining as soon as the Commoner’s population goes beyond its carrying capacity [at around 250 years], and then the full collapse takes only about 250 additional years.

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You can see how this misrepresentation happens. The conspiracy culture consists of many groups who think that collapse is not only likely in the coming decades, but is actually happening right now. They are constant posting "THIS IS IT!!!!" posts every time something happens like a local police force buys a new truck. So the idea of hundreds of years of stability is incredibly foreign to them.

It think this study will end up being framed as some kind of academic agenda-21 propaganda.
 
But I could say finding a suitable planet to live on or living underground would be the best solution.

Another planet is a bit of a non starter.....

http://thebigbangtonow.wordpress.com/2007/12/29/could-we-survive-the-thip-to-another-planet/

There is third obstacle we would have to surmount if humans like us were to colonize another planet even after we’d found it. That’s the problem of getting there in the first place. To put this in perspective, it was a mere four centuries ago that Europeans began sailing across the Atlantic to what we now call the Americas. It was a perilous journey that thousands did not survive. Many ships were lost at sea, and illness killed many more on the journey. Nor was survival assured once they hit land. Even though it was already inhabited by earlier arrivals, many newly founded colonies died out, killed by starvation and disease.
How much more challenging would be a trek to another planet? How much more treacherous surviving once the space ship touched down?
First of all the trip itself. We don’t know how far the nearest habitable planet we might find is, but the best candidate so far is more than 20 light years away. A light year is the distance light travels in a year which is 186,282 miles a second. Multiplied by 60 is the distance in a minute, multiplied by 60 again is the distance in an hour; multiplied by 24 is the distance in a day; and multiplying that by 365 is the distance in miles light travels in a year. That’s 5,874,589,152,000 miles.
The fastest astronauts have ever travelled so far is 7 miles a second. That means it would take more than 26 thousand years for us to travel the distance of a light year. The good news is that optimistic scientists think we could eventually multiply the speed of human space travel by 100, so that it would take only 260 years to travel the distance of a light year.
The bad news is that the nearest scientists think an inhabitable planet might be is 10 light years away, and the nearest planet scientists have at this point actually found that might be potentially inhabitable is 20 light years away. So optimistically, we would have to assume that it would take between 2,600 and 5,000 years for us to reach the nearest inhabitable planet.
So the trip itself poses gigantic obstacles.
First, we would need volunteers to go into space where they would spend the rest of their lives, with no expectation that they or any of their offspring for thousands of years would reach land. Space stations that we set up along the way might help break up the journey, but it would also slow it down. And space stations themselves as permanent support stops are not yet feasible.
Second, we would have to solve the problems associated with the fact that humans have evolved to live in a world with certain levels of gravity and pressure. Without it, our bones tend to disintegrate. So far, we haven’t any idea of how the human body would cope with living from birth to death in an atmosphere without gravity. The question of whether new human life could be conceived and nurtured successfully in a space ship is an obvious one that would need to be solved. So would questions of disease, and the inevitable friction that would develop when a small group of people are living permanently in a cramped space – not even able to get out for a walk.
Of greatest concern would be one of genetic diversity. Would the original humans take along a large gene pool so that the pioneers would not eventually become a small incestuous group highly vulnerable to disease?
Then, of course, we would have to build a space ship that could fuel itself for 5,000 years and provide food for its passengers.
When I think about it, I think it might be easier to save this planet. Because the problems don’t stop with getting to a new planet.
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In addition, how do you finance such an idea, and how do you persuade the remaining population that this is the way forward, after all it's not something you could organise at the last minute!
 
Another planet is a bit of a non starter.....


In addition, how do you finance such an idea, and how do you persuade the remaining population that this is the way forward, after all it's not something you could organise at the last minute!

No doubt a conspiracy theorist would posit the secret elite (Illuminati?) building an escape craft in some covert location (I'd suggest North Korea, Antarctica or perhaps the Bermuda Triangle), using some (suppressed) Tesla engine paid for by the wealth they are accumulating from the rest of us. (See http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/news/375-years-national-minimum-wage-worker-earn-pay-ftse-100-ceo )

More seriously: I am not a mathematician, but it does seem to me impossible to predict the behaviour of complex systems beyond the short term - think of weather forecasts, not to mention economic forecasts and turbulent fluid flow. So it would seem quite infeasible to predict a date when society would collapse through the interplay of economic and social factors, the climate system and the ecosystem (and of course one ought to define exactly what would constitute societal collapse: for instance would forsaking the petroleum economy and going back to an agrarian lifestyle count as a collapse or an adjustment?)

It may well be bunkum to pretend to know when a collapse will happen. But it is also clear that everything does at some point come to an end - as the principle of entropy, and the fate of all previous civilisations, makes clear. As Greens are fond of pointing out, it is irrational to aim for endless growth in a finite world. I hope we don't throw out the baby of legitimate concern with the bunk...
 
I think the scepticism in this case is towards the presentation of the study, not the plausibility of these eventualities or the sense in some forward-looking concern.
 
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