Sure. And mesoamerican empires collapsed several times and the rest of the world didn't even "discover" that it had happened at all until centuries later. There was little contact or trade between the Roman Empire and China (although there was some, indirectly). There was no contact or even knowledge between the precolumbian mesoamerican empires and the rest of the world.
The modern world is much more interconnected.
I'm cutting it there because that was my entire point - while various collapses and declines have happened before, none of them are useful comparisons because the world today is so different. It doesn't mean that collapse can't happen, but it does mean that cries of "it's happening again" are nonsense because nothing similar has ever had the chance to happen before. Any collapse of modern civilisation will be completely different from any past collapses.
Secondly, you haven't addressed the other, equally important, point I made - those previous collapses generally had little or nothing to do with running out of basic resources. As I said, the (western) Roman empire did not collapse because it ran out of wood. The world has
never been forced to return to the power sources of previous ages due to running out of modern ones. A scenario in which we run out of (cheap enough) oil and coal has absolutely nothing to do with any previous case in which a country declined due to any number of economic and social reasons.
Wrong
Green Revolution. Not the present day marketing buzz word, the mid 20th century transformation of agriculture for higher productivity per acre by means of more energy-intensive methods. Fertilizers (based on the Haber process), pesticides, mechanization, irrigation, expansion and consolidation of farms, and advanced crop varieties. Most of that has quite a bit to do with fossil fuels, as does rapid transport of perishable produce.
We need another bigger revolution to undo that one without going back to the lower yields of earlier eras or continuing to deplete our soil and aquifers. Not an easy task, and no guarantee of success. That's why I'm interested in everything Red Baron Farms has to say here.
Ah, I thought you were talking about green as in energy. Farming and such isn't really something I know enough about. However, it's worth pointing out that alternate power sources are just as viable here as anywhere else.
I agree with all that. Although, changing from petroleum fuels to other sources could require a lot of retooling, a large capital cost that could come at a bad time if we wait for shortages before acting.
Absolutely. Trying to implement this sort of change in a short time as an emergency measure would be extremely difficult, but we don't need to worry too much about that because we're already implementing it right now. There are already several different electric cars on sale to consumers, and fuel cells are powering quite a variety of things, although not quite in general consumer usage yet.
Again, whether everything gets done in time is still very much open to question, but the claims
inevitability just don't stand up.
And when I was a kid, the next replacement, nuclear, seemed to be all queued up and ready to go. Besides nuclear power plants, there were nuclear ships already, and I remember Popular Science articles about nuclear planes, nuclear trains, even nuclear cars.
But, that stumbled out of the gate, and here we are.
It's still queued up and ready to go. Nuclear power hasn't gone anywhere, and the more it looks like power could become a problem, the more attractive it's going to look.
I've read assessments that clearly point both ways, by equally (not very) credible sources. The fact that more effort is being put into saying "we're not running out of oil, really" than "we can build replacement sources" is not reassuring. But it looks like I'm going to have to attempt some math myself on this.
The problem on this front is really with the "can't" and "inevitable" claims. If we absolutely had to, we could build enough nuclear power to power most of the world within a few years. It's simply a question of money, and the political will to actually do it. As for how much effort is being put into saying we can build replacement sources, maybe things are different where you are, but around here the government never stops saying that. The connection between mouth and money is a little lacking at times, but even companies like BP go to great lengths to advertise that oil isn't all they do. In contrast, other than in discussions like this I can't recall anyone ever saying that oil isn't going to be a problem, although admittedly the focus tends to be on price and security of supply rather than simply running out.
That's a pretty specious argument, suitable for the Community thread but not here.
No, it really isn't. The entire argument presented by you in both threads consists of anecdotal claims that things are going to be terrible. "Here" is the Science section, and I'm pointing out that there seems to be distinct lack of it backing up the claims of doom.
We're not talking about "kids used to be polite to their elders and wash behind their ears." It's more like "it used to be possible to work your way through college without accruing debt, and for a BA graduate to afford to support a non-working spouse in an urban apartment (if not a suburban tract house) and even get sick occasionally, on an entry level job."
From my point of view, those two claims are pretty much indistinguishable. Certainly the latter has nothing to do with the experiences of anyone I know. Which is exactly the point I am making about anecdotal claims. You say one thing based on your experience, I don't believe it. Without actual evidence, there just isn't an argument to be made.
These differences are reflected in basic statistics. They might not be directly relevant (that is, they might have a different underlying cause) but they're not made up. There probably are peer reviewed studies on this. I'll go look, when I have time.
It's generally best to establish that claims are based on peer reviewed studies
first. Citing "basic statistics" is about one step removed from "common sense".
Yeah, bubbles aren't new, but they become more attractive when growth elsewhere is slow.
So? Bubbles mean you don't have monotonically increasing growth. I have yet to see anything connecting that to the claimed impending collapse.
What (besides real estate that was a bubble that popped) was the big growth industry of the 2000's? What (besides fracking) is the big growth industry now?
I have no idea. Is there a reason I should care?
That is an incredibly difficult question to answer.
I've tried.
It should not be too difficult to answer the easier question, how much energy
is currently used to build a wind or water turbine? The information doesn't appear to be directly on a list somewhere, but if you have estimates of the EROI (about 20 for a wind turbine), the service life, and the mean power generated, you could calculate it.
Not that difficult at all.
Oh yes, that coal article. Which says only that the island of Great Britain is "pretty much built on a bed of coal."
Um, no, not "that coal article". Did you actually read it? The word "coal" only appears in the first couple of lines, and hardly has anything to do with the article as a whole, other than using a particularly stupid claim about it as a jumping off point to talk about how important it is to actually know what you're talking about before claiming we're about to run out of things. It actually focusses far more on various metal resources.
No numbers, no citations, and no explanation for the steadily decreasing
UK coal production figures over the last 100 years. Miners got tired of working? No one wants the stuff any more? (But then, why have they been importing so much of it?) Cagey Brits have just been holding out waiting for the price to go up? I have to say, the kind of glib reassurance offered by an article like that one worries me more than ten doomer blogs.
It's hardly a secret that it's currently cheaper to import coal than to mine it in Britain. That has absolutely nothing to do with whether we are actually going to
run out any time soon. And given how much detail the article goes into to support its points, with numerous numbers and citations that you seem to have somehow missed, dismissing it as "glib reassurance" really doesn't help you make a case here, especially given the pronounced lack of said numbers and citations backing up your own claims.
The evidence I've seen has consisted mostly of examples, but there are a great many of those covering a lot of ground. Consider, for example, lubricating a bearing. Heavy grease will give you more friction; use a less viscous lubricant to reduce friction (increase efficiency) and you have to worry more about wear (less resilient). The more you pay for your airline ticket (less efficient), the fewer pitfalls and restrictions if your plans change (more resilient). The most efficient bicycles are more fragile and more dependent on smooth roads; a heavy old Schwinn will give you more of a workout but go over anything.
Maybe some kind of computer simulation could elucidate this more. In the meantime, I'd welcome counterexamples.
Given that out of three examples you've given, one (the price of tickets) has nothing to do with efficiency and one (bicycles) is just flat out wrong, I don't really see any need to go looking for counterexamples. It's just more anecdotes that don't hold up, but no real evidence.
Optimistic "we can do something about this" attitudes unfortunately seem to be way outnumbered by passive "we don't have to do anything about this," "they'll think of something," and "the market will take care of it" attitudes. The UK is made of coal, what's the problem? That makes optimism more difficult, but I'm working on it.
I definitely agree here. Far too many people think that because a solution is possible, there's no point in worrying about it at all. For any problem really, not just the one under discussion here. Even worse are those who think that because we've often come up with new technology to solve a problem in the past, that means we must always do so in the future so there's never any point worrying about anything.
But there are two important points here. Firstly, the people who generally hold that sort of attitude are mostly just the general public. The people with relevant expertise in positions to actually deal with these problems generally have very different attitudes, and their opinions are far more important. Secondly, as I've previously noted, the idea of actually doing something gets more and more attractive the worse things look. Nuclear is unpopular now largely because there's no immediate need. See how long that attitude lasts once we start getting brownouts due to lack of power. Will it be too late to save things by that point? Maybe, but I'm far from convinced of that so far.
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very good....smile of the day. 
