Collapse of Industrial Civilization in the 21st Century

[Dinwar]

...those previous collapses generally had little or nothing to do with running out of basic resources.

Forgive me if this has already been answered, but I believe there are at least two such instances. First, Easter Island ran out of pretty much all their resources, causing a fairly catastrophic societal collaps. Second, the Mayas (I believe....it may have been another group) engaged in massive deforestation, which as I understand it (my knowledge of Meso- and South American archaeology is not very good, I will admit) contributed to their demise.

Nuclear power hasn't gone anywhere...

The administrative hurddles that would need to be cleared are tremendous. The technology is mature, for hte most part (new technologies are constantly being devised, but we can build Davis-Bessy type plants right now), but the permitting is a NIGHTMARE. I've been involved in preliminary stages of some of this, years ago, and it's only gotten worse. Second, we don't have a good way to deal with the waste. Right now, it's largely stored at the reactors, as I understand it.

The Japanese earthquake didn't help. A lot of people are running scared of nuclear now, ignoring the fact that there are fairly large areas where earthquakes of that magnitude are essentially impossible.

So? Bubbles mean you don't have monotonically increasing growth. I have yet to see anything connecting that to the claimed impending collapse.

This is a matter of historical record--this question CAN be answered. A good place to start looking is the Dutch tulip economic collaps. Obviously the country survived; the question is how.

Is climate change on it's own ( acknowledging the knock on effects in disease, food issues and the ocean) enough to trigger a widescale collapse.

The geologic record does not include, to the best of my knowledge, any instances of climate change alone being sufficient to trigger a mass extinction (the only statistically viable option for "collapse" in the biosphere). Attempts to pin mass extinctions on climate change are abundant, but all suffer from the same flaw: they ignore everything else going on at the time, and start with the presumption that climate change is the answer. Examinations of the Permo-Triassic extinction greatly suffer from this, for example. People have been trying for years to prove climate did it, but the simple fact is that there are so many confounding factors surrounding those two extinction pulses that to say any one did it is simply insane. Attempts to blame the K/Pg mass extinction on climate change alone have taken on a ring of despiration. And that's not getting into the Late Cretaceous Ocean Anoxic Events, or the Eocene Climate Optimum, or OIS 11. Climate change can, of course, cause LOCAL extinctions--the Neotoma midden record of the Desert Southwest in the USA demonstrates this quite well, for example, and obviously anywhere that gets flooded will see an extinction of local terrestrial species (and almost certainly an increase in local shallow-marine species). So I'm not saying climate change isn't bad; I'm just saying it's not bad enough, by itself, to cause an ecological collapse.

Recently, the Proceedings of the Royal Society published a paper convincingly arguing that humans, not climate, were the deciding factor in the mass extinction that started 10k or so years ago. This is hardly a new concept, but their argument is both quite convincing and quite useful for analyzing previous extinctions. The full implications of this haven't been explored (no time to do so).

Also, I must point out that we're NOT just facing climate change. Climate change gets all the press, but it's one of a myriad of ecological factors involved in the current mass extinction. The transport of organisms (ie, invasive species) is a major factor, as is habitat fragmentation and the increase in scavanging behavior (roadkill is easy to get to, if you don't become roadkill). The rise of new biomes is another factor--we simply don't understand the impact our cities and farms will have on the environment, not fully and not in terms of evolutionary timescales. NO organism has EVER adapted to high-rise buildings before, for the very obvious reason that high-rise buildings never existed before. Bioenginering is another factor--we are creating new species (either we're in the early stages of it or we've done it, depending on your point of view), and that's going to play a role.

Climate change is complex enough, but to fully grasp the picture of what's going on you need to understand that climate change is only one aspect of this ecological shift.

 

[macdoc]

Recently, the Proceedings of the Royal Society published a paper convincingly arguing that humans, not climate, were the deciding factor in the mass extinction that started 10k or so years ago. This is hardly a new concept, but their argument is both quite convincing and quite useful for analyzing previous extinctions. The full implications of this haven't been explored (no time to do so).

I was not in the least convinced. Advocates have dug in their heels over this and there were simply not enough humans and their main easy to kill meat animals survived in abundance which humans continued to kill to sustain a reasonable level of hunter gatherer until only a century or a bit more ago.

Post 1850 there is an argument which is easily supported.

Islands there is an argument - major continents - I and others are entirely from Missouri on human primary cause.

••

As for other arguments....our economic system is fubar and due for a collapse so nothing of that really has a bearing on feasible solutions to transition to sustainable civilization.
Wars are never affordable and always eventually paid for or inflated out of.

I am very much of the opinion we have collapse in some areas ( democratic function in some nation states notably the US ) with rebirth in others ( in the same nation some at the individual state level ).

Sector by sector one can argue collapse or renewal.
Ocean for example is in collapse well along with not a lot of remedial progress visible.

Mega fauna in collapse with some remedial action ( rewilding and continental introduction ).

 

[Dinwar]

I was not in the least convinced.

Did you read the paper? Because if not, whether you are convinced or not is irrelevant. The reason is that this paperr uses a line of argument not generally included in these debates, and a great deal of data backing it up.

The paper is free to download. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1787/20133254.full Basically, the pattern of human distribution, the pattern of climate change, and the pattern of extinction (in megafauna) were examined, to see if the latter correlated best with humans or climate change. The results were that the pattern best fits with humans, not climate change. If climate change is the cause, we must explain why the effects on the biosphere do not match the effects on the climate--not an impossible task, but certainly a very difficult one, particularly when a far more likely answer presents itself. If you want to convince me that the paper is wrong, that's what it'll take.

What will it take to convince YOU that YOUR idea is wrong?

...there were simply not enough humans and their main easy to kill meat animals survived in abundance which humans continued to kill to sustain a reasonable level of hunter gatherer until only a century or a bit more ago.

This is nonsense (and while it may be the cold, not terribly easy to understand linguistically). First, it's a mischaracterization of the overkill hypothesis--no one argued that humans killed everything to extinction, but rather that the added ecological pressures from the introduction of humans into already predator-rich environments pushed many organisms over the edge, causing them to go extinct. It wouldn't take many humans to do that. Second, the organisms a hundred years ago were living in a world depauperate in predators, and were the survivors of the 10ka extinction--hardly a representative sample! Plus, the most untouched ecosystems we have today are demonstrably predator-poor compared to Pleistocene ecosystems. And since predation was a major limitinig factor in the Pleistocene (the last truly long-term stable ecosystem), the reduction of predators would provide ecological room for the herbivores to spread out in as well as niches for humans to occupy. Africa is a horrible place to base any arguments on, for several reasons (outlined in the Royal Society paper, but best summarized as "coevolution"; I can go into greater depth if you'd like). Finally, without a robust estimate of population size (which we don't have, for ANY organism, at the 10ka mark) arguments along the lines of "THere weren't enough of us" amount to little more than Arguments from Personal Incredulity. Simply put, you cannot have the data upon which to base such a conclusion, because that data doesn't exist (or, more accurately, we don't know if it does or not because we haven't found it yet).

The overkill hypothesis has some flaws, sure, but "There weren't enough humans" isn't one of them.

 

[DC]

Did you read the paper? Because if not, whether you are convinced or not is irrelevant. The reason is that this paperr uses a line of argument not generally included in these debates, and a great deal of data backing it up.

The paper is free to download. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1787/20133254.full Basically, the pattern of human distribution, the pattern of climate change, and the pattern of extinction (in megafauna) were examined, to see if the latter correlated best with humans or climate change. The results were that the pattern best fits with humans, not climate change. If climate change is the cause, we must explain why the effects on the biosphere do not match the effects on the climate--not an impossible task, but certainly a very difficult one, particularly when a far more likely answer presents itself. If you want to convince me that the paper is wrong, that's what it'll take.

What will it take to convince YOU that YOUR idea is wrong?

This is nonsense (and while it may be the cold, not terribly easy to understand linguistically). First, it's a mischaracterization of the overkill hypothesis--no one argued that humans killed everything to extinction, but rather that the added ecological pressures from the introduction of humans into already predator-rich environments pushed many organisms over the edge, causing them to go extinct. It wouldn't take many humans to do that. Second, the organisms a hundred years ago were living in a world depauperate in predators, and were the survivors of the 10ka extinction--hardly a representative sample! Plus, the most untouched ecosystems we have today are demonstrably predator-poor compared to Pleistocene ecosystems. And since predation was a major limitinig factor in the Pleistocene (the last truly long-term stable ecosystem), the reduction of predators would provide ecological room for the herbivores to spread out in as well as niches for humans to occupy. Africa is a horrible place to base any arguments on, for several reasons (outlined in the Royal Society paper, but best summarized as "coevolution"; I can go into greater depth if you'd like). Finally, without a robust estimate of population size (which we don't have, for ANY organism, at the 10ka mark) arguments along the lines of "THere weren't enough of us" amount to little more than Arguments from Personal Incredulity. Simply put, you cannot have the data upon which to base such a conclusion, because that data doesn't exist (or, more accurately, we don't know if it does or not because we haven't found it yet).

The overkill hypothesis has some flaws, sure, but "There weren't enough humans" isn't one of them.

mmh interesting read, i would also have bet on CC rather than Humans. (especially as they excluded extinctions in the past 1000 years) very counterintuitive.

 

[macdoc]

Africa is a horrible place to base any arguments on, for several reasons (outlined in the Royal Society paper, but best summarized as "coevolution"; I can go into greater depth if you'd like)

I have not mentioned Africa once but it sounds like Africa is cited as an exception which seems kind of odd doesn't it since there were enough humans for a long enough time.....so another reason is "invented" specifically to explain Africa away ??

Most of the megafauna in Australia went extinct BEFORE humans arrived. No getting around that fossil record.
It's those scientists working there you have to convince.

I think there are advocates of human influences that are overstating their case.
Nothing I have seen alters my view of that......obtaining support for a view does not in any way mean it's correct.
The conventional wisdom on Missoula was it could not be short time period.
It was.....one dissenting voice who happened to be correct.

There are far more dissenting voices about human influence ..and please do not put words in my mouth as you are wont to do....I SAID influence...and at no time said they "killed off all the megafauna".
When you do that sort of nonsense any cred you might have disappears.

WE have done in the current crop of remaining megafauna.

I am completely unconvinced for North America and Australia 10-12k BP.

I remain open for Asia tipping to unconvinced

I'd accept it for Europe which is really almost island biogeography.

I'll do my own reading and draw my own conclusions on megafauna.

Now I've laid out my position can we get back to 2100 human society collapse or not.?

 

[Dinwar]

mmh interesting read, i would also have bet on CC rather than Humans.

Why? What data is this based on?

Anyone familiar with the history of science will know that major scientific discoveries can become trends in research--for example, after the Alvarez Hypothesis was more or less proven, people tried to pin EVERY mass extinction on impacts. This has nothing to do with the data; it had everything to do with the sociology of science. Major ideas get funded, and get press, which both translate into prestige. So researchers ride each other's coat tails. This isn't bad, so long as the research remains of appropriate caliber--after all, a thorough examination of novel concepts is necessary for science. However, it does lead some to prematurely jump to conclusions, and those premature conclusione need to be weeded out through proper, rigorous investigation.

For my part, I doubt climate change was the only factor, for a few reasons. First, there were clearly alterations to the predator/prey ratios at the time of the extinction, in ways that are far more consistent with the introduction of new predators than with shifts in climate. Second, previous climate shifts on similar scales did not produce mass extinctions, despite involving many (most) of the same species. While the current rate of global temperature change may be unique (I'm not sure sufficient records exist from the Mesozoic or Paleozoic to justify the claim, but that's irrelevant to this argument), the rate of change around 10ka certainly wasn't. Interglacials of comperable magnitude did not produce comperable ecological instability, indicating that other factors were involved. Third, to put it bluntly humans invaded multiple continents. We had to have had SOME impact; the introduction of a new species of efficient predator is going to cause SOMETHING to happen, particularly in a predator-rich environment. Add to that the fact that we tend to dislike being trampled while foraging, or having our young eaten, and the reduction of megafauna seems likely. Look at what we do to wolves, for example--we don't just kill for food, but to protect food and protect ourselves (not saying wolves attack humans unprovoked; rather, people believed they did, however, and the results were the same for the wolves). The paper I linked to provides an additional line of evidence, one which I had previously not been aware of.

None of this really has much to do with the current climate conditions or trends, except to point out that in my opinion, climate change alone is not sufficient to cause ecological collapse. As climate change is not happening in isolation (ie, other major forcing mechanisms are currently in operation in addition to climate change), this doesn't mean that the ecosystem will be unaffected by human activity. The question of collapse is far more complicated; we're certainly in a mass extinction, but only time will tell if it's a mass die-off or a mass turn-over. "Future Evolution" by Peter Ward provides some arguments in favor of this being a mass turn-over; I'm not entirely convinced, and believe that we could go either way.

 

[DC]

Why? What data is this based on?

on a huge lack of data, based purely on my ignorance. the only data that went into the bet, eyeballing human population graphs and graphs about the last deglaciation and sea level rise.

and the paper you linked to is the very first i ever did read on this topic.

i do not doubt their findings, i just find it counterintuitive, because in my mind the Climate changes were huge and human poulation very little and primitive.
and i have absolutely no reason to doubt the paper. i know i am totally ignorant on this topic.

and as to today's cliamte change, i am not in the Guy McPherson camp

 

[Dinwar]

I have not mentioned Africa once.

It was pre-emptive. Africa is a common counter to the overkill hypothesis. Plus, it introduces a concept that is widely ignored in these discussions (as you ignored it in citing the presence of megafauna herbivores up to a hundred years ago, by the way).

Most of the megafauna in Australia went extinct BEFORE humans arrived.

It's those scientists working there you have to convince.

Global forcing mechanisms are affected by, and can sometimes be overwritten by, regional and local conditions. It's hardly surprising that one or two areas experienced ecological turmoil without humans being present; however, that doesn't make it the dominant trend. One can see much more dramatic examples of this in the K/Pg mass extinction, particularly in the reefs found in Europe.

We're talking global trends here. Saying "That's not what happened here!!!" isn't an argument. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the debate itself.

I SAID influence...and at no time said they "killed off all the megafauna".

Actually, you edited your response after I started typing, so neither were present. I was presenting a typical counter-argument to the overkill hypothesis (with a touch of hyperbole, but not as much as one would hope), since your counter-argument was devoid of data and did not outline your reasoning. If you force me to guess, I'm going to argue against the standard counter-arguments.

I'll do my own reading and draw my own conclusions on megafauna.

Will you do so with the intent of finding the truth? Or with the intent of proving your point? You don't have to answer that, by the way--just something to consider. Personally, I don't care what killed things off 10ka; I've got no dog in this fight. I tend to believe the overkill hypothesis is better-substantiated, but if someone could provide the data to convince me otherwise I wouldn't have any problem switching sides.

can we get back to 2100 human society collapse or not.?

This directly bears on a question asked up-thread. The past is the key to the future; understanding previous ecological collapses is the ONLY way to rigorously analyze the current one. I know some people can't wrap their heads around it, but the simple fact is that ecological collapses have happened before, and we can use those to predict what's going to happen now, as well as to isolate those things we can't predict from the past.

What you are doing is the equivalent of declaring that historic experiments don't matter, because THIS experiment is happening NOW! The flaw in this reasoning is obvious. Previous mass extionctions constitute the background reading for understanding the current one--and as ecological collapse was mentioned as a potential cause for human society collapse, this makes previous mass extinctions relevant.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

I was not in the least convinced. Advocates have dug in their heels over this and there were simply not enough humans and their main easy to kill meat animals survived in abundance which humans continued to kill to sustain a reasonable level of hunter gatherer until only a century or a bit more ago.

Post 1850 there is an argument which is easily supported.

Islands there is an argument - major continents - I and others are entirely from Missouri on human primary cause.

••

You "show me" types have forgotten one very important factor. The trophic cascade/ecological cascade. Humans didn't actually need to kill and eat every single member of a species to cause it to go extinct. Furthermore, changes in keystone species numbers and behavior can cause profound ecosystem transformation, which in turn can cause the extinctions. This generally is "local", but add enough "local" changes together and then you start seeing continent wide effects and even potentially world wide effects.



And for a more scientific analysis:

Trophic cascades in Yellowstone: The first 15 years after wolf reintroduction

This shows how a small number of predators can affect much larger ecosystem change. The transformation of the ecosystem is much larger than the relatively few animals preyed upon. The human culling of deer by Rangers was actually a bit more than the reintroduced wolf preying on deer. The behavior change is what was significant. The wolves got those deer mobbing and moving again. That allowed rest for overgrazed land, which in the end brought in significant numbers of other wildlife. Total productivity in terms of both biodiversity and total biomass increased! Which of course means there is actually MORE grazing and browsing going on than before and actually more animals supported by the ecosystem! Almost all Trophic cascades caused by humans are in the opposite direction, but here is an example that proves the concept by putting it in reverse. Keep in mind this all happened in < 20 years. In geological time...an instant.

 

[Dinwar]

on a huge lack of data, based purely on my ignorance. the only data that went into the bet, eyeballing human population graphs and graphs about the last deglaciation and sea level rise.

and the paper you linked to is the very first i ever did read on this topic.

I apologize if my response to you came off as snippy. As I mentioned before, I have a cold, and haven't been getting a lot of sleep--my tone isn't exactly coming across the way I want it to. I was asking out of genuine curiosity.

i just find it counterintuitive, because in my mind the Climate changes were huge and human poulation very little and primitive.

I can definitely understand that. However, I think being primative may have contributed to this. Modern people have a number of options other than "kill all wolves you see". Primative peoples tend to only have violate options. But I can agree that it definitely seems counter-intuitive.

 

[DC]

I apologize if my response to you came off as snippy. As I mentioned before, I have a cold, and haven't been getting a lot of sleep--my tone isn't exactly coming across the way I want it to. I was asking out of genuine curiosity.

I can definitely understand that. However, I think being primative may have contributed to this. Modern people have a number of options other than "kill all wolves you see". Primative peoples tend to only have violate options. But I can agree that it definitely seems counter-intuitive.

no offense taken

aah there you go again with your knowledge, we laymen have this nice dream that primitive societies lived in Harmony with nature, haven't you seen Avatar?

 

[Dinwar]

aah there you go again with your knowledge, we laymen have this nice dream that primitive societies lived in Harmony with nature, haven't you seen Avatar?

I like to destroy that one. Whenever people start talking about "being one with nature" I start talking about parasitic castration. Suddenly, people don't want to be one with nature anymore, even though the bopirids only infect crabs....

Also, to tie this back with the thread: the collaps of Native American civilizations in North America may be an interesting area of study. The natives Europeans saw were the remanents of a previously thriving civilization, living in what was to them a post-apocolyptic world. Essentially, they were living in a stone-age version of the Fallout series. So we actually have an example of precisely this happening, quite suddenly, and over a wide area. Middle and South America are more complicated.

 

[LSSBB]

How sound or unsound is the reasoning and evidence that industrial civilization is heading for collapse during the 21st century? What should a skeptic conclude?

To start out, I'll define "collapse" as a significant (say, 50% or greater) decrease in worldwide economic productivity per capita, regardless of the time scale over which it happens (e.g. it could be sustained economic contraction, the opposite of economic growth, over many years; or a sudden calamity, or anything in between), and regardless of its causes or consequences. However, the scenario I'm most interested in, because it seems the most plausible, is of a slow collapse caused by resource limitations, especially energy resource limitations, and irreversible due to population pressure. That is to say, the aftermath of a population overshoot that's already put us above any sustainable level.

I listed the major elements of that scenario on another thread, in this post. As that post is in the members-only area, but contains no content unsuitable for the public discussion areas, I'll reproduce it in the next post.

The alternative scenarios to eventual (slow or fast) collapse appear to be the following:

- indefinite continued growth
- reaching (now or after further growth) an indefinitely sustainable equilibrium at at least the present population
- a future gradual population contraction to a sustainable equilibrium that occurs without collapse
- apocalypse (global nuclear war, meteor impact, solar mass ejection, nearby supernova, supervolcano, superflu, or other event that suddenly causes a radical population decrease)
- singularity (an event or change that makes any comparison with the present impossible, such as being invited to join the Federation of Planets, the Rapture, or uploading our consciousnesses into computers)
- delayed collapse; that is, continued growth or non-sustainable equilibrium through the 21st century but collapse sometime after

I find it interesting that almost no one on any side of any discussion about the future pays any attention to that last possibility. If I'm not mistaken, that suggests that even though predictions of what's going to happen in the 21st century tend to be polarized between doomers and optimists, the perception that the 21st century is indeed a critical time in the history of our species is nearly universally agreed upon.

At the same time, the idea that industrial civilization will collapse eventually is also generally well accepted. For example, the Long Now Foundation assumed from the start, in their project to build a clock that will last 10,000 years, that it will have to be able to survive periods of abandonment or barbarism. They've continued to assume that in their other projects, and to suggest that cycles of collapse and recovery are likely elements of a long-term view of future history. They don't usually get tagged as doomers for this, but as realists.

From what I've seen, the evidence is not clear enough, and the dynamics too complex, to conclude with certainty that a collapse in the 21st century is inevitable, but that it's at least as likely as not. In particular, I find each of the alternative possibilities, that I listed above, individually less plausible.

From bits and pieces of previous threads over the years, I've gotten the impression that some people here agree with that assessment at least in part. Of course, others do not, sometimes because they expect technological advances to solve the problems. What do you think, and why?

Myriad, in the studies you have represented, and your own synopsis, it seems to me that Earth and human civilization have been represented as a closed system. Given the recent drive by some private enterprise (SpaceX, Planetary Resources, etc.) to begin increased development beyond the Earth, have any of these future collapsed scenarios factored potential developments in space travel? These could potentially bring in external resources and provide additional technological development (and initially minor migration). In addition, it seems to me that a lot as far as food resources could be addressed by GMO (with accompanying FUD drag), and hydroponics.

 

[Dinwar]

In addition, it seems to me that a lot as far as food resources could be addressed by GMO (with accompanying FUD drag), and hydroponics.

Do you think we could develop hydroponics systems relatively easily using space-based resources? In other words, could we use the water and minerals on asteroids, comets, Mars, wherever to set up hydroponics systems? If so, that would have very serious consequences to this.

Plus, I like the idea of turning geocentric orbit into a breadbasket.

 

[LSSBB]

Do you think we could develop hydroponics systems relatively easily using space-based resources? In other words, could we use the water and minerals on asteroids, comets, Mars, wherever to set up hydroponics systems? If so, that would have very serious consequences to this.

Plus, I like the idea of turning geocentric orbit into a breadbasket.

Actually, I meant to list hydroponics as a separate matter, and not include it with space exploration, however for the workings of large scale hydroponics please see articles about FarmedHere, in Bedford Park, IL. Of course, I think large scale space exploration might also use hydroponics, and I am not an expert on the resources required to support it in space.

 

[macdoc]

In addition, it seems to me that a lot as far as food resources could be addressed by GMO (with accompanying FUD drag), and hydroponics.

you forget food from chemicals directly.

Synthetic Food: Better Cooking Through Chemistry - PBS
www.pbs.org/wgbh/.../synthetic-food-better-cooking-through-chemistry/
Jun 5, 2013 - The basic idea behind molecular gastronomy is to determine what happens ... but “to make food directly from the basic constituent chemicals ...

we already produce far more food than is required....we just don't distribute it very well.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Historically, many civilisations have collapsed. So they would have a basis for making this claim.

So then the 21st century is no different than any other.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I suspect they haven't. In what previous centuries were people saying that the next hundred years would be critical for the entire Human species?

All of them.

Do you not think that someone during the Plague might have thought that the fate of mankind hung in the balance?

Just last century we have the threat of nuclear annihilation. Have we forgotten that already?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

The biggest argument against a major physical collapse is the moving of peak oil further into the future.. Peak oil could have been really distruptive..

We can't really have Peak Oil^(tm) if we keep moving it, can we?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

this time we have good scientific reasons to say it.

Just like all the other times.