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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/romney-weed-whacker-on-environmental-rules-may-falter.html?hpquote:In responses to a recent questionnaire, Mr. Romney allowed that the world was getting warmer, that human activity contributes to the warming and that some action may be required to deal with it. But he opposes significant steps to combat climate change. He also has said he would revisit a recently announced fuel economy standard for cars and light trucks that would double fuel efficiency to an average of 54.5 miles per gallon for the 2025 model year while markedly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The new target was the result of years of negotiation among automakers, the Department of Transportation, the E.P.A. and regulators in a number of states, led by California. Expected and not the least bit surprising, but still loving infuriating. "Yes this is a problem and happening but no let's do nothing about it." *proceeds to go and complain about how our national debt will destroy the lives of our children and grandchildren and we must act immediately by starving the poors* Obama isn't really doing too much either, so maybe it doesn't even really matter.
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Oct 7, 2012 12:19
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This thread is pretty convinced of doom. One of the things that always strikes me reading these big picture predictions of the end is that they tend to dissolve into inspecific notions of collapse. Is there any particular mechanism by which one of these thinkers has predicted collapse? Without some detail its hard to follow them through the logical leap of environmental degradation->societal collapse. If that mechanism is not well articulated its hard to see how they rule out other outcomes, like decline or decline punctuated by local collapse or even radical political re-alignment that establishes a sustainable new order or, well, anything really. And yes, I have read Collapse.
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Oct 8, 2012 05:32
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Arglebargle III posted:This thread is pretty convinced of doom. One of the things that always strikes me reading these big picture predictions of the end is that they tend to dissolve into inspecific notions of collapse. Is there any particular mechanism by which one of these thinkers has predicted collapse? India and China have huge populations who are going to be adversely affected by increasing food prices, and nuclear weapons. Remember North Korea and its habit of threatening military action if it doesn't get food aid? Imagine that, but with ~2.5 billion people, actual nukes, and a massive effect on the world economy. Then consider Pakistan, Japan and all the other countries with bad relations to India and China, some of which have nukes as well. (On a brighter topic, read The Third Chimpanzee if you've read Collapse, Jared Diamond is great.)
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Oct 8, 2012 05:53
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So yeah, that's generally the sort of vague thing that gets bandied about. So say China seizes agricultural land in SE Asia, even annexes Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam - is that societal collapse? This is where the doomsayers break down for me; there's a tendency to assume that radical change in the political status quo is necessarily a sign of impending collapse, when it seems to me more likely to be a pressure valve. What if powerful states create a new age of imperialism in which the vast majority of natural resources are directed to a few? What if India and China do indeed collapse while other places merely suffer declining populations and standards of living? I could go on with what-ifs all day, because without a clear causal connection between environmental decay and abrupt collapse it's hard to say what might happen. Here you're positing a limited nuclear exchange, I guess. That's not the end of civilization. India, China, and Pakistan all have small nuclear arsenals and nuclear policies that are less insane than the U.S. and Russia. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 06:38
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Its fine if China can find land enough to seize (for example), many doomsaying predictions indicate there will not be enough such land as it dries up. What then? What happens when the US bread basket goes dustbowl again, but the rest of the world goes with it? What if the US has the food, and China wants it? It could very well get 'nuclear conflict' bad, and that's a pretty good step towards societal collapse. E: to be clear I'm just playing the 'what if' game
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Oct 8, 2012 07:28
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Something will happen, certainly, but my point is that the dots have not been connected to global collapse of modern civilization. Maybe somebody has and I'd be interested to see that. But the dominant story in the last few pages of the thread of total collapse of civilization and a catastrophic return to primitivism (which is itself an anachronistic concept) hardly seems inevitable to me.
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Oct 8, 2012 09:07
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Arglebargle III posted:Something will happen, certainly, but my point is that the dots have not been connected to global collapse of modern civilization. Maybe somebody has and I'd be interested to see that. But the dominant story in the last few pages of the thread of total collapse of civilization and a catastrophic return to primitivism (which is itself an anachronistic concept) hardly seems inevitable to me. This seems like a pretty good starting point: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/05/01/204017/lester-brown-scientific-american-food-shortages-there-is-no-bo/ quote:Food scarcity and the resulting higher food prices are pushing poor countries into chaos. There's also a fair bit of research that points to decreases in crop yields as temperature increases. Rice crops for instance show a 10% decline per 1 degree C over 30 degrees. Add to that the potential for milder winters (increase in pests), larger temperature and dry/wet swings, and many poorer countries already grow rice and other crops in environments that are already pushing these limits. So, when yields drop, prices rise, and people go hungry from the double-whammy of "smaller harvest, higher import prices". When people starve, bad things happen. I don't think anyone can predict the exact path to collapse along this line, but the points above are hard to dispute. Without adequate intervention, things could go very, very south. This seems like a pretty good article as well (farming and climate change): http://www.worldwatch.org/node/572
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Oct 8, 2012 14:55
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In my opinion, the most probable consequence of climate change is that food prices will rise. As a consequence, the West will consume less meat. I think it's pretty unlikely that we'll see mass migrations. Hungry people can't travel very far and if they have money to travel, they have money for food - which I assume would be a priority.
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Oct 8, 2012 15:21
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Arglebargle III posted:Something will happen, certainly, but my point is that the dots have not been connected to global collapse of modern civilization. Maybe somebody has and I'd be interested to see that. But the dominant story in the last few pages of the thread of total collapse of civilization and a catastrophic return to primitivism (which is itself an anachronistic concept) hardly seems inevitable to me. Predicting the effects of climate change a few decades out is hard enough; predicting the most likely path of it's effects on civilization is magnitudes more difficult. That said, one can figure out pretty easily general patterns that will emerge from climate change: 1. Primary effects: Extreme weather (heat waves, drought, storms, flooding, etc.), rising oceans, and loss of ice (contributing to droughts). 2. Secondary effects: More pests (not killed by winters), disease carrying bugs (as climate zones shift), desertification, and massive crop die-offs (see: all of the above), more deaths due to storms, mass starvation, and mass displacement (due to flooding, starvation, storms, climate zones shifting). 3. Tertiary effects: Studies have shown people without the basic necessities of life (food, water, shelter) are more likely to fight, so war. Realize the scope of the damages, and you realize conflicts would be everywhere and widespread. Also, 4. Compounding Problems: There are a huge number of problems that aren't caused by climate change, but will compound it. Growing world wealth disparity and loss of basic necessities will (and has) provoked unrest all over the world (Europe and the Middle-East are on the news quite a bit). Aquifers are being depleted far faster than replenished. Society is completely dependent on fossil fuels, which we need to switch completely off of (and soon) or they'll compound any other problems. Add to all of that the current economic system (capitalism) that values profit over lives and society and is able to basically buy political power, and you have a recipe for a cataclysmic disaster. Yes, it's vague, but as I said, no one can predict exactly how things will go down. The point is, it's going to be bad stuff, all over the world, simultaneously. Edit: I don't think things will regress all the way to the stone age, but if things remain on course, it will probably regress society, standards of living, and technology a whole bunch, and kill a few billion people. Uranium Phoenix fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 16:09
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Arglebargle III posted:Something will happen, certainly, but my point is that the dots have not been connected to global collapse of modern civilization. Maybe somebody has and I'd be interested to see that. But the dominant story in the last few pages of the thread of total collapse of civilization and a catastrophic return to primitivism (which is itself an anachronistic concept) hardly seems inevitable to me. I keep bringing it up and I swear I'm not some fanatic, but Gwynne Dyer's Climate Wars does go into some detail as to what the major problems and threats current day governments are worrying about, and speculates as to what might happen 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now. All of this is based on scientific data and military/policy planning papers. Essentially he argues that the time for global cooperation and pinning down a treaty concerning things like geo-engineering is now, and as the climate changes, food and drinkable water will become more scarce and lead to war. Dreylad fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 18:30
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I don't see why economists and neoliberalists are able to half bake whatever predictions or theories they want, and despite them not panning out their mandates are followed and revered, while environmental analysts aren't allowed to outline the range of risks and timescales involved for dealing with our problems. Here's a hint: scientists study things and compile them into books full of other studies, then when studies become prominent and are validated they are widely seen as truthful. Have you read anything about the science of climate change, sustainability, energy, etc? Because if you're just listening to journalists or political commentators, you're engaging in some real capitalist apologism.
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Oct 8, 2012 19:23
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UP AND ADAM posted:I don't see why economists and neoliberalists are able to half bake whatever predictions or theories they want, and despite them not panning out their mandates are followed and revered... Have you read anything about the science of climate change, sustainability, energy, etc? Yes, I have, which you would know if you'd read just my posts on this page. You're not likely to find me defending the neoliberal consensus. I think political upheaval and reordering is a likely outcome of environmental degradation, as are falling standards of living and population declines. I'm not prepared, however, to accept the narrative of the Second Denial piece posted or the tone of the last few pages that seem to agree that catastrophe is inevitable. Claiming inevitability carries a heavy burden of explanatory power, but I've seen very little explanation of how we get from the premise to the conclusion. I'm glad my post has stirred up a lot of what-ifs. Each what-if is a counterpoint to the idea of an inevitable outcome, plus they're interesting to talk about and stimulate thought. Lazy subscription to a theory of inevitable collapse excuses us from contemplation of our choices in the immediate future.
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Oct 9, 2012 07:06
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I think the the economic system that guided the development of the last few centuries is flawed, when it takes place in a system that does not allow for continual growth- see: our utilization of a fuel resource that was created millions of years ago and can't be renewed, climate change, pollution, and the interrelatedness of so many environmental problems. This is from a digital publication from 2011, a review of 20 papers that deal with energy return on investment (EROI), from my old professor: "There is, at least in my mind, a remarkable uniformity in the conclusions of essentially all of these papers, and also a very clear confirmation and continuation of the patterns derived in former EROI studies from the 1970s and 1980s but largely forgotten. The most general conclusions are that (1)traditional fossil fuels almost universally have a higher, often a much higher, EROI than most substitutes (especially when backup systems are included), (2) nevertheless, the EROI of essentially all fossil fuels studied are declining, in many cases sharply, and (3) that the economic implications of these are enormous. I do not see within this suite of studies anything that implies a “business as usual” (i.e. growth) as the most likely scenario representing the future. More probably the “undulating plateau” of the past half-decade or so will continue followed by a gradual decline in the availability of our most important fuels. Even our most promising new technologies appear to represent at best minor, even trivial, replacements for our main fossil fuels at least within anything like the present investment and technological environment." and also, re: new tech "There are many other unanswered problems to whatever new energy technologies may be coming our way: can the technical progress of photovoltaic systems be continued without using energy-intensive exotic materials, would there be enough copper and other materials, can backup systems be derived for massive wind power systems without bringing the EROI down to unmanageable levels? Can we have anything like our present level of affluence and civilization on fuels of modest EROI? And then there is the question of coal: this remains abundant in the US and several other areas of the world but its environmental problems are of course very severe. Because of the environmental concern about nuclear power and the decline in available oil or at least its growth the increased energy use in the US and other large countries has normally fallen by default to coal. This is likely to continue without some kind of coordinated plan." and the conclusion: "Given the connection between EROI and fuel price shown by King and Hall in this issue it seems that markets will continue to maintain fossil fuels as dominant fuels until their own EROIs, including backups and perhaps environmental issues, are in the same range, if that ever occurs. Despite all the rhetoric the proportional contribution of oil, gas and coal has not changed much at all since the 1970s. Even if some magic new technology is found, encouraged and the necessary investments are found it is likely to have a low EROI relative to traditional fuels. If it were to grow exponentially it could be a sink of net energy from society for some time, even decades (see Deng and Tyron [1], this issue, and Gutowski et al. [2]). There are no simple solutions to our energy dilemma and they need to be understood much better, especially with respect to economics. We try to do that in a new book [3] which examines how we might think quite different about economics from the perspective of energy and all of the issues identified here. " I don't want to assert that all of this is definitive and unquestionable, but it doesn't sound like mindless orthodoxy to me. I think the depletion of easily-available oil will lead to rising energy prices, further marginalization of the welfare of poor people, and just more human suffering worldwide. I don't think there are new technologies that work as well as oil does right now, but I would say I know nothing about the details of that stuff, or the infrastructure and economics of it. All the scholarly things I've heard and read, though, about alternative energy have been have been full of measured analysis and restraint. There are technologies to be excited about, but they do have to pan out at some point; there's a time limit and a resource limit. I admit I fret because I can't look past the inertia of the type of thinking that capitalism fosters. How the mindset of shortsightedness, selfishness, and mindless desire to take more of the "economic pie" for yourself will grow less prevalent I am baffled about. Sorry for this wack post. I haven't written anything about the environment since college (or actually anything that wasn't a text or shopping list or something, honestly), but this post is probably more about my problems with the world and reality. edit: and from another book of his: "We think we have to go into the future with the following model, and something like the following probabilities (you can choose your own percentages): we will go off the cliff, energetically, economically, or environmentally (25%), we can make a transition to a new energy source that will benevolently replace oil (25%), or we will muddle along, gradually getting materially poorer, but adjusting to that (50%). The point is that we do not think that anyone knows those percentages, so we must go into the future with a huge amount of uncertainty. That in itself might be pretty difficult. Some would trust the market to adjust, others might not, or might have other mechanisms. Many people who think about these things retreat to a bunker mentality and are stocking their country houses with food and ammunition. We, on the other hand, think that is a little foolish; we will probably weather the storm all together or not at all." UP AND ADAM fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Oct 9, 2012 |
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Oct 9, 2012 08:56
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Arglebargle III posted:Something will happen, certainly, but my point is that the dots have not been connected to global collapse of modern civilization. Maybe somebody has and I'd be interested to see that. But the dominant story in the last few pages of the thread of total collapse of civilization and a catastrophic return to primitivism (which is itself an anachronistic concept) hardly seems inevitable to me. Yeah dont worry, civilization probably won't collapse, just several hundred million people will probably die. I don't understand why this is a big issue, civilization is hard to get rid of even in the very worst crises but that doesn't mean horrific catastrophes won't be any less horrific. This is just fixating on a kind "ehhhh, I guess society will continue to operate so it can't be too bad" sentiment, don't worry it'll be loving bad and you will likely be affected whether or not civilization crumbles.
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Oct 9, 2012 13:39
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Sky is falling predictions dilute the impact the potential real consequences have. When you mix unproven or hyperbolic predictions in with the very likely ones, people stop paying attention and you lose the audience. Plus in a very scientific argument people get annoyed with hyperbole fast. Millions of people dying is horrific of course, but when it's paired with the complete and utter destruction of civilization and the deaths of billions it gets lost in the shuffle. 1 billion dying is catastrophic enough, even if it will mostly be poor people in poor countries and worldwide society will keep chugging along. That's horrific and terrifying enough.
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Oct 9, 2012 13:53
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WoodrowSkillson posted:1 billion dying is catastrophic enough, even if it will mostly be poor people in poor countries and worldwide society will keep chugging along. That's horrific and terrifying enough. Significant amounts of people don't roll over and die neatly in mass graves strictly in the geographic borders of "poor countries" when the bad times hit, they start mass migrations. It's also pretty doubtful that the first world would manage to keep chugging along without the underpaid and impoverished third world labour to extract wealth from, with those poor countries being in complete chaos.
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Oct 9, 2012 15:26
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welp I just had a workmate completely lose his poo poo at me when I told him my sister was a former CSIRO climate researcher. Like full on anger-shouty stuff. Apparently just being related to a dreaded scientist makes you some sort of evil scumbag out to destroy the country. I can sort of see why she quit. She's actually a bit scared of returning to the field.
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Oct 9, 2012 15:41
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duck monster posted:welp I just had a workmate completely lose his poo poo at me when I told him my sister was a former CSIRO climate researcher. Like full on anger-shouty stuff. I hope people like that dude will be around when the cracks really start to show. I mean, they're on display right now, but they will become too big to ignore. How will they keep up their cognitive dissonance then?
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Oct 9, 2012 15:49
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Somaen posted:Significant amounts of people don't roll over and die neatly in mass graves strictly in the geographic borders of "poor countries" when the bad times hit, they start mass migrations. It's also pretty doubtful that the first world would manage to keep chugging along without the underpaid and impoverished third world labour to extract wealth from, with those poor countries being in complete chaos. Things will be hosed up and lots of countries will be affected, but the odds of these problems literally turning the developed world into mad max are very, very small. Refugee camps, economic struggles, rioting, disease spread, some wars etc, sure. Literally Turing he is into rival city states as has been mentioned in this thread, probably not.
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Oct 9, 2012 15:55
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khwarezm posted:Yeah dont worry, civilization probably won't collapse. . . I don't understand why this is a big issue,  You don't understand that the collapse of civilization is a big issue?UP AND ADAM posted:I haven't written anything about the environment since college (or actually anything that wasn't a text or shopping list or something, honestly), but this post is probably more about my problems with the world and reality. Believe me, I'm on board the "Bad Things Are Coming" bandwagon with all my limbs safely inside the vehicle. But like President Skillson said the collapse of civilization and bad things that are not the collapse of civilization deserve to be treated separately. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Oct 9, 2012 |
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Oct 9, 2012 16:54
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Arglebargle III posted:
 you can't be serious, I'm saying I don't understand why people fixate on the whole "Global warming activists think that civilization will collapse" when in reality "all" that will happen is a billion people might die and the world will be thrown out of whack as if that isn't horrifyingly catastrophic. Its common for people to paint those seriously concerned about global warming as a bunch of chicken littles who have this crazy idea that the world is going to end, even on these very forums, and then just going deaf to the serious issues regarding global warming because, hey, it ain't the end of the world right?
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Oct 9, 2012 17:10
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Literally the only thing I would miss about modern society is medicine. I would be a dirt farmer if we could somehow keep access to modern medicine/hospitals around.
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Oct 9, 2012 18:07
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First of all, I don't understand how self-assured some of you can be with your assessment of how the planet will go. The industrial revolution was only like 200 years ago. Why does the legacy of fossil fuel consumption and globalization have to continue into perpetuity? Do you believe our energy sources will become abundant enough and clean enough in time to address climate change? How will a large segment of the world's populace dying act as a "safety valve" against political or economic strife in the first world? I think there's plenty to be pessimistic about.
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Oct 9, 2012 18:17
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everyone assumes that they won't be part of that billion or so, or that they'll be smart enough to enact their disaster preparedness plan they've half hashed out to themselves ("Buy a gun?, dig a hole?"). maybe even 50% of people will die but these champions of ignorance will be jumping over the flaming piles of corpses on their dirt bikes.
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Oct 9, 2012 18:24
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Do any of you actually understand what social collapse means? It doesn't mean that we're going to turn into Mad Max. If you look at historical social collapses it's not like there's a moment where a switch flips and we are now in full blown lowercase anarchy. We're already seeing social institutions fail as governments are unable to cope with the new material circumstances of the twenty first century. Tell a starving Greek retiree that society isn't collapsing. Tell someone who got shelled in Syria that society isn't collapsing.WoodrowSkillson posted:Things will be hosed up and lots of countries will be affected, but the odds of these problems literally turning the developed world into mad max are very, very small. Refugee camps, economic struggles, rioting, disease spread, some wars etc, sure. Literally Turing he is into rival city states as has been mentioned in this thread, probably not. What do you think people living in Mexico/Central America are going to do when their way of life is no longer made possible by global warming? If the material circumstances in the US are that much better than the "third world" right below them you will see migration on a scale you can't even imagine. We're already seeing this in sub Saharan Africa and some southeastern Asian countries and there are no signs of it slowing down. Refugee camps, economic struggles, rioting, diseases spreading, war... this is what social collapse looks like. You're describing the phenomenon and then claiming it won't happen because you've convinced yourself that a mediocre movie made in Australia's plot is actually a potential theory for the future. Also, most people in this thread continue to underestimate the threat of nuclear weapons going forward. Not only are nation states going to be put under more and more pressure due to the social issues of the 21st century, nuclear terrorism is only going to become easier. I think it's all but inevitable that nuclear weapon is detonated in the next 20-30 years simply due to the proliferation of fissionable material and social pressures. How society chooses to deal with it will be a major turning point.
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Oct 9, 2012 18:26
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The only nuclear threat can come from state actors. Nuclear weapons are too complicated to build for a terrorist group to do it unless a state gave them one that was armed with a switch.
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Oct 9, 2012 19:01
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Sylink posted:The only nuclear threat can come from state actors. Or it was stolen. Plenty of weaponized fissionable material has leaked outside the control of state actors and that is the hardest part when it comes to making a nuclear bomb. Gun-type nuclear bombs especially are easy to create once you have that material. No, you're not going to see a modern nuclear weapon being detonated by non-state actors, but there are plenty of nuclear weapons that could be and the effects could be just as devastating, especially considering the potential responses by other nation states
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Oct 9, 2012 19:09
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And if this was easy to accomplish I think it would have already happened, if these supposed crazy people already exist and fissionable material is as available and easy to turn into something as you say it is.
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Oct 9, 2012 19:31
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global tetrahedron posted:I hope people like that dude will be around when the cracks really start to show. I mean, they're on display right now, but they will become too big to ignore. How will they keep up their cognitive dissonance then?
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Oct 9, 2012 19:39
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Sylink posted:And if this was easy to accomplish I think it would have already happened, if these supposed crazy people already exist and fissionable material is as available and easy to turn into something as you say it is. Well this is a convenient way to deny any possibility. If it can happen it would have already. In my eyes the pressures that could lead to a group that could pull it off are in play and only getting stronger. I'm not trying to say that it's as easy as 1. place HEU in tube, 2. detonate, but it doesn't take a lot of technology or knowledge to finish building one after you've obtained the HEU. Also, like I said in my last post, one could easily be stolen as well. There are plenty of nukes in places with extreme social instability, Pakistan comes to mind, North Korea as well. Honestly, it's astounding that we haven't already used a nuclear weapon on ourselves (ourselves being humanity) if you look at the history of the weapon and how close we've come so many times.
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Oct 9, 2012 19:54
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a lovely poster posted:Honestly, it's astounding that we haven't already used a nuclear weapon on ourselves (ourselves being humanity) if you look at the history of the weapon and how close we've come so many times. What do you mean by this? You're forgetting two really obvious instances, unless they doesn't fit some criteria that you haven't told us about...
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Oct 9, 2012 20:05
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global tetrahedron posted:What do you mean by this? You're forgetting two really obvious instances, unless that doesn't fit some criteria that you haven't told us about... I mean beyond the times they've already been used... obviously. We had a lot of close calls even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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Oct 9, 2012 20:06
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There is no upside to a nuclear weapon. I think terrorist groups are more rational than you give them credit for. They blow civilians and whatever to send a message, which is normally to be destructive but also annoying enough that you bugger off. A nuclear weapon is the resort of a madman and it would take some unique circumstances for someone to go through with it because anyone with a brain knows that your target will not back off or negotiate at all once you use it. 9/11 was a rational decision intended to get the US to go away, like all the smaller attacks before and after. They went overboard and got a tremendous response leading to a fierce reprisal (whether this was the intent is up for debate). Basically, a nuke would only be used by the same type of person who shoots up a theater in Colorado, a deranged schizophrenic with nothing to prove. And that type of person isn't likely to be organized/connected enough to get the materials and know how to make one. Maybe some crazy fucker tries to detonate one in Tel Aviv or something, but I don't think Hamas would even do it if you handed them a nuke. They would probably use it as a bargaining chip, not a weapon, unless pushed into a corner.
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Oct 9, 2012 21:18
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Sylink posted:They would probably use it as a bargaining chip, not a weapon, unless pushed into a corner. My point is that all of these organizations ARE being pushed into corners as we speak. With escalating resource scarcity as well as climate change it's going to put a lot of pressures on these entities over the next century. Do you really believe OBL thought that the US would simply leave the middle east after 9/11? I was under the impression he was trying to draw them in to a conflict that they could never win and would bleed them dry. I understand there is some debate surrounding this, but I find it highly unlikely that Al Qaeda believed 9/11 would do something other than escalate the US's military actions in the middle east (at least in the short term). Also I think you underestimate how willing nation states and other actors would be to use nukes. I don't think it takes a deranged psychopath to justify using one. Hell, the President of the United States already did... twice. It's like you said, "unless pushed into a corner". We're pushing people into corners all over the world. The entire US foreign policy strategy is about pushing groups they don't agree with into corners. a lovely poster fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Oct 9, 2012 |
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Oct 9, 2012 21:45
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a lovely poster posted:Do any of you actually understand what social collapse means? It doesn't mean that we're going to turn into Mad Max. This has literally been proposed in this thread as a not improbable result of global warming. People have actually said the United States will turn into a set of independent city states after a complete collapse of civilization as we know it. There is no strawmanning going on here. a lovely poster posted:Refugee camps, economic struggles, rioting, diseases spreading, war... this is what social collapse looks like. You're describing the phenomenon and then claiming it won't happen because you've convinced yourself that a mediocre movie made in Australia's plot is actually a potential theory for the future. These are things have happened and will happen regardless of global warming. They are disasters that lead to temporary breakdowns in society, not full global civilization collapse. It will not lead to the dissolution of major governments and the complete breakdown of international relations. I can't tell you exactly what will happen because we don't know what the hard effects of warming will be. We have some great projections, but some clash with each other, and who knows what the true mix of effects will be between which areas see massive desertification, increased rain, warmer winters, colder winters, whatever. What I can say is I do not think a strong case has been made for complete dissolution of civilization. There will be death, unrests, war and famine, but these are not new challenges to humanity. Things will change, and change massively, but we can't say how. Maybe the US can organize the refugees and extant poor into public works teams a la the TVA, maybe Russia or China is able to produce enough food to become the dominant world powers as they feed the US and Europe. Either of those scenarios is more likely than Detroit the City State. Horrifically the mass starvation can only go on so long before eventually the food supply is adequate again. Lets all pray to whatever gods we hold that it does not come to that. I also selfishly hope I will not live to see such things.
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Oct 9, 2012 22:03
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I bet you a hundred dollars that you're going to be sad about the state of the environment in 20 years.
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Oct 9, 2012 22:24
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global tetrahedron posted:I hope people like that dude will be around when the cracks really start to show. I mean, they're on display right now, but they will become too big to ignore. How will they keep up their cognitive dissonance then? Generally people will pretend that they had a different position. Ask 100 people over the age of 65 whether or not they supported the civil rights act, and I have a feeling you'll find that it was shockingly popular compared to contemporary polls. This has always worked as long as you weren't published somewhere. It might be harder now that everyone records their lives on Facebook, now that I'm thinking about it, but who knows.
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Oct 9, 2012 22:36
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WoodrowSkillson posted:This has literally been proposed in this thread as a not improbable result of global warming. People have actually said the United States will turn into a set of independent city states after a complete collapse of civilization as we know it. There is no strawmanning going on here. If you're going to argue against a position in a 60 page thread just quote it. I don't know who you're talking about nor do I think you're incredibly clear about what people are saying. Saying that the US will dissolve is not saying that Mad Max will happen. It's wholly possibly that the US devolves into seperate regional areas, or even city states. This has happened in the past to other places, there is nothing that says our civilization will be immune to this phenomenon. Can you define "complete collapse of civilization as we know it"? quote:These are things have happened and will happen regardless of global warming. They are disasters that lead to temporary breakdowns in society, not full global civilization collapse. It will not lead to the dissolution of major governments and the complete breakdown of international relations. What is a major government? One of the security council nation states? You need to define what exactly you're talking about. When I think of societal collapse I think of a long drawn out process quote:I can't tell you exactly what will happen because we don't know what the hard effects of warming will be. We have some great projections, but some clash with each other, and who knows what the true mix of effects will be between which areas see massive desertification, increased rain, warmer winters, colder winters, whatever. The complete dissolution of civilization isn't going to happen and I don't know anyone who's really postulating that except on the most extreme of long scales.
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Oct 9, 2012 23:05
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As Dr. David Suzuki once said - Climate change is a catastophe happening in slow motion. The key question, though - is that will it happen just slow enough so that all future generations come to expect the next shift as normal? I'm looking a little bit at the Aral Sea disaster and the people who live there. the older generation tell of greating fishing stories, and the husks of rusted fishing vessels line the deserted landscape... Yet kids being born now only see this giant desert as normal, since it's always been there since they've been born. They weren't around when the expect the loss of fishing jobs, increased health problems - the exodus of people, and so forth, occured. The same can be said for the melting of Arctic ice - in 50 years time, when the whole area has become a major shipping route, will people care that the area was so thick of ice you needed special submarines to patrol underneath? It's like your mother telling you of what things were like behind your house in the subdivision your are living in; you've always seen it as houses, a park, a shopping mall, and so forth - you didn't know that your mother remembers it as a huge swath of hiking trails, deer hunting, swamps, turtles, and so forth. I think what probably might happen, is a start of xenophobia take root in first world countries as the richer individuals from poorer countries being affected by migration move out. Meanwhile, more intense fishing may occur in waters where natives usually get their food for the day...
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Oct 10, 2012 01:19
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a lovely poster posted:Also, most people in this thread continue to underestimate the threat of nuclear weapons going forward. Not only are nation states going to be put under more and more pressure due to the social issues of the 21st century, nuclear terrorism is only going to become easier. I think it's all but inevitable that nuclear weapon is detonated in the next 20-30 years simply due to the proliferation of fissionable material and social pressures. How society chooses to deal with it will be a major turning point. Nuclear terrorism is never going to be easy. Let's posit that we have a terrorist organization with support from one or two 3rd world states, and they want to make a pure U-235 bomb like Little Boy. The design could not be simpler, collide two halfs of a critical mass of U-235 together with a neutron source in the middle and it explodes. This is, by far, the easiest weapon to build IF you get some pure enough (85%+) U-235. Problem is, a terrorist organization is never going to find, let alone steal, significant amounts of this stuff. It's a material that's magnitudes more valuable than platinum, and it isn't transported or just kept around unguarded as a result. HEU of this grade is seldom used in anything except weapons that have already been assembled and some nuclear submarines because it's so ridiculously costly and time-consuming to make. Lower grades of HEU could hypothetically be used in nuclear weapons, all the way down to 20%, or even 6%. But this requires fusion boosting technology that makes peaceful fusion's problems look simple in comparison. There is no way in hell a 3rd-world country could develop effective boosting, nevermind a terrorist organization. Let's look at plutonium next. Plutonium is cheap as poo poo in comparison to U-235, and can be made en masse with efficient breeder reactor technology. Russia has a particularly hard time keeping track of its stocks apparently, and I'm not talking about the lovely reactor-grade stuff either. You need high-purity plutonium to make bombs by the way, reactor-grade stuff will only work in those special cases where the line between purity and definition gets fuzzy (see US reactor-grade test bomb using MAGNOX-bred plutonium). Despite all that, weapons-worthy plutonium can be diverted from some heavy water reactors such as a CANDU, notable example of this coming from India's first (internationally frowned-uppon) nuclear weapon test in which it used its Canada-India partnership reactor (CIRUS) to produce the plutonium. So regular spent-nuclear fuel plutonium wouldn't cut it, but you could always tinker around with specialized civilian systems to make the pure stuff. The problem is, how do you make a plutonium bomb? Plutonium won't go off unless you implement an implosion mechanism. Sounds simple, it is not. For the charges, you need to remotely precision-machine explosives in a blast-resistant building several miles away from your location in order to avoid deadly accidents. You need perfectly smooth plutonium core sections, which may or may not "fizzle" while handling once they're brought together, and perfectly smooth tamper sections which are typically depleted uranium. This should all work if you have super-pure 95%+ Pu-239, otherwise you're going to need to pull off a few more extremely difficult tasks to make the bomb work well. They could also use U-233, produced from thorium-232. It can be produced and seperated from thorium in high isotopic and chemical purities (~99%), although the actual breeding process is complicated by intermediate products that require isolation from neutrons in order to "age" into the desired U-233. Problem here is we don't use thorium breeders, or thorium as a fuel period, so the availability of U-233 is extremely limited. It also comes with a nasty-as-poo poo parasitic isotope that emits hard gamma rays detectable from space. And the final kicker is that it requires an implosion mechanism to go critical in the fast spectrum, just like Pu-239, and as such it is basically the hardest of the 3 cost-effectively possible nuclear reactor fuels (the other two being U-235 and Pu-239) to turn into a weapon. Those were the 3 easily-obtainable options that have been tested in weapons at some point or another (yes, U-235 is easy compared to this other stuff). Next we'll look at 2 less conventional isotopes that are theoretically proliferable. Neptunium-237 in particular has become an increasingly popular proliferation bogeyman. It has high fission rate in fast-neutron environments such as fast reactors and weapons, and can produce enough neutrons to quickly propagate a chain reaction. It behaves similarly to U-235, with its best feature being that it occurs in almost 100% isotopic purity. Problem is, 99.9% of it on earth is produced and stuck in spent nuclear fuel with a bunch of other poo poo that no one has figured out how to chemically seperate our yet. Breeding it from U-235 also requires some advanced reactor design technologies that no one has bothered developping due to the better cost-effectiveness of Pu-239. We then have Americium-242m1, a nuclear isomer of Am-242. It's a rare case in that it's more stable than its ground nuclear state and happens to have an odd-number of neutrons which makes it fissionable. It has good neutron yields per fission in the fast spectrum, and a very low critical mass, making it really loving attractive for portable nuclear bombs. Problem is it's expensive, and I mean really expensive. It is rapidly destroyed in typical reactors due to its high neutron cross section for fission (the same feature that makes it potentially portable). Its production would require a highly-specialized reactor of as-of-yet undetermined design. Making nuclear weapons is not something a terrorist group can do, even with a shitload of support and money. You need a large, technologically advanced state and a lot of time and patience to pull it off. Iran is poised to do it, but it will still take them decades on top of having to deal with watchdogs and sabotage. If you are still worried about nuclear weapons, especially ones possibly coming from nuclear states, and by god I would not blame you for being worried, then I'd like to present a possible solution that would not only massively reduce proliferation risks but quite possibly displace fossil fuels as our primary energy sources as well. You see, all those 5 weaponizable isotopes can be permanently destroyed in civilian nuclear reactors. Not only that, but the destruction of all our current weapons-grade material would produce enough energy to sustain all our needs for a little more than a hundred years, and also kickstart fuel breeding cycles that would sustain us for a heck of a lot longer than that. Currently we use U-235 as our main nuclear fuel, which makes up 0.7% of natural uranium. The rest of that uranium is U-238, which can be bred into Pu-239, a possible nuclear fuel, for an increase in fuel availability by a factor of 140, making sea-water extraction of uranium more than economic. Expand fuel use to include thorium, which is 3-4 times more common than uranium in nature, and which can be bred into U-233 and subsequently fissioned in breeder reactors. Now you're talking about making granite a more economic source of fuel for every tonne than burning the same mass of coal. If you abandon U-235 you also stop making Np-237. You're not touching fusion yet. The final piece is to disregard using natural uranium for the time being and instead use spent nuclear fuel, no reprocessing needed, in plutonium breeders. Spent fuel is about 95% U-238, while the other waste products can be transmuted into oblivion and permanently destroyed with a few exceptions that need to be isolated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation If your reactors are slick enough, you can make it so material produced in any part of the breeding cycles are not easily or at all proliferable without significant modifications to the reactor system itself. Reactors can work perfectly fine with isotopically impure fissile material that's unsuitable for nuclear weapons, and extra features can be added to complicate any part of attempts to divert material for unsolicitated purposes. There should be no theoretical reason not to adopt a fleet of nuclear reactors to help dispose of waste and nuclear weapons material. Office Thug fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Oct 10, 2012 |
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Oct 10, 2012 19:24
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