Happy New Year, and happy new open thread.
As per usual, nuclear energy is off-topic – it’s not that it’s uninteresting, but it ends up dominating conversation to the total exclusion of everything else and just becomes repetitive and dull. Recent excursions on this topic shows what happens when we relax the moderation, so back to being strict about this. If you want to discuss this, please go somewhere else.
Enough said, I suggest.
z wrote: “Greed actually is good”
And that’s where you’ve been ‘brainwashed.’ Greed is never going to save the living communities of the earth nor the save the systems that support them. Systemic greed (=capitalism and industrial consumerist society) _has_ proved to be very effective in converting vast parts of the planet into local and global toxins of various sorts.
At least you don’t seem to be as blinkered as Greenspan was before the crash–you understand that whatever capitalism there is in a society needs to be highly regulated. The problem we see is that allowing some to accumulate endless wealth means they use that wealth to influence and really control the laws intended to regulate them. Those who don’t see this are either in cahoots with those interests or are frankly criminally naive on the subject.
By the way, I’m not opposed to there being some capitalism in society…to paraphrase a famous quote, I just want to shrink capitalism till it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub! ‘-)
@wili 402,
“the problem we see is that allowing some to accumulate endless wealth…”
Yes, wili, but that is exactly what I am saying the government prevents. In order to maintain a free market. Because you can’t have a free market with a bi-modal wealth distribution.
The right-wing propaganda that you are falling for is all about language; you have been poorly educated because since the end of WWII, there has been a concerted effort to redefine terms in the economic sphere.
“Capitalism” is not the same thing as “free market”. I have given the definition multiple times now, and if you ignore it, you are aiding the .1% you say you are against. That’s what they want you to think!
Why would you object to wealthy people giving their money to build renewable sources of electricity? Do you want them to spend it on yachts, or maybe insanely overpriced art?
The reason we can’t move forward on climate change is that so many people– even those who say it is very important– can’t let go of other issues. I don’t care if Elon Musk gets even richer from Tesla, I don’t care if Edward Greisch screams in triumph because he sees a nuclear plant being completed, and I don’t care if Killian is elected Grand Wizard of some hippie commune. I care that we do something about this disruption of the ecosystem, because it has the potential to cause massive human suffering.
Again, reading the science, time is not on our side. We can’t afford to be manipulated by those who want to obstruct change.
386 Kevin McKinney: At least 1 Gen 4 reactor has already operated successfully over a period of something like a quarter century.
400 Kevin McKinney: I’m bored. Please stop. And quit trying to sucker me into forbidden territory. Kevin McKinney is on ignore.
Here in the Real Climate comment pages the forcing due to the reality of climate change continues to result in a steadily increasing concern about our global situation. There is a small minority that claim that there has been a pause, or hiatus, in concern, but the data actually show that short term shifts in concern are due to short term variability.
It has been demonstrated that commenters with trollish habits, a biased agenda, and especially an affliction of exaggerated self-reference, all contribute a noise factor that creates short term variability about, or on top of, a steadily increasing long term trend. Every year or two the phases of these short term factors coincide to produce a much larger influence on this forum in a manner analogous to the effect that an el nino can have on global temperature. I refer to these events as an RCSS (Real Climate Silly Season) event. We are now in a peak RCSS. What is needed is the application of an appropriate moderation filter to smooth the short term variability and allow the real signal to shine through.
Does anybody have a model or a graph of these data? Steve
#404–Wasn’t thinking primarily of you, Ed, though if you feel the shoe fits…
#405–Well said, Steve. I think you’re on the cutting edge with your conceptual model, however, so I expect the answer to your last question to be negative.
“I refer to these events as an RCSS (Real Climate Silly Season) event”
Previously simply known as Cabin Fever, exacerbated by the increased certainty that the minority is shrinking at an accelerated rate.
Re- Comment by flxible — 29 Jan 2016 @ 9:28 AM, ~#408
Science in action! Your hypothesis that Cabin Fever is the mechanism that induces phase correlation in trolling, biased, overactive self-important, and similar dysfunctional behaviors is excellent and testable. Write a grant application. I recommend the National Institute of Mental Health. Steve
For anyone interested in SA’s cited paper (#373), full text, free…
NB, because here it is:
http://www.nature.com.sci-hub.io/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2921.html
…. brought to you by the paywall-smashing magic of sci-hub.io — a terrific utility that deals with this problem in ~95% of cases (my impression after about 3 weeks of use).
In this particular case, pasting the DOI into the sci-hub.io search box did not work (I have not seen this happen before; usually DOIs are rock-solid); I had to paste the nature.com url into the search box. Point being: don’t give up right away if you don’t get what you want. Try a different way.
Steve Fish, #383:
“[Griesch, your comments] suggest that your vaunted engineering degree is getting a little long in the tooth.”
Everyone’s degree is getting long in the tooth. Degrees ought to have expiration dates (or at least “best if used before ___” tags) because, although the basic principles learned have not (probably not) changed, the context in which those principles express themselves have often changed dramatically. The world in which Griesch got his engineering degree no longer exists. The brain that Griesch had when he got his engineering degree also no longer exists. Way back then, his neurology was much more plastic and capable of learning new things. The most fundamental thing to be learned, over and over, is how wrong one can be. Though I can’t prove it, I believe that this promotes neural plasticity.
BPL #343:
“Apparently you have missed the work of Aiguo Dai, Kevin Trenberth, and many others who are saying approximately what I’m saying”
No, I don’t believe I have missed their work, and they are not saying anything remotely like what you are saying. They express themselves cautiously, as befits the uncertainties of the issue. Typical example, from Trenberth, Dai et al:
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n1/full/nclimate2067.html — [Concluding sentence:] “Increased heating from global warming may not cause droughts but it is expected that when droughts occur they are likely to set in quicker and be more intense.”
OK. Droughts are likely to set in quicker and be more intense. Got it. Nothing about the collapse of civilization, just yet. No National Enquirer headline there about the imminent ride of the Four Horsemen.
BPL: “plus the recent UK foreign office computer simulations that anticipate complete global economic collapse in 2040.”
Yeah, I saw that, too. It assumes stasis in the human response; i.e. no response. It assumes that everyone sits on their hands and does nothing:
http://planetsave.com/2015/06/25/climate-change-induced-collapse-of-civilization-by-2040-reports-uk-foreign-office/ — “Before you panic, the good news is that the scientists behind the [UK foreign office] model don’t believe it’s predictive. The model does not account for the reality that people will react to escalating crises by changing behavior and policies.”
Right. Not predictive. People will react.
Further, same article: “We ran the model forward to the year 2040, along a business-as-usual trajectory based on ‘do-nothing’ trends — that is, without any feedback loops that would change the underlying trend. The results show that based on plausible climate trends, and a total failure to change course, the global food supply system would face catastrophic losses, and an unprecedented epidemic of food riots.”
NB:
— “based on ‘do-nothing’ trends”
— “without any feedback loops”
— “total failure to change course”
Right.
There are worrying trends currently in motion, trends that could — if humans enter a state of paralysis, losing their capacity to think, discover, create, implement, and generally respond — result in the collapse of civilization. I do not question the possibility that civilization could collapse. What I question is the (gigantic) assumptions that must be made to arrive at that as a likelihood. What I question is the neomalthusian wet dreams which take as inevitable that which is only a possibility — and a slim one at that, at least if one pays attention to the scientific literature (not the final arbiter of everything, but a great starting-point). UK Foreign Office scenarios based on the assumption of TOTAL NON-RESPONSE are not scientific literature.
And further: scenarios of such nature are a good thing. We need an alarmist scenario or tract now and then — perhaps often — to stimulate us. “If we don’t change course, we’re screwed!” — needs to be heard, often. What does NOT need to be heard often, or at all, is toxic neomalthusian clucking about inevitable dieoff of 5 billion people, the certainty of the collapse of industrial civilization, etc., etc. Warnings are good; fatalistic Malthusian fear-mongering is not.
BPL: “Everyone in the field is NOT saying there will be foreseeable agricultural disruption; far from it.”
If you expose yourself to current literature on agronomy vis a vis climate change, (have you done this?), you’ll note that there is little if any disagreement that there will be negative impacts on agriculture. The disagreement has to do with how much, where, as modified by what, etc., etc. It is a complex issue, with multiple difficult-to-model axes or domains (which themselves interact in ways nearly impossible to predict), and so far no scientific voices have been so brash and intemperate as to lay down certainties as to what is going to happen — and especially not certainties as to the collapse of civilization! Instead, scientific voices make sober, considered remarks that reflect the many uncertainties, as well as reflecting the likelihood that humans will respond in various ways that will alter the trajectory.
BPL #343, continued:
“And as for no massive crop failures occurring–apparently you don’t live in Australia, or Syria, or Brazil, or Texas.”
The phrase “massive crop failures” was, to my eyes, always used in a context that suggested massive GLOBAL crop failures resulting in notable shortfalls in agricultural outputs and reserves. This has not happened. The opposite has been happening. Aggregate agricultural output is more robust than ever. Of course, robust global output can obtain while crop failures occur in Texas, Brazil and elsewhere — and surely those failures are, in their local context, “massive”. But that is not the context in which I thought we were speaking.
“What is needed is the application of an appropriate moderation filter to smooth the short term variability and allow the real signal to shine through.
“Does anybody have a model or a graph of these data? Steve ”
My killfiles are at present discarding over 50% of published commentary. I have graphed this on occasion for amusement, which quickly turned to horror when discard rates exceeded 90% during some of the previous climate wars. But I do not delude myself that the number represents “signal,” rather, merely indicates my taste.
409 alan2102: alan2102 is a denialist. BPL is correct. “They express themselves cautiously” by personality [Asperger’s syndrome], by training and by culture. “[T]he uncertainties of the issue” are not great enough to affect what needs to be said.
2 books for alan2102 to read: “The Long Summer” by Brian Fagan and “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. Dozens of previous civilizations have collapsed. Your assumption that ours won’t collapse is pure arrogance.
“What I question is the neomalthusian wet dreams which take as inevitable that which is only a possibility” is nothing more than proof that alan2102 are a denialist, and that alan2102’s language is out of bounds. Malthus was not wrong, but Malthus’ timing was bad. There are several reasons to expect a collapse in the near future:
The big one, as often, is famine due to GW.
The others are overpopulation and various forms of resource depletion.
Scientists do need to get over their shyness and say what needs to be said in language that even alan2102 can understand. For example, “Not recommended” is not understandable and may as well not be said. Say instead “Don’t put this damn stuff in your car! It will destroy your car!” Yes, the scientists need to say: “Do this right now or civilization is going to collapse and you, senator, are going to die of starvation, not old age!!!!!!!!!!!”
alan2102
About the prediction that business as usual leads to collapse by 2040: Business will not continue as usual? Because people will react? Pardon me for being cynical, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
alan2102: Most or all people in previous collapses had no idea that a collapse would happen, often even after the collapse happened. I mean, they kept on plowing the desert after the 1000 year drought had started, still hoping for rain.
alan2102: You aren’t from farm country, are you? Living in the corn belt, I should tell you some stories from the past several years. The climate is getting weird and it is impacting farming. alan2102 has not noticed it yet because we have bought our way out so far. That doesn’t last for ever. It will catch up with us.
alan2102 will not notice until one day when he goes to the grocery store and finds no food. Digby Scorgie is not cynical enough.
413 alan2102: Crop failures are global enough to serve as a warning. The crop reserve is now measured in days. It used to be measure in years, back in the 1950s. We had so much surplus, we couldn’t give it away. We are now very close, way too close, to the edge. When we get to zero days of reserve, all hell breaks loose.
Kevin McKinney, I believe I have perused your suggested solution set, but long ago, and found it flawed. I can’t, frankly, remember it clearly at all. Perhaps you could point me to it?
Also, about Cap and Dividend and a significant tweak CCL should be following, I asked to speak off list…?
As for all the passive-aggressive complaints about “name-calling,” what always stands out is the “name-calling” always starts with some rude person or persons here being dismissive of others, rudely, disrespectfully. Those people are never called out.
It’s a sad, weird, unethical, but common aspect of groupthink, and this forum certainly has a rather constant stream of it. That, my friends, is what needs moderation. When someone is rude and disrespectful of others views, it should be addressed by the community, if not the mods. But it never is. Only after defense is made does this happen. Call it the NFL effect: Second guy swinging gets the flag. But, much like Congress, it’s those who are often the worst at denigrating others calling for protections from the “gov’t” when they get their butts handed to them.
In other words, manage your own ethical shortcomings and the problem basically goes away. Treat everyone with respect. Hard, but try it. You might like it.
I realize Kevin’s comments are not directed solely at me, but I am just as certain he had me in mind. Yet, if you look back through the last several weeks you will find repeated insulting comments from zebra, e.g. None of you have said a single word. You act like school kids or church ladies: If someone uses course language, well, by god, you’re offended! What a scoundrel! But let someone denigrate others without using course or direct language and you don’t notice or don’t care. It’s a mental/emotional groupthink-based illness, imo, part of the PCization of public discourse.
It disgusts me. So, do try to actually note when others are being put down before whining if they defend themselves, or give better in return.
I’ll not be holding my breath on this as this has been status quo here for YEARS. But, since Kevin raised the issue, I raise the bar.
Alan2012: “The most fundamental thing to be learned, over and over, is how wrong one can be. Though I can’t prove it, I believe that this promotes neural plasticity.”
Purely in the interests of neuroplasticity, have you considered the consequences if you are wrong about catastrophic consequences of near-future warming. After all, the infrastructure that supports global civilization are definitely feeling the strain of supporting >7 billion people. They rely on finite resources that are being depleted rapidly (e.g. fish stocks, aquifers, glacial snowpack,…). Have you given thought to the additional strains imposed by a global population of 10 billion and additional warming likely to be realized by the mid portion of this century?
Yes, wili, but that is exactly what I am saying the government prevents. In order to maintain a free market. Because you can’t have a free market with a bi-modal wealth distribution.
A free market has never existed in any complex society. They can’t. Greed, imbalances of power and influence, issues such as infrastructure, culture, etc., all conspire against any truly free market. If you regulate, it is no longer a free market, so to speak of it as so – and I don’t care what definition anyone gives as anyone can make up a definition that suits them, and they often do – makes no sense. But, as I have said, and others before me and with greater skill, the economic beliefs that lead one to worship economics over everything else, and particularly the environment, are delusional. At best, the vast majority of economists don’t even understand the flaws of their own field. There are a few that do, very few, but even they fail at the final step.
Steve Keen is as realistic an economist as you will find, but even he will not remove from his model of a balanced economy that killer of all sustainability: Profit. Profit, be definition, takes out more than it puts in. No system that does that over time period T can be said to be sustainable. (Let’s set aside the issue of physics and losses in systems that make entropy what it is for the sake of simplicity.) No sustainable economy can operate on a profit basis because this equals consumption and/or hoarding above and beyond inputs. A sustainable system cannot do that and survive.
Thus, Z, no matter what else you advocate, support, are activist about, etc., the simple fact you seek free market solutions means you simply do not understand the markets you advocate, nor the physical system that they are a subset of. Ergo, your solution isn’t one.
I expect your ignorant (literally, not pejoratively) rants about what I propose to continue; you have no understanding of the system, so cannot comprehend why a resources-based model is necessary. That you are not someone versed in the function of natural systems makes this all the harder for you to understand. You simply do not know what you don’t know.
Until you set aside the metaphysics of irrational economics, you never will.
Exchange? Of course. Each resource managed at the scale it both exists at and is used at. A neighborhood council cannot be asked to manage the Mississippi watershed, but it can, and should, have full autonomy over empty lots and burned out houses within its borders. A city cannot manage a major river watershed, but can, and should, manage infrastructure and processes that cross neighborhood boundaries. Roads. Water systems. Emergency services, etc. A bio-region can, and should, manage a watershed, but not what to do with city streets or a burned out house. However, at the end of the day, resources must be allocated and those must be allocated via the scale needed, with bio-regions as the borders, not political, or even societal, borders. (Cities, btw, are utterly unsustainable. They can exist *only* if done so within the bio-regional level of resource allocation. Most probably cannot exist without inter-bio-regional cooperation.)
This is the fractal governance I created and have promoted since 2011. This is the “feudal” and “magical” system you have disparaged with zero knowledge of it, calling it feudal even though the smallest level of community requires autonomy which cannot be usurped without unbalancing sustainability. No one level of governance has any control over any other *because* responsibilities are determined by scale, not money, not power, not anything other than the nature of the issue and its scale. Since, ultimately, every community controls its resources, the larger scale governance layers have at their disposal to brandish as they wish exactly zero resources. They have authority, but no power not given them by the smallest, most important part of the system: The community.
Setting up such governance follows a very simple model: Just freaking do it. As F. B. Fuller said, you don’t change a system by fighting it, you create a better one to replace it. Your invisible hand economics is a joke, and learned people know this. At least, people learned in the physical realities of the planet’s ecological structures and patterns. Ecological economics gets close, but not close enough. Not simple enough. Not deep enough. So, you want a city council that works at the level of the ecology first? You have to create it. You can’t just put “greens” on city councils because the way governance itself now works is top-down hierarchy, which you cannot have in a sustainable society. The structure itself must reflect natural systems, and in this case “natural” means aboriginal, which tend to be some form of egalitarian system. The only societies that have existed in the same locations for thousands of years without destroying them are aboriginal. (The unenlightened, unlearned, and/or ignorant will scream about mud huts and loin cloths at this point.)
What we learn from them is a PATTERN, not a system. How they might do egalitarian in *practice* may or may not work elsewhere. What will work is *some* form or degree of egalitarianism. Not only will it work, but, more accurately, it’s the only thing that can.
What sane communities intent on sustainable management of resources will do is start with what gives security and autonomy: Local water catchment, local food production, local energy, local governance. That last will not transition to being *the* governance for some time. It is a process of the new system growing up and the old system decaying away, but over time a see-saw change will occur if communities persist… and if we hope to avoid uncontrollable simplification, aka chaotic collapse.
So, here is your sliver. I have said all this here before. Many times. I have written it and posted it in various places besides here. I have spoken of it at a conference and linked it in various fora. And this is all *you* get at the moment because if you don’t get this, all that follows would be meaningless to you. And, remember, the pattern is not a cookie cutter, it is a concept that must be made real in each community in its way. I cannot tell you what that looks like where you are. I do not know your community, your resources, your population, your culture, your customs, etc. I do know you have very little chance of achieving sustainability with any other form of governance. How do we know? Nature. Follow her, or die trying not to. Up to you.
Thanks for posting the unpaywalled link to MacDonald(2016). For those papers yet paywalled, and for those too impatient to await open publication, I repeat, for future reference:
Every paper has a link to the corresponding author(s) in the abstract, which is always freely available. In this case they are alexander.e.macdonald@noaa.gov and christopher.clack@noaa.gov
Email them. They will send you a copy. They want people to read it. Back in the day b4 the net, we had little printed post cards we would fill in and send out, and the authors even in remote lands, always sent a copy. In fact, some journals would give us large boxes of paper copies to send out. Everyone wants their paper to be read.
In all my decades of requesting papers from authors, I have been turned down exactly once. In that case, a coauthor promptly sent me a copy.
sidd
Er, Killian, old chap, I think you mean “coarse language”, not “course language”.
Of course, robust global output can obtain while crop failures occur in Texas, Brazil and elsewhere — and surely those failures are, in their local context, “massive”. But that is not the context in which I thought we were speaking.
Comment by alan2102 — 29 Jan 2016
alan, you don’t get it and you’re not going to. I don’t know if you expect to convince people here that we don’t have a serious problem but if you do you’re going to be disappointed. You should listen, read and ask questions. There’s a lot you don’t know.
418 & 420 Killian: Thank you.
#418–Thanks, Killian, for considering my comment.
Yes, you remember correctly; you were not wild about my solutions (and actually, I probably would have termed them “recommended actions” or some such.) They were oriented toward the urgent and the pragmatic (as I see it.)
The comment you are referring to is here, FWIW:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/01/unforced-variations-jan-2016/comment-page-5/#comment-640982
As to the offline conversation you mention, I’d actually tried to look you up in response to your request about CCL–we’d had a conversation back quite a while when I’d queried you about sustainability concepts. But I didn’t find any contact info in my system, for some reason. The easiest way, I think, would be to email me via my website, which has a contact button, and which you can access by clicking on my name in the header of this very comment. Do note, though, that I have no particular ‘juice’ within CCL, so don’t expect a marked shift in CCL direction to quickly follow any ‘tweak’ you give me, even if I think it absolutely wonderful! Be interested to hear it, though.
Greisch #215:
— So I am a “denialist” because I don’t see mass dieoff as a likelihood? If so, then your definition of “denialism” is so broad as to take in nearly everyone, including virtually the whole of the scientific and scholarly communities.
— Diamond’s stuff was dissected and demolished years ago by real scholars of the relevant fields. Hadn’t you heard? They couch their demolition in appropriately-kind words, but demolition it is nonetheless.[1]
— Don’t get me wrong: I don’t dislike Diamond. He is an excellent writer and his pop books make for fun reading! But they are riddled with errors of both fact and interpretation, and they cannot be given equal weight as the work of real scientists and scholarly specialists. There’s also the danger that ignorant readers — readers with no clue as to the breadth and nature of real scholarship in the respective fields — will take his books too seriously, causing all kinds of problems.
— I don’t assume that “our civilization” (I’ll take that to mean modern industrial civilization) won’t collapse. I just think it unlikely. I say that, deliberately leaving aside the fact that “collapse” is vague, ill-defined, and subject to abuse — as the scholarship I just cited explains.
— “Malthus was not wrong, but Malthus’ timing was bad.” I’ve been predicting the Detroit Lions to reach the superbowl every year for the last 50 years. I’m not wrong! It is just that my timing is bad.
— “There are several reasons to expect a collapse in the near future: The big one … is famine due to GW.” You mean famine due to absolute global shortfall of food (i.e. a first in modern history)? What is your basis for saying this?
……………………….
1.
See:
https://questioningcollapse.wordpress.com
See:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521733663&ss=exc
excerpt from:
Questioning Collapse
Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire
See:
https://www.academia.edu/787727/Crisis_what_Crisis_-_on_Jared_Diamond
Science v 330, 12 November 2010
Collapse? What Collapse? Societal Change Revisited
Old notions about how societies fail are at odds with new data painting a more nuanced, complicated—and possibly hopeful—view of human adaptation to change
See also, for more general orientation:
http://www.academia.edu/1216606/Nothing_lasts_forever_Environmental_discourses_on_the_collapse_of_past_societies_2012_
J Archaeol Res (2012) 20:257-307 DOI 10.1007/s10814-011-9054-1
Nothing Lasts Forever: Environmental Discourses on the Collapse of Past Societies
Guy D. Middleton
Chuck Hughes, multiple posts:
I would be happy to reply, but I am not finding sufficient substance to reply to. As such, the personal insults fall flat. I mean: I’m all in favor of personal insults, but they need to be accompanied with substantive argument, verifiable facts, citations to scholarly literature, etc. *Ad hominem* is not when you insult someone; it is when you do *nothing but* insult them. Please give me (and other readers) some real intellectual body, along with the insults.
I would be happy to reply, but I am not finding sufficient substance to reply to. As such, the personal insults fall flat. I mean: I’m all in favor of personal insults, but they need to be accompanied with substantive argument, verifiable facts, citations to scholarly literature, etc. *Ad hominem* is not when you insult someone; it is when you do *nothing but* insult them. Please give me (and other readers) some real intellectual body, along with the insults.
Comment by alan2102 — 31 Jan 2016 @
Your skewed notions about crop failure are laughable. Even when presented with direct evidence you come back with this sort of vacuous, anecdotal evidence to support your assertions. And now you’re attempting to change the definition of “crop failure” to accommodate your previous misstatements.
How about you provide us with something other than your “opinion”.
Alan,
While one could certainly add nuance to Diamond’s work, to say it was debunked is ridiculous. The entire point of his book is not summed up as, “Collapse happens this way I say it does,” but “collapse happens and is sometimes avoidable.”
First, that’s not debunkable. Before running around claiming bogus poo, know whereof you speak. You can proffer evidence with which you more closely agree, but the concept of collapse is far too unsettled to be considered factually settled. The term “debunk” doesn’t even apply. Second, that you don’t know this indicates a strong bias towards a preconceived notion on collapse tells us much of your perspective.
I agree with Diamond. The brilliance of the work lies in that simple observation that collapse can be avoided. This is particularly true today when we can literally model future potential outcomes, at least roughly. We are counting the collapse as it occurs: The devastation, the extinctions, the growing dead zones, the increasing acidification, etc. And, we know what to do about it.
Collapse will be determined by whether we make that choice or choose to pretend we can’t possibly. We can, we are, and we will without rather urgent action.
alan2102: Who are you?
alan2102: “Like all social sciences, archaeology is embedded within and reflects contemporary cultural, intellectual,political,and social concerns” Speak for yourself on that. Thomas Kuhn is full of nonsense as far as the hard sciences are concerned. Kuhn never got the memo:
” Nature isn’t just the final authority on truth, Nature is the Only authority. There are zero human authorities. Scientists do not vote on what is the truth. There is only one vote and Nature owns it. We find out what Nature’s vote is by doing Scientific [public and replicable] experiments. Scientific [public and replicable] experiments are the only source of truth. [To be public, it has to be visible to other people in the room. What goes on inside one person’s head isn’t public unless it can be seen on an X-ray or with another instrument.]”
alan2102 426, 427,
First a nitpick. Ad Hominem would be of the form:
Chuck says X.
Chuck beats his wife.
Therefore, X is untrue.
Not exactly what you are saying.
As to the substance, you say: “collapse is vague, ill-defined, and subject to abuse…”, but you are engaging in the same kind of vagueness.
I think you are quite correct that there will not be catastrophic crop failures (let’s call that 50% reduction) in every major staple producing region by 2040. That’s a clearly defined, concrete projection.
Let’s move on from there though. What defines civilization, and how much of the world must not meet those criteria for it to be “collapsed”?
There was a recent article– I think NYT– that included the experience of a young Yazidi fighter, and it went something like this.
He was living rough on the front lines, without the “amenities” available to more regular troops, very close to the village from which he had escaped from the ISIS invasion. But what really caused him despair was that his family (still in the village) was suffering from severe hunger as well as abuse. How did he know this? Because the cellphones were still working.
Where does that fit among the various academic arguments about “civilization” that you cite?
426 alan2102: I’m reading those interesting papers you sent. I had heard that they were rounding the edges off a bit on civilization collapses. But: In the old days, there was always a jungle to wander off into. Now when you wander off, you find that you are in wall-to-wall cities as far as you can go with these exceptions: a desert, Antarctica, Alaska, Siberia and Nunavut, Canada. And these places already have as many people as can live there. The population is sparse because the land can’t support more people.
That means, when we need a release valve, you are released to wander anywhere you want, but the food will already have been eaten in all of those places. A friend of mine participated in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. When it was over, there was no food in the grocery stores, so my friend went out of Budapest to go squirrel hunting. There were no squirrels.
A more general collapse would follow the Budapest pattern. Every edible thing would be eaten to extinction.
And yes, everybody should understand what happened to my friend from Hungary. More realistic expectations could help formulate a better plan.
z, if a term consistently leads reasonably intelligent people to conclude that it means something different than what you think it should mean, then maybe you need to come up with a new term.
No market of any sort can exist without some kind of rule of law; i.e. there is no such thing as a completely ‘free’ totally unregulated market. So if one is placing ‘free’ before the term ‘market’ either means nothing, or it means imposing the absolute minimum of government regulations over markets. We’ve already tried that, and it nearly crashed the entire world economy, leading even Greenspan to conclude that financial markets, contrary to his earlier ideology, do not in fact self regulate.
So how about switching to advocating for a ‘well regulated market’ and then we can cavil about what the proper regulations for a market are, rather than ‘free market’ only means exactly what you say it means, no matter what everyone else concludes that it means.
This is a bit like economists who, faced with the fact that infinite growth cannot happen on a finite planet, squirm around with their definition of ‘economic growth’ until it doesn’t really have anything to do with ‘growth’ anymore in any way that most people understand the term. Why the fetishistic devotion to particular words?