If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
“the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic *cancer-causing substances* around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be *an extinction event*.”
One statement does not support another here. Can you link something say that these spent fuel rods mean mass/instant death if they caught fire and the particles were inhaled? As in, the particles drifting across the world would kill large swathes of people, and quickly? Because increased chance of lifetime cancer risk is probably a pretty negligible issue for anyone who manages to survive a global societal collapse.
I personally am a fan of Dr. Shane Simonsen and his work with low-input, low-tech biotechnology, or his idea of humans as the ‘universal symbiont’ that could form mutual relationships with all life. As he says, nobody ever reinvented themselves on a good day. A lot of our fragile and intensive mechanical/technological solutions were only one societal evolutionary path that happened to win out, when a resilient and self-perpetuating biological solution could work better but is unexplored. @ZeroInputAgriculture
Having studied permaculture, indigenous horticulture, and ecology (along with collapse, energy systems, and climate change) for a few years now, I find that my answers are usually ‘C’ or sometimes ‘A + B’. I think you have good intentions with the questions, but are still viewing it from the modern idea of modernity or nothing (except now it is more like mad max/collapse forever or nothing).
Nature is not a static thing, it is always changing and forming new relationships within itself, always reorienting to conditions. We tend to hyperfocus on the little picture of this species succeeding or that one extincting, or even individual members, rather than looking at the big picture; the dance of all Life that is ongoing regardless, that merely shifts forms and movements. Every collapse and extinction in Earth’s history was also an opportunity for what came after to flourish and radiate into a thousand different new shapes and patterns. We see the death, but forget that it is the other side of birth, and of rebirth.
Anyway, hopefully this makes sense and doesn’t sound two crazy lol. I will attempt to answer these as best I can.
1. B + C: Nature is resilient and flexible. Already new life forms have evolved to digest microplastic, oil, toxic waste, etc. Currently IIRC, they only break the plastic down to smaller bits, but the point is that the chain of digestion and cycling into the earth system has started. That’s not to say it’s not an issue, but rather it’s not a forever one.
2. C: I don’t foresee many scenarios where the need for mass deforestation is ongoing at the same time as the ability to carry it out (similar to mass hunting below). If the lights are on and the system working, most people lack the skill or ability, and tools plus infrastructure, to make much use of an open fire. If the system is not working, the majority of people (this is talking about the first world and specifically America here) are too unconditioned, unskilled, and unequipped to just go out and start burning the woods down, let alone that the driver in this scenario is a lack of energy (meaning no food, water, power, etc coming in). There’s a middle ground here where perhaps slightly more resilient rural people are chipping away at forests while the system unwinds slowly, but I don’t see the majority of forests as slated for the fireplace.
I could be wrong here, but even in that case, I’d point out that the majority of the US was already deforested just a few hundred years ago, before domestic logging/mining and the industrial solution made coal the preferred energy source. All of the forests we see today aren’t ’original or ‘pristine’, they are an example of life’s tenacious ability to bounce back from a literal moonscape when left alone. I like to think about this with all the farmland left to rewild, as well.
3. C: Again, seems more likely that there’d be mass death before there was both the combined incentive and ability for mass couch burnings or what have you.
4. B: Indeed, it is very tragic to see these things go, and will be very beautiful to see what comes after. Already new plant life is sprouting up in the Arctic circle and other unusual places for it. Contained within the question, but often overlooked, is that a savanna is still a diverse and functional ecosystem. I also wonder if the aforementioned rewilding of most farmland and urban spaces will do much to slow down warming. I think it will, as North America alone after the Native’s died off is what led to the Little Ice Age in Europe.
5. B: Gonna be pretty cool, right? Kudzu jungles giving way to shopping mall swamps giving way to underground parking garage reefs.
6. Mostly B: Thankfully silvopasture, permaculture, managed grazing etc can be practiced on marginal lands and don’t require ideal crop land. Hell even crops can be grown on unideal land, just not industrial monocrops that need machines for everything. Barring a sudden nuclear war, I don’t see most power plants etc being left off, but could be wrong. We are already seeing many being shut down indefinitely due to low water levels or high water temps etc.
7. C: While B is correct, it doesn’t understand that there is more to permaculture than annual grain crops and veggies, or doesn’t understand that a stable climate is what permitted predictable harvesting and drying/storing of vast grain monocrops, not like, all useful plant life or something. I expect the staples of the future to be nut trees and perennial tuber crops, supported by ecosystem engineering and earthworks, along with managed grazing. And again, the point of permaculture is you can do it anywhere, even on marginal land.
But yes, billions are going to die when annual grain ag eventually completely fails, as we are already starting to see happen. Probably within a decade or so, if I had to guess? However, civilization does not equal humanity or all human societal potential.
8. C: Much like the firewood example, there won’t be both the incentive and ability at the same time (or not for very long). Even modern hunters rely on tech and energy, to set up cameras, drive to site, shoot with gun, haul out with ATV (don’t forget to leave all the most nourishing bits behind because it’s weird!), drop off at processor because you don’t know how to butcher (and leave the rest of the bones and organs behind here), pick up and store in freezer. It would be comically removed from real skill at subsistence if it wasn’t so sad.
And these are our best examples. I think this mainly comes from Dunning-Krueger, the average person thinks “I’d just go hunt” despite never having to do anything more involved than hunting down a hot pocket, and still failing at processing that properly when he burns his mouth on the bits that aren’t still frozen.
Or to put it in other words, again, millions of starving, sick, weak people drinking no or bad water and walking on foot aren’t an unstoppable horde, they are a humanitarian refugee crisis that probably won’t make it out of the city. During the Great Depression 90% of people lived rurally, on a farm, and had generations of low-tech skills, and we still couldn’t hunt everything out (I assume things survived in really unaccessible locations). Today, we will be lucky if the deer don’t eat us while the squirrels pilfer our apocalypse hot pocket stash.
9. B + C: It is true that much life will go extinct. However, life is still very adaptable and flexible. Some of the most vibrant nature reserves in the world spring up immediately once we are forced to get out of the way, ie Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the DMZ.
To my understanding, most of the pressure on wildlife today is directly from humans, ie habitat loss. Things, including humans, are clearly still able to breed despite the mountain of chemicals we have already poured into the earth (although it’s probably good for us that we are less fertile). I do think some species would go extinct without assisted migration, so we will see how much help any among us are willing and able to offer them. Again though, many other species will recalibrate and find new niches and balances, once humans are out of the way.
10. B + C: We forget that our ancestors were exposed to countless small systemic pressures everyday that we never evolved much resistance for (carcinogenic wood smoke, chronic diseases, and literal parasites come to mind). For some reason we think about microplastics etc as if they mean death or inability to breed… while reading that we’ve been eating and drinking them since the 50’s. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not harmless or good by any means and I try my best to avoid them, but it’s a category error to treat them like an *acute* poison.
But yes, you are very right here. Whether we can be flexible and adaptable now and learn to fit into the new patterns we have created will make it or break it for us. I think it is up to us fringe weirdos, the kind who would read this blog and take these topics seriously, to be laying the groundwork or what’s to come. We can be hybridizing novel species, domesticating new staple crops, and creating the foundations for new agro-ecological systems today. Or perhaps as you said, we are just going to make way for the next thing. Either way, even if we have forgotten, we are still part of the dance and web of life. It remains to be seen who among us will bravely take the first shaky steps out of the crowd of bystanders, trying to find their footing and timing. Who among us will begin the delicate work of reconnecting old threads, and weaving new ones?
What an awesome comment, Cimbri, very well put! I wholeheartedly agree with every single thing you've said here (which shouldn't surprise you much).
Most of those questions are not of the "either-or" type, although the left brain hemisphere's mode of perception & thinking might make it seem like this is the case.
Thanks David! I have to admit, I was inspired by/thinking of your and Shane’s writing style when I wrote it. Always enjoy your feedback :)
By the end of it I was thinking it could be its own post haha. I keep thinking I need something new to talk about (and I have recently ‘broken though’ the initiation period on my shamanic trance work, and hope to start using some nearby land for permaculture projects and experimental farming), but maybe I’d be fine just reiterating and collecting some of my longer form thoughts from Reddit?
I guess a better question would be, do you feel like you reach/help a lot of people with your work? If it’s just about expressing myself, I already have said much of what there is to say on Reddit at least, without rehashing the same old arguments. But perhaps substack reaches a different audience, maybe people who are more thoughtful or engaged? Feel free to answer this in email if you prefer!
Whereas a post/comment on Reddit gets carried away in the continuous flow, a curious reader is more likely to come across your insights on Substack, months after you posted it. It's also more shareable. As for the "I" in the ROI, being able to modify existing longform comments reduces effort (I drew from email exchanges).
Very good points. I hadn’t considered the ‘turnover rate’ for the churn of new Reddit posts that the majority probably spend most of their time in. And I certainly have plenty of old email threads to modify!
"seems more likely that there’d be mass death before there was both the combined incentive and ability for mass couch burnings" summarizes my thinking on the prompts, too. openness to uncertainty and mysterious systems dynamics + not driven by bias/hopium + humor.
re: Hot Pockets - I went to a "good" university and know peers (Millennials) who now earn 6 figures, but ecology/collapse aren't at all on their radar. When I told my friend I was leaving NYC because of ... y'know, all the factors ... he replied that he was likewise considering moving away - to the Carolinas, because "the weather is nicer" and there's "better golfing". I don't think it's a socioeconomic thing either, though. Everyone still expects to live The American Dream. I have absolutely no idea how people will react, mentally/emotionally and behaviorally, to systems deterioration. I think many/most Americans would rather die than eat raw plants.
“openness to uncertainty and mysterious systems dynamics + not driven by bias/hopium + humor.”
Well said. I think for many (and I can speak from my own experience here) that it’s a grief thing. It’s easier and really more comforting to be like ‘it’s over, it’s all gonna go.’ When you have been through the doom wringer so many times, you eventually want a way out even if it’s just this discount version of the ‘acceptance’ stage. Being open to what may come, realizing that there are many varied and interesting possibilities, can be a negative or drain when you aren’t ready for it.
Re: Golfing. Haha. Sums up a lot of people I know as well. I have been trying to pin down the ‘x-factor’ that makes one collapse aware and want to do something about it. It seems more like a multitude of possible things, of course. But I can that it definitely isn’t intelligence. The smartest people I personally know are my brother and stepdad, and both of them are vaguely aware of this stuff from me doom phasing about it but are just puttering along. Like, they can acknowledge some of it, but not actually do anything different or based on the information.
Meanwhile the person I know most interested in all the niche esoteric shit I am has a totally different background and isn’t very much of an ‘academic’ type. So idk if it’s random genetics, if it’s a childhood thing, environmental factors, or what. Maybe it’s all the Cold War era science fiction I was into as a kid? But yeah, whatever it is it only seems laggingly related to systemic understanding, and sometimes not at all.
Lastly, I’ll do you one better and point out that most Americans couldn’t identity most plants outside the supermarket haha. Let alone wild or atypical crops. But I do think the breakdown of the system is an opportunity for new cultures and worldviews to come through. The system is not just material, it’s also ‘spiritual’, it’s an ideological thing perpetuating itself in our minds. Its breakdown has to not only be replaced with a new material base, but a new ‘mythic’ one as well.
Nice rundown. Couple things: No, the entire nation won’t be coming together, but some of these basic, long-forgotten skills cn be relearnt and taught, and capable leaders will emerge. While the long descent will continuously make things harder and harder, experience and resilience will grow among the survivors. How many that will be, no one knows. The other comment is that people tend to overestimate shortterm declines and underestimate longterm declines. So, when someone predicta billions will die within a decade based on their estimates of things like EROI , industrial or agricultural collapses that haven’t happened yet, I’m so skeptical I’d happily wager they’re wrong. When they think humanity will never go extinct, I laugh. Fwiw, I’m on the collapse train.
All good points. And yes, the system does seem to have a high degree of ‘slack’, so any predictions based on ‘if x trend continues’ need to take that into account. They say wisdom is learning from others mistakes, and many of the collapseniks who came before me have said they were sure it’d be during 2008, and were surprised. So even if I can’t see a future for global industrial ag beyond 2030-2035 or so, I make plans for both possibilities!
Calling an age, any age, 'little' is an oxymoron. But it gets worse
*The myth of Europe’s Little Ice Age*
.
"The Little Ice Age is generally seen as a major event in European history. Analysing a variety of recent weather reconstructions, this column finds that European weather appears constant from the Middle Ages until 1900, and that events like the freezing of the Thames and the disappearance of English vineyards have simpler explanations than changing climate. It appears instead that the European Little Ice Age is a statistical artefact, where the standard climatological practice of smoothing what turn out to be white noise data prior to analysis gives the spurious appearance of irregular oscillation – a Slutsky Effect."
"Conclusion
While the idea that Europe experienced a Little Ice Age is widespread, its statistical basis is at best exiguous, and appears to stem from inappropriate efforts to smooth data that are actually random. At the same time, most of the anecdotal evidence admits more simple explanations than climate change."
" But the term Little Ice Age is a misnomer, and some climate scientists have argued that the name should be abandoned. It was not a full-blown ice age at all (or even a little one), but rather a very short-lived and puny climate and social perturbation, by the standards of geologic time."
Can you explain what your point is, beyond semantics? That there was a period of climatic oscillation in Europe at the time you seem to agree with, at least in your second quote.
Alan Ginsberg said it succinctly in the 1970's... (0) there is a game; (1) you can't win; (2) you can't break even; (3) you can't even get out of the game.
Human history is a study in innovation. Out of necessity will come solutions. There is nothing like a threat to bring out both the best and the worst in human nature.
Nuclear or a renewable energy source will solve the depletion of oil.
Closed loop CAFOs and concentrated closed loop farming practices will replace wholesale destruction of habitat.
Large scale concentration of populations into small footprint habitats will occur.
Voluntary reduction in family sizes will reduce human populations to sustainable ecological levels.
Our imagination and resourcefulness will increase as the sharing of knowledge increases. If you have ever been a member of a think tank or research group, there is a synergy that occurs between individuals committed to finding solutions. Quite beautiful to watch or to be a part of.
Thanks for this great piece of interactive communication.
May I nitpick one small point? You write: "likely halt of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (aka the “Gulf stream”)" However, the Gulf Stream is not synonymous with the AMOC.
A good recent explanation can be found on a video from the channel "Science Talk" by Jim Massa dated 5 September. The title is: Is AMOC Collapse Imminent?
He explains the relationship between AMOC and the various Gulf Stream gyre's (some which are a part of AMOC) There is a good diagram shown during this lecture. Start at 18:14 and go on to 22:10.
Don't forget there is (in human species existence terms) an everlasting and larger than our current needs supply of useful energy from the sun. Those societies that master its use before they run out of diesel will do ok. Those that don't, won't. And no, plants are not an efficient way of harvesting solar energy, but fast growing miscanthus is less inefficient (by a large multiple) than most.
I'm a retired physician/psychiatrist/addictionist and now independent scholar focused on stress and the role it is playing in our exploding human "stress diseases". I recommend the researches of mid 20th century "animal crowding" researchers: Calhoun, Southwick, and Christian. Their iterations of Calhoun's "mouse utopia" studies inevitably resulted in total population extinctions when no newborn pup could live to adulthood and reproduce. All of the indicators of reproductive failure and decreasing fertility are evident in our "modern" crowded populations. I go into greater depth in my 2018 online free PDF, "Stress R Us", with thanks to Stanford and MAHB. If our self imposed climate collapse doesn't get our children/grandchildren, then population density stress might. We are 3,000 times more numerous than were our last ecologically balanced and self-sustaining iteration, our Hunter-Gatherer/pastoralist ancestors just 10kya. What could go wrong? Everything? Many thanks for this well constructed piece and the thoughtful comments.
So, why do we comment on other people's essays? There seems to be this primordial sitting-around-the-fire or encountering-in-the-old-town square urge to just offer each other thoughts. Unfortunately, in the context we've created (someone created) called 'Social Media' there is no interaction. Just tossing something out into the universe. Message-in-a-bottle inclinations.
Here's my toss:
Setting the stage for my point — From Nick Lane, The Vital Question: (Next two paragraphs — I can't find a way to visually distinguish anything in this app).
Life arose around half a billion years after the earth’s formation, perhaps 4 billion years ago, but then got stuck at the bacterial level of complexity for more than 2 billion years, half the age of our planet. Indeed, bacteria have remained simple in their morphology (but not their biochemistry) since.
In stark contrast, ALL morphologically complex organisms — all plants, animals, fungi, seaweeds, and single-celled ‘protists’ such as amoeba — descend from that singular ancestor about 1.5 – 2 billion years ago.
AGAIN: Bacteria became 'stuck' at their level of morphological complexity.
My thought:
It appears we humans got 'stuck' in or capacity or grasping complexity shortly after we appeared on the evolutionary scene (maybe 300,000 years ago or after language showed up around 100 - 200,000 years ago).
That is, our capacity for cognitive complexity seems to be as frozen as the morphology of bacteria. We have great difficulty moving beyond either-or classifications. We have a terrible time understanding systemic processes - i.e., how THIS affects THAT which affects THAT as such interactions occur in intricate interactions. The kind of thing Donnella Meadows so elegantly laid out to be ignored by most everyone, especially including those who wield the power to apply it usefully.
Specifically, as Rodney King underscored: We haven't figured out how to get along.
That is, we haven't figured out what we need to figure out in order to thrive as a species in connection with our larger world while getting along with each other and it.
We keep making the same self-destructive mistakes, a feature (not a bug) that is cumulatively accruing as we blithely pass tipping points we recognize while missing many we don't even think about (see the Fast Eddy @fasteddynz nightmare below, regarding what happens if spent fuel rods run out of water to cool them).
Kinda sad.
Thanks for reading, if you did. And — just for the hell of it — look up and read some of what Donnella Meadows wrote before her death. We might as well grasp a bit of what's happening before the lights go out.
Inherent in your comment is that life forms ever more complexity and resiliency at each ‘stage’, no? We could quibble about when and what caused us to breakdown our ability to understand and respond to these things, but it seems we both could see it positively as a story of life’s tenacity and capacity for connection.
“So, why do we comment on other people's essays? There seems to be this primordial sitting-around-the-fire or encountering-in-the-old-town square urge to just offer each other thoughts. Unfortunately, in the context we've created (someone created) called 'Social Media' there is no interaction. Just tossing something out into the universe. Message-in-a-bottle inclinations.”
I do see a positive in what you've observed about life's tenacity and capacity for connection.
Unfortunately, in the service of accumulating power and money (the means to acquire more and more), we've invented a thing - The Corporation. It has taken the means for connecting with each other and revised it to serve the owners of that means.
We've done it — for example — by, first, providing this app, which provides the little charge we get from imagining connection with another human being.
I'm feeling it right now - as though you and I were sitting down to have a cup of coffee while discussing what we've noticed about life, even as I'm sitting here in my anonymous little room.
But then the app strips out any true nutritional value - it strips out the real connection that would come from forming an ongoing relationship.
It's like my very favorite: Kettle-Cooked Potato Chips. Lots of taste. No nourishment. If they sitting in front of me, I'll eat them.
My point: We've short circuited 'Life's' striving for complexity — with occurs through connectivity —, so we're now moving toward a dead, connectionless end.
I completely agree. Thank you for your thoughts, I enjoyed reading them. :)
This is why I find hope in collapse, as a chance for new things to be born outside of the monolith of industrialized state society. It’s as much a material collapse as it is a return to a flourishing of the human spirit, and a wild aliveness. A chance to be real human beings again, the good and the bad, instead of saturated plastic monoculture people.
I think we need to make a distinction between nature bouncing back and nature being able to support human beings. For example the wastelands around Chernobyl has recovered and now have a vibrant forest ecosystem. People still can't live there. There will be many places like this which will provide refuge to wildlife. Its Possible similar outcomes will occur with other pollution as well.
Most climate models are suspicious at best. The climate is way too complex to accurately model. Climate change may be better or worse than the models, especially when considering the radical changes in consumption and destruction on the horizon. In respect to questions like sea level rise, a "we have no clue" option would be appropriate.
Lastly, for most westerners these questions are pure hypotheticals. I live in rural Africa and regularly see the response/adaption to environmental degredation and sea level rise. The response is universally to expand farmland and try harder. However, there is a growing understanding of the dangers of artificial fertilizer and chemicals in general and a push for organic agriculture. I understand why the questions are asked of the globe as a whole but the viability of Russia will depends greatly on the decisions of the Russians, likewise with america, Europe, Africa and every other part of the globe. China might go balls to the wall and deforest while Belize does not.
Personally, I think speculations on when humans go extinct and questions like that are just hubris. We have no meaningful way to predict whether it will be 10,000 yrs or 10 million yrs. Even with a 99% die off anyone with confidence that the wild tribe in northern Siberia will die out has an inflated sense of their predictive powers. There are so many different people's and cultures in all corners of the globe. Confidence that every single one will die out soon is a joke. A serious possibly, maybe. An inevitability, no.
While I appreciate your efforts, I see this as a pointless exercise, because it assumes a "one size fits all" approach to collapse. Even the summary poll doesn't provide much room. It's like Fox News on the Gulf War: "Presenting both sides: bomb first, or immediately invade?"
I think the inevitable decline will be varied and uneven.
The global poor in cities will have a very hard time of things, although the rural poor who are already practicing subsistence farming may well do the best. So-called "un-contacted tribes" in various parts of the world will barely notice.
Newly industrialized nations with their own source of hydrocarbons may push the limits, while the rest of the world does without. Art Berman thinks we have perhaps 3-5 years before such countries cut off their exports, so they can fill their own needs.
Likewise, "bully" nations may be able to continue their high-energy ways, even while their own production falters. Israel will take over Palestine's natural gas resources, for example. The US can park aircraft carriers within bombing range of every oil producer's major cities.
The only "hope" I see is if those who get past the initial crash will come to their senses, and join with others and enter a time of self-imposed frugality. It's happened in the past, with less provocation.
I'm casting my lot in with this last group. Not sure who they are, yet, though…
While I didn't so much mind the boolean options presented, Jan, I do agree the decline will be patchy and diverse. Human populations in the direct path of big events (storms, wildfires, droughts) may well disappear quickly. Others with skills and knowledge in gentler zones may hang on longer. Nature will dramatically change, too. Ultimalty, humans will probably all be gone through disease from the contamination we've dumped into the biosphere ... how long that takes 100s or 1000s or years ... who knows. It depends on way too many variables to be predictable.
Hundreds or thousands of years? Guy McPherson gives us a decade!
I don't agree with some of his predicates, but he's put a lot of research into this — he's a professor emeritus, not some "YouTube researcher". So I wouldn't just write his viewpoint off.
James Hansen sees future humanity as a few tens of thousands, clustered around the Arctic Ocean.
I don't claim to have a crystal ball. But it seems rather easy to see what the "least adapted" will look like. I feel like the kid in "The Sixth Sense" movie: "I see dead people!"
The human footprint could be reduced to 50 million in 100 years by having only half a million children birthed each year starting today.
Part of this transition in population size could be implemented by sterilizing the current 8 billion. Who could all die if old age.
The second part of conflation would be to create a process to allow half a million births a year.
I have proposed processes to conflate the current human footprint to 50 million in a way that would clean up our mess on the way out and to leave a non jury producing civilization. See www.skil.org.
As a contribution to B's thread i would like to put this population reduction into the realm of the possible. Consider the possibility that bio tech is progressing so rapidly that soon some grad student in some existing lab can create a contagious sterlity virus that can within months sterilize everyone in the present global population.
Then the decision to implement conflation resides in the choice of a single person.
He or she decides if he or she will feel more guilty for removing the choice to have children from 8 billion. Or more guilty if he or she allows the injuries that result from the human footprint on its present path.
It is a fairly simple calculation to show global sterilization (with a few exceptions) produces less guilt.
In my view this path forward for the human experiment has a very high probability of occurrence
I have a High Voltage Switching and Protection Certification from the London Electricity Board, I have some experience in this field. In the mid 1980's, I was the electrical engineer at Lennox Wood Computer center in the South of England, we pumped chilled water through Mainframe Computers to cool them down.
The fact that more modern data centres still require water cooling, indicates huge amounts of energy is being used and as usual is wasted as heat as a byproduct.
That old entropy devil and the uncomfortable laws of thermodynamics really are a pain in the butt!
I've added this analysis to my blog post titled "Science Snippets: Much of North America Faces Electricity Shortages this Year- 2024" which contains a previous analysis on this aspect of our predicament from Guy as well!
Clearly the super organism that is Industrial Civilisation is hell bent on pedal to the metal and full speed ahead!
Pretending that the Seneca Cliff doesn't exist is mandatory in this set of living arrangements!
There are 4000 Spent Fuel Ponds Around the Globe…
If you don’t cool the spent fuel, the temperature will rise and there may be a swift chain reaction that leads to spontaneous combustion–an explosion and fire of the spent fuel assemblies. Such a scenario would emit radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Pick your poison. Fresh fuel is hotter and more radioactive, but is only one fuel assembly. A pool of spent fuel will have dozens of assemblies.
One report from Sankei News said that there are over 700 fuel assemblies stored in one pool at Fukushima. If they all caught fire, radioactive particles—including those lasting for as long as a decade—would be released into the air and eventually contaminate the land or, worse, be inhaled by people. “To me, the spent fuel is scarier. All those spent fuel assemblies are still extremely radioactive,” Dalnoki-Veress says.
It has been known for more than two decades that, in case of a loss of water in the pool, convective air cooling would be relatively ineffective in such a “dense-packed” pool. Spent fuel recently discharged from a reactor could heat up relatively rapidly to temperatures at which the zircaloy fuel cladding could catch fire and the fuel’s volatile fission product, including 30-year half-life Cs, would be released. The fire could well spread to older spent fuel. The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl. Source
Japan’s chief cabinet secretary called it “the devil’s scenario.” Two weeks after the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, causing three nuclear reactors to melt down and release radioactive plumes, officials were bracing for even worse. They feared that spent fuel stored in pools in the reactor halls would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. Source
Estimates of the cancer burden in Europe from radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident Source (Note: The Chernobyl accident was relatively minor, involved no spent fuel ponds, and was controlled by pouring cement onto the reactor. This was breaking down so a few years back they re-entombed.)
“However, many of the radioactive elements in spent fuel have long half-lives. For example, plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years, and plutonium-240 has a half-life of 6,800 years. Because it contains these long half-lived radioactive elements, spent fuel must be isolated and controlled for thousands of years.” Source
It does not matter how remote you are, the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic cancer-causing substances around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be an extinction event.
https://fasteddynz.substack.com/p/the-utter-futility-of-doomsday-prepping
Thanks. I've thought of a lot that could contribute to our and to adjacent creatures' demise — but not this one!
“the jet stream and ocean currents will circulate these toxic *cancer-causing substances* around the globe. They will be picked up by convection and pour deadly rain on your crop and water supply.
Nobody survives the collapse of civilization. This will be *an extinction event*.”
One statement does not support another here. Can you link something say that these spent fuel rods mean mass/instant death if they caught fire and the particles were inhaled? As in, the particles drifting across the world would kill large swathes of people, and quickly? Because increased chance of lifetime cancer risk is probably a pretty negligible issue for anyone who manages to survive a global societal collapse.
I personally am a fan of Dr. Shane Simonsen and his work with low-input, low-tech biotechnology, or his idea of humans as the ‘universal symbiont’ that could form mutual relationships with all life. As he says, nobody ever reinvented themselves on a good day. A lot of our fragile and intensive mechanical/technological solutions were only one societal evolutionary path that happened to win out, when a resilient and self-perpetuating biological solution could work better but is unexplored. @ZeroInputAgriculture
Having studied permaculture, indigenous horticulture, and ecology (along with collapse, energy systems, and climate change) for a few years now, I find that my answers are usually ‘C’ or sometimes ‘A + B’. I think you have good intentions with the questions, but are still viewing it from the modern idea of modernity or nothing (except now it is more like mad max/collapse forever or nothing).
Nature is not a static thing, it is always changing and forming new relationships within itself, always reorienting to conditions. We tend to hyperfocus on the little picture of this species succeeding or that one extincting, or even individual members, rather than looking at the big picture; the dance of all Life that is ongoing regardless, that merely shifts forms and movements. Every collapse and extinction in Earth’s history was also an opportunity for what came after to flourish and radiate into a thousand different new shapes and patterns. We see the death, but forget that it is the other side of birth, and of rebirth.
Anyway, hopefully this makes sense and doesn’t sound two crazy lol. I will attempt to answer these as best I can.
1. B + C: Nature is resilient and flexible. Already new life forms have evolved to digest microplastic, oil, toxic waste, etc. Currently IIRC, they only break the plastic down to smaller bits, but the point is that the chain of digestion and cycling into the earth system has started. That’s not to say it’s not an issue, but rather it’s not a forever one.
2. C: I don’t foresee many scenarios where the need for mass deforestation is ongoing at the same time as the ability to carry it out (similar to mass hunting below). If the lights are on and the system working, most people lack the skill or ability, and tools plus infrastructure, to make much use of an open fire. If the system is not working, the majority of people (this is talking about the first world and specifically America here) are too unconditioned, unskilled, and unequipped to just go out and start burning the woods down, let alone that the driver in this scenario is a lack of energy (meaning no food, water, power, etc coming in). There’s a middle ground here where perhaps slightly more resilient rural people are chipping away at forests while the system unwinds slowly, but I don’t see the majority of forests as slated for the fireplace.
I could be wrong here, but even in that case, I’d point out that the majority of the US was already deforested just a few hundred years ago, before domestic logging/mining and the industrial solution made coal the preferred energy source. All of the forests we see today aren’t ’original or ‘pristine’, they are an example of life’s tenacious ability to bounce back from a literal moonscape when left alone. I like to think about this with all the farmland left to rewild, as well.
3. C: Again, seems more likely that there’d be mass death before there was both the combined incentive and ability for mass couch burnings or what have you.
4. B: Indeed, it is very tragic to see these things go, and will be very beautiful to see what comes after. Already new plant life is sprouting up in the Arctic circle and other unusual places for it. Contained within the question, but often overlooked, is that a savanna is still a diverse and functional ecosystem. I also wonder if the aforementioned rewilding of most farmland and urban spaces will do much to slow down warming. I think it will, as North America alone after the Native’s died off is what led to the Little Ice Age in Europe.
5. B: Gonna be pretty cool, right? Kudzu jungles giving way to shopping mall swamps giving way to underground parking garage reefs.
6. Mostly B: Thankfully silvopasture, permaculture, managed grazing etc can be practiced on marginal lands and don’t require ideal crop land. Hell even crops can be grown on unideal land, just not industrial monocrops that need machines for everything. Barring a sudden nuclear war, I don’t see most power plants etc being left off, but could be wrong. We are already seeing many being shut down indefinitely due to low water levels or high water temps etc.
7. C: While B is correct, it doesn’t understand that there is more to permaculture than annual grain crops and veggies, or doesn’t understand that a stable climate is what permitted predictable harvesting and drying/storing of vast grain monocrops, not like, all useful plant life or something. I expect the staples of the future to be nut trees and perennial tuber crops, supported by ecosystem engineering and earthworks, along with managed grazing. And again, the point of permaculture is you can do it anywhere, even on marginal land.
But yes, billions are going to die when annual grain ag eventually completely fails, as we are already starting to see happen. Probably within a decade or so, if I had to guess? However, civilization does not equal humanity or all human societal potential.
8. C: Much like the firewood example, there won’t be both the incentive and ability at the same time (or not for very long). Even modern hunters rely on tech and energy, to set up cameras, drive to site, shoot with gun, haul out with ATV (don’t forget to leave all the most nourishing bits behind because it’s weird!), drop off at processor because you don’t know how to butcher (and leave the rest of the bones and organs behind here), pick up and store in freezer. It would be comically removed from real skill at subsistence if it wasn’t so sad.
And these are our best examples. I think this mainly comes from Dunning-Krueger, the average person thinks “I’d just go hunt” despite never having to do anything more involved than hunting down a hot pocket, and still failing at processing that properly when he burns his mouth on the bits that aren’t still frozen.
Or to put it in other words, again, millions of starving, sick, weak people drinking no or bad water and walking on foot aren’t an unstoppable horde, they are a humanitarian refugee crisis that probably won’t make it out of the city. During the Great Depression 90% of people lived rurally, on a farm, and had generations of low-tech skills, and we still couldn’t hunt everything out (I assume things survived in really unaccessible locations). Today, we will be lucky if the deer don’t eat us while the squirrels pilfer our apocalypse hot pocket stash.
9. B + C: It is true that much life will go extinct. However, life is still very adaptable and flexible. Some of the most vibrant nature reserves in the world spring up immediately once we are forced to get out of the way, ie Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the DMZ.
To my understanding, most of the pressure on wildlife today is directly from humans, ie habitat loss. Things, including humans, are clearly still able to breed despite the mountain of chemicals we have already poured into the earth (although it’s probably good for us that we are less fertile). I do think some species would go extinct without assisted migration, so we will see how much help any among us are willing and able to offer them. Again though, many other species will recalibrate and find new niches and balances, once humans are out of the way.
10. B + C: We forget that our ancestors were exposed to countless small systemic pressures everyday that we never evolved much resistance for (carcinogenic wood smoke, chronic diseases, and literal parasites come to mind). For some reason we think about microplastics etc as if they mean death or inability to breed… while reading that we’ve been eating and drinking them since the 50’s. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not harmless or good by any means and I try my best to avoid them, but it’s a category error to treat them like an *acute* poison.
But yes, you are very right here. Whether we can be flexible and adaptable now and learn to fit into the new patterns we have created will make it or break it for us. I think it is up to us fringe weirdos, the kind who would read this blog and take these topics seriously, to be laying the groundwork or what’s to come. We can be hybridizing novel species, domesticating new staple crops, and creating the foundations for new agro-ecological systems today. Or perhaps as you said, we are just going to make way for the next thing. Either way, even if we have forgotten, we are still part of the dance and web of life. It remains to be seen who among us will bravely take the first shaky steps out of the crowd of bystanders, trying to find their footing and timing. Who among us will begin the delicate work of reconnecting old threads, and weaving new ones?
What an awesome comment, Cimbri, very well put! I wholeheartedly agree with every single thing you've said here (which shouldn't surprise you much).
Most of those questions are not of the "either-or" type, although the left brain hemisphere's mode of perception & thinking might make it seem like this is the case.
Thanks David! I have to admit, I was inspired by/thinking of your and Shane’s writing style when I wrote it. Always enjoy your feedback :)
By the end of it I was thinking it could be its own post haha. I keep thinking I need something new to talk about (and I have recently ‘broken though’ the initiation period on my shamanic trance work, and hope to start using some nearby land for permaculture projects and experimental farming), but maybe I’d be fine just reiterating and collecting some of my longer form thoughts from Reddit?
I guess a better question would be, do you feel like you reach/help a lot of people with your work? If it’s just about expressing myself, I already have said much of what there is to say on Reddit at least, without rehashing the same old arguments. But perhaps substack reaches a different audience, maybe people who are more thoughtful or engaged? Feel free to answer this in email if you prefer!
Whereas a post/comment on Reddit gets carried away in the continuous flow, a curious reader is more likely to come across your insights on Substack, months after you posted it. It's also more shareable. As for the "I" in the ROI, being able to modify existing longform comments reduces effort (I drew from email exchanges).
Very good points. I hadn’t considered the ‘turnover rate’ for the churn of new Reddit posts that the majority probably spend most of their time in. And I certainly have plenty of old email threads to modify!
"seems more likely that there’d be mass death before there was both the combined incentive and ability for mass couch burnings" summarizes my thinking on the prompts, too. openness to uncertainty and mysterious systems dynamics + not driven by bias/hopium + humor.
re: Hot Pockets - I went to a "good" university and know peers (Millennials) who now earn 6 figures, but ecology/collapse aren't at all on their radar. When I told my friend I was leaving NYC because of ... y'know, all the factors ... he replied that he was likewise considering moving away - to the Carolinas, because "the weather is nicer" and there's "better golfing". I don't think it's a socioeconomic thing either, though. Everyone still expects to live The American Dream. I have absolutely no idea how people will react, mentally/emotionally and behaviorally, to systems deterioration. I think many/most Americans would rather die than eat raw plants.
“openness to uncertainty and mysterious systems dynamics + not driven by bias/hopium + humor.”
Well said. I think for many (and I can speak from my own experience here) that it’s a grief thing. It’s easier and really more comforting to be like ‘it’s over, it’s all gonna go.’ When you have been through the doom wringer so many times, you eventually want a way out even if it’s just this discount version of the ‘acceptance’ stage. Being open to what may come, realizing that there are many varied and interesting possibilities, can be a negative or drain when you aren’t ready for it.
Re: Golfing. Haha. Sums up a lot of people I know as well. I have been trying to pin down the ‘x-factor’ that makes one collapse aware and want to do something about it. It seems more like a multitude of possible things, of course. But I can that it definitely isn’t intelligence. The smartest people I personally know are my brother and stepdad, and both of them are vaguely aware of this stuff from me doom phasing about it but are just puttering along. Like, they can acknowledge some of it, but not actually do anything different or based on the information.
Meanwhile the person I know most interested in all the niche esoteric shit I am has a totally different background and isn’t very much of an ‘academic’ type. So idk if it’s random genetics, if it’s a childhood thing, environmental factors, or what. Maybe it’s all the Cold War era science fiction I was into as a kid? But yeah, whatever it is it only seems laggingly related to systemic understanding, and sometimes not at all.
Lastly, I’ll do you one better and point out that most Americans couldn’t identity most plants outside the supermarket haha. Let alone wild or atypical crops. But I do think the breakdown of the system is an opportunity for new cultures and worldviews to come through. The system is not just material, it’s also ‘spiritual’, it’s an ideological thing perpetuating itself in our minds. Its breakdown has to not only be replaced with a new material base, but a new ‘mythic’ one as well.
Nice rundown. Couple things: No, the entire nation won’t be coming together, but some of these basic, long-forgotten skills cn be relearnt and taught, and capable leaders will emerge. While the long descent will continuously make things harder and harder, experience and resilience will grow among the survivors. How many that will be, no one knows. The other comment is that people tend to overestimate shortterm declines and underestimate longterm declines. So, when someone predicta billions will die within a decade based on their estimates of things like EROI , industrial or agricultural collapses that haven’t happened yet, I’m so skeptical I’d happily wager they’re wrong. When they think humanity will never go extinct, I laugh. Fwiw, I’m on the collapse train.
All good points. And yes, the system does seem to have a high degree of ‘slack’, so any predictions based on ‘if x trend continues’ need to take that into account. They say wisdom is learning from others mistakes, and many of the collapseniks who came before me have said they were sure it’d be during 2008, and were surprised. So even if I can’t see a future for global industrial ag beyond 2030-2035 or so, I make plans for both possibilities!
Calling an age, any age, 'little' is an oxymoron. But it gets worse
*The myth of Europe’s Little Ice Age*
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"The Little Ice Age is generally seen as a major event in European history. Analysing a variety of recent weather reconstructions, this column finds that European weather appears constant from the Middle Ages until 1900, and that events like the freezing of the Thames and the disappearance of English vineyards have simpler explanations than changing climate. It appears instead that the European Little Ice Age is a statistical artefact, where the standard climatological practice of smoothing what turn out to be white noise data prior to analysis gives the spurious appearance of irregular oscillation – a Slutsky Effect."
"Conclusion
While the idea that Europe experienced a Little Ice Age is widespread, its statistical basis is at best exiguous, and appears to stem from inappropriate efforts to smooth data that are actually random. At the same time, most of the anecdotal evidence admits more simple explanations than climate change."
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https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/myth-europes-little-ice-age
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Little Ice Age? No. Big Warming Age? Yes.*
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" But the term Little Ice Age is a misnomer, and some climate scientists have argued that the name should be abandoned. It was not a full-blown ice age at all (or even a little one), but rather a very short-lived and puny climate and social perturbation, by the standards of geologic time."
.
https://thebulletin.org/2018/12/little-ice-age-no-big-warming-age-yes/
Can you explain what your point is, beyond semantics? That there was a period of climatic oscillation in Europe at the time you seem to agree with, at least in your second quote.
Alan Ginsberg said it succinctly in the 1970's... (0) there is a game; (1) you can't win; (2) you can't break even; (3) you can't even get out of the game.
Ginsberg WAS a Pedophile, so that may have meant different things to him.
I didn't know he was a pedophile! Yikes!
Seems like in the end the anarcho-primitivists will win - the political debate, and perhaps even the world!
Human history is a study in innovation. Out of necessity will come solutions. There is nothing like a threat to bring out both the best and the worst in human nature.
Nuclear or a renewable energy source will solve the depletion of oil.
Closed loop CAFOs and concentrated closed loop farming practices will replace wholesale destruction of habitat.
Large scale concentration of populations into small footprint habitats will occur.
Voluntary reduction in family sizes will reduce human populations to sustainable ecological levels.
Our imagination and resourcefulness will increase as the sharing of knowledge increases. If you have ever been a member of a think tank or research group, there is a synergy that occurs between individuals committed to finding solutions. Quite beautiful to watch or to be a part of.
Thanks for this great piece of interactive communication.
May I nitpick one small point? You write: "likely halt of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (aka the “Gulf stream”)" However, the Gulf Stream is not synonymous with the AMOC.
A good recent explanation can be found on a video from the channel "Science Talk" by Jim Massa dated 5 September. The title is: Is AMOC Collapse Imminent?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDutq98TqPU
He explains the relationship between AMOC and the various Gulf Stream gyre's (some which are a part of AMOC) There is a good diagram shown during this lecture. Start at 18:14 and go on to 22:10.
Don't forget there is (in human species existence terms) an everlasting and larger than our current needs supply of useful energy from the sun. Those societies that master its use before they run out of diesel will do ok. Those that don't, won't. And no, plants are not an efficient way of harvesting solar energy, but fast growing miscanthus is less inefficient (by a large multiple) than most.
I'm a retired physician/psychiatrist/addictionist and now independent scholar focused on stress and the role it is playing in our exploding human "stress diseases". I recommend the researches of mid 20th century "animal crowding" researchers: Calhoun, Southwick, and Christian. Their iterations of Calhoun's "mouse utopia" studies inevitably resulted in total population extinctions when no newborn pup could live to adulthood and reproduce. All of the indicators of reproductive failure and decreasing fertility are evident in our "modern" crowded populations. I go into greater depth in my 2018 online free PDF, "Stress R Us", with thanks to Stanford and MAHB. If our self imposed climate collapse doesn't get our children/grandchildren, then population density stress might. We are 3,000 times more numerous than were our last ecologically balanced and self-sustaining iteration, our Hunter-Gatherer/pastoralist ancestors just 10kya. What could go wrong? Everything? Many thanks for this well constructed piece and the thoughtful comments.
So, why do we comment on other people's essays? There seems to be this primordial sitting-around-the-fire or encountering-in-the-old-town square urge to just offer each other thoughts. Unfortunately, in the context we've created (someone created) called 'Social Media' there is no interaction. Just tossing something out into the universe. Message-in-a-bottle inclinations.
Here's my toss:
Setting the stage for my point — From Nick Lane, The Vital Question: (Next two paragraphs — I can't find a way to visually distinguish anything in this app).
Life arose around half a billion years after the earth’s formation, perhaps 4 billion years ago, but then got stuck at the bacterial level of complexity for more than 2 billion years, half the age of our planet. Indeed, bacteria have remained simple in their morphology (but not their biochemistry) since.
In stark contrast, ALL morphologically complex organisms — all plants, animals, fungi, seaweeds, and single-celled ‘protists’ such as amoeba — descend from that singular ancestor about 1.5 – 2 billion years ago.
AGAIN: Bacteria became 'stuck' at their level of morphological complexity.
My thought:
It appears we humans got 'stuck' in or capacity or grasping complexity shortly after we appeared on the evolutionary scene (maybe 300,000 years ago or after language showed up around 100 - 200,000 years ago).
That is, our capacity for cognitive complexity seems to be as frozen as the morphology of bacteria. We have great difficulty moving beyond either-or classifications. We have a terrible time understanding systemic processes - i.e., how THIS affects THAT which affects THAT as such interactions occur in intricate interactions. The kind of thing Donnella Meadows so elegantly laid out to be ignored by most everyone, especially including those who wield the power to apply it usefully.
Specifically, as Rodney King underscored: We haven't figured out how to get along.
That is, we haven't figured out what we need to figure out in order to thrive as a species in connection with our larger world while getting along with each other and it.
We keep making the same self-destructive mistakes, a feature (not a bug) that is cumulatively accruing as we blithely pass tipping points we recognize while missing many we don't even think about (see the Fast Eddy @fasteddynz nightmare below, regarding what happens if spent fuel rods run out of water to cool them).
Kinda sad.
Thanks for reading, if you did. And — just for the hell of it — look up and read some of what Donnella Meadows wrote before her death. We might as well grasp a bit of what's happening before the lights go out.
Inherent in your comment is that life forms ever more complexity and resiliency at each ‘stage’, no? We could quibble about when and what caused us to breakdown our ability to understand and respond to these things, but it seems we both could see it positively as a story of life’s tenacity and capacity for connection.
“So, why do we comment on other people's essays? There seems to be this primordial sitting-around-the-fire or encountering-in-the-old-town square urge to just offer each other thoughts. Unfortunately, in the context we've created (someone created) called 'Social Media' there is no interaction. Just tossing something out into the universe. Message-in-a-bottle inclinations.”
❤️
I do see a positive in what you've observed about life's tenacity and capacity for connection.
Unfortunately, in the service of accumulating power and money (the means to acquire more and more), we've invented a thing - The Corporation. It has taken the means for connecting with each other and revised it to serve the owners of that means.
We've done it — for example — by, first, providing this app, which provides the little charge we get from imagining connection with another human being.
I'm feeling it right now - as though you and I were sitting down to have a cup of coffee while discussing what we've noticed about life, even as I'm sitting here in my anonymous little room.
But then the app strips out any true nutritional value - it strips out the real connection that would come from forming an ongoing relationship.
It's like my very favorite: Kettle-Cooked Potato Chips. Lots of taste. No nourishment. If they sitting in front of me, I'll eat them.
My point: We've short circuited 'Life's' striving for complexity — with occurs through connectivity —, so we're now moving toward a dead, connectionless end.
Thanks for your thought.
I completely agree. Thank you for your thoughts, I enjoyed reading them. :)
This is why I find hope in collapse, as a chance for new things to be born outside of the monolith of industrialized state society. It’s as much a material collapse as it is a return to a flourishing of the human spirit, and a wild aliveness. A chance to be real human beings again, the good and the bad, instead of saturated plastic monoculture people.
B all the way. B fer prez!
I don't know what will happen. My crystal ball is broken. My lifespan is too short.
If there are dragonflies hundreds of millions of years from now, I'll be happy.
I think we need to make a distinction between nature bouncing back and nature being able to support human beings. For example the wastelands around Chernobyl has recovered and now have a vibrant forest ecosystem. People still can't live there. There will be many places like this which will provide refuge to wildlife. Its Possible similar outcomes will occur with other pollution as well.
Most climate models are suspicious at best. The climate is way too complex to accurately model. Climate change may be better or worse than the models, especially when considering the radical changes in consumption and destruction on the horizon. In respect to questions like sea level rise, a "we have no clue" option would be appropriate.
Lastly, for most westerners these questions are pure hypotheticals. I live in rural Africa and regularly see the response/adaption to environmental degredation and sea level rise. The response is universally to expand farmland and try harder. However, there is a growing understanding of the dangers of artificial fertilizer and chemicals in general and a push for organic agriculture. I understand why the questions are asked of the globe as a whole but the viability of Russia will depends greatly on the decisions of the Russians, likewise with america, Europe, Africa and every other part of the globe. China might go balls to the wall and deforest while Belize does not.
Personally, I think speculations on when humans go extinct and questions like that are just hubris. We have no meaningful way to predict whether it will be 10,000 yrs or 10 million yrs. Even with a 99% die off anyone with confidence that the wild tribe in northern Siberia will die out has an inflated sense of their predictive powers. There are so many different people's and cultures in all corners of the globe. Confidence that every single one will die out soon is a joke. A serious possibly, maybe. An inevitability, no.
While I appreciate your efforts, I see this as a pointless exercise, because it assumes a "one size fits all" approach to collapse. Even the summary poll doesn't provide much room. It's like Fox News on the Gulf War: "Presenting both sides: bomb first, or immediately invade?"
I think the inevitable decline will be varied and uneven.
The global poor in cities will have a very hard time of things, although the rural poor who are already practicing subsistence farming may well do the best. So-called "un-contacted tribes" in various parts of the world will barely notice.
Newly industrialized nations with their own source of hydrocarbons may push the limits, while the rest of the world does without. Art Berman thinks we have perhaps 3-5 years before such countries cut off their exports, so they can fill their own needs.
Likewise, "bully" nations may be able to continue their high-energy ways, even while their own production falters. Israel will take over Palestine's natural gas resources, for example. The US can park aircraft carriers within bombing range of every oil producer's major cities.
The only "hope" I see is if those who get past the initial crash will come to their senses, and join with others and enter a time of self-imposed frugality. It's happened in the past, with less provocation.
I'm casting my lot in with this last group. Not sure who they are, yet, though…
While I didn't so much mind the boolean options presented, Jan, I do agree the decline will be patchy and diverse. Human populations in the direct path of big events (storms, wildfires, droughts) may well disappear quickly. Others with skills and knowledge in gentler zones may hang on longer. Nature will dramatically change, too. Ultimalty, humans will probably all be gone through disease from the contamination we've dumped into the biosphere ... how long that takes 100s or 1000s or years ... who knows. It depends on way too many variables to be predictable.
Hundreds or thousands of years? Guy McPherson gives us a decade!
I don't agree with some of his predicates, but he's put a lot of research into this — he's a professor emeritus, not some "YouTube researcher". So I wouldn't just write his viewpoint off.
James Hansen sees future humanity as a few tens of thousands, clustered around the Arctic Ocean.
I don't claim to have a crystal ball. But it seems rather easy to see what the "least adapted" will look like. I feel like the kid in "The Sixth Sense" movie: "I see dead people!"
The human footprint could be reduced to 50 million in 100 years by having only half a million children birthed each year starting today.
Part of this transition in population size could be implemented by sterilizing the current 8 billion. Who could all die if old age.
The second part of conflation would be to create a process to allow half a million births a year.
I have proposed processes to conflate the current human footprint to 50 million in a way that would clean up our mess on the way out and to leave a non jury producing civilization. See www.skil.org.
As a contribution to B's thread i would like to put this population reduction into the realm of the possible. Consider the possibility that bio tech is progressing so rapidly that soon some grad student in some existing lab can create a contagious sterlity virus that can within months sterilize everyone in the present global population.
Then the decision to implement conflation resides in the choice of a single person.
He or she decides if he or she will feel more guilty for removing the choice to have children from 8 billion. Or more guilty if he or she allows the injuries that result from the human footprint on its present path.
It is a fairly simple calculation to show global sterilization (with a few exceptions) produces less guilt.
In my view this path forward for the human experiment has a very high probability of occurrence
Jack Alpert Alpert@skil.org www.skil.org
I answered mostly "neither A nor B", so "roughly equal".
"Never go extinct" might mean "not before most other species". Red Giant type events end planetary life.
This stuff happens every 6000 - 12.000 years and doesn't kill everything or everybody, but it's worse than "climate change". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2decDcEJqo&list=PLHSoxioQtwZcVcFC85TxEEiirgfXwhfsw
I have a High Voltage Switching and Protection Certification from the London Electricity Board, I have some experience in this field. In the mid 1980's, I was the electrical engineer at Lennox Wood Computer center in the South of England, we pumped chilled water through Mainframe Computers to cool them down.
The fact that more modern data centres still require water cooling, indicates huge amounts of energy is being used and as usual is wasted as heat as a byproduct.
That old entropy devil and the uncomfortable laws of thermodynamics really are a pain in the butt!
I've added this analysis to my blog post titled "Science Snippets: Much of North America Faces Electricity Shortages this Year- 2024" which contains a previous analysis on this aspect of our predicament from Guy as well!
Clearly the super organism that is Industrial Civilisation is hell bent on pedal to the metal and full speed ahead!
Pretending that the Seneca Cliff doesn't exist is mandatory in this set of living arrangements!
The Cognitive dissonance is astounding!
https://guymcpherson.substack.com/p/electric-power-update-big-data-ai/comments