Terrifying Study of Planetary Collapse

The projections outlined in this study may not turn out to be correct but why should we ever shy away from or reject projections that may seem “a bit too extreme and alarming”?

Human society seems to lack some type of fundamental cautionary principal with respect to how we view the future…

We do our best to create projections about how the future will be (ie: predict the future), based on incomplete information – then act surprised when, as time goes by and the “results come in”, we discover that “Oh, things didn’t go as we expected”.

Any sane person would never pilot a boat through thick fog, accelerating to full throttle the whole while…
After all these years, why haven’t we learned that the human experience occurs within “a thick fog”?

Steve and Lucas,
I agree with you both.

But the point I wanted to make (an unpleasant thought in its own right) is that we have reached a point in the course of human events where it can be logically argued that large-scale and rapid reductions of human population are necessary AND this at a time when such a thing is actually possible. Surely most of you heard about the experiments with the bird flu that made it far, far more contagious. The research needed to generate a highly virulent strain of this high-mortality virus was paid for by some entity for unknown reasons. Now, one doesn’t even need a conspiracy to make this situation dangerous. All one needs is a single scientist who has access to this bug who despairs at what humans are doing to the planet and is willing to expose himself to the virus before boarding an international flight with multiple connecting flights. Gives me the shivers.

You only have to come to a city like Bangkok, where I am now, to witness the costs of our lifestyle–the costs we have exported to poorer countries to keep it all out of sight and out of mind. The environmental degradation is invisibilized in North America and Europe. But clearly, life hangs by a tenuous thread: far too many liquids of unknown origin running through the gutters; constant stream of 10 million people in emission-belching vehicles; air conditioners running 24/7; millions and millions of gallons of precious water housed in diposable plastic bottles for sale at the ubiquitous 7-11’s.

I see this trip as our “apocalypse tour”. I feel it’s a bit risky to travel to such placesnow, because you just don’t know when it’s going to fall. But I figured it might be our last chance to see some of this stuff.

Agtefc post=4733 wrote: It is difficult to call a human cull a solution, but it is the highest quality solution available. Both necessary and sufficient.

Necessary for what? If we can only achieve sustainable human societies by murdering billions of people, then sustainability isn’t a goal worth reaching. Billions of people may die based on our current trajectory, but it should by no means be a policy goal. If you mean it is necessary to “save the planet”, then I disagree. It is very unlikely that life on Earth will disappear due to human actions, especially if many humans naturally die in the process of systemic crises. IMO, anyone who advocates for systematic depopulation policies has a sinister agenda or hasn’t used their brains enough to think through the implications (most of which are ethical/moral, and infinitely more important than the material).

Depopulation…

Yes,there was a reason I did not “pee in the gene pool”,I have always figured there would always be children who needed schooling by a elder in my life…and there always has been.My stepdaughter was bright enough to jettison a dead-weight husband…but not before 2 kids made a appearance…and I have been ask to fill in as male role model ect..Now,their future is a concern of mine.I cannot change whats coming,but I can start to teach,what I know to two,who,Hopefully won’t get the scar tissue I gained with lessons learned.

My guess would be biological agents of some kind,with a twisty way to ensure “their control”…but I could be wrong.

It may turn out just someone who wants to send us back to the stone age…or let another species have a shot at use of this plant.

It takes less than 200k cash,and a smart graduate student to make effective biological agents. How they are spread,the vectors,the lethality….this has been my darkest fear for a long time….as there is no “safe”place in a plague.

I think the way we may see the depopulation is a variation of whats going on now…..collapse the system,slowly,[a controlled demolition],and the death toll starts to rise…collapse it into a economic nightmare for the masses…with tight military control of essential infrastructure,and let the plebs kill each other over a crust of bread…while those at the top stay in heavily fortified safe zones, while the “excess” population starves. A war cutting oil supplies to the rest of the world would fit the bill nicely….[Did I mention Iran?]

Bee good,or
Bee careful

snuffy

davefairtex post=4735 wrote: skip –

If you actually live in Bangkok, you don’t buy water from 7-11, at least not more than once. You reuse your plastic bottles and refill them from the ubiquitous reverse-osmosis water filtering machines scattered all around the urban jungle. Cost: 1 baht/liter. (Water at 7-11: 14 baht)

If you look closely, the Thais have a large number of very low energy ways of getting things done. While westerners (and rich Thais) take taxis, the regular people use buses and specially-constructed red trucks with benches to get places cheaply. Often the 4-person family car is a 110cc scooter.

Locally produced natgas is used to fuel a large number of taxis and buses. There’s also a thriving business in fixing things – every neighborhood has some guy with a sewing machine and a table who charges 20 baht and takes 10 minutes to fix your old clothing. A different guy fixes shoes.

I’m not sure I’d count the Thais out so quickly. They might end up doing better than other places that have further to fall, and less of a culture of small business operation. Almost everyone in Thailand has their eye out for a way to start a small retail business, and many have family members that own a small farm upcountry. If you do something well, your Thai friend will notice this, and suggest that you might want to open a shop – something much preferred to working for someone else.

I think Thailand will do much better with less than America.

Have fun in Bangkok. 🙂

Very interesting insights. I am hardly an expert on Thailand. After all, I’ve only been here 24 hours so far!

I wouldn’t count them out either, based on the reasons you mention. But…I think witnessing the sheer impact of such a population in a small area is pretty hard for me to discount. I expect there is adaptability and a connection to traditional means of survival here, which we’ve lost in the west. But most of the vehicles I’m seeing on the motorway are cars with only a passenger or two in them. As you mention, I do see entire families on motor scooters though–the little ones rarely with helmets. Hey, you do what you have to do, and we westerners do get bogged down in regulations that only increase the complexity of life without adding much to efficiency.

I counter that typhoid and polio are increasing at a fairly alarming rate here in Thailand. That must indicate something. And after spending about 3 hours going up and down the Chao Phraya River I didn’t–see–a–single–bird!!! Not overhead. And not on the water. That is a big water course, with not a bird in sight. What does that mean.

I think your point that the populations with the least to lose–those who have continued to be self-sufficient out of necessity induced largely by poverty–is very well taken. They will serve as an example for us. But there is no way 10 million of them in this city alone aren’t hanging by a thread. If things get really bad, I do expect you’re right, though–the survivors in places like this know what they’re doing. But I can’t help but see another 10 million people who, like all of us, believe we should aspire to “have more”, without any true understanding of the price we’ll pay for it.

I just feel so bad for the planet. I’m afraid simply opting for more motor scooters rather than cars probably won’t do the trick, in the long run. But I would be so, so, so relieved to find out that was the case.

Lucas, just look at your premise: most people aren’t sane.

Steve B,
Yes…
We live in paradoxical times.

skip –

I didn’t mean to suggest simply using scooters fixes everything long term. That said, if we did that in the US it would drop our fuel consumption in half if not more, and that would seem to buy some more time, but my real point is people here live just fine, just with less. And if even less comes, more people will just take buses and the song teo. It might even improve Bangkok traffic!

Your comments about the river are right on though. God knows whats in it. I’m not a fan of that water. There aren’t many birds in general, come to think of it. Perhaps they get eaten, I really don’t know! Upcountry even the (field) rats and the larger bugs are protein sources.

Yet poverty is a funny thing. I see vastly more street people in San Francisco than I do in Bangkok. What exactly is poor? Sure upcountry people are quite poor, I’ve been there. Poor is one solitary light bulb in a wooden house with cardboard and bamboo for “windows”, the “kitchen” is outside, food cooked over an open fire, the family eats dinner on a mat nearby, and every meal has lots of sticky rice and random protein sources with lots of spices. And a single pickup truck is shared among 5 families. There is one older TV at the rich guy’s house. And of course no aircon. And if you have a bad medical problem – well, you die. But with all this poverty you would think Bangkok would be overrun with street people. I only know of three.

On a Purchasing Power Parity basis, Thais have 50% of the purchasing power that we do in the US. On a per capita GDP basis, its more like 10%. That per capita GDP differential shows up when you talk about airfares and iphones, but the PPP comes into play when prices of street food, local clothing, and transport are measured against local salaries.

If you have time and inclination and are in the city for a few more days and want to drop by and see my neighborhood, skype me at username davefairtex. I’d have sent an email except…no facility here to do that.

Agtefc post=4731 wrote: Depopulation to below 1 billion is both Necessary and Sufficient for posterity of the human species.
Many other things are necessary but no other will fill the bill.

Agtefc post=4733 wrote: Tptb must execute said depopulation by coercive means over a brutally short time frame in order to prevent collateral ecosystem degradation.

ashvin post=4734 wrote:
Necessary for what? If we can only achieve sustainable human societies by murdering billions of people, then sustainability isn’t a goal worth reaching.

I agree with Ash, planetary genocide is never a solution.
Publicly advocating [the necessity of] planetary genocide is the most severe criminal speech, the suggestion that a criminal act of this magnitude may be employed as necessary policy is a false dilemma.

Some fates are worse than extinction. Premeditated genocide and gigadeath to ‘save the planet’, or even to save the human species itself, cannot possibly be worth it, there is no end worthy enough to justify such means. The surviving human species would be tainted, ethically devalued worse than by the shame of extinction or total ecocide, only to discover such a genocide wasn’t necessary, or that it wouldn’t have helped anyway.

Even if the human race, and all the contemporary biosphere, were to be saved from total extinction and actually prospered afterwards, if humanity were guaranteed a billion years of prosperity because of it, it still would not be a worthy enough end to justify genocide; better to just go extinct by biospheric collapse, if that was inevitable otherwise.
Conversely, by similar method of false dilemma, it should be an equitable action to consume and destroy the entire terrestrial biosphere if it were to guarantee human survival and enable stellar expansion, perchance to provide a distant opportunity to progress towards a type-3 galactic civilization which is technologically capable of recreating the biosphere.

Anyone who does publicly advocate that planetary genocide is necessary and proper for whatever reason may be held criminally accountable and would be morally complicit in any resultant acts pursuant to such advocation.

Ecofascism of this sort is not a political ideology pertaining to a coherent value-system, but instead is a form of suicidal nihilism. Mitigating circumstances in the degree of criminal speech may be resultant from clinically defined mental deviancy.

There is no scientific proof that life is important,
within utilitarian modalities circumscribing degrees of continued existence of the biosphere, biodiversity, ecosystemic integrity or the survival of non-human species, whereas there is sufficient legal precedent that human life is unalienable and safeguarded from malicious devaluation.

Disregarding the capital weight of unsubstitutable life-supporting services and the inability of biotrophic decoupling of humanity from the terrestrial biosphere, the entire living world is worth less than a single human life in philosophical and lawfully material terms. Legal parameters render it morally obligatory to sacrifice all non-human species to save a single person in applicable situations.

Can’t we just have our planet and eat it too?

Vortex post=4748 wrote: All of you insane freaks who want to kill billions of people, by all means.

But we’ll start with the lowest form of human shit known to mankind. Who is that…that would be you.

You sick freaks can blow your brains out, die of starvation or any hundred other ways to die. Makes no difference to those of us who wish to live.

I’m not entirely certain, but I think you may be confusing two separate aspects of the debate regarding both a financial and an environmental collapse: what we want to happen, and what will happen. I don’t think anyone here WANTS to kill anyone! I know I don’t. In a perfect world, I want us all to have more and achieve our life’s ambitions. I want everyone born, whether that is 7 billion of us or 14 billion of us, to have a peaceful, healthy life with good jobs and lots of spending money. I naively used to believe we could achieve that. I now realize that no matter what I “want”, there are extraneous limitations on a finite planet that are going to have a lot more to say about things.

Similarly, with finance, I do not want a deflationary collapse. I am young enough to still have ambitions I thought I was going to be able to fulfill. I want us to live the “American” dream we were promised no matter where we happen to live. I realize now that wishing is not going to make the deflationary collapse go away. And so I have decided it’s important to prepare, and hopefully I can convince others to prepare too. I’m not really even helping the situation by offing myself so there’s one less person. What would that accomplish?

A financial collapse, and possibly a later environmental collapse, will happen no matter what I want. It’s a darker place to hang out in. I prefer my old world where I believed we were all going to get BMW’s if we just worked hard and smart enough. Alas, I think now that was woefully naive. And ironically, refusing to discuss economic alternatives is what is going to maim and kill.

Also, I’m unconvinced that species extinction is already accelerating at exponential rates, some models do extrapolate this effect by loss of habitat space or conversion of terrestrial biomass to human biomass, but such extrapolations are often deficient by orders of magnitude.

There is no evidence that biodiversity itself, constituting absolute numbers of species and ecosystemic complexity, is important for biospheric integrity, and biospheric integrity is only materially quantifiable in ecophysical terms by its rendered material services to continued human existence on this planet.

I’d sacrifice myself voluntarily for the certainty of saving an entire species, especially one occupying a vital node in the foodchain, but I couldn’t demand such an involuntary sacrifice from anyone else, not even to save all species at once.
[The dignity of] the human race is worth at least half the species on this planet, and quite possibly is worth all other species on this planet, moreover if, by continued technological advancement to a type-1 civilization and beyond, a non-zero possibility exists that anthropologically extinctified species, or the entire biosphere in its current configuration, could be recreated by humanity’s progeny using biosystemic engineering. This technotrophic false dilemma is no more absurd than one necessitating planetary genocide for ecofascist motives.

Life is more inclusive than “human life”.

I’m waiting to see what kind of life they discover on Mars.

It might even cause a re-definition of “Planetary Collapse”

I guessing you don’t have kids timothwc, or any other reason to care what happens to the rest after you’re dead and rotting in the ground (sooner would be better) or reduced to the ash hole you came from. We’ll all be better off when your blood and flesh is dried, eaten or burnt and mixed back into this Earth you aren’t so worried about.

Hi Folks,

The irony is infinite. The very term economy comes from the Greek :sick: meaning oikonomos, manager of a household. This implies a careful and considered use of ‘resources’. But instead what we have is wanton exploitation of anything and everything in the name of an abstract value system called money. And like all mono-cultures either worldly or of the mind, it dominates all.

Coupled with the problem of ‘shifting baselines’ (the problem that we think the world we are born into has always been this way), and we really have no idea what the human race has achieved over the last few centuries.

The problem of shifting environmental baselines is explored in Callum Roberts “The Unnatural History of the Sea” (https://www.york.ac.uk/res/unnatural-history-of-the-sea/). It is a shocking expose of just how much ‘damage’ has been done. People today talk of ‘restoring the oceans’ to levels of a few decades ago not realising that a few decades ago the patient was already dead having been depleted over ninety percent already!

Also what is missed is the still little understood implications of dynamic biological systems interdependence (see: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00vl3bw); for instance over fishing does not just reduce the fish stocks, it also affect the local micro-biota ecosystem, upon which the whole oceanic food chain is based. A simple analogy: Fish can be compared to the large herding animals on land, that both maintain and fertilize the various landscapes through their waste products. Remove their presence and the land quickly reverts to desert. This is what has happened in the oceans. The micro biota fed on the excrement of the higher animals which in turn fed on the microbiota. Thus the nutrients were kept cycling in the various layers of the ocean in which these lifeforms lived. Extract or wipe out (by netting rivers so that the fish cannot get to spawning grounds) one part of the food chain and all the nutrients suddenly stop being recycled and sink to the bottom of the ocean never to be seen again. Voila ‘Dead Zones’… Pump too much of one type of nutrient (from mismanaged land use) into the oceans and you have an explosion of certain micro-biota that like those nutrients – so called plankton blooms – that then suck out all the other things like oxygen (required by other organisms) and often excrete poisons (nutrients other organisms can’t deal with) into the water. Et encore more Dead Zones… The idea that we can all eat jelly fish (one of the symptoms of systemic collapse) is a complete misapprehension of the problem.

This is one example of impacts on only one system, the ocean system, without going into the human impacts on soil biota and the interaction between micro-biota and the atmosphere (see Lovelock, Margulis et al). The Earth, Being what it is, can and does recover (at varying rates ranging from decades to millennia), but in the interim the biodiversity of higher/larger life forms will tend to decrease, and any dominant ‘single’ species will face extinction. And the current most dominant ‘single’ species is us folks.

We either start putting our ‘house’ in order or its over, no ifs or buts and certainly no eating jelly fish… (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/3776788/Jellyfish-on-the-menu-as-edible-fish-stocks-become-extinct.html)

L,
Sid.