RE: Is Our Civilization About To Collapse? | Answers With Joe

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Is Our Civilization About To Collapse? | Answers With Joe

in civilization •  5 years ago 

Wonderful video about an all important topic. A few notes...


Linking Syrian refugees to climate change is probably inappropriate. They are refugees from a US led proxy war. They would not be refugees (yet) if the US had just left the country alone instead of attempting Nation-Building.


Climate change IS an issue but so is fossil fuel depletion. Humans will not be able to extract and burn enough fossil fuels to make IPCC's worst case (nor the penultimate worst case) scenario a reality. In fact it is this resource depletion that is catalyzing the long descent we can expect over the next century or two. A new Dark Age.


I like how you're upfront about the fact that actually reducing fossil fuel consumption will mean making lifestyle choices that nobody will be willing to make.


The inverted yield curve information is very relevent. It is a good recession indicator and if we counted GDP today the way that it was counted in the 80's it would be obvious that we've been in recessionary territory since early in the 21th century.

Here is information on another indicator that I'd argue has more leverage than the yield curve.

https://econbrowser.com/archives/2009/04/oil_shocks_and_1


It is good you mentioned that the collapse of the bronze age took at least a century to play out. Too many people see videos like this and expect to see a Hollywood style quick collapse where one year somebody is managing a McDonalds and the next they're leading a gang of thugs in some Mad Max landscape.

The bronze age collapse was catalyzed by limits to energy availability. They depleted the fuel source (wood) that allowed their civilization to thrive. A single ~50 lb ingot of copper required about four acres of pine trees.

When trees were plentiful the EROI (Energy Return on Investment) was high. The trees were close by, plentiful and old. As the land was deforested the energy required to go get additional energy kept going up which means the EROI was going down. Civilizations grow large off of and become dependent on high EROI energy sources. Then the energy sources deplete and EROI decreases. Once it goes down enough the process of Catabolic Collapse sets in and another Dark Age is on the way.

https://psmag.com/environment/peak-wood-and-the-bronze-age-14363

As I mentioned above, it is a similar dynamic at work in the global economy of today and it is leading to another Dark Age. Conventional crude oil (high EROI) production has already peaked and is beginning to decline. The unconventional production from shale and tar sands are only slightly better than corn based ethanol as far as EROI goes given how much energy it actually takes to extract and refine them.


The guy who developed the idea of Catabolic Collapse linked to above has some specific things to say about why the Trusted Sources of information are no longer being trusted.


Thanks for this video. I'll like/subscribe on Youtube as well.

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