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My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

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Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#421

Post by giantg2 »

jandrese wrote: post #96
dane-pgp wrote: post #20

> In many ways, this scenario is even gloomier than BAU, and many say that it predicts the dire outcome of allowing climate change to go unchecked. But if they are using the same World3 model, created in 1972, with a single variable representing "pollution", then surely it's just a coincidence if the effects of climate change end up modelled correctly. The climate is a non-linear system, and there certainly weren't g…

I thought that "pollution" chart showing it dropping off sharply in all scenarios (due either to clean technology or societal collapse) were unlikely. If you are counting CO2 as pollution (and you should) then it's very hard to get it back out of the air, especially in a short timeframe. So in all cases the pollution line ends up in a steady state at roughly wherever society either weaned itself from fossil fuels or…

"If you are counting CO2 as pollution (and you should)"

There is a caveat. They only consider CO2 from specific sources to be pollution, so we can't just blanket call it pollution. For example, the CO2 I exhale would not be considered pollution, but if it's coming from fossil fuels or even burning trees, then it is. I'm not sure how they handle the natural burning of tree, like wildfires though.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#422

Post by giantg2 »

adrianN wrote: post #356
asdff wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than burn coal to smelt steel beams, we could start opting for more timber frame construction and growing more trees, capturing carbon out of the air and turning it into housing.

A very rough ballpark estimate is that you'd need to use at least as much timber as we've mined coal. Probably a lot more since coal has a higher carbon content than timber and we've also burned plenty of oil and gas. That's a mind boggling amount of timber.

They are saying to stop using steel in construction.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#423

Post by dd36 »

dgdosen wrote: post #417

The first thing I wondered about these comments is how often "Peak Oil" would be mentioned. There has been no peak oil related crash. I think the world's economy and markets are now resilient enough to safely say 'peak oil' will never be a cause for the collapse of civilization. Rising energy prices will just usher out the age of fossil fuels faster. I now wonder what happens when (if?) we get to 'net 0' (which hasn'…

Net negative.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#424

Post by dd36 »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #163

I love that there's a "technology will fix things" model. This assumes we'll discover some magical bullet, that we haven't thought of, that will counteract erosion of topsoil, water shortages, and climate change. Another implicit assumption is that we'll be able to move forward unilaterally with such a solution, instead of it becoming a political football until it's too late to do anything, like climate change. A lot…

We already discovered it. It’s nuclear energy.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#425

Post by vegetablepotpie »

webinvest wrote: post #167
nr2x wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lost hope in politics, I’m buying a sturdy helmet and hoping for the best.

Yeah I watched a cspan question and answer session and one dinosaur-aged Republican representative from West Palm Beach Florida sounded so backwards. He was saying that we shouldn’t transition to green energy because of all the coal miner jobs that will be displaced by green energy jobs. It seemed like he was just being difficult or corrupt because Florida doesn’t even have any coal mines or coal mining jobs! Also, i…

I’m not so sure. A lot of people don’t remember this, but GW Bush ran to the left of Al Gore on climate policy in 2000. Bush proposed using the clean air act to reduce the CO2 output of power plants to voters in September 2000 [1].

Christine Todd Whitman was nominated as administrator of the EPA to enact the policy. Lobbying by the fossil fuel industry changed the direction of this policy and because of push back, Bush took the opposite direction of the policy he campaigned on.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/episode/7uhLvnKOClYXtJ8ZdjJM43

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#426

Post by [deleted] »

conjectures wrote: post #406

Wow, actually slightly shocked how seriously this model seems to be taken or, at least, how sticky it is. Coefficients, dynamics, number of entities involved, stationarity. There are so many unknowns and so many reasons to believe incomplete understanding could scupper predictions... I know everyone likes to believe themselves to be a good Fermi estimator. But trying to model the world beyond 2050 when the weather a…

[deleted]

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#427

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

dgdosen wrote: post #417

The first thing I wondered about these comments is how often "Peak Oil" would be mentioned. There has been no peak oil related crash. I think the world's economy and markets are now resilient enough to safely say 'peak oil' will never be a cause for the collapse of civilization. Rising energy prices will just usher out the age of fossil fuels faster. I now wonder what happens when (if?) we get to 'net 0' (which hasn'…

How would we ever get there?

The cost to build and maintain powerplants is expensive - whether it's solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear. This cost needs to be amortized over the life of the plant. It's hard to imagine this getting to less than $0.05 / kWh.

Construction costs alone make Nuclear Energy cost ~$0.08 / kWh even in China where construction is relatively cheap. Even if we get Fusion energy, AFAIK it's unlikely the construction will be substantially cheaper.

Obviously if anything was free - people would abuse it. You would need to build endless powerplants (which cost money) to provide free energy for people to launch rockets and mine asteroids and produce fertilizer and desalinate water...

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#428

Post by throwaway0a5e »

giantg2 wrote: post #386
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the uproar if you tried to build a nuclear powered desalination plant on Long Island. That's basically what you're alluding to with the seaweed and food thing. Cultural and ideological hangups will go right out the window in a hurry when there's a real crisis and a culturally incompatible solution. People aren't gonna let things truly go to shit over something as trivial as what they eat or where their water…

"Doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine how climate change might F-over downstate Illinois (because farms) but Chicago won't let them do anything about it because they hold all the cards and they make their money a different way." I actually can't envision what you mean by "Chicago won't let them do anything about it". Isn't Chicago the more liberal area that wants to fight climate change?

I just picked some random state that has a farming economy (very sensitive to slight environmental changes) at one end and a city economy (not so directly tied to the environment as long as energy is cheap and it isn't flooded) at the other that runs the show so forgive me if the example isn't bulletproof.

>Isn't Chicago the more liberal area that wants to fight climate change?

Right up until you have to take some other controversial step in order to do it.

I'm sure you can imagine how things would go if downstate farmers wanted to all apply some sort of fertilizer that would make their farming economically viable but the beta and the v1 versions of the chemical also killed some sort of visible wildlife.

Re: My take on the study from MIT that predicts “societal collapse”

#430

Post by oezi »

PeterisP wrote: post #389
Dudeman112 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also mostly assumes that the undeveloped world won't eat the developed world. Societal collapse in for example India or Brazil would make things awkward real fast for a large chunk of the world

In general, that would be prevented by the fact that the developed world is militarily stronger than the developing world. If some resources are not enough for India or Brazil, they can't take them from the developed world in the style of the earlier resource wars for e.g. oil.

Military might is not very helpful in the modern world. The NATO coalition could not hold their ground in a country such as Afghanistan nor could all of Europe prevent that the collapse of order in Syria (a country of 20m) caused a spill of 2m migrants into Europe.

Your parent was suggesting that the developed world could not deal with a collapse of India or Brazil or several populous African countries.

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