Most societies are currently realizing that the baby boomer's frat party is over, and our children will live in a different world than we were born into...
Follow American politics much? The only concession that the current crop of political idiots is making is that they think they can get gasoline down to $2.00 a gallon instead of 50 cents per gallon.
Some times you just need to start over. I'm well stocked with solver coins, shotgun shells, peanut butter, and tampons. I'll be able to trade for whatever I need in the collapse.
Solver coins? Wolfram-Alpha in currency form? You'll probably need it to figure out how to make a balanced diet with the other stuff you're storing. Peanut duck is pretty good, but would probably get a tad boring.
At the very least, I'd suggest stashing some duct tape, wire and of course, WD-40.
And read up on military small unit tactics. That group of frazzled ex-vets (the ones with the AK-47's) might have a different definition of 'trading' then the one you are thinking of.
The underlying assumption here is: "if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace.". When it comes to human behavior, such long term assumption may not valid especially since the problem is widely known among the people who care to look beyond the headlines. There are many smart people are working toward a steady state economy and sustainable future based on renewable energy. I am hopeful.
"A person is smart, humans are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
Little exercise: create a population (or economic) model for human civilization using any time in history. It will predict a peak population (or population explosion) at some other point in history (usually a couple hundreds years from the chosen time). Yet guess what? Humanity has continued to expand well past that predicted limits, because these models are inherently unable to predict changes in the trends: they can only be based on current or historical trends, and those always change unpredictably.
Look at the total planetary burden of humans: Up until the industrial revolution it gradually wandered upward with significant die offs including one fairly soon after humans branched off the other primates which dropped population down to perhaps a couple of thousand people.
Then we hit the industrial revolution and we've started on the exponential growth phase. Clearly, that growth (and growth of resource utilization) has to stop at one point or another, either by decreasing population growth and letting demographics drop the numbers over a couple of generations (what we're trying to do), launching excess population off the planet (preferred method for Heinlein addicts, Star Trek groupies and fans of Josh Wheedon) or by invoking Liebig's Law of the Minimum and crashing the population as is seen in insect ecology.
The big question is how close we are to a critical resource depletion that will force the latter scenario. (The science fiction scenario is discounted until somebody invents essentially limitless energy or the ability to manipulate physics undreamed of currently.) Unfortunately, it looks like we're uncomfortably close to maximal production rates of fossil fuels and we're several orders of magnitude away from replacing fossil fuels with anything else on a joule-per-joule basis (ignoring the difficulties of replacing oil with non liquid forms of energy - hard to do, but not impossible). At the same time, the climate might be changing rapidly enough to stress a number of large economies with large numbers of people in short periods of time.
And Los Angeles and Reno still need lots and lots of water.
So you're correct - they're models based on extant data and IIRC the original Club of Rome report has several scenarios that were variably optimistic about our ability to manipulate important variables.
Yeah, but watch those negative slopes on the oscillation - they can be a bitch. And that's what we're talking about. Fast negative local slope equates to a world of hurt for those alive at the time.
Do whatever the hell you want. Your personal sacrifices won't change things one iota. The major driver now is the enormous growth in resource utilization in regions of the world which have, until recently, been limited to a more or less subsistence lifestyle and are now trying to emulate a Western way of life.
I'm referring to, of course, China and India. Billions of people who want a steak, air conditioning and a car. Nothing inherently wrong with that, except they're going to compete for our steak, air conditioning and car. And 'we' are not likely to give it up without protest.
They also failed to notice that China and India are hell bent on scarfing resources so they can reach rough parity with US / Europe per capita energy use. Yep, the rate of growth of population is slowing, but population is still increasing. The big question is whether we can 'wait it out' until the human population drops to a more reasonable (in terms of planetary resources) level or we get a replicator that can use a local gas giant as feedstocks.
With the right technology (and application thereof) to reduce and mitigate human's continued impact on global resources, the economy can indeed grow with practically no limit.
Ah, a Cornicopian.
First, you come up with a real (not theoretical) way to power your unlimited civilization. Then we can talk.
While you're researching that, feast your eyes on this scary story. (Leibig's Law of the Minimum).
Show me a cultural system / civilization that has NOT collapsed. Perhaps the most stable (at least ethnically and geographically) has been China but even they have gone through massive swings of population, wealth and control over the 5000 or so years they've been keeping track.
The absolute best a civilization can do is to hope that the change over is relatively smooth, but with the human population bumping up against global resource limits, that doesn't seem particularly likely.
And it's likely to backfire on the Republicans. You've just given him a bunch of perfectly free publicity of the worst sort - your opponent comes off as the good guy. Likely a significant fraction of the voting population would never had cottoned on to the fact that he is / was an astronaut. Now everybody knows. And if there is a generic hero in the 21st Century, it's got to be astronauts.
Even if you don't really care about NASA and space exploration, astronauts still have a pretty good (albeit not totally unblemished) reputation.
The squirrel can counter-attack and bite the snake behind the head if it attacks the big moving warm thing just next to the tail. There is plenty of evidence on youtube they do just that.
So you're saying that a squirrel is really a small mongoose?
(Eyes furry rodent hanging out at the bird feeder with a bit more respect.)
A significant amount of the US military effort is in direct support of keeping our oil supply flowing.
That's not chump change.
Then there are numerous tax breaks, early depreciation allowances and numerous accounting shenanigans that cover oil exploration and recovery. To be fair, that nonsense is pretty typical for several other major industries (medicine, automobiles, aircraft, military, agriculture) but one should always call a spade a spade....
And if you look in the video here you see exactly this. Enormous structures in what clearly is a residential area. If you put a conventional thermal plant there you'd get the same complaints.
It's not the wind energy generation per se, it's an over reaching, poorly structured law that benefits a few corporations.
That's an interesting trailer. The documentary style (multiple short anecdotes and hyperbolic claims) is annoying, but the video showing the massive structures within a couple hundred feet of residences is pretty telling. I wouldn't want one that close. Not at all.
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Three "Jenny McCarthy Lifetime Achievement Points" for you, sir!
Most societies are currently realizing that the baby boomer's frat party is over, and our children will live in a different world than we were born into ...
Follow American politics much? The only concession that the current crop of political idiots is making is that they think they can get gasoline down to $2.00 a gallon instead of 50 cents per gallon.
Sounds like the same old party to me.
Some times you just need to start over. I'm well stocked with solver coins, shotgun shells, peanut butter, and tampons. I'll be able to trade for whatever I need in the collapse.
Solver coins? Wolfram-Alpha in currency form? You'll probably need it to figure out how to make a balanced diet with the other stuff you're storing. Peanut duck is pretty good, but would probably get a tad boring.
At the very least, I'd suggest stashing some duct tape, wire and of course, WD-40.
And read up on military small unit tactics. That group of frazzled ex-vets (the ones with the AK-47's) might have a different definition of 'trading' then the one you are thinking of.
The underlying assumption here is: "if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace.". When it comes to human behavior, such long term assumption may not valid especially since the problem is widely known among the people who care to look beyond the headlines. There are many smart people are working toward a steady state economy and sustainable future based on renewable energy. I am hopeful.
"A person is smart, humans are dumb, panicky animals and you know that."
Agent K
The trends never stay the same.
True enough.
Little exercise: create a population (or economic) model for human civilization using any time in history. It will predict a peak population (or population explosion) at some other point in history (usually a couple hundreds years from the chosen time). Yet guess what? Humanity has continued to expand well past that predicted limits, because these models are inherently unable to predict changes in the trends: they can only be based on current or historical trends, and those always change unpredictably.
Look at the total planetary burden of humans: Up until the industrial revolution it gradually wandered upward with significant die offs including one fairly soon after humans branched off the other primates which dropped population down to perhaps a couple of thousand people.
Then we hit the industrial revolution and we've started on the exponential growth phase. Clearly, that growth (and growth of resource utilization) has to stop at one point or another, either by decreasing population growth and letting demographics drop the numbers over a couple of generations (what we're trying to do), launching excess population off the planet (preferred method for Heinlein addicts, Star Trek groupies and fans of Josh Wheedon) or by invoking Liebig's Law of the Minimum and crashing the population as is seen in insect ecology.
The big question is how close we are to a critical resource depletion that will force the latter scenario. (The science fiction scenario is discounted until somebody invents essentially limitless energy or the ability to manipulate physics undreamed of currently.) Unfortunately, it looks like we're uncomfortably close to maximal production rates of fossil fuels and we're several orders of magnitude away from replacing fossil fuels with anything else on a joule-per-joule basis (ignoring the difficulties of replacing oil with non liquid forms of energy - hard to do, but not impossible). At the same time, the climate might be changing rapidly enough to stress a number of large economies with large numbers of people in short periods of time.
And Los Angeles and Reno still need lots and lots of water.
So you're correct - they're models based on extant data and IIRC the original Club of Rome report has several scenarios that were variably optimistic about our ability to manipulate important variables.
But it certainly looks scary out there....
Yeah, but watch those negative slopes on the oscillation - they can be a bitch. And that's what we're talking about. Fast negative local slope equates to a world of hurt for those alive at the time.
Do whatever the hell you want. Your personal sacrifices won't change things one iota. The major driver now is the enormous growth in resource utilization in regions of the world which have, until recently, been limited to a more or less subsistence lifestyle and are now trying to emulate a Western way of life.
I'm referring to, of course, China and India. Billions of people who want a steak, air conditioning and a car. Nothing inherently wrong with that, except they're going to compete for our steak, air conditioning and car. And 'we' are not likely to give it up without protest.
Read Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Civilizations".
Yes, it's happened and yes, it will happen again.
They also failed to notice that China and India are hell bent on scarfing resources so they can reach rough parity with US / Europe per capita energy use. Yep, the rate of growth of population is slowing, but population is still increasing. The big question is whether we can 'wait it out' until the human population drops to a more reasonable (in terms of planetary resources) level or we get a replicator that can use a local gas giant as feedstocks.
My bet is on the 'not' part of that question.
You need some additional Geek cred.
May I suggest this timely treatise: A Canticle for Leibowitz.
With the right technology (and application thereof) to reduce and mitigate human's continued impact on global resources, the economy can indeed grow with practically no limit.
Ah, a Cornicopian.
First, you come up with a real (not theoretical) way to power your unlimited civilization. Then we can talk.
While you're researching that, feast your eyes on this scary story. (Leibig's Law of the Minimum).
Show me a cultural system / civilization that has NOT collapsed. Perhaps the most stable (at least ethnically and geographically) has been China but even they have gone through massive swings of population, wealth and control over the 5000 or so years they've been keeping track.
The absolute best a civilization can do is to hope that the change over is relatively smooth, but with the human population bumping up against global resource limits, that doesn't seem particularly likely.
And it's likely to backfire on the Republicans. You've just given him a bunch of perfectly free publicity of the worst sort - your opponent comes off as the good guy. Likely a significant fraction of the voting population would never had cottoned on to the fact that he is / was an astronaut. Now everybody knows. And if there is a generic hero in the 21st Century, it's got to be astronauts.
Even if you don't really care about NASA and space exploration, astronauts still have a pretty good (albeit not totally unblemished) reputation.
Nice work, bozos.
Has anyone given thought to attaching rattlesnakes to sharks to assist with laser targeting? It would be a wonderfully evil contraption.
The squirrel can counter-attack and bite the snake behind the head if it attacks the big moving warm thing just next to the tail. There is plenty of evidence on youtube they do just that.
So you're saying that a squirrel is really a small mongoose?
(Eyes furry rodent hanging out at the bird feeder with a bit more respect.)
Perhaps these robocritters can deal with the plague of our snake-in-the-grass politicians.
I, for one, welcome our new hot tailed rodent overlords.
Why do you hate America?
If it was like an Ikea kit, it would explain a number of things.
He's still probably trying to read the directions.
A significant amount of the US military effort is in direct support of keeping our oil supply flowing.
That's not chump change.
Then there are numerous tax breaks, early depreciation allowances and numerous accounting shenanigans that cover oil exploration and recovery. To be fair, that nonsense is pretty typical for several other major industries (medicine, automobiles, aircraft, military, agriculture) but one should always call a spade a spade....
Errr, this video.
And if you look in the video here you see exactly this. Enormous structures in what clearly is a residential area. If you put a conventional thermal plant there you'd get the same complaints.
It's not the wind energy generation per se, it's an over reaching, poorly structured law that benefits a few corporations.
Who'd a thought?
That's an interesting trailer. The documentary style (multiple short anecdotes and hyperbolic claims) is annoying, but the video showing the massive structures within a couple hundred feet of residences is pretty telling. I wouldn't want one that close. Not at all.
Looks like it's mostly an issue of bad zoning.
What everybody here is missing is that pic has been photoshopped. They cloned out the little wire going directly into her brain.
Google now has access to everything. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Anyone got a good suggestion on how to filter this spam out?
There's likely to be an 'off' button somewhere on the device you're using. Power down!
'Trade shows' huh? The only part of trade shows that this demographic wants to see is the stuff in the hotel rooms after the exhibits close.