Using Human History As a Guide Could Our Present Civilization Fall into a New Dark Ages or Even a Collapse ?

[S John]

37 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Yup. Easily accessible fossil fuels are pretty much gone. If we lose our current technological edge and get knocked back to the stage where we need them to get back to being able to tap renewables, it's going to cause almost-irrecoverable problems.

On the other hand, this is far too cynical. We've seen countries like Germany - a north European country lacking lots of sunny days, mostly inland, heavily industrialised and urbanised with a huge population - running completely on renewables for days on end. Even Britain, which has lagged far behind other nations in renewable technology, has had a few days of running on renewables alone. We're not far off from getting it down, it just requires scaling up and if the need was urgent we could do it in a few years.

To power the entire planet from solar, you could build a ring of solar collectors around the moon and beam the energy back to Earth as microwaves. The cost would be ~$10 trillion. Enormously expensive, yes, but also about 1/7 of the world's total GDP. If we needed to do it as an emergency or lose electricity worldwide, we could do it. Or, rather less extravagantly, we could just build massive solar farms in the middle of deserts, or pass laws requiring 100% of all new houses and flats built worldwide to have solar panels on their roofs.

If we look at how quickly the western world shifted from almost no-one having mobile phones to almost everyone having them, it was like two years. It was built on technology that had been worked on at much smaller scales for years earlier, yes, but when the moment came that it made sense to do the switch, it was done with utterly stunning speed. If you put it in an SF novel ten years earlier, people would not have remotely believed it. The same can happen with renewables, with electric cars and so on.

Tough sell in the US, but I would love to see this happen.  I definitely want to get solar panels on my house eventually.  In Texas there's so much sun here that everyone could power their own house with solar if there were a push to do so - and not just Texas but the entire southern half of the United States, and most of the western half, is fertile ground for solar power.  My girlfriend's aunt and uncle own a ranch in rural TX and they've got both solar panels and a water catchment system and are basically self sufficient for electricity and water and it really didn't require anything crazy to get there.  Completely aside from concerns over societal collapse I just generally love the idea of that kind of efficiency and self-reliance.  But to make a real push for it you almost need a completely clean slate from all the special interest entanglements currently plaguing government and that doesn't bode well for timely transition.  You almost have to hit the breaking point before you can reverse the situation due to sheer inertia.    

[ThinkerX]

2 hours ago, S John said:

Tough sell in the US, but I would love to see this happen.  I definitely want to get solar panels on my house eventually.  In Texas there's so much sun here that everyone could power their own house with solar if there were a push to do so - and not just Texas but the entire southern half of the United States, and most of the western half, is fertile ground for solar power.  My girlfriend's aunt and uncle own a ranch in rural TX and they've got both solar panels and a water catchment system and are basically self sufficient for electricity and water and it really didn't require anything crazy to get there.  Completely aside from concerns over societal collapse I just generally love the idea of that kind of efficiency and self-reliance.  But to make a real push for it you almost need a completely clean slate from all the special interest entanglements currently plaguing government and that doesn't bode well for timely transition.  You almost have to hit the breaking point before you can reverse the situation due to sheer inertia.    

Yes.  The fossil fuels industry is, and will continue, to fight 'green energy' any way they can. (Witness Trump's policies and decrees).  Eventually, though, a tipping point gets reached, and then things get interesting.  Might be more than a few billionaire types going bust before the dust settles.

[Spring Bass]

I don't think there are many good examples from history of civilizational collapse that we could look to. The fundamental vulnerability of agrarian civilizations was that they were dependent on food surplus margins vastly lower than what we have now, and had a limited ability to move large amounts of food over long distances in case particular areas had major food shortages (or store food for long periods). Even the Roman Empire struggled with that, especially if there were other stresses on the system (of which there were plenty in the 5th and 6th centuries). And of course look at the Great Famine of 1315-1317 to see what three years of bad weather can do to such societies. 

Modern civilization (or at least large parts of it) has a much greater capacity to produce, store, and transport food supplies. 

[Jo498]

As someone mentioned above modern society is also more vulnerable in other respects. Until only a few decades ago, the staple food production was mostly decentralized and local. Not dependent on transportation over long distances or on imports (Roman dependency on grain from Egypt was an exception). As recently as my mother's childhood in the 1950s in an industrialized country like Germany people in rural regions were almost self-sufficient in their food production. They had a few pigs, cattle, chicken, maybe a goat as well as field, orchards and pastures that were tended in the "spare time" after work, at weekend as well as by the wife and school-aged kids. My mother's and my aunt's pocket money as teenager was literally "milk money" they got for milking cows in the early morning before school. (Of course this sufficiency did not apply to larger cities they did have problems after the war and people went bartering for food in the countryside.)

This is obviously not as efficient as modern industrialized agriculture (but the latter is not very efficient without cheap fossil fuels! and often not at all sustainable for the soil) but far more resilient and in many ways also more sustainable. Of course it goes with a lot of backbreaking work and a considerably lower standard of living. OTOH there is no law of nature that forbids combining indoor plumbing or solar powered smartphones with smaller scale and more sustainable (food) production.

The most important things for me are a general reduction of the use of everything in the developed countries and the switch to renewables. But it is important to realize that renewables will be able to sustain all the wasteful gimmicks we had with fossil fuels. We should not only replace fossil powered cars with electrical ones but rather go for far fewer cars and rather use trains, trams, bikes, maybe e-powered motorbikes or small cars. And if we use cars they should be shared and not almost everyone should need to own one. This is already easily possible in urban regions.

 

[Jo498]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

On the other hand, this is far too cynical. We've seen countries like Germany - a north European country lacking lots of sunny days, mostly inland, heavily industrialised and urbanised with a huge population - running completely on renewables for days on end.

That's an exaggeration. Only a considerable portion of electricity is from renewables. German houses are still mostly heated by fossils, German cars still run on fossils and the car industry is very stubborn about it and has probably already missed the opportunity to become anywhere close as good with electric vehicles as it used to be with conventional ones because they have basically ignored the field for such a long time. And we have unfortunately some of the dirtiest coal plants (for political reasons) although it is not to deny that especially wind power seems to go well. Still, the long term sustainability is often not properly scrutinized. I seriously doubt that one can produce the huge steel vanes for these rotors by wind power. And how long does such a rotor last before it has to be replaced?

[GAROVORKIN]

 We're putting all of our knowledge in computer storage . What if for one reason or another, we lose access to all of  it ? 

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

As someone mentioned above modern society is also more vulnerable in other respects. Until only a few decades ago, the staple food production was mostly decentralized and local. Not dependent on transportation over long distances or on imports (Roman dependency on grain from Egypt was an exception). As recently as my mother's childhood in the 1950s in an industrialized country like Germany people in rural regions were almost self-sufficient in their food production. They had a few pigs, cattle, chicken, maybe a goat as well as field, orchards and pastures that were tended in the "spare time" after work, at weekend as well as by the wife and school-aged kids. My mother's and my aunt's pocket money as teenager was literally "milk money" they got for milking cows in the early morning before school. (Of course this sufficiency did not apply to larger cities they did have problems after the war and people went bartering for food in the countryside.)

This is obviously not as efficient as modern industrialized agriculture (but the latter is not very efficient without cheap fossil fuels! and often not at all sustainable for the soil) but far more resilient and in many ways also more sustainable. Of course it goes with a lot of backbreaking work and a considerably lower standard of living. OTOH there is no law of nature that forbids combining indoor plumbing or solar powered smartphones with smaller scale and more sustainable (food) production.

The most important things for me are a general reduction of the use of everything in the developed countries and the switch to renewables. But it is important to realize that renewables will be able to sustain all the wasteful gimmicks we had with fossil fuels. We should not only replace fossil powered cars with electrical ones but rather go for far fewer cars and rather use trains, trams, bikes, maybe e-powered motorbikes or small cars. And if we use cars they should be shared and not almost everyone should need to own one. This is already easily possible in urban regions.

 

Yes, and I'd add to that, we are not just allowing a single person to drive around in a fossil fuel burner, we are not even just encouraging it. We are pretty much requiring it if you don't live in a major city, in particular in the U.S.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

As someone mentioned above modern society is also more vulnerable in other respects. Until only a few decades ago, the staple food production was mostly decentralized and local. Not dependent on transportation over long distances or on imports (Roman dependency on grain from Egypt was an exception). As recently as my mother's childhood in the 1950s in an industrialized country like Germany people in rural regions were almost self-sufficient in their food production. They had a few pigs, cattle, chicken, maybe a goat as well as field, orchards and pastures that were tended in the "spare time" after work, at weekend as well as by the wife and school-aged kids. My mother's and my aunt's pocket money as teenager was literally "milk money" they got for milking cows in the early morning before school. (Of course this sufficiency did not apply to larger cities they did have problems after the war and people went bartering for food in the countryside.)

This is obviously not as efficient as modern industrialized agriculture (but the latter is not very efficient without cheap fossil fuels! and often not at all sustainable for the soil) but far more resilient and in many ways also more sustainable. Of course it goes with a lot of backbreaking work and a considerably lower standard of living. OTOH there is no law of nature that forbids combining indoor plumbing or solar powered smartphones with smaller scale and more sustainable (food) production.

The most important things for me are a general reduction of the use of everything in the developed countries and the switch to renewables. But it is important to realize that renewables will be able to sustain all the wasteful gimmicks we had with fossil fuels. We should not only replace fossil powered cars with electrical ones but rather go for far fewer cars and rather use trains, trams, bikes, maybe e-powered motorbikes or small cars. And if we use cars they should be shared and not almost everyone should need to own one. This is already easily possible in urban regions.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but don't we literally lack the ability to grow enough food to feed the planet without using fossil fuels (which are an actual ingredient in the process for artificially fixing nitrogen not just the energy source (natural gas is the primary hydrogen source for the process)) to fix nitrogen to facilitate plant growth?  Therefore if we run out of fossil fuels a large portion of the human population will starve to death?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

[Loge]

46 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but don't we literally lack the ability to grow enough food to feed the planet without using fossil fuels (which are an actual ingredient in the process for artificially fixing nitrogen not just the energy source (natural gas is the primary hydrogen source for the process)) to fix nitrogen to facilitate plant growth?  Therefore if we run out of fossil fuels a large portion of the human population will starve to death?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

Producing the hydrogen from natural gas may be the cheapest way, but there are others. You can split water into hydrogen and oxygen, e.g. The energy cost is just higher.

Here's the Wikipedia article on hydrogen production

[IheartIheartTesla]

20 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Dude. Duuuuude. People are already doing that right now. Heck, we have people regularly selling homeopathic medicine at the supermarket and people buy it, in droves. Antivaccers are happily letting other kids die. Tribes of people are raping virgins to get rid of AIDS.

I phrased what I wanted to say a little inelegantly. What I meant to say is that scientific Truth has made great leaps since the Middle Ages, and once a Truth is discovered, there is no going back. That is to say, these Truths now exist in the universe and are irreversible. 

Individual can and will continue to ignore that Truth (s) now and in the future. The best thing we can do to prevent civilizational collapse, in my opinion is to ensure as many Truths as possible are passed on to future generations.

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but don't we literally lack the ability to grow enough food to feed the planet without using fossil fuels (which are an actual ingredient in the process for artificially fixing nitrogen not just the energy source (natural gas is the primary hydrogen source for the process)) to fix nitrogen to facilitate plant growth?  Therefore if we run out of fossil fuels a large portion of the human population will starve to death?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

You might be interested in Charles Mann's article for the Atlantic:
 

Quote

 

But there was no obvious way to manufacture the nitrogenous substances that feed plants. That technology was provided before and during the First World War by two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch. Their subsequent Nobel Prizes were richly deserved: The Haber-Bosch process, as it is called, was arguably the most consequential technological innovation of the 20th century. Today the Haber-Bosch process is responsible for almost all of the world’s synthetic fertilizer. A little more than 1 percent of the world’s industrial energy is devoted to it. “That 1 percent,” the futurist Ramez Naam has noted, “roughly doubles the amount of food the world can grow

 

I just quoted a portion of the article, but read the whole thing......

[GAROVORKIN]

So far, lots of interesting stuff. 

[GAROVORKIN]

On 1/23/2018 at 4:28 PM, Free Northman Reborn said:

A major problem in my view is that most of the easily accessible raw materials and fossil resources have been depleted. Meaning that if something knocks us back to a pre-industrial state I don't know if we can return to our current tehcnological level again. I suspect we basically have one shot to make the colonization of space work, and it is now. If we need to start over again, there is a chance that we will not be able to re-industrialize, and be marooned on this planet at a less developed technological level forever.

 

Which means we will go extinct which happen long before the the Sun renders Earth Uninhabitable which will happen on about a billion years because the sun will be about 20 percent hotter then it is now.

[Loge]

8 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Which means we will go extinct which happen long before the the Sun renders Earth Uninhabitable which will happen on about a billion years because the sun will be about 20 percent hotter then it is now.

Not hotter, but more luminous. The temperature doesn't really change, the Sun just gets bigger. Not sure about the consequences for life on earth. I don't think anybody knows. Without any change to the atmosphere it gets hotter, of cause, but a billion years is a long time. The earth would be uninhabitable now without CO2 in the atmosphere, and definitely should have been in the past, when the Sun was fainter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faint_young_Sun_paradox

[Larry of the Lawn]

Probably we just wait for some Guantanamo torturer who got fired to become Our New Leader and make the case we get a new sun to the powers that be.

[lokisnow]

On 1/22/2018 at 4:25 PM, GAROVORKIN said:

How are we in the present like and unlike past civilizations that have suffered  these  particular kinds of fates ? What do you think are our vulnerabilities in this regard? And what any, would be the telltale sings and indications that we entering either a Dark age or a potential total collapse ? Are they avoidable or are they inevitable in the cycle of history ?

How do think it will happen ?  Thoughts ?

Dark ages? You mean the 1500 years of vibrant thought, and advances of humanity throughout the world (excepting of course the irrelevant, third-world European backwaters of France England Germany etc)

if, like the majority of the worlds population, you weren’t part of one of the aforementioned third world countries repressed by religious dictatorships, the dark ages did not exist. 

What dark ages? The dark ages were just a local disturbance, and hardly constitute a global phenomenon.

[lokisnow]

This is a problem of scale of thought , imo, there are seven billion people on the planet. A civilization collapse of a large scale is logistically an incredible problem, remember, the holocaust wasn’t worse because the Germans ran out of the logistical capacity to murder people En masse. Bullets were precious, gas is dependent on complex manufacturing capacity (and both require you deal with getting corpses which quickly became big logistics problems of their own) and ovens are reliant on enormous quantities of fuel, which they rapidly ran out of.

that leaves starvation, which is a big problem for Asia because their percentage of arable land is relatively small, especially compared to their population levels. But for the United States? 90% of the United States is arable land, this country is never going to starve. Is any world power going to invade Us for our arable land? Of course not, we are well defended and far away, the supply chain problems are enormous. On the other hand, Africa is much less well defended, much closer and quite arable and has been integrating deeply with Asian powers for some time.

an Asia led genocide and displacement of native Africans  modeled on the European led genocide and displacement of native Americans is probably the most likely major outcome in response to a global starvation scenario. 

And even that sort of world war three between asia and Africa is probably not going to result in a collapse of civilization . 

Its not going to come from disease, measles is basically the maximum a disease can rapidly spread, and outbreaks of that level are containable by our current system, an outbreak of ten thousand cases is still five orders of magnitude below the numbers by which we count global population. 

and outbreaks were even containable by crude quarantine and inoculation systems of the recent past.

The biggest thing that could change the future of the world, both in climate change and population increases, is setting global high standards for the education of females and high access to birth control. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

I think the more likely scenario for a civilizational collapse, for many of the reasons you have noted, wont be internal to the Earth but rather external....for instance, a large meteor wiping out large swathes of population, or doing something horrible to our atmosphere that results in near inhospitable conditions.

[GAROVORKIN]

7 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I think the more likely scenario for a civilizational collapse, for many of the reasons you have noted, wont be internal to the Earth but rather external....for instance, a large meteor wiping out large swathes of population, or doing something horrible to our atmosphere that results in near inhospitable conditions.

Well there other things Maybe A even't on the scale of the Permian Extinction event  of 250 million years age in which 90 percent of everything  that live on Earth died.  

An Asteroid strike is another possibility ,but intros case we have  technology which might be about to do nothing about that.  

A star going nova with 1000 light year of Earth could cause some damage to our electronics. There is a large Red Giant star Betelgeuse which is approaching nova phase about 900 light years away from us .  If the star were a Blue Hyper-giant that could finish all life earth. 

A star Passing too come to our solar. system could cause Earth and some of the planets to be thrown off into space .

A passing Blackhole would would destroy not only Earth but the entire solar system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

20 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Well there other things Maybe A even't on the scale of the Permian Extinction event  of 250 million years age in which 90 percent of everything  that live on Earth died.  

An Asteroid strike is another possibility ,but intros case we have  technology which might be about to do nothing about that.  

A star going nova with 1000 light year of Earth could cause some damage to our electronics. There is a large Red Giant star Betelgeuse which is approaching nova phase about 900 light years away from us .  If the star were a Blue Hyper-giant that could finish all life earth. 

A star Passing too come to our solar. system could cause Earth and some of the planets to be thrown off into space .

A passing Blackhole would would destroy not only Earth but the entire solar system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally (in the most literal sense of the word), a guaranteed source of the apocalypse 900 years away wouldn't concern me much.