Imminent chances of societal collapse is sky high

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Bio weapons are good. Very targeted! I'd feel so guilty killing a cat by mistake!

Targeting would be easy, just use cell phones as the vector.

[ignoramus]

We'll start with targeting leftist hipsters precisely, by poisoning soy lattes! No-one else drinks that shit! lol

[Duty]

I've always thought that "population collapse" would be very excellent for the environment/resources depletion etc.

[Silver]

The dinosaurs had their fun, then they were eliminated. Only a matter of time for us.

[The Grand Nudger]

A long time, hopefully. I wouldn't mind 300 million years. I don't think that their model accurately or fully reflects human behavior with respect to deforestation.

Deforestation is the environmental movements greatest success story. While we know that, globally, we cut down more trees than we plant, this is almost entirely due to the destruction of tropical forests and the needs of those countries and others to develop. Outside of that, and I'll use the US east coast as an example, we've doubled the amount of trees over the past 70 years. We've entirely reversed the pre-columbian deforestation of the east coast, and we're well on the way toward reversing the post contact harvest toll. We're not there yet, lots of work still to be done, and the west coast is recovering from a massive deficit.

As it turns out, something very much like this created the amazon, as we know it. It's more an intentional garden than the raw nature we imagine. Once we realize that we're dealing with managed plots, the behavior can be recognized for what it is, for the same thing we did until the 20's. As the authors of the paper note, trees are a very important resource and there's always an economic incentive to having trees. There are other incentives, best expressed by referencing the creation of national forests or the forest centric value systems of the people who grew the amazon.

Deforestation is not new, it's mans primary means of survival - and any credible effort to reduce or reverse it must be capable of acknowledging and respecting this immutable fact and it's relationship to human well being. We go through boom and bust cycles on a regional basis, but examples of complete deforestation and collapse are only remarkable for their rarity.

[Anomalocaris]

The dinosaurs had their fun, then they were eliminated. Only a matter of time for us.

Their fun lasted >170,000,000 years   Our fun is of <170,000 Years so far.

“Societal collapse“ is a evocatively vague term.  There is a large number of degrees of “Collapse”.  “Societal Collapse” of some notable degrees happened many times during just the last century, on several instances to nations and societies we would consider advanced, yet technological society is still here.

There is yet a vast, essentially unbridgeable by our powers, chasm between the uttermost “societal collapse”, and extinction of the human species.

So don’t get carried away with glee at prospect of your own hoped for demise.   Your chance of bringing too many others down is slim.

[Paleophyte]

Models predicting something that nobody has observed before are always good for a chuckle. The End Is Nigh plus or minus 5 billion years!!!

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Some folks are currently developing a modeling system for societal collapse using chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas as surrogates for humans. Should be interesting to watch.

[Brian37]

Suggested by the modelling

Earth's civilization has a “very low probability” of surviving the next few decades without facing a catastrophic collapse, according to a study published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

Two researchers from Chile and the UK used modeling to see how rates of resource consumption, namely in terms of deforestation, affects the ability of global human society to sustain itself. By their workings, there’s just a 10 percent chance that human civilization will be able to make it through the next 20 to 40 years without a catastrophic collapse.

“We conclude from a statistical point of view that the probability that our civilization survives itself is less than 10 percent in the most optimistic scenario,” the study authors write.

“Calculations show that, maintaining the actual rate of population growth and resource consumption, in particular forest consumption, we have a few decades left before an irreversible collapse of our civilization.”

“It is hard to imagine, in absence of very strong collective efforts, big changes of these parameters to occur in such time scale,” they added.

This is all theoretical, of course. The study authors are both mathematical physicists who use modeling to understand complex systems, ranging from complicated biological processes to fiddly social systems. This intensely theoretical approach does have some limitations. As the researchers point out, their work assumes some parameters (such as population growth and deforestation rate) will remain constant, which is certainly not guaranteed. Forest is also taken as a proxy for all resources, which could be seen as oversimplistic.

Nevertheless, the study paints a compelling image of how rampant deforestation and population collapse threaten human society as a whole.

If too much of the world's wealth doesn't pull it's head out of its ass, this wont be just a "theory". Humans simply cannot keep putting speeding up consumption of resources and polluting in the process and not expect problems. 

I think it is good that we have cell phones and not rotary phones. I am glad I can pm someone on social media, instead of writing a letter and handing it over to the Pony Express. But the global market needs to seriously stop making things that are cheap and disposable and pollute. That only shortens our species ride, and in the process, the harder resources are to obtain, the more expensive they get, and the more conflict they create in competing for them.

Humans need to get over politics, religion, political and economic ideology. Ultimately resources are what all humans need. And unless we slow down and plan and think, our species will shorten our ride.

[Rhizomorph13]

I've been hearing about the imminent demise of the planet since I was able to read. I don't doubt that change is coming, I live in Oregon and it is feeling more like California than the place I grew up in that is dreary cold and rainy most of the year, so I can see clear evidence of change. I worked for the California Conservation Corps and we work with Forestry and the way they manage the forest actually prevents much of the fires that would normally burn right through a natural patch of forest. The fuels reduction, thinning, and planting in riparian zones goes to maintaining the healthiest forest and streams that are possible.

I thought this thread was going to be about the upcoming civil war between liberals and conservatives. I think that is going to thing down the population more than climate change. It has already cost us 158,087 people the last time I checked worldometers.