The Future

[herme3]

How do you think human civilization will be in the future? Some people imagine a civilization that is very scientifically advanced. However, the web site http://www.dieoff.org has a different prediction of the future. Most of the pages on that site basically say that human civilization is at its peak, and all humans are either going to die or just go back to a very simple lifestyle.

 

One of the most interesting pages on that site is http://dieoff.org/page137.htm. Here are some of the things said on that page:

 

A collapse of the earth's human population cannot be more than a few years away. If there are survivors, they will not be able to carry on the cultural traditions of civilization, which require abundant, cheap energy. It is unlikely, however, that the species itself can long persist without the energy whose exploitation is so much a part of its modus vivendi.

 

Most of this energy comes from fossil fuels, which supply nearly 75% of the world's energy. But fossil fuels are being depleted a hundred thousand times faster than they are being formed (Davis, 1990, P. 56). At current rates of consumption, known reserves of Petroleum will be gone in about thirty-five years; natural gas in fifty-two years; and coal in some two hundred years (PRIMED, 1990, p. 145).

 

But when one understands the process that has been responsible for population growth, it becomes clear that an end to growth is the beginning of collapse. Human population has grown exponentially by exhausting limited resources, like yeast in a vat or reindeer on St. Matthew Island, and is destined for a similar fate.

 

As long as population continues to grow, conservation is futile; at the present rate of growth (1.6% per year), even a 25% reduction in resource use would be obliterated in just over eighteen years. And the use of any combination of resources that permits continued population growth can only postpone the day of reckoning.

 

And the spiraling collapse that is far more likely will leave, at best, a handfull of survivors. These people might get by, for a while, by picking through the wreckage of civilization, but soon they would have to lead simpler lives, like the hunters and subsistence farmers of the past. They would not have the resources to build great public works or carry forward scientific inquiry. They could not let individuals remain unproductive as they wrote novels or composed symphonies. After a few generations, they might come to believe that the rubble amid which they live is the remains of cities built by gods.

 

If the passage of Homo sapiens across evolution's stage significantly alters Earth's atmosphere, virtually all living things may become extinct quite rapidly.

 

It is unlikely, however, that anything quite like human beings will come this way again. The resources that have made humans what they are will be gone, and there may not be time before the sun burns out for new deposits of fossil fuel to form and intelligent new scavengers to evolve.

 

On that web site, there are hundreds of other articles written by different scientists that basically say the same thing. Many articles say that human civilization is not sustainable no matter how much you conserve or recycle.

 

At http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm they show the following graph:

 

 

Does this mean that most of us will see the end of human civilization in our lifetimes, or do you just think this site is exaggerating the problems?

[insane_alien]

the site is exagerating. we have alternative fuel sources that we CAN switch to right now. its just that the oil companies are buying out the tech and keeping it down. electricity can be handled by nuclear and rewnewable sources (although nuclear will end up going the way of oil eventually(fission that is)). fuels can come from biodiesel as well as plastics and other petro chems. we would just need to step up the scale of production which is quite simple.

[CPL.Luke]

yeah and even in the event of a massive collapse in infrastructure and population its not that hard to make your own power.

 

just take the starting motor out of a car and hook it up to a windmill, that could give you up to 12 hp or ~8400 watts. more than enough to run a computer and power a few lights. could even run the microwave and the stove off of that.

 

I expect that even in the event of a catastrophic population collapse (95% of population dies off) that humans would be back up to our full capacity within a millenia

[herme3]

the site is exagerating. we have alternative fuel sources that we CAN switch to right now. its just that the oil companies are buying out the tech and keeping it down. electricity can be handled by nuclear and rewnewable sources (although nuclear will end up going the way of oil eventually(fission that is)). fuels can come from biodiesel as well as plastics and other petro chems. we would just need to step up the scale of production which is quite simple.

 

The web site talks about renewable resources in some of its other articles. This is what it said about ethanol:

 

Ethanol production is wasteful of fossil energy resources and does not increase energy security. This is because considerably more energy, much of it high-grade fossil fuels, is required to produce ethanol than is available in the ethanol output. Specifically, about 71% more energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy contained in a gallon of ethanol.

 

It also says somewhere that if nuclear energy was used to completely replace fossil fuels, it would be gone in about 10 years. Do you think this is true?

 

The web site also talks about tons of other problems. An interesting page is http://www.dieoff.com/page146.htm which basically says the economy and population need to completely stop growing for there to be any chance of human civilization surviving.

 

Wow... Reading the different pages on this web site is extremely addicting. Some of the pages seem very scary, but I just keep wondering what is true and what isn't. Almost every page appears to have been written by a different scientist, and almost all of the facts are well referenced. We could probably find other sources that claim this web site's facts are all false, but how would we know those other sources aren't wrong?

[JohnB]

So if these guys wandered around carrying a placard saying "The end of the world is coming" you'd believe them just because they can provide a reference?

 

The end of oil has been predicted since the 1890s. Sorry, but the doom and gloom predictions of supposedly learned persons is becoming incredibly boring.

 

1970s: We were all going to freeze to death (in about 40 years) following a nuclear winter caused by particulate matter pollutants.

 

1980s: Global Warming rears it's head and we were all going to drown (in about 40 years) when the oceans rose 30 metres.

 

1990s: With the destruction of the ozone layer we were all going to die (in about 40 years) most horribly of radiation illness.

 

2000s: We are all going down the gurgler when oil runs out (in about 40 years) causing the collapse of civilization.

 

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a pattern here?