Zooming out - will humans go extinct or what?

[UndercoverElephant]

I thought that coal cannot form again as fungi have now evolved and the wood precursor to coal will not just sit there on the forest floor waiting to be covered by later forest material but will instead get eaten by fungi. So puts coal out of the equation. Since most societies went from wood to charcoal to coal to coke to oil then maybe not having coal is a bit of a blocker to the development of a future civilisation.

This is basically correct, yes. There will never be another period of coal formation like the Carboniferous.

Future civilisations will not be powered by fossil fuels.

[UndercoverElephant]

Hmmm. Why? Civilisation existed on wood and water power for millenia. Now we have much better scientific knowledge, so it ought to be easier, not harder.

All the literature will be retained. Every book that is worth saving will be saved, along with millions that weren't worth saving.

Civilisation as we know it cannot survive -- that's not what I am asking. I am asking about whether our biological species will survive, because if it does then we must assume that eventually we create a very different sort of society. Something we struggle to even imagine now.

We can't go backwards. We can't unlearn science. If the human race survives then we are going to have to invent a new way of living. We can learn from the past, of course, but we aren't going to go back to throwing spears at wild animals. Hunting wild animals won't be a successful survival strategy. In order to survive, we're going to need to learn to do much better than that.

I suppose you did not make it very clear what civilisation you were meaning.

I meant any kind of civilisation.

Firewood will be a limiting factor in how much energy a civilisation can use and a technological society will need a lot of energy.

That depends on the specifics of their technology. There is no reason why a civilisation could not have technologies which were much more energy-efficient than ours. They may also be organised differently, so as to need less travel (for example).

Regarding literature I am not sure how books will survive a collapse.

A lot of books have survived from a very long time ago.

Will there be sealed libraries to keep them nice and dry?

You don't need a sealed library if there's 2 million copies of a book in existence. All the important books have millions of copies out there.

And will means to read computer tapes, hard disks or USB drives be retained?

Probably, but not for general usage. But available to researchers, probably.

How many Carthaginian works can you name?

How many Carthaginian works were mass-produced?

I think humans will make it past a worldwide civilisation collapse but advanced civilisation cannot be rebooted.

That depends what you mean by "advanced". I think it is entirely possible that future civilisations could make ours look primitive. All civilisations thought they were advanced.

[clv101]

I think humans will make it past a worldwide civilisation collapse but advanced civilisation cannot be rebooted.

Yep, if by 'advanced civilisation' you mean, electricity of any significant magnitude for example, then yep, there's no rebooting. Hard to see any future human civilisation progressing past 'medieval-Europe' technology.

However, with all such predictions of the future, beware of the unknown unknowns! Aliens come to help! Communication breakthrough in dolphin communication leading to the discovery that they are WAY more intelligent than us - but have largely abandoned the physical world in preference to leading unbelievably complex and fulfilling lives in their imaginations.

A reboot of advanced civilisation on the back of fossil fuel ain't happening again, but I'm wary of stating that such a trajectory is the ONLY route to something that might be descried as 'advanced'.

[UndercoverElephant]

I think humans will make it past a worldwide civilisation collapse but advanced civilisation cannot be rebooted.

Yep, if by 'advanced civilisation' you mean, electricity of any significant magnitude for example, then yep, there's no rebooting. Hard to see any future human civilisation progressing past 'medieval-Europe' technology.

I'm not so sure about this. With a different sort of culture, politics and economics, perhaps a different sort of technology could emerge. At the moment we aren't even trying to change this model.

A reboot of advanced civilisation on the back of fossil fuel ain't happening again, but I'm wary of stating that such a trajectory is the ONLY route to something that might be descried as 'advanced'.

Exactly. We cannot save civilisation based on the current model, but humans have a very poor record of imagining how things might change in the future. When the most advanced form of transport was canals, very few people imagined they would be superseded by railways within 50 years, even though both horse-powered railways and static steam engines both already existed. I realise this is a bad example with respect to energy usage, but the failure of imagination is was very real.

For me the key question is how the economy is organised and how society is governed. "More advanced" does not necessarily refer to technology at all.

[clv101]

"More advanced" does not necessarily refer to technology at all.

Yep - that's what I was getting at with my imaginative dolphin comment. They could be far more "advanced" than that us but we are as oblivious to it as my cat is to the inner workings of my laptop computer.

[UndercoverElephant]

"More advanced" does not necessarily refer to technology at all.

Yep - that's what I was getting at with my imaginative dolphin comment. They could be far more "advanced" than that us but we are as oblivious to it as my cat is to the inner workings of my laptop computer.

This helps a bit in thinking about it. In this context "advanced" can only mean "closer to ecological equilibrium". The process has a definable end point, which is the point where a combination of physical and cultural human evolution, and the state of the rest of the global ecosystem, including the atmosphere, is back into a long-term state of relative equilibrium. This is in fact a much better idea of "advanced" than the one we normally use.

[PS_RalphW]

Any sustainable culture will be self limiting in both resource consumption and population. Such cultures have evolved on pacific islands where the finite nature of the resource base was very evident, but Easter island shows that such culture is not guaranteed, and previously sustainable societies can evolve very quickly into destructive ones. Globally, any sustainable culture will be extremely vulnerable to any nearby high population high resource culture just walking in and eradicating them. Think pacific island Stone Age culture meets Victorian era warship. End result, modern culture of Hawaii, which has the highest carbon footprint of any us state, iirc.

[BritDownUnder]

Exactly. We cannot save civilisation based on the current model, but humans have a very poor record of imagining how things might change in the future. When the most advanced form of transport was canals, very few people imagined they would be superseded by railways within 50 years, even though both horse-powered railways and static steam engines both already existed. I realise this is a bad example with respect to energy usage, but the failure of imagination is was very real.

Static steam engines were very inefficient and needed the improvements made by James Watt to make them portable. Horse powered railways were made of wood were they not or were of very short distances using wrought iron. Steam engine rails are made of steel and need close to 120kg of steel per metre of rail. That would need an equivalent weight of charcoal made from firewood to make them. You would need about 1 hectare of harvested forest to make about 10 metres of rail. Given the UK did not start to make a lot of steel rail until coal came along I think it will be a non starter to redevelop a rail system without coal. So basically you are stuck with canals and have to make use of all the considerable metal waste that our civilisation has left them. Assuming the Chinese have not come along and looted the UK of anything of value post-Collapse.

A human can produce about 1kWh of energy per day. Modern society uses about 100kWh per capita per day. That's a hundredfold amplification. Past civilisations used firewood and waterpower to help, along with animal power and wind power. Problem is animals need food and about 25% of the UK farmland was used for fodder at one time. Harnessing solar power may be the only hope for future civilisations. One hectare (10,000 square metres I believe) of sustainably harvested forest may produce about 50kWh of energy per day (less the cost of harvesting it of course) but about 4-6kWh of solar energy falls on each square metre of ground. Thomas Edison 'put it quite well.

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy – sun, wind and tide. … I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

[UndercoverElephant]

Static steam engines were very inefficient and needed the improvements made by James Watt to make them portable. Horse powered railways were made of wood were they not or were of very short distances using wrought iron. Steam engine rails are made of steel and need close to 120kg of steel per metre of rail. That would need an equivalent weight of charcoal made from firewood to make them. You would need about 1 hectare of harvested forest to make about 10 metres of rail. Given the UK did not start to make a lot of steel rail until coal came along I think it will be a non starter to redevelop a rail system without coal. So basically you are stuck with canals and have to make use of all the considerable metal waste that our civilisation has left them.

Yes, the canals will probably come back into use for transporting goods. But the point I am actually making is that there was a period of time where people really did believe canals would remain the most advanced form of transport for centuries, and as a result put considerable amounts of money into projects that were doomed. Although according to the definition of "advanced" I just gave in a recent post, perhaps canals really are the most advanced form of transport we've invented.

[UndercoverElephant]

Any sustainable culture will be self limiting in both resource consumption and population. Such cultures have evolved on pacific islands where the finite nature of the resource base was very evident, but Easter island shows that such culture is not guaranteed, and previously sustainable societies can evolve very quickly into destructive ones.

I am not sure Easter Island was ever sustainable.

Globally, any sustainable culture will be extremely vulnerable to any nearby high population high resource culture just walking in and eradicating them.

"Sustainable" needs to include "Capable of defending its own territory."

[clv101]

"Sustainable" needs to include "Capable of defending its own territory."

That's totally dependent on who is attacking, Victorians coming for neolithic tribes? No chance they could be sustainable by that definition, same with the native Americans etc.

[BritDownUnder]

OK then. It seems like we can all agree that humanity wont go extinct. But can you give any scenarios on the nature of the collapse?
In my opinion one, some or all of the following will trigger it ...

- Resource depletion / Overpopulation
- Internal takeover followed by civil war leading to collapse
- Government mismanagement / debasement of currency / resource mismanagement
- External invasion
- Mass migration
- Depredation by neighbours / colonisers
- Global warming / weather events
- Earthquakes
- Exhaustion of society / Lack of moral fibre
- Technological burnout / most people no longer have an understanding of technology required for life / lack of skills of how to survive
- AI
- Aliens?
- Asteroids / Gamma ray bursts / Solar coronal mass ejections

[Catweazle]

Canals again ? Only if there is a sufficiently strong authority to enforce safe travel. Roads and canals are no use if not policed. So expect to need either a strong government and police force, or well armed convoys. I wonder about the role of community in future, historically communities have been bound together through generations of village life, marriage and family ties. People from other areas, Saxons, Vikings, whoever, felt no reason not to slaughter or enslave them - it simply wasn't an issue for them. Modern life lacks those old family and village ties, our communities are already fractured even before TSHTF, can we expect things to improve ? Neighbourhoods are being burgled by people who live in them, neighbour fights neighbour, and more people from ever farther away are arriving every day.

Can we expect self-policing communities to coalesce from this muddy mix ? Or are we going to see ever more authoritarian government trying to keep a lid on the situation ? The police seem hard pressed to keep their own house in order, and we know that ever more crimes are not investigated.

The dystopian nightmare moves closer, people feel safe when bolted into their houses and stay there as much as possible, with the lights turned down low.

Or not ?

[BritDownUnder]

Any sustainable culture will be self limiting in both resource consumption and population. Such cultures have evolved on pacific islands where the finite nature of the resource base was very evident, but Easter island shows that such culture is not guaranteed, and previously sustainable societies can evolve very quickly into destructive ones.

I am not sure Easter Island was ever sustainable.

Globally, any sustainable culture will be extremely vulnerable to any nearby high population high resource culture just walking in and eradicating them.

"Sustainable" needs to include "Capable of defending its own territory."

I think Jared Diamond holds Tikopia, also in the Pacific, as being an example of sustainability. I think it is only about one quarter of a square mile in area. Easter Islanders spent a lot of time and resources on erecting Moai (sp?).

[johnny]

Human society needs to either change (radically) or it will die out.

Maybe, Maybe not. It isn't as though Apocalypticism is new. Thought of another way, we humans been waiting around a long time to die out, and the folks thinking it keep recycling it down through the generations when it doesn't come to fruition.

Either we do that voluntarily and culturally, or natural processes will do it against or will, probably physically. I am interested in the broader perspective of HUMAN evolution, precisely because whether or not humans survive will have a great deal of effect on everything else, thus it is the key question concerning that new ecological order.

Humans aren't much for collective voluntary or decided cultural change are we? Have we ever sat down and said "hey, we need to do this thing for this reason" and then actually gone out and done it? CFCs?

But jellyfish might just LOVE this...or the next apex predator that comes along enjoying how we've reconfigured the biosphere to suit them.

Humans aren't just an apex predator. It is a predator which has changed the whole game by inventing a new ecological niche: extreme brain power.

I am unclear on how clever monkeys made a new ecological niche by polluting the biosphere as they became more cleverer. Seems like polluting the biosphere was just a side effect of us consuming and burning and polluting, etc etc, as our cleverness grew. So we changed the climate along the way? Cool...so did the Azolla, and a fern didn't need cleverness at all. Just more time than us humans have needed.

We have also changed our social structure from tribes/clans to civilisations thousands of times larger. This is evolution at work, but its work is not finished. The new social structure is too effective, and the rest of the ecosystem can't cope. Therefore it will also have to change - whether humans survive or not. It either has to reboot without us, or reboot with us.

We have evolved, yes. How we used our evolved cleverness led to more fouling of the nest. So sure...change will happen, voluntary or involuntary. Sounds like how we have dodged past claims of Apocalypse doesn't it? Change happened. We don't know what we don't know until the pressure of the situations perhaps forces a change that matters. It works...until it doesn't.

Catton outlines like 6 or 7 of these events down through our history in "Overshoot". Are you discounting the next one, if only because we can't see into the future?