[Cashmere]

New Monkey - the only reason that you can 1. Believe that Peak Oil is upon us, and 2. Believe that things will be ok, is . . .

you haven't read enough yet.

Read up on alternatives and all your other "counter points" and you will eventually figure out that it's going to be really bad - the only question is how bad.

[ProudFossil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'I')'m a doomer. My view of the future (based on what I've learned here and elsewhere) goes like this:
1. recession
2. depression
3. collapse
4. die off
This is based on historical examples, anthropology, and biology, and it's all been covered on here a gazillion times.

[eXpat]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Monkeydust', '.')..Whenever I browse forums such as this one, though, one thing that always strikes me as surprising is the extent of belief that peak oil represents unimaginable catastrophe, mass die-off, a collapse of civilization, and a return to some primitive way of life - and the extent to which people believe this is just around the corner.

[kpeavey]

Monkeydust wrote$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') know enough about it to realize that it's a very, very serious problem.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ProudFossil', 'P')lease give me one example from anthropology of the die off a population.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Monkeydust', 'O')n the other hand, if I'm pessimistic and wrong, I'll have spent a lot of time worrying and catastrophizing and living my life in a pretty gloomy way...only for everything to turn out not as bad as I thought it would be. It just "makes sense" to me not to be gloomy so long as the jury's still out.

[Petrodollar]

MonkeyDust, here's a book that does an excellent job of discussing human behavior in the face of differing crisis over a few thousand years...and I think it might help explian the viewpoints of Ludi and others...

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed



$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In his Pulitzer Prize–winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, geographer Diamond laid out a grand view of the organic roots of human civilizations in flora, fauna, climate and geology. That vision takes on apocalyptic overtones in this fascinating comparative study of societies that have, sometimes fatally, undermined their own ecological foundations. Diamond examines storied examples of human economic and social collapse, and even extinction, including Easter Island, classical Mayan civilization and the Greenland Norse. He explores patterns of population growth, overfarming, overgrazing and overhunting, often abetted by drought, cold, rigid social mores and warfare, that lead inexorably to vicious circles of deforestation, erosion and starvation prompted by the disappearance of plant and animal food sources. Extending his treatment to contemporary environmental trouble spots, from Montana to China to Australia, he finds today's global, technologically advanced civilization very far from solving the problems that plagued primitive, isolated communities in the remote past.

At times Diamond comes close to a counsel of despair when contemplating the environmental havoc engulfing our rapidly industrializing planet, but he holds out hope at examples of sustainability from highland New Guinea's age-old but highly diverse and efficient agriculture to Japan's rigorous program of forest protection and, less convincingly, in recent green consumerism initiatives. Diamond is a brilliant expositor of everything from anthropology to zoology, providing a lucid background of scientific lore to support a stimulating, incisive historical account of these many declines and falls. Readers will find his book an enthralling, and disturbing, reminder of the indissoluble links that bind humans to nature.

[ProudFossil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', 'a')n I believe we are not. Show me some "adapting" evidence that "we" can change.

[Ludi]

Here's a nice little essay about collapse:
Collapse

see the rest of the essay series for supporting points.

[ProudFossil]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ProudFossil', 'P')lease give me one example from anthropology of the die off a population.

[Homesteader]

Die-off = significant population decline (time line may vary)

Die-off does not = extinction

Or am I confused?

[canis_lupus]

Welcome to the forum and way to swing for the fences with your first post!

I'm a doomer. I think I've put it together and am hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. I look at this American Idol nation and abandon hope.

kpeavy has the most concise reply I've seen in awhile so I'm not going to foist my opinion on you. I would say this, though: as you scan these pages, you'll start to get a flavor for the open-minded doomers, the cranky old people with nothing new to contribute but vitriol, and the whackos that can't wait for a dieoff to happen so they can be the first to say, "I told you so!" before they starve to death because they spent too much time on these boards than, say, starting a garden. There are a couple of warmongers here, too, who offer no opinion, just post up faux 'news' articles about anything remotely violent. That's why they invented the Ignore button.

Also, since you seem sharp, I'd be interested to see if your outlook has changed in, say, six months after really digging in to this PO mess. If you feel like it, start a thread in December and let us know. I'll be the first to read it.

[yull]

An analysis of history, biology, mathematics and current events (and others), and I see that collapse looks highly likely. By "collapse" I don't mean an overnight descent into a Mad Max world - it will probably take decades, and different people and different countries will suffer differently. Historically, the collapse would be pretty damn rapid but it would seem fairly drawn out to us.

There is no way the planet can support 6.7 billion people indefinitely, that's for certain, and environmental damage and resource use is reducing this all the time, so the population must come down. How and how quickly is another matter, but I see a slow decline beginning in perhaps 10-15 years.

I also think that resource wars will be inevitable. It's no secret that throughout history wars have been fought over resources and I can't see it not happening again.T he 20th century was the most bloody century by far in human history, and this was in the boom times of this civilisation. The 21st will see the decline and so one would expect this century's wars to far outdo anything in the 20th. Nuclear exchanges I see as inevitable considering the increasing amount of countries with nuclear weapons.

I'd put myself at 8 or so on the doomerosity scale.

[canis_lupus]

I'm about an 8 or so on the lowem scale, myself.

[dbruning]

"You can possibly stretch that context to bring up the extinction of 99% of all species which have ever existed on the planet Earth. But if you do then you are getting into the whacko world of global warming or global cooling or global whatever."

Whacko? Worrisome, yes...but whacko?

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('kpeavey', ' ') My research has led me to that conclusion. .

[Ludi]

Greenland Vikings
Die off does not mean extinction, it means a catastrophic collapse of population, usually fairly sudden.

The classic biological example is the reindeer on St Matthew Island.

Some die offs do lead to extinction of that population, such as the St Matthew reindeer, and the Greenland Vikings. This doesn't mean that all reindeer or all Vikings went extinct.

[kpeavey]

Proudfossil wrote$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'P')lease give me one example from anthropology of the die off a population.

[kpeavey]

Ludi, add a section to your plan:

3.1 a whole lot of people flipping their lid

[NeoPeasant]

I'm hoping that we merely decline into a lifestyle that resembles a cross between 30's depression /40's rationing /coldwar eastern Europe. I don't know if I can prepare for much worse than that.

Being poor and living simply isn't the quite the unspeakable horror that our compulsive consuming society fears, as long as you got somewhere to live and something to eat. If you have those things, you will be as content as you make up your mind to be.