doomsday beckons

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Prediction of social collapse bot finance based but rather anarchy due to inequality? 1%ers pay heed. Hopefully I will be returned to the state of stardust by the time the corner cracks off, but I do hope they become aware that they are the reason for the tumble and not invincible and untouchable as they believe. I hope the anarchists are close enough to them to see their eyeballs pop.

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The headline of the article was plucked directly from its' most pessimistic segment. Clearly we're capable of some pretty ridiculous overconsumtion but people can also be more resourceful than any abstraction could calculate. Any volume of technological resources slightly above average can mean the ability to preserve the capabilities of millions of existing devices, and that's just an example from my own disciplines.

There is no substitute for resourceful behavior. Alot of times, it cannot be predicted. There is no lack of resources.

This is increasingly obvious. I encourage people to learn about James Howard Kunstler, he has a blog. It's all about energy, but the collapse could start in the financial industry. It will take a long time and won't be totally catastrophic, we will eventually learn how to run an economy around the basic needs of life, produced locally.

Except that we will need advanced technology to sustain our lifes if global warming bring the hydrogen sulfyde apocalyptic scenario.

Kunstler is an excellent resource! He writes in a way that trades in the scientific and technical jargon for a relatively easy to read translation.

That being said, I think water will be the catalyst. Water shortages are already happening around the world, and here in the US, many tributaries and small rivers are gone as more and more water is siphoned off. The dry southwest states will be hit pretty hard once the glacial waters and the Colorada are tapped out. Vegas will probably be among the first of the giant city ghost towns. Desalinization is cost prohibitive (in terms of break even point), so that is not something that will be quickly achievable once the rapid downward spiral begins. Arctic ice hauling is feasible, but it would not be able to keep up, and would be only a stop-gap measure, anyway.

Kunstler can be a jerk, and his politics are too liberal for my taste, but he does have some good points. According to him, the resources (mainly oil and water) will gradually run out over 50-75 years or so, enough time for mankind to adjust. People will have smaller families as supporting a large family will be cost prohibitive. People will realize that the Southwest US deserts are impossible to live in without cheap water and cheap oil, and people will return to places like Detroit, which has lots of water and good soil. People will abandon the cities and learn how to farm again. And Kunstler already has a model for his future: Cuba. Cuba's economy was dependent on the USSR providing cheap oil for highly mechanized farming geared towards the import needs of the Comecon Bloc. Then the USSR collapsed. Cuba went through a period of adjustment, then stabilized. Castro and the communist system was not toppled in a huge revolution. Instead, people tore up parking lots and planted food gardens. Try googling "Cuba agriculture". The BBC has a good article (with video) somewhere on their site from 2005 or so detailing how Cuba adjusted to a post-oil life. The weird thing about Kunstler is how he keeps saying that NEXT YEAR the world will cave in, when The Long Emergency says exactly the opposite. I guess punditry doesn't pay too well.

Actually, I think San Francisco will be among the first places to be abandoned. People think of SF as surrounded by water, but it's all saltwater. They depend heavily on snowmelt from the Sierras, collected in large lakes and piped hundreds of miles artificially. When there's a drought, the Bay Area suffers greatly. Las Vegas, SoCal, Phoenix, all will be abandoned as the water runs dry. And some more dark horse candidates: Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto, Stockton. The entire southern Central Valley is at risk.

That article is taking a little too pessimistic of a look of things. Not my cup of tea.

I think southern California is one of the few places sinking money and resources into large scale desalinization plants. The last I had heard, they were going with solar polar for the massive energy requirements. I believe Tampa (in Florida) was floating the idea as well, but haven't looked into it for a little while.

There are a lot of things about him that I don't like, but his ability with words to show things in perspective I quite like. What most people would do is just use a load of graphs, charts, and eye-catching graphics or stuff the writing with so many technical and scientific words that the average reader would not easily read it.

There are plenty of much better sources, but only once you know enough about the subject to wade into the more technical waters. I feel that he does the best when it comes to putting things into plain-speak.