Totally. I assume his error margin is about 30 times that difference

Because it's a simple way of saying "We're not quite over that most likely outcome line yet, but we're getting there."

Any good broad-scale critique fro anthropologists that's worth reading? I've only read one of his books, nearly 20 years ago, but most of what I've heard him say has seemed more or less on point.

I was gonna say... Was briefly concerned until I saw Jared Fucking Diamond's name.

Honestly is he a scientist? Does he do science,or just find shit that supports his idea.

Edit, I did a bit of googling and it does appear he is still publishing papers, but it feels like he has been beating the "we all gonna die" drum for a long time now.

That’s a pretty big bit of weasel-wording there

Absolutely, the world today is also not as we knew it in the 25 years ago, and it's very different compared to the 70's, where the future looked a bit more rosy.

That was a pretty good prediction then. "World will end" is obviously a stupid wording, but the point is clear. The entire food supply chain as it is today will collapse, the question is just when it will happen and if we will have completely switched to indoor farming before then.

Almost there

That model keeps getting tweaked and rerun, as others have mentioned, its from 'The Limits to Growth, otherwise known as the 'World 3 model'.

In this one, instesd of measuring 'pollution', which was....fairly difficult to get accurate data on... they just used CO2 instead.

Pretty much same result, we are pretty much at the peak of modern civilization right now.

IIRC, thats a screen grab from Paul Beckwith, a pretty well renowned climate scientist... he has a youtube channel, he puts out like a 20ish slide powerpoint recapping other recent climate studies every week or so ...

Basically we are fucked, all our climate models from 5 or 10 years ago were actually too optimistic, we already blew through 1.5C, the SMOC, the Anatactic part of the thermohaline cycle, already collapsed a decade ago, and we did not notice untill the last few months.

We are tracking closer to the '8.5C by 2100' level of climate sensitivity models than anything else.

Insurance companies are basically already abandoning roughly the lower third of the US, too much climate disaster danger, can't afford to insure homes and neighborhoods.

UK Society of Actuaries recently put together their own risk assessment, from the ground up instesd of top down as the World 3 model... they are also predicting massive losses, economic damage, begging governments and insurance companies and banks to adopt mitigation strategies.

LtG has been pretty on point with its modelling compared to real life data since its publication.

BUT LtG wasn't a prediction for the end of the world, it was/is a model of interconnected metrics about our society at large and to illustrate two points:

1. You cannot have infinite growth in a finite system.

2. Society has to maintain a harmony of these metrics to prevent itself from collapsing.

Basically what happened after its publication, a bunch of economists attacked it with their can openers. Some whackjobs claimed the club of rome was an illuminati front, a few scientists recalibrated the model with updated data, showing evidence in its favour and the world moved on ignoring it and the myriad of other climate warnings

Well at least this means there's a 50% chance I won't need the retirement savings that Im not going to have

yep, sounds like we can start worrying about that in about 20 years then.

Not sure if you're celebrating because that's earlier than you thought, or later than you thought...

And this isn't a news community.

I was thinking the same thing so I looked him up and he has a BSc in biochemical science (Harvard) and a PhD from Cambridge in biophysics of the gallbladder. Colour me shocked. Still, kind of stepping outside his zone of expertise on this grand statement.

To be fair though, he’s been writing on this topic for nearly 20 years. His book collapse is still one of the best history books I’ve read.

Pulitzer Prize winning author

I’d rather the magic 8 ball make our decisions than most politicians. We’d have a higher chance of survival

The collapse of society "as we know it" where we as a species cannot survive by following the same.lifestyle we have depended on in the past.

Our company helps manage a significant percentage of a critical piece of nationwide infrastructure. With what I see everyday, my wife and I have decided to buy fertile land that can be farmed and has its own source of subterranean water so that we can grow enough food to survive (we already switched to plant based diets). We also are investing heavily so that our home can be "off-grid". Summer is covered, but we are still working on winter power generation.

We are not at "prepper" level, but if you're building a new home, why not try to build in some resiliency?

no more strawberry frosted doughnuts at Dunks.

This is something historians struggle with, because "Collapse" has happened before, the most famous of which might be the Bronze Age Collapse, or the fall of the western Roman Empire in 473. Needless to say, those didn't result in human extinction, or even the extinction of human habitation in those locations (so Greece was inhabited before the Bronze age collapse, but that predates Classical Greece, which we think of as it's golden age, and one for humanity).

Specifically, it was (natural) climate change or political turmoil (those usually go hand in hand) making long established trade routes and subsistence patterns untenable, and with it, destroying the power of the people who controlled that trade. There was a reduction in trade, as the elites had the money to import, and the disposition to distinguish themselves from the lower classes. There was certainly some population reduction, because food was not moving as much, and populations were reduced to what the locality could support. I want to note that at this point, we see migrations (although we do see violence). I want to thank Patrick Wyman's podcast for teaching me this answer.

So I think, in this case, I think its likely we see this. The current power structure will probably not survive, although pockets of it may hold on in places, and maybe even survive into the next iteration (so think about the Catholic Church, an ancient roman institution survives to this day). Instead, I expect to see local polities spring up, holding on to or rejecting various aspects of the old world. A process of balkanization implies the rest of the world looks on in horror, but I expect to see some process of it happening everywhere. Immediately, these fragments will resemble the world we recognize, but in the centuries that follow, the world will become unrecognizable to us.

I think its also important to note that like, the destruction of the social order, which would suck for a lot of reasons (like the development of technology like vaccines), doesn't necessarily mean a "dark age." Some knowledge was lost (like Roman concrete in the fall of Rome) but I dont think the fall of the modern world precludes the loss of electricity, or motor vehicles, or even something like the telephone.

We're rather resilient, but it's gonna be dicey.

The general breakdown of civilization,.nad mutiple points of fialuer that.can no longer be papered over.

and no one.comes bevase theres been too many disasters. A bridge collaoaes and no one foxes it, a wildfire and no firefighters, a hurricane and no one comes to help, the ibtent goes nldown and.doeat come back up again. The lights go off and don't come back on, your toilet doesn't flush and the grocery store has empty shelves.amd no gasoline available etc

Most of the northern hemisphere isn't even making 2 per couple. It is Africa which keeps churning out babies to be blunt

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/birth-rate-by-country

What we have also seen is education and rising economies reduce the birth rate. If we want to actually curb things: the trend of reducing foreign aid is going to make things worse

Seems to me like the latter is the likely outcome.

Yeah, obviously. But that doesn't do my child a damn bit of good now does it?

Is that what you think people are worried about? Planetary death has never really been on the table, that's just the ignorant parroting things that were misunderstood.

"civilization" doesn't even include humanity or technology.

This argument frustrates me greatly. Humans are far more adaptable than most other species, and the damage we are already doing to less adaptable species and ecosystems is incalculable and irreversible. We will kill off much of Earth's life long before we manage to destroy ourselves.

Species are going extinct at a rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the normal "background rate" of extinction, driven by habitat loss, climate change, and pollution. Every species that we drive to extinction represents a multi-billion year legacy that will never return. Arguing that life will continue after the collapse of humanity is only partly true. There are a hell of a lot of species that will never continue, because our actions destroyed them.

We're also roughly at the halfway point of Earth's ability to support complex life, which emerged about a half billion years ago and has roughly another half billion years before the increased heat of the aging sun disrupts carbonate weathering to the extent that one of the main pathways of photosynthesis is no longer possible. Yes, during that 500 million years, in the absence of ongoing anthropogenic extinction, species will again diversify to fill the gaps. But there will be no tigers or elephants or rhinoceros after humanity, just as there were no non-avian dinosaurs after the asteroid.

Oh, so just the collapse of current civilisation. That’s happened many, many times already.

Collapse of local civilizations has happened a lot of times. Collapse of the global civilization has not happened yet. And previous collapses happened often improved the living conditions for big parts of the population, because they were farmers who no longer had to support the ruling classes after the collapse. Collapse of food production and distribution when e.g. only 1% of the population are professional farmers (in Germany) will be fundamentally different.

no scientist worth anything would ever make such a moronic claim.

He didn't. It would have taken you five seconds to read the excerpt OP posted and notice that the actual quote is "I would estimate the chances are about 49% that the world as we know it will collapse by about 2050."

He didn't say the world will end. He didn't even say that civilisation will end. He said that the social order we enjoy today could collapse. But rather than take five seconds to notice that, you decided to yell about nothing because it was more important to voice your opinion than it was to check your facts.

I think you're being, not only pedantic, but also just wrong. "The world will end" is a perfectly apt description to just about anyone about what is going on. The world will be uninhabitable for A MAJORITY of life that currently exists.

Permian extinction: last time shit like this happened, temps rose 10°C over 10,000's of years. Still killed 90% of ALL LIFE. To be so arrogant as to presume that the USA collapsing would not have any knock on effects on the rest of the world. To presume that what kills of humans would do nothing to any other life. To presume that that scientist is a moron who just LOVES AMERICA so very much, because why else would he say things that make me feel bad?