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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."

He's playing it very save with 49%. As if he knew math or something

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

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.

no more strawberry frosted doughnuts at Dunks.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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