this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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Collapse

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This is the place for discussing the potential collapse of modern civilization and the environment.

Collapse, in this context, refers to the significant loss of an established level or complexity towards a much simpler state. It can occur differently within many areas, orderly or chaotically, and be willing or unwilling. It does not necessarily imply human extinction or a singular, global event. Although, the longer the duration, the more it resembles a ‘decline’ instead of collapse.

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21
Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point? (tos.org)
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major impact on climate, not just in the northern Atlantic but globally. Paleoclimatic data show it has been unstable in the past, leading to some of the most dramatic and abrupt climate shifts known. These instabilities are due to two different types of tipping points, one linked to amplifying feedbacks in the large-scale salt transport and the other in the convective mixing that drives the flow. These tipping points present a major risk of abrupt ocean circulation and climate shifts as we push our planet further out of the stable Holocene climate into uncharted waters.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I have some good and some bad news. First the good one: we about on the cusp of fossil and hence all mineral resource extractability, having finally hit our limits of growth. The first bottleneck of the energy bottleneck appears to be the heavy hydrocarbon fraction, from which our diesel and ship bunker fuel originates. This constrains agriculture, mining and all shipping.

Now for the bad news: which is the same as the good news. This means lots of excess deaths this century, probably in the billions. The renewables we will be still able to deploy will not be able to cushion our fall. Without a renewable base that can power and maintain its own life cycle and also whatever surplus it provides for the rest of our activities the carrying capacity of this planet is less than a billion. Potentially, a lot less.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Intetesting, any study to back those numbers?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

just going chime in here with an unsourced figure.

quite some time ago I read a few articles claiming a comfortable global carrying capacity of about 500 milion for a post fossil fuel world. this number is old (as I am), and I have no idea if this was misinfo/disinfo/propaganda but if you poke around you may find more detail.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I believe that Western Europe's population at the dawn of the 17th century was about 20-25 million and this did not represent a base case for preindustrial organization -- in fact it was quite scaled up and organized in its own preindustrial way, with population having been significantly less at certain places and times before that. So that gives an idea of where things may be headed, and that doesn't take into account the accumulated damage to the biosphere that we can expect on the downside of the slope which did not have any parallel in the preindustrial world.