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Old 06-28-2022, 09:13 AM   #71
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
I didnt say that painels pollute as much as coal or oil. I said they pollute.
All technologies pollute. It's equivalent to saying they produce something other than what you want them too -- which is an inevitable consequence of the 2nd law of thermodynamics if nothing else. Making an issue of it implies it's at least significant in comparison to the alternatives.

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And what is bad about nuclear waste? Aside from Chernobil and that one in Japan - which would no longer happen with the technology we have today - can you tell me a single case of nuclear waste polluting anything?
Kyshtym is still the worst one right? Hanford Nuclear Site leaking into the Colombia River. Windscale. That medical radioisotope incident in Brazil. There are doubtless hundreds if you go looking.

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Modern techniques make nuclear be 100% POLLUTION (OR WASTE) FREE.
People who are telling you [anything at all] is perfectly free of waste or hazards or risks are straight up lying to you. Some things are safer or cleaner than others, but that's a different issue. Claiming your process is perfect tends to make everyone assume you are an obvious con-man and may well prevent serious consideration of what might well be a perfectly acceptable level of risk.

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Anyway, reducing our grid to that of the 1900's would mean:
- Mass famine
Which would mean
- Endless wars
Which would mean
- Civilizational collapse
Even if those were inevitable (and I think that's debatable) the world had endless wars and mass famines up into the mid-20th century without civilizational collapse. And frankly a lot of historical civilizational "collapses" look a lot less collapse-y the closer you look at them. Massive change does tend to be bad news for the people at the top - which these days yeah would be the rich western elites like those of us who can afford internet access. We might well label this particular one a collapse, but I'm less sure historians in 2500 or 3000 AD would agree.
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Old 06-28-2022, 09:23 AM   #72
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
Y
So you're basically stuck with soldiers and rifles to protect your entire logical chain against endless raiders.
Raiders can not be "endless". There has to be more food production that they can steal than there are raiders to steal it. Otherwise raiders don't exist two years in a row.

Most of our fireside tales of "endless" hordes of barbarians assailing civilization go back to the steppes of Central Asia Huns, Mongols, call them different names at different times.. Not only was that a very large area of land the peoples who lived on it were largely self-sufficient on those steppes. Also incredibly rich in horses which made them incredibly mobile by the standards of the time.

There won't be an endless supply of barbarians beyond the little circle of firelight in this hypothetical world.
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Old 06-28-2022, 09:55 AM   #73
whswhs
 
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
There won't be an endless supply of barbarians beyond the little circle of firelight in this hypothetical world.
You know, that's a valid point. S.M. Stirling repeatedly shows a civilizational collapse leading to widespread cannibalism (in the Emberverse, and also in Russia in The Peshawar Lancers), and perhaps that might happen in the first year or so of mass starvation. But then he has cannibalism continuing a generation or a century later, and surely the cannibals would run out of food. You have to have new calories coming into the population from external sources, or the population crashes.
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Old 06-28-2022, 10:27 AM   #74
malloyd
 
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
But then he has cannibalism continuing a generation or a century later, and surely the cannibals would run out of food. You have to have new calories coming into the population from external sources, or the population crashes.
It's a longstanding problem with adventure fiction, starting from those bands of bandits or outlaws hanging out in the middle of the wilderness instead of sensibly right outside of town where there are people to steal from.

But yeah it's particularly bad in post-apocalyptic fiction. I think the problem is that apocalypses are necessarily short duration. Sure in the immediate aftermath things can get really, really bad, but if you want to tell a long term story, it's really hard to make that [last] in a plausible way. A year on and everybody who hasn't figured out a way to reliably get and defend food and water is already dead and no longer a threat.

You can get around that a little with robots or zombies or something, but ultimately "where are the villains getting the resources?" is a question that ruins many a wicked scheme. It's in the nature of wickedness to use up a lot of resources without doing the generally insufficiently wicked to be cast as pure evil stuff that produces new ones. It comes up even in less resource stressed cases - the question "if the Evil Empire is so bad, why do recruits sign up for the Evil Horde?" is I think related.
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Old 06-28-2022, 10:43 AM   #75
Willy
 
Join Date: Dec 2020
Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by exalted View Post
Concrete roads are no problem at all...drove on some in germany that where laid down before ww2 before they got modernized, but they where still around fifteen years ago.
They sure are still there. And will last even longer, if the heavy traffic and transport often with trucks will stop, as in the scenario above.

Same goes for asphalt, once only a few vehicles a day, mostly lighter than in our days use them you can count on the fact the road network will live for half a century or more without maintanance.

Half a century, because near me is a old road, base with big squares and roads given up before my birth, under the dirt the material is still unharmed by time. Only at the fringes where treeroots are digging under the place the asphalt is a bit broken.
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Old 06-28-2022, 11:24 AM   #76
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec View Post
So final state of society is TL 4 (assuming we cannot make fission economically replace all fossil fuel use)? OK, but would there be any tricks of TL 5+? Like radio?
Sure, lots. There are lots and lots of TL5 and higher processes that are not particularly more energy intensive or difficult than TL3 or lower ones.

A point I often make in post-apocalypse discussions is that flintlock rifles are actually easier to make than good quality swords, and indeed enough better and easy enough to maintain and copy that local copies historically replaced [bows] in some places.
The radio stuff definitely survives - people still hand build radio parts, they aren't as good, but there's a segment of the hobby that considers it part of the fun.
The mechanization of the textile industry was built on local water power, so cheaper, if not modern levels of cheap, clothing is at least doable, though a lot of the infrastructure would need to be rebuilt.
Up until the launch of real time weather satellite imagery (ca. 1970) weather forecasts involved nothing but good organization and the ability to move data faster than the weather, so that piggybacks on the radio (or telegraph, or telephone, which also don't need a lot, early telegraph systems after all ran on [batteries].
Clipper ships are arguably TL5, and modern sailboats do have advantages over their TL4- ancestors.
Most of the field of medicine at TL5 and 6 doesn't involve anything energy or capital intensive, though long distance trade in drugs would be really helpful - drug trade volumes aren't big though, those sailing yachts might well be able to manage it even without building new ones.
Lots of small machine shops don't use a lot of power, particularly rural ones before heavy electrification around TL7, are fully capable of making replacements for their own machines and any small engines or water wheels needed to supply their small power needs assuming there are any streams or burnable stuff left.

The really big hit for a lower energy economy are in bulk transportation. That's pretty important since most cities couldn't possibly feed themselves without long distance food shipments. Yeah agriculture production is down too, though it isn't as bad in the long term as some people want you to think since a lot of industrial agriculture production boosts go into stuff that isn't survival level food production (for example about 15% of US agricultural energy use goes into wet milling corn - you don't [need] to turn it into corn syrup, the food calories are still there in the raw corn) and fully 3/4 of production goes into livestock, for about 1/6 the calories) or into producing food on less area (the developed world has seen food production shoot up even as land under cultivation falls...)

And I do really think the other obvious quality of life effect is heating. Without so much cheap heat you need smaller (and better insulated) buildings. There's a reason historic houses are tiny by modern standards.
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Old 06-28-2022, 11:26 AM   #77
KarlKost
 
Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Brazil
Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Even if those were inevitable (and I think that's debatable) the world had endless wars and mass famines up into the mid-20th century without civilizational collapse. And frankly a lot of historical civilizational "collapses" look a lot less collapse-y the closer you look at them. Massive change does tend to be bad news for the people at the top - which these days yeah would be the rich western elites like those of us who can afford internet access. We might well label this particular one a collapse, but I'm less sure historians in 2500 or 3000 AD would agree.
There wasnt 8 billion people in the world up to the 20th century. If Im not mistaken (and Im not sure on that) it was up to 1 billion or 2, I dont remember, up to the beggining of the 20th century. And the historical average was between 200 millions.

So we are talking about a 40x times increase.

Also, like I said, any other such previous "collapses" have always been local, restricted to a single point. There has always been some continuity.

We never had a global event of civilization breaking all over everywhere at the same time, as it could happen right now due to the interconnectivity of the global trade networks.

It's more or less like a body; you can survive with a few deficiencies - if your lungs get a little less air, your heart get a little weaker, your kidneys face a little dysfunction. You can survive a few healthy issues.

If too many of those accumulate at once however your body shutsdown. It's the same with the global economy. It can take a few hits and can even regenerate.

If however it gets beyond the point of no return, all systems fall.

We are nowhere near that thou, even with all the problems, but with all the fossil suddenly disappearing over night we would get way past that.
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Old 06-28-2022, 11:53 AM   #78
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
There wasnt 8 billion people in the world up to the 20th century. If Im not mistaken (and Im not sure on that) it was up to 1 billion or 2, I dont remember, up to the beggining of the 20th century. And the historical average was between 200 millions.
About 2 billion in 1900 - that's actually well past the beginning of the modern demographic surge - which actually started in the late 1700s and peaked about the 1950s or 60s. 21 century populations are actually only growing because more people are in the younger age cohort that has more children, the age graph hasn't quite come to equilibrium since the 1960s. Absent any changes we can expect population [shrinkage] by the end of this century. It's already an issue in developed world work forces, which I think is an issue a lot of people don't quite realize even exists.

And historical estimates tend to be really contentious because of the Americas. Pretty much everybody agrees on 200 to 300 million for the Old World, though the exact distribution can vary a little, but estimates for anywhere from 10 to 150 million for the pre-Columbian New World have defenders.

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Also, like I said, any other such previous "collapses" have always been local, restricted to a single point. There has always been some continuity.
Alternately, you could argue if there's no influence, there's no continuity at all, those places that don't "collapse" with you were never part of your civilization in the first place. You can ignore them entirely in the same way our post-apocalypse discussion ignores the unknown but potentially thriving Vegan civilization just to Coreward....
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Old 06-28-2022, 12:13 PM   #79
KarlKost
 
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Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Alternately, you could argue if there's no influence, there's no continuity at all, those places that don't "collapse" with you were never part of your civilization in the first place. You can ignore them entirely in the same way our post-apocalypse discussion ignores the unknown but potentially thriving Vegan civilization just to Coreward....
Not quite exactly. We have no connections at all with the thriving Vegan civilization (unless they are hidden among us).

That's not what happened in any one of the other "collapses". When the Minoan pre-classic greek civilization fell, Egypt, Babilon and Phoenicians were still standing. The people living in the Aegean regressed technologically a bit, as evident by the archeology. But soon they reestablished trade with middle east and egypt, and quickly catched up - to the point of forming classic Greece. They didnt went from TL1 to TL0 (or even late TL1 / almost TL2 to early TL1) and had to start back from scratch. As Egyptians, Phoenicians and Babilonians advanced to TL2, so did the regressed minoans/proto-greeks that simply copied them. So, there was in fact continuity.

When Rome "fell" being already at early TL3, the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Burgundians and the rest of the "barbarians" were actually no longer "barbarians" for a good amount of centuries, and were also at early TL3 just like the romans. Not to mention the italian city states that formed. Even if the Romans had plunged back to TL0, they would be surrounded by civilizations at TL3, and would soon catch up simply by trading. So once again, there was continuity.
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Old 06-28-2022, 12:22 PM   #80
TGLS
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Default Re: Deindustrialized World3 22nd Century

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
We never had a global event of civilization breaking all over everywhere at the same time.
Well, is the world3 model a total global collapse?

Just think about it for a moment: The model suggests that some time around 2010-2030, industrial output peaks globally as the rising costs of resource extraction reduces the available surplus of production for agriculture, maintenance, growth, etc. This leads to a feedback loop where industrial output drops to 1940s levels around 2050 and below 1900s levels in 2100, levelling off to effectively nothing in 2150. At the same time food production per capita halves from 2000 to 2050, only "recovering" because the population declines throughout the 22nd century.

There's no reason that the problems of a falling industrial output would be borne equally everywhere. Export driven economies might turn inward. Poor countries see foreign aid dry up. Protectionism becomes more normative. The steady march of progress fades. Things are built to last, or at least people stop replacing broken things needlessly.

The model suggests a very slow process, and there's plenty of time between "decline" in 2050 and "collapse" in 2150 for policy and decision makers to make changes that lead to a more more resilient post-resource decline economy.
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