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NASA: Industrial civilization headed for ‘irreversible collapse’


Tyger

Paranormal Adept
In fifteen years no less......interesting - but the handwriting-on-the-wall has been such a regular siren call that it's well-nigh hard to take seriously........

NASA: Industrial civilization headed for ‘irreversible collapse’
LINK: NASA: Industrial civilization headed for ‘irreversible collapse’ | The Raw Story

TEXT: "Natural and social scientists develop new model of how ‘perfect storm’ of crises could unravel global system

"A new study sponsored by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

"Noting that warnings of ‘collapse’ are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that “the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history.” Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to “precipitous collapse — often lasting centuries — have been quite common.”

"The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary ‘Human And Nature DYnamical’ (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

"It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

“The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent.”

"By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

"These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity”; and “the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or “Commoners”) [poor]” These social phenomena have played “a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse,” in all such cases over “the last five thousand years.”

"Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with “Elites” based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:

“… accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels.”

"The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency: “Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use.”

"Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from “increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput,” despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

"Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions “closely reflecting the reality of the world today… we find that collapse is difficult to avoid.” In the first of these scenarios, civilization: “…. appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature.”

"Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that “with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites.”

"In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most “detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners”, allowing them to “continue ‘business as usual’ despite the impending catastrophe.” The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how “historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases).”

"Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that: “While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory ‘so far’ in support of doing nothing.

"However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.

"The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth: “Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.” The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business – and consumers – to recognize that ‘business as usual’ cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.

"Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies – by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance – have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a ‘perfect storm’ within about fifteen years. But these ‘business as usual’ forecasts could be very conservative."
 
"The two key solutions are to reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth: “Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion.

True but it is not going to happen
 
So what's going to happen? How will it play out? Seriously - or funously (what's in that wine, anyway? :) ) - where will the break happen? How will it occur and what will it look like?

A coupla decades ago I recall being dragged to a lecture given by a guy called Scallia (I think). He's gone and dead now, may he r.i.p. Anyway, he was an earth-changes fella - and he had all these maps of what the earth would look like with rising sea levels. (No global warming rationale for the rise as far as I recall back then - but 'everyone' in the prescient camp were all talking about rising sea levels a-coming. Anyway, it was quite the buzz - and then he said (or someone said) - that it would all happen slowly not in one fell swoop - and we'd look back and say - oh, look how it's changed.

In a way it's doing that. The most striking thing is all what has been happening in the Midwest (US) along the Mississippi River - the flooding, the Louisiana Delta region (Katrina) - it's all happening very slowly - but the changes are happening the way they all said it would (sort of, maybe) and slowly.
 
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I'll answer my own query - it will happen with a series of events that could never be predicted: a 'perfect storm' of unlooked for events. Like this lost 777.
 
Notice that you cannot actually read this "scientific" study done by a graduate student. :D

The author of this article Dr. Nafeez Ahmed wants you to be frightened and emotional, like this child in his movie:

The Crisis Of Civilization
crisis_of_civilization_logo2.jpg


so you will cry "Please Big Daddy! Make more laws to Save Us!"

The corporations who fund his foundation would like that very much.

spreadtheword.gif
 
Thanks! I searched all over for that paper.

It is all about Fear. Fear sells. Fear motivates. Some say Fear is the strongest human emotion, even stronger than Love.
 
Thanks! I searched all over for that paper.

It is all about Fear. Fear sells. Fear motivates. Some say Fear is the strongest human emotion, even stronger than Love.

It's about fear if that's your reaction to facts - or imagined scenarios.

Fear actually doesn't 'sell'. It may motivate but it's the least predictable emotion in how it will impact. Fear can also freeze response. Again, you see manipulation everywhere - that in itself is 'fear'. Where you see conscious manipulation I see human nature at work. There is a difference. Your response is fear and worry and anxiety. My response is interest and curiosity - and many other things - but not apprehension.
 
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You really should read some scientific studies from business schools on mass marketing techniques and ad design.

Tell me again how Fear is not being employed here as a driver...

 
You really should read some scientific studies from business schools on mass marketing techniques and ad design.

I am well aware - as most educated people are these days. One cannot have lived through any part of the 20th century - or been to university - or engaged in politics - without being aware.

My statements stand. You decide how you are going to react - most people do.

Tell me again how Fear is not being employed here as a driver...


I don't think I told you anything about that trailer. Where are you getting that I said anything about it?

Methinks you are having an argument in your head and are trying to get me to participate in your mental scenario in a given role. I'm not inclined to participate on those terms.
 
So what's going to happen? How will it play out? Seriously - or funously (what's in that wine, anyway? :) ) - where will the break happen? How will it occur and what will it look like?

A coupla decades ago I recall being dragged to a lecture given by a guy called Scallia (I think). He's gone and dead now, may he r.i.p. Anyway, he was an earth-changes fella - and he had all these maps of what the earth would look like with rising sea levels. (No global warming rationale for the rise as far as I recall back then - but 'everyone' in the prescient camp were all talking about rising sea levels a-coming. Anyway, it was quite the buzz - and then he said (or someone said) - that it would all happen slowly not in one fell swoop - and we'd look back and say - oh, look how it's changed.

In a way it's doing that. The most striking thing is all what has been happening in the Midwest (US) along the Mississippi River - the flooding, the Louisiana Delta region (Katrina) - it's all happening very slowly - but the changes are happening the way they all said it would (sort of, maybe) and slowly.

I agree with you.. the writing has been on the wall for some time now.

I posted this in the flight 777 thread but it really belongs here.

"We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that."
 
Well this is my rant and what I think from simply observing our civilization and I don’t expect you to agree. I think you are both correct by the way.

We are fucked well and truly that is what I think.

The question I guess you will ask is why and how do you know?

I cannot tell you how things are going to fall to bits but I can tell you they will and are already doing so. The signs are there and the cracks are getting bigger.

Charlie is absolutely correct in his assertion of fear control because it has been used this way time and time again, but the problem is very much like the boy who cried wolf; but the problem is that now it is very real and coming very fast.

But sadly like the boy who cried wolf people are not listening because they do not believe it. But saying I don’t believe it will not make the reality any less real.

But will the power elite use it to gain more power even if it means the eventual destruction of themselves as well... you bet they will because they cannot think beyond a frame work of which they are not in control and at the top.

The whole world is becoming less socially and environmentally stable every day and I feel for my part that we past the point of no return a decade ago.

Look around you, you can feel things are wrong or you would not be talking about this topic... Am I right?

The whole system has become top heavy with a few having vast wealth and the middle and lower classes having less and less. The fact that we still use the word “class” says we have progressed very little in the past century in my opinion.

You may have seen me use the term Feudalism 2.0 in a thread or two before, well I am not joking it is the coming reality. To quote Jim “you are all fucking slaves” but worse than that you are all slaves that have to pay for their own up keep.

This is not a debate about political systems so let us stay away from that for in my opinion they are all very flawed and politicians are little more than corporate owned parasites. I am also not an all out Socialist which you may have thought from what you have read thus far.

The problem as such is the level of exploitation of the social and environmental systems we need to survive.

Where do you get your food?

The answer is the vast majority depend on supermarket chains of supply and that is extremely vulnerable. Believe me live through a natural disaster and you become very quickly aware of just how vulnerable it is. The food supply chain is very sympathetic in relation to other systems around us. For example we just had serious flooding where I live and the food prices jumped.

Now if you are well off this is little more than a short term problem and you can absorbed the cost, but for many of us (myself included) this presents a bit of a problem and I don’t consider myself poor. Then many are faced with the choice of do I eat or do I pay the electric bill and keep warm.

Don’t laugh it is a very real reality for many out there; I have been there myself and understand the feeling. It sucks.

I have to work hard for what little money I have (not complaining it is simply reality)and the cost of living is getting higher each year. I say this because you get those that say well if you are poor it is because you are lazy and don’t have the “go get it attitude” to become a big shot.. this is utter bull shit.

So another question, how do you heat your home and cook your food?

Well some of us who are lucky still have a wood stove but for most it is electricity which costs and is vulnerable as well. An interesting exercise is to look at all the things you need week to week to live and work out just how you get them and could you live without them. You become very aware of just how dependent you really are on a system that you are not in control of.

We are all part of a machine that is in reality quite fragile. Just how many of us know how to catch and prepare or grow our own food? I know some here do but very many do not.

This bit from the article hits the nail on the head by way of summery thus far:

"In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most “detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners”, allowing them to “continue ‘business as usual’ despite the impending catastrophe.” The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how “historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases).”

Absolutely correct and reminds me of my own conclusions while studying. In part this explains the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome that the elite tend to use on the rest of the masses. What I mean by this is if you want to use something as a fear device to meet your own ends then the best one to use is a real possibility even if you do not believe it yourself.

So on to social media and television which is but another festering pile lies.

I don’t own a television these days because you know they don’t call it programming for no reason. But if you have one turn it on and analyze what people are being fed, what we are teaching our children. Now ask yourself why we have crazy levels of youth violence, drinking problems, rampant consumerism, and many other social problems to boot. It is a bit of an eye opener for those that have never really stopped to think just how manipulated they are.

An experiment I have tried a number of times is to ask a person what their opinion is on a topic I know is hot in the news right now, invariably you find that their opinion is little different to that which is being dished out by the media.

As an aside I call this current young generation (coming through now) Gen Narcissist for a reason but I blame Facebook more for that but I digress as it is in a way just the same crap we from Gen X were fed. In our case we realized we had been taken for a ride.

All of us here on this forum should know by now that there is no real news on the TV only what we are being told.

Yes and just what are we being told?

Everything is ok your betters have it all under control so go buy this new product and watch the latest star we have created for you.... Go back to sleep..... and most do but some of us are still awake and for the elite we are a problem.

We are being sold a dream, “you can be a big shot”, “you can be a star”, you can be this or that, but the reality is none of us can, oh sure one or two may get lucky but the fact of the matter is the dream is simply like Mr Carlin said “they call it a dream for a reason because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

The environmental end of this argument is messy if we start to get into the whole man made climate change argument so let us ignore that and simply focuses on the direct observable damage because we are fucking ourselves up in a million different ways that if man made climate change is indeed a reality it is really little more than a little cherry on top of a huge cake anyway.

We are poisoning every inch of our food supply and fishing out the oceans so fast that there are areas that make a desert look lush and teaming with life.

In short our way of life built on infinite growth via the monetary paradigm and mass consumerism is a god damned joke.

We simply cannot have infinite growth in a finite system no matter what way you cut it the system will fall to bits sooner or later. Oh yeah for sure you can patch it all up and let it limp on but in the end it is going to be more patches than functioning system and then either implosion or explosion is inevitable.

Fill in the gaps because I could rant for hours on this topic of why we are fucked and I have not even scratched the surface.



But!

The reason why we are fucked is not because the environment is going to do us in, it could but it may not; the reason is not that our financial systems and social orders are on a razors edge right now because we could reorder them and fix the systems if we really wanted to.

We are not fucked because an elite few want it all and nothing for the rest of us because we could wipe them away if we all really wanted to.

No the reason why we are fucked is because no one gives a shit outside of their own little worlds and that is why we are fucked.
 
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No the reason why we are fucked is because no one gives a shit outside of their own little worlds and that is why we are fucked.

People are beginning to care.

Every day more and more people are beginning to realize that they are enslaved, and developing ways to gain more freedom, first mental freedom by educating themselves, and then increasing physical and financial freedom by forming alternative ways on living that don't depend on the violence and deception employed by the publishers of that government fear campaign the OP posted.
 
People are beginning to care.

Every day more and more people are beginning to realize that they are enslaved, and developing ways to gain more freedom, first mental freedom by educating themselves, and then increasing physical and financial freedom by forming alternative ways on living that don't depend on the violence and deception employed by the publishers of that government fear campaign the OP posted.

I agree but I feel it may be to little to late... But I welcome it anyway for maybe there is a chance we can sort this mess out.
 
I walked out into my yard tonight, a glass of home made hard lemonade in hand, made from a tree i planted from seed.
Looked up into a night sky unspoiled by light and other pollution, the last of the seasons honeysuckle sweet to the nose
I reflected on my home, my family and my friends, a huge portion of which are the people here in this forum
Brilliant people who ive been so very very lucky to have shared ideas and lifes path with

And thinking this should be enough for anyone, what greater rich's could anyone need.

Yes the lemonade is hard, and i will wake up with a headache no doubt. But i love you guys

The truth is this Paracast family has given me a place to share ideas i dont think i would ever find anywhere else

Life is a journey, im grateful to have shared some of the path with you all

Thank You
 
I agree but I feel it may be to little to late...

Watch over time as you grow older. You'll begin to notice how this year is always the year that it will be "too late". The first time I heard about this Global Warming fraud was in 1987.

I saw a scientist on Ted Koppel's Nightline warning everyone that the mid-western United States would be an uninhabitable desert by the year 2000. He had computer models with irrefutable data. He begged America to "act now because 1990 would be too late!".

THAT scared the crap out of me. My wife and I began making plans to move east.

To keep that livestock frightened, there must be immediacy. It's an old con. Pat Robertson pulls it about every 7 years.
 
Watch over time as you grow older. You'll begin to notice how this year is always the year that it will be "too late". The first time I heard about this Global Warming fraud was in 1987.

I saw a scientist on Ted Koppel's Nightline warning everyone that the mid-western United States would be an uninhabitable desert by the year 2000. He had computer models with irrefutable data. He begged America to "act now because 1990 would be too late!".

THAT scared the crap out of me. My wife and I began making plans to move east.

To keep that livestock frightened, there must be immediacy. It's an old con. Pat Robertson pulls it about every 7 years.

Well I am probably older than you think but that is not really the point and I agree with what you are saying here.
I feel I have been around long enough to sort the wheat from the chaff so I am always very wary of scare mongering, the posted item had me thinking Agenda 21 first off to be honest.
It could be scare mongering but this time I am not so sure... call it instinct but I get this feeling we are in for a rough ride over the next 15 to 20 years.
The end of industrial civilization is in fact not a bad thing and it will not mean the end of humanity, no we just have to change what we are doing and this is either going to happen out of planed action or the environment is going to force it on us if we like it or not.

Either way change is a coming.

So to add a positive note to this thread humans are the great survivors and we have the ability to do great things when we have to and that is the problem really as we tend not to react to things until the time is almost run out.

Our system of economics is not stable and no longer sustainable, we have to face this fact that it is not really helping us anymore and in fact it is hindering social and intellectual progress. I have no idea what can replace it so sorry I have no answers to the question that is bound to be asked "well what would you replace it with".
Before the Zeitgeist crowd pipe up please don't because the Venus project is a joke.
Simply work in manufacturing for a few weeks and you will understand why the idea is not going to work, the robotic machines need people to run them as they can not service themselves.

I could go on and on but lets change the flavor of this thread and instead of pointing out what is going wrong let us come up with ideas on how to solve the problems we face.
You are all very smart people on this forum our I would not be here (I don't suffer fools even an inch), so get those brains a working and come up with ideas.

It is easy to point out what is wrong but much harder to work out how to change and fix them.
 
It's also possible that taking energy from the zero point field could cause the universe to collapse spontaneously to a lower-energy state.

Of course the fact that both the universe and Earth's environment has survived far, far worse than we could ever throw at it is simply a sign that we live in a state of cognitive dissonance where we simultaneously detest ourselves and think that we have the power to seriously impact the Earth on a geological timescale.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we can't, or won't, or aren't making the Earth unliveable for us as an advanced society...

But remember well the number of predictions of the end of the world...

List of predictions of the end of the world - RationalWiki
 
It's also possible that taking energy from the zero point field could cause the universe to collapse spontaneously to a lower-energy state.

Of course the fact that both the universe and Earth's environment has survived far, far worse than we could ever throw at it is simply a sign that we live in a state of cognitive dissonance where we simultaneously detest ourselves and think that we have the power to seriously impact the Earth on a geological timescale.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we can't, or won't, or aren't making the Earth unliveable for us as an advanced society...

But remember well the number of predictions of the end of the world...

List of predictions of the end of the world - RationalWiki

True enough the planet will just shrug us off and start again I have no doubt about that and never have had.

This is why I have always thought that save the planet campaigns were a bit of a joke because what we really need is a save the humans campaign before we screw ourselves up.

But as for end of the world predictions, sure there have been many and they are a joke in my opinion... but I am not talking about the end of the world but the regression of or civilization which is a very really threat. We seem to think we are invulnerable but we are far from it, the party will not go on forever.
We as a civilization can not keep consuming at the speed we are doing so, like I said before ignore the man made climate change debate and focus on the confirmed man made environmental damage. The planet will carry on without us for sure so when I talk about the environmental concerns I am not saying we must save the planet or the world will end, no I am pointing out that it is us that will suffer from it in the long run.

If people really thing this great technological civilization is invulnerable please think again because many civilizations over time have come and gone and just because we have I-Pads and jet planes make us no different in the slightest. Just like those that have come and gone it is the preservation of knowledge that defines exactly how far the civilization regresses when it falls.

So will we completely fall to bits? Maybe but I feel we will have a better chance at rebuilding our knowledge base and infrastructure much faster than past ones I should think.
But it is all an unknown as there has never been a global civilization like this one that has been so close to the edge of falling apart so who the hell knows.

If you really want my opinion on what is coming it is this:

We will continue to ruin the biosphereic conditions that are required to sustain us and slip slowly into a dystopian nightmare where the extremely rich control everything and the rest of us are reduced to more or less slaves in a system we have no say in. consequently those at the top will be buffered from the worst effects of the decline (as they are now) and nothing will be done to save us until it is way past to late. Those in power are not there to look after you other than say a farmer looks after cattle , they are out to keep the status quo as it is and create more wealth for themselves. This is so painfully obvious in politics these days that I am surprised that people even bother to vote at all for these parasites.

Then like past civilization we will have to rebuild in the ruins of the old but unlike those of the past we will have a very toxic biosphere in which to do it.

So is it the end of the world .. nope it is the end of us.
 
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