The massive social structure known as civilization faces several major existential threats, ranked in this order: nuclear weapons, plastics contamination, global warming and natural population controls such as disease vectors. Advances in science have mostly kept up a step ahead of diseases, which are the normal population control, there being several viruses specific to every species along with other disease vectors. See Limits to Progress. Given that we reduced disease mortality, it was incumbent upon us to devise our own population controls, but that remains a third-rail issue.
The next most critical issue is global warming, although this is a long-term issue and such are difficult for human understanding. There is a lot of excessive urgency on this issue, trying to push it forward on the action agenda. The fact is, we are in an interglacial and the plant IS GOING TO warm up! Yes, we have sped it up with fossil-fuel burning, but it isn’t beyond what the planet can deal with. Here is a chart of last and first frost dates at this location. Can you see the alarming warming trend in 2023- 2025?
Frost dates Last First
2020 21-Apr 24-Oct
2021 15-Apr 30-Oct
2022 28-Apr 2-Nov
2023 17-Apr 26-Oct
2024 19-Apr 28-Nov
2025 18-Apr
But compared to the next-higher level threat, plastics contamination, which IS going to drastically impair reproduction in ALL species, accelerating this extinction event, the warming issue has little relevance and is moot until there is effective world governance.
The most immediate issue is still nuclear weapons, and with India planning on invading Pakistan, while Pakistan is a US-backed dictatorship and India is aligned with BRICS (Russia, China, etc.) and both have nuclear weapons, what could go wrong?
17) Economic activity relates to ever-increasing social complexity which requires energy input. Adapting to problems requires increased complexity with additional energy inputs. See The deceit of “Progress”
22) The business mind through its adaptation of numerical values rather than existential values allows it to bypass empathy, allowing total disregard for any consequences (see above link).
a) See above link.
b) Any factor that forces a reduction in complexity immediately triggers collapse, which will be all-out civil war of all-against-all. No hay otra camino!
c) See above link. Easy fuels allowed the population overshoot; both must be wound down in tandem. But that breaks complexity and the cat rolls of the end of the treadmill.
d) See link to The Great Mindshift in above link.
Concluding: Global warming is one of the existing negative feedbacks to this species existence, but it is a long-term issue, meanwhile the world is rapidly gearing up for WW-III.
Lots to unpack in your comment, Kathleen. Thank you for sharing it!
You certainly capture the complexity of the polycrisis - there's lots going on right now that has extinction potential. I'll try to respond in a couple of the avenues you opened up...
Not quite clear on what your take is on the global heating in progress: "Yes, we have sped it up with fossil-fuel burning, but it isn’t beyond what the planet can deal with." I don't think anyone questions what the planet can deal with. The planet will do just fine, and if this crisis wipes out much of the human population, it will do even better.
I concur that civilization has a growing complexity, and that consumes energy. Attempting to solve complex problems can also further increase the complexity and fragility of the system. However, those are not hard and fast qualities of ALL complex systems. Nature is also extremely complex - beyond what we can comprehend - and yet it ticks along for millions of years. Perhaps part of that is explained by different value systems and different strategies. Number-based systems move in unidirectional lines or exponential curves; qualitative systems are circular or bidirectionally polar. Which do you think defines sustainability?
I won't claim any ability to rank or objectively prioritize the looming disasters. One would have to be very specific on what one meant by "ranking". Again, what is meant by global warming being a long-term issue? Long time coming? Long time to solve? Effects much further down the road? Certainly there is all the difference in the world between the trigger-to-collapse timing of climate change and nuclear war, but I have no predictions on which catastrophe will happen first. (Many would argue that the global warming trigger has already been pulled.)
Thank you for the reply! Yes, I concur that the planet will be just fine, humans not so much, which with a bit of schadenfreude, is their due. According to Joseph Tainter, the complexity of civilization presents dangerous levels of fragility, and not even mentioning the opening cracks in the financial structure which has underpinned globalization. The financial situation was already severely fragile, what with the excessive levels of leveraging and massive US debt tied up in T-bills world-wide. So many countries are going to soon find out that what they are holding in exchange reserves are essentially kindling. Yes, the threat time-frame for warming entails all those factors you mention, and over millennial-scale. Worse yet, is the damage to the oceans if humans just don’t get out of the oceans NOW. That makes global warming look like a picnic - if the silicate cycle in the ocean is broken, it can take as much as 5 million years to recover, see https://kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/the-total-eclipse-of-the-earth
Very interesting. I had never previously thought of climate change as a positive: the negative feedback humanity needs in order to change. I just wonder if the best moment for changing our values will be when the numbers based system is not working anymore? Possibly too late.
Some notes on Aanimad Assertion-
The massive social structure known as civilization faces several major existential threats, ranked in this order: nuclear weapons, plastics contamination, global warming and natural population controls such as disease vectors. Advances in science have mostly kept up a step ahead of diseases, which are the normal population control, there being several viruses specific to every species along with other disease vectors. See Limits to Progress. Given that we reduced disease mortality, it was incumbent upon us to devise our own population controls, but that remains a third-rail issue.
The next most critical issue is global warming, although this is a long-term issue and such are difficult for human understanding. There is a lot of excessive urgency on this issue, trying to push it forward on the action agenda. The fact is, we are in an interglacial and the plant IS GOING TO warm up! Yes, we have sped it up with fossil-fuel burning, but it isn’t beyond what the planet can deal with. Here is a chart of last and first frost dates at this location. Can you see the alarming warming trend in 2023- 2025?
Frost dates Last First
2020 21-Apr 24-Oct
2021 15-Apr 30-Oct
2022 28-Apr 2-Nov
2023 17-Apr 26-Oct
2024 19-Apr 28-Nov
2025 18-Apr
But compared to the next-higher level threat, plastics contamination, which IS going to drastically impair reproduction in ALL species, accelerating this extinction event, the warming issue has little relevance and is moot until there is effective world governance.
The most immediate issue is still nuclear weapons, and with India planning on invading Pakistan, while Pakistan is a US-backed dictatorship and India is aligned with BRICS (Russia, China, etc.) and both have nuclear weapons, what could go wrong?
17) Economic activity relates to ever-increasing social complexity which requires energy input. Adapting to problems requires increased complexity with additional energy inputs. See The deceit of “Progress”
22) The business mind through its adaptation of numerical values rather than existential values allows it to bypass empathy, allowing total disregard for any consequences (see above link).
a) See above link.
b) Any factor that forces a reduction in complexity immediately triggers collapse, which will be all-out civil war of all-against-all. No hay otra camino!
c) See above link. Easy fuels allowed the population overshoot; both must be wound down in tandem. But that breaks complexity and the cat rolls of the end of the treadmill.
d) See link to The Great Mindshift in above link.
Concluding: Global warming is one of the existing negative feedbacks to this species existence, but it is a long-term issue, meanwhile the world is rapidly gearing up for WW-III.
Lots to unpack in your comment, Kathleen. Thank you for sharing it!
You certainly capture the complexity of the polycrisis - there's lots going on right now that has extinction potential. I'll try to respond in a couple of the avenues you opened up...
Not quite clear on what your take is on the global heating in progress: "Yes, we have sped it up with fossil-fuel burning, but it isn’t beyond what the planet can deal with." I don't think anyone questions what the planet can deal with. The planet will do just fine, and if this crisis wipes out much of the human population, it will do even better.
I concur that civilization has a growing complexity, and that consumes energy. Attempting to solve complex problems can also further increase the complexity and fragility of the system. However, those are not hard and fast qualities of ALL complex systems. Nature is also extremely complex - beyond what we can comprehend - and yet it ticks along for millions of years. Perhaps part of that is explained by different value systems and different strategies. Number-based systems move in unidirectional lines or exponential curves; qualitative systems are circular or bidirectionally polar. Which do you think defines sustainability?
I won't claim any ability to rank or objectively prioritize the looming disasters. One would have to be very specific on what one meant by "ranking". Again, what is meant by global warming being a long-term issue? Long time coming? Long time to solve? Effects much further down the road? Certainly there is all the difference in the world between the trigger-to-collapse timing of climate change and nuclear war, but I have no predictions on which catastrophe will happen first. (Many would argue that the global warming trigger has already been pulled.)
Thank you for the reply! Yes, I concur that the planet will be just fine, humans not so much, which with a bit of schadenfreude, is their due. According to Joseph Tainter, the complexity of civilization presents dangerous levels of fragility, and not even mentioning the opening cracks in the financial structure which has underpinned globalization. The financial situation was already severely fragile, what with the excessive levels of leveraging and massive US debt tied up in T-bills world-wide. So many countries are going to soon find out that what they are holding in exchange reserves are essentially kindling. Yes, the threat time-frame for warming entails all those factors you mention, and over millennial-scale. Worse yet, is the damage to the oceans if humans just don’t get out of the oceans NOW. That makes global warming look like a picnic - if the silicate cycle in the ocean is broken, it can take as much as 5 million years to recover, see https://kathleenmccroskey.substack.com/p/the-total-eclipse-of-the-earth
Yes, the fuels-based warming trigger has been pulled, but it looks like the plastics contamination will cause mass extinctions before warming does. See https://www.ecowatch.com/microplastics-ovarian-follicular-fluid.html
Very interesting. I had never previously thought of climate change as a positive: the negative feedback humanity needs in order to change. I just wonder if the best moment for changing our values will be when the numbers based system is not working anymore? Possibly too late.