Nasa-funded study: industrial civilization headed for 'irreversible collapse'

[The Brain]

Social science is a disease.

[Grinning_Colossus]

If we were to collapse now there'd be no getting up again. We've nearly exhausted our easily-accessible supplies of fossil fuels, so we'd never be able to reestablish industrial civilization. We'd be stuck in medieval stasis until the end.

[Ideologue]

Hydroelectricity could form the core of a new civilization that dominates the outlander savages.

And where is America's beating hydroelectric heart?

[MadImmortalMan]

[Queequeg]

Wouldn't metals be the bigger concern? We've exhausted all surface deposits of iron and copper.

[Valmy]

Wouldn't metals be the bigger concern? We've exhausted all surface deposits of iron and copper.

Well there would be heaps of salvage though.

[The Brain]

Wouldn't metals be the bigger concern? We've exhausted all surface deposits of iron and copper.

Elements typically don't disappear.

[grumbler]

If we were to collapse now there'd be no getting up again. We've nearly exhausted our easily-accessible supplies of fossil fuels, so we'd never be able to reestablish industrial civilization. We'd be stuck in medieval stasis until the end.

GC does satire.

[DGuller]

Wouldn't metals be the bigger concern? We've exhausted all surface deposits of iron and copper.

Elements typically don't disappear.

Obviously you don't know what the Russians are capable of.

[The Brain]

Wouldn't metals be the bigger concern? We've exhausted all surface deposits of iron and copper.

Elements typically don't disappear.

Obviously you don't know what the Russians are capable of.

Well it's not eating a barrel of blueberries without ill effects.

[Razgovory]

The decline was permanent, it just was offset by natural progress over the following centuries. This differs from a period of war where there is a temporary decline but things pick up where they left off afterward.

Frankly this is bizarre thinking.  You could just as easily say that the Soviet union permanently declined (after all it ceased to exist), and poverty that followedwas offset by the natural progress of the new economy.

[Razgovory]

Wouldn't metals be the bigger concern? We've exhausted all surface deposits of iron and copper.

Elements typically don't disappear.

Obviously you don't know what the Russians are capable of.

I think this last month has taught Spellus some unpleasant truths about Russia.

[MadImmortalMan]

Frankly this is bizarre thinking.  You could just as easily say that the Soviet union permanently declined (after all it ceased to exist), and poverty that followedwas offset by the natural progress of the new economy.

Or you could say that the poverty that followed was still the same poverty, only differently distributed.

[Razgovory]

I think it's easier to simply say that the Soviet Union, as political, social and economic entity collapsed.

[Ideologue]

You're so hasty.