Category Archives: Scientists Warnings to Humanity

World Scientists’ Warning: Ecological Overshoot & Human nature

Preface.  It is rare for a mainstream newspaper to bring up overshoot, so congratulations to the scientific paper of Merz et al (2023) for appearing in The Guardian.  It is so frustrating for those of us who are ecologically aware … Continue reading

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Collapse of Mayan civilization: drought, mercury poisoning, toxic algae

Preface. Drought is probably reason #1, but collapse is complex, I’ve seen lists of over 200 reasons for the Fall of the Roman Empire, and our own fall will have even more causes, though triggered by energy decline, since for … Continue reading

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Soil salinity and erosion

Preface.  Civilizations fail when their soils are ruined or eroded.  One way conquerors made sure that those they enslaved during wars was to salt their land and burn their homes so they had nowhere to escape to. Erosion is an … Continue reading

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Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future

Preface. This is another “Scientists Warnings to Humanity” by many famous scientists, including Paul & Anne Erlich, John Harte, Peter Raven, and Mathis Wackernagel. Some of the challenges they point to are loss of biodiversity and consequent 6th mass extinction, … Continue reading

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We’ve wiped out two-thirds of wildlife in just 50 years

Last updated 2022-4-28 Preface.  Human over-consumption is driving extinction far more than climate change. Humans  began reducing biodiversity 4 million years ago, when large carnivores in Africa began disappearing (Faurby, S., et al. 2020. Brain expansion in early hominins predicts … Continue reading

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Scientists’ warning to humanity on insect extinctions

Preface. Below are excerpts from two articles on why the extinction of insects could lead to our own extinction, not to mention all the other species on earth. Though if peak oil did happen in 2018 (citations chapter 2 of … Continue reading

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Microbes a key factor in climate change

Preface. The IPCC, like economists, assumes our economy and burning of fossil fuels will grow exponentially until 2100 and beyond, with no limits to growth. But conventional oil peaked and has stayed on a plateau since 2005, so clearly peak … Continue reading

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Civilizations last just 336 years on average

Preface. I stopped trying to find out why each civilization failed because it’s not always clear and historians bicker over it, so I was glad to run across this article that attempts to summarize this broad topic. It’s clear drought, … Continue reading

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Part 1. How long do civilizations last?

This is most, but not all of Kemp’s BBC article, which you ought to read in its entirety at the link in the title below.  I disagree with him when he says that: “The collapse of our civilization is not … Continue reading

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Here’s how NASA thinks society will collapse

Preface.  NASA  says that the way to avoid collapse is having the population reach a steady state at the maximum carrying capacity and reducing the rate of depletion of nature to a sustainable level by equitably distributing resources. They don’t … Continue reading

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