Quote from: RE on Jan 19, 2026, 01:07 PMIt's hardly opaque to "everyone else", given the vast amount of material that has been written about it from Tainter to Diamond to Heinberg to Carson...among many others. Hell you even have to include some of our favorite bloggers like Kunstler, Orlov and Mr. Wizard, JMG. lol.
I'll give you Tainter and Diamond, as professional academic types who did research on the topic of quality. Heinberg I hear is a decent amateur violin player...and just because he mouths words you like doesn't mean there is any quality there whatsoever. After all, he advocated that peak oil in 2008 should require the government to force people out of the cities to grow food in the countryside. Amateur violin players playing at doom having forgotten the history of Stalin and the Holdor, Mao or Pol Pot thinking the same thing.
I am unfamiliar with Carson.
Quote from: REAs to when it actually began, that's not a bad question but difficult to put a single date on because there are so many different components. Also it has to wait until someone notices it, which comes after it's actually underway.
According to you, it already is. I'm asking why we aren't seeing it in any significant way....your definition of it of course. And the beginning of it doesn't have to be a single date, but surely you've got some event or another, maybe a couple of related events, that triggered the your definition of collapse that is quite difficult to see.
Quote from: RELooking at environmental collapse for instance, Rachel Carson noticed it underway in the 60's, but it certainly began before that. It only really becomes visible in retrospect, and there has to be some time interval to see develop.
Hubbert was able to figure out his contribution in advance (not his US 1950 peak oil claim which was just a warmup), so some folks don't need to wait until after the fact.
As far as retrospect in general, I assure you a continental sized basalt flow wouldn't require all that much time to see the results of. Not environmental, but it would certainly and easily cascade into environmental effects without any trouble. Big volcanoes are REALLY cool....which is why Yellowstone got so much coverage among the geologically uninformed when they weren't worried about the Mayan calendar....just a little more steam out of Ol' Faithful, please Lord, and then...BOOM!
Quote from: RESince oil is such a big part of the energy aspect, you could peg the beginning to when the 2nd derivative of new discoveries turned negative. That would put it in the mid 1960s.
And how many of the collapse conditions listed in your definition are currently churning the world because of global discoveries of oil? You well understand supply/demand/price.....you see an oil price problem FINALLY arriving 65 years later....except....what are gas prices nowadays? I paid <$2/gal. People tried this one before, in 2008 when oil speculation early in that year created a peak price only 48 years after global discoveries did their thing. Maybe the farther we get from global discovery peak the cheaper fuels get? Certainly that correlation looks good.
For the record, the global discoveries angle was used before. To predict all those early 21st century peak oils that discredited their claimants and gave a solid career bumpt to those of us who knew better.
Quote from: REAnother way to look at it would be the 2nd derivative of global population. That peaked in 1962.
I don't deny that a big population of a species most closely resembling any other invasive species sooner or later ends badly. But do people have to keep proving they don't know when by continually pretending they do?
Quote from: REPicking out the moment it began slowing can be tough as it's almost imperceptible.
Do you say that because you backed yourself into a corner with a decent definition? Because there are a BUNCH of horn blowing doomers that have been doing it for awhile, and keep getting it wrong. Why did they proclaim the end decades ago? More PhDs in that crowd than ones on leftover dooomer blogs nowadays.
And yet, you me and Da Dog all managed to grow up into aging gracefully gentlemen and all still eating well. And none of it is via cannabalism!
Quote from: REAs it progresses it becomes more obvious.
Indeed. So after the Dieoff back in the 80's was called during 1970 Earth Day celebrations, do you think those highly educated folks like Dr Ehrlich were just slack jawed stupid by pulling the trigger half a century too early? Did they not think about that the Boy Who Cried Wolf routine wouldn't work forever?
Quote from: RENow with industrial civilization it has become quite apparent, and has been so since the early 2000s for any who is not so blind they will not see.
RE
So....what events of the early 2000's correspond with the collapse definition you find acceptable? Certainly BS isn't even a ripple in a collapse pond....once it caught your eye, what did you then discover that mattered? Did you even know that a REAL peak oil occurred in 2018 and here we all still are? With local gasoline <$2/gal no less!