Let's Talk About Time And Decline

Get busy living, or get busy dying
   — Tim Robbins, in the movie The Shawshank Redemption

You can only shit in your nest for so long; then you're nesting in your own shit
   — origin unknown

Yesterday's post Contemporary Eschatology raises issues about time which need to be addressed. Toward that end, you need to consider the standard time scales (or time frames) and a few others I've put in for completeness.

• the cosmological time scale — current measurements based on the background radiation, which is an artifact of the Big Bang, put the age of the Universe at 13.7 billion years.


• the geological time scale — current measurements based on various isotopic dating methods put the age of the Earth at 4.567 billion years.


• the complex life time scale — here I refer to the non-standard time frame in which complex (metazoan) life has existed on Earth. The fossil record indicates that visible metazoans enter the fossil record about 580 million years ago. Most of this period is called the Phanerozoic Eon, as opposed to the Proterozoic Eon which proceeded it, which begins with the "Cambrian Explosion" 543 million years ago.


• the paleoanthropological time scale — here I refer to the non-standard time frame in which the human lineage (hominins) diverged from some branch of the apes (genus Hominoidea). The best estimates put the split at about 6-7 million years ago. The genus Homo arose about 2.1 million years ago at the beginning of, or shortly before, the start of the Pleistocene Epoch (measurements vary). The first crude stone tools appear in the fossil record about 2.5 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) appear in the fossil record 200,000 years ago.


• the historical time scale — we might put the beginning of human history at about 5,000 years ago, when the first written records appear. Our knowledge of history prior to that is based on paleontological, anthropological or genetic research. This time scale typically deals with arbitrary cultural (or political) periods spanning many decades or hundreds of years.


• the human time scale — the span of a single human life, measured in years or decades. The upper bound (which is rarely exceeded) is about 100 years. Longevity has increased in the last few centuries. Human lifetimes used to be much shorter (more like 50 years).

Although these definitions and descriptions are much too brief, they are good enough for our purposes here.

Yesterday I described and criticized those whom I call Doomers for their repeated, sometimes hysterical calls for the collapse of human industrial civilizations any day (or month or year) now. It seemed to some readers that I was open to the same critique. Aren't I a Doomer too? Haven't I also said that human civilizations have no future?

I made an effort to distinguish myself (or scientists like Jeremy Jackson) from Doomers yesterday, but those distinctions were apparently too difficult for some readers to understand, no doubt because emotional responses preclude a reasoned consideration of such distinctions.

My expanded answer begins with a consideration of time. I have never claimed that industrial civilizations are on the verge of collapse this year, next year or within a decade. (Doomers are slippery, so the predicted time of collapse keeps shifting.) I have said that I expect that humankind will face insurmountable resource and environmental problems by the end of the 21st century. What's the difference timewise?

Straightforwardly, the difference is approximately 40 to 90 years. All of this discussion takes place on the human or historical time scales as defined above. However, if we consider the geological time scale, or the complex life time scale, or even the paleoanthropological time scale, then we can readily see that humankind's overshoot on planet Earth might as well be invisible because it is happening so quickly. The exploitation of fossil fuels began a mere 250 years ago, which seems like a lot of time on the human or historical time scales. Therefore my critics are right (in this narrow sense) if we view the events of the last few centuries in the context of unimaginably long time frames.

However, there are real differences to consider on the human or historical time scales. The differences emerge when we consider what Jeremy Jackson called shifting baselines. (Watch the video.)

Humans typically think and behave as though the world began on the day they are born. If there has been a gradual deterioration in economic conditions, or in the Earth's biosphere, people view those changes within the perspective of a single human lifetime—theirs. People seem to be blithely unaware that the deterioration they've seen over their lifetimes began long before they were born (on the human or historical time scales). Thus you get a shifting baseline. Each new generation of humans "resets the clock" to zero in this sense.

However, and this is very important, the deterioration of marine ecosystems, as Jeremy Jackson points out, began hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago. For climate, the situation is similar. Dave Keeling first measured CO₂ in the atmosphere in the 1950s. The level of CO2 began rising (swiftly) when humans first started burning fossil fuels about 250 years ago. The actual baseline that scientists use is the CO₂ level as it was during the Ice Ages (on the paleoanthropological time scale). If you look at that baseline, you readily see that human impacts began a very long time ago.

You should now be able to see that we humans are in the middle of a multi-stage decline in environmental conditions that began a long time ago (measured in human or historical time). On DOTE I am simply describing where we are and where we are going with respect to this decline. That human-caused decline is accelerating. Therefore, I say that human life has no future if those trends continue unabated as the 21st century goes on. Therefore, I am not a Doomer (as described yesterday) in any sense except that informed by very long time scales (e.g. geological time). Even then, I am merely extrapolating trends which are long-established.

Let me give you an illustration to bring this home to you. Suppose I could tell you with considerable certainty that these trends will come to their expected conclusion in 50 years. Would you buy gold or canned goods or whatever all that time, waiting for the end? Is that how you want to live your life? I think that's crazy. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

I think it's a shame that humans are destroying their Earthly habitat. I really do. I'm sorry it's happening.

The bottom line is that you are in the middle of a process which began long ago and seems to be playing out to its inevitable conclusion. That's the Great Truth of the 21st century, and repeated calls for some kind of  "end of the world" next week, next month, next year or whatever only serve to obscure it.

Comments

[Chris Notts]

You say:

I made an effort to distinguish myself (or scientists like Jeremy Jackson) from Doomers yesterday, but those distinctions were apparently too difficult for some readers to understand, no doubt because emotional responses preclude a reasoned consideration of such distinctions.

I don't think this is fair. What I and others wrote was, I thought, reasonable and not based on knee-jerk emotional reactions. Our point was that the difference between your position and the position of those you criticise is more one of degree than kind, with lots of shades of gray in the middle. No-one said that there was no difference between your position and, say, the Orlovs of the world, merely that there are many kinds of 'doomers' and that the positions are not so completely distinct as you present them to be.

Perhaps you might want to consider that seeing everything in terms of black and white and hard divisions is another common symptom of the religious mindset you criticise?

[Bill Hicks]

I'll admit that I used to be a doomer. Back in 2008 when oil proces were shooting to the moon and then the markets blew up, it really did look like there was going to be a fast collapse of our industrial civilization. Events since then, however, have greatly changed my thinking. It's obvious that those who run the show are going to pull out all the stops to keep the game going for as long as possible, even if the eventual end result will remain the same. The only way I now see a fast collapse happening is if some idiot pushes the button and unleashes a nuclear holocaust--a very low probability event even in these increasingly dangerous times.

I would also add that I was never a doomer because I believed I would be one of the chosen ones whose preparations would allow him to survive the collapse. Indeed, other than paying off my debts and getting out of the stock market I haven't done much preparation at all. Fact is, I have no desire to live in a world made by hand, as Kunstler calls it. What I find attractive about the idea of a fast collapse is the flushing of our utterly corrupt, infantile civilization before it completely consumes the planet's biosphere. But wanting it to happen is not the same thing as rationally analyzing whether or not it is LIKELY to happen.

[Dave Cohen]

@Chris Notts

I said "some readers", I didn't say "Chris Notts" or whoever. I was referring to the people who told me to FUCK OFF, not you or some others.

And you ignored what I wrote in this post, which made the distinctions I assumed yesterday much clearer. Instead you chose to attack me on specious grounds.

If you want to see a good comment, look at what Bill Hicks wrote.

In fact, today, you illustrated my point about emotional responses.

-- Dave

[Andrew Kirk]

Thanks for the time-scale analysis. Just brilliant!

[Jordan Drew (formerly "the practician")]

Damn dave, you really are going to great lengths to try and explain to these fools the difference between yourself and the average armchair Doomer futurist. I get it. It's your website, and you gets to define what a "Doomer" is, not the fine folks in the comment section. You do not fit the definition, as defined by you and evidenced by your writing, and therefore you are not a Doomer. It's really quite simple.

[Eric Thurston]

RE Shifting Baselines

With minimal intelligence and critical thinking, one can extrapolate backwards in time as well as forward. The 30 years I spent in Western NC gave me a perspective on how the trend of development and defoliation was accelerating during my lifetime. Reading the history and talking with older folks in the area gave me a perspective on the rate of acceleration, so I could imagine what things were like 50, 100, 200 years before my time.

I can see your distinction between faith-based doomerism and informed perspectives on the future but the distinction is easily lost in the blogosphere.

Thanks for the mental stimulation.

[Dave Cohen]

@Jordon Drew

Re: It's really quite simple

Yes, it really is quite simple. But just because I've gone to great lengths to explain it doesn't necessarily mean that some of them will understand it ;-)

-- Dave

[Brian M]

The shifting baselines problem is, I think, made worse by the increasing absence of any meaningful historical education. Even basic history is increasingly falling by the wayside as school systems rush to meet arbitrary guidelines that focus almost exclusively on math and "literacy". There was a time, within my educational memory, where we were taught, at quite a detailed level, about the natural world and our historical relationship to it. I remember topics like pollution, population, oceans, food chains, rain forests, and a host of other issues that helped show us that our world was changing, and not necessarily for the better.

My kids receive virtually none of this education (at least through 6th grade), with their limited exposure to history focused on colonial interactions with native peoples. Now it seems like all change is good, all change is "progress". There seems to be little effort to educate children with regards to the nature of our planet over time. The failure to do this reinforces our natural tendency to simply assume that the way it was when we were young is the way it always was before.

It's hard to overcome our irrational minds. Harder still when we don't make the effort.

[Ben]

Re: The only way I now see a fast collapse happening is if some idiot pushes the button and unleashes a nuclear holocaust--a very low probability event even in these increasingly dangerous times.

One human fuck-up, literally one fuck-up, and there could be a nuclear holocaust. Keep in mind that the Cuban Missile Crisis did not escalate into nuclear war because one Soviet naval officer, Vasili Arkhipov, prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo, and therefore a retaliatory nuclear strike on the USSR by the U.S.

Wikipedia: "On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph trapped the nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-59 near Cuba and started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, wanted to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo.[4]

Three officers on board the submarine – Savitsky, the political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the second-in-command Arkhipov – were authorized to launch the torpedo if agreeing unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch,[5] eventually persuading Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. The nuclear warfare which presumably would have ensued was thus averted.[6] Although Arkhipov was only second-in-command of submarine B-59, he was actually Commander of the flotilla of submarines including B-4, B-36, and B-130 and of equal rank to Captain Savitsky. Washington's message that practice depth charges were being used to signal the submarines to surface never reached B-59, and Moscow claims they have no record of receiving it either. The B-59 was also too deep to spy on US Navy radio traffic, so those on board could not know if war had broken out. [7]"

If we keep playing games with the Chinese in the South China Sea, there might be South China Sea Missile Crisis.

[Eric Thurston]

Like Bill Hicks, I used to be a doomer also. Back in the 70s and fresh out of college, my wife and I moved to back in the sticks in the mountains of Western NC. Nuclear Armageddon and social collapse were our TEOTWAWKI. Some of the first people we met were a group of Jesus freaks who were waiting for their rapturous version of the endoftheworld.

Eventually, we all had to go get jobs so we could pay the rent, etc.

I still live a rural lifestyle (in Oregon), but because I like the real food, freedom from traffic noise, relatively clean air and water, not because I think the end is near. I get tickled at some of the doomers on TOD who evidently have been waiting for the end for the past 30 or 40 years. I hope they are having a happy life.

[Gail]

I'm aware that the baseline for healthy forests shifted long before I was born, mainly from logging but also from pollution that dates backs even more decades than my lifetime. The same is true for coral reefs.

That doesn't change the empirical, observable fact that both of these crucial ecosystem foundations have taken a precipitous, dramatic plunge off the cliff of extinction in the last 20 years, a trend that has accelerated even more wildly in only the past 5 years.

I'm not capable of drawing graphs or measuring the exponential character of these declines, but I am able to detect the rather obvious evidence. And that's why I AM a doomer, and that's why I call this the beginning stages of collapse, I don't care how you want to define it. I wish I could say I'm making a profit off it though!

Here's a good example of the blindness that enables most people, even peak oil doomers, to not appreciate how fast this Titanic is sinking: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/09/this-is-not-real-verdant-forest.html

[Wanooski]

That whole shifting baselines phenomena is a real bitch.

[T E Cho]

@Ben ...fascinating. 1st I heard it.

... I don't mind being called a doomer, I was more pessimistic than 90 % of the people I know in 2006 , on the economy, a lotta good it did me. This all going on now just seems like significantly more than a repeat of the 1930's. And, BTW, who knows how lucky we were or were not since then, re-Ben's comment. How would we know if we've just been lucky until now, or on the flip side, unlucky until now. I was not thinking this way in the '80s or 90s, but since 2000 we've seen things I never thought I'd see in my lifetime.

It just seems like the deep derivatives, rates of change of change are getting worse, the precedents and fundamentals behind the fundamentals, though still somewhat hidden. And the foundations of institutions are going away fast. There've been more changes in the last 5years than in the previous 25, and in so many different areas.

I've been called worse.

[Ben]

@T E Cho

There are many more examples of "close calls."

Able Archer 83: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83
RYAN: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_RYAN

[Mike Roberts]

I think yesterday's Jeremy Jackson video was from 2004 (or thereabouts). I wonder how he would view the condition of today's oceans (and environment generally) relative to what was known then. Some ecosystems (like the Jamaican coral reefs) have already, effectively collapsed. I've read that many climate scientists think climate deterioration is happening much more quickly than the models would indicate. My own experience regarding the drastic songbird decline in England, over only less than a decade (maybe only several years), adds to the feeling that the situation doesn't look good. Dave's posts on the environment continue to tell a depressing story. Do these things portend a near term collapse of our habitat? I don't know. No-one does, though many take a guess.

My reading of the science (from a barely educated viewpoint, admittedly) has shifted my views considerably over the last dozen years. What now drives my thoughts on life-style changes is the damage we're doing to our only known habitat. It's that that makes me want to lower my impact, to stop engaging in our consumptive society as much as possible, to learn how to grow my own food in a permacultural way. Living with and off the land and reducing reliance on the unsustainable doesn't seem to be giving up life, to me, it seems to be a richer way to live. Or will be a richer way to live. Those who advocate relocalisation, community, self-reliance (within community) and low-impact living seem quite sensible to me. I'm open to arguments, though, that engaging more with the industrial economy, for however long it exists, is a much better way to exist. It sure would be easier but, for now, seems a less moral way to live (for me, that is, as each person's morals are their own affair).

[Lisa]

I agree with you, Mike.
My life is richer for living more simply and having more time to enjoy the natural world - or what's left of it. So many people lead such vacuous lives chasing after the money to pay their debts and wondering what they should buy next.

I've been a doomer in the past - religiously and non. Funny, how I didn't see that Orlov was a secular doomer. Reading this blog has opened my eyes to that.

Every year the doomers say that collapse is just around the corner. Maybe gas will be $11 a gal. by fall, food will disappear off the shelves, money will be worthless, there will be a run on the banks...blah, blah, blah.
I haven't saved, my husband has gotten so depressed he won't work - just sits around. The world is basically going to "end" anyway. Why bother. This is what angers me about this doomer stuff.

I love to read your articles, Dave. I hope you keep them coming.
Some of us really need them. Some of us who haven't known any better than to believe the religious ending or the secular ending need a good dose of reality.

I've been reading lately some books by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan and one of the many things I've learned is that there have always been doomers and "end times cults". Always. Well, always in civilization. I'm not sure about the "natural man" who is and was not considered more than primitive. Some Native Americans had a doomer cult going in the 1800's but for them - maybe that was legitimate. They were doomed.
And the doomers of the past were of various religions and cultures. Makes me feel silly to have metaphorically carried around that silly sign painted "The End is Near". Just silly. And duped.
Lisa