The Permian Ice Age and the Perfect Storm (I)

[shunyadragon]

This thread is the first in a series that concerns what I call the greatest threat to humanity in our modern world. Xru and grmorton have brought out aspects of this problem, but it is the combination of factors that leads up to a Permian Ice Age and a Perfect Storm that I wish to propose. The concept is based on the chaos mathematical model (read Chaos by Gleich. In the natural world chaos is good, because It is where the existence of great diversity means a healthy world. When diversity (the number of variables) decreases the system becomes fragile, and prown to collapse or massive failure.

Examples of the potential effects of the decrease in diversity are commonly being felt in the modern world. Economic diversity means many sources and many entities in the chain from resources to the finished products. Example there were only several producers of certain auto parts in one place in Japan, and when the Tsunami struck they all failed and many automobile plants either shut down or slowed production to a level unable to meet demand. a potential example is that 80%+ of vitamin C producers in the world are in China and increasing, therefore the market becomes fragile and monopolistic. At present there is a sharp rise in prices. If something happens the supply of Vitamin C could virtually end or become unrealistically scarce in relation to demand.

The above examples allude to a key problem in a fragile system, 'unbalanced dependency' in an unbalanced supply and demand situation. The achilles heel here is the supply problem, but uncontrolled runaway demand can create a severe unstable situation as in energy resources.

Why call it the Permian Ice Age and what is the Perfect Storm?

The Permian Ice Age was a time in our geologic past when a sudden change (meteor impact and/or severe geologic event?) ended a period of great diversity of life and climate, The result was a near death flat line for the surface of the earth which was either Ice Age or desert for ~80 to 95%. Diversity ended and life struggled at minimum level. It took millions of years for the climate and life to slowly return to a healthy diversity. The Perfect Storm would be the event that causes this event.

These issues have been presented individually in many threads, but i will present them in a different light and different way integrating them in a way not done before.

The key factors in the possible impending catastrophic collapse are . . .

(1) Global Climate Change (GCC) and climate cycles - It is not the change, but the cycles. We cannot pedal out of this one.
(2) Energy - The end of the glutons feast, Glen has covered this well. I will deal with interedendency of the consequences.
(3) Technology R&D Ceiling - No more Thomas Edisons.
(4) Environmental Diversity - a decreasing life system.
(5) Maybe more or less . . .

The first problem from a different perspective.

(1) Global Climate Change (GCC) and climate cycles - Climate Change has been the subject of heated debate here and all over the world, but I believe our concerns are dangerously misdirected. I believe that there is a human element, but the extent has not been determined conclusively. I believe the reality is Climate Change regardless. Almost every one equates this with the problems and possible benefits rising temperatures, and have an exaggerated sense of the importance of short term year to year apparent changes. These issues create illusions that obscure the important problems, which in the long term GCC may not be the climate issue that takes us down. It may be simply the natural climate cycles that have torpedoed civilizations in the past.

The main problem is the fragile dependency created by food demands of an increasing world population (7 billion and growing) and the fragile high energy requirement of agriculture facing a decrease in arable land. The increase in the number of monoculture industrial farms with increasingly higher energy demands, and the decrease in small diverse farms with lower energy demands creates a fragile system prown to catastrophic failure.

The natural drought cycles are too often interpreted today as GCC. GCC is a factor which likely increases the drought impact over time, but the main problem is our inability to deal with drought because we have over extended our high energy dependent monoculture agriculture into marginal zones in the good years.

If the GCC factor is significant it can possibly tip the scale of the drought cycle and really signiicantly reduce agricultural production in the future.

The midwest is currently going through a drought and heat crisis that is likely a part of this cycle. They went through this in the fifties and in the past. the problem is each time this happens the impact is more problematic on the food supply and prices because of the increased demand on a increasingly fragile system.

Africa is a classic case of the impact of over population, increased political instability, forced nation boundaries, and religious divisions that have virtually eliminated the natural diverse migratory patterns where the people responded to natural drought cycles by moving north and south.

Go with the flow . . . may no longer be an option.

The combination of all the factors leading to the Permian Ice Age may have reduced our chances of simply adopting to change, which is the only alternative.

The unfortunate result of all these factors may be the 'Feast of the Crows*'

From the title of George RR Martin's 4th book in the series.

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[shunyadragon]

(1) Global Climate Change (GCC) and climate cycles - Climate Change has been the subject of heated debate here and all over the world, but I believe our concerns are dangerously misdirected. I believe that there is a human element, but the extent has not been determined conclusively. I believe the reality is Climate Change regardless. Almost every one equates this with the problems and possible benefits rising temperatures, and have an exaggerated sense of the importance of short term year to year apparent changes. These issues create illusions that obscure the important problems, which in the long term GCC may not be the climate issue that takes us down. It may be simply the natural climate cycles that have torpedoed civilizations in the past.

I want to add to this the geologic trend of 'global desertification,' or the decrease of the rainfall around the arid belts of the world in the northern and southern hemispheres, which I believe is a far more global change issue than anything humans have potentially influenced by causing a green house effect with warming of the earth. The growing arid belts have progressively removed significant portions of arable land in Australia, China, USA and Africa and have measurable impacts in Eurasia. One aspect of this change is the reduction of the cloud cover in the regions around these belts and increasing average temperatures which will in turn likely contribute to raising global temperatures. There is abundant evidence for this process and its effects since the last Ice Age. It is actually prolonged droughts in the natural climate cycles that are increasing that has torpedoed most civilizations in the past.

The critical up front contribution to a potential collapse in the near future is the impact it will have on the diminishing food supply world wide.

[shunyadragon]

There are many things happening in recent years that have an ominous connection in the decrease in healthy diverse chaotic world where the complexity and diversity of the world was a buffer against world cataclysms.

Our energy systems and resources have become extremely monolithic and fragile. Many small systems are more stable and chaotic, where large highly interdependent systems, become fragile and prown to catastrophic failure. The history of large electrical blackouts and failures, began with the great 'New York city blackout.' The recent power failure on a national scale in India is best example of what the future may have in store as the population grows and demands on the power supplies grows.

The Tsunami that hit Japan represents another example of extreme fragile interdependent systems. The loose of a few factories shut down much of the world production of Toyotas. The threat of large scale disasters is largely ignored. Historical data is sufficient that people should take more heed of the possible consequences of such events.

If a hurricane of the size of those that hit New York, or possibly the huge one that we have evidence of in the 1200 to 1300's the effects would be devastating national and the impact would be world wide, where in the past these hurricanes did not have the major consequences they would today because of the diversity and independence of various aspects of our economy.

Our current internet system is ripe for catastrophic failure. It is vastly interconnected into one World Wide Web that is vulnerable to a high tech invasion of one or more viruses.

The example these threads are related to is the Premian Ice Age where something knocked out the diversity of the planet and our entire ecosystem collapsed.

[shunyadragon]

I thought I would expand on the above by asking others to check out the histories of cataclysmic events how the impact the world. Before the last 50 years or so cataclysmic events like the Eruption of Krakatoa and the Flue pandemic of 1918- 1919 did have a global impact, but the impact was mediated by lower populations, greater economic, communication independence and social independence of different . The world food supplies were not stretched to a critical level like they are today, creating a fragile eggshell network that feeds the world at marginal levels.

simple facts of today's world make it apparent that such events occurring today would cause 10 to 100 times the disruption of world food supplies, communications, and transportation infrastructure.