Phase transitions are a fascinating phenomena in nature. Lower the temperature of water from 0.000001 C to 0.0000001 C and it is still liquid water. Then low...
Optical magnification instruments once brought about the Copernican revolution that put the Earth in its correct astrophysical context. Sophisticated information-compression techniques including simulation modelling are now ushering in a second ‘Copernican’ revolution. The latter strives to understand the ‘Earth system’ as a whole and to develop, on this cognitive basis, concepts for global environmental management.
Figure 3: A ‘theatre world’ for representing paradigms of sustainable development.
The space of all conceivable co-evolution states P=( N, A) is spanned by a ‘natural’ axis, N (representing, say, global mean temperature) and a civilizatory axis, A (representing, say, global gross product). Vertical lines at Ncrit(1) and Ncrit(2) delimit the niche of subsistence states for humanity between an ultra-cold ‘Martian regime’ and an ultra-hot ‘Venusian regime’. The domain U(P0) (‘accessible universe’) embraces all possible co-evolution states that can be reached from the present state P0 by some management sequence from the overall pool. U(P0) contains specific ‘catastrophe domains’ K1 and K2.
It was a joke from a user back in the reddit r/collapse that used to argue that any day now we were gonna get in a feedback loop so bad that we would be “Venus by ______”.
Honestly they might have also might have meant it in a joking way but I’m actually not sure. They had the most unhinged comments and I just was remembering them while reading through the article.
Don’t know the user, but apparently they just believe humanity might end any day now and nobody is even realising. Which to be fair is a somewhat of a fair assessment? One I have to keep at the very back of my mind in order to not constantly scream at everybody around me, so I feel this fishmaboi. The worst thing is that GHG emissions could have triggered the cascade inevitably leading to such a feedback loop decades ago and we wouldn’t even know yet, because the cycles of the systems involved are so long. I mean sure, “Venus by Sunday” is a very weird way of framing it, but the danger seems to be rather real sadly. Consider that we don’t need to be at Venus levels but just approaching them enough in order for society to break down. The hothouse earth scenario is rather long-term, but the feedback loop itself would probably be characterised by rapid global temperature shifts on the magnitude of 1°C per year (!) or more in either direction, as climate subsystems fail, rebalance, thereby get others to fail, therefore fail again, and rebalance again or fail permanently. This would take time to settle, which would probably be deadly for globalised society, might be deadly for humanity as a species, and already is deadly for a multitude of other species despite “the feedback loop” not even really having started yet.
Not Venus yet. That’s the thing, chaos is unpredictable. Think of seasons as examples of predictable.
The chaotic transition to a new stable state holds no promise to how unpredictable it gets and how long it takes to get to the new stable state.
Here’s a perspective article from some years ago:
‘Earth system’ analysis and the second Copernican revolution | Nature
Figure 3: A ‘theatre world’ for representing paradigms of sustainable development.
It was a joke from a user back in the reddit r/collapse that used to argue that any day now we were gonna get in a feedback loop so bad that we would be “Venus by ______”.
Honestly they might have also might have meant it in a joking way but I’m actually not sure. They had the most unhinged comments and I just was remembering them while reading through the article.
I know who fishmahboi was (on reddit)
Don’t know the user, but apparently they just believe humanity might end any day now and nobody is even realising. Which to be fair is a somewhat of a fair assessment? One I have to keep at the very back of my mind in order to not constantly scream at everybody around me, so I feel this fishmaboi. The worst thing is that GHG emissions could have triggered the cascade inevitably leading to such a feedback loop decades ago and we wouldn’t even know yet, because the cycles of the systems involved are so long. I mean sure, “Venus by Sunday” is a very weird way of framing it, but the danger seems to be rather real sadly. Consider that we don’t need to be at Venus levels but just approaching them enough in order for society to break down. The hothouse earth scenario is rather long-term, but the feedback loop itself would probably be characterised by rapid global temperature shifts on the magnitude of 1°C per year (!) or more in either direction, as climate subsystems fail, rebalance, thereby get others to fail, therefore fail again, and rebalance again or fail permanently. This would take time to settle, which would probably be deadly for globalised society, might be deadly for humanity as a species, and already is deadly for a multitude of other species despite “the feedback loop” not even really having started yet.