this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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The planet's average temperature hit 17.23 degrees Celsius on Thursday, surpassing the 17.18C record set on Tuesday and equalled on Wednesday.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Nope, see the problem is that our civilisation has used all the most readily accessible natural resources, oil, copper, tin, iron, coal, gold, silver, etc. The problem now is that if our civilisation collapses and there's a significant loss of technological capacity, any emergent civilisation may never develop the capacity to reach or process adequate amounts to enable a technological rediscovery. Yay.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree, if you've looked at all the advances in technology made over the last 1,2,300 years. If there was to be a great extinction event with some survivors - they'd bounce back relatively quickly.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disagree, what's different from previous civilizations is our usage of energy. We found fossil fuels which are basically conveniently stored sunlight and we have used this abundance to help ourself to do more while using less stored energy in our bodies.

There isn't that much oil left which especially behaves like miraculous liquid, kind of like magic. Without it our society would collapse and majority of people would be required to go back to fields to grow food.

Any survivors wouldn't have all the currently existing technology as most easily accessible recourses are already gathered. All while current inventions continue to decay and require replacement eventually, leaving behind only mountains of trash.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah you're taking sense. Although in the situation of the population dropping drastically to a core survivor population, you might find there to be less of a limit on resources.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think that some of those resources would probably continue to dwindle, even if we all just dissapeared today. That's a big part of what's so scary about this. Climate change is progressing beyond what we can "undo". Now, they're also seeing greenhouse gases being released from melting ice and soil. The heating won't suddenly stop if we all died today.

Many living organisms require certain living conditions. Who's to say that this heat won't eventually start to destroy the chances of growing most crops? What if these massive forest fires become a lot more common? How many animal species will die? More floods, droughts, storms, and severe heat events are all on our horizon.

I would like to believe what you suggest, but it might be optimistic at this point. We all need to help eachother to survive this, as an entire species (including the rich people ofc).

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

metals dont disappear tho, they can be salvaged from the ruins of the previous civilization. but i agree coal/oil are a problem.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Good luck relying on the coin flip that civilisation gets to a point it can make use of those before they all oxidise, metals don't last forever, nor do they maintain the capacity for all applications due to quality.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yep. I'm a mechanic, no expert of course but what I know from experience? Metals aren't eternal. They rust, they corrode, they oxidize (lol) they break in strenuous (or light) application and just in general aren't guaranteed. Nothing is. Wiring constantly fails. Batteries go dead. To top it off, we don't make things to last anymore. Everything seems to be made to last just until the warranty expires. Personally I consider every single product that isn't built to last as long as possible an utter waste of resources. I think it should be illegal to manufacture items that will only last a short time. Companies use up resources like we have an infinite supply so they can profit. Making vehicles that can hit 160-200 mph that will only ever travel on roads with a speed limit of 70-80 tops should be illegal. Hell, racing in general just shouldn't be legal, wasting all of these previous finite resources to go fast? All that time, all that technology for something useless? It's all so ridiculous.

I work on vehicles/equipment that are 30-50 years old that are much more reliable than the vehicles of the past 20 years. Simpler to work on too. If we ever do truly see Armageddon and lose the world as we know it, people are going to experience hell trying to get vehicles to run. Even the best mechanics I know can't fix many of the issues the new vehicles present without vehicle specific programs that the manufacturers won't release to the public. They're making vehicles/equipment that people won't be able to even use much less repair if society collapsed.

Yet an old truck from the 70's? Almost anyone can learn to work on them and you don't need any fancy tools to get them running. Can do damn near anything you need to with some vice grips, a flathead, a christen wrench and maybe a hammer.

It's getting bad. We would have had enough resources to sustain us for many, many years to come. Silver, gold, platinum? We mined and used most of it for what, jewelry?

Steel, iron etc? Building skyscrapers for millionaires to live in at overly expensive rates?

People are homeless, people are starving, people are living in poverty

And we had all the resources needed for a utopian civilization but traded it all so a small percentage of the population could live like Kings.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I work on vehicles/equipment that are 30-50 years old that are much more reliable than the vehicles of the past 20 years.

I think you're confusing durability for reliability here.

30-50 year old vehicles will go forever, but usually need small repairs fairly often. Modern vehicles will do 200k-300k km with no problems, and then everything bad starts happening, because it's not like anyone maintains them.

So the 30-50 year old ones are more durable, but the newer ones are more reliable. Until they've reached the end of their useful life, that is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's also survivorship bias. All the crapily designed cars from 30-50 years ago are long scraped while some of the well designed ones are still around. With "current" cars you see the whole spectrum.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Absolutely. There are entire marques you don't see anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

We? It doesn't seem like too many people had much of a choice. ~Strawberry

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Oh god I'd never thought about it that way, we really fucked up