The Type One Civilization Energy Hump: Have We Been Here Before?

The most significant characteristic of modern civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present, and all the power of science has been prostituted to this purpose.

-William James

Happy Friday, ATS.

In the wind-up to the Big Day, I find I've had my head up the end of the world. Not anything zany - Planet X's or Galactic Convergences or even Fiery Armageddons. Nothing with a catchy storyline or the promise of a quick, decisive end. Just a nice round survey of our energy problems and how they are triggering the slow-motion landslide of societal collapse.

I'm going to get a few things out of the way real quick before I get into the meat of the thread. Please bear with me, reader.

1. Anyone who has an axe to grind about climate change, peak oil or free energy is asked to try and tie their content in with the thread's subject, rather than running it into the ground with the kind of debate available on many other fine forums dedicated especially to that purpose.

2. First poster to bring up Dyson Spheres gets a Twinkie- a great prize, considering they'll be used as currency in the future.

Our exploitation of oil as an energy source has allowed us to advance rapidly as a species. It's strange when you really think about it: a plant spends two years converting sunlight into biomass, and the product of that gradual process is burned away in the bowels of a combustion engine in less than five seconds. The accumulated energy storage fund from billions of years of biological activity, a resource that if properly husbanded could buy us some time until we crack the free energy dilemma- and we are blowing through it at an astonishing rate.

We can't seem to help ourselves.

It's almost as though we've made a bet on our ability to get around the fundamental laws of physics- and the collateral is our future. That's a pretty steep bet, and if it doesn't pay out: well, what traces might it leave thousands- or millions- of years later?

*Woo Warning*

As far as we know, our current civilization is the absolute apex of social development and complexity, our technological achievements miraculous and unparalleled in all the planet's history. What if this were not the case? What if several previous civilizations attained something commensurate with us, and ran into roughly the same problems? The traces of that might look a little like this:



www.abovetopsecret.com...

Or this:



I welcome other examples, those are my current favorites. What do you say, guys? Have we been here before? And if not us, then some other species- say, giants with freaky-ass shark-teeth?

Ok--
Dyson spheres.

Now do I get my Twinkie?

reply to post by Chamberf=6


Crap.

I might have stockpiled 50k, but I just know I'm gonna miss the one I have to send you.

reply to post by Eidolon23


Yes and Yes. We have more than likely been here at least once before if not more. Things are changing quickly with the weather, sink holes, earthquake frequency and magnitude increase and many other things that are going on we must believe that the changes are coming. To many different things happening and I'm being told to many things from to many in the know to disregard the things that are going on. But that is a story for another post. The answer is that yes we have been here before. Plato called it Atlantis but what people don't see is that Atlantis wasn't a continent to find. It was the planet. One world wide people who were wiped out by possible earth changes going on in there time.

If we've been here before...why did they pile big rocks on top of eachother. What does that do?

"Hey look, we can pile big rocks!"

I think the OP should look into abiotic oil -- the theory that oil is constantly being produced and replenished in the Earth's crust.

If that were at least in part true, it might explain why we haven't done more to ween ourselves off of oil.

reply to post by CaptNemo2012


Atlantis as the mythic echo of a global civilization- yeah, I'd definitely put that into play as a strong possibility. Mitigating against it, though, is looking at what happened once we became enmeshed globally: we transported species willy nilly, we domesticated many species beyond being viable in the wild, and drove most every other species not of immediate utility extinct.

Our legacy: The Homogocene

But because of modern transportation systems and an ever more global economy, our biotic mixing — intentional and unintentional — has increased at a frightening pace. Some scientists have dubbed the current era the Homogocene, a time when weedy generalist species will take over large portions of the globe, pushing out the specialist species that developed in isolation.

www.hcn.org...

I think you couldn't establish a global civilization without at least some of that^ happening, and I bet it'd would leave a heavy footprint in the fossil record. And who knows: maybe it has, but the wrong conclusions were drawn.

Originally posted by MystikMushroom
If we've been here before...why did they pile big rocks on top of eachother. What does that do?

"Hey look, we can pile big rocks!"

Great question. I imagine, many years from now, some damn dirty apes asking the same thing while examining some shapeless lump that was once ordered from a Sharper Image catalog. Like they, I admit I am mystified when it comes to the monoliths.

I think the OP should look into abiotic oil -- the theory that oil is constantly being produced and replenished in the Earth's crust.

Oh, but the OP has, and smells nothing but methane fumes, if you catch my drift.

If that were at least in part true, it might explain why we haven't done more to ween ourselves off of oil.

Cognitive dissonance already explains it plenty.

There is plenty of evidence surfacing now about our distant past. Some in Egypt and more in the America's.

I am pretty sure the Antithicarus device was Atlantian. It was still somewhat intact after multiple thousands of years mostly under salt water. that is a testament to it's creator and the abilities of the time. It is partially fossilized and yet the gears are clearly definable and their intricacies are immense.

Math and some science has been at least as good as it is today. Unfortunately they faced the same problems we do right now. If our infrastructure were to crash and technology were not retained we would lose it also. Wars are the biggest factor in destroying civilizations. Some times it is planetary change that takes us by surprise and knocks out the majority of the population and sometimes it is just disease.

It has happened before and it will happen again.

I got my 16 gigs of info in txt format with a MP4 player in my BOB. I got a plan and necessities so I feel fine about it.

reply to post by Eidolon23


Yes,

I think that we have been here before, over and over again.

I think that the earth sometimes achieves a sort of homeostasis. Things can knock it out of whack, but for a really long time it has been able to return to 'center', somehow.

And during those periods of stability, human beings are the most advanced and complex fruiting bodies, so to speak, of this biological system.

And they form cultures, while they are able to, and thrive until they no longer can.

And despite all of that change and repeated upheaval? I sometimes think that it has always been the same 'people'.

reply to post by Eidolon23

Um does "earth" qualify as a Dyson Sphere, after all its spherical travels around a star capturing its energy. Or does it have to be all futuristic shiny metal stuff like you see in the movies and be all technomagical and so super duper advanced that we would not even know it is so advanced and would classify it as either magic or nature. Or maybe the moon, the moon can be a Dyson Sphere, but then again not really as I never really liked the moon so that is out of the equation. But then again technically there both not exactly 100% spherical in shape so they can not exactly 100% be considered true spheres. But they do capture a lot of our suns energy for varying purposes, one such purpose being the thing we call life, by definition that would make them Dyson spheres I suppose.

Oh I'm pretty sure others, and even us human have come and gone many times before on this spinning rock we call earth, and for all we know even giants with shark teeth could of existed at one point in the billions of years this rock has been around, as far as we know, and for all we know this planet could of been around way longer then that. But given the nature of the planet and how even something as plentiful in number as the dinosaurs which at one time would range probably way over the messily 6 billion or so humans around today maybe even in the hundreds of billions of different types of species of dinosaurs could of been around I mean who really knows. And of all that we only seem to find a few fossils here and there, given that if our civilization were to fall tomorrow it would take nature few hundreds of years to pretty much cover the evidence we existed, what do you think would happen in hundreds of thousands of years, or even millions of years. It is not inconceivable that all of this could of came and went before on some level.

Ah whatever, who knows maybe in the future once we go extinct the next species to take over, or the surviving humans in some distant far flung future will use plastics to fuel there societies, or who knows even twinkies I heard that Twinkies can even survive a nuclear holocaust, twinkies could be to humans what ambrosia is to the gods, the food of the gods indeed. Maybe the late great sage George Carlin was right and were here to produce plastic for others to use in there civilizations in hundreds of thousands of years to possibly even millions of years from now. Just like the dinosaurs, other creatures, plants and a whole lot of biomass were there to create oil for us to use. Irony it would be, no?