Quoting Carl Sagan, I begin some presentations with this line: “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” But in the wake of a recent trip to the northeastern United States, it’s clear many people disagree with Sagan, choosing delusion over reality, believing we can have infinite growth on a finite planet with no consequences for humans or other organisms, smoking the crack pipe of hopium.
From those who actually absorb my messages about collapse and climate change, I’m asked: “Why bother? Why do you go on the road?”
My response:
Do I tell the truth, or not? Paradoxically, the importance of my messages and my ability to deliver them in compelling fashion are not the primary reasons I spend time on the road. People want to hear what I’ve done to prepare, so that’s why I’m invited to speak. But the real reason I travel is that I need to get away, in large part because the experiment has failed. I’ve conducted many experiments, and I know failure when it whacks me in the head.
My experiences, essays, and presentations have failed to promote resistance sufficient to cause collapse of the industrial economy, and have therefore failed to delay human extinction. Further, I’ve failed to convince even a very small minority of people in my audiences to change their lives. Worse yet, the mud hut offers no viable future for humans, thus precluding a decent future for the youngster here and his generation. Thus, my primary targets — the general public and the youngster and his generation — are left in the
coldextreme heat.In summary, I recognize the mud hut has become a near-term death trap because of climate chaos, and so I must leave it. And then, when I become totally burned out on the road, demoralized by the majority people in the audiences and the sheer insanity of speaking to a world that will not listen, I must return to the mud hut. And not so much to recover or re-energize as to take my turn at the chores while preparing for another round of insanity.
On the road, there’s little possibility to develop a lasting relationship. I throw a Molotov cocktail into the conversation, and then I leave the area.
On the road, I describe how we live at the mud hut. I describe the importance of living for today. I contemplate the ethics of near-term human extinction. In response, I am given nicknames. The latest, which I greatly appreciate: Guy McStinction.
Of course it’s not all bad. I enjoy being hosted by people who open their doors, minds, and hearts to me. I enjoy serious conversation about serious topics, always laced with abundant humor.
Shortly after my return from my latest trip, a comment comes from the ether (to protect the guilty, I’ll not reveal names): “Listened to Guy last night. He spoke at our permaculture meeting. It’s hard to keep on believing it matters when it really doesn’t. We’re screwed, no matter what.”
The online response from a former fan of mine: “Really, so Guy traveled to your permaculture meeting and left you with the impression we are all screwed no matter what we do? Doesn’t sound very motivating towards being proactive. What is the point of having a massive carbon footprint flying about and having people drive to hear him spreading a message if you spread such pessimism that people do not think it matters what we do?”
And in a subsequent message from the latter person: “You were someone I really looked up to last year. Nothing wrong with facing doom head on and naming it for what it is but at least then you gave some hope and some direction, now, not so much.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that hope is hopeless. As Nietzsche pointed out, “hope is the most evil of evils, because it prolongs man’s torment.” To put Ed Abbey’s spin on it, “action is the antidote to despair.” So, even though I no longer think my actions matter for humans, I’ll take action.
From my email inbox comes a message from the campus “green” committee that invited my presentation at a local college: “We are as alarmed as you are but strongly disagree with your analysis that the only solution to climate chaos is to embrace economic collapse. There are other empowering, creative, sustainable and hopeful courses of action. Our students need to hear these choices in order to move forward. A message entirely consisting of gloom and doom will not move us in a positive direction. If we are to have a future, we must stay engaged, not disempowered and filled with despair.”
A portion of my response:
I understand wanting to promote empowerment, creativity, and hopefulness. I cannot understand promoting these attributes in the absence of — or at the expense of — factual information supported by extensive, rational analyses.
Near-term human extinction is a difficult pill to swallow, as is economic collapse. But ignoring ugly truths does not make them any less true. Despair is an expected and appropriate response to this information. Recognizing, accepting, and moving beyond despair are important subsequent steps.
As I indicated in my presentation, only complete economic collapse prevents runaway greenhouse. We’ve known this tidbit since 2009, when Timothy Garrett’s excellent analysis was published in the journal Climatic Change. It’s not as if I’m making up the dire information, or cheering for the human suffering that is resulting from collapse. But I’m not interested in presenting information based on wishful thinking, either.
On and on it goes. As George Orwell pointed out, “truth is treason in an empire of lies.” A typically absurd comment comes from a leading public figure in response to a question about my reporting of the climate science: “I think his view is profoundly disempowering. Whether or not he’s right, I think telling people that is not helpful. It’s a recipe for ending up with people doing none of the things that are possible to make a difference. There’s so much uncertainty in the models that we can’t realistically make predictions like that anyway. Climate is highly non-linear, we don’t understand the various feedback loops, or where we lie within them, or the net effect of different ones, or the impact of methane in comparison with CO2, or the background cycle of natural forcings, or the impact of economic collapse on both emissions and global dimming etc etc. I think we need to plan to get over the first hurdle (financial crissi) and then deal with the next, and the one after that as they arise. Relocalization, undertaken for reasons of finance and energy contraction, will also be the only factor that can genuinely benefit climate as well. Whatever reason we do it for, that is the answer – a simpler society.”
Let’s move toward a simpler society, and the sooner the better. But let’s not deal with predicaments as hurdles to be leaped over or knocked down. Let’s take them on now, and let’s get to the root of the matter: Industrial civilization is destroying life on Earth. Rather than pondering how we can protect faux wealth as the industrial economy unwinds — the leading question for the civilized among us — let’s get to work saving the living planet by terminating industrial civilization.
Apparently I disempower people by encouraging them to take responsibility for facts, and for themselves. Oh, the irony. I induce disempowerment and despair. As individuals, we’ve never had significant power, our privilege aside. For most of us, the limited power we possess has been used primarily to accrue more personal power at the expense of the living planet and people outside the industrialized world.
What of despair? If you don’t despair what we’ve done, and what we continue to do, to the living planet and people outside the industrialized world, I have little sympathy for you. Despair is a typical and expected reaction to my presentations, and I would have it no other way. If the truth causes despair, then bring on the truth. I’ve been despairing for years. It hurts. But avoiding our emotions makes us less human, hence degrades our humanity. I want no part of that. I want to feel, even when it hurts. Until I can’t.
How difficult it is for civilized humans to comprehend that this civilization, like all others, has disadvantages. How difficult it is for civilized humans to comprehend that this civilization, like all others, must end. How difficult it is for civilized humans to comprehend that humans, like other organisms, are headed for extinction.
And you believe I’m not grieving? You believe I enjoy the knowledge in my head? Apparently you’ve not been paying attention.
Lest you conclude this essay is a defensive rant — and perhaps it is, at least in part — I’m actually going somewhere. All this speaking and writing and reacting and pondering leads me to a new and different place than I ever imagined. Specifically, I’m adjusting to my new roles as the world burns: court jester and psychotherapist. I have no experience with either pursuit, unless playing class clown contributes to the former. But I think Nero had the right idea, creating art as Rome burned. So I’ll create humor while taking advantage of opportunities to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Perhaps if I provide enough humor, I’ll be spared the usual end-of-life experience proposed for those messengers who bring bad news.
Had the industrial economy collapsed in late 2008 or early 2009, as appeared likely at the time, our species might have persisted a few more generations. Now, however, it’s time to let go. As individuals, we do not possess the power to alter the outcome. However, we have the power to control our reaction to events. Thus, the new role I’ve assigned myself.
I’ll present dire information with empathy while promoting resistance. I’ll continue to criticize society while empathizing with individuals. And I’ll ask people to empathize, and to feel. Even if though it hurts.
Why? Because, hopium aside, Carl Sagan was correct: painful reality trumps satisfying, reassuring delusion.
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This post is permalinked at Island Breath, Peak Oil News, and Speaking Truth to Power.
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My monthly essay for Transition Voice was published two days ago. It’s here.
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NEXT-DAY UPDATE: The IPCC Fifth Assessment has been leaked. It’s here. Note that, like its predecessors, it fails to incorporate major positive feedbacks.
December 13th, 2012 at 8:34 am
As one of the people who encountered Guy’s radio interview on a local radio station, I can say that a crippling darkness has entered my being. Spread the word, but give people a chance to jump ship at the beginning – a caveat, like, this is really dark shit and you shouldn’t deal with it if you can’t. Didn’t you read The Road? What did “the man’s” wife do? She killed herself in the very beginning of the book, because she couldn’t take what she knew the future would hold. That represents almost everyone. Only a few of us are stupid/brave enough to think we would even want to try to survive in the bleakest of possible futures. Hearing on my little local radio station that every thing I love – including my 5 month old son – will die the most miserable horrid death anyone could imagine is not the type of shit anyone is EVER prepared to hear. I don’t know what the right answer is to this question – we’ve never really been here before. So, I guess ethics fail. There’s no map for where we’re going, I guess, but this shit is so bleak. I’m still trying to come to terms with it in a way that doesn’t freak my wife out.
December 13th, 2012 at 9:26 am
People who seek solace from you–those that need a guru to guide through the overwhelming horror our misbegotten civilization has wrought–should be ignored. As you said, there should be no pity for those that do not feel despair every waking moment of their lives. People seek “answers” all the while knowing what the answer is; it would be farce if it wasn’t so disgusting.
I save my pity and mourning not for my fellow man, but for all the other wonderful species suffering and winking out as a result of our evil self-indulgence. The voiceless ones, those who aren’t considered when we speak of “saving the species”, they are the victims, and they are the ones deserving of pity. Our lot is getting what it deserves.
Your recent presentation–The Twin Sides of the Fossil Fuel Coin–was the best encapsulation of “our moment” that I’ve seen. If we were redeemable, it would be the most viewed clip on the web, and people would literally be streaming out of their cubicles, abandoning their autos where they sit, and marching on nuke plants to shut them down. That we are not–that *I* am not–says all we need to know about our species and the lack of responsibility and self-knowledge that is selecting our species out of existence.
Please continue your journey. It’s not comfortable or comforting, but it IS appreciated (not that that means anything….)
December 13th, 2012 at 9:51 am
I’m with Guy on this one.
As he writes: “Despair is an expected and appropriate response to this information. Recognizing, accepting, and moving beyond despair are important subsequent steps.”
I’ve followed his blog since 2009, and in the intervening time I’ve certainly despaired, and grieved for all that is good about human achievement…..for it all to be coming to an end at our own hands is very hard to bear.
But knowing the truth IS empowering…it puts all our petty, daily aggravations into perspective..and at the end of the day, Love is the answer. Love for the planet, for our fellow men, for our work, for the air we breathe and the sun on our faces….for speaking our Truth, however unwelcome, for the day that’s in it.
We all take whatever steps we can, however small and seemingly futile…Guy is not spreading the word for kudos, money or prestige,and it must come at some cost to him and his relationships, but I see it coming from Love. Fair Play to him!
December 13th, 2012 at 10:05 am
Always heavy. Always real.
The fact that not all of us, if any of us, will survive what’s to come is a detail that does seem to promote ‘well if that’s the case, why try?’ in so many. This puzzles me.
For all our John Wayne posturing in American society (not to mention the Power to the People! mantra), I am astounded at the number of people willing to throw in the towel that fast. We most assuredly don’t succumb to this mindset when a hurricane rips apart the larger part of entire states shoreline. When a tornado flattens a town. When we THINK we’ve got some good intel on why we should invade and decimate an entire country on another continent.
I know we’re fucked. But I also know that I intend to go down fighting. And I know that developing skills that could extend my life and actually provide some measure of comfort during this collapse and upheaval is the right thing to do. Even if I don’t make it, SOMEBODY might find and use my seed bank. My fertile, healthy soil. My rain collection barrels. My canning supplies. My books on identifying wild edibles, mushrooms, medicinal herbal methods and food preservation.
Or maybe just having promoted a healthy land base here will allow some other life forms to continue a bit longer.
It just never occurred to me to ‘give up’. To adopt the position that I may as well just continue with business as usual and live it up because it just doesn’t matter any longer. And the bullshit, cave at mach speed, of people who hear your message is so in opposition to the ‘American Spirit’ to which so many lay claim.
If anything, this dark knowledge instilled a sense of urgency in me to acquire skills that I know damn well will benefit myself and those around me when shit hits the fan. Will they ‘save’ me or anyone else? How could I know? We face far too many uncertainties and death comes to us all eventually anyhow. So at best it perhaps prolongs my life. But the point is, unlike those who cry out for the truth to be tempered so more might find it palatable, your message lit a fire under my ass.
And it was a huge catalyst in my rearranging my priorities and values. A decade ago, I was one of the willing participants of this culture. I marvel at how much my worldview has shifted over the past decade and all I’ve learned on this journey to arrive where I am today.
I think it’s glaringly apparent these groups you’re speaking to are still so rooted in this culture they believe if only enough people plant a garden and get a hybrid car it’ll be okay. If only enough people boycott this place and make a few feel good purchases it’ll be okay. These people simply have NOT faced the music yet. And if people like you, Guy McStinction, don’t fling it in their face, they’re never going to start having this discussion. And we all know, the discussion is the 1st step in accepting the truth.
December 13th, 2012 at 10:23 am
I will trudge onward on the slim chance that there is still hope for hope.
I will continue learning to grow my own food, fill my root cellar and dig out my fresh water spring. I’ll continue harvesting firewood and using the rest for hugelkultur beds. I’ll continue to work toward reskilling and relocalization.
I understand the news is dire, and made so much worse by the deniers and anti-science crowd. There may be no hope for long term human survival, but I will continue to do what I can, to control the one thing on this planet I CAN control — me.
I salute Guy for bringing the facts to the table – horrible though they may be. But I will act on the hope that there’s still some feedback loop we don;t currently understand, that economic collapse just might save a small part of humanity in a small corner of the world. And why not here in Vermont? We have ample water (so far), and a rural population that at least has some memory of raising our own food and making the things we need from local stuff.
It might be an exercise in futility, but until things get so bad that we can’t survive, I’ll continue to act as if we can.
December 13th, 2012 at 10:24 am
deskpoet says: The voiceless ones, those who aren’t considered when we speak of “saving the species”, they are the victims, and they are the ones deserving of pity.
I would add: and they are the «only» ones deserving of pity. really.
lately, I read the word «numb» to describe the reaction to catastrophes. In philippines for example, people could not help the emergency workers after the typhoon because they were numb. I bet it will be one of the few generalized reactions in the coming events.
December 13th, 2012 at 10:28 am
Guy, I am one of the minority that listens to what you have to say with utmost interest, and believe in your messsage, no matter how bad it is for all of us. Thanks for being brave anough to, against the whole system, say what you feel you must say.
December 13th, 2012 at 10:34 am
No one here gets out alive. What disturbs people the most is they can’t control it. We never could control it so I really don’t see how this is different. I’ve always known I was going to die someday but I haven’t thrown in the towel. Now at least I have some idea that if I live long enough it may be climate change that checks my ticket. Maybe for some its better not knowing ones demise…for me it’s something I realize I can’t control. So keep on keepin’ on is my motto. Either way no one here gets out alive.
December 13th, 2012 at 10:43 am
I’m not sure I would want to prolong my life if the events of Climate Collapse come to fruition (which I believe they will). At the same time, I can understand the importance of educating oneself on survivalist skills.
I had my good “cry” long ago (in the Spring of 1988) when I foresaw the inaction by Western civilization toward the coming Climate Collapse. People don’t want to hear the truth and consequences of our wreckless carbon-based actions. My own coworkers have (affectionately) called me “that crazy climate guy” as I’ve tried to warn them of what Guy speaks of. So, over time I’ve come to soften my dialogue to others. Deep down, though, I know we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. We’re done for. I can’t cry anymore as I have no more tears left. But once we’re gone, just maybe the planet can heal itself over many thousand years. Anyhow, I’d like to think that that’s still a possibility.
December 13th, 2012 at 11:23 am
Guy, when I first began to understand that some people found you to be disempowering, I was confused. I thought to myself, ‘How could a man who I find to be extraordinarily empowering be seen as the opposite by others?’
But I recovered quickly; oh yes! those who want to cling to their illusion that the material world and all its glory is the one we must and can perpetuate will feel disempowered when told there is nothing they can do to ensure the continuation of it. Nothing they can do to ensure they continue to have the privileges they have so enjoyed and, which are the exact factors that are causing the destruction of the planet, at the expense of those that that enjoyment has enslaved in third-world countries; nothing they can do to ensure that there will still be a way to have semi-drinkable water running out of their taps while raw sewage and industrial waste is pumped into each and every water way, nothing they can do to ensure that steak and pork and chicken will still be on their plates dripping with bearnaise sauce while (b)illions of animals are tortured and slain to satisfy their pallet; nothing they can do to ensure that it will take 3 minutes to get that triple mocha double shot hazelnut whipped cream mega-size latte 24 hours a day at their corner multi-national coffee shop while the Amazon rain forest is in megadrought.
They are feel disempowered because they are being told that they and the entire industrial paradigm have pushed the planet to the point of no material return. There will be no long-term, technological or other fix for a planet where there is no oxygen to breathe. There is no way to stop the process, the march toward a planet that can produce no oxygen. And WE have caused this thing for which you, Guy, are saying there is no cure. Yes, I understand how that could feel disempowering – but only to people who had the illusion that that system was good in the first place and that they had any power within it at al.
Guy, when we were visiting at Jen’s, did I tell you about my amazing parents? They had their faults and issues, as do all parents, and I didn’t really appreciate them until I was an adult, no longer a rebellious child. I remember a day long ago, when I was in my 30s, that I was talking about them to a friend. I remember describing them as people who did not teach me what to think. They opened my mind and taught me ‘how’ to think. Critically and for myself. They taught me I had power, to a certain degree, over my own life, but that we were all living within a particular paradigm that had been going on for millennia, and it was pretty much impossible to leave, or ‘not see’ that paradigm. They taught me (and I loved hearing these words again from you) that it was a moral imperative to work to form a world based on compassion, empathy, egalitarian ethics, and respect for all people.. animals… plants… the living planet. And it was a moral imperative to resist those who enslave and destroy. Given our ever-crushing political and social system, that has not been an easy way of life for those who choose this path, and efforts seem sometimes to be fruitless, as evinced by the position in which we now find ourselves.
So, here you come along with: 1. Proof that the ‘system’ does not, in fact, work past providing comfort for a few at the expense of the many; 2. Proof that the ‘system’ is, in fact, exacting wholesale destruction of a planet on which beautiful and balanced life had flourished for millions of years as a result of a process that has taken billions of years; 3. Proof that there is nothing we can do to save the perpetrators, which include ourselves.
And to that I stand on the highest mountaintop that has not been stripped, removed and mined and I shout: “HalleFuckingLujah!!!” loudly enough so that each and every one of the billions of people living in abject poverty with scare food or water, in a constant state of oppression, fear, slavery and war can hear me; so that millions of chickens crammed into cages with their beaks and claws cut off, bleeding and tortured can hear me; so that their brother and sister wolves and bears and elephants and salmon that are near extinction can hear me; so the tuna and whales and dolphins that swim and gag in the polluted oceans can hear me; so the rain forest dying in the Amazon drought and the trees being murdered in clear cuts for coffee tables and printer paper can hear me; so the babies born with deformities caused by depleted uranium dropped in bombs by the U.S. so we can steal their oil so all those disempowered-feeling people can drive to the mall and shop for Christmas gifts can hear me.
Again, I shout “HALLELUJAH!!! The horrors that species Homo Sapiens has perpetrated on this beautiful planet and all her creatures will soon be over. And I absolutely feel empowered by that. For the past 57 years, knowing that I could not, that all those of us who have resisted, who have worked for social change could not in any substantive way feed the hungry, heal the sick and stop the suffering has meant soul-shattering disempowerment. Now I am empowered. I feel the power of this planet coursing through my veins, intertwining with my blood, propelling me toward a short-term future that I cannot begin to imagine, but welcome, even though it means unfathomable suffering. I remind those of you who would shove this fact in my face – there has always been and continues to be unfathomable suffering for those who are not ‘privileged.’
And in the meantime, I am empowered to slough off all the crap, the ideologies, the mundanities, the meaningless activities. I am empowered to totally learn and embrace who I am, really, underneath all the societal-enforced indoctrination. I am empowered to live with the deepest authenticity of my mind and heart and soul. I am empowered to touch and talk to and relate to other people with deepening compassion and empathy and without fear. I am empowered to breathe each breath with purpose, with joy, with the astonishment of being alive at this sacred time. I am empowered to see the Earth as it truly is, and not through the eyes of a 21st century person brought up in the construct of the post-industrial age. I am empowered to open my heart and my mind and my spirit to their broadest extent and fully perceive and embrace the world around me. I am empowered to love, without fear, without holding back. In fact, I am empowered to be fearless. And maybe, just maybe, all that is the point to living in the first place.
But then, I do not desire to hold onto and perpetuate the current set of living arrangements on this planet. I desire the horrors to be gone. And all the evidence points to the process of that exact thing happening. So, as my parents taught me and as you, Guy, so tirelessly ask us to do now, I wipe away the remaining illusions, I open my heart and my mind and my arms, I feel the power dancing in my body, my toes, my fingertips – and I reach out to touch all that is beautiful and magickal and alive on our magnificent planet. I reach out to touch you, each of you, so that you can feel this all-encompassing empowerment, too.
December 13th, 2012 at 11:32 am
Guy, with greatest respect and love, I am eternally grateful that it is you will to speak…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJRKg07W1zU
December 13th, 2012 at 11:37 am
The “leading public figure” is wrong. The uncertainties in the models are no longer SO large that we can’t begin to draw some reasonable conclusions from them moving forward. “The only thing we know is that we know nothing” is no longer plausible when it comes to climate science.
December 13th, 2012 at 11:55 am
Many of us have been living the simple life (not looking to get rich), trying to do the right thing by the planet – recycle, garden, refrain from the pursuit of some synthetic “happiness” because you’re already genuinely happy, not needing all the toys, reading, meditating, working out, doing what we thought was right. It doesn’t take long if you’re paying attention to discover that something is very wrong with the way things are set up – it’s way too energy inefficient (and now with a worn-out electrical grid)! Some have their “aha” moment while stuck in a long line of unmoving traffic on a sunny summer day, see all those idling engines ahead and behind . . .
If you check around you can find local groups doing just about everything in the “environmental involvement” area from water protection, to anti-fracking, to clean air, supporting local farms who do things organically or co-ops, urban garden projects in poor neighborhoods using abandoned space or on roof-tops of buildings, there’s any number of public works projects (and some townships have public meetings where it can be addressed, budgeted and facilitated, so get involved if you so feel – it’s cathartic, somehow makes one feel better, even if only for the time they participate.
Perhaps somewhere along the evolution trail we were supposed to slow down and enjoy the surroundings – and tend to them (then stay out of the way and don’t cause problems). How we were supposed to know, with all the conditions we had to endure, i’ve yet to discern. Lately it feels like this was the ride the whole time, that it was meant to happen this way and that we get the privilege to be at the last picture show.
December 13th, 2012 at 11:59 am
I started to write this comment and then decided to refresh the screen one more time. Up pops Liag’s comment. Now I can speak.
I have published on empowerment. I study empowerment. I’ve been slammed by (some) editors, nurses and others. But some “get it” and patients get it better than nurses.
The concept of empowerment was created by Julian Rappaport (not Paulo Freire, as usually assumed) in a 1981 speech to the American Psychological Association (APA). He defined it as a feeling, and the opposite feeling to that of helplessness. Psychologists, nurses, social workers, and other agents of empire loved this idea. Create a feeling in a person and you’ve done a good thing. If you tried and they didn’t feel empowered, well, then it’s their own fault. It has become so bad, that nurses (even my students!) say, “Yes, I empowered him to quit smoking.” No, you forced him by your will and your status as a social agent of the status quo.
The empowerment people speak of has nothing to do with the objective details of people’s lives. It’s about how they feel. It has become a technique of oppression, used by social agents. *I* will empower *you* to do what *I* say is best for *you*.
Patients are considered empowered if and only if they make the *correct* decisions as defined by the health care provider.
Oooooo, Guy, you made people feel *disempowered*. Shame on you. Your message was *disempowering*. Shame again.
Anyone *feeling* disempowered by the truths of the message of NTE is a very fragile person. Anyone *feeling* disempowered by this presentation is a captive of empire – they feel what they are told to feel, they behave as they are told to behave.
What unthinking idiots these people are.
Liag is not one of these. He sees the truth, embraces the message, and makes what he wants of it. He thinks. He makes his own decisions. He will do what he wants, not what he is told to do, to feel. And he will face the consequences as a relatively free agent.
All feelings and actions from this point on will be moot, anyway. We speak of the “moral” thing to do at the end of the planetary ecosystems – what hubris! We think of how we wish to “go down fighting” or “at least help people until the end” as though someone or something was going to judge us after it was all over. You may decide to do these things, but be mindful of why you do what you do. You must be your own judge.
But we’re down to biology and physics now, people. All the things we made up to support people living in groups: morality, generosity, team work, religion, civilization, the very ideas of right and wrong, science, philosophy – all these things are ethereal, made up by humans, not real. They mean nothing in the face of NTE. We are the lemmings exhorting each other to higher moral standing as we all dive over the cliff together.
So face the end however you like! Make your own decisions. Do what you must. Get real, as Liag has done. It will be interesting to observe individual humans’ responses. Most will cling to their conditioned responses. Some not. The possibilities are endless! Grab the popcorn.
December 13th, 2012 at 12:52 pm
BC Nurse Prof, I appreciate your comments about me. It feels good to have positive feed back, of course. I agree with your comment whole-heartedly.
I must correct you on just one thing, something I understand you can’t ascertain from my name. I am a ‘she.’
December 13th, 2012 at 1:28 pm
I am very sorry, Liag, for making that assumption. Rather illustrates our culturally mediated reflexes, no?
December 13th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
A quick sort of off topic – some aspects of collapse will have a stark beauty http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2012/dec/12/chasing-ice-iceberg-greenland-video
“It’s like watching ‘Manhattan breaking apart in front of your eyes’, says one of the researchers for filmmaker James Balog. He’s describing the largest iceberg calving ever filmed, as featured in his movie, Chasing Ice. After weeks of waiting, the filmakers witnessed 7.4 cubic km of ice crashing off the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland. Chasing Ice, released in the UK on Friday, follows Balog’s mission to document Arctic ice being melted by climate change.”
December 13th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Guy, I’m actually pleased to see you realize the mud hut has been a failure. You really are someone who is not afraid to re-evaluate decisions, assumptions, paths, etc., in light of new information. I hope I am able to do the same.
Our small home and garden here has taken all of our money to set up. Now I think it might be a mistake to have tied all of it up this way. We may need to gather a few things together in a backpack and walk away north some day. I hope I know when that day comes. I also hope my joints will be able to take it. If not, I’ll lay down and die – I have no problem with that.
Every part of the world will have its end. For some, flood. For some, drought. For some, heat. For us, it will be by firestorm. All it will take is another El Nino and one lightning strike. Poof!
December 13th, 2012 at 1:45 pm
Guy, are you going to reconsider what you do, in light of the response to your latest presentation? I don’t see you sitting down and waiting for the end. What’s your plan? Why do you torture yourself so? I’d rather sit and commune with the worms in my garden than do what you do.
But I love gardening. And cooking the food and eating it. A bit late to figure out what I want to do in life, isn’t it?
December 13th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
I am a 27 year old woman who has been reading NBL for a few months. Gradually, I have let the horrors of the facts that your work and essays uncover sink in. I have presented the facts to all sorts of people- a few close friends also in their 20′s, my old therapist, my current therapist, my father. No one believes it. No one is willing to accept it. Even my old therapist, who introduced me to being aware of ecological destruction (a proponent of the field of ‘ecopsychology’), believes that mystery could account for something science doesn’t know.
My current therapist, who I’m seeing because of depression (but I know philosophically, I am sensitive to truths those around me don’t accept), says that I am vulnerable to ‘enthrallment.’
So, for me, the hardest thing currently is how alone I feel. Utterly helpless. I know we are all helpless, but at least if we could comfort each other in small teams or groups.
How does one deal with the loneliness? If even the most eco-minded therapist can’t face this with me and participate in a conversation about how to die, what do I do? Go to nature and weep alone? Wait for the day when everyone has to wake up?
December 13th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
“What of despair? If you don’t despair what we’ve done, and what we continue to do, to the living planet and people outside the industrialized world, I have little sympathy for you. Despair is a typical and expected reaction to my presentations, and I would have it no other way. If the truth causes despair, then bring on the truth. I’ve been despairing for years. It hurts. But avoiding our emotions makes us less human, hence degrades our humanity. I want no part of that. I want to feel, even when it hurts. Until I can’t.” ~ Guy McPherson
This is brilliant Guy! And they said you were a psychopath!? I say you are real and that is why I love you!
Choices are the only real thing we have complete control over in our lives. We make choices based on many many factors and living with the consequences of those choices is what makes us learn and grow as human beings. Be deliberate and critical in your thinking because when the choice is made, the consequence is what WE have to live with.
I wrote this for my students because it is what I used to teach them and what I feel is true in our lives, but based on the industrial civilization model, we are taught to avoid what is perceived to be the uncomfortable or “bad” feelings we naturally feel. They are there, we choose to “stuff” or ignore them which leads to very unhealthy physical, mental, and emotional maladies. Many of which we see in “civilization” today. I applaud your truth and your ability to express your feelings Guy. When people actually meet you and choose not to get stuck on the “darkness” of your message, then they will get “it”! Hopefully they feel the pain and then live their lives the way they see fit. As long as they are doing their best to live their lives without destroying Mother Earth and at the least expense of living things, then who are We to judge? Therein lies the question we all can ask ourselves: Am I living my life the best I can without destroying the Earth and consequentially each other?
Since I have been on this journey of realization, 45 years in the making, I realize it has been a process to answer this question. I am getting there and I am thankful for your input. I think I can say that I appreciate your message of sadness and pain and have come out the better for it!
I choose to feel your message and then model as best I can by trying not to live within the paradigm of industrial civilization to the best of my ability and psychological well-being. So far so good I believe! With that said, I am grateful you are in my tribe! I am looking forward to much laughter, critical discussion, listening, and feeling feelings with you in the very near future! Peace Fatty!
December 13th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
KB, don’t let these people run your life! Their job is to get you to “adapt” better to “society” for your own good. They are trained to fix you to not ask such questions! You should have an oppressive job, kids, spouse, and fly to Hawaii for holidays.
You have now happened upon the biggest unwelcome truth of the human species right now. What to do? Why? Why do you have to *do* anything?
As an aside, why do people your age always think they have to “do” something? Is that a product of being young? Maybe. I don’t have access to my young brain anymore. I can’t answer.
Yep. It’s lonely. Powerfully so. But look at Liag. How freeing is this information? It could strike you as the most freeing piece of news you ever came across. Do you get depressed listening to news reports of drones blowing children to bits? Of torture, rape, starvation, drowning? It makes me feel so much better to know that it’s almost over. As a species, we are the worst ever, and now we’re about to destroy the planet. I think we deserve it, and by our own hand, even.
I listen to the news: last weekend a young couple died by sliding their car off the road into the icy river north of here. High school sweethearts, teachers of children, she 8 months pregnant with their first child, loved by the entire small community. They pulled his body out, but they can’t find hers. I will not go down to the river until they find her. I couldn’t bear to be the one to find her body stuck between a couple of boulders or tree roots in the water.
The only way I can bear things like this is by saying to myself, “They are the lucky ones. Their child will not starve to death before their eyes.” It’s almost over. It’s almost over. I repeat. Then I can see more clearly. Rejoice! It’s almost over.
December 13th, 2012 at 2:23 pm
Hi BC Nurse Prof. Thanks for those words.
I guess the urge to ‘do’ comes from a desire to still make meaning out of life.
And yes, of course, I get horridly depressed when I hear about drones blowing children to bits, or of rape, torture, starvation. But I had been one of those hoping for the collapse of industrial civilization, and an end to at least some oppression.
And selfishly, I must admit, I before reading NBL, had been hoping for a “normal” life. I know it’s shallow and selfish, given how privileged I am compared to other species and poor people of the world.
I wanted to love my own child, I wanted to fall in love, I wanted my heart to smile. You see, I was never in the industrial economy death camp. My own three occupations of choice (to which I aspire) are musician (baroque singer), writer, and counselor. All I wanted was to live a life of harmony.
Yes, I see above, a preoccupation with “I.” I seem self-obsessed and premature. My parents still think I will have those things. My friends to do.
What do you do with all this youthful energy? Where do I turn it?
December 13th, 2012 at 2:41 pm
I think the “leading public figure” Guy mentions in his essay should read Paul Kingsnorth’s 2009 essay “Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist”. Dealing with NTE/”McStinctionism” in one bite might be too much for him/her to deal with right now. Kingsnorth’s Dark Mountain might be a good alternative place to start.
December 13th, 2012 at 2:45 pm
KB,
Here’s one place:
http://dark-mountain.net/
Spend some time there. For someone with a lot of youthful energy, it’s an OK place to hang out.
December 13th, 2012 at 2:57 pm
KB, I don’t know if I can help you. You’re asking all the right questions and figuring out what your own answers tell you about yourself.
So make it not about you anymore. Do things for others, instead. If I were young again, I would move to New Zealand. I just missed a job opportunity there and I’ve been kicking myself ever since. But that’s me. Not you.
Don’t agonize over lost children and lost loves. If you decide you don’t want a lover I can bet you dollars to donuts that lovers will begin breaking down your door. I don’t know why this is, but somehow people exude the fragrance of not being interested. Then potential lovers smell this and get intrigued. When you truly don’t want one, they’ll find you. Just don’t let them convince you to have children.
Let go of the “Woe is me! When will someone make me happy?” and go out and do what makes you happy. Become active, not passive. No one else can do this for you. If you are doing what makes you happy, then people will attracted to you, to your happiness in what you are doing.
Ok, that’s enough motherly advice for today.
December 13th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Guy you wrote “From my email inbox comes a message from the campus “green” committee that invited my presentation at a local college: “We are as alarmed as you are but strongly disagree with your analysis that the only solution to climate chaos is to embrace economic collapse. There are other empowering, creative, sustainable and hopeful courses of action. Our students need to hear these choices in order to move forward. A message entirely consisting of gloom and doom will not move us in a positive direction. If we are to have a future, we must stay engaged, not disempowered and filled with despair.””
Funny how all those positive things people are supposed to do to save the world all seem to involve producing more CO2 (attending conventions, driving to meetings, buying cute save the world T-shirts etc. Not to mention continuing to ruin the environments of any country that has resources we need for our cell phones (coltan, Congo) so we can plan actions, or our windmills (NEODYMIUM, China) just to name a few. Alternet wanted me to ask for a free bumper sticker today – No Farms, No Food, American Farmland Trust. Besides being absolutely useless and giving them my info so they can ask for money, it uses resources to make, print, and mail eh?
Psychotherapist to the doomed. I think there must be a limerick in that. I;ll work on it if BtD doesn’t get there first. It will provide something to use for your court jester role maybe.
Thank you for speaking truth and providing a forum where we can absorb this truth and learn how to live with it until our living is over.
December 13th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Yes, and along the lines of court jester, I’ve been hoping to see a doomer version of one of those stupid media lists……most influential people, biggest events of 2012……that kind of thing. I wish I was funny.
BC Nurse Prof,
I agree with your advice to KB. Must be the crone thing.
December 13th, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Empowerment comes in two flavours: delegation of authority to act, and the uprooting of all the negative attitudes that inhibit action.
The disempwering referred to here is in the latter sense. It is predicated on expectation of anticipated results as the motivation for action. With no escape from the imminent ghastliness, and any favourable expectations are excluded, there is no internal goad to action to bank upon.
Stuck in the paradigm of attachment – in this case the expecting of anticipated results – one has two options: block out the prospect of NTE, or fall into the pit of despair. But to the extent that a person’s attitudes and actions are not exclusively in thrall to expectations, they will experience reality differently.
December 13th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Somewhere above, I read of someone fearing watching their own child die.
There are people who are already living this… this has already begun. We (of the “first world”) are the only people who remain protected from the environmental damage that we (mostly) have wrought.
December 13th, 2012 at 5:28 pm
There is a recent–actually copyrighted 2013– book that appears helpful to me after having reading the references, table of contents, foreword, and introduction: Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Sally Weintrobe, editor, published by Routledge. The book is formatted as individual essays, each essay followed with brief discussion by several others, and sometimes with a response from the essay’s author.
A major shortcoming, that the books acknowledges, p. 3, “The focus of this book is on people in the West, currently the biggest carbon polluters, and very little is said about how people from other cultures and economies think and feel about climate change and about nature. This is a significant lack.”
Yes, I agree. For one, Buddhist Vipassana meditation, also termed insight meditation, can permit the difficulties of civilization’s social and psychological conditioning–so ably named and uncovered by western psychoanalysis–to be unwound and dissolved in practice, whereas strictly western psychoanalysis may not be so effective past the problem statement stage.
Another reason is that indigenous cultures, often overwhelmed and partially subsumed by a dominant western culture, nevertheless retain world views that do not rely on the same paradigms of western culture that are now revealed as destructive, and in fact suicidal. Both of these avenues, explored elsewhere than in this book, have proven fruitful.
But I am continuing to read with great interest what the discipline of western psychoanalysis may have to offer to the strategy of discussing climate change. All signs point to some good value within this volume.
December 13th, 2012 at 5:33 pm
Just saw Guy’s “Twin Sides of the Fossil Fuel Coin”. Crisp, sharp and snappy. Lookin’ good!
December 13th, 2012 at 5:47 pm
This is probably not a big surprise to those of us used to higher academia as being “full of hot air”:
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/12/methane-is-popping-up-all-over-boston-2512834.html
December 13th, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Guy,
in traditional court setting, the Court Jester speaks the truth to the King/Queen, because they have the power. We know it today as speaking ‘Truth to Power’.
In the case of the traditional Court Jester, no one else dare try the possible temper of the Monarch, by speaking Truth. The case of the Court Jester is singularly different because that role is a socially disguised one of a sufficiently enlightened individual to be able to advise the Monarch on a complete world picture regarding the welfare of the realm. In traditional indigenous groups this is known as a Sharmanic role.
The European social development meant so much power was in the hands of one, that the Sharmanic role needed to be close by. The two roles of the Court Jester of ‘truth teller’ and ‘humour maker’ go side by side with very high intellegence.
I don’t see you are hitting the mark as Court Jester yet, as you are not speaking to those in power, at least you are making the illusion of all householders, (distinct from eletes in real positions of power), believing in their own power. As you continue the essays and lectures it is apparent that that illusion is one of the issues we need to come to, our powerlessness, especially as many have pointed out her, our relationship to death and now species extinction.
To be critical, I can’t laugh much at your black humour ‘on the road’, and I suspect it is a way of you personally coping during the discourses and getting your audience to wake a little.
I agree many of your points are so absurd it is funny, but not the kind of funny, IMO, that brings self recognition with it.
I will say you are doing a damn fine impression of a court jester, but IMO the power is in a less obvious place, but how you would speak directly to it I don’t know. I suppose the fact there was a significant problem with trolling recently may give creedence that your voice reache somwhere into that hidden vault of ‘real power’.
That said, I applaud your committment to living in the midst of an experiment, and one that is a creative life on display.
As I suspect you are well aware, association with even one kid, is enough to make your heart bleed for the near term future holds for humans, let alone other life forms.
Our own, personal day of death will come, untill then live with all your heart.
How about someone draw and post a McStinction burger with all the in’greed’ience. It has to have some ‘Relish’ on it, but unfortunately no ‘Ketchup’ is left. And an Eco-cideo-chino on the side.
December 13th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
BTW, yesterday I saw a cofee cup, made of paper with the term ‘eco-cup’ on the side.
I nearly vomited.
It shoud have correctly been labelled:
a-slightly-less-ecosidal-species-lethal-single-use-warm-beverage-holder-come-false-feel-good-slogan-device-convincing-me-and-maybe-you-I’m-doing-my-bit-and-all-I-can-for-the-biosphere-sustainability-campaign-even-though-caffene-implies-I-am-not-sufficiently-motivated-to-work-without-stimulation-as-a-compensation-for-my-bondage-to-industrial-civilisation-debt-slavery-and-destruction-of-the-living-planet
Now that kinda label would get me in!!
December 13th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
There should be no more pussy footing, when time is running out,
And no more non believers when there’s nothing left to doubt.
Our world is right before us, we should see it every day,
Yet no one speaks of what they feel while they see our own decay.
We go about our daily tasks noting little of what’s become,
To all the single parts that contribute to the sum.
There is little paid attention to the ground beneath our feet
Or where we’ll get our food when there’s nothing left to eat.
Does one ever look above them at the fewer birds that fly the sky?
And I wonder if they really know how many people lie?
Though some have spoke to tell us what we need to make it through our day
But do we ever listen to what they have to say?
Do we want to hear the truth or just be told the lies?
I know for me I have to clear the path before I die.
I have to know what part I’ve played to the damage I’ve caused the earth
Since life was given to me when I was placed at birth.
Our playground was for living
A life that none destroys
Though some think of it as fantasy as they play with all their toys.
I can’t say how sorry I am that I ever played the part
Of living such a life with very little heart.
I now know how it feels to lose the sacred ground
That once bestowed upon us all that makes us sound.
December 13th, 2012 at 6:31 pm
In the thrall of my usual existential angst yesterday, someone pointed me to a book.
“There is (also) a psychological edge we’re all living on. We know that we’re living in a world that is being devastated but also one replete with the beauty and power of life. We live on the boundary of deciding to make positive contributions although we know we are implicit in the destruction. We skate between apathy, because the truth of what’s happening is painful to think about, versus action, any kind of action; and we skitter between the paralysis caused by grief and fear versus action. Every decision we have to make, whether it’s a life-sustaining or a life-destroying one, is an edge. Our very psyches are on the edge, between dropping out and dropping in, between selling out and fighting back. Every single one of us.
The verge is a dangerous and frightening place. It’s important to know that one is not alone on it. The edge holds a tremendous amount of ecological and cultural as well as intellectual power. I believe that we have to get comfortable with it.
How shall we live? As if we believe in the future. As if everyone one of us is a seed, which as you know is a sacred thing. In my wildest dreams the seeds of every species are speaking to me, calling out: in all the bare spots on earth plant us and let us grow. On all the edges, plant seeds.”
- From “The Seed Underground: A Growing Revolution to Save Food.”
Reading just the preface and intro brought me to tears. I don’t think that there’s anything we can (or should) do at this point to save ourselves, but perhaps we can keep the old plant varieties around?
Anyway, in the book, the author says that she is mainly writing it for young people, trying to inspire them with her own life.
You can read the preface/intro (and more) at the link below. I’m very curious what everyone thinks about this. We are most definitely effed, but could this be something for us to focus on that is not a distraction, but a (maybe?) worthwhile pursuit?
http://books.google.com/books?id=TKLJxZPdyyQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false
December 13th, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Global warming/climate change – fogetaboutit
It’s a ruse, a meme to drive people toward feeling they are the problem. Sure, we consume too much precious oil and have misguided energy policies. But there is way more to the causes of climate change than our excess production of CO2.
Our political, economic and religious systems are all broken. We are at the end of the line. This is the bogeyman, not the climate. Overpopulation, habitat and species destruction is a problem, but not the main one.
The problem is a human one, and can be fixed when a crisis presents itself. Until then we are just whistling in the wind. Nobody knows how it will unfold.
December 13th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
KB, you asked, “How does one deal with the loneliness?” I think coming here is a start. And reaching out further and further. Asking for help in a very specific way, like “My name is ___ and I live in ___. Who’s out there for me to meet with and talk to?” There are doomers all over the place, it turns out; it takes a bit of work sometimes to unearth them. It usually takes revealing yourself first. What I do is make myself “findable” by using my real name and location; show up in various ways, whether in person at events, or with relevant groups, or online; invite people to talk to me; invite people to have tea with me; even invite people to travel long distances to my home, or travel to see them. I think it’s worth going to great lengths to address the loneliness.
Your current therapist who says you are “vulnerable to enthrallment”: holy crap, does that push my buttons. It seems to me that everyone around you is vulnerable to the enthrallment of industrial civilization. They don’t see the bars of the cage. You are seeing them. I know, it’s crazy-making when everyone around you is crazy and claiming to be sane and telling you you’re the crazy one. Listen: trust yourself. Trust your ability to think critically and evaluate information, on both an intellectual and emotional level. Of course you are depressed. Of course you are already grieving for lost possibilities. You are right to seek out other people to lean on, because those around you are feeding you bullshit. It’s not your fault that they cling to denial.
December 13th, 2012 at 8:49 pm
This is by far one of my favourite essay’s of your’s Guy. I myself swing from great frustration and grief to absolute joy in creating, feeling cold, cooking a satisfying meal, dealing with my animals or staring at the stars (especially tonight).
In our own way we are all alone….. but alone does not mean necessarily lonely. It is useful to to read other’s thoughts. It widens the lens to see the world through.
I have a regime of taking an image a day reflective of that day. I am at the end of the second year of doing it. This for me has been a very positive thing for many reasons but also as a connecting point between the head noise and the absolute stillness of a moment in time. That is all we really have. A moment in time.
It is a structure that keeps me relatively sane and look at the world as it is in the moment which is in stark contrast to considering the near future extinction of life on this planet.
December 13th, 2012 at 8:59 pm
To one who not bored with oneself, loneliness is not a problem. To deal with loneliness one must first consider how one’s own company feels to oneself. This should be extended to how one’s company might feel to others. Solitude is to be happy in one’s own company. It is to be distinguished from loneliness.
December 13th, 2012 at 8:59 pm
I am not surprised to hear what you say. Denial is perhaps the most common thought in the Western world. Denial that we can do wrong either as individuals or as a nation or species. I’m an American. I decided 5 years ago to remove myself from the US and currently live in the Philippines. I have invited my grown family to join me, but denial rules their lives also. So sad.
I read your articles wherever I find them and some of your books as well as those by Richard Heinberg and others. I have the luxury of retirement, and am able to follow world events closely and to try to reason out their interactions to the best of my ability. It is NOT looking good for homo sapiens. The worse part of this is that we are taking down the rest of the world with us. No, the worst is: we are denying that we are doing it and maybe, we could make it less destructive if we tried. But, we will not even try.
I never thought, when I was a child back in the late 40s and 50s that I might see the end of the world as we know it, in my lifetime. But a few years of rational thought, the Pandora’s Box of the internet, and a few personal experiences have shown me otherwise. We should never have assumed the title ‘sapiens’ for we have never measured up.
I wish I could experience one of your truth serving banquets but I probably never will, so I will be content to watch the videos. Here in the Philippines, things are not as bad as in the US. People are still self-sufficient for the most part. Small towns are still families and old friends who have live there for generations. I am the outsider, but I can contribute skills that they can use and have experience that I can share. That is the real wealth, not money.
Thanks again for all of your efforts and know that you reinforce my convictions that I have to do what I can to prepare and to help others, if possible. I know, as a lone swimmer, I cannot push the Titanic away from the iceberg, but maybe I can build a few small life boats before it hits.
December 13th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
The Burden of Knowing
by C.H.Smith
‘The knowledge that the present is unsustainable is, for many of us, a great emotional burden. It troubles our sleep, our minds, and our very well being. Knowledge, like memory, cannot be erased at will, and thus runs in the background of our lives, unseen by others, but deeply troubling to the knower.”
December 13th, 2012 at 9:24 pm
So Andy, I carefully read your post and I’m trying to make sense out of it. You said, (in regards to global climate change) “It’s a ruse, a meme to drive people toward feeling they are the problem. Sure, we consume too much precious oil and have misguided energy policies. But there is way more to the causes of climate change than our excess production of CO2.
Our political, economic and religious systems are all broken. We are at the end of the line. This is the bogeyman, not the climate. Overpopulation, habitat and species destruction is a problem, but not the main one.
The problem is a human one, and can be fixed when a crisis presents itself. Until then we are just whistling in the wind. Nobody knows how it will unfold.”
So… let me get this right. Aren’t you saying from your post that we ARE actually the problem (which I believe we are, indeed)? Firstly, overpopulation,habitat (human-induced loss) and species destruction (as you quoted) is an essential problem as you suggest. But you go on to expand your idea by saying that (in the end) the problem is “a human one.”
If I’m correct, aren’t all of those factors human-related and therefore a “human problem” as you suggest? Either I clearly misread your satire (if that is what is what meant to be) or I am confused by your wording. Please elaborate on your musings. I really want to hear more.
With all due and most courteous respect,
Pilot
December 13th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
Hi Guy,
There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you that just keeps slipping my mind. Where can I find how to build a mud hut?
December 13th, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Smile! You may be oncandid camera
(H/t to Stuart Staniford of the Early Warning blog)
December 13th, 2012 at 10:32 pm
@ KB
In a world that has been dominated far too long by stupid white men, one of the most impressive and empowering aspects of this site, is how many amazing women there are, who aren’t afraid to stare into the abyss–even those with young children–and still find reason and cause to live life fully. So screw your therapist, listen and commiserate with these wise sages online.
Very few of us have someone in our lives, which we can share this information with, so we’ve all come here, for very similar reasons. We may not know the answers, but then again, no one does, but at least we’re probing the appropriate questions, and that’s about as good as it gets.
Never has it been truer, that “we’re all in this together”. Only lies can make the despair go away. Truth has always been brutal, especially now.
The “silver lining” of resignation that others here speak of, is going to be very hard for the younger to discover for themselves, given that most of your life is supposedly still ahead of you, but there is a growing liberation that we’re all just on the cusp of discovering. As long as you keep your eyes open, as you have already, I can promise you, it will get easier with time, even though it seems as if that’s the last thing we can now wait for. We are just beginning to unearth the “divine irresponsibility” that comes with the awareness of being condemned.
So stay tuned…….
December 13th, 2012 at 10:38 pm
They’re gonna count the zits on your butt.
(H/t again to Stuart Staniford’s Early Warning blog)
December 13th, 2012 at 10:45 pm
But we’re down to biology and physics now, people. All the things we made up to support people living in groups: morality, generosity, team work, religion, civilization, the very ideas of right and wrong, science, philosophy – all these things are ethereal, made up by humans, not real. They mean nothing in the face of NTE. We are the lemmings exhorting each other to higher moral standing as we all dive over the cliff together.
Morality, religion, good and evil, they mean nothing, just empty human constructs. The Real is naked nihilism. An empty, morally vacuous space-time continuum with funny little large brained primates who go around inventing moral concepts because it makes living in small hunting groups more efficient.
So why don’t we embrace our now confirmed nihilism since we’re on the cusp of NTE and do whatever we want to whomever we want? Murder that idiot boss, rape the pretty neighbor … what’s stopping those who are so certain that the universe is just a big freak’in ball of nothingness … why aren’t you out feeding your body’s appetites? Nothing else exists, or has any conceivable value than the body’s desires, right? I mean, we’re just cogitational meat machines. So why is Guy bothering to tell the other meat machines that they will all soon die from climate change? What’s the point? It’s all just decaying meat, right?
December 13th, 2012 at 10:46 pm
Hmmm …
I’ve been over here a few times and, frankly, I have come to many of the same conclusions about industrialization and outcomes, nothing is a big surprise … I suspect the economy will unravel like a sweater with the string being pulled. A dramatic collapse is too easy, the long kicking way down is more realistic IMO.
Earth has been down this road before, we simply go along for the ride:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation
Depending on how long humanoids have been ‘here’, we have crossed paths with glaciation periods several times.
Nobody knows how folks will react to a situation until it stares them in the face. It doesn’t, it’s too soon … so far peeps are ignoring the managers rather than taking potshots at them. When managers start ducking is when it gets serious, right now … it’s pondering and waiting.
As for extinction … Keynes said it best: “In the long run, we’re all dead …”
December 14th, 2012 at 12:13 am
depressive lucidity
As your handle may suggest, you are forgetting about great happiness.
The dog that greets its owner is chuffed, but the human that expresses the self, is blissfully happy.
The meat body is no doubt there, and is functioning, but the being it is associated with is not identified with it and its ordinary carry on.
Happiness, is the rub, not suffering.
A young person went to an elder for advice. The young person was ver depressed and unhappy, and had been for a while. The two had trust, and had been known to each other from the young ones birth.
The young one says tot eh elder,
“I’m so unhappy I don’t know what to do. Can you help me, I’ll try anything?
The elder look directly into the young one’s eyes, and sensing sincerity and genuine inner struggle, the elder said,
“Very well, I will help you, but you must do exactly what I ask, no half measures. It wont be easy but you must be serious about this, remember, exactly as I say, OK?
The young one is animated and releived at fimally getting some real help.
“Thank you, what do i do?”
“Right. From today onwards I want you to be happy every moment of your life!!” said the elder.
The yonger one screeched in consternation,” But that’s too hard”
Happiness is a lot harder to ‘live’ than ordinary unhappiness. There are always ‘reasons’ to be unhappy, from trivial things like my frapaccino is too hot and tokk too long, to I’m trapped in a debt cycle I can’t escape and my partner is having some on the side. Reasons for unhappiness are always relative, (and sometimes relatives, he, he).
However happiness, deep and abiding is the unconditioned manifestation of one’s free heart expression, or the bing of the isness of ourselves.
Are you willing to live a life primarily comprised of anything less?
Guy’s over all message is a big reason to lose focus, drop your jaw and ordinary life and do something else, but what?
IMO the message is not really much different to Hamlet’s acceptence of death, ‘The readiness id all”
So going on living, happily, is an objective I foster, regardless of all the shit and poodle going down.
A very obstinate comments poster from some previous essays would likely retort, “But what is there to be happy about, if it’s game over, species extinctions etc?”
My answer is fine be unhappy, you don’t need a reason to be truely happy, but, you may have to let go of all the reasons you are presently unhappy.
Hamlet only realy lived after he understood the readiness of being. (eh hemm… He died soon after, however, ….)
December 14th, 2012 at 12:18 am
ooopps….
Sorry, that should have been…
‘The readiness is all’
December 14th, 2012 at 12:19 am
Right-On, Guy!
Gotta’ go THROUGH the despair, dive INTO the wave, and keep going…
I’m doggy-paddling like crazy in the little old plantation-era clinic, with rules from Washington, and computer software from GE (We Bring Good Things To Life, and nuclear warheads…).
It is Bizarre, but I’m getting paid to take care of poor Hawaiian people, until this shite crashes, and that’s what I’ll do, by-golly.
Mele Kalikimaka!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV_BGqgbxdc
Haoli-John
December 14th, 2012 at 12:21 am
It is quite true that in reference to the material world we are all meat machines. Even the mind and the intellect are subtly material, being epiphenomena on the meat machines. The onesho has awareness: awareness of body and its surroundings, awareness of thought, awareness of intellect has no proof that the rest of the bodies have that awareness; they could very well be meat machines, performing their myriad functions so well that they only appear to have awareness. Indeed the rest could very well be meat machines without awareness, justifying a laissez-faire attitude.
December 14th, 2012 at 12:22 am
“The one who has awareness……”
December 14th, 2012 at 12:30 am
‘Soaring temperatures melt road’
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/soaring-temperatures-melt-road/23016
“Friday December 14, 2012 – 12:10 EDT
Temperatures above 40 degrees in South Australia’s far north this week have caused a main road near Port Augusta to melt.
About three kilometres of the Quorn Road, which goes through Stirling North to the Augusta Highway, had to be repaired because of heat damage.
Harold Carne from the Transport Department says machinery from Port Lincoln was used to fix it.
He says the heat in the area was clearly evident when he went to inspect the road.
“I went out to inspect the site at 2:30[pm] at Stirling North, it was 43 degrees, the air temperature,” he said.
“I went out to take some photos of the site and my phone actually shut down – it said it was too hot.”
© ABC 2012 ”
Also
‘Children feared swept away in Samoan cyclone’
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/children-feared-swept-away-in-samoan-cyclone/23017
“Police in Samoa say a number of children are presumed to have drowned after being swept away in a flooded river when Cyclone Evan hit the South Pacific nation.
The cyclone made landfall yesterday and caused widespread damage across the country, killing at least two people, cutting power, causing flooding and ripping trees out of the ground.
Locals say it is the worst storm to hit the region in recent years and a state of disaster has been declared.
There are now fears the storm could intensify to a category five cyclone as it tracks across the north of Tonga and then moves onto Fiji.
New Zealand’s high commissioner to Samoa, Nick Hurley, says police have told him a number of children went missing near the main river in Samoa’s capital Apia.
“This is the biggest one I’ve been through and I’ve been through difficult situations in the Pacific (before),” Mr Hurley told Radio New Zealand.
“The unpredictable nature of this one has made it quite different. The forecast winds did not give any indication of how strong the impact was going to be.”
Many places in Samoa have only just rebuilt after being devastated by a tsunami in 2009.
“Power is off for the whole country… Tanugamanono power plant is completely destroyed and we might not have power for at least two weeks,” the Disaster Management Office (DMO) said in a statement….
It was around 70 kilometres off the coast and is forecast to reverse its course later this evening, although it is not known if it will again cross Samoa.
The Fiji Meteorological Service has warned the cyclone could threaten northern parts of Tonga on Saturday and reach Fiji by Sunday.
Authorities in Fiji have gone into emergency preparation as the cyclone threatens to head towards the country.
Fiji’s weather bureau says the storm could eventually become a category five cyclone – packing winds at its core of 360 kilometres per hour – and on its current path would hit both of the nation’s main islands.
ABC/AFP
© ABC 2012 ”
More on the way this summer here in the South, it seems.
December 14th, 2012 at 12:41 am
‘GOES-15 Satellite Image of Tropical Storm Evan’
http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/50892.php?from=228496
As many know the Southern Oceans have far less land mass than the Northern, and therefor, there is less likelihood that land masses will be hit, but that does not mean none will.
December 14th, 2012 at 12:53 am
Something else to be unhappy about…
‘WMO Provisional Statement on the State of Global Climate in 2012
By: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)’
http://yubanet.com/world/WMO-Provisional-Statement-on-the-State-of-Global-Climate-in-2012.php
“November 28, 2012 – Global Temperatures in 2012
The last eleven years (2001–2011) were among the top warmest years on record, and the first ten months of 2012 indicate that this year will not be an exception. The year was characterized by unusual warmth across most of the globe’s land areas and a weak-to-moderate La Niña at the beginning of the year.
Overall, the 2012 global land and ocean temperature during January–October 2012 is estimated to be 0.45°C1 ±0.10°C2 (0.81°F ±0.18°F) above the 1961–1990 average. This is the ninth warmest such period since records began in 1850. Global average temperatures are also estimated using model-based reanalysis data and are typically consistent with the observations. According to reanalysis data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the January–October 2012 global land and ocean temperature anomaly ranks among the top ten warmest years thus far. ECMWF reanalysis data goes back to 1958.
The year began with a weak-to-moderate strength La Niña, which had developed in October 2011. The presence of a La Niña during the start of a year tends to have a cooling influence on global temperatures, and this year was no different. The averaged 3-month period of January–March 2012 was the lowest global land and ocean temperature for that period since 1997. However, the temperature anomaly remained above average at +0.28°C1 (+0.50°F). The La Niña weakened through April 2012 as sea surface temperatures across the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed, giving way to the neutral-to-warm conditions that have persisted since. As shown in the graph below, after the dissipation of the La Niña, the global land and ocean year-to-date temperature anomalies continued to increase with each consecutive month for the rest of the year. The six-month average of May–October 2012 was among the four warmest such periods on record….
Greenland, which had above-average temperatures for much of the year, recorded its all-time highest May maximum temperature, when temperatures soared to 24.8°C at Ivittuut/Narsarsuaq on May 29th.
Jordan experienced two heat waves during June and July, observing daily temperatures as high as 9°C above normal maximum temperatures during that time.
During April and May 2012, most of China experienced exceptional warmth, with most areas having anomalies as high as 5°C above the 1961–1990 average. On April 30th, Hong Kong recorded a daily mean temperature of 28.5°C, tying with April 26th, 1994 as the highest in April since records began in 1884. On May 3rd, Hong Kong observed a minimum temperature of 28.0°C, the earliest occurrence of a “hot night” (minimum temperatures equal to or higher than 28°C). South-central China experienced a heat wave during late June to mid-July, prompting electricity load to rise as high as 3.8 gigawatts in Changsha city on July 9th—the highest on record. The heat also caused light to moderate damage to crops. The warm conditions continued to affect parts of southern China in August 2012, with Hong Kong experiencing one of its warmest August on records. A heat wave during mid-July to early August brought daily maximum temperatures between 29°C to 37°C across parts of central Russia. Northern Japan experienced extremely warm conditions from late August to mid-September due to the significantly enhanced North Pacific High, prompting record-high 10-day mean temperatures with an anomaly of 5.5°C above the 1981–2010 average in the middle of September.
Across parts of Australia, maximum temperatures were well-above-average from August onwards. Of particular interest, Evans Head had a maximum temperature of 41.6°C on October 20th, the highest October temperature on record for any coastal New South Wales site. Meanwhile, Birdsville had its earliest spring 40-degree day on record when it reached 40.6°C on September 20th.
Sea Ice Extent
The Arctic reached its lowest sea ice extent in its annual cycle on record on September 16th, 2012 at 3.41 million square kilometers. This value broke the previous record low set on September 18th, 2007 by 18 percent and was 49 percent or nearly 3.3 million square kilometers below the 1979–2000 average minimum.
The difference between the maximum Arctic sea ice extent on March 20th, 2012 and the lowest minimum extent on September 16th was 11.83 million square kilometers—the largest seasonal ice extent loss in the 34-year satellite record.
2011 State of the Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere
The latest analysis of observations from the WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) Programme shows that the globally averaged mole fractions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) reached new highs in 2011. The globally averaged CO2 mole fraction in 2011 reached 390.9±0.1 ppm. The annual increase from 2010 to 2011 constituted 2.0 ppm, which is higher than the average growth rate for the 1990s (~1.5 ppm/yr) and is the same as the average growth rate for the past decade (~2.0 ppm/yr). Atmospheric CH4 reached a new high of 1813±2 ppb in 2011 due to increased emissions from anthropogenic sources. Globally averaged CH4 mole fraction increased by 5 ppb with respect to 2010. The growth rate of CH4 decreased from ~13 ppb/yr during the early 1980s to near zero during 1999–2006. However, since 2007, atmospheric CH4 has been increasing again, with a nearly constant rate during the last 3 years. The average global N2O mole fraction in 2011 reached 324.2±0.1 ppb, which is 1.0 ppb above 2010. The annual increase from 2010 to 2011 is greater than the mean growth rate over the past 10 years (0.78 ppb/yr).”
Recomend further reading there…
December 14th, 2012 at 1:32 am
Good one Guy.
Hope is an excuse for inaction.
December 14th, 2012 at 3:48 am
OZ man, cultured be happy feelings work for some. For others they work the opposite. In Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich she tells of how when she got cancer she was told she had to be happy and positive or she would not be cured. That is not what she did and she is cured for now. She felt, and others in her situation agreed, that to urging to be happy just became another burden, and another way to perceive personal failure. As Guy notes, one can choose to fight even if you think the cause is lost. One can choose to get the most out of life without going wild too. For some that might be doing just what they are doing now – it is for me as I am already doing all the things I want to do, growing food and chickens and enjoying life with my husband. Others might want to make a change but that doesn’t mean going out and living the high life or a life of excesses which is likely to cause you to crash before the crash.
I never told a Hospice Patient I sat with at the end of their life to be happy. I never told them what to do at all. I tried to see what they needed and provide it if I could, to just be a new friend who wasn’t in denial about their immanence of death. Perhaps the best way people can prepare for NTE is to become a Hospice Volunteer. I did it while I was working, usually just 1 or 2 hours a week, more close to the person’s end time. Be there with someone else through their last days. Think about the fact that for all of us those last days will come NTE or not. Being a Hospice Volunteer didn’t make me happy, but it did make me feel that I could do a bit of good for someone. Doing a bit of good for a dying person or planet can be satisfying even if we remain unhappy about the future of our species and planet.
For what not to do perhaps a reading of The Picture of Dorian Grey might be in order http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray
At any rate, be happy exhortations, IMHO never helped anyone to be happy. Be unhappy, face the thing that is making you unhappy, work through it to your own personal way to face a somewhat nearer end than expected.
December 14th, 2012 at 3:57 am
Makati1 thanks for the quote from The Burden of Knowing. I intend to get the book.
Here is another for anyone brave enough to carry the burden of knowing
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano or other books by the same author.
Galeano is a hard read, but the least we can do is know what the industrial civilization has done to other humans on the planet.
December 14th, 2012 at 4:21 am
I think the main problem is that the vast majority of people in the industrialized (and so called “developed”) countries associate economic collapse with doom, death and all kinds of unpleasentness. And frankly, yes, if the shelves in the supermarkets were suddenly empty (or if the purse is empty and the stuff on the shelves therefore out of reach), a lot of those people would be threatened by starvation rather quickly. So we can’t really blame them.
Of course, what those people refuse to see is that the same economy which is their lifeline is killing people (and not just a few … ), animals, plants and ecosystems in epic proportions. And that it will kill them as well if they don’t stop it. Soon. At once. Yesterday would even be better.
What we have to do is to convince them that economic collapse is not the devil incarnate. Quite the contrary. It is the only way out of this mess. Maybe the problem is language. Maybe we have to find other, less frightening words for it. Collapse does not sound very positive. Maybe we could just say something like “when economy has run it’s course”. That sounds a lot less frightening.
Personally, I live a life that is in many respects as if the big collapse had already happened. I live in a little timberframe cabin without electricity or plumbing. My heating is a little woodstove, fueled with wood from my direct surroundings, my toilet is a plastic bucket, my sink is an old porcelain bowl. I do cheat a bit, still, because I have access to electricity and the internet from the main house where I work, but actually, if that suddenly wouldn’t work any more, things wouldn’t be so different for me. I would miss it for a few days or weeks, but then get over it. There is so much other stuff to do.
I also still enjoy that I have the opportunity to buy a large variety of organic foods from a little organic food store that I can reach by bike. But with a little adaption I could get by with what we grow on the grounds here and what we can get from the neighbours, many of which are still farmers. I can get milk, potatoes, beef and honey in our little village. We have chickens and ducks ourselves, as well as herbs and veggies and many fruit trees.
I don’t watch telly, don’t even have one, I don’t own a car and only drive one if I really absolutely have to, I don’t have a smartphone or a playstation or whatever people think they need nowadays. And yet I don’t have the feeling that I am missing out on something. Quite the contrary. This way of life is by far more exciting, satisfying and comforting than anything I have done before.
The message we have to spread if we want people to join the end-civilisation-bandwaggon is that we don’t need iPhones and plasma screens to be happy. We don’t need space travel, as fascinating as it might be. We don’t need cars, at least not an individual car for every person, we don’t need McMansions and we don’t need WalMart. The only things we need is food, shelter, access to clean air and water and a functioning little ecosystem of other people, animals, plants, fungi and what not around us.
We don’t lose when the economy collapses. We win. And if we take an active part in bringing it down and when we actively change our lives instead of sitting in a cellar with bags of beans and rice awaiting collapse, it will feel not like an ending. It will feel like a new beginning. And that’s much better.
December 14th, 2012 at 4:24 am
….when the oil shale is fracked, not only oil is liberated from the rock, but also a large amount of trapped natural gas, mostly methane, is released…with the energy value of the oil worth as much as 30 times that of the gas, the exploitation companies want no part of the delay involved in capturing the cheaper gas, and would rather burn it off than build the infrastructure to capture and transport to where it could be used….
US oil well flaring as seen from space
December 14th, 2012 at 4:52 am
Dawned on me the morning that the acronym we used a lot concerning peak oil (TEOTAWAKI – the end of the world as we know it) has been replaced with the much shorter Near Term Extinction. We can at least type a shorter acronym for the fate we are facing.
We used talk TEOTAWAKI
Reductions in life style to see
But with each rising degree
We begin to sadly agree
That the future is now NTE
December 14th, 2012 at 5:09 am
Kathy C
You wrote:
“Be unhappy, face the thing that is making you unhappy, work through it to your own personal way to face a somewhat nearer end than expected.”
I completely agree with this and I said much the same thing:
“My answer is fine be unhappy, you don’t need a reason to be truely happy, but, you may have to let go of all the reasons you are presently unhappy.”
With respect, the example you use of simple positive thinking, and some Bright Shield prmotion scheme is really not what I was speaking about.
I never tell people simply to pretend, and that is the point.
If one ‘tries’ to be happy, under any circumstances, one quickly realises that there is inner resistance to being happy, and that is what we both seem to agree is what is making one unhappy. We say, address these issues to begin with, and then something may come of that, and it may be the next thing that is in there that we are clinging to that keeps us unhappy that we find.
My parable story is meant to illustrate that when the exhortation is to really be happy, ‘because’ it is the underlying ‘real’ condition of one’s being, then that exhortation immediately brings up resistance to being happy.
The glib homoly of “just get on with life and be happier” is not what I was advocating, because that is moving on to either repression or distraction, and issues, especially major ones, don’t get healed and moved on that way IMHO.
To glibly tell someone in a deep depression, or with life threatening issues to be happy, is not what I was advocating either. The parable is not necessarily to be imitated, but serves to illustrate that mentally we are very deeply addicted to our unhappiness.
And when the real demand is given to be happy as a cure for the depression, it is to bring up, or to the reflective mind, that oneself has held on to something that now impedes the real experience of happiness.
I never suggested these deep problems can be swept aside by shallow mental whitewashing. Not at all.
I am mildly disappoited you would interpret my wriring in that vein, but I acknowledge perhaps some ambiguity.
Rather than invoke the superficial hokum of corporate management ethics, I advocated the parable because it is about wizdom and conscious recognition that something like depression, as an example of something aparently stronger than our personal will, impedes our happiness, and my view is that understanding is the key to the lifting of the fog, or the healing of the wound that is at the root of such issues. Not some silly surface psychobable about positive thinking cures negativity or such tripe. I refer to the healing power of the heart, or the spiritual core of our being. Perhaps that is not something you believe in anymore Kathy C, and if I have read you correctly on other posts I’m not denying your experience or view. I happen to believe in a spiritual truth of existance, and acknowledge it is an individual view, but it is not an illusion, nor a mental crutch for me.
I agree it is very easy to write glibly, in some advisory capacity about unhappiness and depression, and so I apologuise if my advice sounded lase fare. It was not. I had depression in my teens for about three years, but I managed to fight my way from the wet paper bag, and understand that for me, depression was a way of contacting the feeling nature I had not been encouraged to develope in family matters, and self temperament. To me it was as much a great help as it was a torture, but I simply knew it was endurable, and perhaps because I was so young, and full of ‘spit and froth’, I felt it was partly an induced accomodation to my immediate surroundings, and a learnt ‘behaviour’, if I can call it a behaviour.
My family had lost my brother to Leukemia when he was 14, after 18 months of his struggle to stay alive, and looking back my mother just kind of collapsed for a few years, and luckily my other brother and I were capable of self care and resourceful enough to get our schooling and life affairs done without much ado.
I think the weight of my mothers’ grief over those years pulled me into the same emotional channels, but I definitely had greater issues to work through at the age of 15-18 anyway.
So I offered that advice, because I see the overall point made in the book by John Harrison titled: “Love Your Disease, Its keeping you healthy” as somthing to look at when one is unhappy.
The situation is different when one is overwhelmed by the enormity of witnessing suffering, and more so if it is endless, as I believe occurs in some aid work, welfare work, and hospice work. That is an experience that can cripple an individual that has even great compassion, but not the pathway within to continual compassion. IMO, perhaps only Saints and authentic Realisers can take that on emotionally and remain in the moment. I think it would take me down too Kathy C, and a good dose of simple living, and growing food and feeding chickens is a fair way to heal the heart when such things overwhelm one.
In a wierd way the prospect of NTE is to me a call to get on with life…however, one wishes to do that.
BTW, I have read Gorian Gray several times, and it is definitely a terrably excruciating ride to get to the end. A masterpiece in IMO.
December 14th, 2012 at 5:23 am
Sorry… it should have read…’Dorian Gray’.
December 14th, 2012 at 6:03 am
Ozman I stand corrected. Apologies. Thank you for sharing the story of your brother. I do believe in healing. When I was in a very bad place I knew that to get out of it I had to do something for others as a way of doing something for myself. Hospice was the answer for me. I could give myself lovingly to others and in so giving I healed myself. In fact I exuded so much warmth that one old man misunderstood and thought my warmth was much more. I had to ask Hospice to not put me as a volunteer with any men unless they were gay
. I didn’t want to hold back on being warm, giving a hug if welcomed.
Again apologies for misunderstanding and misrepresenting your remarks, but I am glad you spoke further on the subject. Thanks for your words
December 14th, 2012 at 6:05 am
As troubles monstrously loom
We prepare to meet our doom
For the Id and the I
We can turn to Guy
Until we find peace in our tomb
December 14th, 2012 at 7:03 am
I picture a person with an oxygen tank and nose tubing smoking a cigarette and carrying a sign that says, “See what you did.”
December 14th, 2012 at 7:21 am
Guy, reading this latest essay helps me to understand why religion was so overwhelmingly popular during our evolution that a propensity toward it worked into our DNA.
When nothing on earth allows you to have hope, then the only thing remaining is the “mystery of faith”. I can’t go there myself, and I suspect many others on NBL can’t either, but at least I’m beginning to understand where it comes from.
December 14th, 2012 at 7:29 am
BC Nurse Prof, Every part of the world will have its end. For some, flood. For some, drought. For some, heat. For us, it will be by firestorm. All it will take is another El Nino and one lightning strike. Poof!
Fire is the one that scares me the most. Sure we have lots of tornadoes in this area, and they can be incredibly destructive, but usually their damage is localized. With good preparation, they also can be survived and their damage minimized.
But fire is becoming more and more common in the central U.S. Fires have the ability to wipe out hundreds of square miles of land devouring everything including wildlife, livestock, buildings, etc. Also, there is nowhere to hide and take cover. I’m not sure getting into a pond or lake would do much good as all the low lying oxygen would be consumed.
I’ve seen several house fires over the years and I’m always impressed with how hot they are. Generally, the heat from a house fire can be felt several hundred meters away. The images on TV and movies showing the actors standing close to major fires is pure fantasy.
December 14th, 2012 at 7:36 am
OzMan, a-slightly-less-ecosidal-species-lethal-single-use-warm-beverage-holder-come-false-feel-good-slogan-device-convincing-me-and-maybe-you-I’m-doing-my-bit-and-all-I-can-for-the-biosphere-sustainability-campaign-even-though-caffene-implies-I-am-not-sufficiently-motivated-to-work-without-stimulation-as-a-compensation-for-my-bondage-to-industrial-civilisation-debt-slavery-and-destruction-of-the-living-planet
Very funny and very good.
December 14th, 2012 at 7:39 am
Deskpoet : I save my pity and mourning not for my fellow man, but for all the other wonderful species suffering and winking out as a result of our evil self-indulgence. The voiceless ones, those who aren’t considered when we speak of “saving the species”, they are the victims, and they are the ones deserving of pity. Our lot is getting what it deserves.
Well said. The relentless greed, the need for speed. Those methane burnoffs in Texas. They are in such a hurry to make money that they throw money away.
It reminds me of when I lived in a city. It happened all the time, but one example. An old book shop was bought by another business. So everything has to be stripped out, so the building coild have a new interior fitted. And it has to be done in a week, because time is money. So the old fittings, shelves, etc, which were rare exotic hardwood c.1930s, irreplaceable today, worth thousands and thousands, get smashed to pieces and dumped into skips and taken to landfill, because there is no time or money to pay someone to take them apart with care and find a buyer to reuse the wood… The contract says ‘empty space after five days’ and that’s what they get….
Competitive capitalism. If you aren’t running flat out, you fall behind and someone eats your lunch, and they’ll kill to keep it that way…. until there is nobody left, and nothing left to loot.
I mean, it’s like the superfast high frequency trading Wall St does, shaving nano seconds off the speed a deal beats the other guy, makes a profit, they spent 800 million dollars, was it, laying a cable to Chicago, to get a few micro seconds advantage… kinda weird. What happens when you beat time altogether, and do the deal before it gets done ?
They never even give a thought to where it all leads or what the collateral damage is, nothing is real except numbers on screens…
December 14th, 2012 at 8:21 am
The key word is “useful”. Guy M. has brought about a presentation that collates the essence of the despairing evidence in front of us, and most of it applies to “life as we have known it” and forces us to face what Sagan points out as “the brutal reality of the universe”.
The bottom line of the universe’s brutal reality is this: things that are more Useful than Consumptive are the things that persist, and things that consume their own future will disappear.
If we think of humanity as one ‘thing’, then it is sobering to see that humanity “as we know it” will go extinct. If we think of individual humans as things that have collaborated to develop civilization, we can think of individual humans as things that are facing massive changes in their circumstances. Humans, as all living things, are pieces of a bell-shaped curve. Too many want us to believe that we are all part of the mean Mean, living in the narrow confines of a spike in data which is dependent on one form of human being: the homo petroleumus consumpticus: the fossil fuel consumer.
We are not. Every one of us has the potential to be adapted to some new environment (to some degree). Whether the climate gets hot enough to wipe out all humans or not, the bell curve of our existence then would extend to the existence of life on Earth, and the fringe survivors may end up being bacteria. A recent letter in New Scientist pointed out that humans may be the cyanobacteria of the modern age: changing the climate entirely and dying off to make way for new forms of life to evolve.
Does this give me hope? No. It is merely pointing to the harsh reality of the circumstances, and forcing me to step away from this computer a little bit more (one day perhaps for good), and appreciate what I have surrounding me and do the best I can to be useful to my environment/circumstances.
I do not agree with Farnish (see previous comment) about undermining the system intentionally. The System of systems will do that itself, based on its own “efficiency” philosophy, which forces Specialization in a universe based on flexibility and randomness.
As Guy points out in his video, however, the timing is probably going to suck.
The System should have collapsed with the first oil shock in the ’70′s, if humans were actually intelligent and intentional beings that acted in their own best interests. Unfortunately, we are simply tools of the money monster we have created: robots that worship at the altar of an Invisible Hand.
The Invisible Hand is my White Whale. I am fighting somnambulance. I think people like Eric, Guy, and Wendel Berry are also. Civilization is a tool that isolates humans from the risks of nature: much like quicksand, it is a struggle to escape its clutches and claw our way back to the living, sense-filling world.
“Do Be Do Be Do” -Frank Sinatra
December 14th, 2012 at 8:24 am
The reference to Farnish in a previous comment is related to “The Underminers”, which can be found with a quick search. I do not think it is prudent to put a link to it here.
December 14th, 2012 at 8:28 am
Dmitry Orlov’s classic line, ‘The invisible hand is attached to an invisible idiot…’
December 14th, 2012 at 8:41 am
Prudent ? I thought we were facing NTE ? It’s been posted here before, you’re late.
December 14th, 2012 at 9:08 am
Guy,
When reading you website review of the planets honest predicament many months ago,
I for the first time in my life was hit with the body reaction of butterflies in my stomach, elevated body heat and slight ringing in my ears. My instincts chimed in like a freight train. I knew you where on to the truth of our real circumstance on Planet Earth.
You are my Hero
I consider my other Hero’s of this generation to be Derrick Jensen, Chris Hedges and Michael Ruppert.
Cut wrenching truth tellers of the state of delusion we humans have lived for far to long.
I can only deeply apologies for our failure as humans to have been so greedy in our evolution process.
Sincerely
Michelle and Family
December 14th, 2012 at 9:17 am
“I’ll present dire information with empathy while promoting resistance. I’ll continue to criticize society while empathizing with individuals. And I’ll ask people to empathize, and to feel. Even if though it hurts.”
I don’t know you, other than what I gather from this blog. But please don’t stop blogging, writing, and speaking. I check your blog nearly every day. I watch your videos. Doing so is kind of like having a buddy sitting at your side, that you know understands.
“When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.”
― Dmitri Shostakovich
December 14th, 2012 at 10:00 am
previous post: «and appreciate what I have surrounding me and do the best I can to be useful to my environment/circumstances»
there is not much left here in the center of the city. the trees are all but gone (suffering their last days in the middle of complete humane indifference), the air is foul (every day is worse), the birds, bats, insects, racoons and all crickets are completely gone, the temperature is completely abnormal for the season and my last refuge (the blue sky) rarely makes an appearance and is replaced by a thick layer of uniform gray clouds (even on “sunny” days, the haze looks more and more like beijing). but, there are many cars and vans and trucks and cement and buildings and dirt (but nothing comparing to what it will be when we can no more “get rid” of our garbage and shit). oh ya, and there is people, people and more people, and a lot of dogs (the cats are hidden in the houses and the rats in the sewers).
for the ones writing on NBL who still live in places where there is life, good for you. most of it is already gone here, except for electricity that still permits me to escape in this virtual seeminly endless wonderland that is internet.
still, this last week, I witnessed my younger sun (27) falling in love! that is something I had not seen in a long time! he knows everything (and more) about what is going on on earth. and bang! there it happened! almost in one split second (it happened to me in 1966 and I saw it all last night when he came to talk to me in my room: the same feeling, the same words). i cannot scientifically or philosophically debate this point, but I am convinced that hope is in our dna and comes from the inside as much as from the outside and will be the very very last thing to die.
December 14th, 2012 at 10:31 am
Kathy C,
About bring children into this world:
What follows is a quote from Wen Stephenson of the “Phoenix” (Boston) “‘I’d rather fight like hell’: Naomi Klein’s fierce new resolve to fight for climate justice”
I asked about her decision to have a baby, in spite of everything she knows.
She got quiet. “For a long time,” she told me, “I just couldn’t see a future for a child that wasn’t some, like, Mad Max climate-warrior thing.”
Somehow, though, her engagement in the climate movement seems to have changed that. Another future seemed possible. She and Lewis decided to have a child, but struggled with infertility. Then, having given up, surprise: along came Toma.
If anything, the experience has made Klein all the more a fighter. She now believes that denying her desire to have a child, because of the mess being made by those willing to destroy the planet for profit, would be a form of surrender.
“I guess what I want to say is, I don’t want to give them that power,” she told me. “I’d rather fight like hell than give these evil motherfuckers the power to extinguish the desire to create life.”
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/148879-id-rather-fight-like-hell-naomi-kleins-fierce/?page=1#TOPCONTENT
Michael Irving
December 14th, 2012 at 10:39 am
Not to be disrespectful, but sounds to me like Naomi has been smokin the hopium.
Off topic, I got a jury summons yesterday. I am so thankful to Sherry Ackerman’s essay and the links posted in response to that, so that I can be prepared. I may not survive voie dire, because I will be truthful (but brief!), but it’ll be interesting for sure.
I love this community so much!
December 14th, 2012 at 11:16 am
Michele – from Anna Karenina:
“Romantic love will be the last delusion of the old order”.
As I was reading this post and the comments, I already had that interview linked to above with Naomi Klein in the back of my mind. I was thinking that is why I appreciate NBL so much, and the community of commenters Guy fosters here – because it is so refreshing to hear thoughts from people who already understand that we have to move on from “if” to “when” and “what now”.
Please don’t stop talking Guy. Those of us who are listening need you!
Here’s the comment I had left at the Phoenix:
“So, yeah,” she said, “it’s important to build local alternatives, we have to do it, but unless we are really going after the source of the problem” – namely, the fossil-fuel industry and its lock on Washington – “we are gonna get inundated.”
Actually, the source of the problem isn’t corporations, politicians, or capitalism – the source of the problem is overpopulation and overconsumption. If you waved a magic wand and made climate change disappear, we would still be on a collision course with disaster. Ocean acidification is killing life in the sea, and tropospheric ozone is invisible but the inexorably rising background level is murdering trees and stunting annual agricultural crops. (see the free book http://www.deadtrees-dyingforests.com/pillage-plunder-pollute-llc/)
Certainly climate change is an existential threat, but it is a symptom of deeper intractable problems that result from industrial civilization and the “growth” paradigm ravaging a finite planet. Blaming the fossil-fuel industry for what we all consume is just another way of kicking the can down the road and pretending that we can replace billion-year old stored energy with solar panels, keep the party going and continue using iphones and selfishly having babies, pretending they have a future on an uninhabitable planet.
Just another delusion.
December 14th, 2012 at 11:29 am
sunweb “I picture a person with an oxygen tank and nose tubing smoking a cigarette and carrying a sign that says, “See what you did.”
True, we have no one but ourselves as a species to blame, if that is what you mean.
But who is to blame for our domestication into civilization. Which human can we call the first to leave the life we evolved for. Which wolf gets the blame for the sad state of domestic dogs, reduced to groveling not to an deserving alpha male or female but some dumb human.
Per Craig Dilworth, Too Smart for our Own Good, we are trapped in our vicious cycles by our nature – we could blame evolution, but evolution is thoughtless. For such a thoughty creature sapiens sapiens, we humans have thoughtlessly brought ourselves to the brink of an early extinction.
So no blame is called for. But heck, I want to have fun on the way down, so I am going to blame BP, and the Nuclear Regulation Association, and any scapegoat I can find for the state of affairs even though I know that in the end there is no blame.
We just are a failed species, one among many, one of the shortest lived. Too bad for us…..
December 14th, 2012 at 11:34 am
Michael “She now believes that denying her desire to have a child, because of the mess being made by those willing to destroy the planet for profit, would be a form of surrender.” Yes, but what does the child think about all this? We can’t help it, but having children without their permission is such hubris. Of course we can’t have them any other way. Somehow this all seems centered on Naomi and what she wants and not on the child and what they may suffer for her wants.
It would be interesting to check with her child 15 years from now and see how the child feels about being her mother’s refusal to surrender. But no doubt we will be so close to extinction that we won’t be able to follow up.
December 14th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Oldies from Elsewhere
For Guy:
Realistic Predictions
Soothsaying what’s realistic
Is not consequently sadistic;
Predict with distinction:
Include mass extinction,
And don’t try to be optimistic.
For Kathy:
Doomer Poetry
At first, you’re depressed despite it,
When you’re worse, it helps to recite it;
When you no longer fight it
And start to invite it
You’ll find yourself starting to write it.
December 14th, 2012 at 12:26 pm
anyone know where I can find a step by step guide on building a mud hut/home?
December 14th, 2012 at 12:30 pm
I saw 2 of Guy’s presentations on his Massachusetts visit specifically so that I could bring other people that probably would not have gone otherwise.I had seen his talk several months earlier and have read his essays for a few years now,so I was already familiar with his message and wanted for others I know to hear it.
Two new things I learned from Guy’s visit to the area is that people learning about “doom” can be funny and that the people that already know about it and try to share it might be the one’s that will need psychotherapy.
I mean, these people are both driving me crazy and making me laugh!
One family member who I have been talking about this stuff to for years has always said “Yeah,whatever, your the queen of doom” etc.
He agreed to go to Guy’s talk and now he’s calling me up at all hours and emailing with odd suggestions. Two days ago,I pick up the phone and without hello or preamble he says “What about bleach and beef jerky? Is that good? Should I get a case of each?
Yesterday he called and asked if he should buy a box of harmonicas.
I asked why and he said that he just read that people who can make music will be welcomed additions to a group in the Apocalypse. I reminded him that he didn’t know how to play a harmonica and I suggested (jokingly)to buy a case of kazoos since anyone can play one.He replied “Do you know where I can get a case?”.
He owns a small market and I overheard a conversation with him and a customer. The customer asked “You seem to be out of Romaine lettuce. Do you know if you will have any tomorrow?”and he said “What does it matter? Will all be dead in 17 years anyway? I had to have a little talk with him about living with his feet in 2 worlds.
Another person that I encouraged to go to the talk came up to me afterwards and said “Oh my God! It’s my two boys (20 and 22) that I feel so bad for. What will they be able to do? Me,I can just move to Hawaii. There I can walk to everything,I won’t need a car,but what will they do?”
I just listened but in my mind I am thinking “Hello,you need oxygen in Hawaii too!”
2 other people,independently mentioned something about building big bubbles that we will live in. I have no idea where that is coming from.I find myself wondering if this is what I was like when I first learned about peak oil. I don’t know but I does seem that the people who have been studying our predicament for years now are going to be
asked for a lot of advice from former naysayers. I can tell already that it will be trying at times.
Guy,
Thanks for all you do!
When we talked about your new nickname I had imagined it spelled
McXtinction like extinction but I can see that McStinction has a Stink about it that also seems fitting!
December 14th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Ryan,
Guy calls his straw bale house the mud hut. You can search how to build a straw bale house and find good pointers. Be sure you live in a straw bale friendly climate!
December 14th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
Ryan have a look here:
http://www.beingsomewhere.net/lammas.htm
December 14th, 2012 at 2:03 pm
I think cob houses can survive most climates can’t they ? various mixes of mud and straw.
http://www.cobcourses.com/cob-houses/
December 14th, 2012 at 2:48 pm
NEXT-DAY UPDATE (also listed at the bottom of the essay, above): The IPCC Fifth Assessment has been leaked. It’s here. Note that, like its predecessors, it fails to incorporate major positive feedbacks.
December 14th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
New Scientist on what Alec Rawls, the leaker, says :
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23005-leaked-ipcc-report-reaffirms-dangerous-climate-change.html
“The most interesting aspect of this little event is it reveals how deeply in denial the climate deniers are,” says Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia – one of the lead authors of the chapter in question. “If they can look at a short section of a report and walk away believing it says the opposite of what it actually says, and if this spin can be uncritically echoed by very influential blogs, imagine how wildly they are misinterpreting the scientific evidence.”
December 14th, 2012 at 4:01 pm
@Liag I have to thank you for your comment. You said it all.
It’s almost hard to believe that a “green” committee from a university has been disempowered by information and facts. What haven do they live in where they can’t simply look out the window or go for a walk and witness for themselves what is happening in the world? I find that information is power, and no one else can take your power unless you let them. It reminds me of people I know who have been sheltered, bailed out from suffering the consequences of their own mistakes, or have somehow escaped the tragedies of life. They never really grow up. They are looking for someone to tell them what to do, and waiting for approval and a gold star when they are finished.
I’ve also decided that having this information changes everything, yet changes nothing. As a mother of small children, I’ve been battling within myself every day, not knowing what to do. I know things are going to get increasingly difficult, and some people are going to suffer more than others. But so many people and animals and habitats already suffer needlessly. Life is pain, life is suffering, life is despair, life is work. As long as I wake up in a world where some crazy person can walk into an elementary school and gun down little children, my life is necessarily filled with despair. So, I battle every day trying to figure out how to raise children that may or may not have a future. And then I remind myself it was never certain to begin with.
A good life does not mean a life of comfort. If I can find a few moments to spend with each child, as long as I am truly present, that moment can encompass all of the pain and beauty of birth, life, and death. It is timeless.
@KB About the loneliness. I was never more lonely than while sleeping in a tent on a beach in Mexico next to my husband of more than ten years. I decided to divorce him. If people don’t care for at least some of the things you care about, it makes relationships difficult. I find that if I can get to a place where nature makes me feel really small, it wipes my mind clear and I can make difficult decisions. Just find somewhere to be still and draw on the wisdom and power of nature. While you still can. For the first time in my life I dread the spring.
December 14th, 2012 at 5:18 pm
I’ve been following NBL for some time and I have to say that this post and comments have moved me unlike any other….Bravo to the NBL community.
I have been living off-grid for 13 years and finally consider my family self-reliant. We have gained much hard-earned knowledge these past years (and continue to learn). They have been the best years of my life (just turned 50!). My wife and I want to share what we know in 2013 taking on 2 Apprentices to live and learn with us for 7 months. We have had many young interns in the past (WWOOFERS) but we want to step it up into a full educational immersion. We will charge for this as we are not independently wealthy and see this as a good way to help others and ourselves. Should be an adventure.
Good luck to all of you out there!!
December 14th, 2012 at 5:47 pm
The AR5 leak probably has the UN tearing their hair out. It appears that the leaker had a RW agenda to discredit it, but the doc itself looks good. Now the UN will need to justify every edit they make in the final version. I would totally hate to be in their shoes.
Just in case it goes off-line, I’ve captured all 131 MB of it.
December 14th, 2012 at 6:44 pm
This may be of interest to the readership. I started writing about collapse in 2007. One of my earliest and doomiest articles just received a very favourable review by a population activist. I was asked to respond to the review, and after I responded I sent this follow-up email. It speaks to our sense of “collapse craving” – where it may come from, and how it may shape our treatment of what otherwise looks like bald data.
This is in no way intended as a commentary on Guy’s writings or as armchair psychoanalysis. It’s purely a commentary on my own process.
***
Your comment in the review about my having been traumatized by my awareness was right on the mark. As I compared my assessment of today to the one from five years ago, what I’ve been doing with all this calculating, analysis, writing and referencing finally became clear. What follows is a brief glimpse behind the curtain.
Here is a piece of psychology that may be helpful when assessing deeply speculative works: every prediction is a projection of the predictor’s inner state, at least to some extent. In my case this has been more true than usual.
The reason the results are more optimistic now than before is not because the situation has changed, but because I have changed. It’s because I am now more optimistic than I was five years ago – but again, not because the external situation has improved. If anything, it has gotten visibly worse. So why the change?
You may have read of research on unconscious decision-making. Its findings imply that many of our decisions are made unconsciously, and then presented to our conscious mind fully formed. The conscious mind then dresses the decisions up in psychologically acceptable garb. It quickly develops post-hoc rationalizations to make the non-rational decisions appear reasonable and rational.
Something similar has been going on with me in these articles. The trauma I experienced predated my writing in 2007 by a year or two. It was triggered by a deep realization that the world from which I took my identity was not solid as I had always assumed, but fragile and ephemeral. It could be destroyed without warning by any number of unpredictable system failures. Of course, since I took my identity from this world, the threat of its dissolution implied the threat of my own annihilation. This was an unbearable psychological pain, and since I couldn’t wish it away I had to find some way to justify it. I had to make it seem founded in reality – I had to rationalize it.
In order to reify my inner pain I wrote a stream of doom-laden articles in 2007 and 2008. Although they are all based on real ideas – from Peak Oil and the science of complex systems to resilience and the triune brain – their conclusions, along with the their extremist and uncompromising tone, is pure projection. I externalized my excruciating inner pain out onto the external world. I was essentially saying, “This agony is not just because I’m wounded, it’s real!!! Watch, I’ll prove it!” And with references, cold numbers, charts and graphs I proved it over and over again.
In the years since then I have done a lot of inner work to come to terms with the ephemeral nature of both the outer world (including human civilization) and my own being. As my acceptance deepened, my need to alleviate my distress by projecting dire consequences became less urgent. Reading your review of my essay, and being compelled to revisit it in detail for my comments, brought out the contrast between my conclusions then and now. In trying to resolve why there was such a difference, I realized that it was because I was slowly healing that old trauma.
You may treat my article with all the seriousness you feel it deserves – after all, the references and the underlying mechanisms are legitimate. But please be aware that my conclusions, both then and now, were driven more by my own psychodrama than by any “scientific” rigor.
I still think humanity is out of time, but what that means in terms of specifics I haven’t the foggiest idea. I still think that many aspects of our coming global reality will be driven more by impersonal external forces than by human volition. At the same time, those aspects of life that are most important and satisfying to us as individuals will remain matters of personal choice. This reinforces my view that all significant human-driven change in the coming years will happen at the grass roots, among individuals making personal choices for personal reasons. The universe sets the stage, while we get to write and perform the play. That’s good enough for me.
This goes much further of course, out into the deep waters of consciousness, inner exploration and self-realization. But this is enough for now. When you read my earlier pieces, you would be well advised to step back a pace or two and consider them for what they really are – not simply as analysis of possible futures, but as statements about my own personal reality.
***
December 14th, 2012 at 8:31 pm
Paul Chefurka Says: As my acceptance deepened, my need to alleviate my distress by projecting dire consequences became less urgent.
Now THAT is an interesting point. If it’s not already in the literature, you might have yourself something there.
December 14th, 2012 at 8:31 pm
First, my thanks to those of you who commented on my comment. Really makes me feel good to hear that my thoughts and feelings are received resonate well with you. Warms my heart and makes me smile.
So many amazing ideas here. How people react to this information. If I may, I’d like to add something that I think relates to how humans respond to this kind of stuff by posting an article by NPR today about the Connecticut shooting. I apologize to everyone if my timing in talking about this so close to the event is offensive. (I’ve been getting a bit of flack on my facebook page, which solidifies my occupation as shit disturber). But, how do we approach talking about climate change when this is the accepted strategy for talking about this violence? What are your thoughts?
“The key thing is limiting their exposure to news media, TV,” says Dr. Daniel Fagbuyi, medical director for disaster preparedness and emergency management at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “We’ve found this over and over in different disasters.”
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/12/14/167269582/how-to-talk-to-your-kids-about-the-conn-shooting?utm_source=science&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20121214
December 14th, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Gail Says: Actually, the source of the problem isn’t corporations, politicians, or capitalism – the source of the problem is overpopulation and overconsumption.
Evolving to man from the brute,
We grew to be much less hirsute,
But not much more astute,
So now everything’s moot:
We created our own overshoot.
December 14th, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Kathy C Says:
December 14th, 2012 at 11:29 am
So no blame is called for. But heck, I want to have fun on the way down, so I am going to blame BP, and the Nuclear Regulation Association, and any scapegoat I can find for the state of affairs even though I know that in the end there is no blame. We just are a failed species, one among many, one of the shortest lived. Too bad for us…..
Finally, an honest, sensible attitude. Enough with all the capitalism and BP bashing. There just no place for it on a environmentally minded web site. Instead of blaming, we should all just pull up a chair and enjoy the slaughter. And if it gets boring just watching BP kill hundreds of dolphins and sea turtles…for even more fun, maybe we could even pitch in and help them. I sure as heck wouldn’t blame you if you did, like you say, it wouldn’t be your fault, it would be “a failed species” fault.
December 15th, 2012 at 2:06 am
When seconds count, the cops are just minutes away. – John Steinbeck
December 15th, 2012 at 2:58 am
The AR5 leak probably has the UN tearing their hair out.
My feeling is that this will destroy climate science. It will be like the climategate email thing but vastly bigger. The scientists are naive. They think that truth and facts and data matter. Kochs and Murdoch and Exxon know that public perception is what matters, and who owns the media. Every line in the IPPC thing can be distorted to mean the opposite of what it says and spun to sound as if it comes from the ‘secret leaked document’ that covered up the ‘fact’ that AGW is not really happening.
The mass of the world’s population are like kids having a party. They don’t want to go to bed yet. They don’t want to hear the bad news, so it simply can’t be true, and they’ll be told what they want to hear. None of them will read the IPPC report, they wouldn’t understand it if they did, they’ll hear what the MSM and liars like Inhofe tell them to hear.
Like twit Andy above Global warming/climate change – fogetaboutit It’s a ruse, a meme to drive people toward feeling they are the problem..
Perfect example. Or David’s ‘CO2 is plant food, Vegetation doesn’t need oxygen…’
When the masses have such dismal level of insight into science, and how the Earth’s climate and biological systems work, or not even that much understanding, it’s easy to cause so much confusion that it will be impossible to take any remedial action.
The battle is not about the ‘facts’ or ‘error bars’ or ‘highly likely’ or ’95% certainty’ or anything like that. It’s about playing to the audience. The audience is the mob in the Roman Colisseum. They are not interested in logic or statistics. If a bimbo with big tits on the screen says that the climate scientists have been caught telling lies, and it’s all part of the plot by the United Nations to kill all the kittens, they’ll believe it.
Once I would have found this all extremely depressing. But as I know NTE is coming anyway, sooner or later, it takes on the character of grim farce. Bit like watching a public execution. The axeman is so incompetent he misses the target, the chopper gets embedded in the woodblock, he can’t get it out and the crowd roars with laughter… I feel like a little child watching this gruesome revolting spectacle from afar, disgusted, appalled, powerless…
December 15th, 2012 at 3:53 am
The problem’s is in our own brain
If we must have someone to blame
We evolved very quick
With skulls all too thick
To envision our own end game
December 15th, 2012 at 3:55 am
William Catton says we are suffering from Redundancy Anxiety
http://stirpat.org/32catton.pdf
We know there are too many of us and not enough slots for us to fill.
December 15th, 2012 at 3:57 am
ulvfugl, I sympathize with you, but at least half the regular bloggers on this site believe that people can’t help what they do because everyone is just part a “failed species.” So, is there isn’t really any point in discussing anyone’s reactions or behaviors regarding the IPPC or anything else, is there?
December 15th, 2012 at 3:59 am
ulvfugl
++++!!!!
You have said it brother.
I will quibble with some of the details but essentially the mainstream of populations who do not look deeper than the MSM are where you describe. The ever expanding fring however, well it is hard to say what sways their minds, but my view is that talking to a knowledgable NTExtinctioner may be a goer.
Cheers
December 15th, 2012 at 4:19 am
Gail
I have just been reading your link /book: Pillage, Plunder, Pollute…
and have a few initial questions.
We have a variety of Holly here in the Blue Mountains, NSW Australia, and I cnat tell you which, but suffice to say the wildlife people denote it as a weed needing disposal. I have checked and none of these shrubs show any signs you describe.
Good I presume. So is the Southern Hemisphere behind the North like Guy says regarding other GHGases and GWarming? Also, does Altitude play any role, worse effects or less effects of O3? We are at 1000 meters and have many days a year in fog and relative high humidity. Is humidity a factor?
I have only read a few pages… bloody hell mate, you’ve just thrown
an(nother) spanner in the works !
Crikey!!!
The recent acknowledgement here used a bit known as …
“We’re Fucked”…
goes nowhere near expessing the situation.
How about?…
“We’ve dishonoured every ancestor and previous antecedent to present life-forms back to the first form of life on Earth!”
or
“We’re fucking all our ancestors, and dishonoured and shit in their faces, and pissed on their instinct to survive!”
All there is is what may come.
December 15th, 2012 at 4:22 am
BTW
All
I have had post apocalyptic dreams three nights running now folks, and that has never happened before to me..
It could be the december 12th or 21st thing, or the asteroid near flyby a few days ago… but I wouldn’t be surprised if something else wasn’t going on there.
I’ll keep you all posted, or internetted.
December 15th, 2012 at 4:38 am
@Ripley
I’m of the view that, at some point in life, you sit down and sort your head out, your whole being out. That can mean a long time sitting. Perhaps. Some people find it easier than others. Suppose it depends how messed up you are, or how lucky you are.
Then you stand up, and start walking, and take full responsibility for everything you do.
‘Rest of the species’ stuff doesn’t really come into it.
Is that an answer to your comment, or did you mean something else ?
December 15th, 2012 at 4:48 am
This is worth a read, IMO, if you havn’t seen it, although I think most here know it already :
DeMocker: The major paradigm-changing social movements in history — the civil-rights movement, the abolitionist movement, the independence movement in India — have mostly been campaigns against oppression. Who are the oppressors in the climate-change movement?
Moore: Transnational petrochemical industries, their leaders, their investors, and the politicians they control.
For a long time activists were unclear about this. The corporations were happy to claim that they were simply responding to public demand. Only recently has it become clear how much corporations have been manipulating public demand. They build and maintain infrastructures that force consumers to use fossil fuels. They convince politicians to kill or lethally underfund alternative energy or transportation initiatives. They increase demand for energy-intensive products through advertising. They create confusion about the harmful effects of burning fossil fuels. They influence elections to defang regulatory agencies that would limit Big Oil’s power to impose risks and costs on others. And, whenever possible, they work outside of democracies.
If you own stock in a petrochemical industry, you’ve got to dump it. If you benefit from a fund that owns stock in a petro-chemical industry — a university fund, a retirement fund — you’ve got to insist they dump it. No excuses, no delays.
DeMocker: Part of me wonders why people even need to be convinced that we have a moral obligation to protect the future of our planet.
Moore: There’s a disconnect in our culture separating what people do from what they really care about. I love my children and my grandchildren more than anything else. I care about their future. I love this world with a passion. The thought that we might be losing songbirds, trading them for something I don’t care about at all, like running shoes, makes me angry. And still I drive to the store and buy running shoes. I don’t think I am different from other people in this regard.
DeMocker: What leads us to forget our obligation?
Moore: I don’t know. But the fact is, many well-meaning people are blithely destroying the world on which their children’s lives depend. Environmental activist Derrick Jensen says that if aliens landed and did to the planet what the industrial economy is doing, it would be considered all-out war. Yet instead of fighting them, we invest in our own destruction. We damage the ecosystem simply because we no longer recognize that we live in an impoverished world. But we also do it because we ask less and less of ourselves. We don’t expect ourselves to be generous or openhearted. We think greed is ok. Even our visions of a better life are simplified and denuded and strip-mined.
DeMocker: Maybe we don’t destroy so willingly. I certainly feel forced to in many ways.
Moore: It isn’t easy to change. Our choices are all tangled up in nets of profit and entrenched patterns of environmental destruction. But if we understand exactly how skillfully we are manipulated, we’ll get angry, and that will motivate us to make changes.
We are at a critical point. We have a very narrow window of opportunity to get it right, and to get it right, we first have to imagine a new world, story by story.
http://thesunmagazine.org/issues/444/if_your_house_is_on_fire?page=1
December 15th, 2012 at 4:51 am
Guy
I have been considering the essay above and specifically how you feel about your failure.
I am guessing your initial impulse was to stop the juggenaught of industrial civilisation and thwart the destuction of the biosphere so it could continue to sustain human and all the other existing life-forms?
Correct?
Well, yes you have failed so far very badly.
But realistically, just for the moment, what ‘could’ one intellegent person, as you say in ‘Walking Away From Empire’, born at the Apex of Empire actually do more or better or with greater personal conviction than you have done so far?
Yes only little things. Not meaningless things, but little things, all of which, also would make little difference.
But you are doing a lot, and most here know it, and praise you for that work.
Other people are doing a lot, in many different ways as well.
I personally feel your lectures are a bit formulaic, but I have never run lectures anywhere and I guess they just are that way. That is just how I feel about them, not you.
I just want you to know once you did begin this act of resistance, and went to the mud hut, it has begun something you perhaps will never really know where and how it actually will do something toward your actual goals.
No one person ever changed human destiny, and therefore no one person is responsible for the failures to live up to the highest human goals, of love, peace and happiness for all beings.
I think the endeavour, or ordeal you commenced could never be a failure, just something only Hercules himself would be sorely tested in accomplishing.
Praise to you Guy for the path you have taken.
If you write poetry, now would be a good time to share it, IMO.
December 15th, 2012 at 5:19 am
ulvfugl Says:
December 15th, 2012 at 4:38 am
you stand up, and take full responsibility for everything you do.
‘Rest of the species’ stuff doesn’t really come into it.
Is that an answer to your comment, or did you mean something else ?
No, that’s a very good answer. I’m just wondering what bloggers think about the idea that we have no responsibility for what we do. Because that is the idea that I am seeing increasingly presented here on this blog, and I don’t see anyone challenging it, or even commenting on it.
December 15th, 2012 at 6:23 am
I think taking responsibility is hard work. I think, quite naturally, we are tempted to take the path of least resistance. It saves energy. Ted Kaczynski wrote about it somewhere. Capitalism exploits this tendency we have, absolutely ruthlessly. ‘Convenience’ they call it.
John Brown, famous chairmaker, screamed at me about this, in one of his most noble rants, about an advertisment in a woodworking magazine which proclaimed ‘NO SKILL REQUIRED ! if you buy our machine’…
‘What the FUCK is the point of being a skilled woodworker ? The whole POINT is that you can be proud that you can do this stuff, that you have SKILL, that you learned, and these fucking capitalists try to steal it and take your money and pretend they can sell it back to you in the shape of their useless fucking machine that will break, and will take twice as long to set up as it would take to do the whole job by hand…’
…at that point his head exploded…
When I first came here, 25 years ago, to a new life, I designed all my habits. I had been a kitchen designer. You know, there’s rules. Stuff you use a lot, frequently, gets stored nearby, at arm’s length, stuff you use rarely, maybe you fetch a stool to reach it on a high shelf. And I’d done permaculture design, me at the centre, concentric zones, all that stuff, and so I had one bag for biodegradable waste, another for plastic, another for glass, designing my whole life, the first time with conscious thought and time and consideration and several adjustments, then it becomes habit, on autopilot.
So, there’s one shop where I buy most stuff including mass produced bread, and another that bakes their own much nicer bread, but it’s a long walk, just for the one loaf. But I do it, training my habit. Then one day, I’m tired and it’s wet and cold, so I settle for the inferior bread in the shop that sells all the other stuff. And of course, that’s what all the other folk also do, so eventually, the poor baker closes, because not enough customers will make that extra effort to walk that 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back in the rain and wind, just for the better bread…
That’s human species stuff. Our weakness. We like homemade food. So corporations make stuff that mimics homemade jam, biscuits, cakes, whatever, but really, it’s full of crap, fillers, additives, synthetic gunk, churned out in vast factories, thousands and thousands of tons of it, but it’s convenient, saves the trouble and work of growing and gathering fruit, cleaning up, if you made it yourself.
They’ve studied us, like mice or ants. Every single thing about us, and worked out ways to exploit us. You know, those bloody gadgets that sit beside the bed, that would make a really foul cup of tea, ready for when you wake, then ring the alarm and switch on the radio… and every single thing that a human does through the day and night, their entire lives, has been analysed, for business opportunities, to market some fucking product that would tempt them… those fucking vibrating chairs, to relax you after a hard day at the office, then a waterbed with a stereo attached, and on and on and on… and it’s all guaranteed to break…
So I suggest designing a daily and nightly life that designs out all of that crap, as much as possible. Bare essentials. If you want music, get an instrument and learn to play it. DIY is actually much more rewarding. Fight the path of least resistance. Do the 15 minutes in the rain for the homemade superior bread.
December 15th, 2012 at 6:38 am
Ripley & ulvfugl
Can I jump in here?
Personally I am one of those who does not believe humans are a failed species.
I am aware others do, however, if we all challenged everything we disagree with that others write we would be back with trolls again and I feel many are relieved that this last few essays comments have been much better discoursed or ciscussed in that department.
I am not quibbling with Ripleys question, but apart from a sort of pressure cooker relief valve that I suspect some might have by way of clearly delineating what is a personal responsability for all the FUBAR we now have, and what is collective responsibility, the question is valid in so far as it asked generally.
I have not objected or questioned such statements as ‘a failed species’ because to me , although I completely disagree, I sense where some regulars are coming from, and to them it is a way of understnding and explaining what is a very insane longterm outcome.
It is one explaination, although, as I just wrote, I don;t agree.
I also think it is a way of encapsulating the self-deluded and selfrighteous attitudes many report they rub up against all the time in their experience of the ‘masses’. And I also guess they wish to generalise the responsibility for the mess to that species wide failure.
Those are some very big generalisations to be wielding, but in some defined scientific Darwinian rekoning, it is a POV, and not really irrational.
Ripley’s question points to the concept of ‘a failed species’ as a device of personal obfuscation of responsibility, if I read it correctly.
Who can take responsibility?
Is that concept really obtainable now?
I was just following ulvfugl’s last link to the DeMocker-Moore interview and on the question of responsibility Moore is in no doubt in her response:
“DeMocker: The major paradigm-changing social movements in history — the civil-rights movement, the abolitionist movement, the independence movement in India — have mostly been campaigns against oppression. Who are the oppressors in the climate-change movement?
Moore: Transnational petrochemical industries, their leaders, their investors, and the politicians they control.
For a long time activists were unclear about this. The corporations were happy to claim that they were simply responding to public demand. Only recently has it become clear how much corporations have been manipulating public demand. They build and maintain infrastructures that force consumers to use fossil fuels. They convince politicians to kill or lethally underfund alternative energy or transportation initiatives. They increase demand for energy-intensive products through advertising. They create confusion about the harmful effects of burning fossil fuels. They influence elections to defang regulatory agencies that would limit Big Oil’s power to impose risks and costs on others. And, whenever possible, they work outside of democracies.”
But suppose we go further back and say who were the groups who preceeded the petrochemical industry advocates?
Look at the coal barons, and before them the forrestry woodcutters and fisheries managers etc.
Many here and elsewhere point to the beginning of aggriculture way back 12000 years ago, but does it really matter how far you go back in the thought experiment it is lost in the moments when humans introjected their instincts and developed a subconscious mind in order to generate the rational understanding of patterns in nature and self awareness. A pattern irecognition system is concommittent with being cognitive enough to be separate from the daily immersion in the patterns of nature.
That separation is way back and lost in ancestral species differentiation, such that no one alive since Aggriculture could be responsible for that high level of mind(and stupidity).
Instinct is the key t me.
Instinct is not a lack of reflective intellegence, it is the demonstration that an instinctive ability or motivation is active in consciousness. Many problems arise for us when our instincts are repressed, culturally, or otherwise undeveloped and are therefore hidden to us, and are therfore also more easily exploited by others.
Zipping to now, I don’t see a problem ethically if as ulvfugl stated that there is a time in life where you get yourself together and begin to take responsibility for your own actions/life.
To me part of that is becoming self aware of where your own carbon unit stops and others begin, and therefore where the bahaviour of your own carbon unit has consequences to the biosphere and so on.
Then to generalise the rest of humanity as failed is going too far for me but why would I criticise ulvfugl or others for going down that path.
I believe the root causes of this FUBARed planet lie in the failure to adequitely address adolescent development as a worldwide culture. It has been in the interest of those at the Apex of Empire Managment Inc to promote adolescent mentality because that is the demographic that is in a transition from letting go and rebelling or rejecting parent/culture dominant norms and customs, and moving toward an unknown adult engagement, which after time becomes unknown as elders are also adolescents, or regressed dried up industrial fodder, with no viable models of mature human beings, with adult cosmologies freed from doubt.
The adolsecent is also now an efficient enough moneyearner or regulator, with the characteristic of being easily manipulated re those spending habits, to milk very reliably back to Big Money Inc.
Who is ultimately responsible for this mess?
My short answer is those who can be, and by definition they are the ones trying to understand it all, and doing what it may take to change it.
Also by definition, those who cannot take responsibility, almost universally believe it is someone elses responsibility.
So it is mine? and anyone else who gives a danm enough to practice counter-egoic counter-industrial-civ thought and behaviour. It follows that none of that is accomplished overnight, but to me the vomit response is a clear indication you are on the right path when in the privacy of your own localised moments you become aware just how far back, and so comprehensively your ‘culture’ is based on murder, rape, plunder, genocide, crimes against the human genome, (Depleted Uraniom Weapons and Nuclear Industry), endless starvation, malnutrition and disease of millions of people, killing and poisonning of wildlife and oceans and rivers…Are you vomitting yet?????
That is a better path IMO, for the visceral rejection of all that is destructive is a sign that healing and a realignment is underway, at least in one’s own carbon unit… but you gotta start somehwere, and it is always noww!!!
December 15th, 2012 at 6:55 am
BTW
ulvfugl
Great link to the DeMocker/Moore interview. Hoping to get my patner and kids to read it tomorrow…(hoping…)
All
This site… can we somehow get it pirate-shifted onto school websites worldwide by some cyber-stealth-hidden-iphone-app?
That might do something….No?
December 15th, 2012 at 7:05 am
How many men does it take to tighten a screw
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/12/express-it-took-160-people-cost-4-million-yen-to-tighten-a-screw-of-a-nuclear-plant/
“It took 160 people, cost 4 million yen to tighten a screw of a nuclear plant”
Posted by Mochizuki on December 15th, 2012 · No Comments
Introducing an important tweet as [Express] for simultaneous update.
Once a large screw became loose at a running nuclear plant. When a nuclear reactor is generating power, the radiation level is extremely high, so 30 workers were prepared to tighten the screw. They were queued to run for the screw 7 meters away one after one.
The dosimeter beeps when you get to the screw and count 1, 2, 3. Some of them had the dosimeter beep before they even found a wrench. Only to tighten the screw required 160 workers and 4 million yen in total.
December 15th, 2012 at 7:39 am
Ripley, of course in fact all of us think we have responsibility for what we do. There are people with a brain defect that believe their arm or leg is not there. When the look in the mirror and see a hand brushing their teeth they wonder whose hand it is. Some people have even had a surgeon cut off the arm or leg they say isn’t theirs. Its called somatoparaphrenia. http://www.cracked.com/article_19369_the-6-most-mind-blowing-ways-your-brain-can-malfunction_p2.html for more info look the condition up on wiki. But such disconnect from the actions of our body are brain defects, not normal thinking. Still it is clear that it is the brain programs that cause us to think our arm and our leg are ours and under our (whoever our is) control, since a defect in the program can occur with brain damage.
So we are programmed to see our body as ours and under our control. If we in anger throw a cup on the floor most people admit their own responsibility, except my mother who said it was our (me and my siblings) fault for being bad kids. So you can see that ownership of our body and its actions can get a bit cloudy. My mother probably wouldn’t have thrown that cup on the floor if we had not angered her, of course other mothers don’t throw cups on the floor when their kids make them angry.
Do we only do what we choose to do? Are our actions controlled by our unconscious brain, our education or indoctrination, our lack of knowledge or experience in some area? The law allows exceptions for or gradations of responsibility for mental illness, low intelligence, fear (as is claimed in the Travon Martin case in FL), rage (husband finds wife in bed with another man), age etc. Just what is the right age of responsibility for murder or climate change??? What criteria should we use for responsibility for climate change?
Its a sticky issue you raise. Every time I use electricity I am responsible for the early deaths of copper miners in South America (about 45 average age). Every time I use my computer I am responsible for the raping of lands that have the raw materials in it. Every time we use a cell phone we share responsibility for the horror that the Congo has become, arms cut off, women raped with broken bottles, children forced into armies. If we get electricity from windmills we are responsible for the pollution of parts of china where the rare earth metals are mined for the magnets that make them efficient.
But I am also responsible for saving leaves from the dump to make rich soil in my garden, even as I am responsible for the gas I use to drive to town.
But those who plan a murder, or plan to drop a bomb on Hiroshima, or lie us into a war in Iraq, or cut corners as the drill in the Gulf, or build a nuclear plant over a fault line, or shoot up a classroom of students, are they not somehow more responsible? Well the last might be a mind control subject used to get gun control per some conspiracy cites? Who knows if he is a mind control subject is he responsible. To what degree is our whole civilization mind controlled? Because some of us can step partly back from civilization, does that mean everyone can or that we are poorer subjects for mind control.
I think who to blame is the wrong question. I am not sure what is the right question to get the solution of avoiding extinction. I think there isn’t one.
December 15th, 2012 at 7:55 am
Another exceprt from the DeMocker/Moore interview linked by ulvfugl
just above:
“DeMocker: You and your students have a “hope-o-meter” for the future of the earth, with a one meaning very little hope and a ten meaning no worries. Where are you on your hope-o-meter now?
Moore: Honestly? I’m about a one. I see feedback loops in the natural world that are going to make climate change much harder to address. As ice melts, it frees methane, a potent greenhouse gas. As forests are destroyed, they release carbon dioxide. By every measure global warming is increasing more rapidly than the most horrifying predictions of the past. And I can see the political feedback mechanisms kicking in: the more politicised the issue becomes, the more money will be thrown into debating it instead of addressing the crisis. It will be hard to get out of this one.
DeMocker: So why do you try?
Moore: People tend to think that we have only two options: hope or despair. But neither one is acceptable. Blind hope leads to moral complacency: things will get better, so why should I put myself out? Despair leads to moral abdication: things will get worse no matter what I do, so why should I put myself out? But between hope and despair is the broad territory of moral integrity — a match between what you believe and what you do. You act lovingly toward your children because you love them. You live simply because you believe in taking only your fair share. You do what’s right because it’s right, not because you will gain from it.
There is freedom in that. There is joy in that. And, ultimately, there is social change in that. That’s the way we respond to a lack of hope. A person could be at zero on the hope-o-meter and still do great, joyous work. Even — especially — in desperate times, we can make our lives into works of art that embody our deepest values. The ways of life that are most destructive to the world often turn out to be the ones that are also most destructive to the human spirit. So, although environmental emergencies call on us to change, they don’t call on us to give up what we value most. They encourage us to exercise our moral imagination and to invent new ways of living that lift the human spirit and help biological and cultural communities thrive.
Over the weekend I sat for an hour in a warm pond in beautiful sunshine with my one-year-old grandson on my lap, splashing and scooping. I’ve never seen a child so happy. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so happy. That type of immersion in the world is a lesson in responsible caring. We can find the ongoing strength to do this work if we keep in mind that it is powered by love.”
She nails it !!!
December 15th, 2012 at 8:14 am
After some quick searching, I couldn’t find a definition for “failed species”. And if we use the term, it would be helpful if it was defined.
Just because a species goes extinct, does that mean it has failed? Or, is it considered a failed species only if it self-destructs? What about a species which has gone extinct but its progeny are now evolved into a different species?
There have been literally millions upon millions of species which have gone extinct since life first showed up here on Earth. If we are looking at percentages, then the entire planet should be considered a failure.
If we use extinction as a measure of failure, then humans are not a failed species. We’re not extinct yet. We may certainly become that soon enough, but once we get there, we’ll never know it – we’ll already be gone.
December 15th, 2012 at 8:39 am
Kathy C Says: “If we must have someone to blame”
Needing somebody to blame
Suggests that an unconscious aim
Is using projection
For changing direction
Away from one’s own guilt and shame.
December 15th, 2012 at 8:41 am
I don’t agree with Kathy C. on this, which is not surprising, because we have radically different conceptions as to what a human being is, and it’s probably not useful to re-open that can of worms at this point. Neither do I agree with Moore.
Kathy said Do we only do what we choose to do?
That’s the point of training. One trains oneself constantly, to be more fully conscious of every thought and action and impulse, so as to gain choice, so as to gain control. Otherwise, there can’t really be full responsibility, or indeed, moral responsibility.
I mean, if you walk into a room and out again, and you were so absorbed in your own internal world that you never even noticed the body laying on the floor in the corner….
A lot of people are like that. They are living in their own dream world, scarcely aware of what happens around them. I have a public footpath close to my house. I see them walking, staring at the ground a couple of yards in front of them, never noticing anything else. I could be standing still in the hedge a yard from them, – indeed I have been – and they would not see me…
Re the costs of all the things we use. That goes back to what I said about designing one’s life. You do it to try and minimise your eco-footprint. Zero impact is impossible. What you want is to fully understand the costs of what you have and what you use. You need certain things to function. You need certain stuff to stay alive as a biological organism. Just the essentials. The way I see it, it’s making a base camp to fight from.
Which leads on to the Moore stuff, which seems very dated to me, would have been fine five years ago. Has she contemplated NTE ? Hope and despair are both pointless, IMO, but I draw from martial arts and zen traditions, leaving the base camp to fight, so to speak, you don’t go with any expectation whatsoever, neither of winning not losing, neither hope nor despair, are appropriate, the frame of mind is ‘beyond the opposites’. You just do it, because it is the right thing to do, because it is something to do. Action within emptiness, or emptiness within action, sort of thing. Just the Universe expressing itself.
How can you take responsibility for anyone other than yourself ? Unless you are a general or a CEO or president or something, who pays others to follow orders. I can’t command the 7 billion, I can only control myself.
December 15th, 2012 at 8:53 am
Yes, TRDH, that’s very perceptive of you, I hadn’t caught that until you pointed it out. I don’t think Charles Darwin would accept ‘failed species’, it’s much more the ugly travesty of American social darwinism, anthropocentric values, capitalist success and failure in the marketplace, kinda thing…
December 15th, 2012 at 11:22 am
Humans A species that failed to last as long as most species then. “A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance,[3] although some species, called living fossils, survive virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. ” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction
December 15th, 2012 at 11:46 am
ulvfugl: Though Darwin might not accept applying whatever biological meaning to “failed species” in a strict sense, i believe the argument can be made that we, in fact, are just that – if even only a special case (ie. we were so effing brilliant that we did the same thing all other species that could exploit a host for as long as it was useful did – but we “studied” them and called it science so nobody out on the street paid it the slightest attention and we humans ourselves are somehow immune from our discoveries in “nature,” or none of it applies to us).
All our culture and civilization is but a glorified ant farm that overran its resource base while it simultaneously destroyed its own living space with toxic pollution. Real bright species – and a bit self-congratulatory too, don’t you think, naming ourselves “sapiens” when, looking around, we’re anything but. Clever, i’ll give you but “wise” – no, we’re a long way off.
i don’t know what you and Kathy C were discussing and agreeing to disagree about “being human” but i don’t think philosophy, sociology, biology, psychology, neuroscience, mathematics, religion or medicine has the entire picture or description. i’m not even sure that’s the kind of knowledge one understands from “studying it” while living it (and subsequently ignoring the fact that the way we’re living is killing us and the entire planet). It seems anymore that any honest description of humanity must include the word “delusional.”
December 15th, 2012 at 11:47 am
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December 15th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Tom, it’s ‘us’ applying ‘our’ human judgements and values to biological evolution of life on Earth, which, as I understand it, Darwin and scientists in general try hard not to do.
Of course, if one just looks at it as a member of the public, without any attempt to be scientific, then you can make any judgement you like. You can say the dinosaurs were bad because they look ugly, so it’s a good thing they have gone.
I don’t think we know enough to be able to say, unequivocally, what our place in the Universe, in the scheme of things really is. Most biologists and physicists want to deny any purpose, any teleology, whilst most religions and many spiritual people want there to be some deeper meaning. The internet has a smorgasbord on offer, reincarnation, multiverses, panpsychism, alien abduction, everything anybody could possibly want…
It does seem such a tragic shame that we have messed things up so terribly. Talking about ‘our species’ seems kinda crazy. Have the people on this forum really got anything at all in common with the lunatics burning off the methane from the Bakken Shale ? Might as well be completely different species.
December 15th, 2012 at 12:57 pm
Auntiegrav: I disagree. I think Keith Farnish’s work is very important. And I will happily post a link to his book Underminers, which can be read online for free: http://underminers.org/ Note also that Guy is featured in Chapter 10.
Michael Irving: interesting that bit about Naomi Klein justifying her decision to have a child. One thing it made me reflect on: if I didn’t have a child of my own right now, I might have already killed myself. Instead, I also want to fight like hell. But in spite of this, if I could hit rewind, if I could go back in time and not conceive my child, I think I would do it. Now she’s here, and I will love her and defend her to my last breath. But if I could do it over, I would.
wildwoman: can’t wait to hear about your experience with jury duty.
thestormcrow: I think a case each of harmonicas and kazoos.
BadlandsAK: you wrote something for KB that it turns out I needed to see. So just know that your words have a reach and an effect that are sometimes unanticipated: I was never more lonely than while sleeping in a tent on a beach in Mexico next to my husband of more than ten years. I decided to divorce him. If people don’t care for at least some of the things you care about, it makes relationships difficult. I find that if I can get to a place where nature makes me feel really small, it wipes my mind clear and I can make difficult decisions. Just find somewhere to be still and draw on the wisdom and power of nature. While you still can.
December 15th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Excellent posts here. I see people dealing with the most important issues in human existence and coming here to discuss them. Nowhere else do I see such insight and questioning. I have a couple of things to add.
Good question, TRDH, what is a failed species anyway? I kinda thought that was one that killed itself off, with more marks taken off for killing off other entire species. But I now take the biological view. In my days of philosophy classes, I took the philosophical view. I argued for one definition of a concept, such as “responsibility,” over another. I followed the path of thought from ancient Greece to the post-modernists and eco-feminism. I had no exposure to Asian views, so I can’t comment there. I was good at this, and I got good grades. Now I see it means nothing. I have another point of view.
In order to belive anything has meaning, you have to study how the existentialists deconstructed the concept of meaning. Sartre, Camus, etc. To make a long story short, they argued that only when you realize that all life means nothing, is nothing, represents nothing, has no future, no present, nothing – only then you can make meaning for yourself. And only for yourself. And you also have to know that the meaning you construct for yourself might cause society to kill you for it. Responsibility is one of these meanings.
It helps to understand gravity by imagining two dimensions instead of three, even though the comparison doesn’t work perfectly. In a two dimensional world, say, a sheet of rubber with steel balls laying on it at various points to represent planets, imagine people living on the two dimensions of the rubber sheet. They see asteroids, comets, other heavy things, being drawn towards the steel balls because the balls distort “space” into another dimension of which the people are unaware. They see straight line movement being interfered with and call it gravity. Now imagine us in three physical dimensions, viewing gravity and thinking it is a property of the mass of the planets, when actually what is happening is that mass is distorting space into another dimension of which we are unaware.
That kind of step-away-from-the-situation-to-see-it-better is what I’m going to do to help describe my new point of view that is not philosophical any longer. In my philosophical view, I was lost in the human propensity to take words and thoughts as real and true. “Failed species” is one of those thoughts. So is “responsibility.” So here goes…
Imagine the planet as a very large ecosystem. Not Gaia – no thoughts, no judgements, just a complex interacting set of large and small ecosystems. There is no “tendency to equilibrium” or to any other physical state other than that which can be explained by the laws of physics. (A friend of mine calls his farm “entropy acres.”) Now view earth from this perspective. Things are happening, molecules are moving around, gasses changing places, heat being trapped, similar processes to those that have happened for a very long time. It began 4.5 billion years ago, and the sun has another 4.5 billion to go before it’s lights out. These changes are so small, really, just a blip on the timescale of biology. But small creatures have radically changed this planet before. Think of the bacteria that first used sunlight to crack a water molecule to get oxygen and food. Photosynthesis. No biggie? Only the biggest change on the planet EVAH. Oxygen was toxic to most life. (Somehow, manganese was involved and I can’t explain that, but I read about it this week.) So mostly all new life had to evolve, and it did!
Now imagine another change just as dramatic. Maybe even more. Humans may have caused the creation of Venus 2.0, we don’t know and we’ll never know it if we manage to do it. Humans, just larger collections of cooperating bacteria.
Now imagine people realizing they might have triggered this change. Imagine them spinning around trying to assign blame. It’s the corporations! It’s the GOP! It’s the scientists! It’s agriculture! It’s the economy! Imagine the bacteria that developed photosynthesis saying: It wasn’t me! It was those blue bacteria over there! No, it was the red ones! The yellow! The yellow! Kill all the yellow ones!
Imagine people saying: But we created Bethoven’s fifth symphony! We painted the Mona Lisa! We appreciated flowers! We created philosophy and science! We know the laws of physics! We walked on the moon!
These exhortations are ridiculous in this light, no? Our appeal to some sort of “rightness” or “wrongness” or “justice” or “responsibility” or some mitigating behaviour that should derail our extinction, sounds so much like pleading with a parent to avoid being punished. These have no more force or truth or impact than the same objections were they cried by bacteria. They mean nothing. No one is listening. Indeed, there is no one to listen. No parent, no dog.
If you read Charles C. Mann’s “1491″ and “1493″ you’ll see what we’ve been up to. We never change, we just do what humans do. Over and over again. Just like bacteria. We are horrified, but then we do it again. And again. None of it matters, really. Biology just ticks along, oblivious to us. When you realize that it doesn’t matter, when you REALLY realize it doesn’t matter, then you can decide that it matters TO YOU.
That’s all you can do. That’s all you ever could do.
So here we are, self-aware bacteria, criticizing our own behaviour and where it has gotten us, trying to blame someone else or trying to reverse the process.
“We” should kill the economy! “We” should all grow food! Should should should. More human constructs that mean nothing.
Just remember, none of it matters to biology. But it may matter to you. Conduct yourselves accordingly.
December 15th, 2012 at 2:16 pm
TRDr. House: All i’m pointing out is that, whatever our supposed “purpose” is or was, we (okay, i’ll concede the point that “we ain’t dead yet”) are ‘on the verge of’ failing to even stay alive (not to mention the destruction we’ve caused the living planet, not unlike cancer) DESPITE being the self-labelled ‘apex of life’ (according to us, because we possess language and what we think is some kind of “special” brain – which is looking more and more delusional as we head into ecological and civilization collapse – as opposed to being the ‘image and likeness of God’ as some would have us believe).
BCNP: Excellent! That’s what i got out of the NewScientist article! It’s as if we’re existing and ascribe meaning to our deeds and “lives” when in reality there isn’t any such thing as a separate “us” in the first place! That we’re about as important as any other species in that we had our place and went through our “program” all the way to self-destruction. Maybe there was a “right way” to live on the planet once, but it mutated (like lots of other stuff) and now we’re looking at the end comin’ down the road. i throw out cynical “judgements” like the “failed species” label because i’m so pissed that all the “fault” was us all along! How could we be so damn ignorant?! But it’s just frustration and reaction to “blowing it” for the other species while we were at it. i appreciate your viewpoint at the end there – it’s all personal in the end.
December 15th, 2012 at 2:25 pm
Beautifully stated, BC Nurse Prof. I especially liked the bit about the construction of meaning.
What is the meaning of meaning
Much that I agree with. Perhaps even all of it…
However, what if you are mistaken ? What if there is something else ? Isn’t it rather a big responsibility to take on to declare that all is now known ? And also meaningless ?
No, actually, I don’t agree. I maintain there is ‘something more’, the mysterious spiritual element… it’s not biology, and it’s not a human construct either. It might possibly have something to do with quantum entanglement, quantum non-locality, and consciousness, but that remains conjectural at this time.
December 15th, 2012 at 2:42 pm
The answer !
http://electricsheepcomix.com/sketch/?p=244
December 15th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
ulvfugl: You may be right. If right is the correct word. I remain unconvinced, is all. But people have convinced me of things before, and I may be convinced of other things in future. Who knows? I say no one knows.
Someone may ask, “Is everything relative, then?” Even “relative” is a human construct. What’s relative to a pig? A paramecium?
As Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbs) says as he screams at an ant on the ground: “Don’t let them tell you what to do! What about YOUR needs? Leave now and live your own life!”
There are fungi that invade their host and cause the insect to crawl to the top of the forest and bite into the top leaf to hold on tight before dying in that position. Then the fungus fruits out of the top if the insect’s head, opens, and throws spores into the wind. Did the insect decide for itself to crawl to the top of the tree? How did a fungus make the insect think to do that? Are we really in charge of our thoughts?
December 15th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
BC Nurse Prof, not for me to convince people, but I began from a scientific position, I remember seeing a book when aged about 18, with descriptions and paintings of chakras, and being outraged, ‘how can people get away with this rubbish ?’ but a few years later, I understood, it was me that was grossly mistaken, I had been mislead by this materialist culture which does not understand how to know the inner world, or the spiritual domain.
But I explored it as a scientist. The final words of the Buddha, ‘ Don’t take anything I say as truth just because I say it, try it and test it for yourself’, which is really much the same as the scientific empirical method.
This has been the essence of my disagreement with Kathy C. She thinks I am following ‘a religious faith’, a dogmatic teaching. Whereas the particular school that I adhere to ( Soto Zen ) is, I maintain, a way to get free from all belief systems, including Soto zen… I mean, what it aims for, is direct experience of raw natural reality without any cultural interpretation… if that makes any sense. So one does not overlay a biological or a philosophical or any other ‘constructed reality’ upon ‘what is’.
This is significantly further than where the existentialists, Sartre, Camus, etc, were able to go. I don’t know, you may recall, Nausea, Sartre kinda reaches that point, and sees a tree, roots and branches like writhing intestines, and feels sick, and can’t handle it.But the zen student stays with it. Like the raked gravel and rocks and moss of the Japanese zen gardens, to transcend all meaning and categories. The existentialists got lost, in nihilism and hedonism. The zen student has 2000 years or so of profound teaching to support them, of great masters who have made all the mistakes and found ways around the hazards. The buddhist ethics are instilled first, so they are habitual, and so forth.
You could arrive at much the same position by reading Wittgenstein. He started by thinking there was a way to pin down reality with logic and words. But that turned out to be impossible. He ended by realising that words create an illusory reality that we lay over the actual reality, and thus we spend our whole lives living in a false world. At least, that is how I understand him. Some have other interpretations.
Yes, there’s some nice examples of the parasites and their victims here :
http://jeb.biologists.org/content/216/1/i.full
December 15th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Paul Chefurka Says: As my acceptance deepened, my need to alleviate my distress by projecting dire consequences became less urgent.
B the D answered: Now THAT is an interesting point. If it’s not already in the literature, you might have yourself something there.
Paul, does this work? Did it alleviate your distress to project dire consequences? I think I know what you mean, but I’m not sure. Can you elaborate?
December 15th, 2012 at 4:25 pm
Jennifer “if I could hit rewind, if I could go back in time and not conceive my child, I think I would do it. Now she’s here, and I will love her and defend her to my last breath. But if I could do it over, I would.”
Likewise. I feel for you having to raise a child in these times, but I know you will do as well as anyone could do.
I wish I could make people understand that when I urge them to get their tubes tied now it will be a small gift to themselves. When birth control fails, they will not risk conceiving a child with a very short lifespan and the guilt and pain they will face raising that child in a dying world.
December 15th, 2012 at 4:32 pm
Guy’s essay is being somewhat hotly debated on 2 peak oil sites I blog on. The essay was posted not by me. I sort of marvel. We have been discussing the dieoff that will come with peak oil – estimates of remaining populations have run from 1 billion to 500,000. Now the dreaded E word is spoken and protests abound. Why such a heated discussion. I realized as I pondered this today that in part it is because people get some meaning out of believing humanity will continue, but I think mostly it is this. Dieoff lets you imagine other people dying, but you by dint of preparation, or just because you live in the US of A will survive and make it through the bottleneck. Extinction allows no personal exemption. People are dying off now from floods, hurricanes, droughts, famine etc caused by climate change. But that is over there and only once in a while in the US and the numbers here are always smaller. Uttering the E word strips the denial away. Even if we only had a dieoff I hardly think the US of A or the first world is going to be hit lighter, probably it will be hit harder. All these years, studying about Peak Oil and still folks don’t internalize dieoff much less extinction.
So it goes.
December 15th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
BC Nurse Prof
Your recently posted view is great IMO. I wonder if you are simply describing a process of deconditioning of all the cultural ideas, meanings and cosmology a single carbon unit must go through BEFORE it’s own meanings can be created, formed or otherwise become known to it, perhaps ‘realised’ tacitly?
I feel that this is what goes on in Authentic spiritual practice, as opposed to the half baked religion business that simply reinternalises dominant norms by rehashing cultural stories of ‘chosen ones under oppression’ or ‘avouding suffering by tetreating to subtle mind states’ etc.
Aspects of the process have begun culturally, through the feminist movement and ecological movements, and the essence of post-modern discussion about deconstructing the meta-narratives, or grande stories we recycle, and reinvent, and tell ourselves, now universally via mass communication, but this occurs in spits and starts on the cultural stage.
Think of slavery. It still exists, especially sexual bondage, which is estimated by a recent aquaintence of mine as amounting to between one third to one quarter of world GDP,(including the unaccounted for black economy Dark-GDP).
Slavery and racial discrimination, like apartheit, was challenged, and narrow civil rights for a few were challenged, but in the USA BTW only after the lives of non-WASPs had accrued more ‘economic measurable value’ to the USA economy. But still, in terms of ethical values, it is simple to make the argument slavery is unfair, barbaric and ‘wrong’ to enforce.
So in that particular area cultures of European decent have made some ‘enlightened’ progress, that first had to identify the ‘old world’ meanings, stories/narratives of dominance and racial superiority, stuff like phrenology and earlier notions of Darwinian fitness etc, then the ideas about equality, and inclusiveness and identity emerge and convene to form a new meaning, which struggles but is then adopted by many, (but not all).
What I’m pointing to is that that impulse to clean up the detritis in our unconscious cultural baggage is ‘active’, and has some cutting power, but continually is at odd with profit based exploitation, and just conservative inertia.
However, as any modern politician knows, with wedge politics and public rhetoric, if you let any light through, it is the end of your way of discoursing your argument, as it will grow to root out all the tendrils of fabricated story-lies that keep the exploitative status quo operating. That is one reason we live in a polarised political world at present, because the heat is on the ‘old world’ ways, and a new world, or freedom from dictation of what the world is, and our place in it is, is hammering at the Bastile dorrs.
The very real power to direct military, and distractive entertainments, and disinformation should never be underestimated, for as an older story about the Buda points out, at the very last moment before the Buda’s enlightenment, Maya, the force of worldly bondage, threw everythig in ‘her’ arsenal to distract him from that realisation. That is what in a similar way the 1%, and its empire is doing in our time, trying to impede ‘our’ becoming significanly self aware to render ‘it’ the 1& and the empire unnecessary.
Keep hammering, I say, but with profound Love, for it only clear, powerful, Love, felt through the very direct exchanges between beings that has the clarity, understanding, and power to smash illusions and delusions about all that is of no value to a greater world….
Great posts here of late, I agree. More first time commenters too. Ace!!!
December 15th, 2012 at 4:57 pm
you don’t go with any expectation whatsoever, neither of winning not losing, neither hope nor despair, are appropriate, the frame of mind is ‘beyond the opposites’. You just do it, because it is the right thing to do, because it is something to do.
Hope and despair are two sides to the coin of expectation. Hopelessness is desirelessness.
Action within emptiness, or emptiness within action,
“Action in inaction and inaction in action” is noted in a passage in a traditional text.
How can you take responsibility for anyone other than yourself ?
In the Army, it is pointed out that one can delegate authority, but one can never delegate responsibility. Responsibility for the actions of others is tempered by the circumstances in which the commensurate authority was delegated. Such delegation of authority can be implicit of explicit, witting or unwitting. Filling the gas tank of one’s car is an example of implicit and unwitting delegation of authority to the petroleum industry to act on one’s behalf. Taking an airplane journey involves is similar.
All of these factor into the circumstances that temper one’s responsibility (and culpability).
So here we are, self-aware bacteria,
The idea of a separate “self” (as contrasted with “non-self”) is an illusion generated in awareness. Awareness is neither “self” nor ” non-self” and not dependent on either.
Failure is falling short of goal. Species are DNA”s way of continuing itself. Dinosaurs are extinct, but the DNA in the dinosaurs from which birds evolved continued into birds. The same goes for the DNA of a lungfish that once crawled out of the water onto land. But as a general rule, almost all species are dead ends for DNA. Like the roots of a tree exploring many crevices and coming to many dead ends, so too do the branches of the tree of life come to many dead ends. If the purpose includes reconnaissance, then no dead end is a failure.
December 15th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
“involves something similar.”
December 15th, 2012 at 5:02 pm
If you have no children, it’s much easier to accept NTE. If your extinction is imminent, stop eating. It’s been done before. If you have children, that’s a lot more difficult. Or so I imagine, since I have no offspring.
December 15th, 2012 at 5:04 pm
So here we are, self-aware bacteria,
But you don’t get a human, unless you have a planet, a biosphere.
So, by the same token, self-aware biosphere.
and you don’t get a biosphere, without first a Universe, so, by the same logic, self-aware Universe.
December 15th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
Action in inaction and inaction in action” is noted in a passage in a traditional text.
Talking, words, it’s hard to explain, but this man can show how it’s done, in a practical sense.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgI56XtQ7y0&feature=share&list=ULRgI56XtQ7y0
December 15th, 2012 at 5:26 pm
Kathy C
Per your last comment…
I remember seeing a Science doco about human evolution which mentions that at a certain period in the last interglacial I think the human species was separated into two populations, one in europe, the other in Africa. I think it is supposed to be Neanderthals, and Homo Somethingus, but…
The European population had pretty good conditions to live under, plenty of rain, lots of animals and selife to hunt, varied microecosystems to move to in changing seasons etc. Over in Africa they were doing it very tough, droughts, scarce aminals to hunt, long distances to travel to some habitable conditions that always changed.
Ordinary thinking might lead one to conclude that the population in Europe would do better and survive down the evolutionalry track, but in fact they went under, and we are descendents from the African groups.
There is some ideas that there was gene exchange, if you know what I mean, so it is a bit moot there, but the whole story, in essence, points to tha fact that it was the need to adapt and struggle with conditions of environmental adversity that lead to survival, because it among other things selected those who had an adaptation of cooperative mind, apart from the anatomical differences.
The modern concept of theaory of mind, at times considered to be a defining attribute to our species alone, is the Sapien part of our inhetitence from these earlier times. We selected the mind and its denial of instinct as a simple day to day operating system, to borrow a computer metaphore. Sapiens have the ability to hold abstract pattern recognition to the monent of self recognition, and in the catch 22 chicken-egg way, that selected characteristic ‘freed us from purely biological instincts and realised an aspect of self then emerging.
People like Shoppenhauer and Jung and Joseph Campbell, have variously put the view that this project of accruing ‘mind’ or self awareness has been at the expence of other functions, and if I read then correctly, there is a pendulum of cultural emphasis over lengthy time periods in historic times at least where feeling subsides and rationality dominates, and then it begins to reverse.
But over time, ‘culture’(also a survival tool) has developed ways to record and pass on major influences from its history that mean accumulation of bodies of knowledege get passed on,(also selectively so, through pathways of privelege and non-privelage).
We seem to be now at that Apex where rationality has been pushed to absurdity, and as th aTao posits, if one element becomes extreme it can morph into its opposite, as balance.
We see this wholesale now with industrial lying, on an epic scale.
The politician says at a public forum…
“As your elected representative it is a privelage and an honour to serve the community”
We know the lie is obvious, as cash for legislative votes is endemic in most democracies.
So Your last comment is well taken by me, and yes it is a bit of a game changer, the old NTE, the 500 000 to 1 billion get out of die-off clause is rejigged to mean:
NO ONE, IN THE PRESENT HUMAN FORM WE RECOGNISE AS SAPIENS, WILL SURVIVE.
Some other smaller, (better heat regulation), Homonid, with ant eating proclivities,( abundantly adaptive insects likely to survive for a time, but when the plants die off, who knows), may emerge, who knows?
December 15th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Ozman, if the forests and the phytoplankton go, then there’s no oxygen to breath, so it seems very unlikely any land or sea mammals would survive.
It might take a couple of centuries to reach that point, but that counts as instant, in geological time. Doesn’t allow for genetic evolution to adapt.
December 15th, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Kathy C Says:
December 14th, 2012 at 11:29 am
So no blame is called for. But heck, I want to have fun on the way down, so I am going to blame BP, and the Nuclear Regulation Association, and any scapegoat I can find for the state of affairs even though I know that in the end there is no blame. We just are a failed species, one among many, one of the shortest lived. Too bad for us…..
Kathy C Says:
December 15th, 2012 at 7:39 am Ripley, of course in fact all of us think we have responsibility for what we do. (then in the same post)
I think who to blame is the wrong question. I am not sure what is the right question to get the solution of avoiding extinction. I think there isn’t one.
If we have responsibility, when someone behaves irresponsibly, that person, group or corporation is to blame for the consequences of their behavior. You can’t say you believe in responsibility but not blame. This is known as cognitive dissonance or doublethink.
December 15th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century’s leading evolutionary biologists.
Mayr viewed intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation.
I would say that looks like why h. Sapien Sapien is a failed species, a dead end with a Capital ‘D’.
Consciousness and intelligence are connected concepts, a picket and a fence.
I just ‘retired’ and I cope with the end of the world by sleeping as much as possible, I.e. being unconscious.
It works well.
My goal is to sleep about 20 hours a day. It leaves enough time for chores, eating, etc.
Try instead of booze and drugs.
December 15th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
Liag Says:
December 13th, 2012 at 11:23 am
…lots of great stuff. a great example (there are many to choose from imo) of a ‘regular’ comment to nbl that humbles me in the best way and makes me feel that not only am i not completely alone, i’m blessed by the cyberspace companionship of sheeple i can look up to and learn from.
thanks, guy, for the gift of nbl this holiday season, and always.
December 15th, 2012 at 9:05 pm
This one’s for Guy.
The invention of ‘Canned Laughter’ should have been a wake up call to Industrial Civilisation we were being had.
‘CANNED LAUGHTER’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEiaPxSrFN4
And…
‘Artificially Sweetened: The Story of Canned Laughter’
http://www.neatorama.com/2012/08/22/Artificially-Sweetened-The-Story-of-Canned-Laughter/
An excerpt:
“The following article is from the book ‘Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV’.
What if the studio audience isn’t laughing at what’s supposed to be funny? What if there isn’t a studio audience at all? There’s always “sweetening” – tweaking a program’s audio wth a laugh track or some other canned response. This is the story of “canned laughter.”
SILENCE IS DEADLY
Laughter is contagious. That’s why radio comedies in the 1930s often employed studio audiences – their laughter showed listeners at home which lines were supposed to be funny, and make them think the show itself was well liked by many people. Television continued that tradition. The problem: Sometimes nobody in the live audience laughed, or they laughed at the wrong parts, or too hard, or for too long.
LAUGHING ON THE INSIDE
In the late 1940s, CBS sound engineer Charley Douglass came up with the solution for the problem of underwhelming audience responses: artificial laughter. Making fake laughter was fairly simple: create tape loops of ideal audience responses, then insert them wherever they were needed.
Douglass started collecting audiotapes of shows from the CBS archive. He listened carefully to them, analyzing why one laugh worked and another didn’t. Douglass soon noticed that laughter came in many varieties: An audience could titter slightly, chuckle, or roar. And then there was the timing: the instant laugh, the surprised laugh, the delayed one, and, with a particularly intelligent or obscure joke, the rolling laugh as members of the audience got the joke at different times. Douglass realized that dozens of taped laughs would be required.
Ideally, Douglass thought, the canned laughter should be hearty but not too loud, enthusiastic but not disruptive, and just long enough to not throw off the performers’ delivery. He aimed to make it consistent and reproducible, and realistic enough to augment and even replace an actual audience…..
Douglass’s work is carried on by his son Bob, but not with his dad’s Laff Box: Using what could more accurately be called the Laff Laptop, which contains hundreds of laughs accesible only through proprietary software, Bob does electronically what his father did with hand-cut recording tape.
The responsiveness of the new technology is such that sweetening is now routinely added in real time during the seven-second delay on live award shows, including the Emmys and the Academy Awards. Even live sports presentations are sweetened now, with augmented boos, gasps, and cheers from the crowd. As the saying goes, you can’t believe everything you hear.”
I can reccommend the u-tube insert on this link with Milton Berle and Mickey Rooney telling it like it became.
When TV, movies and industrial entertainment was growing, but people in the West were also perhaps seeing the destruction of ‘community’, ‘canned laughter’ was a very inexpensive way of manufacturing consensus on what is some of the unconscious issues in the culture best laughed at, rather than see solemnly and with chagrin. It also completed the separation of capital inluenced live broardcast entertainment from unreliable returns due to ‘real’ unpredictable responses. A similar thing took place at large stage events with lip syncing hit songs, to ensure product reliability, of popular hit songs.
Anyone could work out it works better on children, because they are usually taking their cues from the social arena about what is OK and what is not, what is significant and what is not.
(This explains to me why I never found Lucile Ball and Jerry Lewis funny.)
I remember several months ago rewatching the first 5 episodes of the 1062 sit-com ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’. They must have used every canned laugh there was. For those who dont know it is about…
“… a poor backwoods family transplanted to Beverly Hills, California, after striking oil on their land.”
The situation is designed to disguise the Oil barrons real identities, as these simple folk are as unsophisticated as is possible, and counter posed by the greedy banker, Mr Drysdale, and his frigid, upperclass, but fair natured secretary, Miss Hathaway.
The banker takes all the heat on the greed front, but perhaps it also pressaged the wat to ordinary folk buying shares into an oil portfolio that films like the 1965 epic ‘Giant’, starring James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor, which left an oily, greedy tinge in the mouth.
IMO, hese are good examples to make the argument that big investments in modern storytelling in the 1950′s, where youth rebellion was becoming fashionable, subsequently required closer ‘tweaking’ by Big Money Inc., so it was toned down and turned to comedy, but then when it rose again, with directors/producers coming of age who went into the business in the 40′s and 50′s, we got violent and racist junk like Hill Street Blues, and Starsky and Hutch, The Sweeny, and even the rediculously serious face saving but popular TV series ‘FBI’, starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr. as Inspector Lewis Erskine.
Never did I see a more serious show intended to reassure a population that the investigative fellows in charge were on the case. Another was called ‘Adam 12′, a cop show where the cops actually read people their rights and never infringed a suspects civil rights, and went by the book. The two main characters, officers Pete Malloy and Jim Reed, patroled the LA presinct, catching the bad guys and teaching all the kids who watched their ‘rights’.
But we now know from Mike Ruppert’s ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ and others that during the late 60′s and 70′s the CIA was expanding and running the cocaine trade and making many millions. Trusty FBI.
(Moved on a bit from canned Laughter there…)
Canned Laughter, just another tool in the Industrial Empires repotior to invoke consensual group ideas, and dimmed mental criticallity.
Audiences used to throw rotten fruit, but they have to be really there to throw it.
There is nothing quite like the ‘sound of silence’ in an auditorium, when you are trying to be funny….especially concerning NTE.
How about handing out rotten fruit at your next lecture/talk Guy?
December 15th, 2012 at 10:33 pm
Kathy C: . . . Now the dreaded E word is spoken and protests abound. Why such a heated discussion. I realized as I pondered this today that in part it is because people get some meaning out of believing humanity will continue, but I think mostly it is this. Dieoff lets you imagine other people dying, but you by dint of preparation, or just because you live in the US of A will survive and make it through the bottleneck. Extinction allows no personal exemption. . .
When I first started waking up to all this I began “preparing”. I started gardening and raising chickens and goats and educating myself on so many things that I never would have imagined only five years ago. I was convinced that die-off was coming, but I really didn’t think I’d be one of “them”. After all, I was “preparing”.
I think what made me realize that I just wasn’t all that special was when I began to include the nuclear reactors in my calculations. I can find ways to adapt to some unknown weather weirding (or so I told myself) or peak oil or collapse of all civilization, but radiation was a different story – it’s a killer in sufficient quantity. There’s no way to protect against that, at least not for very long. If the entire northern hemisphere and most of the southern is fried then there’s nowhere to go.
Extinction of the species is now easier for me to accept, at least intellectually. I doubt I’ll ever accept any of this much beyond an intellectual standpoint – until it starts to get so bad that it becomes real to me.
Right now I can easily switch back and forth between the two worlds. One is the world where nothing is wrong and life just keeps going on every day like it always has. The other is the world we talk about here and the world which is plain to see if one looks just below the surface. That ability to jump between the two makes it easy to deny reality.
December 15th, 2012 at 10:33 pm
Guy
You are doing important work.You are having a big impact. You need to give yourself a break once in a while. The pressure of delivering the message and the act of personally confronting these realities would kill the average man. By the time you left Mass you were clearly exhausted. Your own personal early extinction will not help the world. Take care my friend.
I went to two of your talks in Mass. Once with my wife and once with two friends.I thought I knew what to expect when I walked in the first time and you wacked both my wife and I upside our intellectual heads. Good thing too – thank you. Our new awareness regarding the time frame of the upcoming changes has already caused us to make changes . Changes that will impact our lives and the future of the earth in positive ways. Will it make a measurable difference? I don’t know and I don’t care – we will continue.
Regarding the reaction of the University where you spoke- it is unimportant. The straight response from the powers that be should not be unexpected. What really matters is that a group of students and faculty listened and heard. The will absorb, digest and discuss your perspective. What the School Administration says will have no impact whatsoever on their ideas. The response you got from the system is a sure sign that you are on the right track. You know these things.
Get out of the Mud Hut for a while – take a break – get out of your head if you can -
seek a little comfort – take time to rest and get perspective on things
Best Regards – Ron
December 16th, 2012 at 12:21 am
ulvfugl
It might take a couple of centuries to reach that point, but that counts as instant, in geological time. Doesn’t allow for genetic evolution to adapt.
True that a couple of centuries is an instant in geological time. However, you are not talking about continental drift; for unicellular organisms passing through hundreds of generations per year, two centuries is plenty of time to adapt. I believe the research finding a 40% reduction in phytoplankton since 1950 concluded increased ocean stratification (due to warming) rather than acidification was the main problem.
When we start harvesting phytoplankton for food or fuel because there is nothing else left to eat or burn is when I’ll start worrying about them.
I entirely share your pessimism for the future of trees. I’ve read that only 20% of original forests remain. Given how little original forest remains, is it likely destruction of the remainder will cause a problem with oxygen? Presumably much of what replaces original forest also engages in photosynthesis (obviously apart from areas paved over or lost to desertification).
The first listing when I search for “oxygen decline” in google seems well balanced and doesn’t anticipate lack of oxygen being a problem anytime soon.
December 16th, 2012 at 12:29 am
Well, my take, although I accept that Guy’s position is a possible future, is that no-one can predict the future exactly and may be wildly out on the time frame. Who knows what black swans may emerge to change the human predicament fundamentally? Just as an example, if a supervolcano erupts, that would fundamentally change future events and conditions, as well as populations, and no-one knows when the next one will blow though some are thought to be overdue. I’m sure people can think of other potential black swans.
There are many unknowns. What, I think, Guy does is project what some models predict and how some scientists see certain feedbacks onto an otherwise unchanging world but, as we know, things change. I couldn’t believe civilization got past peak crude oil but the global financial crisis did have that side effect. I’m definitely not saying “everything will be fine” but we just don’t know the precise future path of the planet and humanity.
However, I do know that civilisation destroys the environment and so that is a good reason to alter one’s lifestyle to as simple a one as possible. I’m trying to do that, within some confines of my personal situation and emotions. And I see that there is good reason to do that. Instead of despair it’s the morally right thing to do (in my opinion), to live as simply as one can, to live as sustainably as one can and, since the future is uncertain, that might actually be of benefit in the future, probably in all futures except near term human extinction, which just might not happen.
By the way, I don’t see this as blind hope, just a recognition of human inability to see into the future. If it doesn’t work out the way Guy thinks, then, in that situation, each of us would probably think that they could have done more (or anything) to prepare for a different world.
December 16th, 2012 at 1:56 am
Tony Weddle Says:
However, I do know that civilisation destroys the environment and so that is a good reason to alter one’s lifestyle to as simple a one as possible.
It’s interesting that even within the industrial system waste could be reduced by a huge amount with very little change in lifestyle, in fact lifestyle might actually be better. I live in the US, where deliberate waste IS the lifestyle, here, we’re not even trying to conserve energy. In Germany they build houses that use 90% less energy. Heating buildings is a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions. These kind of savings could be implemented across most sectors of the industrial system. But the political will is not there because of the entrenched vested interests. A 90% reduction in CO2 could have, at least, bought us some time. But it will not happen in system where greed and irresponsibility rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
December 16th, 2012 at 3:14 am
Yorchichan, my comment re the oxygen was in reply to Ozman’s comment, and his vision of some new hominid evolving.
It may take a couple of centuries before the phytoplankton and forests which supply our oxygen have gone – it could be sooner – and the residual atmospheric oxygen level drops, and keeps on dropping thereafter.
The planet will not be suitable for mammals, such as ourselves to live on, so new hominids are not going to evolve. What’s more the oceans will be dead zones, from acidification, and will remain so time periods which preclude any chance of recovery, except in terms of geological time.
http://guymcpherson.com/2012/12/kill-the-economy/#comment-55376
I think oxygen was discussed somewhere on that thread, you seem to have missed it, it’s a bit long for me to trawl through.
December 16th, 2012 at 3:29 am
BC Nurse Prof Says:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
So here we are, self-aware bacteria, criticizing our own behavior and where it has gotten us, trying to blame someone else or trying to reverse the process. “We” should kill the economy! “We” should all grow food! Should should should. More human constructs that mean nothing. Just remember, none of it matters to biology. But it may matter to you.
That’s really the only thing I’m interested in. I just want to know what you, and everyone else, thinks right action is. You obviously think posting on a blog is one of the shoulds you should do. How and why did you decide that was such an important thing to do? I mean you could have gone out and shot 20 school children, but you didn’t, how did you decide not to do that instead? Like you say it wouldn’t have mattered to biology.
December 16th, 2012 at 3:38 am
Tony, you wrote “What, I think, Guy does is project what some models predict and how some scientists see certain feedbacks onto an otherwise unchanging world but, as we know, things change.”
I can’t speak for Guy but it really is not so much what some models predict, it is that things are progressing so far ahead of what the main models predict that suggests that we are nearing the end.
see this. http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b017744cf5360970d-pi
Sure we passed peak CONVENTIONAL oil in 2005 and the economy, held together with string and sealing wax still wobbles on. That just means that when it does collapse it will be over a huge cliff instead of a hill. One of the ways we held it together is to go heavy into oil sands, and fracked oil and gas which result in more CO2 emissions.
Sure anything can happen, EXCEPT for getting the CO2 already in the atmosphere out of the atmosphere at any time in the near future. Or reducing the acidity of the oceans at any time in the near future. Most of the things that could happen would speed up our demise not save us. Nuclear war could give us nuclear winter and well fry us directly or with radiation. Solar flares could shut down civilization and create 400 Fukushimas.
December 16th, 2012 at 3:47 am
Otto Matic – I too sleep more these days. I once told a teen that her fights with her parents were probably nature’s way of preparing them and her for her leaving the home to go out in the world. If teens become intolerable, parents are less likely to hold on. Don’t know if that is true but it sure sounded good when I said it.
Perhaps the increased nap time for aging adults is a way of preparing for the ultimate nap
December 16th, 2012 at 3:50 am
Otto, one more thought – the idea of intelligence as a lethal mutation is explored in the novel Blindsight by Peter Watts, available free through the creative commons at http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm I think I am up to 6 readings at last count. My all time favorite science fiction book
December 16th, 2012 at 3:51 am
ulvfugl
You may be right about the oceans becoming dead zones and I believe large parts of them already are. My only real point is that because of their short lifespan, phytoplankton (excepting quite possibly the calcifying types) should be able to evolve quickly enough to survive ocean acidification. Whether more rapid pollution or other changes will cause a phytoplankton die off much greater than that which is thought to have already occured nobody knows. Similarly to on land, in general the smaller the ocean dwelling plant or animal the greater its chance of surviving the ravages of mankind.
December 16th, 2012 at 4:06 am
Yes, Yorchichan, small stuff like bacteria evolves quickly, but so what ? Jellyfish thrive in the present-day ocean dead zones.
The phytoplankton will have to cope with acidification, temperature change, and possibly UV light from damaged ozone layer, and who knows what else.
There’s no reason to suppose that it will evolve to produce O2 is there ? It doesn’t do that now because it want’s to benefit life on Earth. It just happens to be a component of the system that we are destroying. If I’m remember rightly, Robin calculated that without the forests and phytoplankton, the 22% of oxygen will last some thousands of years. That still doesn’t give time for genetic evolution of higher life forms and ecosystems to evolve and adjust.
December 16th, 2012 at 4:46 am
Today’s computer-simulated climate models, the foundation of all UN climate negotiations, represent the “almost complete disregard for reality,” says Werner Krauss, from the Helmholtz Geesthacht Center for Materials and Coastal Research. “A world is being saved that only exists as a model.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/top-researchers-call-for-an-end-to-united-nations-climate-summits-a-872992.html
December 16th, 2012 at 5:08 am
Ripley, when a puppy chews up a shoe if the puppy if you see him do it he is clearly responsible. Yet it is a dogs nature to chew on leather so he is not responsible. However because of the way his is programmed if you punish him appropriately you can cause him to cease chewing on shoes – he is programmed not only to chew on animal skin, but also to obey the alpha wolf. Same word “responsible” but he is both responsible (he did it) and not responsible (he is programmed to do it) but we mean different things when we use the word in each case. Punishment is appropriate if it puts in place a stronger program – don’t mess with the alpha.
We could really use 2 different words for the different types of being responsible. I think we should blame and punish those who mess up the environment just as we punish the dog who chews on leather (and provide him something acceptable to chew on). How else can polluters engage the program to avoid behavior that is costly to them, if the behavior has only rewards and no cost. We can also attempt to educate people to see pollution as costly to themselves in the sense that they need the world to survive. But if we don’t understand our programs and how they lead to the vicious cycles of civilization over and over and over, and just sit around blaming the corporations or whoever NOTHING will change.
Since I believe that we have run this cycle to the point that NOTHING can be done, I will throw darts at BP. But in the end we are a species that is so damn good that we get a very short run. Bacteria that live in the deep rocks and reproduce very very slowly get a long run. http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2011/02/09/buried-microbes-coax-energy-from-rock Just the way it is.
Feeling that we are responsible for our actions is just that, a feeling that our conscious brain is in control. We think we are in control but we don’t even know who “we” is. Is it the unconscious brain that steps on the brake before the conscious brain even sees why it is doing that? Is it the unconscious brain that finds the solution to a problem the conscious brain can’t – and reveals it while the thinker is concentrating on shaving. The unconscious brain IMO is responsible for running our body but we the conscious side can’t control it. The best we can do IMO is consciously feed it the best info we can so that maybe we (our body run by the unconscious) will do what we (the conscious) think it should do. Sometimes that happens, sometimes not. Like Paul of Tarsus, we often do the bad we do not want to do, and don’t do the good we want to do. We ask ourselves why we did something. We are not one self but many.
December 16th, 2012 at 5:20 am
Incidentally, I learn that oceanic dead zones are another feedback loop that I didn’t know about before.
The oxygen level decreases, and nitrous oxide production increases. Nitrous oxide, N2O, is three hundred times more potent as a greenhouse gas, than carbon dioxide.
Apparently, in shallow coastal water, c. 300ft, N2O production can exceed 10,000 times normal ocean N2O levels. Currently, low oxygen areas produce about half of the ocean’s N2O.
So this appears to me to be a classic malign negative feedback loop.
Higher temperatures, acidification, oil spills and other pollution, over-fishing destroying the ecology, eutrophication, and so forth, all lead to dead zones.
The dead zones release N2O, which speeds up global warming and acidification, which expands the dead zones, which means that the effect becomes the cause, and you’re back to the start of the feedback loop, and on and on, round and around…. until something breaks the cycle…
December 16th, 2012 at 5:25 am
Kathy C. we don’t even know who “we” is.
Which is why, very often, the first koan given to beginners who go to zen retreats is to answer the question ‘who am I ?’
You keep on asking it until you do know.
December 16th, 2012 at 5:29 am
Actually, that should be ‘positive’ feedback loop shouldn’t it ? I mistakenly used ‘negative’ in the sense of bad. Positive in the sense of amplifying.
December 16th, 2012 at 6:33 am
Kathy C Says:
December 14th, 2012 at 11:29 am
So no blame is called for. But heck, I want to have fun on the way down, so I am going to blame BP, and the Nuclear Regulation Association, and any scapegoat I can find for the state of affairs even though I know that in the end there is no blame.
December 16th, 2012 at 5:08 am
I think we should blame and punish those who mess up the environment just as we punish the dog who chews on leather
(So now you do believe in blame…or maybe not..)
But if we don’t understand our programs and how they lead to the vicious cycles of civilization over and over and over, and just sit around blaming the corporations or whoever NOTHING will change.
(As they say on the game show: is this your final answer?)
December 16th, 2012 at 6:55 am
The guidelines allow the NCTC, for the first time, to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, using “predictive pattern-matching,” to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. The data the counterterrorism center has access to, according to the Journal, includes “entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/13/national_counterterrorism_center_s_massive_new_surveillance_program_uncovered.html
December 16th, 2012 at 7:17 am
America is not the greatest country in the world (anymore).
‘The Newsroom – Opening Scene’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zqOYBabXmA
Not bad, but I think only children believe in the greatest this and that in the world, so it is a bit soppy.
You gotta wonder about a group who have to keep telling themselves they are the greatest. I mean David Letterman, has been opening his late show for so long with the line, “….its New York, the greatest city in the world”.
I rekon Reykjavik is far better, the streets are heated by geothermal, only 89,000 residents, and it even has an original name too, not a ‘new’ somthing.
Yeah ulvfugl, with all that ‘freedom’ in the USA they need a lot of survelence to keep everyone free… makes a lot of sense….hole in the head kinda sense.
Still if they have it, we’ll get it soon enough too, if there is time. But probably well get the freedom and the survelence at the same time.
December 16th, 2012 at 8:24 am
Tony Weddle: Well, my take, although I accept that Guy’s position is a possible future, is that no-one can predict the future exactly and may be wildly out on the time frame. Who knows what black swans may emerge to change the human predicament fundamentally?
No one would argue with that, I don’t think. Nor do I think anyone here will say adamantly that such and such will happen on this date or that one. However, when a situation requires a black swan in order for the course to be changed, then one can feel fairly confident in a potential outcome.
Sure, there are many unknowns. But virtually every chart one sees on the wide range of topics discussed here shows the classic hockey stick. Population growth, CO2 emissions, energy demand, resource depletion, Arctic ice loss, etc. They all show the hockey stick. In a finite world, that type of change can’t go on very long. And that’s the whole point. We are nearing the end of life as we have known it. There are now more than 7 billion people on the planet. There are almost certainly going to be far, far fewer humans in the seemingly near future.
Even if we somehow found ways to increase our energy efficiency using such techniques as the “passive house” to which Ripley linked, that only kicks the can a little farther down the road. Studies have shown that energy efficiency only leads to greater longterm energy use. That extra time is unlikely to change our behavior and it certainly won’t reduce our population. On the contrary, we will simply grow our population more, increasing the strains on the system making the crash even more certain. By the way, I’ve followed the passive house concept for quite a while and think it’s a very interesting technology. However, the increased amount of petroleum-based products used in that type of construction is quite a bit higher than in conventional housing. So, I just don’t think it would have made much difference in the long run.
With respect to peak conventional oil, as Kathy C mentioned, the reason the impact has been muted has been due to nonconventional oils. But, as multiple sources attest, fracking sites are peaking and declining in a period of years instead of decades seen with conventional oil. So, look for the effects of peak oil to start showing up shortly. The financial system is so grossly overleveraged, that financial collapse is long overdue and could happen anytime now. As you say, one black swan would be all it takes. With the collapse of the financial system, the rest of the house of cards would collapse almost instantly. Even without a black swan, collapse of the financial ponzi system is a certainty – just a little farther out.
Even if none of those things were issues, there can be no doubt that we have reached our limits with respect to providing food and water to the entire global population. Even without global warming. Yet, population continues to grow unabated. When you add in climate change/weather weirding, major social upheaval is a given.
You’re right, there are too many variables to make an accurate specific prediction. But, big picture, not so much. The shit is going to hit the fan, and soon.
December 16th, 2012 at 8:39 am
…there are too many variables to make an accurate specific prediction….
What is kinda astounding, is the utter recklessness, the staggering ignorance, considering that we have nowhere else to exist !
No mention anymore of the precautionary principle, that we should err on the safe side, for the sake of future generations… and reading the IPCC stuff, it’s incredible how often they say they can’t be certain about this or that, because of lack of data, I mean, it’s everyone’s future we’re talking about, everyone’s children’s future, and whilst there’s always plenty of money to blow things up and kill people, and to bail out banks, but we can’t say how much CO2 is coming out of the boreal peat, whatever, because nobody has been there with instruments to have a look !
December 16th, 2012 at 9:46 am
.
We all evolved from the muck;
Traits once needed now leave us stuck
Caring less about some
Generations to come,
Than wanting to come when we fuck.
December 16th, 2012 at 9:47 am
Ulvfugl, if the unconscious brain is unconscious you can’t know it. Whatever you come to know, is not the part that is unconscious. You can assert you have come to know it, but how can you ever know that there is not some part that you cannot know?
December 16th, 2012 at 10:27 am
The REAL Dr. House Says:
December 16th, 2012 at 8:24 am
Even if we somehow found ways to increase our energy efficiency using such techniques as the “passive house” to which Ripley linked, that only kicks the can a little farther down the road. Studies have shown that energy efficiency only leads to greater long term energy use.
Well I did say that “a 90% reduction in CO2 could have, at least, bought us some time.”
But can you please explain WTF your last sentence even means?
December 16th, 2012 at 11:52 am
Kathy, I wouldn’t assert anything that isn’t supported by experience.
What one does is to train consciousness. It’s possible to train consciousness to experience vastly more than the average person comprehends. This has been known for millennia in the various traditions, but is also now well established scientifically. By constant training the whole structure and functioning of the brain is changed. It changes anyway, for ordinary people, just in the course of ordinary life, but I mean in a way that follows a discipline and a purpose.
Imagine consciousness as a light. By constant training, you can make it much stronger and brighter, and carry it into areas that are normally dark.
Quite apart from the ancient traditions, which have studied this stuff for centuries, there’s plenty of people learning lucid dreaming, and how to get out of body experiences and so forth, just because they find it intriguing and the research is interesting.
But havn’t we had this conversation before ? You ask me something about this stuff, I try and explain, then you tell me it’s impossible, I get increasingly frustrated, and the whole exchange is fruitless… nevermind
http://youtu.be/9p7Y1JFOUok
December 16th, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Table 1: Major reservoirs involved in the oxygen cycle
Sphere
Reservoir
Capacity
(kg O2)
Flux
In/Out
(kg O2 per year)
Residence
Time
(years)
Atmosphere
1.4 * 1018
30,000 * 1010
4,500
Biosphere
1.6 * 1016
30,000 * 1010
50
Lithosphere
2.9 * 1020
60 * 1010
500,000,000
December 16th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
It’s a fairly safe assumption, that for many here, as with Guy, we have come to the threshold of acceptance of NTE from a background of collapse preparedness. This has put many of us ahead of a wicked curve…. so to speak. For many, the acceptance of collapse of civilization has inadvertently prepared us in ways we did not foresee. In ways still unforeseen.
This decadal process has taken us far from any socialist inspirations we may have once possessed in our youth, and deposited us unto libertarian rural homesteads and ideologies to await the death of our industrial means, well outside the humanity we liken ourselves to be championing. Imagining we were/are somehow limiting our footprints and living as true stewards of Gaia, even though we had long oiled the gears of the machine in becoming landed gentry, all the while bemoaning the rot of capitalism. We are all hypocrites at best.
So, it strikes me as odd, as to why some might now question the growing anomie resulting from our acceptance of NTE. Did we imagine that we were somehow living by example, while ignoring that it was only ever a privilege. We all have the neighbors we can afford. We speak of responsibility, but to whom? Long have we been living a hopelessly contorted fantasy, projecting agency and ethics unto an utterly indifferent world. I need look no further than a mirror to find who is to blame.
We are all, now, false in this new empiricism, still living out old constructs and comforting lies to ourselves.
Thinking monkeys/bacteria of what quantum mysteries might lie beyond our myopic sapience. Smug in our relative western immunity pondering whether or not, we’re a failed species, as gyres of our garbage choke the life out of an entire planet. Taking issue with the possible immorality of abandoning our moral imperatives, as if we’re somehow standing guard, when in fact, we have long left our posts.
We are well beyond whatever past imperatives have brought us here. Long after the empiricism has laid waste our delusions, our old dreams still remain; residuals of past vested interests which are buried deep, in both our subconscious and collective conscious where they will most likely remain amidst our remains.
We are nowhere now, other than where we imagine ourselves to be.
We are living through the decimation of our planet’s biosphere. There is no cause for joy, hope, empowerment or happiness to be found in NTE. It is an all consuming abyss. We can attempt to project whatever ad hoc peace and wisdom we believe we’ve managed to glean from the wreckage of our existence, as how best to rise above the despair, but once the attrition of famine sets in, there is and will only be one path that can possibly ease such suffering. The actuality of “letting go” in the face of NTE, eventually begins and inevitably ends with the same act.
We have been studying a reality which only science could reveal, only to discover that it unveiled a certainty which only metaphysics can now interpret.
December 16th, 2012 at 1:17 pm
@TRDH
You stated:
“However, when a situation requires a black swan in order for the course to be changed, then one can feel fairly confident in a potential outcome”.
Brilliant!
December 16th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
Thinking about the Titanic and at what point everyone knew. Will we reach a point like that and if we do, will we wish for the days when everyone was asleep. Or will most everyone just keep complaining about the weather?
December 16th, 2012 at 2:38 pm
Ripley, But can you please explain WTF your last sentence even means?
I’m assuming you’re referring to the last sentence of mine which you quoted. In that case, I think wikipedia can do a much better job than I can of explaining Jevon’s paradox. It can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
Short snippet: In economics, the Jevons paradox (/ˈdʒɛvənz paɹədɒks/; sometimes Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.[1]
See [1] in the wiki article for a link to a study on this topic.
December 16th, 2012 at 2:47 pm
The updated version of Jevons’ paradox is termed the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate. Wikipedia link is here.
December 16th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
@ DMD
That is a very good question, and I suspect “our acceptance” of critical mass acceptance, is just one of many factors yet to be figured into our own plans for the future. But if critical mass awareness proves to be non-linear in nature as well, and given consumer confidence is the bedrock of the world’s economy, then even passive “NTE speculation”, will greatly proceed actual physical limits.
While permanent drought makes famine inevitable, famine doesn’t necessarily connote drought.
In other words, we could reach the end long before we actually do. The problem is, capitalism is incredibly adaptive. It, or rather we, have an almost infinite ability of paying Peter to rape, steal and murder Paul.
It’s most likely not going to be the weather that kills us, but rather each other. I am a childless man, so I will eventually and quietly take my own life when the time comes, but if I had starving mouths to feed, there would be almost nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them alive for as long as I could…..and I’m a pacifist.
December 16th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
Ripley,
It’s not our waste that wrecking the planet, though that obviously doesn’t help, it is our lifestyles. Reducing waste, though admirable, would not be a solution.
Kathy C,
You’re right that the CO2 already in the atmosphere has condemned us to a pretty horrible environment … if no black swan comes along. What it may not do, yet, is condemn all life to extinction. We just don’t know the future in detail and so there is no reason to give up, if that is the message that some people get from Guy’s talks. [To my mind, that wouldn't be a good reason to give up, anyway.]
The REAL Dr. House,
Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubts at all that the shit will hit the fan, and not too far into the future (for some, it has already hit the fan). I’m not saying life may be a doddle, because of a black swan event. I’m not saying it will be a smooth slope down. I’m not even saying that most people will survive the coming turmoil. All I’m saying is that this century may not see the end of all life, or even humans. There is good reason to think it might and individuals may me utterly convinced by those reasons but no one can see the future – humans, and the beginnings of a new tree of life might still be around for a long time to come. I think Guy needs to add that rider – that, even though it looks likely that all, or nearly all, life will cease this century, we just don’t know that for certain – that view relies on uncertain predictions. So do what’s right and live as though you want a habitable planet for your kids.
December 16th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Daniel, And I’m a farmer. Can’t seem to stop. Seems like the right thing to do. Or maybe the wrong thing to do. Our neighbor pointed out that we have a lot of hamburger walking around here. Meaning I could be forced to stop long before the weather gets intollerable, as you pointed out.
December 16th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
@ Tom
You stated:
“I think Guy needs to add that rider – that, even though it looks likely that all, or nearly all, life will cease this century, we just don’t know that for certain – that view relies on uncertain predictions. So do what’s right and live as though you want a habitable planet for your kids”.
All of science is based on uncertainty. Acceptance of NTE is not derived from knowing any one thing for certain, but rather the probability of observable phenomena, either behaving one way or another. In fact, almost every aspect of our lives is based on probability. What aspect of our lives is based on knowing anything for certain?
Believing something to be certain, isn’t certainty.
The “certainty argument” has been a straw man used against climate science for decades, and it’s definitely going to find ample traction in any debate about NTE.
I for one, don’t believe in debating NTE. I consider it only be a commiserative endeavor for those who have, or are in the process of accepting it.
NTE is solely based, on newly discovered non-linear rates of change now in effect. There is no such thing as certainty, just increasing probability. And to empiricists (and that’s the key distinction), that’s all we need to base our perspectives on, given there honestly isn’t anything else in which to quantify the likelihood of future events.
December 16th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Daniel
You wrote:
“I am a childless man, so I will eventually and quietly take my own life when the time comes, but if I had starving mouths to feed, there would be almost nothing I wouldn’t do to keep them alive for as long as I could…..and I’m a pacifist.”
Does that include or exclude eating people? Would you be one to carry the fire? ….aka ‘The Road’.
Noting you are a pacifist, as people actually die in other ways than being killed for their callories, would it matter in considdering the above questions if it were ‘roadkill’ we were considdering?
December 16th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
@ Ozman
While I haven’t really given it much thought, I think I must have put in the word “almost” as a caveat in regards to cannibalism. I would imagine that when the time came when I knew I could no longer provide for my dependents–which could be attending to the infirmed as well–and cannibalism of my weaker neighbors was the only option, I would seek to take the life of my dependents. I might be misanthropic, but it stops at eating people.
December 16th, 2012 at 5:24 pm
@ Tony Weddle
Sorry Tony, I posted something addressed to you, but I used the name Tom by mistake.
December 16th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
I am so glad to have come across Guy’s videos and blog today. See, I have been aware of the painful truth which he lays out so poignantly for years now; Though I may have lacked all the knowledge of how soon our sojourn would end, even intuition tells you that a parasitic species cannot consume its host indefinitely. I have experienced the painful loneliness which my inward knowing (and grieving) has caused for years concerning the destruction of nature on every front. At least now I don’t feel so alone!
December 16th, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Pictures of our future when the nuclear plants all go Fukushima – snippet below but please read the whole article about the consequences of the DU in Fallujah
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33332.htm
The medical recommendation of the gynaecologists to the women of Fallujah is simple: “just stop”. Stop falling pregnant because it is likely you will not give birth to a healthy baby. These words carry a shocking implication: a city of about 300,000 with a generation of young women who may never be mothers; and a generation who may not live, or at least not a healthy life.
December 16th, 2012 at 6:32 pm
@ Bailey
You said:
“….Though I may have lacked all the knowledge of how soon our sojourn would end, even intuition tells you that a parasitic species cannot consume its host indefinitely.”
Well said….
December 16th, 2012 at 7:10 pm
ulvfugl
The chance of a species of phytoplankton evolving into a non-photosynthesising creature is the same as that of a tree evolving into a human being. That is, zero. Too many simultaneous complementary mutations are required. Even if by some miracle this did happen, there would still be plenty of other phytoplankton species to carry on the good work (Or would there? See the link below.)
The counter to the oceanic dead zones is life itself. Life is constantly striving at the edges of habitability to change dead zones into living ones. The noteworthy exception is of course humans, who constantly strive for the opposite effect.
In support of what you say about mass oceanic extinction:
Evolution at Sea: Long-Term Experiments Indicate Phytoplankton Can Adapt to Ocean Acidification
The title appears to contradict you, but if you read the article:
“environmental changes comparable to what happens right now in the oceans have repeatedly resulted in mass extinctions, even though these changes were 10-100 times slower than what we observe today”
December 16th, 2012 at 8:57 pm
Guy McPherson Says:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:47 pm
The updated version of Jevons’ paradox is termed the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate. Wikipedia link is here.
You mention in your talk how a Neo-classical economist hijacked the climate debate. Now you’re quoting their theories. If the mud hut suddenly became 90% more efficient at holding heat, this theory says you will, for some strange reason, begin to use even more energy to heat it. Why would you do that?
There is nothing in the laws of physics that says in a society can’t decide to cut energy use by 90% across all sectors, if it wants to . But I do agree that if the society is run neo-classical economic theory that defends the idea that “we can have infinite growth on a finite planet with no consequences”, it will never happen. And wouldn’t you agree that it is this idea that must be killed before the industrial economy can be brought down?
December 16th, 2012 at 9:11 pm
Ripley, neoclassical economists caught up with Jevons only 140 years later. The ideas about efficiency and conservation forwarded by Jevons and substantiated by Khazzoom and Brookes apply at the level of societies with respect to finite materials, not at the level of individuals.
December 16th, 2012 at 9:21 pm
Then would the theory apply to a society that decided it wanted to cut energy use by 90% across all sectors, because it no longer wanted to the live under idea that “it can have infinite growth on a finite planet with no consequences?”
December 16th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
When I brought up the example of the Passive house that uses 90% less energy, it was merely to show that it is possible to reduce the energy use that’s killing the planet. The laws of physics don’t forbid it, but the system of human decision making we live under, does.
December 16th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
Ripley, Then would the theory apply to a society that decided it wanted to cut energy use by 90% across all sectors, because it no longer wanted to the live under idea that “it can have infinite growth on a finite planet with no consequences?”
First, no such society exists.
Second, we are all going to have our energy cut by more than 90% in the not too distant future.
December 16th, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Well, you state the obvious. And you bring up other things rather than stick to the example and question on the table. The is called: avoiding the issue.
December 16th, 2012 at 11:10 pm
The REAL Dr. House Says:
December 16th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
Then would the theory apply to a society that decided it wanted to cut energy use by 90% across all sectors, because it no longer wanted to the live under idea that “it can have infinite growth on a finite planet with no consequences?”
First, no such society exists.
REAL Dr. House,
Actually you’re wrong on that point too. Look up energy use per capita by country.
Switzerland, UK, Japan, and a bunch of other “societies” use 50% less energy per person than the US. Chile uses 75% less. So they’re are obviously societies that can use way less energy than the US and still exist.
Need I go on?
It wouldn’t surprise me if you are an American. America has a miserably low rated medical system, with a lot of greedy incompetent doctors. Medical malpractice is common there, as are people would don’t reason very well. You seem to be a combination of the two. Your medical license needs to be revoked. If I were you, I would go away before someone discovers your whereabouts, and sues you for malpractice.
December 17th, 2012 at 12:01 am
Kathy C
DU – Nuclear War by other means….
You really know how to kick a guy when he’s on his knees,(me).
December 17th, 2012 at 12:52 am
Ripley
We are all human, that should be enough. Some North Americans are very waste conscious, and some Africans use way too much jet fuel – carbon footprint is all relative and not absolutly correlated to nationality. That said, national infrastructure, which is not the ‘fault’ of little kids in a nation, is just there, and if you are provided with no rail, and limited public transport, most are trapped to use an automobile to get employment, for example. Individuals make choices, sometimes counter to their national infrastructure settings, and the USA has gone the overconsumption path, and many see it. I would not blame Americans, but the corrupt American System, which many are activly fighting to bring down or at least to account and radical redemocratisation.
Regarding the Jevons paradox and later Khazzoom and Brookes findings or postulates I might explain something if others have not expressed it clearly enough.
I think you are correct that if everyone, that is all economic entities, decided to limit or reduce the consumption of say gas, by thoroughly rating the insulation and waste of gas to heat homes, and the reduction held, then that would work. But only untill other sectors of the world economy, as it works now, used the surplus for other uses.
Likewise, say a country, or a bloc of concerned countries decided to serverely reduce GHG emitting input, like fossil fuels, it would reduce their net emmissions, but other countries would use those ‘products’ up, maybe at a slightly slower rate in net terms, but the resources, would eventually make it into the ‘use’ cycles down the track.
Also, there is another aspect to this.
Say you plan is universally accepted, and alternatives are found, though insulation, efficiencies, and reducing waste, via trigen etc. Everyone commits and complies, and world emmissions go down markedly. Great.
But the world industrial economy keeps going without anything shifting to stop it, and those fossil fuels still get unearthed, burned or otherwise ‘consumed’ and converted to Green House Gasses, but down the track, just a little later. The CO2 rises to the dangerous levels anyway, but 30 to 60 years later.
Your plan may but time, but not complete mittigation.
Jervons used coal as an example. If it is hard to mine and exteact, a financial disincentive is there to get it out and it is relativly expensive, so it is extracted more slowly. If a bright engineer comes to the problem and dramatically increases the ease and efficiency of extraxtion and processing, as happened, it will not lead to less coal being used, but reduces the financial burden, after the initial changes are accomplished, and vastly more is used and the coal deposits are depleted far quicker.
The key to all this is demand.
If demand is constant, or even increasing as is the case with all the world fossil fuels due to population increase, or overshoot as Guy and others term it, then efficiencies, and ‘reductions’ from say a decision like you propose, only slow the rate of net use, not stop it completely.
I think your logic is sound. If an agreement were international and everyone complied, it would buy time.
Funny, I was under the impression this was what was supposed to be the mandate at the Copenhaagen Summit in 2009? and all the summits before and after?
Untill the deep argument is made, and understood, and deeply understood, and accepted, that worldwide fossil fuel use must cease NOW,) or Yesterday, or 3 centuries ago), and alternatives found in real terms, no agreement, or root changes will occur, and the World Industrial Empire will keep rolling its genocidal carpet of both Suburbia and wholes landscape destruction over the globe.
As I stated, fossil fuel demand is the key, so the international community should agree to make that demand ZERO.
All
Some have made the argument, whatever it is worth, that HAARP and other secret technologies are being used by the Anex-1 nations to heat the globe artificially so as to make the argument for reducing GHGases, and thereby deny non Anex-1 nations, (the developing ones) from developing and getting market share. They also pose that this is why those Non Anex-1 nations are not complying. Further, these theorises go on to say that that is a moral justification for Anex-1 nations initiating war, however unwanted.
I will leave it at that. But I ask, how would anyone outside the small cabaal know?
December 17th, 2012 at 1:22 am
If some process or device used on large scales becomes more efficient in resource utilisation, that process or device will be used even more, to the extent that the total resource utilisation will increase.
December 17th, 2012 at 1:33 am
From Kathy C’s DU link:
‘You’ve Never Seen a Face as Sad as a Mother Watching her Baby Die.’
By Donna Mulhearn
…Why was this happening every day in Fallujah Hospital’s nursery? What has caused a seven-fold increase in birth defects here since 2000? Why a dramatic increase in miscarriages and stillborn births?
The day before I had met a new-born with a bloodied, fleshy hole in her back – a classic case of spina bifida another common occurrence now along with brain dysfunction, spinal conditions, unformed limbs and cleft palet.
Another day I walked through Fallujah cemetery which is littered with small, unmarked ‘baby’ graves, and stood with Marwan and Bashir, a young, healthy couple, at the grave of their baby Mohamed, who lived five minutes after birth. He was their fourth baby to die. They will not try again….
Four new studies on the health crisis in Fallujah have been released in the last three months. The studies suggest the baby of the woman in the pink dress is dying of wounds from a war she never saw. That this epidemic is the legacy of toxic weapons dispersed in this community in the ferocious attacks by US forces in 2004.
Today’s wars are wars of the city; they intrude into neighbourhoods, streets and houses. And the nature of modern weaponry means today’s wars don’t end when the guns fall silent.
The most recent study “Metal Contamination and the Epidemic of Congenital Birth Defects in Iraqi Cities,” published in Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology examines the prevalence of birth defects in Fallujah as well as Basra, another Iraqi city that experienced intense fighting. It found that in Fallujah more than half of all babies surveyed were born with a birth defect between 2007 and 2010. Before the siege, this figure was closer to one in 10.
More than 45 per cent of all pregnancies surveyed ended in miscarriages in the two years after 2004, increased from only 10 per cent before the attacks. Between 2007 and 2010, one in six of all pregnancies ended in miscarriage.
The study presents evidence of widespread exposure to heavy metals such lead and mercury- metals that would be contained in bombs, tank shells and bullets – as a possible cause.
The increase in birth defects in Fallujah and Basra is often connected to the use of another heavy metal – depleted uranium, used in conventional weapons for its armour piercing capabilities. Several studies undertaken in Iraq have found evidence of the presence of uranium local environments and in patients, and point to it as a possible cause, but more research is needed.
About 400,000 kilograms of depleted uranium has been dispersed in Iraq since 1991. Depleted uranium (DU) is radioactive and chemically toxic. The long-term impact on civilians is unknown. Militaries consider it a hazard and use extreme care in its handling. It’s been labelled the “Agent Orange” of today.”
When you imagine this in your personal cubicle, maybe you will vomit too, or at least dry wretch if you are yet to eat for the day.
US servicemen in those Iraq wars, and the sevicemen and women sent to clean up the DU in Iraq, have a very high rate of sickness, debilitation and premature loss of life vitality due to this poison – Depleted Uranium.
It is a viscious and criminal military that subjects a civilian enemy population to the effects of offensive warfare.
It is an entirley insane and out of control national administration that knowingly exposes its own military personnel to the same, AND denies them medical and welfare support.
‘The US military kills its own: Maj. Doug Rokke’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvIqhVnaalo
‘Troops, Vets Please Watch! Depleted Uranium’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=N5huLssLgjA&feature=endscreen
When Guy speaks in his lectures about ‘obedience at home, (USA), and oppression abraod’, and also mentions the Carter doctrine, “that’s our, (USA) Oil over there” this is what he is talking about, just to keep having smart phones and supermarket supplied, and drivthrough McAnimal and fries when you want it.
I got to go and throw up, again.
December 17th, 2012 at 1:57 am
Robin Datta Says:
December 17th, 2012 at 1:22 am
If some process or device used on large scales becomes more efficient in resource utilisation, that process or device will be used even more, to the extent that the total resource utilisation will increase.
So tell me then, why aren’t Switzerland, Japan, Chile, etc., trying to be as wasteful as the US? Why are they failing to increase their resource utilization?
December 17th, 2012 at 2:04 am
Daniel,
Exactly. Certainty does not exist but we have probabilities. Let me repeat yet again that I do see Guy’s predicted near term extinction as very possible though I don’t really have a good idea of just how probable it is. There seems to be a very good chance of its being true but we just don’t know the probability exactly.
To be honest, I’m not sure how I’d react if I was as certain of NTE as Guy is, though I think I’d still try to live simply, more simply. However, there is a chance that I might just decide to rejoin the consumer culture.
December 17th, 2012 at 2:41 am
‘To one who not bored with oneself, loneliness is not a problem.’ -r.d. (r r, get it? bad joke?) rdrr
i disagree! perhaps not for u, but it is for me. i particularly miss not having sane companions (imo) to hang out with and maybe have some fun with before it’s time to say goodbye and die. following is elaborate elaboration of my frustration:
perhaps hatred is a brew of fear, contempt, and envy, for i feel all these emotions quite powerfully, or something akin to them, towards sheeple in general (some in particular). as an american, a citizen of the ‘leader of the free world’, i’ve reached the conclusion that a vast majority of my fellow americans are quite insane. in the case of the sizable percentage who gravitate towards the ‘far right’ of politics, the insanity is maddening. it’s absolutely maddening to live in a large and most powerful nation that has such a group wielding a great deal of political muscle, a group which is unbelievably misinformed, dogmatic, and supportive of the craziest of ideas, wars, conventions, and laws.
the most recent horrific example of the consequences of insane american policies like extremely lax gun control happened just a couple days ago in connecticut. if that young man’s mother didn’t live in a nation that allows almost any tom, dick, or mary to legally obtain police and military assault weapons. she might not have possessed the weapons he used to kill her and all those other sheeple, including the children… the insanity of such a policy is shattering. sheeple who support it (i know a few quite personally) in the face of multiple similar tragedies … i find to be far too insane to deal with. the horrific consequences of their insanity on suffering death and destruction is in the news and all around us as we collectively go over the cliff to some very hard landings on the way down to (nte?).
they are like the authoritarian followers described in bob altermeyer’s book ‘the authoritarians’. they have defective brains and are perversely attracted to ‘authority’. faithful followers of awful ‘authorities’ don’t get enough credit, or should i say discredit, for the role they play in our tragedies. legions of misinformed rabid dogma addicts have come to dominate the politically powerful republican party in the usa, and similar political parties all over the world.
i’ve become obsessed with such thoughts, and emotionally with fear, contempt, and envy (for their power, social acceptability and relative happiness in a culture far more accepting of their views than mine). this brew often tastes a lot like hate. i detest their dogmatic faiths and politics. i might as well hate them too.
harboring hate of course isn’t healthy. it’s another reason to consider suicide as an escape from this toxic brew of emotions/awareness that has become a daily norm. escape from a surreality that increasingly is a psychological nightmare of torment and despair.
just to be clear (and cowardly?), i’m not imminently suicidal. my strong genetic aversion to suicide while i’m still relatively young, healthy, and capable of enjoying life (to the extent that i can forget all this shit and live ‘in the moment’), along with past experience anguishing at length with suicidal thoughts, without ever coming surreally close to attempting it, combine to make me more of a whiner than a doer. it feels good to express distress to anyone who maybe can relate and empathize. probably useful for maintaining some sanity and a firm grip on life.
it would be wonderful to have a suicide plan in place, better yet to have someone or preferably a whole group to share it with, including at least one sherson who could personally assist (or be a co-participant) if and when comes the time to do it.
December 17th, 2012 at 3:15 am
‘ZIONISTS WON’T LET YOU SEE THIS ON YOUR TV’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX18zUp6WPY
If you have the guts to watch this short video, watch it to the very end.
‘What CNN doesn’t want you to see again!’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=tFabLp-Jcbg&feature=fvwp
Wow, diamonds or pearls… notwithstanding the African ‘diamond’ connection, what an important national presedential debate question!!
Think of all the previous wars that ripped the wealth and life out of all the now poor and un’developing’ nations.
War and violence.
That is how ‘I’ got to be sooooooo privelaged.
That is how Anex-1 nations became economicly dominant and have had the ‘luxury’ of democracy.
That is why, because it has worked in the past it is being used now, and it will be used again in the future as a means to have and maintain the privelage.
That is why, now that the world can speak to itself, and trade is so interconected, and universal education in some of the Anex-1 democracies has made the populations literate and numerate, and within the scope of free thinking citizens, surveilence and fear are now needed to quell the internal dissent.
That is why Bradley Manning is being tried for revealing an ugly truth to the world about USA military crimes in other lands, crimes that keep the Anex-1 nations’ supermarkets full, cinimas full, the fossil fuel bowsers chugging, and the i-gadgets coming.
That is why Wikileaks and Julian Assange are target No 1, and the Anex-1 nations are rapidly trying to redefine journalism as aiding terrorism, and come within the scope of National Security legislation.
That is why, why why something has to change…..
I started to feel sick, but not bodily sick at least not to begin with, and not mentally sick, but those I’ve known can tell a differnt story if they wish, and not spirituall sick, because I’ve taken care of that area for a long time. No, I was starting to feel Soul sick.
That is why it was necessary for me to understand the basis for the democratic freedoms I have from birth. Of all the human history one is aware of generally, how did it just eventuate that all that ‘freedom’ was my right, just by birth?
Born in Australia, an Anex-1 nation.
Since researching Peak Oil and collapse issues, and biosphere destruction and Climate Catastrophe, I have discovered those freedoms could not have been possible without being founded on an intentionaly violent culture, an intentionaly biosphere altering industrial ‘machine’, and a way of life which calls for another saner way of life.
That is why I won’t ask for my empire cubicle job back in the 5 hour a day commuted to city again.
That is why I now make my local bush my ‘home’, which if things get tough soon, my family and I may have to go live in.
That is why I call the local Birds, Kangaroos and Wallabys, friends.
That is why I now ‘feel’ people I meet differently – which ‘way’ will we begin to communicate, with, or without, this crucial, humbleing, sickenning understanding about the wreckage of all the murder, rape and disgusting human and other species violence that has led us to this moment, to be able to meet – meet in a shop buying fruit, on a train, asking directions, at an intersection commenting on the comming rainstorm, or just walking from the house I live in to the next task I need to do. Some are not seeing it, and never yet have. And they look calm and socially empowered, by comparison. Others, it is stored in the back spaces of their mind, and is a dim horror not usually looked at, not clear at all, and its labelled, ‘a bad dream’. These people have some guilt in their eyes and fear, lest something or someone touch the latch that holds the ‘bad dreams’ and it gets loose. Still others they believe they are aware of the ‘bad’ things in the ‘past’, the colonial era and such, when people were more brutish etc, but to them, that is all over now, at least for ‘our’ culture. These people smile their way to acceptance for they know about ‘it’ but want most to get on with their life, unconnected to all that has given them this ‘now’. Then there are those rare people, fully aware of the horrors, the historical crimes, the historical violence, and the ongoing continual violence that generates our whole cultural platform upon which everyone lives off to survive.
But I am yet to meet someone like that yet, in person, so I can’t say what they appear like.
I ask myself, which one am I? Would it show if I met me in the street?
Lest any reader feel inclined to think the first video link I put up above means I am down on Israelis, or Zionists or Jews…. I see people there, not Israelis, Zionists, Jews, or palistinians, just people doing violent things to people.
I have to go throw up now, again.
December 17th, 2012 at 3:19 am
Ripley wrote “It wouldn’t surprise me if you are an American. America has a miserably low rated medical system, with a lot of greedy incompetent doctors. Medical malpractice is common there, as are people would don’t reason very well. You seem to be a combination of the two. Your medical license needs to be revoked. If I were you, I would go away before someone discovers your whereabouts, and sues you for malpractice.”
Guy it seems we have another one. Clearly this comment has nothing to do with the discussion and is designed to insult and to hook people into fruitless fights.
December 17th, 2012 at 3:20 am
the virgin terry Says:
i particularly miss not having sane companions
Looks like you’ve come to the right blog.
December 17th, 2012 at 3:26 am
Cathy C is right. But no need to wake the teacher. I get it, my kind of thinking isn’t welcome here. And even though “nothing matters”, except apparently going on a blog and saying “nothing matters”, over and over again–that’s just not my idea of useful therapy or entertaining religious spectacle. Discussion outside this theme is obviously unwanted, and I’m cool with that.
So, just a bit of advice before I go, for the sake of others who may wander by. Brevity is the soul of wit. Donkey is on the right track here, he has, no doubt read The Bard. All other posts take tens of thousands of words, just to say the same thing. So instead of an 800 word post that could be summed up with two words, just post: “We’re doomed”, or “It’s Over.” It saves on eyestrain and CO2…Oh, and Oz, from now on, only two drinks max, before each post, OK bro?
December 17th, 2012 at 4:10 am
Yorchichan The chance of a species of phytoplankton evolving into a non-photosynthesising creature is the same as that of a tree evolving into a human being. That is, zero.
I have no idea why you bring up this absurd suggestion, I never inferred any such thing. I was responding to Ozman’s notion that some humans might survive and evolve into new forms of hominid, which seems highly unlikely to me.
The reason it seems highly unlikely, is that, despite what you say below, I don’t think there will be a habitable environment on land, not least because losing the forests and the phytoplankton is likely to reduce the atmospheric oxygen. But there are myriad other equally severe impacts in the offing, so that’s only one.
When the entire chemistry of the oceans is changed, the pH changes over decades, the rapid temperature rise over decades, the currents changing, the whole ecology as it has been getting swept away, the oceans are not going to be performing the same function.
The counter to the oceanic dead zones is life itself. Life is constantly striving at the edges of habitability to change dead zones into living ones. I don’t think that is correct. They are only ‘dead zones’ because we name them thus, because they are anoxic. Dinoflagellates and jellyfish and whatnot love them.
December 17th, 2012 at 4:19 am
Hello,
This comment following looking at your presentation below :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ina16XSJQvM&feature=youtu.be
About peak oil, a message that seems to me is not enough conveyed especially in the US, is that the first oil shock was a direct consequence of US peak (as appears clearly in the US prod import graph used more or less).
What I mean is that the “Arab embargo” is still the main “name” used for the first oil shock, whereas it was almost a non event in number of barrels taken out of the market (and especially compared to barrels “taken out” by US peak). Moreover shortages started after US peak and before the 1973 “embargo”.
Also something probably not quite well known, but KSA was “cheating” the embargo towards the US throughout (tankers going out of KSA through Bahrain especially towards the US army in Vietnam).
An interview of James Akins (US ambassador in KSA at the time) mentioning this in part two of documentary linked below (after 20:00 or so, unfortunately dubbed) :
http://iiscn.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/bataille-et-lenergie/
Putting the “perception of the first oil shock” back to what it really was wouldn’t change much about current situation for sure (on both climate and peak oil aspects), but still seems to me it is one of the main thing to be “swallowed” if a tiny chance for a way forward exists.
Cheers,
Yves T
December 17th, 2012 at 4:35 am
Ripley
Ok, bro.
Since brevity is requested,
I’d rather be bested,
By a poster who knows,
That their last comment shows,
If I be true,
To the prose,
They haven’t a clue,
And that some things just need more words to define concepts, give details, apply information as background, and otherwise say things like real people do instead of minimal dialogue in a stres situation like characters on LOST do sayoften one or two words, frequently just a person’s name, or “fine”, when there is so much to say, and you would say a lot if you were airwrecked on some strange Pacific Island and some supernatural force kept emerging and the survivors self defined us’s and others’s and they kept discovering more and more about an abandoned Dharma Project social experiment community who were killed by a psychopathic guy who the audiennce is lead to think may be the incarnation of the antichrist becauase his mother died in chilbirth and he is an arch manipulator seeming to know details of survivors histories when no rational information pathway is possible……
Heve you actually promised to go, for good this time?
Hello?
Hello?
Whew, better go throw up, again.
December 17th, 2012 at 4:41 am
Wasn’t really that hard to spot right from the get go, but it is best to just let it pass untill it shows its teeth.
December 17th, 2012 at 6:02 am
Ozman – right on. and sorry to hit you with the DU story but we need to know what we have done, what will happen.
December 17th, 2012 at 6:08 am
Kathy C
No harm done.
Or actually, the harm done is OK!
December 17th, 2012 at 7:07 am
ulvfugl
The phytoplankton will have to cope with acidification, temperature change, and possibly UV light from damaged ozone layer, and who knows what else.
There’s no reason to suppose that it will evolve to produce O2 is there ?
Sounded to me like you were suggesting phytoplankton would likely evolve into organisms no longer producing O2. I understand now you meant phytoplankton will not be able to evolve fast enough to survive.
I totally concede dead zones in the oceans are increasing. Paradoxically, these are due to increased phytoplankton productivity and thus are unlikely to lead to a reduction of atmospheric oxygen. Where I disagree, if I understand your position correctly, is that I do not believe lack of oxygen will ever become a problem for us or other land-dwelling, oxygen-breathing creatures. I believe loss of the photosynthesisers would cause a corresponding loss of animals due to starvation long before oxygen levels became a problem. No animals means no reason for oxygen levels to decrease.
December 17th, 2012 at 7:11 am
Gail recommended to me the movie Sarah’s Key. It speaks well to the topic of responsibility. The main event is the shipping of Jews from Vichy France by the French government to the ovens at Auschwitz and elsewhere. Specifically this event – Rafle du Vel’ d’Hiv, the mass arrest of 13,152 Jews who are held at the Winter Velodrome in Paris and Drancy internment camp before deportation to Auschwitz. Of course we can see that the Nazi’s were responsible for the demand. The French government was responsible for agreeing. And the policemen who did the arrests, and the other people who stood by and watched, what is their responsibility. The movie deals with this and responsibility for actions of individuals in the story it follows.
But couldn’t we also say that the rise of Hitler was a reaction to the harsh reparations forced on Germany in WWII. Couldn’t we say that the plan for genocide was in part modeled on the genocide of the Native Americans. So then doesn’t the blame fall to our founding fathers and the immigrants who wanted Native American land
Letter from President Jefferson to the Secretary of War Henry Burbeck:
“If we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down until that tribe is exterminated . . . in war, they will kill some of us; we will destroy all of them.” — Thomas Jefferson, August 28, 1807 http://only-ed.blogspot.com/2010/07/thomas-jefferson-father-of-american.html
But why did people come to the America’s anyway. In part wasn’t it because Europe overpopulated and their land could no longer feed the populous. So can we lay the blame for the killing of the French Jews at the feet of highly fertile European Peasants? Or the inventor of the moldboard plow, or the person who made the first iron axe, or the hunter-gatherer who first planted a seed.
The movie doesn’t carry it that far back but does deal with other aspects of responsibility. It deals with people who feel responsibility even though they have none or little and yet do the right thing. It deals with shame and denial. It deals with people who blame others but can’t say what they would do. It deals with people taking what they think is the best decision and dealing with the responsibility when it turns out all wrong. It deals with how children become laden with guilt from carrying responsibility on their shoulders alone for something that is not theirs to carry.
December 17th, 2012 at 7:18 am
Yorchichan – The microscopic plants that support all life in the oceans are dying off at a dramatic rate, according to a study that has documented for the first time a disturbing and unprecedented change at the base of the marine food web.
Scientists have discovered that the phytoplankton of the oceans has declined by about 40 per cent over the past century, with much of the loss occurring since the 1950s. They believe the change is linked with rising sea temperatures and global warming.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-dead-sea-global-warming-blamed-for-40-per-cent-decline-in-the-oceans-phytoplankton-2038074.html
While phytoplankton in such areas as the Gulf may be being fertilized and more productive, in the rest of the ocean they appear to be dying off.
December 17th, 2012 at 7:19 am
‘Cyclone Evan slams into Fiji’
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2012/s3656311.htm
“SALLY SARA: A category four cyclone has smashed into the island nation of Fiji, sending thousands fleeing to emergency centres. Tourists have retreated to their hotel rooms and still aren’t allowed to leave. Locals are facing the cyclone head on.
Cyclone Evan is about 480 kilometres wide, and has winds of up to 230 kilometres per hour. It’s the strongest cyclone to hit Fiji in the past decade, and there are concerns storm surges will flood low-lying areas.”
It still could intensify further.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:01 am
@ Bailey
You said:
“….Though I may have lacked all the knowledge of how soon our sojourn would end, even intuition tells you that a parasitic species cannot consume its host indefinitely.”
Yes, the host will die but the parasite can fly away (be raptured) and find a new world. What percent of our population are cheering for the host to die? Drill, baby, drill. Only the “sinners” will suffer.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:01 am
Yorchichan,
Sounded to me like you were suggesting phytoplankton would likely evolve into organisms no longer producing O2. I understand now you meant phytoplankton will not be able to evolve fast enough to survive.
Okay, maybe I should have phrased what I meant more clearly. First time around, I meant that phytoplankton don’t see it as their purpose to produce O2, do they, yes, they’ll evolve, if they can, but who knows what will happen to them, just as the trees on land, if conditions become unsuitable, will strive to evolve, maybe smaller stunted forms, or hybrid forms, or whatever, but they are doing it to pursue their own survival, not to provide oxygen. That just happens to be a by-product. If the upheaval in the overall ecology is so vast, and so rapid, their place in the scheme of things may vanish altogether.
Second time around, yes, they may not be able to evolve fast enough. That experiment in the lab you cited was interesting, but they don’t live in isolation, do they, out in the ocean, there’s a whole complex dynamic inter-relationship of organisms, which is now getting destabilised everywhere.
I totally concede dead zones in the oceans are increasing. Paradoxically, these are due to increased phytoplankton productivity and thus are unlikely to lead to a reduction of atmospheric oxygen.
It’s not paradoxical, it’s well-understood that that’s how it works, when dead zones are produced by eutrophication. But if you looked at the link, from Earth’s history, it seems pretty clear that acidification alone is sufficient to produce dead oceans and extinction, without global warming, and over a long period, not like the rapid change over decades that we are causing. And once it starts, it cannot be stopped. Here it is again. That’s not the only threat to the phytoplankton, is it, nor the only cause of dead zones.
ftp://ftp.gfdl.noaa.gov/pub/mbw/Ocean_Acidification_Papers/Veron_2008.pdf
Where I disagree, if I understand your position correctly, is that I do not believe lack of oxygen will ever become a problem for us or other land-dwelling, oxygen-breathing creatures. I believe loss of the photosynthesisers would cause a corresponding loss of animals due to starvation long before oxygen levels became a problem. No animals means no reason for oxygen levels to decrease.
I think you have not thought it through. Six degree C. increase, likely means most land forests die, and that means they are no longer carbon sinks, and no longer oxygen sources. So that’s half your oxygen supply gone. And the temperature is now running away for a whole lot of reasons, so much of life on land is ending and the warming acidifying seas are full of toxic effluent, dead marine life, run-off of all kinds, not to mention nuclear radiation, UV radiation, etc, so good luck to the phytoplankton… perhaps you’re right, some may survive, but in my estimation, there’s no humans left around to know, either way.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:16 am
@Kathy C
About the population evolution in Europe, something not that well known (realized it a few years ago), is that in the XVIIth XVIIIth centuries, France had the highest population in Europe by quite far (and in fact was third population worldwide after China and India), but in the XIXth century population growth in France was much lower than in other European countries especially Germany and the UK :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/%C3%89volution_d%C3%A9mographique_compar%C3%A9e_-_France%2C_Allemagne_et_Royaume-Uni.svg
In fact if France had the population growth of the UK in XIXth century, its today’s population would be around 220 millions have read somewhere.
Braudel explains this in a book, don’t remember his explanation exactly right now, but it was quite a bit “conscious” in the sense big families not really seen as a good thing.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Kathy C
I’ve been aware of that report since Guy brought it to my (our) attention. It was just one study. Can you find any independent verification of the results? Until such time as independent verification exists, this report should not be accepted as unquestionable truth.
Even if verified, until the mechanism for phytoplankton loss is understood, “past performance is not indicative of future results”. Pollution, decline in sunlight and decline in nutrient availability are possible likely causes of a phytoplankton die off; (slow) acidification and warmer ocean temperatures are not.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:51 am
Kathy C
See the “Envronmental controversy” section on the Wikipedia phytoplankton page.
It appears to agree with me (much to my relief
).
December 17th, 2012 at 10:09 am
I must admit that I don’t understand why ideas can’t be discussed and debated without the dialogue degenerating into ugly personal attacks. Perhaps it’s because we discuss such emotionally charged ideas. Be that as it may, Ripley mentioned some ideas which are worth discussing even if he/she is no longer following the conversation. Others might have the same questions.
It is true the the U.S. is the greatest user of energy even though in recent years the apparent efficiency of our energy use has improved. (References supporting these claims are found easily with a google search.)
China is quickly overtaking the U.S. as the greatest energy user. Why? Because China is making most of the world’s consumable goods. The U.S., Europe, and other developed countries have been able to improve their energy efficiency largely because energy use has been offloaded to China and other developing economies.
It makes sense that if a country develops solar energy or wind energy, then their use of fossil fuels will go down. But where do all the parts making up those energy sources come from? Most are made – from the metals in their components all the way to delivered goods – from fossil fuels. The shelf life of those devices is generally less than 20 years, so every few decades the process is repeated. The wires to transmit that energy are also fossil fuel derived as are all the goods on the receiving end using that energy.
I know of no country which has had a voluntary reduction in energy usage of any percentage much less 90%. To the contrary, the only countries which have reduced their true energy usage (meaning that the energy they use includes that borne by other countries on their behalf) have done so due to shortages or economic downturns.
Guy has stated multiple times that only the complete collapse of the industrial economy will save us and now thinks that it may be too late even for that.
So, unless I’m mistaken about Ripley’s initial question, that is the answer to it. Complete collapse, not 90%. I agree with that assessment, for what it’s worth.
Energy conservation of 90% would almost certainly lead to collapse of the industrial economy. Make no mistake, it is the fossil fuels which have built this modern economy. Even a 1-2% decline in available energy causes recessions. 90% would be fatal.
December 17th, 2012 at 10:40 am
@Jennifer Hartley: I hope you are well. If you would like to get in touch sometime, we could exchange e-mail addresses. Let me know. I have a hard time articulating my thoughts/feelings, mostly due to time constraints with the children, but it’s important for me to know what other people are thinking and feeling, so I will keep trying as well.
In general, it seems like the world is going crazy. The speed at which information travels now means that if you are not well grounded and centered, it can be hard to assimilate or make sense of everything, or anything at all. I have to say, I was completely undone by the school shooting on Friday, and though it is no surprise the ugliness which people are capable of, I’m really scared of who is out there. People don’t know what to do with their anger, frustration, fear, pain, and so they either work to numb it, or they lash out.
Myself, I became so over-saturated by news and information, so depressed and hopeless, I went on a media blackout from about 2005-2009. I think this is when I lost track of some big things going on in the world and with the environment. I had just divorced, moved from Alaska to South Dakota, started Grad school, dropped out, met someone, and without any real planning, started a family. I let my guard down. I didn’t really know myself or my environment. It’s hard to find a balance between being aware and informed, and feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, but there has to a way to function and take action in an informed way, because trying to block everything out and live in denial will never work. Living in fear won’t work.
Re: Naomi Klein having children. As long as women are going to keep having babies, I’m happy to see someone like her doing it. With all the uncertainty about the world right now, I’m not sure I could make that decision, but she is definitely well informed. I refuse to give up on the children, and if there is any chance of hope, it is with them. And I mean the young ones. They are still full of wonder and mystery, and if there is such a thing as spiritual evolution, they are the advanced ones.
December 17th, 2012 at 11:17 am
@BC Nurse Prof
You mentioned fire. I can’t help but agree with you. Your area is so beautiful, but oh so many trees. Even here, they started talking this fall about addressing beetle kill in the Black Hills by doing controlled burns. Are they crazy? It can’t possibly get any drier. And someone mentioned complaining about the weather, well, I will. If we don’t get some snow soon, I predict that at least one more of the little ones will be added to the list of asthma sufferers in our house, which stands at my five year old son and myself. The dust, inside and out, is just terrible. Everyone has a relentless cough. But, here we are. We can’t move to a more hospitable environment at this time, and where would that be, anyway?
December 17th, 2012 at 11:52 am
Some random thoughts:
Earth First! went caroling in Michigan. They visited the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and sung anti-fracking carols, then published his home address. I think that is fabulous and plan to send Keith a card, telling him all I want for Christmas this year is for him to stop selling public lands to oil and gas barons. Think that’ll help?
I’m relatively new to the writings of James Howard Kuntsler. Been reading his blog for about a year now, and after chatting with Guy, read his book “World Made by Hand”. Just read his blog on the massacre in Connecticut and have gotta ask, what is up with the sexism? Is this new or has he always been a bit of a pig?
Jennifer Hartley, my summons to jury duty isn’t until March. Plenty of time to prepare. It’s only for a week. Last time I served, in 1987, it was for four weeks.
I haven’t seen much commentary on Obummers crocodile tears and bible spouting last night. I’m going on record with a prediction that we end up renewing the ban on assault rifles and MAYBE banning the big clips and that will be that. There will be no changes to our pitifully lacking help for anyone who is unfortunate enough to be mentally ill. Our official policy will remain the same: Fuck ‘em.
Drone killing of children not on American soil will continue as usual.
Happy thoughts. Good times.
December 17th, 2012 at 12:29 pm
Yorchichan, your article was only as I understood it about plankton at the places were runoff meets ocean on the shelf of the continents. It was not about plankton in the whole wide ocean unless I misunderstood it.
This seems to confirm that the acidic ocean is a problem for plankton
http://stephenleahy.net/2012/11/02/plankton-death-to-come-with-acid-oceans-and-sunlight/
Researchers were surprised to discover that diatoms, one of the most important and abundant types of phytoplankton, fared very badly during shipboard experiments conducted by co-author Kunshan Gao, from the State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science at Xiamen University, Xiamen China.
Previous experiments in labs like Riebesell’s found that diatoms actually did better in high-acid seawater, unlike most other shell- forming plankton. Burning fossil fuels has made the oceans about 30 percent more acidic researchers discovered less than 10 years ago. Oceans absorb one third of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from using fossil fuels.
The good news is this has slowed the rate of global warming. The bad news is oceans are now more acidic and it will get worse as more CO2 is emitted. This is basic, well-understood ocean chemistry…As expected under these conditions, certain types of plankton like coccolithophores did not do well but surprisingly, diatom productivity also declined.
One possible reason was the much brighter natural light on the ship versus that in science labs, Riebsell and Gao suspected. Followup lab experiments with lights mimicking the intensity of natural light in the subtropical zone of the South China Sea confirmed that the combination of high-acid sea water and light intensity was more than diatoms could handle.
So one study says the declined (possibly due to warming), another says they haven’t, and another shows that acidic oceans can harm phytoplankton.
So we are left with some uncertainty IMO and I bet that although Riebsell in the article above also says that it was possible plankton might adapt, changes are happening rather fast. Of course things the reproduce fast have a better chance of evolving to adapt, but still things are happening in decades not centuries now.
Que sera sera
December 17th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
Facts that do not feed our Confirmation Biases are so tough on our egos. They feel like sometime trying to lobotomize our innards. But oh so liberating to practice critical thinking, in however small the doses.
It gives one the time to contemplate how is it we are here and what is likely to come about after.
For instance, there are a number of theories of how petroleum formed when the world was 6C, or more, warmer than it is today.
One came out about 15yrs ago, featured in Science and Scientific American and others like them at the time.
It posits that a natural carbon cycle led to 1200ppm levels of carbon in the atmosphere, vs our 300-400ppm today. This increase caused such acidification and warming of the ocean that broke down the Thermocline and Thermohaline circulation layers. With the Thermocline and Thermohaline layers broken down, the byproduct (sulfuric acid) of the anaerobic lifeforms feeding on the hydrogen sulfides venting out of the seafloor came up to the surface. For what can be described as eternity to the aerobic lifeforms already going extinct due to the overheated atmosphere up here on the surface, sulfuric acid venting up became the norm.
This dissolved the aerobic lifeforms –and the atmosphere being oxygen-deprived and sulfur-saturated prevented normal decomposition– which in turn generated the oil reserves we have today.
Interesting eh? Imagine how much growth was there in anaerobic lifeforms with such expanded sinks allowed by the breaking down of the Thermocline and Thermohaline layers? They must have thought it would go on forever. HAHA. One can even glimpse familiarity to today eh?
Another thing is makes you ponder is (for those who received an early biblical indoc): How could those who wrote it have known the world would end by fire this time? An everlasting fire what would give no rest…it was unimaginable that such thing could be real as the flesh is so fragile. Now with AGW, I see how a constant warming that lasts until and then and keeps on getting worse and worse until our great-great-grandkids also pass can be essentially considered everlasting. HAHA. Oh the poetry, the hubris, that is us.
December 17th, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Paul Beckwith from Arctic Methane Emergeny Group on radio ecoshock
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2012/12/paul-beckwith-at-radio-ecoshock.html
Personal disclaimer I do not support his call for geo-engineering. I do think he is more right than the more conservative climate scientists based on events on the ground.
December 17th, 2012 at 1:07 pm
.
Monopoly Game
Stay free at the choicest doomsteads:
The oranges, yellows and reds,
Where likely the strongest
Will hold out the longest
Once the collapse really spreads.
Community Chest and Chance pick,
Distractions, the next media trick;
Railroads: a bore,
Unless someone owns four—
Then you get fucked pretty quick.
Utilities, parking, taxes—I’ve scored:
They don’t kill, can be safely ignored;
Pass go on your way
And earn weekly pay,
Working your ass round the board.
In jail you can miss turns in style
And get some relief for awhile;
Next throw of the dice,
Hope fate will be nice
To struggles that lifetimes compile.
The token you choose when you play:
Really, who are you anyway?
Go broke and death knocks,
Pieces back in the box,
Game over—extinction—m’kay?
December 17th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
How could those who wrote it have known the world would end by fire…
For simple folk… I mean, use your imagination… wind ? ice ? fire ? flood ? how many basic natural forces have you got, to play with in your fairy tales ?
December 17th, 2012 at 1:13 pm
of interest
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121216132505.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Earth+%26+Climate+News%29
Difficult-to-forecast polar mesoscale storms occur frequently over the polar seas; however, they are missing in most climate models
December 17th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
the sky is heavy and gray
but i hear them all the time
to see is another fray
but here they are all aligned
http://planefinder.net/
December 17th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
@TVT
There is a deep abiding and inconsolable loneliness that we are either attempting to vanquish or reconcile the best we can, and when you so candidly speak of a truth (suicide), that we’re all probably being slightly disingenuous towards…………..well, it’s hard to find adequate words. It’s hard to gauge what is and isn’t “appropriate”. Basically, what you are doing, is shining a light into a cave many would prefer remain in the dark…….at least for a little while longer.
December 17th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Regarding failed species; aren’t we the first and only one to wipe ourselves out with our own extinction? Or, does that make us number 1?
December 17th, 2012 at 2:23 pm
dairymandave, it happens all the time, in microcosm, from yeast in a beer bottle to the reindeer on St Matthew Island.
December 17th, 2012 at 3:03 pm
ulvfugl, I’m referring to a mass extinction event, the first one caused by a species.
December 17th, 2012 at 3:19 pm
I know you are. It’s the same principle. It’s ecology within a container. Our container is the biosphere.
December 17th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
Well, we hadn’t had any snow here in the southern interior of BC until this past weekend. We had a few flurries that didn’t stick, and it was way too warm for snow until now. Then….whamo!….we got dumped on. It’s still only at freezing or one or two degrees below freezing, but we got more snow this weekend than we had all last winter. It’s a mess. On the way to the university this morning we saw two accidents and a semi jack-knifed in the turn lane. It took four wheel drive just to get here. More snow on the way for tonight. Then rain by the end of the week!
A few years ago we would have had a minus 15 degrees C night by now, but not anymore. I sure hope we don’t get an ice storm for Christmas.
December 17th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
BC Nurse Prof, I can relate to your weather craziness. I keep a diary of activities I undertake around the place including gardening, chickens, goats, etc. I also document the high and low temps and precipitation. My data isn’t complete as I only document on the days when I’m doing something outside as opposed to being at the clinic. However, this past weekend I spent the whole time working outside, frequently in short sleeves. In the middle of December. In this part of the country, that’s not terribly unusual, but the persistence of these temps IS unusual – it’s been this way for weeks now. The lows this weekend were 20+ degrees (F) above normal. For comparison, I looked back to January to see how the temp compared. They were virtually identical. So, if the pattern from last winter is any indication, it looks like we are on track for another very warm winter and probably a scorching hot spring and summer. Climate change deniers look out!
December 17th, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Dr. House – ditto here except today we got rain 2 1/4 inches. Not enough to pull us out of drought yet, but made me and the chickens happy!
December 17th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Kathy C
The most alarming thing in the article you linked to about plankton death (http://stephenleahy.net/2012/11/02/plankton-death-to-come-with-acid-oceans-and-sunlight/) was the third comment, echoing what some on here have been saying about trees dying.
December 17th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Human life is over. Face it, believe it. Not only human, but probably mammalian, probably vertebrate, perhaps all life is over. So where does that leave us. Judging from human contribution to the planetary well-being, the sooner we go the better. If our allegiance is to life, since it can no longer be to continuing human life, a chimera, then we should welcome human extinction and the sooner the better. Certainly the hope of dragging it out for a paltry few more years is disgraceful. Desperately taking a few extra tugs on the tit. Disgusting. So why should we go on?
I myself would like to see a last ditch effort to go gracefully. A wise man giving advice to a young lover instructed him as to how to leave his beloved in the morning, asserting that this was the most important thing. I think we should tidy up our mess and begin to live sustainably. Sustainably? What nonsense. What is sustainable is what leaves the world today exactly as it was on this day last year. That, as radical and impossible as it might be, should be our goal. But all it will achieve is a decorous and polite departure. Were we the dignified beings that we ought to be, that would be important.
December 17th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
ulvfugl, There have been 5 mass extinctions. This is the 6th. There have been millions of species that went extinct. We are the only species that caused a mass extinction, as far as I know. I only know what I read. You know it too.
December 17th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
‘Missing’ polar weather systems could impact climate predictions
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121216132505.htm
December 17th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
What a refreshingly interesting idea, Michael Dollner….
So, perhaps, we have been guests here. And now we must leave. And out of respect, and good manners, we should tidy up, and make the place as it was, when we found it….
Even though that is impossible, because so much got broken. But at least, some of us will have made an effort….
December 17th, 2012 at 6:35 pm
dairymandave, think of the biosphere as an ecosystem, humans as an invasive species, a keystone species with a negative impact if you like. Lots of ecosystems get wrecked by the impact of a new invasive species that destroys the ecology causing extinctions. As I see it, like I said, the principle is the same, just that the scale is different. Yeast in a bottle eating sugar, reindeer on an island eating lichen, humans on a planet eating oil.
December 17th, 2012 at 7:26 pm
BC Nurse Prof:
You ask, “Paul, does this work? Did it alleviate your distress to project dire consequences? I think I know what you mean, but I’m not sure. Can you elaborate?”
I think I understand your question, but there are two ways I could read it.
If you’re asking whether projecting dire consequences alleviated my distress, the answer is an unequivocal “NO!”. That behaviour merely reinforced my distress – especially when I found there were so many people out here who agreed with me.
Achieving equanimity about the idea of “The End” – whether my own end or the species’ – was what did the trick. It took about 5 years to get there. I started at the bottom with the idea that we are a broken species (I learned that from Jay Hansen at dieoff.org). It was in that period that I wrote most of my most dystopian screeds. Then I worked my way up through Daniel Quinn and his idea of “broken story, not broken people”, through Deep Ecology.
It was about then that I had a major breakthrough in terms of seeing that I had been telling myself only one possible story about the future and ignoring many others. The final piece of the puzzle came in the form of a deep non-dualist awakening that brought me to complete acceptance of What Is. That is what has let me maintain my balance in the face of what I know to be true about where we are, what we’re doing, what we are as a species and civilization, and what the endpoint will be.
My earlier angst came from not fully accepting both what we are doing AND its consequences. As a result of the work I’ve done since then I have no need to convince anyone about dire consequences. If they happen it will be apparent to all. And they will happen, because something dire happens to everyone, eventually. If they don’t, they don’t. I no longer need others to share my views in order to validate or confirm my existence. I AM.
December 17th, 2012 at 7:28 pm
wildwoman Says:”my summons to jury duty”
Send me to jail in Missouri,
Or find other vents for your fury:
Shoot me, cut me free,
You ain’t gonna be
Seeing me on your fucking jury.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:14 pm
BtD,
It’s Michigan, but I take your point. Thanks for the smile.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:17 pm
Going to the end of the line:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/wm-A10302B0000384965Q/traveling_wilburys_end_of_the_line_official_music_video/
December 17th, 2012 at 8:24 pm
YW!
Sorry, but it was either Missouri, or give it up and move on to something else, and I DID want to share.
December 17th, 2012 at 8:56 pm
“…When the threat to our personal well-being becomes sufficiently strong, however, the id (being primal and unconscious) tends to win out…..Can the rational processes of the ego and the inhibitory influence of the superego combine to defeat the self-centered desires of the id…?”
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/COP15.html
Superego, ego, and id
Are places where secrets are hid;
But, to cut to the chase,
I think in this case,
We’ve really fucked up—yup, we did.
December 17th, 2012 at 11:14 pm
BadlandsAK: I would be happy to exchange email addresses. Guy, if you don’t mind, could you send mine to BadlandsAK? I agree, the world is crazy. And young children being the advanced ones, yes.
wildwoman: In my opinion, yes, Kunstler has always been a bit of a pig. The sexism isn’t new.
Daniel, the virgin terry, and others contemplating suicide in the future: One question I have is, how do you know when it’s the right time? Also, do you have a chosen method, and the means to do it? I’m not sure I want more than a yes/no answer to that last question.
December 17th, 2012 at 11:50 pm
I no longer need others to share my views in order to validate or confirm my existence. I AM.
So basic that most are unaware of it. And an essential stage before sloughing off of the “I”.
December 18th, 2012 at 3:25 am
With dieoff looming I knew
Who would die would be quite a few
Though we try try and try
Still we must die
Its just sooner we say adieu
But now we face Near Term Extinction
An event with quite a distinction
Not one to survive
Not one left alive
The end of our hubric ambition
So it goes……..
December 18th, 2012 at 3:30 am
Good review of Earth temperature and where we are now:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/
December 18th, 2012 at 4:29 am
Oyster mushrooms will grow on any dead organic matter – including oil (Think about that) Oyster mushrooms do not require fertiliser, heating or extra inputs – think about that. Think about the millions of tonnes of coffee that is thrown away by coffee houses each week and how millions of tonnes of oyster mushrooms could be grown to make us healthy and genuinely sustainable. I have done my homework and know about entropy etc and oyster mushrooms would work. Think closed loop urban farms, using hemp leaves as substrate????
And lets talk about hemp – Do you remember hemp america??? the plant that started you off? remember how it will heat a fire, feed a man and clothe a man? remember how productive it is per acre? it wont replace oil as a liquid fuel but it will soften the loss of it.
The answer is consume less, much less, and produce more, much more
Oyster mushrooms and hemp, they wouldnt even cost a lot to implement
Its time for action
December 18th, 2012 at 4:36 am
no surprise here:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/16/1334921/leaked-ipcc-draft-report-recent-warming-is-manmade-cloud-feedback-is-positive-inaction-is-suicidal/?mobile=nc
December 18th, 2012 at 5:59 am
@ James its time for action
It’s possible to design other highly productive intensive food systems, e.g. duckweed, fresh water shrimps, to feed carp, reeds to clean the water, etc, which can be self-sustaining, and pretty much food for free…
What Michael D. said above What is sustainable is what leaves the world today exactly as it was on this day last year. Perfection is impossible, but it is possible to design systems that are very close.
All it takes is a place to do it, smart, motivated, energetic people, the knowledge which we already have…
But that’s not the problem, is it. We already KNOW what works, and we already KNOW what’s going to kill us all off. How to stop the maniacs from burning ever more coal, oil, gas, destroying the natural world to get ever more minerals, polluting everything to turn it into money, etc, etc…. that’s the problem… the same destructive corporations and greedy mentality that destroyed the old hemp farming, now go into Africa, ( Bill Gates and Monsanto, etc ) and destroy the local relatively eco-friendly small scale farming, push the peasants off the land to be replaced by industrial agribusiness, and nobody can stop it, can they…. that’s the problem…. nobody can stop the pillaging of the oceans, because it’s international commons, so they get fished until there’s nothing left… the powers of the world are competing to grab whatever resources remain as fast as they can, destroying us all in the process, that’s the problem. Nobody knows how to fix this, nobody has any answers or solutions, it’s an insane race into oblivion….
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/world/americas/in-brazil-caves-would-be-lost-in-mining-project.html
December 18th, 2012 at 7:31 am
We’ve seen this graph before but of interest is who posted it this time. John Phipps is spokesperson for Big Ag. This will impact grain prices, ethanol mandates and so on. I think his opinions carry a lot of weight.
http://johnwphipps.blogspot.com/2012/12/denial-is-getting-harder.html
December 18th, 2012 at 8:13 am
Yeah, twenty years too late.
December 18th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Jennifer Hartley, regarding the suicide question, for myself, I want to take myself out before I have to take anyone else out. So when the violence appears, I go. I don’t have a plan, per se. I’m looking for natural plants, hemlock, water chestnuts, but I don’t know what kind of death they produce and how to prepare them. Kathy C keeps mentioning Final Exit, and I might go that route, but plastic bags and suffocation doesn’t appeal. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up, hopefully with no mess for anyone else to clean up and without contributing to the profits of big Pharma.
Is that too much to ask?
P.S. I keep forgetting this….the REAL Doctor House….you got me hooked on the sock puppets. Love that site.
December 18th, 2012 at 10:33 am
wildwoman wrote: « I just want to go to sleep and never wake up, hopefully with no mess for anyone else to clean up and without contributing to the profits of big Pharma.
Is that too much to ask?»
IMO, it is quite a lot to ask. I have a few plans ready since 3-4 years and always at hand. some involve big pharma, others don’t. i beleive in practice, so I regularly spend some meditation time rehearsing my different scenarios. I got less and less “emotional” about this over time and with practice. I don’t think only one plan is enough.
The part «no mess for anyone else to clean up» is a VERY big part of my relexion too. But things can get so bad that I might not have the possibility to take action and just go with the flow (since my early childhood, I have always been fascinated by the people all falling asleep in snow white).
one way I can tolerate life those few past years, is by telling myself that I have just been diagnosed with a terminal illness and have 3 months to live (or whatever period). then, after that period, I miraculously survive! and after a short break, I start the process over again. This game has brought me to really «clean» my shit, my relations, my soul, my house. This is driving my life and yes, it makes me happy! I think the fact of NTE will never ever sink into the deepest recess of my soul. it is too unfathomable, too big for my intellect. I don’t spend time trying to understand it. I feel. I know. And really, at this point, fuke the scientists who are attaching their fuking GPS to all living animals and installing them on every square inch of the earth. Their time has come and gone.
Words are becoming more inadequate by the hour.
here in montreal, there is just the right amount of snow today for humans to feel heartened, oblivious and «happy». the snow is covering the trees that are but corpses. but it is not obvious yet.
December 18th, 2012 at 10:40 am
Everything everyone knows
Will presently decompose
Unless some historian
(A Tralfamadorian?)
Drops by really soon. So it goes.
December 18th, 2012 at 11:01 am
‘About the population evolution in Europe, something not that well known (realized it a few years ago), is that in the XVIIth XVIIIth centuries, France had the highest population in Europe by quite far (and in fact was third population worldwide after China and India), but in the XIXth century population growth in France was much lower than in other European countries especially Germany and the UK’ -yt75
interesting. assuming it’s true, i didn’t know that, and i find the timing intriguing, considering that the french revolution occurred at the end of the 18th century. one of the great effects of the revolution, to my understanding, was a lashing out against the power and wealth of the roman catholic church there (in fact, i just read part of a book on a totally different subject which, in passing, mentioned a great influx of catholic clergy into the usa around that time fleeing ‘persecution’). perhaps in gutting the power of the church, french society was freed from it’s dogmas prohibiting contraception, encouraging unchecked population growth???
perhaps distantly related, at least in a geographic sense, is what happened in what is now the south of france, formerly known as the langue d’oc, 800 years ago, when the catholic church led by pope innocent iii (just gotta love the orwellian nature of some names) declared a ‘crusade’ (genocide) against the sheeple of that region, who had become too educated and independent to continue submitting to roman catholic rule. in this link below, a brief contrast is discussed outlining the stark differences towards sex and reproduction that existed then between catholic dogmas and the ‘cathars’ who the pope decided needed to be destroyed for their ‘heresy’:
http://www.cathar.info/
perhaps playing the blame game at this point is merely an exercise in self gratification, but i still love pointing out the role that dogmas and violent authoritarian institutions like ‘the church’ have played, and continue to play, in creating a world overflowing with clueless dogma addicts who have no idea of what’s about to hit them.
December 18th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
‘contemplating suicide in the future: One question I have is, how do you know when it’s the right time? Also, do you have a chosen method, and the means to do it?’ -jennifer
if u’ve ever studied something like investing in stocks, u’ll understand that the question of timing, of when to buy and when to sell (unless one has ‘insider’ info) is at best vexing and imprecise. if one does happen to pick the perfect time to get out of the market, it’s sheer luck. the best one can hope to do is closely monitor conditions and get out while the getting out is still good, after a good run up in price, but before a ‘crash’.
imo pretty much the same strategy applies here with the question of suicide in the face of collapse and the hardships, dangers, and untold sufferings which shall follow.
i don’t subscribe to the fast collapse theory popular among nbl bloggers. i think collapse will come in waves and will be spread out over decades. it’s impossible to know (as far as i know) at what precise point over this time period will be the perfect time to commit suicide. personally, i look to politics as a bellweather here, because what i expect and fear most is the coming of a huge surge in desperation, crime, and political oppression here in the usa, with it’s legions of insane christian rightwingers. i wouldn’t be surprised if there shall come a brief return, during collapse, of conditions in which liberals, intellectuals, freethinkers, etc. will be harshly persecuted as they have been at various times and in various places throughout history, imprisoned, forced into slave labor, perhaps even exterminated. this is what i hope to avoid. about the time i see such a thing coming to fruition i think will be the time to become surreally serious about committing suicide. wait too long, and one might find oneself trapped in a hellish situation without the ability to choose a most compassionate end.
as for means, that remains an open question. i wish suicide wasn’t such a taboo subject, so that there could be very open discussion of all the various ways it can be accomplished, all the nuances involved, as well as the formation of support groups to make this final act easier to face and accomplish. from my limited knowledge i currently like the idea of having on hand a lethal supply of some opiate, thus leaving in a state of bliss. (something i’d like to know in this regard is the ‘shelf life’ of various opiates, so that, if say one obtains a lethal dose of heroin, how long can it be held and remain confident of it’s potency… a year, 5, 10, forever?…)
another potentially appealling possibility might be to simply go on a terminal fast. i know from recent experience that going 36 hours without food is easy… how about 36 days, or whatever it would take to starve to death? would that be easy and relatively painless? would it be possible in a coercive culture averse to suicide??? lots of questions whose answers may only become clear with the passage of time.
as a final note, u may recall a fairly recent post to this blog from ‘dr. phil’ which opined that nbl was reminiscent of a suicide doom cult. i think much more discussion of suicide, here or perhaps elsewhere, as a response to the ‘doom’ we face, if done with skill, might become quite popular and serve, like nothing else could, to emphasize to curious, intelligent, open minded seekers of knowledge just how desperate our predicament has become. raising awareness. better late than never, huh?
December 18th, 2012 at 12:14 pm
Paul Chefurka: Thanks for your elaboration. Yes, that was what I was asking, and I agree with your comments.
December 18th, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Talking about population in Europe reminds me of some theories about the population reduction by the plague and the effects it had
Here is some thinking on the matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death
“In Western Europe, the sudden shortage of cheap labour provided an incentive for landlords to compete for peasants with wages and freedoms, an innovation that, some argue[weasel words], represents the roots of capitalism, and the resulting social upheaval “caused” the Renaissance, and even the Reformation. In many ways the Black Death and its aftermath improved the situation of surviving peasants, notably by the end of the 15th century. In Western Europe, labourers gained more power and were more in demand because of the shortage of labour. In gaining more power, workers following the Black Death often moved away from annual contracts in favour of taking on successive temporary jobs that offered higher wages.[22] Workers such as servants now had the opportunity to leave their current employment to seek better-paying, more attractive positions in areas previously off limits to them.[22] Another positive aspect of the period was that there was more fertile land available to the population; however, the benefits would not be fully realized until 1470, nearly 120 years later, when overall population levels finally began to rise again. In England, the higher wages for workers combined with sinking prices on grain products led to a problematic economic situation for the gentry. As a result they started to show an increased interest for offices like justice of the peace, sheriff and member of parliament. The gentry took advantage of their new positions and a more systematic corruption than before spread. A result of this was that the gentry as a group became highly disliked by commoners in general.[23]“
The failure of God, the rulers and the church to stem the tide of the plague (no matter how many Jews and atheists they burned) may have started the move to the enlightenment.
December 18th, 2012 at 12:55 pm
I’m looking for a list of the positive feedback loops we’ve tripped. Can anyone point me to where Guy has laid them out?
Thanks.
December 18th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Interesting… hahaha, funny how info circulates around and around in feedback loops on the internet…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/12/unforced-variations-dec-2012/comment-page-4/#comment-309663
And then we get the esteemed Ray Ladbury, who is exceptionally smart, but was saying the very same thing five years ago, hoping the politicians will become virtuous, or that a magic technofix will appear… and meanwhile, things keep on getting worse and worse every day…
December 18th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Paul, Tamsen gave me this
http://guymcpherson.com/2012/12/the-twin-sides-of-the-fossil-fuel-coin-presenting-in-massachusetts/#comment-55642
December 18th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
@ Jennifer Hartley…..and others
There is nothing light about NTE, and probably the only way it can be heavier, is to throw suicide into the mix. Not a subject that many of us are comfortable to openly engage in, for any number of obvious reasons.
I do not know why some of us feel this knowledge more intimately than others. Maybe it just triggers all the other grief we’ve either been blessed or burdened with. Whatever the cause, there are most likely a thousand reasons why.
I believe that while many of us can at times rise to the occasion, at least long enough to appear to be strong and wise, in the face of what we can no longer pretend isn’t happening, but I consider that most of the time, we’re deeply troubled and at a loss as how to decide between the few choices now before us.
I too once likened myself a Raven in regards to the collapse of industrial civilization; if anyone was going to survive, it was going to be me, and I have completely dedicated my entire life to surviving collapse for over a decade. But in light of NTE, I now must admit, I’m but a sentient tree frog, and will mostly likely be among the first to expire.
We honestly might be probing the most distressful topic in the history of our species. I believe that for many here, while we have the emotional/psychological/spiritual stamina to stare into the abyss, to a degree where our dominant culture perceives it to be an act of suicide in itself, it doesn’t mean our coping mechanism aren’t any less under assault. This new empiricism is currently laying siege to our identity, as well as, our very reasons to continue living. I can’t imagine that we are not all in some profound way, seriously reconsidering…….everything!
Yes, many of us, if not everyone, has at one time thought about the meaning of suicide, and while some are apt to seriously contemplate it more than others, IMO, many are still carrying around antiquated ideas and concepts that have not yet been touched or altered by the reality of NTE. It’s just going to take time for this evidence to run its course through our vested interests, and the prospect of suicide is probably the most powerful of these old thoughts that will very soon be cast in a whole new light.
Some will arrive at the inherent fatalism of NTE sooner than others. Many will seek to counter such despair with another dose of hopium. Some will consciously decide to focus on the love they do have, in spite of it all. Those with children and dependents will simply not have the option of choosing suicide until much later, so self-preservation will naturally keep the darkest of thoughts at bay. But, for those who are not encumbered by any moral responsibility to others, then the direct relationship between NTE and suicide, will be free to flower into whatever sense of liberation we embolden it with.
I for one, can clearly see death’s door waiting for me. I am neither eager nor afraid to open it, but I know the choice to take my own life, will be the last decision I ever make, and for me, that’s incredibly cathartic, especially when considering NTE.
The path I now see before me, is figuring how I can best live with this new unprecedented sense of free will. How can I let such neo-self-determinism strip me of all the useless baggage I still habitually carry out of fear and obligation? How can I truly embrace the precious time I have left? Is this not the very next question we ask ourselves, the moment we accept NTE to be a reality?
In my less than humble opinion, I consider the knowledge that we will eventually take our own lives, to be a prerequisite for truly letting go. Whether we eventually do or not, doesn’t matter. I have no plans. I don’t need one. Any remote mountain top would suffice. I just see no reason to be alive having to live with such inconsolable despair, needless societal pressure and the fear of a painful protracted death, if we don’t have to.
There is an obvious stigma surrounding suicide. It makes most everyone uncomfortable. I also believe that there is just a certain character trait, or series of life experiences that allows some of us to be able to openly and rationally discuss it more than others.
I would not say I am suicidal, even though there are many people in my life who would disagree. I just have a heavy heart, always have. I have just been sadly well conditioned to talk about death, especially the death of our planet’s biosphere, which I have been proselytizing for decades.
There are just certain intrinsic values, one must possess to even care about the natural world. I believe these very same values are also intimately connected to the awareness of our insignificance and mortality. Aside from our acceptance of NTE, just our ability to perceive climate change as being a threat, requires an understanding of causality, which in turns requires a degree of objectivity, and it all just feeds back on itself, in fostering our acceptance of death.
I have been shouting collapse from my soapbox for over a decade. I have had hundreds of conversations with literally everyone I’ve ever known. Many times I’ve witnessed the dynamics of a conversation completely flip from me initially being perceived as being suicidal, for even addressing the issue, and as the conversation continues, I’m re-casted an Utopian, and the person I’m speaking to gradually corners themselves into the very shoes they thought I was wearing. This has happened so many times, that years ago, it dawned on me, that denial and hope were completely synonymous with each other.
I am comfortable talking about suicide, simply because I’m well accustomed to our state of hopelessness. I am not so interested in the details of my eventual death, as I am in accepting it’s near term eventuality.
I am in the process of learning that my moral imperative, was apparently conditional, at least to the prospect that life would once again, eventually rise from our ruins. But without this faith, I am but a castaway from the very élan that once gave my life meaning. My guilt and consciousness has only ever left scares, but in the new empirical light of the truth that I hold above all else, I can’t deny NTE. This means that for me, the endless battles of fighting the good fight, have finally taken their toll.
I think it is time, to live without remorse…….if I can.
December 18th, 2012 at 1:20 pm
Thanks, ulvfugl. That’s what I was looking for.
@Robin Datta: There’s no need for the “I” to be sloughed away, it was never there to begin with. Tat tvam asi. It’s just a matter of self-remembering.
December 18th, 2012 at 1:27 pm
Daniel and all,
No way will I ever live without remorse! Best I can hope for is that I will eventually forgive myself for my mistakes, but I will always rue them.
The virgin terry brought up heroin, which is a new thought. It’s got a decent shelf life if stored properly….away from light, dry, vacuum packed would be best. Maybe two years that way. Coke, etc., same thing. Just google it. The DEA museum has a really helpful site that shows you, step by step, how to make it. Isn’t that nice of them?
I wish, above all, to avoid the Mad Max scenario. If that occurs, I’m out. But I have to say, sick as I am, that I’m absolutely fascinated to be living in this particular time and kind of want to see how it turns out. If I can say, “I was right!” with my dying breath, I win. Right?
December 18th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
I’d be interested to know if people agree that the Ocean Dead Zone N20 cycle qualifies as a positive feedback loop along with those others.
http://guymcpherson.com/2012/12/playing-court-jester/#comment-55861
Regarding the suicide thing, it’s a big sensitive topic, but if you look at it the way Robin and Paul just indicated, then there is no one to ‘kill’, there is just ‘am-ness’, and it seems regrettable to do violence against the physical body, which is quite miraculous and innocent, and strives hard to heal itself and survive. Not saying it’s ‘wrong’ to end your life, but it’s mostly ego that suffers and letting go of ego can ease that source of pain, without involving physical death.
badlands mentioned dreading the Spring, again, that seems unnecessary suffering, just do one day at a time, I have no idea if I will survive until the Spring, but if I do, it’ll be nice, even if only because the days will be easier when it is warmer and sunnier, and the birds sing…
December 18th, 2012 at 2:23 pm
ulvfugl, that’s exactly correct. In the grip of my Doomer™ angst five or six years ago I was thinking seriously about ending the life of my body, as that seemed to be the only way to stop the suffering. Finding out where suffering comes from and dealing with it at its source proved to be a much better answer in every way.
As it turned out, the Buddha was right. All suffering springs from attachment. I started there and just kept going. Now the only thing I think about using my razor for is shaving my head…
December 18th, 2012 at 2:29 pm
With regard to suicides, perhaps the fastest acting of pharmaceuticals are the tricyclic antidepressants, the TCADs. I have seen patients walk into the emergency department awake, and in a coma five minutes later. Of course many factors are involved, including the dose, the patient’s weight, the presence of food in the stomach, other medications, the actual agent used, etc.
Slower but surer are the delayed-release calcium channel blockers used in the long-term control of hypertension (high blood pressure). The patients’ blood pressure slowly declines and the heart gradually slows as they circle the drain and go into a coma.
Theophylline, once extensively used to treat asthma, is also quite toxic, causing fatal disturbances of cardiac rhythm. But it produces agitation, and has a tendency to nausea and vomiting. The purple foxglove and the common foxglove both contain digoxin in addition to other cardiotoxic compounds. However they also have substantial unpleasant side effects.
And as Paul Stamets has said, all mushrooms are edible, some only once”.
December 18th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
all mushrooms are edible, some only once
Hahahahahaha…
I was just thinking, about the incredibly toxic chemicals that the witches, sorcerers, shamans, etc, have had in their brews for millennia, and how they discovered those if the first instance, and had the thought, perhaps someone was suicidal, you know, from tragedy or pain, and said ‘right, I’ve had enough’ and took the wolf’s bane, or whatever, and instead of being dead, found themselves tripped out of their skull flying around the universe for a couple of days, and then back here, a changed person… I mean, you’d have to be completely effing kamikaze to take deadly nightshade mixed with foxglove and toad skin and viper venom and whatnot that are in some of the old witchcraft recipes for ‘flying’…
http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/history.htm
Seriously though, there can’t be many things worse than failed suicide, where you are still alive but severely damaged yourself. Not a good idea at all.
December 18th, 2012 at 3:02 pm
Diagram of Doom
December 18th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
Flying ointments, that was the term I was searching for…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_ointment
December 18th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
There was that other feedback loop of the high altitude Greenland ice, and probably other high altitude ice, which, as it melts, the surface becomes lower, therefore surface is in warmer air, so it melts faster.
Here, where I live, I think it’s one degree C. pre 100 feet height above sea level, average over the year, for the growing season, that’s because of the air density mostly, I believe. Not certain if that applies worldwide.
December 18th, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Climate change feedback
“Warming the heart” seems a bit passé: more in vogue could be “roast the _____”.
December 18th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
Seems like I am a late arrival to the doomer gang, eh?
It is nice to find a place where others believe like I do, about the feeling of impending doom for the environment and therefore, for ourselves.
I guess the hardest part is coming to the realization that this totally affects me, personally. I am not somehow magically outside it all and my ability to survive collapse is dubious at best. It seems like reading the great american novel, but I am one of the characters in the book, not some outside reader.
December 18th, 2012 at 4:27 pm
charcoal
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-1391607.html
December 18th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Another interesting comment from Superman1 on RealClimate.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/12/unforced-variations-dec-2012/comment-page-4/#comment-309682
So, as I understand it, the mainstream modelers have got a figure of 4 deg. C possible around 2050 – ish, as a sort of worst case, if emissions continue, business as usual.
But, as it seems to me, all the estimated projections from the official sources over the last twenty years or so, seem to have continually under-estimated the rate of change, I’m not very confident in the ’4 deg in 35 years -ish’ thing, myself.
Nor am I very confident that we can stop the BAU trajectory, in the light of USA and China and Russian, etc, policies, and Doha.
What if coal burning, oil burning, forest clearance, etc, increases ? Worse than BAU ? What if the feedbacks kick in much worse than anyone expects ?
Poor old Superman1 is a voice in the wilderness, it’s a hell if a big gap, between having an idea that might work, to get anybody among the 7 – soon to be 9 – billion to cooperate and put it into effect….
“everybody pitches in” ? When did that ever happen ? The world is fragmented into warring factions, and as things get more desperate, do they somehow become reconciled ? Or do they fight more viciously for survival at the expense of others ?
Doha showed that USA and other powers are quite happy to write off whole countries. Does anyone seriously expect India and Pakistan to become more cooperative when the vanishing Himalayan glaciers and monsoon mean the great rivers fail, or else only appear as catastrophic spasmodic flood events between catastrophic droughts ?
Okay, I’m being negative…. Let’s ‘hope’. Politicians will stop telling lies. Somebody will find a magic techno-fix.
Some people expect 4 deg C in five years, not 35 or 45 years. That was the sort of error that was made by the European Space Agency, modeling the loss of Arctic ice.
Seems to me a lot like playing Russian roulette.
December 18th, 2012 at 5:44 pm
michele/montreal Says:
December 17th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
the sky is heavy and gray
but i hear them all the time
to see is another fray
but here they are all aligned
http://planefinder.net/
Such wondrous technical flash
Supported by mountains of cash:
On destruction’s eve
It’s still hard to believe
The whole thing could ever crash.
December 18th, 2012 at 5:56 pm
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with the Independent, Dr Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he had never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
“Earlier, we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1000m in diameter. It’s amazing,” Semiletov said. “I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area, we found more than 100 but, over a wider area, there should be thousands.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10773020
Add that to the loss of sea ice and it seems clear that things are progressing more like we have gone over a cliff than down a nice slope.
December 18th, 2012 at 6:04 pm
On Vesuvius
The 79 AD eruption was preceded by a powerful earthquake seventeen years beforehand on February 5, AD 62, which caused widespread destruction around the Bay of Naples, and particularly to Pompeii.[33] Some of the damage had still not been repaired when the volcano erupted.[34] The deaths of 600 sheep from “tainted air” in the vicinity of Pompeii indicates that the earthquake of 62 may have been related to new activity by Vesuvius[35]
The Romans grew accustomed to minor earth tremors in the region; the writer Pliny the Younger even wrote that they “were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania”. Small earthquakes started taking place on August 20, 79[34] becoming more frequent over the next four days, but the warnings were not recognised.[36] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Vesuvius#Casualties_from_the_eruption
The ground has rumbled before
Its getting to be a bore
Destruction – not here
Nothing to fear
Oops do I hear a loud roar.
December 18th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Wouldn’t it be super keen
If the future had a routine
To finish our scene
In a way that’s serene
Like where Sol went in “Soylent Green?”
December 18th, 2012 at 7:11 pm
Kathy C Says:
The ground has rumbled before
Its getting to be a bore
Destruction – not here
Nothing to fear
Oops do I hear a loud roar.
Another event to deplore:
See the small bloodied clothes that they wore;
And we’re going to see more?
Is that what’s in store?
Oh well, we’ve been here before.
December 18th, 2012 at 7:12 pm
.
I’m not the front man, the head
Of our jamming on music of dread;
I’m am a sideman whose style
Is, once in a while,
To riff on on what somebody said.
December 18th, 2012 at 7:13 pm
So much sad talk of suicide. I wish some of you would take a leaf out of ulvfugl’s Welsh compatriot’s book in this matter.
If any of you ever did decide enough was enough, you would have arrived at the most empowering decision you could ever make. Couldn’t you find something useful to achieve by your death rather than going out with a whimper at home alone?
December 18th, 2012 at 7:27 pm
Has anyone wondered what the prospects (and degree) are for a recovery of life on the earth after the carbon finally gets out of the atmosphere and the oceans recover(??). I mean, even if basic life was able to evolve again, could there ever be intelligent beings capable of technology or such (of course, we know that can be a curse)? We have not only harmed the ‘software’ of the planet like forests and so forth but also the ‘hardware’ and geology (the minerals and ore deposits, fossil fuels, soil sediments). Can these ever be replaced since they only came about from the formation of the earth itself? I suppose that massive volcano eruptions could make new mountains and redistribute sediments for soils, but how much of what we have destroyed was a ‘one stop shop’ from the earth’s original formation? I am not versed enough in this area to know the answer.
December 18th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Radio EcoShock podcast:
Climate: Arctic Thermostat Blows Up
December 18th, 2012 at 8:21 pm
Bailey, I can’t claim to be well versed in planet science either, but from what little I have studied, intuitively, it seems to me the earth will recover.
The building blocks for life completely saturate this planet. And, the planet has been much, much hotter in the past, including at one point entirely molten. Of course, things were very different at the birth of our solar system than they are now, but I see no reason that if life arose from those harsh conditions (admittedly it took a billion years or so), that it won’t do it again.
I know that some here think we are headed toward Venus 2.0. Personally, I don’t believe that will happen, at least not permanently. Our distance from the Sun is such that the amount of energy coming into the system isn’t sufficient to override the amount of energy lost to space over the long run. It will almost certainly get too hot for any advanced lifeforms for the foreseeable future. But, with time, as the carbon begins to work itself back out of the atmosphere, enough energy will radiate back to space that the planet will slowly cool and return to a temperature range that is more hospitable to complex lifeforms.
One of the things about making predictions such as these: none of us will be around to find out if I’m right.
December 18th, 2012 at 8:28 pm
Thanks Dr. See, I was planning on reincarnating into a suitable creature ASAP and was wanting to know how long I needed to remain in stasis
December 18th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
@ some
Maybe for some, a quick refresher is needed to remind you of who’s blog you’re posting on. This is the blog of someone who has stated, as he continually states, that he believes all of life on earth, will most likely be extinct well before mid century. If this is something you don’t agree with, then this raises the question of why you are spending time here? Because it makes zero sense as to why anyone would take issue with others conversation about making sane, rational decisions in regards to taking our own life when the time comes, in lieu of either being killed or starving to death. Sorry if this makes you sad. But personally, I find NTE to be infinitely more troubling……..don’t you?
December 18th, 2012 at 8:49 pm
Bailey Says: …could there ever be intelligent beings capable of technology…?
==
“With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance, and one chance only.”
– Sir Fred Hoyle, “Of Men and Galaxies”
Look on our works, and despair!
The resources are no more there;
To support such advance,
There is only one chance:
This is a one-shot affair.
December 18th, 2012 at 8:56 pm
The not-so-slow creep of martial law strikes about 15 miles from my home . . .
(FWIW: the city is 98% white.)
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/crime/paragould-arkansas-police-check-everyones-id-2013
Paragould, Arkansas has only 25,000 people, but is one of the most dangerous towns in America.
According to statistics from city-data.com, Paragould has had a property crime index rating that is more than double the national average since 2007. Rapes, burglaries, thefts and assaults are also above the national average.
At a town hall meeting, last Thursday, Mayor Mike Gaskill and Police Chief Todd Stovall endorsed a plan to send police in SWAT gear and carrying AR-15s into downtown Paragould starting in 2013, reports the Paragould Daily Press.
Chief Stovall told the Paragould Daily Press: “This fear is what’s given us the reason to do this. Once I have stats and people saying they’re scared, we can do this. It allows us to do what we’re fixing to do.”
“If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask why you’re out walking, check for your ID. To ask you for your ID, I have to have a reason.”
“Well, I’ve got statistical reasons that say I’ve got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to ask what you’re doing out. Then when I add that people are scared…then that gives us even more [reason] to ask why are you here and what are you doing in this area.”
Mayor Gaskill added: “They may not be doing anything but walking their dog, but they’re going to have to prove it.”
Chief Stovall explained how martial law will work under his Street Crimes Unit: “We will be asking for picture identification. We will be ascertaining where the subject lives and what they are doing in the area. We will be keeping a record of those we contact.”
December 18th, 2012 at 8:58 pm
@ BtD
Absolutely wonderful stuff. While I don’t comment on them, I do read them all…….please keep it up. I love it!!!
December 18th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
@ TVT
You stated:
“……i think much more discussion of suicide, here or perhaps elsewhere, as a response to the ‘doom’ we face, if done with skill, might become quite popular and serve, like nothing else could, to emphasize to curious, intelligent, open minded seekers of knowledge just how desperate our predicament has become….”
Well said, I applaud your honesty and courage in being able to take NTE by the horns and deduce it down to its core consequences.
Acceptance of NTE, is acceptance of our near term death. That death will come in one of five ways: Natural causes, accident, predation, starvation and suicide. If we’re perhaps in our 70′s then there is still a chance we’ll die of natural causes. Death by accident is statistically irrelevant. That leaves the last three, and I would just love to hear from anyone, as to why they think predation or starvation in the face of NTE is the wiser choice.
BTW, I second your suggestion.
December 18th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
Daniel, I guess it depends on what you define as “accidental” or “predation”, but I think in the near term, war is likely to kill many, many people. Probably more than any other cause of early death. One well-placed nuclear bomb can wipe out millions in an instant, as we’ve seen before. Disease, also, is very likely to wipe out millions in a short period of time.
I know that wasn’t your point, but IMO, war and disease can’t be left out as significant causes of death when considering humanity’s future.
To your point, however, suicide is certainly a valid option for some and may become more so as time goes on. However, for myself, suicide has never been something that I’ve ever been able to consider for more than an academic exercise.
For the same reason that I wish I didn’t have to sleep, I never want to miss anything. For me there is always something new and exciting to discover. Even if it’s not good, I still feel compelled not to miss anything. I recognize that this is coming from the perspective of someone who has always had a relatively comfortable need-free life. My view certainly may change as my own circumstances change to something less desirable.
December 18th, 2012 at 10:10 pm
@ TRDH
Good points. I would put war under predation and disease……natural causes? But then again, if the expansion of vectors is a result of AGW, then I would suppose that would be classified as a massively indirect form of passive suicide?
Anyway, I don’t think anyone here, who is openly talking about suicide in context to NTE, is actually suicidal. I believe we all love this life and want to be around for as long as this life is worth living. The point is, we just learned only about seven months ago, that that might not be all that long!
December 18th, 2012 at 11:04 pm
@ Daniel
Thank you very much. You are an inspiration.
December 18th, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Daniel, you know I appreciate your words, all of them.
How can I let such neo-self-determinism strip me of all the useless baggage I still habitually carry out of fear and obligation? How can I truly embrace the precious time I have left? Is this not the very next question we ask ourselves, the moment we accept NTE to be a reality?
I think all the time about the precious time we have left. It makes every day simultaneously blindingly bright and still deeply painful. My priorities have been reordered. All I care about is giving and receiving love, in every sense that that can be construed. Baggage is falling away.
There may come a time when my child has died and I haven’t yet, and so I don’t feel immune to this consideration of suicide. Of course there are also parents who commit suicide while their children are alive, but I can’t really see myself doing that; nevertheless, I’ve attempted suicide before, which is the strongest predictor for completed suicide, so who knows.
I don’t think anyone here, who is openly talking about suicide in context to NTE, is actually suicidal.
Hard to know. And I suspect there are quiet ones who are reading, who may well be actively suicidal. It fills me with compassion. I know how it feels. Torturous. I’m wishing them relief and offering a squeeze of the hand, virtual environment notwithstanding.
December 19th, 2012 at 2:33 am
I find NTE to be infinitely more troubling……..don’t you?
No.
December 19th, 2012 at 3:27 am
My parents both attended Middlebury College back in the 1930s. They discussed things like we discuss even back then. So I was indoctrinated at an early age and have been troubled about running out of stuff all my life. Fuel and food nutrients were the main items. Farmers buy a lot of both. People think fertilizer increases plant growth. It only fills in the void caused by flushing the nutrients, never to be seen again. We have a steady source of energy from the sun that is dependable but there is no new source of food nutrients. They should have been recycled. Man is the only species that doesn’t do that. One more of our failures. And, we are the only species that caused a mass extinction by burning fuel. Any second grader can figure these things out. We lied about it.
December 19th, 2012 at 3:28 am
We are programmed to try stay alive
We are programmed to pass on our genes
Death means we can’t accomplish the first – many people find that program waning if their life is very painful, or they know they are near death from age or disease.
Extinction means the end of passing on our genes. Some already are finding that program waning.
Extinction means more than that to most people. It is the unthinkable because we know we are mortal but have never faced species mortality (despite the fact that we have brought so many other species to their extinction early). Among the many ways we deal with that is to think that our genes live on, our books and music live on, our memory will live on, etc. Talking about extinction removes even that hedge against meaninglessness.
All the more reason to do as Jennifer and others have suggested. Make today count, make today good for yourself and someone else.
December 19th, 2012 at 3:31 am
And even if one is scientific about it, there is the Heat death of the universe
Either way, religion or science, it is pretty much the same conclusion.
December 19th, 2012 at 3:43 am
The reason why superstition masquerading as religion offers so little help in dealing with NTE is because it posits two destinations where one will stay eternally: he/eaven/ll. But everything in the realm of time & space is transient: that is reflected in the First Feature of Existence: “All composite things are transient”.
December 19th, 2012 at 3:55 am
People think fertilizer increases plant growth. It only fills in the void caused by flushing the nutrients, never to be seen again. We have a steady source of energy from the sun that is dependable but there is no new source of food nutrients. They should have been recycled. Man is the only species that doesn’t do that. One more of our failures.
Terra Preta.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060301090431.htm
December 19th, 2012 at 3:56 am
Most Americans probably don’t realized how important the Mississippi still is to transport. Last year with the flooding the worry was that the Mississippi might take a new route to the Gulf, which would divert it from industries along its lower banks and leave the port in LA unusable.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2011/05/16/is-this-the-year-the-atchafalaya-river-captures-the-mississippi/
December 19th, 2012 at 3:57 am
This year it is becoming so low that major work is having to be done to keep it navigable and disputes with the Corp about releases of water from the Missouri River are heating up
“At the New Madrid gauge in New Madrid, Mo., the Mississippi reached a record high of 48.35 feet on May 6, 2011. Just 15 months later, on Aug. 30, 2012, the gauge reading dropped to a record low of minus 5.32 feet. (River gauges are calibrated to a particular elevation, known as a “zero datum,” which means that they don’t always equal the depth of water in the channel. So in this case, the record low was 5.32 feet below the zero-datum elevation at New Madrid.)
The New Madrid gauge is downstream from where the Ohio River empties into the Mississippi, and it is currently running close to 14 feet, which is not problematic for shipping.
In other parts of the river, though, water levels are already low enough that shippers have had to cut back on the number of barges that they are running, as well as the amount of goods on each barge. The low flows north of the intersection of the Ohio River and the Mississippi also have the potential to stymie river borne commerce altogether.
In particular, the approximately 180-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Cairo, Ill., and St. Louis is of the most concern for low-water levels, according to Victor Murphy, climate services program manager for the National Weather Service’s Southern Region in Dallas. The low water in the area is in stark contrast to 2011, when the Army Corps of Engineers was forced to blow up a levee near Cairo, flooding farmland, in order to save the town from devastating flooding.
One especially treacherous low-water section of the Mississippi is currently located near the town of Thebes, Mo., where submerged rocks, known as “pinnacles,” jab toward the surface of the river, threatening to ground passing vessels.”
Rest at http://www.climatecentral.org/news/one-year-after-flood-drought-threatens-mississippi-river-commerce-15369
Welcome to the new normal, ie nothing will be NORMAL ever again except for chaos.
December 19th, 2012 at 4:24 am
That eschatology thing…
…They believe that God has returned to earth as a woman, “born to an ordinary family in the Northern part of China”…to guide mankind for the third and last time…the first and second times of active guidance of mankind were as Jehovah of the Old Testament and as Jesus in the New Testament…The group teaches that a woman self-styled “Lightning Deng”…is the second Christ. Her most widely distributed book, Lightning from the Orient…is the Word of God. The book claimed the first coming of Christ was to redeem humanity, while the second is to conquer men’s hearts and defeat Satan. Those who do not accept her words would die a terrible death…..one belief expressed in Eastern Lightning’s literature is that the world will end on December 21, 2012….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Lightning
December 19th, 2012 at 4:43 am
Single Microbe May Have Triggered World’s Largest Mass Extinction
December 19th, 2012 at 6:32 am
Guy, you have competition. Less content, different style
I present Rev. Billy from the Church of the Stop Shopping and famous for (in select circles) his movie “What would Jesus Buy”
Reverend Billy’s Freakstorm: The End Of The World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj1XByBvOTQ
December 19th, 2012 at 7:01 am
Wheat crop nearing dire straits (12/1/2012) By Andy Vance
Almost any way you slice it, the U.S. wheat crop is in sad shape. In fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture pegged the crop as the poorest at this stage in development since the agency started tracking crop condition ratings 25 years ago.
http://www.feedstuffsfoodlink.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=news&mod=News&mid=9A02E3B96F2A415ABC72CB5F516B4C10&tier=3&nid=74D35097A2A04DE9BAE874A451686E32
December 19th, 2012 at 7:22 am
Here in the northeast, we had better corn yields than the corn belt had. However, 90% of apples were lost and the hay crop was low in protein and fiber digestibility. We can solve this by feeding more soy which didn’t grow so well either. These additional costs will be passed on to the consumer. If we don’t make a profit, we quit (or they shut us down). No bailouts here.
December 19th, 2012 at 7:22 am
The same report that Kathy posted, in the Independent :
However, with the melting of Arctic sea ice and permafrost, the huge stores of methane that have been locked away underground for many thousands of years might be released over a relatively short period of time, Dr Shakhova said.
“I am concerned about this process, I am really concerned. But no-one can tell the timescale of catastrophic releases. There is a probability of future massive releases might occur within the decadal scale, but to be more accurate about how high that probability is, we just don’t know,” Dr Shakova said.
“Methane released from the Arctic shelf deposits contributes to global increase and the best evidence for that is the higher concentration of atmospheric methane above the Arctic Ocean,” she said.
“The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries from 0.7 parts per million to 1.7ppm, and in the Arctic to 1.9ppm. That’s a huge increase, between two and three times, and this has never happened in the history of the planet,” she added.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vast-methane-plumes-seen-in-arctic-ocean-as-sea-ice-retreats-6276278.html
December 19th, 2012 at 7:40 am
Daniel
I read NBL primarily because I share many of Guy’s beliefs and because I find NBL educational. I also find NBL entertaining, although I expect my being entertained will offend some.
I wasn’t aware belief in NTE extinction was a pre-requisite of reading NBL.
Why do you read NBL?
I find NTE to be infinitely more troubling……..don’t you?
Not in the slightest. I don’t spend time worrying over something I can’t change. I must admit I have problems understanding why NTE extinction is troubling as opposed to one’s own inevitable death. I believe that humanity doesn’t deserve to survive and the earth is better off without us. This DOES NOT mean I don’t want to live or that I don’t want to enjoy life.
I would just love to hear from anyone, as to why they think predation or starvation in the face of NTE is the wiser choice.
Then you shall. From my point of view predation is better than starvation or suicide because I want to live and that way I might get to go on living longer. I think you will find this is common amongst most living things outside of NBL. If you don’t want to live at the expense of others then why are you still alive? All of us are predators. Because of your life billions of other living creatures have died, including thousands (at least) of vertebrates. Or is only human life important to you, in which case what business have you reading NBL when you don’t share the belief of most here in the importance of all life forms?
December 19th, 2012 at 7:41 am
It’s like the earth is going to vomit. I would too if I had to breath all that exhaust. Where’s the empathy for Mother Earth?
December 19th, 2012 at 8:10 am
Being one who has had much life long struggle with existential angst, meaning, and all that jazz (especially with the intuitive knowledge of human state), I find the subject matter here almost a form of ‘closure’ to the way I feel.
Re suicide: I agree that there are probably not many here that would even entertain such for the reasons most of society does; Trying to get attention, breaking up with the girlfriend yada yada. Personally, I entertain the thought (and means) for academic reasons because I feel that regardless of the cause, there are times when/if the quality of life dictates it, that it is a reasonable thing (marine mammals beach themselves, other species starve themselves etc). Why not have a serious discussion about this among folks who would never consider it unless it was the only humane course of action?
Personally, I find solace here among like minded folks in regard to the human condition and NTE. As a species, we needed to have 64 bit operating systems in light of the problems we have created, but are still more primitive than MS DOS in regards to emotions and wisdom. I would like to see a discussion group (yahoo or otherwise) come forth from us doomers and NTEers.
December 19th, 2012 at 8:47 am
Guy,
In your “twin sides of the fossil fuel coin” presentation, I’m curious as to why you limited your ending advice to the audience regarding action to planting a garden. Was it just a time-constraint issue, or do you think that additional options, such as becoming seriously involved in reforestation efforts or “rewilding” projects is no longer worth people’s time or efforts at this point.
December 19th, 2012 at 8:49 am
Arthur Johnson, I was simply out of time. As I’ve said and written many times, there are multiple routes to resistance. But that’s another hour of presentation time.
December 19th, 2012 at 9:10 am
The way it’s the sixties is strange:
We think things will soon rearrange;
Then the future seemed fun
And this time there’s none,
But both represent cusps of change.
December 19th, 2012 at 9:40 am
People with ‘existential angst, meaning, and all that jazz’, Bailey’s line,
. might find this video interesting, people with cancer, Parkinson’s, Terrence McKenna’s phrase, ‘you might die of astonishment’, etc…
http://vimeo.com/32460413
December 19th, 2012 at 10:53 am
@ Yorchichan
The fact that you don’t find NTE of all of life on earth to be disturbing “in the slightest”.
You got me. I haven’t anything to say to that.
December 19th, 2012 at 11:00 am
Hedges pointing out that even the BANKS get it:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/stand_still_for_the_apocalypse_20121126/
We also know that the insurance industry sees what’s coming, the military has warnings out about it and others seem to come around to what’s happening every week or so. Still, business as usual. Amazing how sluggish we are to react to going over the falls – it’s like we’re reading the paper (about what’s to come) while lying on our back on an inner tube picking up speed but enjoying the ride.
December 19th, 2012 at 11:53 am
I caught Guy’s comment to Club Orlov. Even Dmitry thinks growth of population and industry are just great. Most commenters, too.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
December 19th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
OzMan, sorry I just saw your questions. I came across a rather astounding draft report from the EPA, specifically about ozone causing “loss of biomass” so I have been immersed in that for several days (linked is here: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/12/no-one-knows-where-this-will-lead_19.html)
Anyway:
1. yes it’s more than likely that the Southern Hemisphere has less ozone, because there is much more ocean and less land where people are burning fuel and emitting precursors. On the other hand, there are plenty of reports of forest dieback in Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South America (see above link for research on that).
2. As to your holly, there are two aspects to consider. One is that just because you don’t see visible damage doesn’t mean it isn’t occurring. In fact it’s well documented that C allocation to roots is reduced when leaves absorb ozone, because the damage to foliage has to be repaired and over time it weakens the plant. The other consideration is that probably the most important effect of ozone is that it compromised the natural immunity that vegetation has from insects, disease and fungus. Those pathogens are part of the ecosystem and they exist to break down dying plants and return nutrients to the soil. But when plants are suffering from absorbing pollution, those pathogens go wild. It’s much like AIDS, where one victim may die because they happen to contract pneumonia, and another lives longer because they are lucky and don’t come into contact with a germ. So some trees fare better than others, depending on what might happen to be around to prey on them.
Personally, I think they’re all doomed, it’s just a question of time.
3. Altitude certainly makes a difference. Ozone levels are variable depending on meteorological conditions too. Fog and clouds can be very acidic from SOx and so sometimes trees that live in foggy conditions – like the Great Smoky Mountains of the US – suffer far more damage than trees at lower altitudes that aren’t foggy.
Hope that “helps”, heh.
December 19th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Dmitri Orlov does appear to have recently started smoking hopium.
December 19th, 2012 at 12:59 pm
Here is the link to the comment
December 19th, 2012 at 1:15 pm
I’ve posted a new essay, courtesy of Greg Robie. It’s here.
December 19th, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Here’s a working link to Gail’s excellent post on her “Wit’s End’ blog:
No One Knows Where This Will Lead
December 19th, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Arthur, I was told on another blog that Dmitry got a new boat because his family size had increased. I checked out the post and while he doesn’t say he and his wife had a baby he doesn’t say what caused the family size to increase. Assuming it was a baby, well parents of young children look harder for any piece of hope they can find. Jennifer has eloquently spoken to the difficulties of facing NTE when you have a young child.
No, we haven’t given up on living aboard, but we did buy a bigger boat, a Pearson 365. The new boat’s name is Prince Kropotkin. Our family has grown and Hogfish is simply too small for us. And so, Hogfish is going to some other yet-to-be-identified happy Hogfish owner.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2012/11/sv-hogfish-is-for-sale.html#more
Too bad that hoping isn’t magic eh? For my part I prefer reality.
Suggested viewing for end times
Runaway Train “Two escaped convicts and a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a train with no brakes and nobody driving.”
December 19th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Daniel
You got me. I haven’t anything to say to that.
I notice you don’t have anything to say about your hypocrisy, why you value human life so much more than non-human life or choosing to fight for survival rather than laying down to die either.
December 19th, 2012 at 6:56 pm
@ Yochichan
I see no point in arguing against your false assumptions and accusations. Take care….
December 19th, 2012 at 8:36 pm
posted by an anonymous commenter in response to a story at Desdemona Despair. It’s a slightly modified version of the original article about polar bears.
This is why I think suicide may become a reasonable option:
On January 24, 2024, in the sweltering heat of an American spring, wildlife biologist Steve Amtop rode in a helicopter flying low over the parched ground. Using an infrared heat detector, he hoped to find some human survivors in abandoned houses. When the gun recorded a hit, Amtop circled around for a closer look. What confronted him was something he had never seen in the past 20 years of research. Outside a wrecked house, a smear of bright-red blood stretched away for more than 200 feet. At the end of a long drag trail through dried weeds lay the still-warm body of a human female. The air temperature was over a 110 degrees above; the woman could not have been dead for more than 12 hours.
Humans do not have natural enemies except each other. A male human can weigh over 250 pounds or more. They are the unchallenged master predators in every environment on Earth. A full-grown human slaughtered in her home for food is considered far outside the ordinary.
Amtop and his team returned by on foot. The dead female had multiple wounds to her neck and head, and the ground was stained by heavy arterial bleeding. Her skull had been pierced by a long knife that slammed into her brain. Her hindquarter, belly, and mammaries were partially eaten. Long strips of meat were removed from her back and legs.
Inside the wrecked home, Amtop found two tiny children, each weighing less than five pounds from malnutrition. Both were dead, suffocated by the collapsed walls of the ruined house. A single set of footprints in the dust led directly to the house. The footprints followed the typical hunting pattern — the stalker meandered around in a wide arc, then beelined for the spot where the mother and children were hiding. There was only one explanation for this carnage: the mother and kids had been killed by another human.
Cannibalism is not normal human behavior. Over the course of that single season, Amtop witnessed two additional instances of human cannibalism with many more unconfirmed reports coming in from around the once prosperous nation. Having never seen anything like this, he was shocked to stumble across three separate incidents in one year. But as he spoke to colleagues, he found that cannibalism was becoming more common among the human survivors in North America. In the ruins of New York City alone, 450 miles to the north, thirty three small children had been found dead inside their homes. Most had been eaten. Although humans often kill each other, these were the first recorded instances in which the killing took place for food. Starvation was the reason.
The past decade has been particularly difficult for human survivors. The summers of 2018, 2019, and 2020 saw a sharp increase in massive levels of drought, with some areas being hit with significant flooding. Between 2015 and 2020, scientists estimated that the local human population had plummeted from hundreds of millions in North America to less then 300,000. Around the nation, the pattern was consistent, with huge levels of die-off and depopulation.
Scientists were building the case that human survival was now the last “event” in a long series of calamities directly attributable to global warming and the complete failure of the world governments to address this issue when there was still time.
Amtop, who had written many of the papers detailing the precipitous decline, was beginning to understand the horrifying carnage; humans were turning to cannibalism because they were literally starving to death. The environment had been completely denuded and stripped of all life, there was nothing else left to eat.
December 20th, 2012 at 4:03 pm
Gail, that’s an interesting story. Here’s a poem I wrote last year:
We had our chance, you know
We knew it was coming
We knew how to make it stop
We knew what we were doing was wrong
We knew what we had to do to get it right
But that was far in the future
It wasn’t all that bad right now
We can still feed all those animals
And they’ll feed us in turn
Until they won’t
It was a disaster, a freak of nature
A once-in-a-hundred-year winter
No one could have predicted it
And the world watched on TV
Mouths agape at the horror
Until another disaster, and another
Captured the attention of those watchers
And they sent money to those
Whose religion they shared
And not to those that didn’t believe
Then the gasoline stopped coming
And the reporters left
And spring brought more death
The animals had no offspring
And the children starved
No females had any milk
No grass grew in any field
No elders lived to tell us how
This happened, or
What we should do now
So we walked away
The few of us who were left
We took the last few animals
And plucked grass for them
And for us to eat
Then we knew what we did wrong
Then we knew what we had to do right
We knew how many babies
Could survive on this land
And how many we had to kill
December 23rd, 2012 at 11:09 pm
Thank you for continuing to post, Guy. Your posts keep me from going crazy, and they help me enjoy the life that remains for me before I run out of the medications that keep me alive, the financial system collapses, food stops being delivered, the nuclear reactors melt down, and most species go extinct. I was comforted to read of your pattern for dealing with despair–alternating the mud hut and the road. I have fallen into the pattern of withdrawing to my garden and the nearby forest to mourn the death of the planet, and then emerging to enjoy the life I have with my friends and family.
January 7th, 2013 at 11:11 am
I stumbled upon peak oil in 2005 and have struggled ever since with the implications which have only gotten more dire. Guy M and to a lesser degree, Nicole Foss paint the picture most starkly. We are going to die, now we expect to die sooner, as a species, a lot sooner. Of course we all harbour the non-rational delight that we will be among the lucky ones who escape the worst. I for example don’t live in the Niger Delta.
I have read much of this thread and the prior one too. Why bother knowing about permaculture or farming organically (as I do) when it’s pointless as a means to avoid calamity?
For me that’s the same as asking why bother living (whatever rich and fulfilling life one chooses) if you know you are going to die? So yes we all know we are going to die, it’s just a long way still in the future we think, but we don’t and can’t know for sure; it could be today by some car accident. I have a 90 yr old friend who still looks for ways to live a good life and contribute to a peaceable world, he’s not waiting around to die. That, my friends is the only answer I can think of to the abject despair written by people here that Guy is too abysmal and his motives are too obscure. Even if we know we are going to die, we can still live a life worth living while we are here. IF that is permaculture farming so be it, for that is a noble goal, it has an ethical morality behind it. If that defined life is riotous debauchery aka large carbon bootprint and energy profligacy, it is not ethical or moral and there are no likely personal consequences for that immorality. Except one’s conscience. And even then we can not listen.
February 12th, 2013 at 12:21 pm
Just a very general reflection on the power of your words.