Updated regularly, and most recently 16 May 2013
American actress Lily Tomlin is credited with the expression, “No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” With respect to climate science, my own efforts to stay abreast are blown away every week by new data, models, and assessments. It seems no matter how dire the situation becomes, it only gets worse when I check the latest reports.
The response of politicians, heads of non-governmental organizations, and corporate leaders remains the same. They’re mired in the dank Swamp of Nothingness. These are the people who know about, and presumably could do something about, our ongoing race to disaster (if only to sound the alarm). Tomlin’s line is never more germane than when thinking about their pursuit of a buck at the expense of life on Earth.
Worse than the aforementioned trolls are the media. Fully captured by corporations and the corporate states, the media continue to dance around the issue of climate change. Occasionally a forthright piece is published, but it generally points in the wrong direction, such as suggesting climate scientists and activists be killed (e.g., James Delingpole’s 7 April 2013 hate-filled article in the Telegraph).
Even mainstream scientists minimize the message at every turn. As we’ve known for years, scientists almost invariably underplay climate impacts. I’m not implying conspiracy. Science selects for conservatism. Academia selects for extreme conservatism. These folks are loathe to risk drawing undue attention to themselves by pointing out there might be a threat to civilization. Never mind the near-term threat to our entire species (they couldn’t care less about other species). If the truth is dire, they can find another, not-so-dire version.
If you’re too busy to read the evidence presented below, here’s the bottom line: On a planet 4 C hotter than baseline, all we can prepare for is human extinction (from Oliver Tickell’s 2008 synthesis in the Guardian). According to an informed assessment of BP’s Energy Outlook 2030, published in January 2013, global average temperature of Earth will hit the 4 C mark in 2030. These assessments consider neither collapse nor self-reinforcing feedback loops. In the face of near-term human extinction, Americans view the threat as distant and irrelevant, as illustrated by a 22 April 2013 article in the Washington Post based on poll results that echo the long-held sentiment that elected officials should be focused on the industrial economy, not far-away minor nuisances such as climate change.
This essay brings attention to recent projections and positive feedbacks. I presented much of this information at the Bluegrass Bioneers conference (Alex Smith at Radio Ecoshock evaluates my presentation here). More recently, I presented an updated version on the campus of the University of Massachusetts. All information and sources are readily confirmed with an online search, and links to information about feedbacks can be found here.
Large-scale assessments
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (late 2007): 1 C by 2100
Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research (late 2008): 2 C by 2100
United Nations Environment Programme (mid 2009): 3.5 C by 2100
Hadley Centre for Meteorological Research (October 2009): 4 C by 2060
Global Carbon Project, Copenhagen Diagnosis (November 2009): 6 C, 7 C by 2100
International Energy Agency (November 2010): 3.5 C by 2035
United Nations Environment Programme (December 2010): up to 5 C by 2050
These assessments fail to account for significant self-reinforcing feedback loops (i.e., positive feedbacks, the term that implies the opposite of its meaning). The IPCC’s vaunted Fifth Assessment will continue the trend as it, too, ignores important feedbacks. On a positive note, major assessments fail to account for economic collapse. However, due to the feedback loops presented below, I strongly suspect it’s too late for economic collapse to extend the run of our species.
Taking a broad view
Astrophysicists have long believed Earth was near the center of the habitable zone for humans. Recent research published in the 10 March 2013 issue of Astrophysical Journal indicates Earth is on the inner edge of the habitable zone, and lies within 1% of inhabitability (1.5 million km, or 5 times the distance from Earth to Earth’s moon). A minor change in Earth’s atmosphere removes human habitat. Unfortunately, we’ve invoked major changes.
The northern hemisphere is particularly susceptible to acclerated warming, as explained in the 8 April 2013 issue of Journal of Climate. Two days later, a paper in Nature confirmed that summers in the northern hemisphere are hotter than they’ve been for 600 years. As pointed out by Sherwood and Huber in the 25 May 2012 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and then by James Hansen points out in his 15 April 2013 paper, humans cannot survive a wet-bulb temperature of 35 C (95 F).
As pointed out by the United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases in 1990, “Beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage” (link mirrored here). Planetary instruments indicate Earth has warmed about 1 C since the beginning of the industrial revolution. However, plants in the vicinity of Concord, Massachusetts — where the instrumental record indicates warming of about 1 C — indicate warming of 2.4 C since the 1840s.
Whether you believe the plants or the instruments is irrelevant at the point. We’ve clearly triggered the types of positive feedbacks the United Nations warned about in 1990. Yet my colleagues and acquaintances think we can and will work our way out of this horrific mess with permaculture (which is not to denigrate permaculture, the principles of which are implemented at the mud hut). Adding egregious insult to spurting wound, the latest public-education initiative in the United States — the Next Generation Science Standards — buries the relationship between combustion of fossil fuels and planetary warming. The misadventures of the corporate government continue.
Let’s ignore the models for a moment and consider only the results of a single briefing to the United Nations Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen (COP15). Regulars in this space will recall COP15 as the climate-change meetings thrown under the bus by the Obama administration. A footnote on that long-forgotten briefing contains this statement: “THE LONG-TERM SEA LEVEL THAT CORRESPONDS TO CURRENT CO2 CONCENTRATION IS ABOUT 23 METERS ABOVE TODAY’S LEVELS, AND THE TEMPERATURES WILL BE 6 DEGREES C OR MORE HIGHER. THESE ESTIMATES ARE BASED ON REAL LONG TERM CLIMATE RECORDS, NOT ON MODELS.”
In other words, Obama and others in his administration knew near-term extinction of humans was already guaranteed. Even before the dire feedbacks were reported by the scientific community, the Obama administration abandoned climate change as a significant issue because it knew we were done as early as 2009. Rather than shoulder the unenviable task of truth-teller, Obama did as his imperial higher-ups demanded: He lied about collapse, and he lied about climate change. And he still does.
Ah, those were the good ol’ days, back when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were below 400 parts per million (ppm). We’ll blow through the 400 ppm mark soon, probably for the first time in 3.2 to 5 million years.
Positive feedbacks
Methane hydrates are bubbling out the Arctic Ocean (Science, March 2010)
Warm Atlantic water is defrosting the Arctic as it shoots through the Fram Strait (Science, January 2011). This breakdown of the thermohaline conveyor belt is happening in the Antarctic as well.
Siberian methane vents have increased in size from less than a meter across in the summer of 2010 to about a kilometer across in 2011 (Tellus, February 2011)
Drought in the Amazon triggered the release of more carbon than the United States in 2010 (Science, February 2011)
Peat in the world’s boreal forests is decomposing at an astonishing rate (Nature Communications, November 2011)
Methane is being released from the Antarctic, too (Nature, August 2012)
Russian forest and bog fires are growing (NASA, August 2012)
Cracking of glaciers accelerates in the presence of increased carbon dioxide (Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, October 2012)
The Beauford Gyre apparently has reversed course (U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, October 2012)
Exposure to sunlight increases bacterial conversion of exposed soil carbon, thus accelerating thawing of the permafrost (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 2013)
Summer ice melt in Antarctica is at its highest level in a thousand years: Summer ice in the Antarctic is melting 10 times quicker than it was 600 years ago, with the most rapid melt occurring in the last 50 years (Nature Geoscience, April 2013)
Arctic drilling was fast-tracked by the Obama administration during the summer of 2012
As nearly as I can distinguish, only the latter feedback process is reversible. Once you pull the tab on the can of beer, there’s no keeping the carbon dioxide from bubbling up and out. Because we’ve entered the era of expensive oil, I can’t imagine we’ll voluntarily terminate the process of drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic (or anywhere else).
See how far we’ve come
Never mind that American naturalist George Perkins Marsh predicted anthropogenic climate change as a result of burning fossil fuels in 1847. Never mind that climate risks have been underestimated for the last 20 Years, or that the IPCC’s efforts have failed miserably. After all, climate scientist Kevin Anderson tells us what I’ve known for years: politicians and the scientists writing official reports on climate change are lying, and we have less time than most people can imagine. Never mind David Wasdell pointed out in 2008 that we must have a period of negative radiative forcing merely to end up with a stable, non-catastrophic climate system. Never mind that even the Atlantic is displaying “five charts about climate change that should have you very, very worried.” Never mind that atmospheric carbon dioxide is affecting satellites. Never mind that even the occasional economic analyst is telling climate scientists to be persuasive, be brave, and be arrested. Never mind that Peruvian ice requiring 1,600 years to accumulate has melted in the last 25 years, according to a paper in the 4 April 2013 issue of Science. And never mind that warming in the interior of large continents in the northern hemisphere has outstripped model predictions in racing to 6-7 C already, according to a paper that tallies temperature rise in China’s interior in the 15 May 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Never mind all that: Future temperatures likely will be at the higher end of the projected range because the forecasts are all too conservative and also because climate negotiations won’t avert catastrophe.
Through late March 2013, global oceans have risen approximately ten millimeters per year during the last two years. This rate of rise is over three times the rate of sea level rise during the time of satellite-based observations from 1993 to the present. Ocean temperatures are rising, and have been impacting global fisheries for four decades, according to the 16 May 2013 issue of Nature.
Actually, catastrophe is already here, although it’s not widely distributed in the United States. Well, not yet, even though the continental U.S. experienced its highest temperature ever in 2012, shattering the 1998 record by a full degree Fahrenheit. But the east coast of North America experienced its hottest water temperatures all the way to the bottom of the ocean. The epic dust bowl of 2012 grew and grew and grew all summer long. Even James Hansen and Makiko Sato are asking whether the loss of ice on Greenland has gone exponential (while ridiculously calling for a carbon tax to “fix” the “problem”), and the tentative answer is not promising, based on very recent data. And climate change causes early death of 400,000 people each year.
Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This warming has resulted about 90% of overall global warming going into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically, according to a paper published in the March 2013 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. About 30% of the ocean warming over the past decade has occurred in the deeper oceans below 700 meters, which is unprecedented over at least the past half century. The death spiral of Arctic sea ice is well under way, as shown in the video below.
Global loss of sea ice matches the trend in the Arctic. It’s down, down, and down some more, with the five lowest values on record all happening in the last seven years (through 2012).
Then see where we’re going
The climate situation is much worse than I’ve led you to believe, and is accelerating far more rapidly than accounted for by models. Ice sheet loss continues to increase at both poles, and warming of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is twice the earlier scientific estimate. Arctic ice at all-time low, half that of 1980, and the Arctic lost enough sea ice to cover Canada and Alaska in 2012 alone. In short, summer ice in the Arctic is nearly gone. Furthermore, the Arctic could well be free of ice by summer 2015, an event that last occurred some three million years ago, before the genus Homo walked the planet. Indeed, Arctic ice could be gone in 2013, as predicted by climate scientist Paul Beckwith. Among the consequences of declining Arctic ice is extremes in cold weather in northern continents (thus illustrating why “climate change” is a better term than “global warming”). In a turn surprising only to mainstream climate scientists, Greenland ice is melting rapidly.
Even the conservative International Energy Agency (IEA) has thrown in the towel, concluding that “renewable” energy is not keeping up with the old, dirty standard sources. As a result, the IEA report dated 17 April 2013 indicates the development of low-carbon energy is progressing too slowly to limit global warming.
The Arctic isn’t Vegas — what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic — it’s the planet’s air conditioner. Whereas nearly 80 calories are required to melt a gram of ice at 0 C, adding 80 calories to the same gram of water at 0 C increases its temperature to 80 C. Anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions add more than 2.5 trillion calories to Earth’s surface every hour (ca. 3 watts per square meter, continuously).
Ocean acidification associated with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is proceeding at an unprecedented rate and could trigger mass extinction by itself. Already, half the Great Barrier Reef has died during the last three decades. And ocean acidification is hardly the only threat on the climate-change front. As one little-discussed example, atmospheric oxygen levels are dropping to levels considered dangerous for humans.
An increasing number of scientists agree that warming of 4 to 6 C causes a dead planet. And, they go on to say, we’ll be there by 2060. The ultra-conservative International Energy Agency, on the other hand, concludes that, “coal will nearly overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017 … without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change.” At the 11:20 mark of this video, climate scientist Paul Beckwith indicates Earth could warm by 6 C within a decade. If you think his view is extreme, consider the reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years published in Science in March 2013. One result is shown in the figure below.
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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents, Goldilocks Zone, Seemorerocks, Climates of Canada, and Island Breath.
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Same-day notification: I’ve posted the following in the Classified section, and bring it to your attention here. I visited this community in July 2012, and I recommend it highly.
Atamai Village: A Resilient Community?
As Guy McPherson has so forcefully summarized in “The twin sides of the fossil fuel coin,” the science has progressed almost as fast as the climate chaos itself. The conclusion from that presentation is that our dear little planet is well on the way to extinguishing all life due to the rapid, unpredictable and non-linear changes we are now witnessing in real time. Projections based on the best current data indicate that life, all life, on planet earth will be extinguished by the middle of this century due to climate chaos – unless some very radical actions are taken on a massive scale.
Planning for Atamai Village began in 2006 with the intention of creating a human settlement that could deal with the challenges presented by climate chaos and energy descent, and all the social and economic implications that were to follow. That was one year prior to the IPCC coming out with its 4th Report identifying human created climate change as a serious issue.
While Atamai Village was well placed to deal with what we understood at the time was going to happen with climate change, Guy’s summary of the current situation means we, along with everyone else, need a major rethink. Our original plan was that we would establish a carbon neutral settlement for some 50 or so families that would see us relatively self-reliant in the same ways that traditional villages were and still are self-reliant. We intended to enhance our resilience by designing the village, based on a traditional model, using best practice permaculture principles.
While we have accomplished much in terms of enhancing our resilience to date, we and everyone else, are in a very different situation than we were a mere 6 years ago. The extinction of all life on the planet is not just another news item (although, interestingly it hasn’t even made the news!) It is as cataclysmic as it gets! It’s not only a big deal it would seem to be THE BIG DEAL and we need to take it seriously. A resilient community in NZ might be a good thing in itself, but it is not going to avert human extinction on its own, or the extinction of all life on the planet.
But we’ve made a start – earlier than most people and groups – and perhaps we have some contribution to make.
What have we accomplished so far?
We have:
• Acquired about 120 ha of land.
• Established a farm operation which is producing fruit and vegetables, has laying poultry, sheep and the beginning of a dairy herd.
• Established a community orchard and garden, and planted thousands of utility trees.
• Created ponds and dams and have done a water inventory of the land so we understand what additional resources we can tap into and what our limits are.
• Completed a permaculture design for the overall village, and created individual land sections each of which is able to support at least permaculture zones 0, 1 &2.
• Obtained permission from our local council to create approximately 40 titles for future villagers. Our plan is for at least 50 titles to eventually be available.
• Welcomed 9 families on site now, some housed in previously existing homes, and one in the first new house built to Atamai Building Guideline standards.
• Demonstrated that the Building Guidelines result in a comfortable dwelling that has almost no operating costs, which generates its own power and water and looks after its own wastes.
• Created a cycle path around the village residential area, so that it can function without cars (all paths are no more than a 10 degree incline).
• Created livelihood opportunities for some villagers and have more available for future villagers.
• Initiated a reforestation project that will increase carbon sequestration and provide future villagers with a variety of lumber for a variety of purposes.
• Created a Commons resource, which largely consists of the majority of land available, as well as equipment, tools and infrastructure.
• Created an Incorporated Society to own and manage the Commons collectively.
• Operated the Society on a consensus decision process since 2010.
• Developed a “layered technology” approach to basic services to ensure we have as much control over our essential technologies as possible for basics such as food, water, energy and shelter, while enjoying more sophisticated (and fragile) technologies while they last.
• Established several Working Groups to carry out Society tasks, including a Strategy Group to look at the big picture issues that will determine our future and the future of the planet.
• Created a small community to work together on our uncertain future. We recognize this is not a task to take on alone.
More details about our vision and what we have done so far are available at www.atamaivillage .com
We are under no illusions that what we have done will avert climate chaos, or protect us from the course of mass extinction we are all on. But we do believe we must keep trying to avert this disaster, and that we are better placed than most to work on the Mother of All Projects. As societies continue to falter under the impact of both Climate Chaos and Resource Depletion, everyone’s options to creatively contribute to adaption and appropriate responses will rapidly diminish. Ever increasing necessities and crisis will make it increasingly difficult to adapt. Atamai Village provides a setting of very high resilience that will keep functioning well beyond most other settlements.
In addition to the steps toward resilience described above, we believe we are well placed to work on this project for at least the following reasons:
• We are to a large degree aware of the problems and are attempting to face them honestly and squarely.
• We have actually made a start – and we have been at it for 6 years and given considerable thought to many aspects of the adaptations that are likely to be necessary, and researched how to approach many of the challenges we will be facing, and implemented them in our plans and built infrastructure
• We are in the Southern Hemisphere, where the impact of climate chaos will take longer than in the Northern Hemisphere – so we may have a few more years to work on these challenges than elsewhere.
• We have gathered people with a variety of skills and interests that are likely to be relevant to work on the challenges ahead.
• We are prepared to adapt our approaches to deal with the realities that are actually confronting us as they unfold.
• We are purposely disseminating and sharing what we have learned and what we might learn with our further attempts to deal with these challenges.
We fully recognize that humanity’s chances of collectively avoiding massive dieoff are low. But we believe there is both a moral and practical imperative in trying.
We intend to give it our best shot and invite anyone who feels they can make a tangible contribution to our efforts – with finances, with creativity and intelligence, with sweat and effort – to step forward and get on with it.
Send us your ideas and tell us about yourself, and ask any questions about how we are proceeding. http://www.atamaivillage.com/contact
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Many of you clearly understand the challenges that our world faces. Often that realization is accompanied by despair. An antidote to the despair that I have discovered is Action. My wife and I have been working full-time these past 14 years to create a sustainable existence on some beautiful land in Southern Utah … we raise our own veggies, herbs, fruit and animals for meat. We forage and hunt. We fix or rig everything ourselves. We repurpose things from the dump. We engage with the local community by selling and sharing our food, hosting musical events and workshops, showing movies in the barn and offering a tool library. We live very happily in these troubled times. I think the model we have created is similar to what Guy has been working on at the Mud Hut.
We have come to realize that the knowledge that we have gained these past years is starting to be sought by many so we have decided to offer a 7-month Apprenticeship for 2 people starting this April. It will be all-inclusive and cost $7,500. I wish we could offer it for free but I still do engage in the cash economy and know many do have the means to pay.
The nature of coming here to live, work and learn is intimate so there is no room for a lot of personal baggage … we are not therapists. We approach this work from a point of hope for the future, not despair for the past and present. You need to be in good physical condition but do not need to have any experience in Homesteading.
We will interview applicants to try to ensure that the chemistry will work between us. We encourage you to check references from folks who have worked for us in the past and we will ask you for personal references. Please check out the Apprenticeship Website at http://sustainableapprenticeship.weebly.com/
Kind Regards,
Scott and Brynn Brodie
Owners, Red House Farm
January 6th, 2013 at 8:51 am
Thank you for all of the links! So much to learn, so little time….
January 6th, 2013 at 8:59 am
Climate scientists keep being “surprised” by the facts on the ground. They should not indicate surprise but rather remorse for being so wrong, apparently in many cases deliberately wrong although no doubt they have marshaled the “science needs to be conservative” or “we won’t change people if we scare them too much” and such like arguments. Perhaps I misunderstand, but aren’t scientists supposed to find the reason when results don’t match theory?
The climate change deniers are joined by the slow climate change deniers in being proven wrong, inevitably dead wrong.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/05/1394711/2012-saw-362-all-time-record-high-temperatures-in-us-but-zero-all-time-record-lows/
362 all time high temperatures in US – zero all time record lows
Describing how off the charts our weather has become gets harder and harder. Fortunately, we have wunderground historian Christopher Burton to put things in perspective.
He tallies the data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in his recap of “the warmest calendar year on record for the continental U.S. according to NCDC data going back to 1895″
January 6th, 2013 at 9:04 am
I just stuck fork in myself, I think I am done…
January 6th, 2013 at 9:08 am
Jeeez!…. I had some hope going through economic collapse and peak oil, but climate change is getting too gnarly.
January 6th, 2013 at 9:18 am
Hi Guy,
Thanks for another clear summary.
One phrase that might trip people up is “positive feedbacks.” Unless you’re trained as a scientist, you might interpret that to mean “good things that are happening.” But, what you mean is, the bad things that are happening are being reinforced “positively” – meaning they (the bad things) are growing bigger (worser) faster and faster.
Thank you again for your persistence in trying to deepen this conversation.
January 6th, 2013 at 9:59 am
+ it is impossible to find water without toxic plastic anywhere in all the oceans + our garbage (which is eventually everything made with an incredible lot of plastics and other toxic components) is poisoning us and will soon bury us + some or all of our 400-500 nuclear power plants will go fukushima + epidemics are on their way + we are going through massive denudation (trees and all vegetation dying) + solar storms + + + + + + +
I don’t know if we are “meat robot”, but we certainly are digestive tubes. Transforming intake into shit at an alarming rate.
January 6th, 2013 at 10:33 am
Great job, Guy!
i’ll spread this post around in hopes people will become aware and clamor for change (not that it will help). i especially like linking your information on economic blogs to indicate that their party is coming to an end and that gold, silver and wealth of any kind will do nothing to stop what’s coming and will effect all life on earth (ie. there’s no “prepping” that’s gonna help in the long run).
January 6th, 2013 at 10:57 am
A former shell executive said this CO2 thingy was just a “waste disposal problem” that we need to work on.
http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/11/27/hofmeister-treat-climate-change-as-a-waste-management-problem/
Quote:
“The debate for me is over because I believe we have the technology available to us today to develop hydrocarbons and to use those hydrocarbons in ways in which we can use them fully and clean up after ourselves; with respect to physical waste, liquid waste, and gaseous waste.
So if we approach the issue of global warming/climate change as an issue of waste management – which I would prefer to do – rather than some kind of global crisis which remains undefined and unresolved. Let’s deal with what we know how to deal with. We know how to deal with waste.”
January 6th, 2013 at 11:07 am
Too Fucking Hot—Summary and Update
[Previously, on doom:]
Nice warm days sure hit the spot
(When it’s too cold, I stay home a lot),
But the heat will increase
And then much life will cease,
‘Cause it’s going to be too fucking hot.
We’ve worked ourselves into a spot
Where a look at the future we’ve got
Shows that feces and fans
Mean no point in big plans:
It’s going to be too fucking hot.
We’re like frogs being boiled in a pot,
And nothing will help a whole lot:
With the mess we’ve now got,
There’s no way to do squat;
It’s going to be too fucking hot.
I’m old, and I don’t know a lot,
And most things I knew, I forgot,
But one thing I know:
It will be time to go
When it gets to be too fucking hot.
[Update:]
Now that you’re up on the plot,
And you’re all pumped to take your best shot:
It’s not just a cliche,
So remember to say,
“It’s going to be too fucking hot!”
January 6th, 2013 at 11:35 am
Thanks for the great summary, Guy.
In the physical world it is all panning out much as I and numerous others have been warning about for more than a decade, i.e. burn the next generation’s future. In the political world it is now plain for all to see that we are governed by clowns and criminals -mostly criminals.
I have been thinking a lot about the local government so-called 10 year plan while I work on landscaping and planting. I think all I need to emphasise next time is that the mayor is
a liar
a hypocrite
a fascist
a bully
a coward.
Much the same for the CEO.
The propaganda department of the local council is doing a job Dr Goebbels would be proud of. Of course, the target of their activity, the group they want eliminated is not Jews, communists or gypsies but is the next generation. This will be achieved via the squandering of resources, so that mass starvation ensues, and via abrupt climate change/acidification/biodiversity loss. These people, particularly the younger ones, are so insane they actively destroy their own futures. And they don’t want to talk about anything connected with the real world.
I’ve just been watching ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’ (1961) again. In the film humanity attempts to correct the mess it has made (as a result of nuclear explosions). In our world all government policy is geared to making everything that matters worse, and at an ever faster pace. And the bulk of the population are quite happy with this state of affairs.
January 6th, 2013 at 11:37 am
So you’re sayin we have a chance?
January 6th, 2013 at 12:05 pm
Privileged, I think we do not know if we have a chance.
We certainly cannot give ourselves one if we do not try. In my view, Guy is being as far out there as he can possible be to goad the rest of us into paying enough attention so that we can try.
Maybe we will fail.
What I keep reminding myself of are two things:
1) LIFE has a powerful resilience which resides within the planet-as-a-whole. We do not know what regenerative capacity exists, but we can rely on the impulse.
2) Every hero/heroine I’ve ever admired has not shirked from the task of confronting the stark realities of their time and its conditions. Their example stirs me to dig ever more deeply into my own resolve to do all that I can imagine doing in order to engage myself as fully and thoroughly as possible in order to give the planet a chance. Us included, if enough of us will band together and work collectively toward a new normal.
January 6th, 2013 at 12:22 pm
Steph, I’m not purposely “being as far out there as [I] can possible be.” Instead, I’m summarizing and synthesizing the evidence as it develops.
January 6th, 2013 at 12:55 pm
Hi everyone,
First time posting here. Just want to say thank you, especially to Guy, for the quality and depth of the dialog that is ongoing at Nature Bats Last. I only just came across Guy’s work in early December. I have subsequently read and viewed nearly everything on the site. Like most of you I suspect, I have been waking up to the true reality of our so called “civilization” for most of my life. Each day seems to bring more evidence of the direction we are heading, extinction of our species, and it appears we are well on the way to dragging every other species on the planet along with us. Oddly, as I dive deeper into my own personal “well of grief” I find I have more equanimity towards and acceptance of this new adventure unfolding before us. I again extend my deepest gratitude to you all. The sincerity, thoughtfulness and empathy resonate through every thread. I am very glad that I found this place. I include an essay from the website Signs Of The Times. I find that the information being provided there is simpatico with that found here,
http://www.sott.net/article/255737-Dont-fix-what-aint-broke
January 6th, 2013 at 1:41 pm
Guy, I probably missed it somewhere in your posted talks, but I have not been able, on my own, to understand the jump from catasrophic climate change for humans and most other multicellular organisms to the extinction of all life on the planet. I bring it up because to me, and others I suppose, it matters philosophically. Life has apparently survived both a snowball earth and a molten rock vapor surface. How is it that this time we kill the thermophiles and the other extreme bacterial specialists?
Thanks, Mike
January 6th, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Mike, I believe that the nuclear plants melting down once the grid fails is what accomplishes the total extinction part.
Guy, dude, you stole my tag line!
January 6th, 2013 at 2:35 pm
http://optimalprediction.com/wp/black-substance-destroying-hawaiis-largest-barrier-reef/
January 6th, 2013 at 2:52 pm
Mike.
I agree that is more or less impossible to extinguish all life on Earth….. well not until the Sun starts to evolve into a red giant.
There is a fair chance that whatever humans do to upset the chemical balance, bacteria, ocean worms, jellyfish etcetera are likely to continue to inhabit the Earth. Even a meltdown of all the nuclear plants would not be enough to eliminate all life: the Earth was a lot more radioactive 3 billion years ago than now. And I read many years ago about evidence that there had been a natural ‘nuclear reactor’, due to an exceptionally high local concentration of uranium (West Coast of Africa, from memory),
The real point is the extinguishing of all higher forms of life (if I can use the term higher without causing offence) by the industrial economy. The utterly corrupt and despotic economic and political system is in the process of setting up conditions that will cause totally unnecessary suffering and mayhem, largely because money-lenders and corporations have a stranglehold on most societies (and most people don’t even realise they are living in a ‘slave camp’).
Following on from my previous post, I’d like to add that we are governed by maniacs, i.e. people suffering from severe mania.
I see that Cameron has announced he is prepared to go to war to defend Britain’s ‘right’ to exploit fossil fuel reserves in the South Atlantic.
January 6th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
Robbie Robertson Ghost Dance/Mahk Jchi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5reZbdkRto
Idle No More
January 6th, 2013 at 2:58 pm
patrick k o’leary, thanks for your first-time comment.
Mike, thanks for your comment. Ocean acidification alone is enough to drive many species to extinction, almost certainly including phytoplankton (which provide half the oxygen on Earth, and serve as the base of the global food chain). Acidification might be sufficient to kill all life in the oceans, particularly when coupled with high marine temperatures. Maybe not, too. On land, extreme events associated with climate change may well extinguish all or nearly all plants (which provide the other half of the oxygen, and serve as the base of the terrestrial food chain). Tack on ionizing radiation from 444 nuclear power plants, and the combination might kill everything. Maybe not, too. I’d rather abandon the experiment known as industrial civilization than find out.
January 6th, 2013 at 3:54 pm
.
The current extinction we see
Isn’t all due to TPTB;
I’m guessing that you
Might be part of it too,
But some of it’s certainly me.
January 6th, 2013 at 4:07 pm
@Steph
While I personally consider it be inappropriate to demean others intent, when I can tell that they mean well, your comments are so rife with false analogy and nascent assumption, that I’m going to use your comments as an illustration of what it means to intentionally and willfully miss the point that is staring you, and the rest of us in the face.
Your desire to focus on what you “want” to believe, in the face of what can no longer be denied, is a classic example of the very cultural dilemma that has be obfuscating the “environmental movement” for over half a century. And this will only continue, for god knows, no one “wants” to accept the empirical evidence of NTE.
Let’s go line by line:
You stated: “We certainly cannot give ourselves one [chance] if we do not try”.
First off, who exactly is “we”? Second, whoever “you” consider “we” to be, what has the last thirty years of climate activism been doing other than trying to give ourselves a chance?
NBL is a site that accepts and contemplates the consequences of our collective inaction, not pretending that we just haven’t been trying hard enough.
You stated: “In my view, Guy is being as far out there as he can possible be to goad the rest of us into paying enough attention so that we can try.”
Other than this just being flat wrong, it also implies you haven’t been following Guy’s fairly recent evolution of awareness, as well as everyone who posts here. For many, we’re choosing to contribute to this blog not because we aren’t paying enough attention. It’s exactly the opposite as you stated, we are here, because no one else is paying attention to all the information Guy just provided. But far more to the actual point, is none of this has anything to do with Guy at all. It simply is. Or are you “trying” to imagine he is just making it up?
You stated : “Maybe we will fail”.
I’ll spare you the ever growing endless list of how we have never not failed, and are only continuing to fail at an ever increasing rate.
You stated: “1) LIFE has a powerful resilience which resides within the planet-as-a-whole. We do not know what regenerative capacity exists, but we can rely on the impulse.”
This is but a clever cognitive trick to deny we live in denial, by redirecting our attention to what we don’t know exists, in light of what we do know. We can substitute “regenerative capacity” with space aliens, god or projections of universal empathy for the natural world and create whatever “impulse” resonates with our wanting worldviews.
You stated: “2) Every hero/heroine I’ve ever admired has not shirked from the task of confronting the stark realities of their time and its conditions.”
Are we to assume you’re speaking of Guy then?
You stated: “Their example stirs me to dig ever more deeply into my own resolve to do all that I can imagine doing in order to engage myself as fully and thoroughly as possible in order to give the planet a chance.”
That sure sounds nice. The greatest threat to the planet (biosphere) is an overpopulated industrial humanity. The best “chance” the planet has, is to remove that threat. However, you’re still here, so I suspect, you haven’t been very thorough in doing all that can imagined.
You stated: “Us included, if enough of us will band together and work collectively toward a new normal.”
Go sit in the middle of a sports area, surrounded by 15,000 screaming people and ask yourself, who is this mythical “we” you liken will someday band together towards a new normal?
While you imagine yourself to be enlightened to some of the perils before us, you don’t even know you’re drowning in the incomprehensible dire complexity you’re ignoring.
January 6th, 2013 at 4:35 pm
This message appeared in my email inbox. If you’d like to track the discussion, and even participate in it, follow Jay Hanson’s directions below.
This coming week, Dr. McPherson will discuss global warming, feedbacks, and the extinction of humanity on the AMERICA 2.0 mailing list. The AMERICA 2.0 will be strictly moderated for this event.
If you would like to discuss this with us, join the AMERICA 2.0 list by sending an email to: America2Point0-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/America2Point0/
Jay
January 6th, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Life first evolved on earth about 4 billion years ago. Photosynthesis about 3 billion years ago. Mammals 200 million years ago. Humans about 200,000 years ago, so from the start of life to humans was almost 4 billion years.
In 1.1 billion years from now, the Sun will be 10% brighter than it is today. This extra energy will cause a moist greenhouse effect in the beginning, similar to the runaway warming on Venus. But then the Earth’s atmosphere will dry out as the water vapor is lost to space, never to return.
3.5 billion years from now, the Sun will be 40% brighter than it is today. It will be so hot that the oceans will boil and that water vapor will be lost to space as well. The ice caps will permanently melt, and snow will be ancient history; life will be unable to survive anywhere on the surface of the Earth. The Earth will resemble dry hot Venus.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/18847/life-of-the-sun/#ixzz2HF2lqL98
Do even if some blue green algae or other lifeforms persist, hardly looks like we will ever get back to mammals eh?
January 6th, 2013 at 4:52 pm
A minor correction, Kathy C: According to Wikipedia, the genus Homo arose more than two million years ago. Homo sapiens appeared on the scene more than 250,000 years ago. There is no time for development of mammals again, however, even if conditions become favorable.
January 6th, 2013 at 5:04 pm
@ Guy
Will you actually be discussing this on his site?
Interesting. Because of Kathy C mentioning a comparable conversation on Jay’s site a few days ago, I became a member and the reason I listed for wanting to join, was to discuss non-linear rates of change leading to NTE.
For anyone who is not familiar with Jay Hansen, he was one of the first people–at least online–to claim the human race is headed for “die-off”, which was the namesake of his once incredibly informative website. I would recommend all those interested, to subscribe, though it is fairly restrictive. Should be fairly interesting…….as well as combative.
January 6th, 2013 at 5:24 pm
I don’t know if I’m abusing an ethical protocol by re-posting what someone else said on another site without asking, but here it is anyways, and it’s probably a fair assessment of what to expect on Jay Hansen’s site in regards to Guy’s latest post.
“So how real are these trends? Are they stuck in backwaters like this
because of massive human self-denial, because they aren’t credible,
or for some other reasons?…….I’ll end by noting that whether such scenarios are credible or not, humans cannot ethically allow themselves the indulgence and luxury of “it’s too late”. Because we DON’T understand the absolute dynamics of these systems, and we will never deserve the conceit of perfect certainty that we do… particularly when it is so damned convenient to believe it rather than fighting tooth and nail to keep the biosphere from dying.”
January 6th, 2013 at 5:32 pm
It is the status quo that is as “out there” as possible.
That is the foundation of neo-classical economics.
>>> Risk the most to win.
This site has discussed the aggregation of risks taken.
Hate to burst the bubble, but…
Last one over the cliff is a rotten egg!
January 6th, 2013 at 5:36 pm
Effed in too many ways to keep track. if one expresses thanks to the messenger of doom, would that be gratitude or sarcasm or both?
January 6th, 2013 at 6:16 pm
Apparently Guy the wiki entry I was going from was this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life
2.5 million years since the appearance of the genus Homo,
200,000 years of anatomically modern humans
I failed to add the adjective anatomically and I didn’t provide the link because of the problem with two link posts
January 6th, 2013 at 6:26 pm
Earth to humanity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqjttpl3peI
Well did I tell you before when I was up
Anxiety was bringing me down
I’m tired of listening to you talking in rhymes
Twisting round to make me think you’re straight down the line
All you do to me is talk, talk
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk
If every sign that I see is complete then I’m a fool in your game
And all you want to do is tell me your lies
Won’t show the other side
You’re just wasting my time
All you do to me is talk, talk
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk
When every choice that I make is yours
Keep telling me what’s right and what’s wrong
Don’t you ever stop to think about me
I’m not that blind to see that you’ve been cheating on me
I hear you laughing at me when I’m up
I see you when you’re crying for me when I’m down
I see you when you laugh at me when I’m up
I see you when you’re crying for me
All you do to me is talk, talk
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
All you do to me is talk, talk (Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes)
Talk, talk, talk, talk
January 6th, 2013 at 6:34 pm
Daniel, Jay’s site has all sorts as does this site. I’ve been on discussion groups in the past that ask people not to copy stuff to other sites but I have not seen any such prohibition on America2.0 As you note there is likely to be quite a bit of push back. That’s OK IMHO. At least Guy won’t be speaking to the choir
I wrote several replies to Steph and kept erasing them. I see I didn’t need to reply as you have covered it quite well.
January 6th, 2013 at 6:35 pm
Daniel, I will be addressing questions in Hanson’s forum that arise from the current essay
January 6th, 2013 at 8:47 pm
Thanks again Guy for keeping us right up to date with the latest.
In spite of all this solid information about what is REALLY happening regarding climate change, I read this week that the Albertans are talking up pipelines to the west, south and east to help deliver the northern Albertan sludge called tarsands, oh sorry, OILsands to the world. Just keep digging the stuff up to keep the old shareholders happy and that’s all that matters. Joni Mitchell ( a former Alberta girl) should write another song about the tarsands.
January 6th, 2013 at 9:25 pm
Hi, patrick k o’leary … I too am a long time reader of SOTT and Laura. Unfortunately, the folks at SOTT, despite being so tuned in to the deceptions of the Matrix, still claim that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax being perpetrated by the NWO. Sometimes the conspiracy meme can swallow the truth. I hope that they rethink their views on this matter because, imo, it undermines a lot of very good information and theories that they have been disseminating over the years.
Welcome to NBL.
January 6th, 2013 at 9:39 pm
I was informed by email today that maximum temperatures in the northern region of Victoria, Australia have been around 50oC, with a high of 54oC. Meanwhile, just north of Melbourne it was ‘only’ 41oC.
Acidification of the oceans has been mentioned. An interesting aspect is that as ocean temperatures rise the solubility of CO2 decreases. This mechanism may well prevent severe acidification from taking place. As the oceans become saturated and as temperatures rise we should expect a greater portion of emissions to remain in the atmosphere ( or in the extreme case, for oceans to become net sources of CO2).
Another rarely discussed aspect of the mess we are in is Global Dimming -the reduced insolation at ground level that is due to industrial pollution in the atmosphere. A rapid demise of the industrial economy could well trigger a rapid increase in average temperature, as clearer skies allow more radiation to reach the ground.
As far as I can tell we are screwed in every direction because the industrial ‘experiment’ has already been allowed to run too long. As I pointed out in my most recent book, the time for action was in the 1960s and 70s, when all the major factors that would lead to collapse we identified. Indeed, there was movement in the right direction around that time. But it was crushed by politicians, economists, bankers and industrialists.
January 6th, 2013 at 9:41 pm
Thanks for another great article, Dr M.
The most wasteful, destructive, and dumbest lifestyle ever invented is the suburban/exurban American way of life circa 1950- present. Where just to get a loaf of bread, millions of people have to get into a two ton hunk of metal and burn toxic gases. Even before the environmental cost were well known, common sense and good taste should have told us this was a stupid way to live. But now, many generations of Americans have known no other way a life and believe that this way of life is their birthright. Ten or twenty $ a gallon gas will reduce the places where these people live to regions of permanent depression. A million people living a suburban lifestyle use far more energy the same number in a dense urban area using public transit. So, the suburbs will collapse first. Thousands of urban high rises will need to be built to accommodate the suburban refugees. Our cities will resemble those of old the Soviet bloc countries. Probably led by some kind of dictatorship, a kind of Pol Pot situation in reverse. Too bad for stupid, greedy Americans, your gun arsenal isn’t going to help you when you can no longer afford to drive to the gun store to buy ammo, or go through the McDonald’s drive-thru for food.
January 6th, 2013 at 10:38 pm
Thanks Guy,
Here’s “Before the Deluge”, by Jackson Browne, for listening, since the video is just a collage of stuff. It’s where we are, and maybe where we are going, and it has always moved me. He did it about 30 years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPCFVLgdc2Q
John-on-Hawaii-now
January 7th, 2013 at 3:54 am
The Mayor of Futaba, a town 20 km away from Fukushima nuclear plant, which has been abandoned by the state and TEPCO, speaks at the United Nations.
http://youtu.be/EqseXWOQLbE
January 7th, 2013 at 5:24 am
Glaciologists fear they may have seriously underestimated the potential for melting ice sheets to contribute to catastrophic sea-level rises in coming decades which could see increases of a metre or more by 2100.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fear-of-catastrophic-sealevel-rise-as-ice-sheets-melt-faster-than-predicted-8440277.html
January 7th, 2013 at 6:37 am
Time lapse video of the Waldo Canyon fire, 23-28 June 2012 in Colorado by Steve Moraco on YouTube:
Waldo Canyon fire, 23-28 June 2012
Great photography and musical accompaniment. Angst-provoking presage of things yet to come.
January 7th, 2013 at 7:56 am
Wawa, Ont., damage from rain may exceed $10M
Record rainfall created 15-metre holes along Trans-Canada Highway
CBC News
Posted: Oct 28, 2012 4:30 PM ET
The destruction that heavy rain caused in the northern Ontario town of Wawa is worse than feared, the community’s mayor says, after the freak downpour overflowed creeks and rivers, washing out arterial roads and collapsing sections of the Trans-Canada Highway.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/story/2012/10/28/wawa-ontario-transcanada.html#next
Having called Wawa my home once upon a time.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/27/wawa-rain-evacuation-highway-damage.html
January 7th, 2013 at 7:56 am
Off topic – some of the good spirit that we loose along with the bad. Landfillharmonic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXynrsrTKbI
January 7th, 2013 at 9:23 am
@Steph
Industrial humans have no chance and are threatening the possibility of all life. I suggest we dive head first into the simple life before it simply goes away.
January 7th, 2013 at 10:12 am
Right now 100+ of our friends have taken over TransCanada’s Keystone XL headquarters in Houston, Texas. You can help shut down work in TransCanada’s offices by flooding the phone lines all today to tell them we don’t want their dirty pipeline in anyone’s backyard.
http://tarsandsblockade.org/houston-action-transcanada-offices/
January 7th, 2013 at 10:15 am
Arctic Storms: A Climate Danger Nobody’s Talking About
Summer and fall are hurricane season, but for the storms known as polar lows, prime time falls in the dead of winter, when frigid air blows off sea ice to collide with warmer, moister air in the North Atlantic. Polar lows are a lot smaller and weaker than hurricanes, they’re generally shorter-lived, and the only danger they generally pose is to shipping and oil rigs.
However, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience, the dozens of polar lows that roil the Greenland, Iceland and Norwegian seas every year may have an effect on the climate of North America and Europe. And if polar lows move northward with the changing climate, as some studies have predicted, winters in both places could become colder, even as the planet warms.
As if that weren’t bad enough, a northward displacement of these Arctic storms could also raise sea level higher along America’s mid-Atlantic coast than the average increase of 3 feet or so projected for the world as a whole by 2100.
It all has to do with the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), a vast conveyer belt of sea water that includes the Gulf Stream.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/arctic-storms-the-climate-danger-nobodys-talking-about-15363
January 7th, 2013 at 10:46 am
Kathy C: Yes, the grid is very vulnerable and getting more fragile every month, the nuclear plants are vulnerable, and even the rubber industry could be taken down by someone with a few fungal spores on their shoes. Without natural rubber, we would see then end of civilization.
http://tculhane.edublogs.org/2008/06/26/the-blight/
January 7th, 2013 at 11:34 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd1Y3u-4SUk
Kevin Moore speaking with Cathy Thurston, Manager Community Services, New Plymouth District Council, in November 2012, shortly after the council had used ratepayers money to promote destruction of the future via the squandering of rapidly depleting resources and the generation of an inordinate amount of pollution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q1mFzJZUlA
And a couple of ‘newbies’ playing the blame game … it is ALL Exxon’s fault.
January 7th, 2013 at 1:29 pm
U.S. Beef and Oil from Space
http://www.vice.com/read/beef-and-oil-0003456-v19n12?Contentpage=-1
January 7th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
@ Ulvfulg
Thanks for the Mayor of Futaba link. Incredible!
His town is actually only 3km not 20km from ground zero. His/their story is hard to put into perspective, given how much deception is still circulating around this event. And this is from a highly developed country with a commendable social contract.
So even though the Japanese government refuses to tell its Fukushima citizens as to how much radiation they were and still are exposed to, and given the entire agricultural region is now a wasteland. And one of the containment pools is still on the verge of collapsing, where, if and when it does collapse, it will render all of Japan uninhabitable. The government is pressuring Futaba citizens to move back home?!?!?
For anyone who is still riding the fence in regards to the nuclear threat from the fallout of these containment pools once the power grid collapses. JUST ONE of these pools with 1,500 spent fuel rods, would release 4,000 times more radiation than Hiroshima!
And to think, not all that long ago, I was almost romanticizing the day when the power failed. What strange fruit our awareness now bears. What a fool I’ve been.
January 7th, 2013 at 2:09 pm
U.S. Beef and Oil from Space.
And if you try to be a vegetarian, people taunt you about carrots. Don’t people know? Don’t they grieve?
January 7th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
@ Daniel
Thanks.
It said 20km where I found it, I didn’t check anything, I guess I just have to assume that man is honest and honourable and genuine, it’s so hard, isn’t it, so many stories going on all the time, and how can one be certain of anything ? You’d need to go there, be fluent in Japanese, spend time, just like the Sandy Hook thing, which is so incredibly weird…
I believe there are ruthless evil groups who create false flags to further their agendas, big ones, small ones, and then we have all the amateur theorists speculating, some of whom are completely crazy, and then the real perpetrators can feed all that, planting rumours and red herrings, creating more smoke and confusion to hide the truth…
But they don’t even have to do the false flags, they can just wait for natural events, there’s enough of them, and then exploit and spin them to their advantage, as in Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine/Disaster Capitalism, like scavengers to a fallen beast, they zoom in on any weakness…
Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes
http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/political_ponerology_lobaczewski.htm
January 7th, 2013 at 5:06 pm
I have not read that book, although I did read excerpts on the website of the same title a year or two ago, before the book was published. I’m not sure ‘science’ is quite the right word, strictly speaking, but certainly original and interesting. Apparently the evil POS named Zbigniew Brzezinski tried to block publication, so that tells you something about it.
January 7th, 2013 at 5:08 pm
Once again, it appears to be my responsibility to help explain why what is happening is happening. No, I don’t mean climate change, non-linear responses or NTE. What I’m talking about is why the PTB don’t give a shit.
To recap, our thoughts, opinions & emotions are not “our own”, but rather a product of social evolutionary pressures imposed over millennia. But perhaps more importantly, these same influences created what in many respects could almost be considered a different species of human.
I’m referring to, of course, “leaders”. While we slaves/serfs/sheep were bred for compliance, sociability and submissiveness, the psychopaths-in-charge have always been on a completely different trajectory.
Consider the traits cherished as positive attributes amongst you & your peers, and exhibited in almost every post on this board: compassion, morality, reason, judgment, etc. These kinds of attitudes weren’t just a moral “attaboy”; no, they were/are necessary traits for survival in a group setting – especially conflict resolution.
Now, consider the parallel characteristics of the ruling class. NONE of these traits provide any competitive advantage whatsoever. In fact, on the contrary, they are markers for certain defeat & death.
Consider for a moment just the history of the British crown. Up until a few centuries ago, daily palace life was one of intrigue, plots, alliances, possible victory or tortuous death. And yet, how many simply ‘walked away’ in order to enjoy a humble, quiet life of rectitude and care?
Because they were/are addicted to the adrenaline rush of the “game”. This is what they do. Some like to hike, some like to paint, some to work in the garden. None of that suffices for this crew – what they live, breath & die for is to play the game of conquest & control.
Of course it’s a completely nihilistic endeavor, but they can no more rationalize away what they do than a lion who is compelled to kill her game.
They have no illusion(s) about life-after death. Shit, they’re the ones who invented religion in the first place as a further means of control. They know that this is it baby. Since they won’t experience anything after this episode of consciousness, who cares what happens as long as there’s action today?
These are the ones in charge. They have possession of all the same facts Guy has – they are under no illusion of escape from our collective destiny. Unfortunately, we’re all trapped on this slave ship commanded by champion nihilists.
The key thing they have in their favor is the ability to issue bald-faced lies without batting an eye. It’s what they were bred to do – if you couldn’t contain a poker face in the palace, you were quickly outed for a date on the chopping block.
My dad, who once worked for the agency during the Cold war, always said “he who complains has already lost”. Think about it.
January 7th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Locked and glued inside TransCanada’s Massachusetts office
http://twitter.com/JustandStable/status/288388624137990144/photo/1
January 7th, 2013 at 6:08 pm
@ ulvfugl Says: “Locked and glued inside TransCanada’s Massachusetts office.”
I feel really sorry for those kids – they’re in for a Tiananmen scale beat down. In reality, it’s their parents to blame for exhibiting such foolish behavior as to either encourage, or (more likely) not adequately teach their kids the no-nonsense truth of how this world actually operates.
Fingerprinting & complete multi-dimensional facial/body scanning for banks of various agency profiling databases are the least of it. DNA marking and who-knows-what horrors lay in store for these new age terrorists that will dog them for the rest of their (sorry-assed) lives.
January 7th, 2013 at 6:09 pm
@ B9K9
I see what you’re getting at, but it seems to me a variation on Social Darwinism, to which I don’t subscribe, or maybe a cultural darwinism… anyhow, although I accept there’s some truth in it, it’s got to be an over-simplification… for one thing, if you look at the various royal dynasties, its amazing how many kings, queens, emperors, have been completely barking mad, really totally incompetent… I suppose you could argue that they were placeholders, and that the real power rested with subordinates, who co-opted their authority… no need to chop their head off, if you can usurp their power, is there.
I read a long paper once- again I don’t subscribe to this stuff, just find it interesting – where someone ‘proved’ mathematically, the sort of thesis you describe. If all the male salmon get an advantage by being big, to push other males out of the way, when it comes to fertilising the female’s eggs at spawning time, there comes a point where they cannot really grow any larger without incurring other disadvantages, then those very small dwarf males appear, which hardly look like salmon at all, which can zoom in and fertilise eggs, and the big males don’t even notice them as competitors.
Likewise, as you said, if everyone is honest and kind, there comes a point, in a large soceity, where there’s an advantage in being dishonest and ruthless. If everyone was dishonest and ruthless, soceity would not work, so the percentage has to remain small.
This is the kind of stuff that some people use to justify evolutionary biological arguments for human behaviour, and so forth. Personally, I don’t, and it’s a big subject, so I’ll leave it there, but basically, my argument would be, rather like the one in neo-classical economics, that sees everyone trying to maximise their selfish advantage. I don’t think people are like that, and I don’t buy Machiavelli’s and Sun Tzu’s argument that leaders must be feared, not loved. You know, I’m a green anarchist, I start from a different base, if everyone took my approach, those ‘leaders’ would have no ‘followers’, therefore no power, kinda thing
January 7th, 2013 at 6:12 pm
@ B9K9
DNA marking and who-knows-what horrors lay in store for these new age terrorists that will dog them for the rest of their (sorry-assed) lives.
Think maybe you’ve stumbled onto the wrong blog, B9K9….
You know ? NTE ?
‘new age terrorists’ ? wtf are you talking about ?
January 7th, 2013 at 6:40 pm
Road protesters go below ground in the ‘second battle of Hastings’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/07/protesters-second-battle-hastings
January 7th, 2013 at 6:55 pm
@ B9K9
DNA marking and who-knows-what horrors lay in store for these new age terrorists that will dog them for the rest of their (sorry-assed) lives.
Seems rather plain where you are coming from, B9K9
We’ve documented that – by any measure – America is the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world.
But remember, terrorism is defined as:
The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.
The American government has also been using violence and threats to intimidate and coerce the American public for political purposes.
For example, the U.S. government is doing the following things to terrorize the American public into docility and compliance:
Labeling peaceful protest as terrorism
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=46921
January 7th, 2013 at 7:13 pm
And this is from a highly developed country with a commendable social contract.
A social contract is not worth the paper it is not signed on. However, it is as effective as fiat money in promoting the interests of those who preach it.
What a fool I’ve been.
“It is OK to make mistakes, as long as they are new mistakes”. – Author unknown
January 7th, 2013 at 7:39 pm
Could someone please tell me what “NTE” stands for?
January 7th, 2013 at 7:50 pm
NEAR TERM EXTINCTION ( of the human species and much of the rest of life on Earth ) as opposed to the idea of far away extinction, in some future century, that nobody really cares about, near term extinction involves people alive now, their children, their grand-children…
Some people have suggested that the human species does not reach the end of this century given the various collapse scenarios and projections for climate change, etc. Near term extinction is a shorter time scale than that.
One such speculation came from Sir Martin Rees, who is highly respected in UK. However his lecture, and the data he based it upon, is dated. If you want the latest news, you have it above, from Guy.
http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_rees_asks_is_this_our_final_century.html
January 7th, 2013 at 8:30 pm
NTE = Near Term Extinction
NTE means this is the end—
At this point, why should we pretend?
We cannot obstruct
Doom, so we’re fucked;
The party’s over all over, my friend.
January 7th, 2013 at 9:14 pm
Hey Daniel,
Thanks for reaming me out, it’s alright to learn how I’m perceived
I think you interpreted most of what I wrote exactly opposite of what I meant. This may be your filter or my lousy presentation or a combination of both.
and Privileged, yea, I’m working on enjoying some of the simple life too, but am not ready to do only that. Could be I’m not even capable of only that! At least, the learning curve (“be here, now”) has been kicking me in the butt for quite awhile…
Guy, I apologize for misrepresenting your reporting of the evidence as anything other than just that. Isn’t there a difference between publishing your summaries and synthesis of the evidence and actively promoting more widespread knowledge? I was attempting to be supportive of the spokesperson aspect of your efforts.
The image or metaphor in my mind has been that all of you – by which I mean loyal, longtime readers and commenters here at NBL as well as all of the past 30 or more years’ worth of activists – are like advance scouts. You’ve seen the shit coming and done your best to translate it to the rest of us but we couldn’t get it – for whatever reasons. “We” and “us”, Daniel, (in this usage) are my reference to myself and the vast majority of human beings who are not in the elite company of ‘advance scouts’.
What’s coming (I project, perhaps wrongly but this is what seems possible as a next thing that will happen), is that some ‘wave’ of people are going to start getting it, possibly move out of denial, or at least into stages of emotional and intellectual processing. Yes, it’s too little too late, but humanity has to live through the next decades, somehow. On the given evidence, we may not do this any better than we’ve lived the past decades (or centuries, or however far back you want to go). Although some peoples have been living well with the land for millennia, and I do not want to discount them.
But perhaps some of us might; perhaps even enough of us to ameliorate the worst extremes to which human behavior could go. This seems to me a productive and useful hope. In the meantime, and in service of that miniscule hope, I’m doing my best to manage my own process while contributing what I can.
To that end, here is this week’s blogentry reflecting upon and interpreting my own process of coming to grips: Dear Guy McPherson, What the Heck?
January 7th, 2013 at 9:16 pm
@BC Nurse Prof
“Without natural rubber, we would see then end of civilization.”
I’m not sure that would end civilization. During WWII the US went from total dependence on natural rubber to synthetic rubber to meet war time needs because the enemy controlled most natural rubber production. Today only 42% of global rubber is natural.
January 7th, 2013 at 9:37 pm
Clarification:
“But perhaps some of us might be able/willing to find ways to live better than we have to date; perhaps even enough of us to ameliorate the worst extremes to which human behavior could go.”
I realize this is a long shot. Take it as my lame way to help spread love.
January 7th, 2013 at 11:42 pm
Lecturing the folks that running the train towards the cliff is reminiscent of pouring water on a duck’s back. But then again might it be a part of one’s nature to howl at the moon? Perhaps a way of acting without expectation because it is “the right thing to do, even when the anticipated results are zilch.
If one succeeds in waking them up before the crocodile of reality chomps down on them, but does not – cannot – offer a timely way out of the swamp (because time’s up!), it could cause distress for much longer than needed. The road from denial to panic can be too short, but can they be led beyond to acceptance?
January 8th, 2013 at 12:04 am
Over the bar at the officer’s club of the Second Aviation Battalion in Camp Red Cloud (Korea) was a sign ” I H T F P”. It’s meaning depended on one’s attitude: “I have truly found paradise” or “I hate this f***ing place”. An alternate for NTE: Nearing The Ecstasy.
January 8th, 2013 at 12:07 am
….. that are</b?running the train …..
January 8th, 2013 at 1:13 am
Notice how the fronts just sit there. Dry everywhere. Hey, I’m a farmer and I like to know what the weather is going to be , near term.
http://weather.unisys.com/sat_sfc_map_loop.php
January 8th, 2013 at 1:27 am
The last time the Arctic was ice-free was during the middle Pliocene, ≈ 3 mya, during which time the australopithecines were relative newcomers to Africa. Now that we have altered the planet such that it will not sustain us much longer, most of us who follow this blog agree that human extinction before the end of the century is probable (nothing is really certain given the nonlinearity of these systems and the unknown unknowns).
I think most of us would also agree that the PTB and the masses are not going to take any effective actions to even mitigate the catastrophe. The catastrophe is already happening. The good news is that the omnicidal system that has become a planetary cancer will most likely collapse before mid-century (or, perhaps much sooner). So, maybe some life forms which would otherwise have been destroyed will survive.
I assume most of us here accept the above statements. Since the writing is on the wall for us as a species, it seems to me that the only remaining question is how to live our lives with moral discernment and dignity. There are some who like to spout neoDarwinist bravado about the strongman and the slave. It is this kind of pathological idiocy that led us down the road to destruction. The little third rate Nietzcheans who get off by proclaiming that existence is nothing more than a bunch of worms trying to crawl to the top of a dung heap are the ones who have always stood in the way of those who sought a higher path.
Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who later became one of the founders of existential psychology, had this to say:
“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes – within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
January 8th, 2013 at 2:15 am
Guy,
Thanks for more acurate reporting where most information is blurred by spin and denial, or just plain too slow reporting – you are up there.
I am wondering if nomadism is not the best option for me here now?
Yes, family will never join in.
Perhaps I could just keep roving and coming back at longer and longer intervals, (for a feed and a shower, Ha Ha).
Very hard to know how to respond to NTE.
Going for broke starting a gift community, and community garden now. Might take, and help some eat when the shelves dry up.
I’ll let everyone know if it takes.
Very hot temps today.
‘The heat is on: Australia posts hottest day on record’
http://www.news.com.au/national/national-heat-record-expected-by-bureau-of-meterology/story-fncynjr2-1226549102215
Some of it:
“AUSTRALIA posted its hottest day on record yesterday, with temperatures expected to rise even further today.
The average maximum temperature across Australia reached 40.33 degrees on Monday, beating the previous record of 40.17 degrees set in 1972, the Bureau of Meteorology’s David Jones told AAP.
Average maximum temperatures have risen above 40 degrees only three times in recorded history.
”We had the hottest day on record for Australia (on Monday) and today it looks like we may well go better again,” Dr Jones said.
”This really puts the national dimension of this heat event into bigger context.”…
Other data from the bureau showed maximum temperatures across the continent in the last four months of 2012 were 1.6 degrees above average, breaking all previous records.
Aaron Coutts-Smith, the bureau’s NSW manager for climate services, expects the run of dry and hot conditions to continue for at least the next week.
”What makes this event quite exceptional is how widespread and intense it’s been,” he said.
”We have been breaking records across all states and territories in Australia over the course of the event so far.”…
Hobart recorded its hottest day in 120 years on Friday, when the temperature peaked at 41.8 degrees.
Hay, in southwest NSW, climbed to 47.7 degrees on Saturday – its highest in 56 years.
Sydney was tipped to reach a maximum of 43 degrees today, which would make it the third highest temperature on record.
Markus Donat, from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, says periods of high temperatures have increased in recent decades….
Temperatures soared by 20C in less than three hours this morning as the heatwave crossing Australia showed no signs of slowing down.
In NSW, temperatures exceeded 30 degrees soon after the sun came up this morning.
Bega on the state’s south coast was the first town to hit 40 degrees at 11.30am (AEDT).”
Some interesting charts and pics on that link above.
Last night the temp here did not go below 20.7 degrees C.
All this hot weather has been good for plant and vege growth in my garden, assuming you can get water to them.
January 8th, 2013 at 4:02 am
Steph, I pretty much perceived your comments as Daniel did. I suspected you didn’t mean them to be perceived that way. Delivery can be really important, but to do that you have to know your audience and where they are at, not just jump in with comments that seem to include moral judgments.
You wrote “humanity has to live through the next decades, somehow.” I know that sounds right, but in fact the only thing humans HAVE to do is die. Most of us here have been struggling for a long time in one way or another to figure out how best to live their lives before they die long before Peak Oil presented a specter of mass dieoff of humans, and Climate Change went unaddressed long enough that total dieoff looks inevitable.
Many of us suspect that when the shit truly hits the fan, WWIII may break out. We have learned that when the grid finally collapses from lack of fuel, infrastructure failure, solar flare or EMP attack, every nuclear plant in the world (400+ with 700 reactors) will fail in ways similar to Fukushima because they need electricity to keep the fuel in the reactor and the fuel in the spent fuel pools cool. Think of that happening without any ability to re-mediate the situation as they are doing in Fukushima and did in Chernobyl. http://truth-out.org/news/item/7301-400-chernobyls-solar-flares-electromagnetic-pulses-and-nuclear-armageddon We can all die much sooner from some event related to climate change.
The words “have to” have no magical power. To make our descent last a bit longer however we could try get the whole world to decommission all the nuclear reactors. Problem is that the countries of the world don’t “have to” listen but if you think that is a good cause you are welcome to beat your head against that brick wall.
Meanwhile a good thing to do, (that no one has to do), is to let everyone you love know it. Hug lots of people. Fill our remaining time on earth with love instead of futile causes. Nursing homes are filled with lots of people who have to die, as do each of us. Most are lonely. Cancer wards for young children are filled with kids who have to die earlier than expected. Volunteer to visit them. There is a ton of good things to do that will make this world a bit better until it is all over.
January 8th, 2013 at 4:03 am
Robin, WOW that Waldo Caynon Fire vid was stunning. I just kept imagining that without any attempt being able to be made to put the fire out. When the firefighters no longer have the fuel to fight fires…..
January 8th, 2013 at 4:04 am
Robin “If one succeeds in waking them up before the crocodile of reality chomps down on them, but does not – cannot – offer a timely way out of the swamp (because time’s up!),”
And I would add because it is ALL swamp now. There is no place that is “out”
January 8th, 2013 at 4:43 am
“Without natural rubber, we would see then end of civilization.”
I’m not sure that would end civilization. During WWII the US went from total dependence on natural rubber to synthetic rubber…
Left brain thinking is reductionist. It breaks down all problems into parts. So we can look at the future as a long, long list of disparate problems, such as droughts and famines, species loss, Fukes, ocean acidification, over-population, wars, peak oil, natural rubber plantations, etc, etc.
Right brain thinking is holistic. It tries to see the large, over-all pattern, putting all the parts of the jigsaw together.
Seems to me very likely we have already made the choice to become extinct, although nobody noticed we were choosing. Over the last ten or twenty years, we could, should, have been desperately cutting CO2 emissions. We didn’t. That was the choice. There’s a time lag. The emissions went into the pipeline. We don’t see the end result for about thirty years.
What we have now ( record high temperatures, fires, ice melting, etc, ) is the result of emissions 30 years ago. They’ve been rising at increasing rates ever since.
The feedbacks kick in.
By 2050, in thirty years time, we’d have had to have completely changed EVERYTHING about how we live our lives.
Seriously. Think that over. I know there’s a lot here who changed long ago, but of the 7 billion, soon to be 9, the only people who are even considering that, are a tiny fraction of a minority on the fringe.
AND we’d need to have found ways to get the CO2 out of the air and the oceans. Somehow. Whilst the whole world, internationally, will be increasingly chaotic and stressed, economically unstable, because of what we have already done.
People are dreaming about thorium power stations and other wonderful new techno-fixes… yes, yes… but look at the time scale, in five years time, at the current rates of change, there’s going to be large areas, Australia, American S.W., etc. that are going to be so hot and dry as to be uninhabitable, let alone agriculturally productive, seems to me, this thing is already running away with itself, already, out of everyone’s control…
Once the feedbacks get triggered, and start feeding the warming with more warming, then there is nothing we can do.
Keep on drilling and fracking guys ! Making it worse, as fast as you can !
January 8th, 2013 at 5:28 am
Related?
http://billmoyers.com/segment/anthony-leiserowitz-on-making-people-care-about-climate-change/
Bill Moyer approached NTE–sort of/indirectly–in his framing, if not substance, of this interview with Anthony Leiserowitz. To my ear, the interviewee is lost to an iteration of motivated reasoning that is the bane of Guy’s efforts to champion collapsing the globalized debt-based capitalistic meme. At any rate, the comment thread is yet open. Might it benefit from the comments of people who post here?
January 8th, 2013 at 5:29 am
re rubber – yes we did without in WWII. We live in a different world
per the article “for only natural rubber has the strength required for the sidewalls of radial tires…””
and ““There is today no product that can match natural rubber’s resilience and tensile strength, resistance to abrasion and impact, and capacity to absorb impact without generating heat. Today the tires of every commercial and military aircraft, from the 747 to the B-2 bomber and the space shuttle, are 100 percent natural rubber. Half the rubber in every pickup tire in America still comes from a tree. The enormous tires of industrial machinery are 90 percent natural.”
The point of the article is that today’s society relies on natural rubber for its superior qualities as it demands more out of tires than was demanded in WWII. Can’t say I would mind seeing 747 and B-2 bombers grounded for the lack of rubber. Lack of natural rubber would it seem not only give a boost to the synthetic industry but demand the retooling of whole industries, the manufacture of less powerful planes, the retooling of industrial machinery to work with less resilient tires etc. At at time when we no longer have the resources to do that.
January 8th, 2013 at 7:28 am
Hi Karen C.
Thanks for reinforcing Daniel’s feedback. And for caring enough to respond, and to suggest courses of meaningful action. You’re correct that I haven’t done as patrick k o’leary, and read through everything carefully before jumping in – which may (or may not) have improved my comprehension of this audience and thus my diction. I’m not sure that I need to know all the awful ways death will come, or the details of how bad it’s getting at ever-increasing rates. Guy convinced me already.
I do know that I want to belong to a group that is having this conversation. And that I want to be part of groups who are just beginning to have this conversation. Which means that inevitably I’ll learn more of those details, and have to cope with them, and make choices about how to carry myself out into the world today and do good things.
January 8th, 2013 at 7:28 am
Have tundra and other northern wildfires contributed to the soot that melted Greenland this summer – thus the Dark Snow Project. I am sure tundra fires as a positive feedback causing Greenland melt is not part of any IPCC projection http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT6H7HPWkqU
January 8th, 2013 at 7:43 am
ulvfugl Says: Seems rather plain where you are coming from, B9K9. Re:
new age terrorists.
I realized after I posted NAT (mistakenly) without some other kind of marker to denote irony that it would incur a reaction. Such is the ‘net. As you observe, it is rather plain where I’m coming from.
As to discussing NTE, yes, I’m well aware of the point of this blog. However, once it begins to wonder away from pure scientific speculation, and engages in forays into a fantasy realm of appealing to authority via reason, I feel it is my civic duty to inform one otherwise.
The only way anything every happens in this world is that it gives someone/thing an advantage. If people were serious about climate change, they would (temporarily) abandon the science and focus on appeal.
That, of course, is the logic behind carbon credits and trading markets. But that’s way too “big concept” – you’ve got to get smaller, and focus on things like sex, food, wine/drugs & the means of acquisition (ie money) that represents the sum total of enjoyment for our ‘leaders’.
But where is the science of psychopathology and the advancement of knowledge critical for sheep who would like to survive? Instead, all we get is this moaning & crying, which is nothing more than an admission of a complete lack of understanding of how this world actually operates.
January 8th, 2013 at 8:13 am
Steph,
Their example stirs me to dig ever more deeply into my own resolve to do all that I can imagine doing in order to engage myself as fully and thoroughly as possible in order to give the planet a chance.
If you want to do something that might “give the planet a chance” (however small), I suggest getting involved in a reputable reforestation project.
If you still believe there’s a chance (however small) that politics can make some kind of positive difference, I suggest also getting involved in 350.org. I should warn you though. Involvement in 350.org is not for the squeamish; it’s strictly for those who are young or truly young-at-heart. TOAHNNA.
January 8th, 2013 at 8:18 am
@B9K9
…after I posted NAT (mistakenly) without some other kind of marker to denote irony that it would incur a reaction…
I don’t know what you mean by ‘NAT’.
As to discussing NTE, yes, I’m well aware of the point of this blog.
What do you think it is, then ?
However, once it begins to wonder away from pure scientific speculation
What do you mean by ‘pure scientific speculation’ ? I don’t know what that means.
..and engages in forays into a fantasy realm of appealing to authority via reason..
That seems totally obscure. Perhaps you’ll explain what you’re attempting to say.
I feel it is my civic duty to inform one otherwise.
How astonishingly kind and generous of you. I do so hope everyone here appreciates your magnanimity.
The only way anything every happens in this world is that it gives someone/thing an advantage. If people were serious about climate change, they would (temporarily) abandon the science and focus on appeal…..an admission of a complete lack of understanding of how this world actually operates.
I think all sorts of things have happened for all sorts of reasons. Don’t see much logic there. You seem to believe you have some superior insight into ‘how this world actually operates’. I’ve yet to see any evidence of that. All you’ve stated is that there are some poker-faced lizards who like power, who are not like the rest of us, isn’t it ? Is that supposed to be a revelation that has escaped our attention until now ?
January 8th, 2013 at 8:24 am
B9K9,
@ ulvfugl Says: “Locked and glued inside TransCanada’s Massachusetts office.”
I feel really sorry for those kids – they’re in for a Tiananmen scale beat down. In reality, it’s their parents to blame for exhibiting such foolish behavior as to either encourage, or (more likely) not adequately teach their kids the no-nonsense truth of how this world actually operates.
Actually, I find those kids’ behavior to be quite inspirational. They’re taking a real risk to their future livelihoods and employment prospects to make their point and “tell it like it is”. Let’s see that photo again, shall we?
http://twitter.com/JustandStable/status/288388624137990144/photo/1
January 8th, 2013 at 8:51 am
I do think that losing natural rubber for 20 years would bring down civilization. Here’s a longer version of the same reasoning:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1997/08/04/229714/index.htm
As I understand it, the fungus has moved north from Central America into Mexico. I also understand that flights from South America to countries with rubber plantations in Asia, such as Thailand, are monitored carefully. Maybe transport of the spores is inevitable, I don’t know.
January 8th, 2013 at 8:52 am
Oh, so NOW they’re worried about it (enough to put it in the paper):
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/fear-of-catastrophic-sealevel-rise-as-ice-sheets-melt-faster-than-predicted-8440277.html
Humanity: still the most ignorant species on the planet, despite all the self-pronouncements claiming our supposed “superiority” and the like to all other life-forms.
January 8th, 2013 at 8:58 am
Worst drought in decades hits Brazil’s northeast:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/04/us-brazil-drought-idUSBRE9030HM20130104
January 8th, 2013 at 8:59 am
BC nurse, and besides rubber (which is made vulnerable by monocropping) there is wheat rust http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-03-03-wheatrust03_ST_N.htm
USA watches as wheat rust makes a damaging comeback
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAYUpdated 3/2/2011 9:19:02 PM | |
A fungus under control for 50 years is back and ravaging wheat crops in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Once it gets in a field, it corrodes the stalks, turning them shades of brown and red that gives the disease, wheat stem rust, its name. Farmers can do little but harvest what’s left, sometimes losing 60% of their crop.
Plant breeders struggled with it in the 1960s, believing they had finally beaten it into submission with new wheat strains. But now, after 50 years of remission, it’s roaring back, and it has U.S. agriculture officials on high alert for any sign of its return in this country….They bred such strongly resistant wheat that for over three decades wheat rust was thought of as a thing of the past. “People became complacent,” Coffman says.
Then in 1999 a new, destructive strain called Ug99 appeared in Uganda. It has spread across 12 countries, including South Africa, Yemen, Iran, India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
So forget 666, Ug99 may be the mark of the beast.
January 8th, 2013 at 9:07 am
When you lose your memory, something is still there:
http://m.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/amnesia-and-the-self-that-remains-when-memory-is-lost/266662/
“I walked down the stairs, past the rows and rows of identical apartment buildings, back to my car. Then I sat in my car with the key in the ignition, not wanting to move. Professor Pribram felt that when we lose our memory, we lose our entire sense of self. When I saw Tom, something fundamentally Tom was still there. Some of us call it personality, or essence. Some call it the “soul.” Whatever it is, the tumor that took Tom’s memory had not touched it.”
January 8th, 2013 at 9:14 am
Matt Taibbi in the Rolling Stone on the (worsening) financial crisis:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104
“It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.”
January 8th, 2013 at 9:55 am
Kathy C. thanks for posting the Dark Snow Project video, I didn’t know that. Yet another feedback that people had not foreseen, climate change kills the forests, with droughts and beetles, and they burn, and the soot falls on the snow and ice, so that it warms and melts…
There’s likely many more of those loops that will surprise us…
The way I’m seeing this, we hit 6 deg around 2050, that’s the end of us all…
That’s around 30 years away plus or minus a few. It’s like a supertanker, inertia, momentum, it takes three miles to slow down and to bring it to a stop, AFTER you make the decision that you want to stop. As a species, as an international community, we have not even made the decision YET. Still fucking dithering.
The optimists and IPPC say, that’s alright, we’ve got three miles, we know that if we put the engines into reverse, slam the brakes on hard, we can stop before we hit the rocks.
All the greenies and environmentalists and social reformers and techno-fixers with their renewables all think this. Three miles, plenty of time, we’ll all get busy and change the world, save the planet, avoid extinction, avoid six degrees…
But in my mind… hang on, three miles between here and the rocks… but there’s that fire that just broke out in the kitchen, and one of the crew has gone insane and running around screaming with a loaded AK47… and the engineer says there’s a leak in the hold and it’s getting bigger… and the ship’s surgeon says there’s a passenger with what looks like bubonic plague, could have got it from a rat… and the navigation system just broke… and there’s some guys in a skiff coming alongside who look a hell of a lot like pirates… and on the horizon, looks something like a big black storm… etc, etc…
You know, seems to me, reducing emissions is hard enough, possibly impossible. Reforming the global economy into something less destructive, might be possible, in theory. Avoiding resource wars, might be possible, in theory. It may be that we have not yet triggered irreversible methane feedback, and/or irreversible permafrost melting, etc. but doing those thing amidst global food shortages, mass-migrations, rising sea levels, all kinds of strife and madness, with the world being run by Goldman Sachs and similar maniacs…
If you had a million pounds, and that was all the money you had, would you hand it over to place a bet, ten to one, to be paid out on 2050, that everything would be fine and dandy, expecting someone would be there to pay you ?
You know, I’ve been reading comments for years and year. Seems to me, hardly anybody gets it. Guy does, Superman1 does, quite a few here do, a sprinkling of voices around the millions on the internet. But the vast majority don’t have a clue, do they…
Of course, could be ME that’s got it all wrong. But I don’t think so. I’d need evidence, to be convinced I was mistaken. I never see any such evidence
January 8th, 2013 at 9:59 am
I’m sure I’m no Benjamin but I’m doomer.
My past is that of a consummate consumer.
So I’ll just continue to move towards the exit.
Planting, building, chasing a different carrot.
Trying to be human instead of a tumor.
January 8th, 2013 at 10:40 am
«As a species, as an international community, we have not even made the decision YET. Still fucking dithering.»
this is because we do not have a collective conscious, only an individual consciousness and a collective destiny.
just read:
http://antonyloewenstein.com/2013/01/06/what-happens-to-our-digital-footprint-when-we-die/
«… the obituary may never be complete.»
January 8th, 2013 at 10:43 am
Interesting article by Colin Tudge who is probably the only thinker on agricultural policy, whom I agree with, (although not necessarily on this article, I have not given it time and thought yet)
http://www.soilassociation.org/blogs/latestblog/article/641/a-peoples-buy-out-of-britains-farmland
January 8th, 2013 at 10:46 am
m/m :..we do not have a collective conscious..
Some people think we do…
http://whofortedblog.com/2013/01/06/4-year-global-consciousness-data-released-highly-significant-evidence-synchronicity/
January 8th, 2013 at 11:05 am
Privileged says: So you’re sayin we have a chance?
LOL!
Privileged says:
I’m sure I’m no Benjamin but I’m doomer.
My past is that of a consummate consumer.
So I’ll just continue to move towards the exit.
Planting, building, chasing a different carrot.
Trying to be human instead of a tumor.
We search for great thinkers to parrot
To believe that we live lives of merit,
And we salve the distress
Of meaninglessness
Chasing one or another carrot.
January 8th, 2013 at 11:32 am
Burning ‘Deep Purple’: Australia So Hot New Color Added To Index
http://www.countercurrents.org/queally080113.htm
January 8th, 2013 at 12:03 pm
State of the Climate, National Overview, Annual 2012, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/13
“In 2012, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average annual temperature of 55.3°F was 3.3°F above the 20th century average, and was the warmest year in the 1895-2012 period of record for the nation. The 2012 annual temperature was 1.0°F warmer than the previous record warm year of 1998. Since 1895, the CONUS has observed a long-term temperature increase of about 0.13°F per decade. Precipitation averaged across the CONUS in 2012 was 26.57 inches, which is 2.57 inches below the 20th century average. Precipitation totals in 2012 ranked as the 15th driest year on record. Over the 118-year period of record, precipitation across the CONUS has increased at a rate of about 0.16 inch per decade.”
January 8th, 2013 at 12:28 pm
when I say “collective conscious” (conscient collectif), I mean a collective capacity to act as one entity, not at all the kind of collective consciousness that is discussed in this article you posted. it is a disgression. (but my level of english does not permit me to go deeper into such a subject)
January 8th, 2013 at 12:54 pm
Obedience at home:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/state_of_fear_20130107/
“The FBI documents are not only a chilling example of how widespread this surveillance and obstruction has become, they are an explicit warning by the security services to all who consider dissent. Anyone who defies corporate power, even if he or she is nonviolent and acting within constitutional rights, is a suspect.”
Just in case anyone still thought this was a democracy based on a Constitution and containing a Bill of Rights . . .
January 8th, 2013 at 12:57 pm
Great find, islandraider. I’ve added some of the information, and the link, to the original essay.
January 8th, 2013 at 1:07 pm
I think people are only going to start to “get it” when it hits close to home, as in the following story:
http://www.care2.com/causes/oysters-killed-by-climate-changes-evil-twin.html
For someone who has never been to Australia and knows nothing about the Great Barrier Reef or any other kind of reef, to talk about its demise remains in the realm of abstraction.
Interesting that in the MSM I am coming across more really dire accounts, and yet I don’t perceive people reacting to these stories, another example of which is here (from a couple of days ago; I couldn’t even find this story again on the website of the local paper where I had first seen it):
http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Slow-New-England-fishing-raises-questions-on-cuts-4170888.php
Look at the bland headline, then read the alarming text.
Tom Dempsey of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association, a council member, questioned whether the cuts would truly be catastrophic, since fishermen aren’t catching anywhere near their full limits, anyway. The real problem, he said, is that the fish being cut from the catch exist only on paper.
“There’s a disaster in New England groundfish, but it’s because we can’t catch the quotas we have,” Dempsey said. “And in most cases, that’s because those fish just aren’t there.“
January 8th, 2013 at 1:10 pm
ulvfugl @9:55, re. the tanker… The oyster article above claims that current acidification is due to CO2 from 30-50 years ago. Eat ‘em while you can, I guess.
January 8th, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Btd
We search for great thinkers to parrot
To believe that we live lives of merit,
And we salve the distress
Of meaninglessness
Chasing one or another carrot.
I have found that when you give up seeking meaning, life goes on as usual. The distress is in the giving it up, not in the having given it up.
January 8th, 2013 at 3:37 pm
@Kathy & BTD
Word.
January 8th, 2013 at 3:57 pm
@ m/m …my level of english…
Much better than my level of French. Yes, I know what you meant. We can’t get intelligent agreement at any level.
@ Lidia …the tanker… turned out to be a crap analogy, really, it was okay to illustrate the chaos, and so forth, but, actually, it’s going to be speeding up the whole time, not slowing down… so it’s sort of three miles before it stops going faster, if we jam the brakes on hard now…and then it begins to slow down after that…
January 8th, 2013 at 3:59 pm
.
Enough data’s now been collected
To warrant our feeling dejected;
We’re going away
So that’s why we say
Extinction is so unexpected.
January 8th, 2013 at 4:11 pm
I have found that when you give up seeking meaning, life goes on as usual. The distress is in the giving it up, not in the having given it up.
It is the acknowledgement of the way things appear to be – “as such”.
From the Wikipedia:
(Suchness) is often best revealed in the seemingly mundane or meaningless, such as noticing the way the wind blows through a field of grass …..
January 8th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Re: Rubber
BC Nurse Prof thanks for the reference. I am still not convinced that shortage of natural rubber would lead industrial collapse. In any case it would be a slow collapse of 20 or more years* at best and that is not the type of collapse that I think Guy is talking about to mitigate global warming in the near term.
*Based on the life of a rubber tree + Rubber trees highly susceptible for a short time (days) and then completely resistant + time to spread of South American Leaf Blight.
“Rubber tree leaves from susceptible Hevea trees are highly susceptible at leaf stage A, but become completely resistant at leaf stage D. The susceptibility of leaves of all Hevea clones to infection with M. ulei generally declines with leaf maturation.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759241/
January 8th, 2013 at 6:44 pm
What might get everyone to notice is the fact that coffee trees are imperiled by climate change now (so says an article in this week’s New Scientist). Can you imagine a world with no coffee?!! My wife says that’s when she’ll be looking to jump off the bridge (she drinks at least 6 to 10 cups a day).
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21728971.500-coffee-to-go-is-this-the-end-of-our-favourite-drink.html
“COFFEE-LOVERS be warned. Whether you are a three-double-espressos-a-day addict or just indulge in the occasional cappuccino, enjoy it while you can: a coffee drought may be on its way. Changing climate threatens to reduce the flow of coffee that fills 1.6 billion cups a day to a trickle. It may not be long before that after-dinner espresso costs more than the wine and some caffeine addicts will be forced to go cold turkey.
If that prospect fills you with dread, you are not alone. There are some 26 million farmers who depend on coffee to feed their families. Coffee is the most valuable tropical export crop, and as the world’s favourite drink it is big business. Our seemingly insatiable appetite for macchiatos and lattes has made coffee the second most traded commodity after oil, with exports worth a whopping $15 billion a year. All that is under threat because the coffee industry is built on a plant that is peculiarly vulnerable to our changing climate.”
January 8th, 2013 at 7:11 pm
No Tom – NOT THE COFFEE
You can keep all of the toffee
But don’t take away my coffee
Its vital to me
You surely can see
Unless your name is Gadaffi
OK that was really bad….
January 8th, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Oh the irony!
Persistent economic weakness is sapping the ability of governments to tackle the growing threat of climate change and threatens a global “perfect storm” of intertwined financial and ecological collapse, the World Economic Forum warned.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/01/08/climate-change-debt-and-inequality-threaten-financial-stability-according-to-world-economic-forum-report/
January 8th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
More awakening reaching a wider audience (comments are a mixed bag):
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/08/1177327/-New-study-forecasts-mass-extinction-in-100-years-due-to-Climate-Change#c58
DKos is not The Mainstream, but close to it for committed Democrats and their fellow travelers.
I feel a lot better after having largely given up coffee. When you think about how absurd it is, not just the vast importation of beans, but the imposed ritual… I have several different dedicated coffee-preparation devices in my home, along with many dedicated coffee-delivery containers (from personal travel thermoses to finely-decorated espresso cups). My deep dark secret is that I just can’t drink black coffee and the cream or sugar didn’t sit well with me in the AM. I have no regrets, but I have to maintain the coffee infrastructure for others in the household; otherwise I would ditch it all.
This is a big question for me: how to negotiate changes among a mixed group of family members ranging from somewhat comprehensive (but not without non-negotiable sticking points) to totally delusional and vehemently adherent to Business As Usual as a matter of pride and personal identity.
If I were on my own, I’d already be in some sort of convent/monastery cultivating an herb garden and waiting calmly for my natural end. As it is, I’m required (by my dying mother) to go to the supermarket in order to stock up on the sodas she sucks down. I’m planning to install a humanure toilet, though—against my husband’s desires. Having recently moved, I joined the local Garden Club to learn about regional plants and conditions, but it’s largely made up of “ladies who lunch”. I am being driven mad more by the disconnect of the rest of society than by the overwhelming and depressing circumstances of the predicament itself.
January 9th, 2013 at 3:01 am
The UK-based conservation group LionAid says as few as 645 lions remain in the wild in western and central Africa. It says lions are extinct in 25 African nations and virtually extinct in 10, and it estimates that 15,000 wild lions remain on the continent as a whole, compared with about 200,000 30 years ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/08/west-african-lions-extinction-report
January 9th, 2013 at 3:58 am
Ah Lidia I feel for you. I become more of a recluse daily because the denial is so hard to deal with. Luckily my husband and I are very much on the same page. you wrote “I am being driven mad more by the disconnect of the rest of society than by the overwhelming and depressing circumstances of the predicament itself.” Yes that is the worst of it isn’t it?
January 9th, 2013 at 4:42 am
Lidia
You wrote:
“This is a big question for me: how to negotiate changes among a mixed group of family members ranging from somewhat comprehensive (but not without non-negotiable sticking points) to totally delusional and vehemently adherent to Business As Usual as a matter of pride and personal identity.”
Having the same problems here in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
My family don’t get it, still sucking-the-dummy-of-industrial-cheap-mind/oil-funnelled-down-the-throat-syndrome.
Garden club sounds like the old world which died last December 21st, 2012.
Here is some free advice. You have to do it all!
I mean it.
And you know what? They wont like it one bit, untill they are hungry and cold and in need of clean water and some decent human community, (see guymcpherson.com or Walking Away from Empire…ha ha)
More advice-fre advice- you don’t have to build a mud hut in the desert, just do it where you are, in an existing home. Yes the bills will come and the kids will use too much of everything. You do it and it will happen.
More free advice…
If you don’t start now, and I mean now you will die very fast(yes silly wording) when the systems fail you.
I have come to this conclusion, you got to do it all, but not as an individual bunker mite, that is the old world bleeding through. The new world is just get up and do the next thing that will bring you that little bit closer to self authored engagement in transforming where you are to what will sustain you when the piped music and the water and the electricity either fail or are so stupidly expensive,(like housing has already become and food is rapidly becoming).
More free advice..
If you know in your heart the place you are in is untransformable, then get the hell out, even if it hurts financially and socially. Go where you can be yourself and grow into who you want to be.
More free advice…
Don’t take any more bullshit from anyone-not from ‘friends’ who fuck with your ideas and invoke some oppposing bankrupt worldview we all can see is failing and likely extincting us and a lot of other lifeforms; not from people in the street you strike up a conversation with who object to you carrying old unused wooden pallets home for transformation into chicken fencing and composting boxes; not from anyone who seems to think life as it has been lived is cool and groovy ang what’s all the hastle man, who just don’t see we privelaged few have sucked the life out of millions of other peoples, ecosystems and even the oceans, just to have that coffee.
IMO people are waiting for someone to act. They want change or they don’t. The only wat to know for sure is to do it, show it to your local community, and never believe you can do it all alone, but you can do far more, and learn far more about how to live simpler and a more happy living circumstance as you go. Others will join you, and if you are nearby me give us a yell and we may be able to raise some hell down under with getting it to happen.
It won’t change the climate, but it will allow ‘us’ to respond locally to conditions to the optimal survival.
For me it is reestablishing the Gift Community that will be the turning point for most.
You also wrote:
” Having recently moved, I joined the local Garden Club to learn about regional plants and conditions, but it’s largely made up of “ladies who lunch”. I am being driven mad more by the disconnect of the rest of society than by the overwhelming and depressing circumstances of the predicament itself.”
I went searching for local organic gardeners and donated some hours per week in exchange for picking up local knowledge from them on how they grow things. Only a few were fearful of me ‘stealing their gold’if you understand. After explaining about the gift Community and my desire to learn more than using potting mix and a garden hose and hope, several local people have given me the chance to keep learning, and provide some labour support for their garden.
I will say this… I you go down this path, and start changing your ways, you will find yourself doing things like putting on your baseball cap with LED lights in it and getting your garbage bin and going over the road to the independent school playing ground at 2 am on a bright moon night and putting on your gardenning gloves and harvesting, one plop at a time, (its a meditation thing), Kangaroo and Wallaby poo for several hours after your wife tells you we better break up when our lease is up in 6 months because we are toxic for each other. Regardless of the possible later actual said breakup, you have to be prepared to do shit other people find strange and somewhat odd – but if it is clear to you there is no time to waste on ‘coffee breaks, beyond talking to people about the ‘real shit’, and having a laugh, then it all has to be done pretty damn soon.
Oh, more free advice… don’t forget to have some damn fine fun when the synchronicity kicks in, big time. That’s when you know you are starting to fire on all cylenders,(to borrow a fossil fuel metaphore).
So the bit about…
” I am being driven mad more by the disconnect of the rest of society than by the overwhelming and depressing circumstances of the predicament itself.”
Well you said it, but like an absessed tooth, it only gets worse till the thing is eradicated, and though the pain, damage and wound is still there for a time, it gets a whole lot easier to chew on that side again.
I’d like to know what part of the country you are now in.
Great links and info all, IMO.
January 9th, 2013 at 4:50 am
TRDH: They list the “big three” dangers as ‘severe income disparities, the indebted state of governments and rising greenhouse gas emissions.’
We have already seen over the past decade, but especially the last 5 years how the powers that be are deliberately cutting jobs, stagnating wages, killing unions and diminishing bargaining power; secondly, the indebtedness of state (and the federal government) is of no concern to the corporatocracy; and finally, as Guy has pointed out, global emissions of greenhouse gases has RISEN over this time despite the “recession” – so we can only imagine how much more they will rise if “growth” was somehow restored! In other words – we effed on all three counts.
Kathy C.: That’s the reaction my wife had too – NOT THE COFFEE!!!! It’s like that scene from Airplane when the stewardess says that they’re wildly off course and headed for certain doom while the passengers remain calm and listen, then as an aside she says “oh, by the way, we’re out of coffee” and everyone goes crazy, running around, getting into fights, screaming, pulling their hair out . . .
Don’t feel bad about the limerick. My attempts aren’t real good either compared to (the Nobel Prize of them) BtD. He’s got a “gift” while it takes real work and time on my part.
There’s another article coming up in the next issue of NewScientist that i’m trying to link to but i’m having trouble. When i finally access it i’ll post it. It’s about climate change, and starts out with this:
Climate Change, The Next Ten Years
The Met Office in the UK says global warming may be on hold as natural cooling cycles temporarily counteract the warming we’ve caused – as New Scientist reported four years ago.
i’m pretty sure it has to do with the melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, rising sea levels and shutting off the thermohaline conveyor belt, but i haven’t read this latest article yet.
January 9th, 2013 at 5:03 am
In the meantime, there’s this that backs up the link from Dr. House:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/global-warming–inequality–and-structural-change-by-joseph-e–stiglitz
The Post-Crisis Crises
NEW YORK – In the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy’s long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril.
The most serious is global warming. While the global economy’s weak performance has led to a corresponding slowdown in the increase in carbon emissions, it amounts to only a short respite. And we are far behind the curve: Because we have been so slow to respond to climate change, achieving the targeted limit of a two-degree (centigrade) rise in global temperature, will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future.
(it’s a good read, but we already know a lot of this)
January 9th, 2013 at 5:41 am
Lidia, your comments really resonated with me. My partner is more or less on board, but he struggles with depression and if we discuss these things too much it becomes overwhelming to him. So, for the most part, we don’t talk about it except in terms of changes we’re making to our lifestyle.
My 81 year old mother, who alternates between our home and my sister’s, acknowledges these important issues but is unwilling to make any changes. When she encounters situations in which she has no choice but to participate (we don’t use paper towels or paper napkins in our house, for example), she accepts them grudgingly.
I understand fully why so many have trouble altering their choices. Denial is incredibly powerful. And, for now, it’s just too easy to dismiss all of this talk of global warming, economic collapse, peak oil, extinction, etc., as left-wing, tree-hugger, nonsense. Americans in particular are notorious for our unwillingness to deny our every want and whim, or accept that we have limits. This trait is pathological.
January 9th, 2013 at 5:43 am
more on the supposed “cooling”:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2259012/Global-warming-Met-Office-releases-revised-global-temperature-predictions-showing-planet-NOT-rapidly-heating-up.html
tell it to the Australians
January 9th, 2013 at 6:06 am
ulvfugl
NO, NOT THE FUCKING LIONS !!!!
ALL
The spiritual heart is best represented by the character of the free wild lion.
In about 1968 – 69, at the age of about 5 or 6, I was taken with my family to a little movie theater at Glenbrook, in the lower Blue Mountains and we watched a movie called ‘Born Free’.
It was a free standing double spool projector on a pull up screen and old chairs type affair.
It was the extraordinary story of a lioness named ‘Elsa’, born in captivity, (sound familiar?), and how her ‘owners’, Joy and George Adamson(Adam-son…?)attempted to reintroduce her to the wild existance in savannas of Kenya.
Films were not so often seem then here, and it was a treat, but what was amazing to me was that almost everyone, myself included was crying. Moved to tears by the deep inner meaning of being able to be free.
The book Born Free written by Joy Adamson was published in 1960, roughly coinciding with Adi Da Samraj’s Thirtieth birthday, and his Devine reawakening. If one reads Adi Da’s spiritual autobiography, “The Knee of Listening”, Adi Da declairs he was born Enlightened, and enjoyed that blissful awareness for aproximately 2 years. Over this 2 years he became aware that others around him did not enjoy this state of bliss, and that they suffered. In response he relinquished that divine realisation spontaeneously, in order to go through all the seven stages of spiritual growth to self realisation, in order to know what it was to do the entire transformation, in human form, so he could teach it, (to us).
He reclaimed that realisation at the age of 30, finding a powerful source of the Shakti force unexpectedly in a small Vadenta Temple in California, after having returned from India, after submitting to his Gurus – Rudi, (in America), Swami Muktanunda, Swami Nityananda, and Rang Advahoot, (in a glancing gesture).
At that 30 year age he began his world work, and he began to dream and ‘see’ all the people who soon came and were his foundation devotees-his Sanga.
It is my view that that act of submission to this world, for the sake of all beings, was accomplished at the same(Synchronistic) time as the Adamsons were attempting to and succeeded in reintroducing Elsa to the wild.
This is essentially(with respect) what self realisation is – it is reestablishing the instinctual adult existance and relation with the universe.
As with many other extraordinary events to do with Adi Da’s Devine emergence, many people (and animals it seems), respond to His Transmission and Agency through the emotional body, and I believe this is what was happening at a deeper level, with the film Born Free.
How does a deomesticated captive being re-aquire instinctual freedom?
Letting a human out of it’s cage is not enough, but as in Elsa’a case, where she had to kill to survive, she got very thin prior to her hunger overriding any ‘learned’ dependency. The drive to survive is paramount, and as it is said in the ancient prophesies, we are in the Kali Yuga, the “Dark Age” or “Dark Time”.(Does any one seriously disagree this is it?!!)
And that is ‘why’ the Heart responded with Adi Das Inncarnation and work.
So the Heart of this cosmic domain, ‘Devine’ if you will, has come and left bodily and cleansed all the 7 sheaths and chakras and planes of existance. He showed what it is to be a lion in this world. Fully vulnerable and full of passion for all beings.
Many will think this is a full on rave not fit for NBL.
That is anyone privelege to think so.
In closing, the first sentence in ‘The Knee of Listening’, which in effect is an attempt by a Devine being to get the attention of Ego-bound Humanity, is:
“Death is utterly acceptable to consciousness and to life.”
That is the Heart of a Lion speaking.
BTW wiki notes:
‘Born Free’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Free
“The book ‘Born Free’ (1960) was followed by two other books, ‘Living Free’ (1961) and ‘Forever Free’ (1963).”
And in synchronisticly timed metaphoric style, those three titles are what Adi Da, through his Teaching and Blessing work, did.
‘Excerpts from The Knee Of Listening’
http://www.kneeoflistening.com/c1-bright.html
A quote:
“The reason for this gesture was a spontaneous motivation associated with a painful loving of the people around me. It was not merely compassion for them, as if they were poor people I could help. It was a painful emotional and physical sensation in my heart and in my solar plexus. It was profoundly painful even then, and it always has been.
It was associated with the full knowledge that these people to whom I was committing myself were going to die, and that I would die. I knew that if I Incarnated in this life-form and circumstance, if I became this body and its lifetime, I would also die its death.
And I knew that, as this bodily incarnate being, I was, in due course, going to be separated from every one and every thing I loved in its lifetime….
This was all fully obvious to me — and, yet, this spontaneous gesture, this painful loving, this profound sensation, awakened in me and moved me into the body, animated me physically.
Thus, it was, altogether and simply, a sympathetic response that brought me into the sphere of human conditions, and of gross conditions altogether.
That response was identification with mortal existence, but it took place by means of Delight. In that Exaltation, the wound of mortality was forgotten.
Thus, it was not the noticing of mortality, in and of itself, that generated my Movement into this plane. Rather, it was the Love-Response, the attracted Response, in which all of the negative aspects of gross conditional existence were effectively forgotten — in Love, in Delight, in Love-Bliss.” Adi Da Samraj.
January 9th, 2013 at 6:13 am
The REAL Dr. House
You wrote:
“Americans in particular are notorious for our unwillingness to deny our every want and whim, or accept that we have limits. This trait is pathological.”
Well, ‘Pathological’ is exactly what protracted ‘adolescent’ stage existence is.
January 9th, 2013 at 6:15 am
Curtis A. Heretic
That link on Australia and ‘Deep Purple’ is a killer.
January 9th, 2013 at 6:16 am
As I understand it, that ‘cooling’ is nonsense, the graph is still going up, anything less than thirty years is weather, not climate, it’s noise, not signal, because there’s so many other factors that interfere, El Nino, economic depression, sun activity, volcanos, hundreds of things, all making contributions up and down. To see climate you need to look at the whole graph over 150 years, which is a steady constant rise which matches CO2. On the finer scale, you’d expect it to jiggle about and have steps, because there’s so much going on.
January 9th, 2013 at 6:27 am
Addendum to ‘Born Free’ comment posting….
I have only attempted to put forward ‘evidence’, and personal testamony, to the effect that this is a Phsycho-physical universe, and therefore, not being purely physical,(in line with ‘Scientism’s'realit presumptions), it is best to know what is ‘real’ when looking at ‘the big issues’ of biosphere destruction and NTE.
I would not bother to include details of Adi Da;s existance ond life work if I did not think it was relevent to understanding completely how this arena we call Earth, and the rest is actually operating.
It is, however, only my opinion.
Just Sayin….
January 9th, 2013 at 6:29 am
Sorry for typos, a bit late here, but cool today BWT.
January 9th, 2013 at 6:32 am
What is the effect of many hundreds of millions of internal combustion engines and coal and gas furnaces giving off heat to the biosphere so constantly?
Does this also have an effect on the heat budget of human activity?
Anyone?
January 9th, 2013 at 7:06 am
@ Ozman
What is the effect of …
As I understand it, insignificant.
January 9th, 2013 at 7:20 am
Ah yes, the disconnect!
The disconnect is the reason I come here every day. I still live in development hell and feel like I’m in a race against the clock to try to get out before the crash. We’ve got land, gorgeous land, where I want to die trying to atone and yet we may never get to it.
The disconnect is the reason I’ve become, like Kathy C, increasingly reclusive and increasingly quiet. Down to one friend anymore. I sleep at least 9 hours a night….unconsciouness is bliss.
You never really notice how frequently the future comes up until you accept that there isn’t one. I’ve begun to laugh out loud at some of the more insane projections of what the future holds.
It’s going to get into the 40s here in Michigan. A January thaw is not unusual, except that we’ve only been freezing for a couple of weeks. We’ve had maybe 3 inches of snowfall so far. Lots of sunshine, which is also really unusual.
January 9th, 2013 at 7:26 am
When ice is heated, the temp. of the ice rises but when it starts to melt, the temp doesn’t rise any more until it becomes liquid. This a phase change which stores energy as potential energy. A lot of heat has gone into melting ice in the Arctic which is now in ocean waters. (All the ice that melted didn’t refreeze again during winter. Most of it didn’t.) I think that after the ice has all melted, the rise in world temp. will pick up quickly. Also, the same thing occurs when water becomes vapor. There is more vapor in the air.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/watice.html
January 9th, 2013 at 7:37 am
There are very few people in this world who know any science. Most of the media doesn’t. Bill Moyers doesn’t. Global warming is about science. Not economics, politics, finance, communication, religion, business, art or music. We’re talking about mostly physics, the old fashion kind, the everyday kind.
I find also that even though many folks say they believe in evolution, they don’t understand it at all. I know of no one who I can talk to about these things…except here in these groups. I understand the disconnect and sympathize with you all.
David
January 9th, 2013 at 7:44 am
Mainline press seems to think Fukushima is over as do the bulk of Americans – it ain’t.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/fukushima-decontamination-measures-are-making-things-worse.html
January 9th, 2013 at 7:48 am
Wildwoman you wrote “You never really notice how frequently the future comes up until you accept that there isn’t one. I’ve begun to laugh out loud at some of the more insane projections of what the future holds.”
I bet laughing out loud doesn’t make people happy
Yeah, it becomes progressively harder to carry on a conversation with folks. I hate make talk. I can still manage at times to interact in socially acceptable ways, but damn if it doesn’t get hard.
January 9th, 2013 at 8:38 am
Tom, thanks! Kathy, haha you never know how they’ll turn out when you start off. Mostly it’s just a matter of practice.
==
Lidia says: I am being driven mad more by the disconnect of the rest of society than by the overwhelming and depressing circumstances of the predicament itself.
Denial is irksome, although
It’s all good if doom’s coming seems slow:
While we’re watching the show,
Folks’ awareness will grow—
Things will be a lot worse once they know.
January 9th, 2013 at 9:26 am
D-Man-Dave makes a great point: There are very few people in this world who know any science. Most of the media doesn’t. Bill Moyers doesn’t. Global warming is about science. Not economics, politics, finance, communication, religion, business, art or music. We’re talking about mostly physics, the old fashion kind, the everyday kind.
In addition to ignorance and misinformation, the human monkeys have layers and layers of psychological filters and delusional mechanisms to insure that only mind-candy gets delivered.
Here is a link to a very good article by Bill McKibben explaining why TPTB aren’t going to do squat about climate change in time to make a difference (assuming that it’s not already too late):
We’re talking about a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn’t care less if precipitous action raises gas prices, or damages the coal industry in swing states. It could care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China, or made agribusiness less profitable.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-01-07/obama-versus-physics
January 9th, 2013 at 9:27 am
Kathy C.: i hear that! i feel like i’m not on the same planet as many of the people i live among. My grandson of 14 gets it, sadly, but we agree that enjoying each day like this might be it, doing the best we can and trying to get along with everyone is the way to go.
Yeah, Fukushima, like the Gulf of Mexico before it, isn’t “fixed” by any stretch of the word (unless, of course you intend to be cynical), and probably won’t be before the NEXT man-made ecological disaster.
i’ve read reports of rampant, flagrant violations of safety, disposal, worker protection, extreme environmental damage (like plutonium leaking into the ocean), corruption and governmental cover-up on a grand scale and with the complicity of many other nations who don’t want the word getting out. Just another nail in our collective coffin.
wildwoman: We’re going up to about 55 today (over 20 degrees above “normal”) and it may be warm until Friday. i hope the plants and trees don’t start reacting like it’s spring. That Silent Spring scenario seems to get closer every year. Since there’s nothing anyone can do, what’s holdin’ you back from just evacuating to your land? Is it a group effort and not everyone on the same page sort of thing? i feel for you, yet the yearning should be recognized and examined too.
dairymandave: Trouble is, science and math are what got us into this predicament. Not the science and the math per se, but their continued misuse and abuse by bankers, military people, corporations, big agribusiness, the energy sector, the stock market etc. In the end, it’s our ignorance as a species that we overpopulated the space and started down that road. As some others have pointed out, it wouldn’t have mattered how we did it, that eventually and for some reason it would come to an end. So i guess we have to accept it as the way it is and ingest it. It’s a bitter tasting, sickening thought – the awful medicine of the truth.
January 9th, 2013 at 9:46 am
Tom wrote: In the end, it’s our ignorance as a species that we overpopulated the space and started down that road. As some others have pointed out, it wouldn’t have mattered how we did it, that eventually and for some reason it would come to an end. So i guess we have to accept it as the way it is and ingest it. It’s a bitter tasting, sickening thought – the awful medicine of the truth.
The expansion of population started with the rise of agriculture because we increased our ability to feed more people. I’ve gone back and forth on whether extinction through climate change is a biological inevitability for our species. Imo, we were destined to eventually overshoot the planet’s carrying capacity due to over population, in which case a die off is unavoidable. But the terminal climate crises was caused by a combination of industrialization and capitalism. It’s conceivable that if we had developed different cultural values, we would not necessarily be facing extinction.
January 9th, 2013 at 10:55 am
dl, Yes, dieoffs are a constant feature of all species all the time. Humans simply haven’t seen it for a couple of hundred years. So we think it’s a “right” for everyone to live as long as they can.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:06 am
Regarding the phase change of ice to water, we could say this is indirectly another positive feedback. All the sun energy us used to heat things, not melt ice. I don’t recall hearing this mentioned. Probably was somewhere along the way.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:21 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81U07CqFPYs
Punk Economics 7: The Global Food Economy
quick, effective video
January 9th, 2013 at 11:26 am
Tom, the problem is geological. The shale we drilled into for our well crumbles in water, which caved in the well. Lots of sediment. Shale is ubiquitous on the Kentucky mountain where our land is, so redrilling probably won’t solve the issue. We are working with people there to figure out the next steps.
We will put the house in development hell up for sale in the next couple of months. Hoorah! I’m thinking that flexibility is going to be key for whatever is coming (OzMan….you may be right, but a family doesn’t make for flexibility) so we’ll probably invest in a camper of some sort….thoughts?
Kathy C, so far, I haven’t laughed in front of people. I am kind of worried about that, though, which is another reason I keep to myself.
Lidia, the links to local news are really interesting to me. Actually, all of the links are great, but I think you are right in that people can only see what is right in front of them.
dairymandave, my 86 year old dad who is receiving dialysis treatments three times a week, sent me a note expressing some level of guilt about the amount of money that is being spent to extend his life and my weak ass response bugs me. I do believe that the amount of time and money going into his life extension is awful, but you can’t exactly say that, right? I said something to the effect that it’s okay to take advantage of the technology available…..yeah, I know, weak.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:33 am
Tom, Ecology should have been part of our science program. But that conflicts with business. When I was in college, my advisor wouldn’t let me take conservation. Would cause me conflict.
A comment about Fukushima I copied:
Chris Busby said it explicitly a long time ago (in 2011) and the reason is pretty clear
why the Japanese government is actually trucking radioactive
material from the Fukushima site all over Japan: in order to increase
the cancer rate in the whole of Japan so that there will be no control
group of children unaffected by the disaster, in order to help the
Japanese government prevent potential lawsuits from people whose health
may have been affected by the radiation.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:42 am
thank you Guy for this CLear and disturbing summary of where we are. you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. the human race killed off by greed and stupidity. it’s all a bit embarrassing really.
Benjamin the donkey I am a great admirer of your work. : )
I am thinking of starting a “welovebenjaminthedonkey”fan club!
January 9th, 2013 at 11:54 am
dairymandave: (especially on your Fuk comment) Brilliant, eh?
wildwoman: time to become nomadic (like in the Terminator, driving away from the coming storm)?
dlucidity: yes we could have prolonged it, possibly even significantly had we gone completely “green” in the 1960′s, made it unlawful to use fossil fuels (punishable by asphixiation), and done things differently, but we’d have had to do something about population at the same time, and that wasn’t happenin.’ So we would have gone into overshoot anyway and our problems would be the same but not climate related perhaps (i’m not so sure about that either, since everything is based on oil). Even had we done everthing perfectly in balance with the earth, sooner or later something would happen: be it earthquakes, tidal waves, asteroid strike, or ultimately the sun going into supernova – it would come to an end sometime. We were just in a hurry to “get it over with” this time i guess.
another fun read:
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2013/01/09/the-2nd-law-of-thermodynamics-dutch-ecotechnik/
January 9th, 2013 at 12:23 pm
This is why it no longer makes sense to get into permaculture at this late stage of the game (if you’re already committed to it, that’s another story, of course):
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/wildfires-rage-across-australia-slideshow/jan-4-2013-photo-provided-holmes-family-tammy-photo-112347883.html
So, instead of picking up the rake and the hoe, a young person like Aleigha would be better off learning a valuable, marketable skill that she can take with her on the road.
January 9th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Australia’s “bunny fence” and climate change:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/earth/14fenc.html?_r=0
January 9th, 2013 at 12:40 pm
BC Nurse Prof,
That phenomenon happens in response to reforestation as well. The areas in the vicinity of the new forest show 10-20% increase in rainfall.
January 9th, 2013 at 1:00 pm
@wildwoman
You stated: “…..so we’ll probably invest in a camper of some sort….thoughts?”
I’m going to try and keep this short, for I could probably write a novelette concerning the pros and cons of competing collapse preparedness strategies.
I’m going to pretend that it’s a few years back, before, we discovered the full implications of 450 nuclear containment pools going into meltdown once the power grids permanently fail. Because honestly, this reality alone, basically undermines every homesteading strategy in existence. And it seriously raises the question as to whether homesteading is even viable, other than for a great way to pass the time. I believe we have entered into a new era, where we must accept that by the time “collapse” finally arrives, we are ALL only a few weeks/months away from extinction.
First off, there are so many regional variables, that depending on your location i.e., winter/summer high and low temps, that this must drive most of your fundamental decisions.
Basically, it sadly all comes down to money. Depending on how much capital you have to invest, will pretty much determine every choice available to you, especially, if you’re not able to do most of the building yourself. If all you have is raw land, with no development, and you’re liquid assets are measured in the tens of thousands, compared to hundreds of thousands, I would highly recommend you never build a permanent structure, other than maybe a privy and a basic structure for an outdoor kitchen. Keep your essentials–heated sleeping arrangements–as small and mobile as possible.
Without knowing how much money you’re working with, I’m going to assume it’s low to moderate. The whole point of homesteading, is for your little piece of land to be as productive as possible, at least enough to keep you alive when you finally need to fall back on your preparedness, so this is where most of your money needs to go, otherwise you’re just defeating the purpose.
Invest first in the physical infrastructure that will allow you to live on the land, forget all the romantic ideas we have all had in dreaming of our little house on the prairie, for by the time, you have even started to build–and this is mostly determined by your states zoning and building codes, not to mention your neighbors–your dream will have mutated countless times, but the basic bones of water supply, raising livestock and extensive gardening is fairly universal–depending on your approach.
As far as mobility, I would recommend either a camper, with a diesel truck, or fifth wheel or trailer with the same truck. The perks of going with an Airstream trailer, is that even the older ones/cheaper are easy to weatherize and they are light and can be towed with a light truck.
If the idea of trailers/campers aren’t your thing, then I would go with an insulated 20′ yurt. They can be found used, but new they will run you around $10-13,000. Of course, you will have to build the platform, and while they are technically mobile, by the time you finally walk through the door, it’s going to feel fairly permanent.
Developing land is all about logistics, logistics, logistics: how far are you from any significant commerce i.e. hardware-building stores, feed stores, gas stations, post office, craft markets, grocery store. Are you in retirement age, or are you going to have to keep a job?
There are thousand and one questions that must be answered before you can even begin to accurately weight your options. I don’t know how far down the road you have already traveled, but I have seen so many dreams be completely crushed by logistics, that they quickly become nightmares……which again, is why it is prudent to live in mobility, while you figure out all the unforeseeable logistical problems you can’t even imagine until they arrive.
Hope this generalization helps is some way, I would be willing to go more in depth depending on your actual circumstances. Let me know.
January 9th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
sue day, thank you very much!
January 9th, 2013 at 2:13 pm
@ Arthur Johnson : …why it no longer makes sense to get into permaculture at this late stage of the game…..would be better off learning a valuable, marketable skill that she can take with her on the road.
That makes no sense to me. I’d have thought permaculture makes just as much sense as anything else, if not more than what most people are doing, and anyway, it IS a valuable skill that can be taken on the road, lots of permie designers are itinerant, like WOOFERS.
January 9th, 2013 at 2:37 pm
Arthur, you wrote “So, instead of picking up the rake and the hoe, a young person like Aleigha would be better off learning a valuable, marketable skill that she can take with her on the road.”
I have actually been recommending this for a long time on peak oil sites to any who want to extend their survival after collapse. One thing about a skill is that you have to be alive for anyone to make use of your skill. Gold, hoards of food, even land can be stolen from you and if you resist you may be killed. But if you are really good at say fishing, sharpening knives, midwifery, foraging etc. if someone kills you they loose your skill. Of course they might make you a slave….but many have accepted slavery in the past over untimely death.
Myself, I hope to be gone before things get really dicey, although I admit an interest in seeing just how things BEGIN to play out.
January 9th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
Tom, I see your point and upon futher reflection I agree with it. Had it not been for an oil/coal based economy we would not have been able to expand the population to 7 billion (and counting). It was the enormous amount of energy derived from oil/coal that made the scientific and technological revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries possible. Otherwise, human population would probably not have reached the point of planetary overshoot (without industrial agriculture and modern medicine human mortality — particularly child mortality — would have remained high thus off setting births).
Hence, an oil/coal economy eventually takes you to catastrophic climate change and extinction. So it seems that we were doomed from the moment we started to burn coal as a basic energy source.
January 9th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Permaculture is a lot of different things, ( nobody can agree on a definition that everyone accepts, so there’s a long list ), but it’s certainly not ‘picking up a rake and a hoe’, that’s gardening, or simple manual labour.
Permaculture is a design system. You have to know what you are doing, in other words, understand a lot of stuff in your head, ecology, biology, botany, soil, how systems work, and then apply them to local conditions. That takes tremendous talent and skill. So if you arrive at a community and can design something for them that produces more food for less work, they’ll be happy to feed and house you, and recommend you to some other folks that they trust.
All I’m saying here, is that being a good permaculture designer is a valuable skill, equivalent to say, PhD, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn as many others as possible…
Re Kathy’s point about slavery, I read yesterday about papyri found which show that people paid to be enslaved by Egyptian temples, because the alternative to temple slavery was forced labour, which was much worse.
January 9th, 2013 at 3:02 pm
ulvfugl,
I was speaking in terms of permaculture as part of homesteading. That no longer makes sense for younger people like Aleigha given that we’re no longer talking about a “garden-variety” economic collapse. Getting tied down with land brings way too many problems with it now.
However, the idea of learning permaculture as a skill that a young person might use, in a “fee for service” arrangement, to help someone who already has land and intends to “make a final stand”, is an interesting one, and could be made to work for certain individuals.
My main point is that younger people shouldn’t at all feel that this whole new kind of collapse scenario necessarily pigeonholes them into that same old, well-worn permaculture homesteading “solution” that’s been pushed and pushed and pushed by the sustainability crowd for the past 40 years. A completely different kind of collapse requires a completely different, and much more flexible, kind of thinking.
January 9th, 2013 at 3:17 pm
Here are Paul Chefurka’s five-step ladder of awareness:
1. Dead asleep. At this stage there seem to be no fundamental problems, just some shortcomings in human organization, behaviour and morality that can be fixed with the proper attention to rule-making. People at this stage tend to live their lives happily, with occasional outbursts of annoyance around election times or the quarterly corporate earnings seasons.
2. Awareness of one fundamental problem. Whether it’s Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.
3. Awareness of many problems. As people let in more evidence from different domains, the awareness of complexity begins to grow. At this point a person worries about the prioritization of problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact. People at this stage may become reluctant to acknowledge new problems – for example, someone who is committed to fighting for social justice and against climate change may not recognize the problem of resource depletion. They may feel that the problem space is already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the effort that needs to be focused on solving the “highest priority” problem.
4. Awareness of the interconnections between the many problems. The realization that a solution in one domain may worsen a problem in another marks the beginning of large-scale system-level thinking. It also marks the transition from thinking of the situation in terms of a set of problems to thinking of it in terms of a predicament. At this point the possibility that there may not be a solution begins to raise its head.
People who arrive at this stage tend to withdraw into tight circles of like-minded individuals in order to trade insights and deepen their understanding of what’s going on. These circles are necessarily small, both because personal dialogue is essential for this depth of exploration, and because there just aren’t very many people who have arrived at this level of understanding.
5. Awareness that the predicament encompasses all aspects of life. This includes everything we do, how we do it, our relationships with each other, as well as our treatment of the rest of the biosphere and the physical planet. With this realization, the floodgates open, and no problem is exempt from consideration or acceptance. The very concept of a “Solution” is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/
January 9th, 2013 at 3:19 pm
Guy,
FYI, in your ongoing forum on Jay Hansen’s site, I was just blocked from posting the following, which was only in response to another contributor denigrating those who question 9/11. I understand that there are few larger cans of worms than 9/11, but I didn’t bring it up, and the person who did, wasn’t blocked. Personally, I have little interest in attempting to communicate such unfathomable evidence as NTE, with anyone who can’t even fathom that while the Bush administration pretty much lied about everything else, that maybe they lied about what really happen on 9/11 as well……IMO, 9/11 is a sort of litmus test for how narrow one’s blinders are, and apparently, and much to my surprise, Jay Hansen’s forum is terribly shortsighted.
My post was simply this:
From Wikipedia: The organization [engineers and architects for 911 truth] is collecting signatures for a petition that demands an independent investigation with subpoena power of the September 11 attacks, specifically the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and 7 WTC. By December 2012, over 1,750 architectural and engineering professionals and 16,000 other supporters had signed the petition.
January 9th, 2013 at 4:00 pm
Daniel, Jay is well Jay. Its his blog and he does as he likes. Over the years and and off his blogs I have been pissed out of my mind. But he does attract an interesting group of bloggers and he did a great deal to bring Peak Oil to the forefront.
I understand your frustration. I have been there myself many times in the last 12 years over a variety of issues, but I keep ending up on a blog he runs anyway. But here is truly home!
January 9th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
Coffee is only one of the gifts of nature we are losing. Trees and other long-lived plants of all species are dying everywhere from air pollution, and so we can say goodbye to apples, peaches, grapes and nuts of all sorts, not to mention lumber, paper and shade. Even perennials like berry bushes and artichokes are in decline.
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-world-of-dying-trees.html
January 9th, 2013 at 4:31 pm
That’s a tremendous bit of work from Paul, depressive lucidity, very impressive, thanks for posting it, deserves wide distribution, I’m ashamed I have not read more of Paul’s stuff… Thankyou Paul ! Indeed, ‘What is The Solution ?’ becomes a zen koan…
@ Arthur Johnson
In the event of widespread social chaos, of the kind we might expect, what might it resemble ? Russian Revolution ? Chinese Revolution ? WW1 ? WW 2 ? I don’t think anyone can plan a survival strategy beforehand, not even the 1%, if there are going to be clouds of nuclear radiation drifting around the planet, total disorder that nobody can predict.
I’d suggest the best thing is to do is cultivate one’s self, that is, meditation, tai chi, qi gong, aikido, that sort of thing, to build inner spiritual strength, so that whatever happens, one doesn’t freak out at the first terrible thing one meets, and learns how to retain equanimity in the face of adversity.
January 9th, 2013 at 4:40 pm
@ Ulvfugl
Sorry, but I have disagree with you as to the relevance of permaculture, given what we now know, though I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you about ten years ago.
Having both studied and practiced it for years, I’m highly skeptical as to whether it has ever been, anything other than just a pet project for system theorists. Given the required large scale earth moving projects–unless you’re in an ideal location–and the focus on perennials which take years to fully mature and produce. There is just an unidentified and undisclosed social stability requirement to get any large scale permaculture experiment off the ground.
Permaculture made sense when the collapse paradigm was still debatable between a slow and fast crash, but that train has left the station.
Years ago, I got into it with Toby Hemingway, for his reasons for abandoning his ten year homestead in lieu of promoting urban permaculture, for urban permaculture–at least in regards to its original intent of being completely sustainable–is a complete joke.
It’s not by accident that most permculturist just happen to be liberal urbanites. They talk a good talk, but rarely seem to come anywhere close to Mollison’s original concept.
As it is being promoted these days, it just seems to be piecemeal at best. And as for Holmgren, I think he is just riding the speaking tour gravy train, promoting grand old ideas with almost no substantive working examples that can realistically have any bearing on “our” lives in a highly developed culture with staggering property prices.
But with that said, the basics of forest gardening and agroforesty still seems to carry water depending on where one lives………but then again, for how long?
January 9th, 2013 at 4:49 pm
depressive lucidity : Had it not been for an oil/coal based economy we would not have….
So, as I have said before, the whole thing hinged upon Abraham Darby, the Quaker, deciding to smelt iron with coke instead of charcoal…. And it seemed like an excellent idea at the time….
Because without the coke and the smelting and the cast iron, there could not have been all the machinery for the industrial revolution…
Of course, if it had not been him, there, then, it would have been someone else, somewhere else…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Darby_I
January 9th, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Here is one for all you seasoned collapseophiles, who have been swept up in this excruciatingly sane international book club called “collapse theory” over the last several decades.
As with many here, I can only assume that we invest time in NBL, because the point of departure, here–where the story begins–is actually where the story ends in almost every other social/internet interaction we’ve ever come across.
I don’t need to ask whether you all have alienated pretty much everyone you’ve ever known, to know you most likely have. This is just one of the unintended consequences of being stupidly over-informed, in regards to events 99% of humanity doesn’t want to know anything about. Our seeking of truth has made us all slightly masochistic in our own right.
One way of defining NBL, is it’s the polar opposite of “How to win friends and influence people”.
But in case you’re wondering whether or not you’ve completely lost your mind, and the time spent here, is far more of a reflection of how misery loves company, I thought I might attempt to expose just how far out on the radical fringe “we” now are.
About twelve years ago, with the exception of maybe William Catton and Joseph Tainter, I would be hard pressed to think of another individual, other than dieoff.org’s founder Jay Hansen, who would have been further out on reaches of the radical fringe. He was seriously ahead of the curve. In many ways JH was a proxy mentor to my understanding of collapse……..as well as countless others, including the slightly misogynist Kunstler.
Well, Guy is currently engaged in a online discussion on JH’s latest and rather large online group, and frankly, I’m not terribly impressed by his or his cadre of informed members.
I know how the zeitgeist of our times is an ever evolving consciousness, that demands we constantly break from previously held assumptions to stay attuned to the latest evidence. But damn, if JH’s group isn’t now considerably behind the curve in coming to terms with what we regularly and openly discuss here. I was hoping for some “enlightened” cross pollination, but the questions Guy is being asked–and maybe he will disagree–are surprisingly sophomoric.
In other words, for what it’s worth, if I had a bunch of gold stars, I would give each of you one, give you a hug and kiss on the cheek, for both allowing me the freedom to express such a troubled and tired consciousness, all the while continuing to teach me something new. It’s an odd relief to know my compulsion is in such good company.
Though we are all separated by countless differences– both real and imaginary–right now, while we’re all momentarily standing on the precipice, staring off into an abysmal future, wondering what in the hell to do with such unwanted knowledge, I like to imagine we’re holding hands. This is as close as we’ll probably ever come to true commiseration, and I can’t tell you how important that is……at least to me. Thank you all so very much.
O.K…….back to the idiosyncratic masochism.
January 9th, 2013 at 5:00 pm
@ Daniel
Sorry, but I have disagree with you as to the relevance of permaculture…
Well, I’m taking the perspective of standing on the beach waiting for the tsunami that’s on the distant horizon… I don’t think it makes much difference what we do, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to endorse rape, murder, cannibalism, or even being an anti-social asshole. I think human dignity and self-respect has it’s own merit, as depressive pointed out with the Victor Frankl quote earlier.
Of all the things one could be doing with one’s time and energy, permaculture seems to me one of the most noble and virtuous and positive. I’m not talking about survival or ‘saving the planet’ and I’ve written a whole rant about the shortcomings of permaculture in Dark Mountain 2.
January 9th, 2013 at 5:08 pm
@ Ulvfugl
I hear ya…..
January 9th, 2013 at 5:14 pm
Daniel: Beyond Crawford, Shepard, Fern who is making a go of it with forestgardening? We have spots on our farm where we work in that direction, but it is slow and doesn’t generate much income. We get discouraged at times, so more examples would be great. Our feeling about what permaculture means is that when you are making choices on your farm that you always pick something that has the most benefits. The best example is a chicken, they get rid of your garbage, provide eggs, provide manure, eat insects, provide warmth from their feathers, warm your greenhouse etc. We grow for a living, Jen has her Permaculture Design “certificate”, and we use some of the concepts, but stuff like keyhole designs just doesn’t fit. Some things just have to be planted in a straight line. Holmgren and Holzer were big advocates on using the big earthmoving aquipment while you can.
Really great posts here. It hasn’t been this good for years. Thanks to all of you.
January 9th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Paul Ehrlich is quoting the title of Guy’s blog in his latest piece. I especially like this statement “If humanity is very unlucky with the climate, there may be less food available in 2050 than today.” Kind of an understatement I would say!
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/01/essay-ehrlich-climate-predicament
January 9th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
@ Daniel
Again… ..the relevance of permaculture…
Thing is, if you’re really staring into NTE, what the hell IS relevant ? Not a lot, really.
That’s where Paul has got to with his The very concept of a “Solution” is seen through, and cast aside as a waste of effort.
But then what ?
You see, unless you make a decisive plan to fulfill an ambition, like commit suicide, or walk across the country, or take up oil painting, or re-decorate your house, or whatever…. What are you going to do ? The world hasn’t ended today, nor will it tomorrow, or this week…. It might just be a long wretched horrible dystopian nightmare, for years and years, yet to come. So, what do we each do ? We are all different.
There doesn’t HAVE to be a reason for doing something. You don’t HAVE to justify it. It doesn’t HAVE to make money, or please somebody else, or have a product or result at the end. You can just do something because you feel like doing it. Or not even that. Do it for no reason at all. Like being a beach comber. Just walk. Kick the piece of wood. Bend down and pick it up. Throw it into the water. Totally senseless. Totally unreasonable. Doesn’t ‘achieve’ anything. Actually works a lot better if you have a dog for company. They’ll teach you the deep wisdom of what I’m saying here.
You can do permaculture. Or, many other pursuits, in that same spirit.
January 9th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
Daniel,
Long story short, we bought the land thinking we’d build something off grid years down the road. I’ve read a lot of Derrick Jensen, and thought we could put our picket pin in the ground and protect the land base.
One of our neighbors is the Daniel Boone National Forest. There is no zoning or codes we have to worry about. The elevation on the land changes from about 800 (where the stream runs) and about 1200 feet el where we thought we’d build. It’s extremely rural, lots of meth, which means lots of theft. Which to my mind rules out a yurt, but that may be ignorance on my part.
It’s also fairly wild with bears and mountain lions and copperhead and rattlers around, according to the neighbors.
We’ve put up some fences to discourage dumping, and drilled for a well, but that’s about it. Originally, I was thinking we’d live in the camper and put up a prefab of some kind, but we’ve got to hit water.
We are both in our 50s and want to leave the empire, but have something to go to, not just to run away. We were hoping to garden and have some animals and live simply and closer to nature.
Don’t want to hog the thread here. You can get my email from Guy if you want to pursue this.
January 9th, 2013 at 6:39 pm
@ ed Beyond Crawford, Shepard, Fern who is making a go of it with forestgardening? We have spots on our farm where we work in that direction, but it is slow and doesn’t generate much income.
I’m fairly amazed if permaculture generates any income, I think it’s more likely subsistence survival for communities… re forest gardens, those guys are re-inventing the wheel, to an extent, I mean, the concept is proven, here’s one 2000 years old
http://youtu.be/hftgWcD-1Nw
Okay, it’s a lot different in temperate climates… ( I don’t know where your farm is located, Ed,) the tragedy of the Tian Shan fruit forest, we could have got hold of that genetic diversity to use before it was lost forever.
January 9th, 2013 at 6:43 pm
To buoy the spirits of the less sanguine:
Has global warming ground to a halt?
January 9th, 2013 at 6:45 pm
Wow, hay has become so expensive, it’s worth stealing. Never happened in my lifetime in this country, mostly farmers would give a bale or two for nothing, to be friendly, it was so cheap.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/us/high-hay-prices-encourage-more-thefts-from-farms.html
January 9th, 2013 at 7:07 pm
and, meanwhile, we, – and just about everything else – are all getting poisoned with phthalates, amongst all the other toxic crap that gets thrown into the environment.
Unfortunately, there are serious concerns about their health effects, as phthalates are thought to be endocrine disruptors, chemicals that alter the way animal hormones operate. Phthalates are not bound chemically to the plastics to which they are added and enter the environment naturally as the plastic deteriorates with age.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/ant-study-deepens-concern-about-plastic-additives/
January 9th, 2013 at 7:13 pm
@ Ulvfulg
Other than the fact that I couldn’t agree with you more, I believe you’re targeting in on the very question that has been dominating the majority of our time here: Now what? Which has been asked within these threads in countless ways. We all know that no one has the answer, the best we can do, is attempt to prosaically rework the relentless question.
While the circumstances of this awareness can be wretched, it does come with a strange sublime equanimity, that’s seems to be ushering in a degree of presence I’m still putting into perspective. The highs have been cropped, while the lows have become bottomless, but there is a sense of levity that comes with letting go, which I’ve been able to tap into from time to time.
We don’t live all that far from the coast, which my dog loves more than eating, and my car if filled with years of past beach gems. In my opinion, if one has the privilege to afford it, a life of contemplation is a life well spent.
As for the relevance of permaculture, it’s meaning/purpose, is trapped in the same past precedence along with all the rest of the pursuits we once championed.
Maybe all that’s left, is to wrestle with the temerity in continuing to ask the most troubling questions, full well knowing we’ll always come up empty handed.
January 9th, 2013 at 7:15 pm
Global warming involves heat for warming ice, melting ice, warming water, evaporating water and finally, warming air temperature. Seems like they should measure all these things, if possible.
Or just measure the volume of ice remaining and forget all the rest.
Daniel, your words are very comforting. Really helps to make it all worth it.
January 9th, 2013 at 7:36 pm
@ Daniel
Yes.
We’re all different. I don’t have children, that’s a massive difference. I live in a remote, quiet, peaceful place, no people-pressure.
I think that each moment of existence, living, life, is unique, never returns, has immense, infinite, potential. Most of ‘em get squandered in routines and habits. Once you start waking up to them, and how precious and valuable they are, start learning tricks to stay woken up, you can kinda get some control over the quality of your own existence, I suppose, that changes what you are…
It’s a wonderful resource to be able to just ‘be’, serene, peaceful, blissful, not haunted, lonely, fearful, anxious, angry, frustrated, desperate, etc.
It’s not ‘a solution’ for the Earth, or for NTE, but it makes the days and nights tolerable.
January 9th, 2013 at 7:42 pm
@ dairymandave
Thanks Dave!
While I can’t maintain the pace some here have mastered beyond my ability, I make sure to read what everyone writes, and I have very much enjoyed your stories and links, and you’re right, we’re all playing our tiny part in somehow making it worth it……whatever it may be. Take care friend.
January 9th, 2013 at 8:20 pm
Ulvfugl, I’d suggest the best thing is to do is cultivate one’s self, that is, meditation, tai chi, qi gong, aikido, that sort of thing, to build inner spiritual strength, so that whatever happens, one doesn’t freak out at the first terrible thing one meets, and learns how to retain equanimity in the face of adversity.
My opinion as to how to conduct myself in the coming days and years has evolved in direct correlation to my changing understanding of what’s happening. Certainly, taking time to spend with family and other loved ones is vital to me, but also enjoying myself is just as, if not more, important.
Several years ago I was all about conservation and permaculture and all those sorts of things. Now, I’m pretty much the opposite. Even though we grow a lot of our food, raise chickens, and goats, I willingly admit that I have a defeatist attitude about the situation. If we are already beaten, then there is no harm in spending more than your share of carbon (can we avoid doing this anyway?). If you want to travel and see the world, go for it. If you want to build a massive statue to yourself, have at it. In the face of NTE, ultimately, what matters to me is how I spend my remaining time and whether or not I can face my death proudly knowing that I lived in such a way that I feel good about myself – regardless whether anyone agrees or not. When we’re all gone, obviously there won’t be any other opinions.
January 9th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
@ depressive lucidity
As it seems with many things, I agree with Ulvfugl, and want to thank you for posting Paul’s wonderful writing. There is a fluidity and kindness to his approach that can’t be denied. And while I’m about as rabid an atheist as they come, and maybe not unlike Kathy C, I’m usually inclined to raise the drawbridge and go to war at even the hint of someone mentioning transcendence, I must admit, Paul possesses a wisdom that speaks volumes to both sides.
And even though, I would probably be the first to claim NBL is not the place for any metaphysical discussion, I’ll confess, I’ve been terribly impressed by yours, Ulvfugl, Ozmans, Robin D and Paul’s ability to be fully and simultaneously present in both the empirical and metaphysical states of being. It has made me reassess some of my own prejudices.
January 9th, 2013 at 9:17 pm
Daniel: 9/11 is a sort of litmus test for how narrow one’s blinders are
I completely agree. Anyone who has seen the towers collapse at near free-fall speed and does not question it because of all the sanctimonious propaganda the Bush administration heaped on 9/11 … and can further ignore the mountain of evidence which undermines the official narrative, along with the incredible coincidences that surrounded the now sacred event, is too programmed to even scratch the surface of NTE. They’re not even at stage 1 of Paul’s ladder of awareness, they’re probably at stage negative 3, “mental zombies”.
There is no point in trying to engage those folks in a discussion about Harsh Reality because they are impervious to anything that is not emotional candy. The challenge is to learn how to live in their midst with a sense of detachment in order to avoid the frustration and negative feelings that such obstinate blindness can trigger … When I’m at the office, I feel like a suppressed version of Kierkegaard’s clown who is hanging out with Vladimir and Estragon and pretending that Godot is about to arrive at any minute.
At this stage of the game, I try to remain invisible and keep my opinions to myself when I’m in a social setting with the capitalist bon vivants. I just want as much peace and tranquility as I can get. Later, there will be plenty of time for apocalyptic drama.
January 9th, 2013 at 10:37 pm
depressive lucidity
You wrote:
” But the terminal climate crises was caused by a combination of industrialization and capitalism. It’s conceivable that if we had developed different cultural values, we would not necessarily be facing extinction. ‘
I concur.
I would also emphasise that the single biggest factor for this situation is a human behavoural shift to the concept of personal wealth. Money is a comodity of exchange, yes, and it therefor, liquifies and translates labour and weath exchange, but IMO it is the idea that I can accumulate personal wealth that turns a group of cooperative humans into competative, self interested, floaters on the land.
Just sayin…
January 9th, 2013 at 10:55 pm
wildwoman,
You wrote:
“Hoorah! I’m thinking that flexibility is going to be key for whatever is coming (OzMan….you may be right, but a family doesn’t make for flexibility) so we’ll probably invest in a camper of some sort….thoughts?”
Good for you on that decision, and I hope you can sell sooner rather than later.
I agree flexability is the key. Also I agree a family can hinder flexability, but in my case really none of the immediate domestic dwellers, 5 to 6, are really changing any actual behaviour, let alone the mental attitude to industrial everthing laid out presuming you can pay for it. So after some pretty tought angst and reflection I have decided to continue without their consent or even much support, and just find casual jobs to contribute to silly rent and such. The actual burden of earning money ahs fallen on my partner for the last 8 months, but I have some casual work for school term for three out of four school terms this year, so that helps.
But I jast said I am not giving up, nor doing nothing to prepare and become adaptable, etc. Yes NTE is a biggy to prep for, who could know, but I have decided to rely on my Intuition, even if it messes with other peaoples schedules and “You-have-got-to-do…”systemic thinking.
I have found new people in the local community to connect with, some not so on board, but some pretty much so.
If your family is not on board, then that just makes it all a bit harder, and less enjoyable, but not impossible. I went ahead anyway, and for me it has been the right decision, even under grandmother in-law evil eye censure…. which only makes me stronger, little do they understand.
I mean ultimately I am taking responsibility when they are incapable of doing so themselves yet. Only how it plays out in the next decade will tell how my actions will be understood.
The politics of peak oil in the market place is equally important to explain to people along with catastrophic climate changes, and I completely endorse how Guy does explain these two sides of the fossil fuel coin.
The reason is that as oil and other fossil fuels like gas and coal increase in price, they deliver less largess throughout the industrial economy, and the more slave labour, well disguised in capatilist rhetoric, is implimented worldwide.
Personal wealth… IMO is the killer idea behind it all.
Perpetual adolescent Ego, in other terms.
The only solution IMO, if it is at all helpfull, is for everyone to grow up, and grow beyond.
Just sayin…
January 9th, 2013 at 10:58 pm
Re: What to do?
I will submit that we are largely unaware of our own religion. That seems infinitely problematic in and of itself. I don’t mean Christianity even, so much as the American pantheon.
We have these characters like freedom, liberty, and cowboy that develop delusional ideas within our societies that one can be self sufficient on the land base – that we don’t necessarily interact with each other. Permaculture flaws seem to arise in those regions also. Permaculture is only as brilliant as the user of the methods, in that it fails where the person/group steps in and out of the system.
And every time that I turn myself decidedly away from the magic, glowing screen of empire, it does not create a solution any larger than myself. I do not notice anyone passing through these 5 stages of Paul’s description any faster than they are able to process events. No amount of pointing things out or attempting to illuminate those stages has noticeably affected anyone I know or care about. At the same time, Guy and NBL have carried me some when my legs have failed. I guess that’s why I read this, whether I like it or not.
The preacher on the corner that announces “Come to Jesus and be saved!” does not call anybody to Jesus and he cannot see that, but he starts conversations in all that are offended upon passing by him.
I don’t even react anymore. I too feel sort of hollowed-out by all of it. I have decided not to tell anybody anymore. I find myself sort of frustrated when people drag me into the conversation, as if they had discovered this cloaked reality that no one sees. Life has been a lot better though, without criticizing anything, no matter how deserved the comments might be. It is delightful to stop cycling through the stages, but delight is sort of the wrong word.
January 9th, 2013 at 11:06 pm
I’m just an old man
Living by the sea
There’s a shadow hanging over me,
There’s a cold wind blowin
can you feel the chill
oh my lord
Nothin left to kill
We made a living
Earth and sea and sky
We had our plenty
lord there’s no deny
We had the birds and trees
and mountains we could mine
We took it all lord
said it’s your design
I’m just an old man
Living by the sea
There’s a shadow hanging over me,
There’s a cold wind blowin
can you feel the chill
oh my lord
Nothin left to kill.
You gave us oceans
We crossed them all
We took the harvest
creatures great and small
We had a one time, good time,
Lord we had our way
Who’d be thinking
it wasn’t meant to stay.
I’m just an old man
Living by the sea
There’s a shadow hanging over me,
There’s a cold wind blowin
can you feel the chill
oh my lord
Nothin left to kill.
We took our ozone,
Will you fancy that
We did it all and
not an eye to bat
we did it all and
wasn’t it a thrill
I’m just an old man
there’s nothin left to kill.
-Kevin Middleton
January 10th, 2013 at 12:44 am
At the moment, those of us at stage 5 are coping with the alienation which results from dealing with a population that is in denial, or people who are so oblivious to Reality that “denial” is not even the right word, since denial presupposes at least a subliminal awareness of that which then gets suppressed.
Soon, however, our existential agnst will end. When for, example, the age of cheap food comes to a screeching halt and people in the “rich” countries find themselves spending 30%, or more, of their income on food, the retail economy (which in Amerika comprises about 70% of the economy) will start to unravel because regular folks will lack the disposable income to buy anything other than food and shelter. At that point, we will experience a massive rise in unemployment, the spreading of hunger among former members of the middle class, and so forth an so on…
Imo, the government has contingency plans to severely curtail civil liberties and quickly install a police state. The problem they are going to encounter is that Amerika is not pre-Soviet Russia, which consisted largely of an agrarian peasant class that had always lived under the boot of a monarch and was further dominated by the backward superstitions of the orthodox churches. They were austere people who had little and were used to oppression. Amerikans, however, are the products of more than 60 years of heavy duty corporate propaganda telling them that they are all little gods. Each Amerikan believes that she is divinely entitled to bleached teeth, a car, at least a townhouse, a new iPad every two years, a flat screen television with either satellite or cable service, endless entertainment, cheap pizza, burgers, fries and diet sodas …. these are considered the primal basics of life. When the Amerikans realize that all those goodies have gone bye-bye for good, they are not simply going to bend over for the friendly neighborhood brown shirts. I doubt that when push comes to shove many in the military will willingly turn their weapons on other Amerikans. I’m sure many of the indoctrinated boy-bots will, but others (including many officers) will probably refuse … in other words, I think the country will fragment and that the feds will ultimately fail. Unfortunately, we may then be faced with local thugs who will control their own fiefdoms … and who knows into how many pieces the country will crumble. We will probably be better off with a police state, since it at least offers the hope of security.
My point is that fairly soon we will be spared the burden of having to wonder what to do in the face of NTE because we will be too busy trying to survive day-to-day in the new dystopian order.
January 10th, 2013 at 1:11 am
‘Dan Collins on The Keiser Report’
http://www.thechinamoneyreport.com/2013/01/08/dan-collins-on-the-keiser-report/
Intersting discussion on the USA china Japan situation. War predicted in 2013, and also Oil price spike soon.
China’s role in Africa, and the announcment over Christmas, that the USA has sent troops to 35 African countries.
A shindig is a brewing….
Just sayin….
January 10th, 2013 at 1:41 am
A must see, especially for anyone who denies that Empire has always relied on enslavment of humans by humans, and destruction of this biosphere, by vertue of the idea of infinite growth on a finite planet.
‘Keiser Report: Wealth & Wage Extinction [KR389]‘
http://maxkeiser.com/2013/01/05/kr389-keiser-report-wealth-wage-extinction/
Median houshold income in the USA peaked in 2009 at 56 K per annum, and has dropped to 51 k as of the end of 2012, which translates into 10 % loss of real value or personal wealth, due to QE, (‘Quantatative Easing’), or money printing.
Why work in such a system if there is an alternative?
How about the gift community….?
I bet it will come back.
January 10th, 2013 at 2:05 am
depressive lucidity
You wrote:
“Unfortunately, we may then be faced with local thugs who will control their own fiefdoms … and who knows into how many pieces the country will crumble. We will probably be better off with a police state, since it at least offers the hope of security.”
I agreed with all the rest of this entry, and your expressions are very succinct and clear.
I disagree with the notion of security being a good thing in a police state,
There is no difference, IMO, to that police state and the local feifdoms you also propose may eventuate. what security? What, knowing the bona fides of the riot squads kicking the ‘homwgrown terrorists’ heads in on your front door is ‘more secure’ and less oppressive than the thugs who you can shoot with impunity when they rape ypur sister, your daughter, or your son or you?
Seems like a free pass you are giving to this oppressive future. When the time comes we will all chose our response, but the organisers of any resistance will be known to TBTB via all that stored social networking infomation, and the show of deadly force in the early time of uprising will lend a lot of deterrence impact on dissent and defiance.
I rather predict an engineered pandemic of some kind, and who knows what selective bioweopon, or genetic marker weopon The Bastards That Be have cooked up for just that moment to kill off the by then unwanted, no-longer-able-to-consume-consumer?
I wouldn’t want to be in the Northern Hemisphere in the coming decade… noooo way!
Just sayin…
January 10th, 2013 at 3:35 am
Probably old news for some…
‘Obama signs NDAA 2013 without objecting to indefinite detention of Americans’
http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-ndaa-detention-president-288/
A snippet and the nub of the issue…
“President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, giving his stamp of approval to a Pentagon spending bill that will keep Guantanamo Bay open and make indefinite detention for US citizens as likely as ever.
The president inked his name to the 2013 NDAA on Wednesday evening to little fanfare, and accompanied his signature with a statement condemning a fair number of provisions contained in a bill that he nevertheless endorsed.
The NDAA, an otherwise mundane annual bill that lays out the use of funds for the Department of Defense, has come under attack during the Obama administration for the introduction of a provision last year that allows the military to detain United States citizens indefinitely without charge or trial for mere suspicions of ties to terrorism. Under the 2012 NDAA’s Sec. 1021, Pres. Obama agreed to give the military the power to arrest and hold Americans without the writ of habeas corpus, although he promised with that year’s signing statement that his administration would not abuse that privilege.
In response to the controversial indefinite detention provision from last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) introduced an amendment in December 2012 that would have forbid the government from using military force to indefinitely detain Americans without trial under the 2013 NDAA. Although that provision, dubbed the “Feinstein Amendment,” passed the Senate unanimously, a select panel of lawmakers led by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) stripped it from the final version of the NDAA two week later before it could clear Congress. In exchange, Congress added a provision, Sec. 1029, that claims to ensure that “any person inside the United States” is allowed their constitutional rights, including habeas corpus, but supporters of the Feinstein Amendment say that the swapped wording does nothing to erase the indefinite detention provision from the previous year.”
What was it Guy keeps saying…?
“Obedience at home, oppression abroad”
Looks like the oppression is heading home now too….oh, and we will be not far behind North America, Ostraya being the 53rd state of the USA…
Big year 2013, for the world….
Just sayin…
January 10th, 2013 at 3:53 am
I have begun working in some compost into the bed where I will plant my edible pod english peas. A pair of wrens are making an nest (rather early it seems) and set up a rukus when the neighbor’s cat wanders round. A Towhee and I have been exchanging calls of late, or so I like to think. I am guess he is just trying to correct the Towhee with the bad call. This year’s crop of young chickens are almost all laying now. Our flock contains genes for blue, brown and white eggs. It is fun to see what color we get from each new hen – mixed as we are many are not homogeneous any more so even when we choose the mating we don’t know for sure what we will get. One young hen for her first egg found a dark corner and was all busy making a nice little nest – spotted her and watched for a while. Such joy. This is my refuge.
January 10th, 2013 at 5:06 am
Kathy C
Last week I went to a large old quarried dam, which was used for water storage for stem engines. both rail and tractorthing pullers way back. I had a good swim and found a lot of sea weed, or dam weed. I managed to stuff a whole shopping bag full and have added Kangaroo poo, some cut grass, and a lot of human urine, (9 Lt)and a spadeful of compost for micro-organisms. That should kickstart an economy, dont you think?
I’m going back to the dam soon to harvest more of the weed. It seems too godd to be true. I need a vehicle to get there in an afternoon. I could walk. but it would take me too long with the heavy wet damweed.
Getting a few more chicken here soon too.
Cluck!!!
January 10th, 2013 at 5:19 am
Australia breaks records and hits 122 degrees.
US breaks all time heat records – and 2nd most extreme weather.
It is going to get to 80 deg 4-5 days straight here in NE Fl. The first time ever since I have lived here for 57 years.
I think the empire will not collapse in time folks. We’ll throw pine straw to keep it flamed until the bloody hot end.
January 10th, 2013 at 5:22 am
The human experiment on the planet is a quarter of a million year old failure. I am trying to find a way to be a peace that I happen to be one of them – and it’s not an easy thing to find peace with.
January 10th, 2013 at 5:45 am
@depressive lucidity:
Thanks for posting that piece of mine. From what I’ve seen so far, those who are coping successfully with a full-blown Stage 5 awareness are doing so through a combination of inner and outer work. That means some sort of community involvement or other action to helps break the paralysis, and some sort of inner work – grief work a la Joanna Macy, shadow work per Carl Jung, and/or general inner psycho-spiritual development aimed at acquiring some level of non-attachment and the accompanying equanimity. There are lots of options, but the combination of inner and outer work is essential.
@bubbleboy:
Climbing that ladder is a deeply personal journey. People can only make it as fast as they are able to process the enormous shift at each stage. I don’t try to “help people climb it” any more. What I do now is just make the information as widely available as I can (similar to what Guy is doing) so that people who are ready to take the next step might see what it requires. Then I offer friendship and conversation to others who are on the road beside me. Frankly, I don’t even need to do much any more with respect to informing people. The awakening is starting to cascade as each year’s events steamroll last year’s expectations.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:16 am
@Bailey,
What’s you definition of “success” in this case? Was that definition ever achievable? If not, does that mean the species is broken, or did we just make a big inadvertent mistake somewhere along the way, or is the definition of “success” the problem?
From an evolutionary point of view we’re an extraordinary success. From a human-derived ethical point of view, perhaps not so much.
These days I define “success” as being exactly where we are right now, with the situation, tools and awareness we have. I’m going to remain fascinated as the situation unfolds into the indeterminable future. Some may see that attitude as a virtue born out of necessity, but it makes me feel much less like shaving my wrists in the morning.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:27 am
Its always worse than we thought – update by Arnie Gundersen – http://fairewinds.com/content/podcast-january-6-2013-happy-new-year-2013
Cleaning up Japan = putting the stuff in the forests and streams
Past info on an old clean up Arnie was involved with
Ft Calhoun worse than we thought.
so it goes…..
January 10th, 2013 at 6:29 am
Oz man the film for you is The Field about an old man who hauls seaweed to fertilize his field ….
Plot Summary for
The Field (1990) More at IMDbPro »
“Bull” McCabe’s family has farmed a field for generations, sacrificing endlessly for the sake of the land. And when the widow who owns the field decides to sell the field in a public auction, McCabe knows that he must own it. But while no one in the village would dare bid against him, an American with deep pockets decides that he needs the field to build a highway. The Bull and his son decide to convince the American to give up bidding on the field, but things go horribly wrong.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:53 am
The college i work part-time at had their adjunct kick-off last evening for the spring semester which begins on Monday the 14th. i think i’m the only one who looks around in disbelief as we’re making plans and commenting about testing, students, and growth! i’m so surprised that anyone is still even interested in preserving the status quo by trying to gain academic skills for job enhancement in a dying empire that i came away empty and a little bitter. People aren’t going to “get it” – that all this job business is killing us off in short order – until the collapse rips through all the economies of the world.
Already we see insurance companies trying to bail on their Sandy investments, banks continuing along despite not having fixed the ticking bomb of derivatives still on their books and cleverly avoided by accounting shenanigans, and the government denying anything to do with climate change despite all the evidence in their districts and all over the world. We’re seeing all the crazy stuff Alex Jones was warning about (like a “kook”) for years coming into play now: botched psy-ops like the Sandy Hook shootings (proven to have been staged using actors as parents and the “medical examiner”, “teachers” who weren’t registered in the state, and condolence/donation websites up and running before the event occured), 9-11, and even the Kennedy assassination to promote whatever agenda they have lined up for the masses. It’s gonna get ugly before we all go down with the ever-worsening living conditions. DHS buying millions of rounds of ammunition and equipping local police with military weaponry, foreign troops being spotted all over the U.S., large movements of materiel across state lines, suspicious activity by the authorities, surveillance 24/7 (now with drones over your skies), and the government becoming ever-more fascist is all enough to make one wonder just how far off martial law really is.
Now we here know in our hearts that the big crunch is coming probably sooner rather than later (my feeling is still that it will happen rapidly once it starts and that it will begin in earnest before 2020), but (since i’m no big deal) THEY probably know this too and are actually engineering the collapse as best they can to protect the powers that be who still think they will escape unfazed. While we’re all distracted with the goings on of daily life they’re consolidating their resources (buying up the water rights to aquifers, for example, or outfitting a ship to avoid the craziness out on the open seas for as long as it takes or investing in fully stocked bunkers).
Like all “prepping” it will be useless once mother nature unleashes her wrath while the economies of the world implode and medical care along with food supplies (and all the other trappings of civilization) cease to exist. We’re already seeing some of the diseases ramping up (like flu here in the U.S. and elsewhere, “mysterious diseases” killing livestock and people alike in China), pollution taking its toll (especially in China where air pollution has killed 8500 people in 4 major cities in 2012) on both people and marine life (not to mention all the other species – specifically trees, which Gail at Wit’s End does such a great job at documenting, THANK YOU Gail!), and on and on through the practically endless list of troubles we face (with new ones coming to the fore daily, it seems).
i guess it’s just willful ignorance that keeps most people “playing the game” of civilization while it still “works.” When it doesn’t is when chaos will take over and craziness becomes the rule.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:55 am
Hey Guy. What’s your feel for our chances if the global economy DOES collapse soon and relatively rapidly? Lots of variables & unknowns, I know, but do you get the feel that the positive feedbacks are too far in motion already? Thanks for all you do.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:57 am
Depressive Lucidity,
I tend to agree with your assessment. I think the government will try, and fail, to control society as it breaks down, and we’ll be left with Mad Max in many places. Look at New Orleans after Katrina.
Daniel, I appreciate your comments which mirror my own experience. It’s very isolating to be more-or-less alone with the unwanted vision of NTE. I’m not sure why some of us didn’t get the denial gene, and there surely aren’t very many of us.
“Lord” Monkton is going to Australia for a speaking tour, sponsored by a fundamentalist preacher who claims that God has sent the wildfires to punish the country for allowing abortion. I expect that as more and more extreme events occur, most people will tend towards such nonsense rather than admit that we have brought catastrophe on ourselves.
January 10th, 2013 at 7:08 am
@ bubbleboy
Someone else’s take on that..
“Here in America, we occupy a cultural moment in which our most dominant thinkers tend to equate science with the best humanity has to offer. Fundamentalist religion dominates the media, while spirituality, on the other hand, is greeted with immediate suspicion—a mere vestige of primitive superstitions. I now understood this black and white thinking to be, well, bullshit. And I started to think of Fringe-ology as a kind of prison escape yarn—a story about how anyone might slip through the bars of the cell we’re encouraged to live inside and explore these big questions for ourselves.
In short then, if you’ve ever felt shy about your own spiritual yearnings, if you’ve ever felt the least bit embarrassed about your interest in topics commonly labeled “paranormal,” stop. You have good reason—a loaded word, in these times—to believe there is so much more to you than meat.”
http://stevevolk.com/archives/1026
January 10th, 2013 at 7:11 am
dan allen, thanks for weighing in. It’s been too long.
I think we’ve triggered too many feedbacks on the climate front. As a result, I suspect we’re headed for near-term human extinction even though the industrial economy will collapse first. I held out hope for a long time, but the evidence overwhelmed me this summer.
January 10th, 2013 at 7:28 am
Meaning of Life/Life of Meaning
Prosaically pursuing TheSolution
‘Tis a task that invokes destitution.
It’s seeking to solve
With the needed resolve
What’s TheProblem and it’s constitution.
CC 2013 (& HatTip2 BtD) Greg Robie
January 10th, 2013 at 7:29 am
more “fun” stuff (meddling):
http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/01/haarp-clouds-over-knoxville-and-other-locations-2440514.html
January 10th, 2013 at 7:35 am
I have never posted a link to Fox News before but this isn’t too bad. Had the feeling he was being cut off.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/01/08/are-raising-generation-deluded-narcissists/
January 10th, 2013 at 8:01 am
@ Daniel
As it seems with many things, I agree with Ulvfugl…
Re the metaphysical v. the empirical
The way I see it, it’s a false dichotomy. There isn’t a body of meaning ‘out there’, it’s ‘in here’, in minds and brains, incorporated, as neurological activity, in other words as stories.
‘One plus one equals two’, is a story. As is ‘Once upon a time…’. Scientific, empirical, stories have to have some precise correspondence with measured evidence ‘out there’. Fiction and fairy stories are unbounded.
Cultures tend to privilege some types of story, denigrate others. The dividing line tends to be between left brain and right brain, between logos and mythos, between literal, testable, logical truths and poetic, symbolic, truths pointing to experience which cannot be measured, ( which is a heck of a lot of ‘em.)
It’s hard to know what you mean by that word transcendence, – hard to know what anyone means by it, for that matter – but I’d suggest it means going beyond all of the stories.
@ Paul Chefurka
Still have not got around to reading all your writings Paul, but thanks for that analysis, great stuff, I’d go along with all of that, although I’m not into Jung or J Macy myself. IMO, what i called the false dichotomy above, just vanishes as a problem, when people do yoga, tai chi, qi gong etc. The division between empirical, atheist, thought versus metaphysical notions of soul, spirit, etc, is all ‘in the head’.
Once a person becomes ‘re-embodied’ and starts living inside their entire sensualnervous system, – instead of only in a tiny walled off section of ego, intellect, and cerebral ideas – and finds the connection between consciousness and the Universe via the breath, the synthetic intellectual divisions which cultures have made over the centuries, just dissolve away and become irrelevant, imo
January 10th, 2013 at 8:39 am
This just in from friends in southern Utah:
Many of you clearly understand the challenges that our world faces. Often that realization is accompanied by despair. An antidote to the despair that I have discovered is Action. My wife and I have been working full-time these past 14 years to create a sustainable existence on some beautiful land in Southern Utah … we raise our own veggies, herbs, fruit and animals for meat. We forage and hunt. We fix or rig everything ourselves. We repurpose things from the dump. We engage with the local community by selling and sharing our food, hosting musical events and workshops, showing movies in the barn and offering a tool library. We live very happily in these troubled times. I think the model we have created is similar to what Guy has been working on at the Mud Hut.
We have come to realize that the knowledge that we have gained these past years is starting to be sought by many so we have decided to offer a 7-month Apprenticeship for 2 people starting this April. It will be all-inclusive and cost $7,500. I wish we could offer it for free but I still do engage in the cash economy and know many do have the means to pay.
The nature of coming here to live, work and learn is intimate so there is no room for a lot of personal baggage … we are not therapists. We approach this work from a point of hope for the future, not despair for the past and present. You need to be in good physical condition but do not need to have any experience in Homesteading.
We will interview applicants to try to ensure that the chemistry will work between us. We encourage you to check references from folks who have worked for us in the past and we will ask you for personal references. Please check out the Apprenticeship Website at http://sustainableapprenticeship.weebly.com/
Kind Regards,
Scott and Brynn Brodie
Owners, Red House Farm
January 10th, 2013 at 8:44 am
It’s interesting to observe the evolution of thought regarding imminent NTE. Like many others, we have an extensive garden, and even added a few hens a few years ago. We have always composted, yet regularly supplemented our amendment processes with commercial fertilizers.
As our awareness of the terrible trio (peak oil, peak debt & AGW) increased, our hobby pursuits took on more of an experimental tone. But, alas, like most (all) others, it doesn’t take long to face the stark reality that one simply cannot generate sufficient yield without a very large dose of petro-chemical fertilizers. No way, no how, not gonna happen.
Once you reach that state of awareness, it tends to open up other horizons. It could almost be said that “true awareness” is the recognition of just how far humanity has collectively ventured up this box canyon called fossil-fuel based civilization.
So, we’ve entered the next phase, which is where Thelma & Louise succumb to nihilism before driving off the cliff. We haven’t discarded all social norms, but we’ve both come to the conclusion that we might as well “burn as many dinosaurs” as possible. There’s a lot to see, even if it represents nothing more than serving one’s own selfish desire to do what they want to do.
We live by a SoCal beach, and you might be surprised at the number of people who have already checked out. The day-use lots are full of “bandit RVs” that hang out during the day & park elsewhere for the night. Perhaps they read the tea leaves long before us, and decided to work on their tans?
January 10th, 2013 at 9:04 am
B9K9:
Below is from a response I received in August 2009 from the head of the Dept. of Biochem. Mol. Biol. at Michigan State University – since the level of background ozone is continually increasing, the statistic he sent gets worse every year. Also of course he is referring to average lost yield, and so in some places and for some crops it will be much worse. Like SoCal. Also, that stunted growth, productivity and quality only accounts for direct losses from air pollution – it doesn’t include the far, far more serious effects of increased vulnerability to insects, disease and fungus. And that number is calculated only for annual crops – perennial crops like artichokes, berries, asparagus and so forth suffer cumulative damage, as of course do the trees. So just like climate science predictions, the empirical reality is far, far worse than modeled.
Dear Gail,
It is generally recognized that 10 to 20% of potential crop yield is lost each year because of ozone. I have a long list of issues that are related to ozone. Ozone is a very difficult topic for news media for several reasons. !. there is a “good” ozone/ “bad” ozone problem. First we wanted people to be alarmed about the loss of high altitude ozone (a success story for global response to an environmental crisis by the way). Now we tell people that ozone (in the lower atmosphere) is bad. This is slightly complex but not really that hard to understand.
Next, ozone is the result of chemical reactions in the atmosphere. No one emits ozone, not electricity generating plants, not cars, but rather a mix of NOx (cars, coal-fired plants) hydrocarbons (from the trees!), and sunlight undergoes reactions that result in ozone in the air we breath. The reactions are complex and vary a lot from time to time, so that many days each summer are quite clean. Nevertheless, the stunting of plants even by “acceptable” levels of ozone is quite amazing.
January 10th, 2013 at 9:04 am
I possibly owe you an apology for misreading your previous satirical ( ? ) comments, B9K9, but I have known lots of people who produce abundant veg without any petro-chem fertilizers, so I question that. How do you think people fed themselves for thousands of years before synthetic fertiliser was invented ?
As for the ‘burn as many dinosaurs as possible’, this seems to be the same point that Dr House made earlier, re no point in permaculture, etc.
I don’t get this at all. Either you are an ethical, person honourable, or you are not. I don’t see why NTE makes ANY difference to that. Why does morality suddenly go away because of NTE ?
I don’t see why, because of NTE, it makes any sense to say, ‘Okay, hedonism from now on, party time’, because, if so, anything goes, and then may as well go looting, plundering, killing and raping…
January 10th, 2013 at 9:16 am
from what I read here, I cannot guess WHEN some of you have time to practice all these ways of becoming enlightened. I think some of us (like me and many, many others) hardly leave our computer any more (considering all the contributions we make on so many sites on the net). It is all about talk, talk, talk, write, write, write and try to be someone somewhere to calm the angst, try to actualize oneself in front of the wall of NTE. This addiction to the computer is comparable in my opinion (to some extent) to the addiction to video games or texting. In front of the unbearable impossibility to act, NTE has become our video game.
Back at the nonexisting farm, since last spring, chronic back condition worsened and at 63, I suddenly cannot walk anymore. So the projects are very limited. No chopping water or carrying wood, no mobility but the virtual possibility of surfing all day to numb the anxiety, despair and pain locked in my apartment that is now a prison. When the grid goes down and I loose my connection, it will be very fast free fall for me (I already got a small idea of how painful it will be during short power failures). I am just drifting and I wish I had the will to stop eating. (+ I now need someone to go get the food for me!). I have absolutely no answers.
But I have a question: if the temperature is 55c somewhere in Australia, at what degree is the air unbreathable for mammals?
p.s. I tried hard to forget that Muktananda was mentioned as a “guru” in this thread somewhere. I did not want to bring this up because it is a completely useless discussion. But because he was named here, I need to say he sure was an exceptional sexual predator/abuser of his young women followers. And Nityananda is very suspicious too in a lot of ways. I don’t want to hear anything anymore about fuking gurus.
January 10th, 2013 at 9:36 am
michele/montreal….thank you for the laugh! “I don’t want to hear anything anymore about fuking gurus” was the line, not anything else you wrote. I agree.
One of them was quoted, regarding the Indian medical student who was gangraped and murdered, that had she prayed, the attack wouldn’t have happened. If that is the level of enlightenment, who needs the fucking guru?
While I do appreciate morality and living according to values, for some reason, I do not need the navel gazing and dogma attached to religions. Nature does it for me. I’m a happy pagan, I guess.
January 10th, 2013 at 9:45 am
Practice becoming enlightened, m/m ? How do you do that ? I don’t know
Sorry about your back. Few years ago, I was unable to stand because of lower back pain, it just wouldn’t hold me up. If I tried to stand, I’d collapse. I thought resting it would be good. Friend drove me to an old lady of 75, retired physiotherapist, said resting it was the worst thing. I had to crawl on hands and knees from car to her house and up stairs to treatment room. She applied all sorts of gadgets, infra red, ultra sound, vibrating things, don’t know what, for two hours, and it was completely cured, good as new.
I don’t go a lot on any gurus. I think basic zen meditation technique can be taught in about ten minutes. After that you’re on your own. You either do it or you don’t. Most people don’t, so they think being in a group with a teacher will help their willpower. Which it probably does.
The other techniques, like tai chi and aikido, do need a teacher. Good ones are hard to find. Really great ones are really hard to find. You can learn basics from a video and practise, but not so much if you have a very bad back. You’d have to fix that first. Sitting is probably very bad for a bad back, might have caused the problem.
January 10th, 2013 at 9:49 am
As the world burns, the psychopaths are laughing all the way to the bank:
With global food prices near all-time highs, Monsanto, global seed and agricultural product powerhouse, delivered blockbuster fiscal first quarter earnings before the bell on Tuesday. The stock continued its upward trajectory, hitting fresh 52-week highs early in the trading session.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/01/08/monsanto-surges-on-latin-american-demand-as-food-prices-hover-near-all-time-highs/
January 10th, 2013 at 10:18 am
Michele you wrote “I cannot guess WHEN some of you have time to practice all these ways of becoming enlightened” and “I don’t want to hear anything anymore about fuking gurus.”
Wildwoman ” I do not need the navel gazing and dogma attached to religions. Nature does it for me. I’m a happy pagan, I guess.”
Ditto, ditto and ditto
Humanure on the other hand does make me feel part of the whole.
I do not need gurus enlightened
Or consciousness greatly heightened
Just give me manure
It has such allure
Fecophobia doesn’t have me frightened
January 10th, 2013 at 10:19 am
The humanure handbook on fecophobia http://weblife.org/humanure/chapter6_2.html
January 10th, 2013 at 10:32 am
Kathy C – You’re right of course, the whole idea of enlightenment is shit. Or is it the other way around? The whole idea of shit is enlightenment…
January 10th, 2013 at 10:40 am
Now this is truly stunning. In parts of Australia, it’s now too hot to pump gasoline. It evaporates too quickly.
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/09/australia-too-hot-to-pump-gas-needs-new-colors/
January 10th, 2013 at 10:41 am
http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2013/01/08/congress-vs-nickelback-the-real-action-is-in-the-cross-tabs/
When asked if they have a higher opinion of either Congress or a series of unpleasant or disliked things, voters said they had a higher opinion of root canals (32 for Congress and 56 for the dental procedure), NFL replacement refs (29-56), head lice (19-67), the rock band Nickelback (32-39), colonoscopies (31-58), Washington DC political pundits (34- 37), carnies (31-39), traffic jams (34-56), cockroaches (43-45), Donald Trump (42-44), France (37-46), Genghis Khan (37-41), used-car salesmen (32-57), and Brussels sprouts (23-69) than Congress.
Congress did manage to beat out telemarketers (45-35), John Edwards (45-29), the Kardashians (49-36), lobbyists (48-30), North Korea (61-26), the ebola virus (53-25), Lindsay Lohan (45-41), Fidel Castro (54-32), playground bullies (43-38), meth labs (60- 21), communism (57-23), and gonorrhea (53-28).
January 10th, 2013 at 10:44 am
It’s still noteworthy that 25% of Americans have a higher opinion of North Korea than the U.S. Congress.
January 10th, 2013 at 10:45 am
Ulvfugl, personally, I think hedonism is a good thing as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else’s pursuit of hedonism. Life can be pretty fucking hard – shouldn’t pleasure be encouraged? One of the reasons that Americans are so uptight about “recreational” drugs is due to a fear of hedonism. I suspect this stems from our puritanical background – and it’s absolute rubbish, in my opinion.
I mentioned traveling the world as one possible way someone might want to spend their last days on Earth. Will that burn lots of fossil fuels? Absolutely. But, unless the whole world agrees to stop flying, (ain’t gonna happen), then those planes are going to fly anyway – we might as well stop the handwringing and hop on board.
The phrase “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” comes to mind. Since we’re all pretty sure that there’s no saving the world, what difference does it make? I’m not suggesting that people start murdering or stealing from each other (I don’t need to – they’re doing that already), I’m just saying that if a person is denying themselves in hopes of saving the world, then give it up. It’s not going to help. A person might as well die as happy as possible – whatever that means for that person.
January 10th, 2013 at 10:53 am
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/australia-canary-global-warming-coal-
“Australia is the canary in the coal mine,” said David Karoly, a climate researcher at the University of Melbourne, in that story. “What is happening in Australia now is similar to what we can expect to see in other places in the future.”
January 10th, 2013 at 11:01 am
michele/montreal, you asked at what temperature does air become unbreathable for mammals.
I know of one study done in 1914 that showed air temperature in a mine that was above 130° F (54.5 C) was very painful with deep breaths to the point that workers were not able to do any meaningful work. Higher humidity also would lower the temperature which could be tolerated. Other factors would alter the tolerable temperature such as wind blowing across the skin.
January 10th, 2013 at 11:08 am
@ REAL Dr …personally, I think hedonism is a good thing,etc…
Completely disagree with all of that. We must have fundamentally different philosophical premises.
I’m am far from being a puritan, like my contemporaries of the hippy generation, I chased sex, drugs, booze, rock and roll, essentially, hedonism in any form it could be formulated. It was a recipe for misery and disaster, as the ancient Greeks discovered. Fortunately, I found something more worthwhile and fulfilling. I’ve watched many others carry on trying to be ‘fun-loving teenagers’ into middle and old age, chasing ‘pleasure’ that they never find, and never got smart enough to look somewhere else.
As for flying, and ‘if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em’, I’m astonished that any intelligent person would take that as a moral justification.
No thanks.
I’m surprised really, that your ethics have such shallow foundations, and you have not thought this stuff through at a deeper level. Still, it’s your business, not mine.
January 10th, 2013 at 11:13 am
@ Paul Chefurka
..the whole idea of enlightenment is shit. Or is it the other way around? The whole idea of shit is enlightenment…
Master Tung-kuo asked Chuang Tzu,
“This thing called the Tao – where does it exist?”
Chuang Tzu said, “There’s no place where it doesn’t exist.”
“Come,” said Master Tung-kuo, “you must be more specific!”
“It is in the ant.”
“As low a thing as that?”
“It is in the grass.”
“But that’s lower still!”
“It is in the tiles and shards.”
“How can it be so low?”
“It is in the piss and shit.”
January 10th, 2013 at 11:35 am
Ulvfugl, I’m am far from being a puritan, like my contemporaries of the hippy generation, I chased sex, drugs, booze, rock and roll, essentially, hedonism in any form it could be formulated. It was a recipe for misery and disaster, as the ancient Greeks discovered.
It’s interesting how you described your pursuit of hedonism. For me, none of those things would give me much pleasure (well, sex does, but that’s another story). The school of thought as regards hedonism is ancient, as I’m sure you know. I tend to take the tack that pretty much all experience can be boiled down to either pain or pleasure. Even the most simple life forms respond similarly – tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Healthcare is pretty much as simple as that too. People don’t like being sick (pain), and they want to get better (pleasure). So, I wouldn’t think it surprising that a physician would have this view.
As for flying, and ‘if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em’, I’m astonished that any intelligent person would take that as a moral justification.
I’m not sure I said it was moral. I’m curious, though, are you saying that all flying is immoral and any person who does it is immoral or is just that I’m willing to admit that it doesn’t make any difference?
I’m surprised really, that your ethics have such shallow foundations, and you have not thought this stuff through at a deeper level. Still, it’s your business, not mine.
As you imply, you are entitled to your opinion just as I am mine. Obviously, I don’t agree with your assessment of my ethics nor of how much time I’ve spent thinking about these things. Just because we have arrived at different places doesn’t mean that your conclusion is right and mine is wrong – nor vice versa.
January 10th, 2013 at 11:59 am
@ Dr. House
Hedonism is the school of thought that the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good, or something like that. Hitting the brain’s pleasure centres, with food, alcohol, sex, drugs, entertainment, anything that gives a buzz, and not restraining or denying one’s self anything in that pursuit. That’s what I mean by the word.
Obviously, some people’s pleasures are more refined, say visiting the world’s art galleries and museums, other’s more gross, visiting the world’s brothels and dens of iniquity.
Personally, my own answer to the existential dilemma has nothing to do with avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure, it’s beyond the opposites, seeing both as futile.
I thought you said ‘if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em’, even though what they are doing is immoral’ ?
In which case, the same could be said re the poor girl raped in India. She’s going to be raped anyway, so why not join in ? The planes are going to fly anyway, a major cause of global warming, causing millions to die and untold suffering, but it’s going to happen anyway, so why not join in ?
I’d say don’t join in, because it’s immoral. Same as I would not join in the rape because it’s immoral.
I may not have the power to change the eventual outcome in either case, but I do have the power to retain my own honour, moral integrity and self-respect, which I consider of primary importance.
January 10th, 2013 at 12:04 pm
two on vaccines:
http://vactruth.com/2013/01/06/paralyzed-after-meningitis-vaccine/
and
January 10th, 2013 at 12:07 pm
http://www.naturalnews.com/038598_vaccines_medical_hoax_government_documents.html
“(NaturalNews) If you have children, you are more than likely already aware of the official U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “Immunization Schedules,” which today recommend an astounding 29 vaccines be given between birth and six years of age, including yearly flu shots, as well as another five to 16 vaccines between ages seven and 18 (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/). But a recent investigative report compiled by Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic, Ph.D., uncovers more than 30 years of hidden government documents exposing these vaccine schedules as a complete hoax, not to mention the fraud of the vaccines themselves to provide any real protection against disease.
Though her paper focuses primarily on the British health system’s elaborate cover-up of the dirty truth about its own national vaccination program, the tenets of the study’s findings still apply to vaccination schedules in general, which are typically designed for the purpose of serving corporate interests rather than public health. Government authorities, it turns out, in an ongoing bid to satisfy the private goals of the vaccine industry, have deliberately covered up pertinent information about the dangers and ineffectiveness of vaccines from parents in order to maintain a high rate of vaccination compliance. And in the process, they have put countless millions of children at risk of serious side effects and death.”
Oh, but remember to get your flu shot!
January 10th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
So much good stuff to read here this morning! I feel such a kinship with all of you that’s difficult to articulate. Imagine the apoplectic frenzy that Ivy Mike must be experiencing about now.
I’m home with the flu today because all of the students have come back from all over Canada (and a lot of other places, too) after their Christmas break and brought lots of novel viruses from their hometowns. Good thing I don’t have any classes to teach today. I’ll keep up with my students using our course website.
My dear sweet husband got up and quietly left early, leaving the woodstove stoked to the gills so that when I got up it would be warm. I don’t get flu shots, so I get sick sometimes, but a lot of times I seem to miss the seasonal variant. I think my immune system benefits from a serious workout every so often. I’ve seen one definition of health as the ability to get sick and recover and I think that’s about right. The day I don’t recover from these will be a significant day, I suppose, and I’ll decide what to do when that happens. Or not. Whatever.
So many topics to think about here today. Limits of temperature tolerance – I’ve seen research to support the idea that it is not absolute temperature that makes life impossible. Many world populations thrive in temperatures of 50 C, but the humidity has to be very low. It’s the measure of temperature and humidity called “wet bulb temperature” that seems to be crucial. Using that standard, I think you can calculate survivability. For example, 38°C air at humidity between 67 and 72 per cent is not compatible with work, even in the shade. I’m reading at Desdemona Despair that the humidity associated with the 50 C temps in Australia is one percent. Here’s a good discussion of this concept:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.full
Back pain – I agree that “resting” your back is the worst thing you can do. I have this problem every winter after canning season is over and the gardens are covered with snow. It gets so bad I have trouble getting out of bed. I *HAVE* to exercise it. I wish I had a garden that needed spading up by this point in January. I have taken to attending the free aerobics classes at our university, even though they are full of bouncy undergraduate females, overweight and pimply, wearing inadequate bras that are eventually (if they keep attending these classes) going to damage the connective tissue therein. Plus the music is stupid and way too loud. But if I don’t do something I won’t be able to lift a shovel in the spring. Moving snow helps, but it doesn’t snow every day. Besides, I can deflect meeting requests for that time each day and escape the building. I keep saying to myself: last semester, last semester, last semester.
And then I will get some chickens! I love chickens. Wonderful, intelligent, perceptive and inspiring creatures. When deciding how to behave at the end of time, i.e. hedonism, spiritualism, adherence to some imaginary moral code, I think I would ask myself what a chicken would do.
January 10th, 2013 at 12:31 pm
@ The Real DH and Ulvfulg
Hedonism is a hell of a loaded concept with no clear distinction. It could be seen as self-medicating as well as compulsive blogging. It could be considered flying around the world, or reveling in isolation on ones private property derived from a murderous culture.
Personally, as NTE slowly works its way through our past vested interests, I see “us” eventually coming to circle around only a few key topics/questions, and the debate between hedonism and ethical imperatives is definitely going to be one of them.
I imagine we will soon see an essay directly addressing how NTE has and will impact our ethical choices from here on out, and that’s when our civility towards each other, will truly be put to the test, for it will strike directly at each of our sense of identity.
January 10th, 2013 at 12:38 pm
The ancient Greeks were not hung up about homosexuality and other sexual practices that were later condemned by Christianity, however, they disapproved of hedonism . According to Michel Foucault, in the ancient Greek ethical system, the emphasis was placed on the virtuous development of the individual. One of the key parts of this development was and is learning the correct ways in which to exercise freedoms, including sexual freedoms. The first virtue discussed in The Use of Pleasure, is sophrosyne, which can be defined as what “one will do „what is fitting as regards both gods and men.” It was also characterized as a freedom. Citing Aristotle, Foucault states that “a state is good in virtue of the goodness of the citizens who have a share in the government … True, it is possible for all to be good collectively…But the better thing is that each individual citizen should be good. The goodness of all is necessarily involved in the goodness of each.” Hence, sophrosyne is a virtue relating to the entire community but proceeding forth from the individual. A prerequisite for sophrosyne is enkrateia or an active form of self-mastery, which enables one to struggle, resist, and achieve domination over ones desires and pleasures.
January 10th, 2013 at 1:28 pm
According to Dimitry Orlov, in Stage 5 collapse, even families will be torn apart, with every person on their own. The motto for this stage follows Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, “May you die today so that I die tomorrow.”
January 10th, 2013 at 1:54 pm
Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.[1] In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain).
Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. It is also the idea that every person’s pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain. Ethical hedonism is said to have been started by a student of Socrates, Aristippus of Cyrene. He held the idea that pleasure is the highest good.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism
Ulvfugl, you are too quick to judge. I don’t think you were on this blog when Dr. House announced his special clinic where people in his area can trade items they made or grew for medical care.
Medical clinic allows patients to barter for care
BONO, AR (KAIT) –Do you need to go to the doctor but don’t have insurance or the money to pay? One doctor is making things easier for those in need of medical care. Dr. John House takes canned produce, manual labor, and even some live animals! It’s a practice many of us aren’t familiar with, but it is bringing in patients!
“The first week we got five chickens, we got a turkey,” said Dr. House.
It is modern day medicine using an older type of payment system.
“I’m looking forward to lots of interesting things that people want to barter,” said Dr. House.
“That you can take something that you made and trade it for medical care is just mind blowing,” said Patient Stacey Quayle.
Quayle is a pastry chef who owns her own business. She trades her baked goods for doctor visits for herself and her three children.
“There are probably times that I would just not go to the doctor that I would not go to the doctor for me but with this barter clinic I can,” said Quayle.
Dr. House opened his office in Bono in August.
“We kept getting so many people that would come in and not have any insurance, they’ve lost their job,” said Dr. House.
In many cases, patients had not been to the doctor in years. more at http://www.kait8.com/Global/story.asp?S=14050056
Perhaps you would like to retract this statement “I’m surprised really, that your ethics have such shallow foundations, and you have not thought this stuff through at a deeper level. ”
Dr. House is a fine caring physician and damn I wish he was closer.
January 10th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
BC Nurse yes – per the Decameron by Boccaccio on the Plague
“..they languished in their illness completely alone, having been abandoned by everybody. One citizen avoided another, everybody neglected their neighbors and rarely or never visited their parents and relatives unless from a distance; the ordeal had so withered the hearts of men and women that brother abandoned brother, and the uncle abandoned his nephew and the sister her brother and many times, wives abandoned their husbands, and, what is even more incredible and cruel, mothers and fathers abandoned their children and would refuse to visit them.”
January 10th, 2013 at 2:00 pm
Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.[1] In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain).
Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure possible to them. It is also the idea that every person’s pleasure should far surpass their amount of pain. Ethical hedonism is said to have been started by a student of Socrates, Aristippus of Cyrene. He held the idea that pleasure is the highest good.[2] per wiki
Ulvfugl, you are too quick to judge. I don’t think you were on this blog when Dr. House announced his special clinic where people in his area can trade items they made or grew for medical care.
Medical clinic allows patients to barter for care
BONO, AR (KAIT) –Do you need to go to the doctor but don’t have insurance or the money to pay? One doctor is making things easier for those in need of medical care. Dr. John House takes canned produce, manual labor, and even some live animals! It’s a practice many of us aren’t familiar with, but it is bringing in patients!
“The first week we got five chickens, we got a turkey,” said Dr. House.
It is modern day medicine using an older type of payment system.
“I’m looking forward to lots of interesting things that people want to barter,” said Dr. House.
“That you can take something that you made and trade it for medical care is just mind blowing,” said Patient Stacey Quayle.
Quayle is a pastry chef who owns her own business. She trades her baked goods for doctor visits for herself and her three children.
“There are probably times that I would just not go to the doctor that I would not go to the doctor for me but with this barter clinic I can,” said Quayle.
Dr. House opened his office in Bono in August.
“We kept getting so many people that would come in and not have any insurance, they’ve lost their job,” said Dr. House.
In many cases, patients had not been to the doctor in years. more at http://www.kait8.com/Global/story.asp?S=14050056
Perhaps you would like to retract this statement “I’m surprised really, that your ethics have such shallow foundations, and you have not thought this stuff through at a deeper level. ”
Dr. House is a fine caring physician and damn I wish he was closer.
January 10th, 2013 at 2:03 pm
The question of what it means to say “What difference does it make?” comes up often in my household and amongst my group of friends.” It’s all screwed anyway so you might as well have fun!” people say. I was talking to a friend who just flew across the country after swearing off air travel for 8 years for environmental reasons. She was a dedicated train traveler and after learning about NTE decided “Fuck it!”
After spending 2 months on the coast, touring, visiting and sight seeing she came back and pronounced that she has come to believe that it is self-centered NOT to go and see the worlds beauty and that everyone should do it to gain a greater awareness of our amazing Earth.
I asked her if she meant that all 7+ billion people should get on a plane and inundated the last natural places to soak in the beauty before it is extinguished. She didn’t have an answer to that but she said that the experience of traveling has shown her that she should continue traveling.
To me, this is double(or triple) speak and translates as “I used to travel alot and liked it, then denied myself and didn’t like it and now I have no reason to deny myself,Yeah!”
I also have noticed that when people say “It won’t make any difference anyway and so I will travel,buy,consume,etc”‘ it is always things that are destructive to the Earth and not “I will lie,cheat,steal,etc… things that are destructive to people and relationships. In the face Extinction, why do some of us still value respecting and caring for other people but not the Earth itself?
I have often imagined it as coming upon a mob of people kicking a man to death. The man is clearly moments away from dying and someone says to me “give him a kick, it feels good”. It feels good and he’s going to die anyway. Do I kick him? No, because then I am responsible for his death.
I try not to do much more damage. I am responsible enough as it is.
January 10th, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Here’s another look at oil extraction pictured from space (thanks ulvfugl for the link above to oil and beef) from the perspective of the shale/oil sites in North Dakota (and probably elsewhere):
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/10/1428801/picture-look-how-much-natural-gas-gets-flared-at-oil-fields-in-north-dakota/
thanks for all the great links and conversation today everyone
January 10th, 2013 at 3:01 pm
Daniel you wrote “I imagine we will soon see an essay directly addressing how NTE has and will impact our ethical choices from here on out, and that’s when our civility towards each other, will truly be put to the test, for it will strike directly at each of our sense of identity.”
So get busy and write that essay
Looks like you have a good start.
January 10th, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Kathy C. : Ulvfugl, you are too quick to judge….etc
I thought you decided you were determined never to argue with me ever again ?
You are either confused or being deliberately provocative, or both.
For me to say “I’m surprised really, that your ethics have such shallow foundations, and you have not thought this stuff through at a deeper level. ”
is not saying, ‘Oh Dr House is a bad, mean person’, or ‘That Dr House, he’s a crap doctor’.
Your defence of Dr House has absolutely no connection whatsoever with the ethical issues which I questioned.
January 10th, 2013 at 3:31 pm
@ thestormcrow
Well said, that’s how I see it. I don’t not do damage to the biosphere, because of fear of police, or social disapproval, or to avoid NTE, but because I love the Earth, and wish to cherish, not injure, such a wondrous thing, that produced us all.
January 10th, 2013 at 3:42 pm
Wildwoman: You may find some answers to your water problems here.
http://www.wiselivingjournal.com/water-issues-ram-jet-or-spiral-wheel/
We have used a 12 volt solar powered pump to move water up hill, but unless its submerged you can only move the water 40-50 ft vertically. Doesn’t sound like a lot but 40 feet will give you plenty of pressure in your house and it’s actually going to be too much pressure if you want to start drip irrigating whatever you want to plant.
Thestormcrow: I watched this last night. This is what we destroy when we all decide to say “Fuck it”
http://pressroom.pbs.org/Programs/n/NATURE/2711-Cuba-Eden.aspx
January 10th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
@ thestormcrow
Actually, upon reflection,
“It won’t make any difference anyway and so I will travel,buy,consume,etc”‘ it is always things that are destructive to the Earth and not “I will lie,cheat,steal,etc… things that are destructive to people and relationships, etc
They are stealing, destroying, taking away, their own, and everyone else’s, children’s future….
In a sense, they are eating their own children… I wonder if that is what the Greek myth of Cronus is about ? Don’t have time to look at this moment…
January 10th, 2013 at 4:27 pm
Ulvfugl — “I thought you decided you were determined never to argue with me ever again ?”
That was about quantum theory and the mind.
I am not arguing with you, I am lambasting you for your comment to Dr. House – again you wrote “I’m surprised really, that your ethics have such shallow foundations, and you have not thought this stuff through at a deeper level.”
So you are saying Dr. House is a person whose ethics are on a shallow foundation. Why then does he spend a day a week giving medical services for trade that is probably always far below what he can charge. Is that not the sign of a man whose ethics have a deep foundation.
You just attacked rather than trying to find out what he meant, where he was coming from You often do that because you seem so damn sure you are right about everything. Personally I think you need to get off the web and do some deep meditation before you post again.
January 10th, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Daniel says: I imagine we will soon see an essay directly addressing how NTE has and will impact our ethical choices from here on out….
We might think we know right and wrong,
But NTE’s coming on strong;
A short time from now,
We’ll get to see how
Jungle law ruled all along.
January 10th, 2013 at 4:40 pm
ulvfugl,
I do believe it was me who accused you of being egomaniacal.
It’s not that I don’t think you have ideas worthy of contemplation. Sometimes, you do, and I have learned from you.
Rather, the reason I said that can be verified simply by the astronomical length and domination of your posts. They are exhausting. I often just scroll past them. They are so long, they overwhelm the discourse – which is just wrong.
If people want to they can click on your name and go to your blog and follow your every thought, they have that option. This is not your blog. It is Guy’s blog, and he has allowed a huge amount of space for readers to comment, for a really great discussion and community to evolve.
For one person to gobble up as much space as you have doesn’t facilitate the conversation.
Just my opinion!
January 10th, 2013 at 4:46 pm
@ulvfugl
They are stealing, destroying, taking away, their own, and everyone else’s, children’s future….
Of course you are right. I thought of that as I was writing my comment. I do believe, though, that when people make comments about consuming,traveling,etc that they generally don’t perceive it as harmful to other people.
There are people who might say “The Earth, that I cherished, is dying and I can’t stop it ,so I will do as I please” that would not say “My
Grandmother,who I cherish, is dying and I can’t stop it,so I will do as I please.” They would care for her.
January 10th, 2013 at 4:47 pm
Gail,
Amazing pictures on your blog! Truly horrifying to contemplate…
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-world-of-dying-trees.html
January 10th, 2013 at 4:50 pm
Kathy C., You obviously don’t have any better understanding as to what the word ‘ethics’ means than you do what the word ‘physics’ means.
January 10th, 2013 at 4:51 pm
@ Gail
Just my opinion!
Yes.
January 10th, 2013 at 4:58 pm
Here you go Kathy C. Read, maybe learn something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
To question Dr House’s ethical foundations is not the same thing as saying he is a ‘bad person’, or ‘an inferior doctor’ or any of the nonsense that you inferred with your insulting ad hominem remarks.
January 10th, 2013 at 5:43 pm
Ed, thanks so much for the link! I’ll need to print that out. The stream in the bottom lands is the headwaters for a fork in a river. I don’t know how reliable it is. Or the quality. But it is something to look at for sure.
thestormcrow…..yes, I agree.
January 10th, 2013 at 5:53 pm
@ thestormcrow
…they generally don’t perceive it as harmful to other people.
Yes, indeed. Isn’t that a massive problem, everywhere, throughout soceity, at every level, on every scale. A lot cannot even understand simple basic cause and effect, and will deny any connection.
Even the scientists. They are mostly left brain folk, who excel at analytical thinking, and have to specialise in a particular field, and then in a speciality in that field, and then in a speciality in that speciality, knowing more and more about less and less and less…
So there’s reductionist thinking everywhere, taking problems apart to look at the pieces in isolation, and almost nobody puts all the pieces back together, and makes the connections.
For example ( thanks to whoever provided the link ! ) this astonishing photograph of the rabbit fence in Australia…
Now, I MAY be wrong, because I am just a humble egomaniac, (to quote Gail) but IMO the doctors Lyons and Nair are fucking idiots….
Hasn’t it been known forever that forests make clouds ? You can sit and watch it happening. People noticed this millennia ago. And that clouds make rain ?
And why does this happen ? It’s because trees are like massive pumps. They suck water from deep in the ground and spray it up into the sky.
And why do they do that ? Because they need minerals and water, they have to pull them into their roots. They do that by hydrostatic pressure inside the phloem and xylem, the pipes, the plumbing, inside the tree.
As the moisture evaporates from the leaves, it pulls more water into the leaves, that pulls water into the twigs that carry the leaves, that sucks water into the branches, that sucks water into the trunk, that sucks water into the roots, which go deep down into the water table. So, if the wood of the tree was invisible, what you’d see would be a fountain.
It’s a lot like sucking water through a plastic hose, except instead of pulling it with your mouth, it’s the evaporation from the surface of the leaves that provides the pull.
With some trees, e.g. eucalyptus, if you press your ear to the tree, you can HEAR this happening, there’s loud gurgling and splashing, like the plumbing in a house when someone is having a bath, every time the wind blows and pulls more water from the leaves, it speeds up and gets louder. It might be the case with many other trees, I’ve always intended to get a stethoscope to test more, but never got around to it, thick bark makes it hard to hear.
Isn’t that how it works ? Isn’t that common knowledge amongst tree specialists and botanists ?
Also, trees release all sorts of other chemicals and spores and bacteria from their leaves which serve as nuclei for water droplets to form around, to make clouds. Isn’t that established science ?
So, that’s what’s happening on one side of the fence. IMNSHO.
On the other side, the entire natural system has been broken, wrecked, destroyed by ignorant humans.
They grow crops in bare soil, where the moisture soon evaporates away, and the plants have roots which only penetrate a few inches, unlike trees which can go down for many metres.
And then they scratch their heads and wonder why, no rain ?
And this kind of stupidity rules supreme, all around the world, and ensures our demise….
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/earth/14fenc.html
January 10th, 2013 at 5:56 pm
The Diva of Doom wrote:
“For one person to gobble up as much space as you have doesn’t facilitate the conversation.”
Perhaps post limiting may help.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:09 pm
…doesn’t facilitate the conversation.
Neither does bitching and complaining.
January 10th, 2013 at 6:52 pm
Blows Against the Empire: Jefferson Starship Paul Kantner Grace Slick Jerry Garcia 1971
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWiKuX3oeZ8
January 10th, 2013 at 6:53 pm
@ Wildwoman
I concur with Ed. If you know for sure you have the water rights to that stream, and the stream is not just seasonal, and not too contaminated, and you have enough elevation to work with, then frankly, you are sitting on a sustainable goldmine.
The ram pump is magical, especially if you have the flow capacity for mini-hydro as well. Both are fairly inexpensive to put together. If any of these questions are still up in the air, then I would highly recommend to make this your number one priority, because this will determine and allow for a great many things to come. I hope you do, because if so, your homesteading adventure just went from being questionable to being a no brainer.
January 10th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Kathy C: Thank you for your kind remarks. There are days when I question my own abilities and ethics and purpose and want to just chunk it all. So, again, thanks.
January 10th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
Makes me think of a song by Malvina Reynolds (a friend of Pete Seeger – she wrote Little Boxes). Oh well, There’s a Bottom Below(sorry – I haven’t found a video):
Chorus:
Do you think you’ve hit bottom?
Do you think you’ve hit bottom?
Oh, no.
There’s a bottom below.
There’s a low below the low you know.
You can’t imagine how far you can go down.
(Chorus)
Every once in a while you’ll rise and glow,
But that’s only so they can let you go down.
(Chorus)
You sit at a party and watch the fun,
It don’t touch you none cause you’re off and gone, down.
(Chorus)
There’s the nightmare kind where you fall and fall,
And you wake to find you haven’t been dreaming at all.
(Chorus)
There’s a low below the low you know.
You can’t imagine how far you can go down.
(Chorus)
January 10th, 2013 at 9:19 pm
Ulvfugl and thestormcrow, there are several things which came to mind as I read your comments re: my earlier statements about enjoying the time we have left. Your responses are valid, to a degree. But, if you look at it from a different perspective, maybe not so much.
Here’s what I mean: each and every person alive today in the developed and developing world – certainly each and every person posting on this blog – is guilty of figurative and literal rape of the Earth – we may not have initiated it, but we certainly joined in. We became guilty of it the moment our parents conceived us. At that very moment we became a drain on the natural world. Sure, we may be “doing our part” to save electricity or conserve fresh water or recycle or use only canvas grocery bags or grow our own food or any number of other Earth-friendly activities, but each and every one of us uses some product or service or receives some benefit from fossil fuels. There is absolutely no denying it nor avoiding it. And that’s my point. There are now more than 7,000,000,000 people on the planet. Every blasted one of us is already “raping that Indian girl” and none of us is willing to stop doing it. Oh, we may claim that we don’t enjoy it as much as our neighbors and friends do, but we’re still doing it.
The thing is, even if a person completely and totally divorces himself from the industrialized world and begins to live in the wilderness, hunting and gathering, that person too, would still be guilty of raping the planet. Unfortunately, even that way of life is not sustainable anymore. The wilderness has been so trashed and overrun and wildlife has been so over-hunted and plants so stressed, that damage is done to the biosphere even by someone living in harmony with nature – because there is no more harmony.
So, perhaps the viewpoints you expressed above are a little bit “holier than thou” with respect to this topic.
I say again, the party is over, the jig is up, the curtain is falling. Enjoy yourself while you can – whatever that may mean for you.
Big hugs to everyone (because that really gives me a lot of pleasure).
January 10th, 2013 at 9:49 pm
@OzMan, your comments were very helpful, thanks… I saved a text version for future reference.
Yes, I “have to do it all”, you’re correct.
I do regret not having local stores of ambient wallaby poo to harvest, however. I am in Vermont, USA. I moved here recently expressly because there is at least a glimmer of understanding of the need for local food production, and I will try to fit into that mix as a client as well as a producer where possible. We just moved to a small town here in the fall and in the spring I will be looking for land. I think the area we have chosen is “transformable”, as you put it. We quickly spent $13k on insulation and are now weighing alternative heating options for this place (a conventional stick-built home from around 1900), although we really want to build a passive-type straw bale structure eventually.
“Just get up and do the next thing.” I call this “putting one foot in front of the other”. I like your advice about just presenting yourself to local growers: the worst they can do is tell you no…
@Dr. House, you are lucky to have someone to share your eldercare duties. Wildwoman, this goes out to you, too, as I know where you are coming from. My mom, also 81, has IPF and was prescribed O2. When she was living on her own, she was not fully “compliant” with her O2 use, and in fact “fired” the O2 company. She told her docs that she “was done”. Now that we have taken her in at the new place, the new doc has her back on O2, which is “good”. I certainly don’t want to see her suffer, but at the same time I am appalled by the mechanism that offers innumerable O2 tanks shipped anywhere one would like, for example “to your hotel” if you are traveling. This is certainly one of the many unsustainable practices which will eventually fall by the wayside. My mom claims not to notice any improvement on O2, so when she is without it she does not panic, btw, but certainly I am aware that the lack of it incides negatively on her overall current health.
For the time being, because I know the transition is traumatic for her, I buy her the minor comforts to which she has become accustomed: the Kleenexes and the tiny single-serving sodas and “Sunny-D” and En$$sure (please tell me how I can get out of that racket; she calls it “my chocolate milk” at $10/six-pack of teeny bottles). Up against that is the idea that these are really small potatoes in the scheme of things. She is on hospice, and we are going to go through the advance directive paperwork this coming week.
I don’t know if you have read any Ivan Illich, but one of the many things which impressed me about him was his apparent refusal of treatment for the cancer that led to his demise.
“Americans in particular are notorious for our unwillingness to deny our every want and whim, or accept that we have limits. This trait is pathological.”
Indeed. I had to go over my mom’s finances with her broker, and for some reason I decided to forge ahead with my thoughts. I asked him where he thought interest came from, where he thought “money” came from, where he thought “wealth” came from, and he could only splutter the standard refrains. The financial crisis is not a matter of resources but a matter of the two political parties having different ideologies, I was told! I’m really on the fence between evangelizing (just wanting to make everyone see The Truth regardless of the social consequences) and, like some commenters here whose names I can’t recall, just keeping mum and letting them figure it out on their own.
I’ve always been a person receptive to “science” and reason, so it disturbs me at an existential level to see people being so irrational (even though my behaviors are not—yet—so far off from theirs). I think what is the hardest to process is that there is so little support for one’s convictions. If I were to believe that a man can walk on water and that the world is 6000 years old, I’d have no end of places to go and people to relate to, but seeing the world as it really is rather than how we would like it to be puts one, sadly, in a distinct superminority.
Last spring, I attended a “Village-Building Convergence” here in VT. Lots of workshops having to do with pre-industrial skills—making string from dogbane and soap from bear fat, etc. Then a young kid (20y.o.?) came to my house representing VPIRG, one of those advocacy groups against nuclear power and so forth. I asked him if he had heard about the VBC: no. I asked if he had heard about permaculture: no. I found this pretty incredible!! Once you start seeking out the “counter-culture”, that too starts to seem “normal” and it’s hard to grasp what a fringe enterprise it really is.
@Arthur Johnson, in our local paper today there was a photo of a family huddling in a river or stream under a bridge to escape wildfires in Tasmania which glowed orange all around them. The caption made sure to recount that they credited their survival to “God”(!).
@Kathy C, re. skills. I am very sorry I did not dedicate a year or two while living overseas to studying shoemaking. I am tempted to fund a scholarship for a young person to learn this important skill and bring it back to the community. Of course, conventional modern shoemaking is predicated on many industrial processes and materials and would need to be walked back. I think there is room for work that’s somewhere between Manolos and moccasins.
@depressive lucidity, that is a great link from Chefurka. Another one to keep for reference.
@Daniel:
Years ago, I got into it with Toby Hemingway, for his reasons for abandoning his ten year homestead in lieu of promoting urban permaculture, for urban permaculture–at least in regards to its original intent of being completely sustainable–is a complete joke. It’s not by accident that most permculturist just happen to be liberal urbanites. They talk a good talk, but rarely seem to come anywhere close to Mollison’s original concept.
Could you talk more about this?, …because permaculture has seemed a worthy goal to me since I started learning about collapse back around 2007-2008. As uvfulgl says, it certainly can’t hurt… But I am guilty of having been a liberal urbanite, it’s true, and I see that many permaculturists come from some means as do WWOOFers. Where is the weak link, as you see it (aside from the NTE issues which are fairly new to the discussion even for the most radical and prescient among us, like Guy)? I always find something of value in your comments at NBL, btw
@ed, re. permaculture that “doesn’t generate much income”. I’m not sure that that’s what permaculture is meant to do (pace Holzer).
@dairymandave, “Seems like they should measure all these things, if possible.” If they really want to know, sure…
This is an aspect that is fascinating to me: overlooking the energy needed for phase changes; seems like beginner stuff. Same with the “black snow” soot deposit issue. We’re just not as smart as we want to take credit for being, that’s for certain.
@OzMan, that money as a concept has exacerbated our situation is indubitable. But money is such a vital modern fetish that people cannot see it as poisonous. Massimo Fini, an Italian journalist wrote a book several years ago that I would love to translate into English; the title is “Denaro: Lo Sterco del Demonio” (“Money; The Devil’s Excrement”). There is something to beware of, however, when advocating a path of relocalization and anti-banksterism: it leaves one open to charges of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Ezra Pound (who perhaps was or became a real anti-Semite—I haven’t studied his case enough to offer a judgment on that score) had this issue when he started to study the perverse origins of money. If he had not been mad already, such a study would certainly have driven him mad, as it did drive me to the brink of insanity several years ago when I began such studies. There’s a young group of skinhead “ultras” in Italy who have aggregated under the moniker “Casa Pound”.
@depressive, re. a reaction from the public. I’m not so sanguine about that. For all their guns and rhetoric, where has the outrage been against drone killings of US citizens, or a presidential election decided by a partisan Supreme Court like some banana republic? We have met the friendly neighborhood brownshirts and they are us. There are just some people, many people, who are wired to be subjects under authoritarian rule and they will destroy whatever village you tell them to, in order to “save” it. Witness the frantic rush to arm principals and schoolteachers, in the wake of a minor (in the grand scheme of dangerous-things-that-can-happen-to-the-average-person) incident. They are yearning for a Big Daddy to tell them what to do. I have family members like this and their minds do work in a distinctly different way from my own.
@KathyC, what a lovely description of your day. What’s your general location? We are under a foot of snow and no hope of planting until April or May, I gather. “The Field”, I remember that film well.
@Tom, I had to converse with the broker about his daughters’ wanting to go to Boston University at $60k p.a. At least I told him not to take out loans for it (as such loans are non-dischargeable in bankruptcy now here in the US, this a function of the need to expand debt exponentially/infinitely). Re: playing the game… even our own mini”tankers” take time to turn around. While stepping into the real world I have one foot in BAU, of necessity.
@KathyC, thanks for the info on Dr. House! And thanks. Dr. House, for being such a mensch. I know that my dad, a surgeon back in the pre-specialty days of medicine, took tomatoes as payment. When filling out insurance forms asking why a patient was still in the hosp., he would write “Patient Is Sick” (of course, those were the days before MRSA).
This has been, and continues to be a great thread so thanks to everyone who has been contributing!
January 10th, 2013 at 11:47 pm
@ The REAL Dr House
I don’t accept that ‘equality of guilt’ argument. It does not stand up to even superficial examination. Are trying to say that the Kayapo in the Amazon forest, the Kogi in Colombia, the Nenets in N. Siberia, carry the same responsibility for the destruction of the biosphere as Americans and British and Japanese do ?
That’s absurd. Their ecological footprint is hardly visible. Coal, oil, nuclear, steel, mining, industry, have never had any place in their cultures, and you want to share the blame for AGW with them, and all the other marginal ethnic groups who never partook in the capitalist industrial economic system which produced this mess ?
On a more personal note, I reject the equality of guilt as applying to myself. I wrote a manifesto concerning living in harmony with nature in my early twenties, and was embarked upon writing a book explaining how to do it, which never got finished because John Seymour came along and stole my thunder, doing a much better job, because he had already a lifetime’s experience to draw upon. I’ve been doing everything I could to minimise my impact, and to assist wild nature ever since. I’d say, on balance, my impact upon the biosphere has been neutral, even positive, in so far as I have helped other species to survive, whilst living as simply as I could, and promoting and teaching green ideas as much as I could.
You say that each and every one if us gets some benefit from fossil fuels, – yes, and some disadvantages, like being poisoned with phthalates and pesticides – but there’s a matter of scale to consider, there are people who fly from London to New York and back for a weekend party, which would make a bigger carbon footprint in a couple of days than I have in the last thirty years.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:33 am
Thing is, re TRDH, the argument has moved right away from the ethical issue, of how to behave in the face of NTE.
It’s kind of, ‘Well, we’ve trashed most of it, we’re going to go extinct, so what does it matter if we trash the rest ?’ like a bunch of teenagers who have had a party and wrecked the living room, so may as well smash up the other rooms…
This seems to be how the criminal capitalists see it. The rhinos, elephants, lions, tigers, blue tuna, etc, are all being hunted to extinction in the wild, rhino horn is possibly the most valuable commodity traded on the planet, which is totally insane.
I knew a guy who traded acoustic guitars, who made a selling point, ‘Madagascar rosewood, soon extinct, will go up in value, grab one while you can’, which appalled me.
Are we going to take the same line here ? Now that we’ve agreed that ‘nothing can be done’, and join in the looting and plunder ? Conscience is clear, pollution doesn’t matter, the last whale, the last wild bear, albatross, snow leopard, musk ox, the last wild everything… watch them all go… does not matter, so long as we are happy and having fun ?
I’m not, that’s for sure.
January 11th, 2013 at 2:05 am
michele/montreal and other Guru sceptics.
I respect your views about Gurus, there are a lot of scammers out there.
My view is that a true guru, a spiritual master, is ultimately a teacher of Love by relationship. Not teaching to the mind, or by rote, or by a method, or even by an old book of parabelic stories, but by Loving beyond all reason and apparent limits.
This is even what the Western,(then Middle Eastern) realiser Jesus did, Loved by demonstration without any discrimination or prejudice. A bit differnt to the Old Testament YWH, (eg Book of Job.)
It has always interested me that the true guru, (note that leaves a lot of room for fucked up people deluded and good at conning others….keh?), by virtue of the extraordinary Siddhi circulating through them, has the capacity to act as a mirror to the ego-bound individual, and ideed the three abuses and addictions the ego-bound individual, money, food and sex, are the first set of projections encountered when ‘mirrored’ by the true guru.
So the cleched image of a wealthy, piña colada sipping, sexually exploiting white robed Swami-Baba-Mukta-somthing-or-other on a south pacific island beach is what pops out of the ego first.
Pure projection!!!
Of course you will find many wannabe gurus, who fail and have no real self-transcendence, but that is no case for there being no authentic ones.
Snake oili is everywhere, and having a healthy sceptical mind is a very useful tool for security and self protection in these matters.
But when you need real help to grow beyond the self absorbtion, (that so many here keep attesting is rampant and even manufactured by empire!!) who you gonna call? Dr Phill?
I had to learn the hard way, (not telling that story here) that you can’t do it all yourself. (that is a different doing-it-all-yourself from what I advised Lidia, which was to do with community activation and involvement).
How do we learn to Love? If we are lucky it is because it is a natural gift from the heart of our Mother, or ‘significant other’, who gave us form and a place to get started for 9 months and then painfully pushed us into this bigger world. Many do not get the gift, and adapt to the world in deep shock and progressive abandonment, and live lives of emotional reaction, rejection scenarios, trust issues, and on and on it goes. (Not blaming Mothers though, like Freud did, just sayin we get dislocated form love training very early, especially after so many generations of Capitalist culture) The nurturing of a deep capacity to love and even be loved is a sacred whispering from mother to child and back, and depending on the demands on her, and her own capacity to give, we fall on a spectrum of personal ease, or trauma as to our own capacity to love.
( Extended and tribal family and kinship social structures put less demads for this role solely from the Mother.)
Love….
IMO we see the consequences all around of the impairment of this faculty which in my opinion is the defining characteristic of our species, but only if it ‘realised’.
Ask yourself if there were moments, even long periods you hated someone, perhaps a partner, a parent, even a child, a kid at school, a boss, a competitor at work, even a shop assistant you didnt like. Are we getting anyone? Right, what the fuck was going on there? Just a witholding of love, pure and simple.
What were the reasons? “They stole my crayon”…Blah Blah “She looked at that guy at the party last night”…Blah Blah, there are always reasons, but always they are limited ego concerns about one’s little petty self. And in a Newtonian, Scientific, Capitalist, Industrial Empire, what else is there?
I’m referring to the overwhelming refusal to love. And in some sense it is not just a refusal, it is a real adaptation and restriction on ones present capacity to love. A habit.
We just cannot do it accross the spectrum of human relations. Some of us love some people deeply, and it is just so, no bullshit, no need to talk about it. I have heard many Aboriginal men talk powerfully about their culture, their older ways and the life they lived as boys when the stories were spoken more often. Then when they speak of their grandmothers, or an aunt, who may have passed on, they break down, and cry for the love their grans and aunts gave them, and they were nurtured by. That is very moving, and revealing as to what keeps their culture strong,(IMO).
I have made a conscious choice since 13 years old to remain open to ideas and concepts that even seem absurd, because the cultural conditioning in this Western Industrial Culture was so obviously so very narrowly defined and skewed in favour of Individualism and Scientism,( which I put names to much later), that even if I was not particulary interested or motivated to embrace an idea, or POV, I did not want to pretend I knew all its merits or even properties, (eg. Quantum Mechanics? such an oxymoron).
I get the impression that the red hot button that goes by the name ‘Guru’, admittedly given a FUBARed reputation by Wako, Joanstown and Two-Pak Pollyfiller and the like, is one of those aspects of earlier civilisations that once gone through the ringer of Western Market Driven culture, becomes a product to sell, and thus, the antithesis of its earlier cultural meaning.
I had a friend who gained a PhD in Ancient Greek religions, and he mentioned once to me that the English translation to the name of the Greek God Dyonisus, was something like, ‘The God who releases you from your identity’.
The cult of Dyonisus was very much about Ecstacy, and not to be confused with the Roman God Bacchus, of wine and getting pissed.(Sorry to Roman scholars, perhaps you may want to correct that).
Dyonisus is the only Greek God to have a mortal parent, but also the only God to be incubated by both his mother Semele, and father Zeus.
After Hera found out about Zeus’s infidelity with Semele,( she must have got used to it , it happened so often), Semele met a firey end.
Seaching through her smoking remains, Zeus finds the unborn Dyonisus still alive in her womb, and he removes him and stiches him into his thight, and when fully grown, later he is born.
All the gods were jealous of Dyonisus because of his gift of Ecstacy, (Ex Stasis, ‘being outside of oneself’), and he is hunted down and killed while very young.(How a God can be ‘killed’ I’m not sure, anyone…?)
Hence the notion that Ecstacy is a brief occurrence, but that is only the report of ‘ordinary folk’.
The realizers tell their experience of endless samadhi, or ecstacy. Like the rest of the gods, unable to experience such profound love and ecstacy, ordinary resentment, and hatred issue from many them.
It is by Dyonisus gift of relieving an individual of their identity, plain and ordinary fucked up self,(yes even back in Ancient Greece) for a time, that the being can express and identify with the transcendental ‘real’ self. That is ecstacy.
This may seem provocative, and I may apologise in advance, but the Guru haters, or Guru-had-enough-ofs may have a pretty uninformed, even popular, view of the authentic function of Guru.
No one said you had to like it, anyhow this is a take or leave communication forum, and what should it matter what anyone writes, as Kathy C said many times, just scroll by what you don’t like, but my free, unsoliseted advice is to at least notice what you reject out of hand, it may be more of a guide to what is going on for you than first impressions would otherwise indicate.
Just sayin…
By the way…
Adi Da Samraj wrote a nice small book titled….”Feeling Without Limitation”
It containd many many great things IMO, but the central concern is to attest that the Heart, the true condition of our being is ‘Feeling Without Limitation.’
Many years after I first read it, having reflected on the title somewhat, I realised that the opposite is what the vast majority of humans do experience…
Limitation without Feeling.
Scroll on…
January 11th, 2013 at 2:17 am
Lidia
Thanks for your kind comments.
I didn’t actually say money was the problem, I indicated a central problem for our time is the concept of individual wealth. This is because it is how the adolescent views energy, knowledge, and resources, it is for ‘me’. ‘Everything is there for me’. Having emerged from the ‘family’ nest as child, the adolescent rejects the codes and patterns of the family, in order to establish their own. Left too long in this phase, the urge to ‘die’, and grow into maturity is very strong, but it requires cultural wizdom to do it.
If, as in our present world culture, all the social signals are to remain in that adolescent phase, because it is the optimumal phychological state to accept marketing and advertising to, (the sexual urges are becoming stronger, even obsessive,) and let go of your cash/wealth, then there is very few who are even adults, psychologically, any more, and can help you.
Indeed the Apex of empire as Guy has defined in ‘Walking Away From Empire, ‘is the personal wherewithall to do exactly as you please.
So we get this shit sandwhich because all the emphasis is on personal wealth as the key to ‘freedom’.
But the notion of personal wealth is what locks many many many into the trap that that is all that matters.
We all know the rest…
January 11th, 2013 at 3:37 am
Great comments flowing here. Thanks everyone. Here’s a quickie:
Oil: “The Devil’s blood”.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:05 am
Lidia, we live in Central Alabama almost on the GA border
Last year was my best garden ever. When winter lasted about 3 weeks and March felt like summer I planted my garden mid March. The bet paid off and I had my freezer full by June, which was good because then the heat and drought came and my well was pumping bottom.
Feels like it might be the same this year.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:06 am
My nephew lives in Tasmania but not where the major fires were. Finally heard from him – the fires in their area got 1.5 miles from them. They have had rain now and some cooling in his part at least.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:11 am
Dr. House “I say again, the party is over, the jig is up, the curtain is falling. Enjoy yourself while you can – whatever that may mean for you. Big hugs to everyone (because that really gives me a lot of pleasure).”
Yep. Raising chickens for as much pleasure as food, growing a garden, living simply are the things I enjoy – healthy hedonism. I am doing exactly what I have always wanted to do. It doesn’t look like hedonism but it is. I have stopped doing all the volunteering things I used to do, and I do still enjoy many of the pleasures of the first world, such as this computer I am using to connect with others. I know it is bought on the backs of others in the world, so I can claim no holiness. I have gotten OK with that.
But any who feel they need to do more can join Guy’s call to crash industrial civilization. May be too late, but its still an option.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:11 am
@ Ozman
One of my favourite gurus was Krishnamurti, who was trained to be the new world messiah, and when the great crowds were gathered for his first speech in that role, as head of the Star of the East, or whatever it was called, he said, paraphrasing, ”Sorry folks, no guru can give you enlightenment, you have to find it yourselves ” and dissolved the order… must have been a shock for his sponsors, eh. Great teacher, all the same, one of the greatest ever, imo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti
January 11th, 2013 at 4:36 am
Lidia: The forestgardening is the activity that doesn’t generate much income. We hope it will at some point in the future. On permaculture, I agree with you.
On your idea for straw bale construction. Take a look at ARXX blocks as you are going through your decision making process. We started with slip form, and then went to straw bale, and ended up with the blocks. R51 and most of the walls are bermed, so it’s even higher than that.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:47 am
Ulvfugl, Guy has presented us with a list of things that we can do to bring down the industrial economy. One of those was to use a LOT of oil so that the price of oil rises which will help send the industrial economy reeling.
So is Guy now unethical in your opinion?
January 11th, 2013 at 4:56 am
Kathy C
Thanks for the movie info. I think I saw that movie many years ago. Suffice to say I remember the old man hauling seaweed endlessly up from the rock sea shore. Can’t really remember much more though.
I think I got the flu from swimming in the damn dam.
January 11th, 2013 at 5:21 am
Kathy C. you remind me of those slimy pharisees trying to trap Jesus with trick questions about whether it was lawful to pluck grain on the sabbath day…
I don’t use any oil in my life, I don’t have any spare money to buy any oil, nothing I do here is going to be noticed in any way whatosever by the industrial economy. I take full responsibility for what I do. What others do is their responsibility. I live the way I do to maintain my moral integrity and self-respect, not because I expect to change the world.
Guy travels around a lot, he flew to New Zealand, I’m completely against people flying, yes, I think it is unethical, immoral, harms the biosphere. That said, perfection is impossible to achieve, we are all forced to compromise. Guy travels for a good cause, imo, not for frivolous reasons.
I’m all in favour of bringing down the industrial economy. I don’t think using a lot of oil is an effective strategy. It’s just handing over money to it, collaborating with it. Better strategy would be to stop using dollars and move to bitcoin, cut out the banks, they’re the people who finance the oil and coal. Use credit unions and LETS. Not that that is going to crash the industrial economy either, but it’s a move in a good direction, imo.
Some 3 billion people, almost half of humanity, live on under 2 dollars a day, they don’t want the global economy to crash, they want a fairer share.
86 percent of the world’s resources are consumed by the world’s wealthiest 20 percent. They don’t want the economy to crash, they want to hold onto what they have for as long as possible.
There’s a handful of people here, hundreds, thousands even, who disagree with the 7 billion. We don’t make any difference.
January 11th, 2013 at 6:18 am
Ulvfugl – bullshit, you use oil to power the electronics you use to blog.
January 11th, 2013 at 6:21 am
Dr. House, I know you are caring physician for more than the barter clinic. You have often shared how patients have shared with you their fears and concerns about their personal lives. You may not realize this but most physicians don’t make the time or space for such sharing. People do not think they want to hear from them about their lives. They think this because it is true. I can’t imagine sharing anything about our personal lives with either of the Drs. I use. They are too busy getting me out the door so they can get in the next patient. Your caring shines without you even knowing it.
January 11th, 2013 at 6:47 am
@ Kathy C. bullshit, you use oil to power the electronics you use to blog.
Ah, so you believe that my 40watt laptop can make or break the global industrial economy. I see..
Actually, the power company boast about how much of their electricity comes from renewables. I forget the percentage. Not that it matters. Your determination to find fault with my position seems to have driven you over the brink of absurdity. What utterly pointless exchange.
January 11th, 2013 at 7:33 am
Dr. House,Thanks for all of your comments. I really appreciate hearing the different views expressed here. I am fortunate to have many “Skin and Bone” relationships where we have ongoing discussions about these issues and the ideas that people post here get carried into discussions in my household and with the people I work and play with.
I want to respond to your last comment about enjoying life while you can.
I completely agree that we should enjoy our time here and I also agree with your comment about our collective culpability. I recently read in To Smart For Our Own Good that original hunter gathers consumed about 5000 calories a day (2000 in food/3000 in wood) and modern humans consume,on average,,about 250,000 calories per day. As I became aware of the destruction humans were doing to the planet I began the ongoing process of being less destructive. Over the years I have probably reduced my own destructive behavior (as measured in calories) by two-thirds but that leaves a hell of a lot of calories because of things that I either have not given up or have no control over (like drones being flown in my name).
I feel,rather that”holier-than-thou” as if I am striving to be “holier-than-myself”.
Pushing myself in a the direction of being better than I am. I harbor no illusions that it will make any difference in our predicament.
as to the discussions about flying around in planes
January 11th, 2013 at 7:35 am
Dr. House, Sorry I cut myself off. I will finish my thoughts and post momentarily.
January 11th, 2013 at 7:39 am
Ulvfugl, once a month I give a free seminar on obesity and the various strategies of weight loss. It’s open to anyone interested and I get a fair amount of takers. In the talk I discuss how cheap oil has led to our being fat. (Oil is a very dense energy storage medium, fat is an energy storage medium; we use the energy in oil to do work instead of using the energy in the fat on our bodies to do work.) One of the illustrations I employ is asking listeners to find something in the room that wasn’t made by or with oil. The answers are interesting and often insightful but always wrong. There isn’t anything made in the room without input from fossil fuels – including the people.
The point is, anyone living in the developed or developing world (btw, that was the qualification I made above – I didn’t include every person on the planet), relies on fossil fuels to a certain degree. And absolutely anyone reading or posting on this blog does. You can try to minimize your involvement by saying that your laptop only uses 45 watts but it doesn’t matter. You’re using fossil fuels. Even if that electricity is coming exclusively from solar energy, no matter. Where does that appliance come from? How were the raw materials that built it obtained? How was the factory which built it powered? What about the trucks and other vehicles involved in transporting all that stuff? What about the wires which deliver that power to you? Where did that metal come from? How was it made and transported? Who maintains those things? Do they ever break down? Where do replacement parts come from? Where does the power come from for the internet itself or the server on which NBL runs? Where do those computers come from? On and on it goes.
If you participate at all in the industrial economy, then you share the guilt. Even if you have divorced yourself completely from it (which you haven’t, you’re still posting and reading here), you share the guilt. Stopping something doesn’t remove the guilt of the past, just the future.
Sure, some people are far worse offenders than others. The huge iron smelting factory in India or China creates far more GHG than does my energy efficient little car – but that argument doesn’t hold water – see two paragraphs above. If you create ANY GHG, or have EVER created GHG, then you are part of the problem. Like it or not, no matter how uncomfortable that makes you feel, it’s true.
And now to include the rest of the world, including those H-G tribes still in existence, unfortunately, due to overshoot, each and every human on the planet is now part of the problem and will almost certainly suffer the consequences of the compounding bad choices made over the last 150 years. We can scream and shout and deny it all we want, but that’s just the way it is.
So, again, in the same way that I advise someone suffering from untreatable cancer to enjoy herself, I say again, spend what time you have left making the most of it. Be happy as you can be knowing the end is near.
January 11th, 2013 at 7:47 am
Kathy C: Yep. Raising chickens for as much pleasure as food, growing a garden, living simply are the things I enjoy – healthy hedonism.
Absolutely! Since we got our chickens and goats and I started spending time caring for them every day, I’ve had to reduce my blood pressure medicine dose three times! I’m now on such a small dose that I probably don’t need anything at all. Healthy hedonism, indeed!
January 11th, 2013 at 7:54 am
thestormcrow: I am fortunate to have many “Skin and Bone” relationships where we have ongoing discussions about these issues
I’m envious! I mentioned before that my partner is onboard but due to his depression tendency isn’t really willing to discuss much in this vein. I am quite grateful for all the discussion here, as well as the virtual relationships built, but would really love to have conversations in real time, face to face.
January 11th, 2013 at 7:58 am
@ TRDrHouse
Sure, some people are far worse offenders than others.
Well, then that is significant, isn’t it ? Ethically ? It strikes me as being highly significant. On a scale of one to a million, where do you start to lay blame ? I think it is ridiculous to say that everyone is equally to blame, when the spread is so large.
The people living in the valley below, in their roundhouses made of mud and thatch, living from vegetables they grow themselves, with no cars, tv or mains electricity, simply can’t be compared with people who own their own private jets, yachts, sports cars, multiple houses, etc, etc, it’s absurd to say they are all equally guilty. Switch off the industrial soceity and those people in the valley below will hardly notice the difference.
Anyway, the original ETHICAL point, ( which has nothing whatsoever to do with your character as a person, or your qualities as a doctor, that’s Kathy C.’s red herring ) was whether it becomes acceptable to do things that are ‘morally wrong’ ( in the sense of being, say, environmentally damaging ) because of the prospect NTE.
January 11th, 2013 at 8:35 am
When I was a kid – 10 or 12 – I remember reading a newspaper article about a bad storm that had raged through the area. In it, the writer commented how wonderful it was that only two people had been killed. Immediately, that struck me that for those two and their families, they probably didn’t think their deaths were that wonderful.
The world gets all excited and upset when a shooter goes into a school and (supposedly) takes out 20+ children, but the black man that got shot on the north side of town last night will hardly make the paper. Yet to that one and those who love him, his death is just as important.
We often tend to think that scale matters – and in some situations it does – but one death is no less important than a million deaths. The million just gets more attention.
We here in the west tend to divorce ourselves from the reality of our actions. Many times others have mentioned in this space the consequences of using an iPhone, for instance, to the miners and other workers who are all but slaves, making those phones for us. As long as we don’t have to see it, it’s okay. Similarly, a 16 year old girl was in my office yesterday and her mother and I were talking about harvesting chickens. The girl said, “as long as I don’t have to see it, I’m okay. But if I have to see my food alive before I eat it, then, no.” And that’s so typical of our situational ethics.
So, it’s okay for us to use the internet, for example, despite the fact that a little bit of the natural world dies every second that it’s in operation, as long as it’s just a little bit and we don’t have to see the results of those actions. But, it’s not okay to kill a lot of the environment at once, particularly when it’s so obvious.
Sorry, I don’t see much difference there.
January 11th, 2013 at 9:01 am
@ Dr House
Of course scale matters. We’re not looking at this through the eyes of one anthropocentric individual, getting upset because of some emotional event in their personal life, are we. That’s been a problem throughout human history, part of the human condition.
What faces us now is all to do with scale, as you’ve said yourself. 7 billion, soon to be 9 billion. It’s the impact upon the biosphere of the cultures of the developed world, centred around consumerism, capitalism, industrialism, science and technology, that is destroying the natural system upon which we all depend.
The way I see it, morally, zero impact would be perfection. But that is impossible. Even in a H/G soceity. Merely by walking, compacting soil, crushing plants, disturbing birds, urinating, a human animal has an impact upon the ecology. Even a dead human is going to effect the ecology.
I’m not saying humans don’t have a right to live. The problem is the oil, the overshoot, Albert Bartlett’s exponential numbers, put us into an impossible fix.
I think Guy said words to the effect “I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not this…”, which I take as an ethical position, a quest, an open ended search…
I’m not saying what YOUR ethics should be as a professional doctor. I’m not competent to judge that at all, it’s none of my business. Where I can express my view is regarding the overall situation, and the biosphere. I put that first, above all else. Crimes against the biosphere.
Here’s an example, mercury pollution, look at the harm and suffering that is going to cause, on top of everything else…
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/10-1
January 11th, 2013 at 9:03 am
Minamata disease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
January 11th, 2013 at 9:10 am
Dr. House, As to the discussions about flying around in planes I will use an example of two of my friend who went to hear Guy’s talk. One person,who flies all over the globe to see birds in other places or to go ice skating on natural ponds (he doesn’t like the artificial feeling or rinks) heard the talk and mulled the info over and decided to start reducing his travel for his kid’s and the Earths sake.
My other friend,who I mentioned previously, heard the talk and and had sworn off flying and decided to say “It doesn’t matter” and start flying again.
So the frequent flyer,by choosing to fly less has made the choice to care more about the Earth. The non-flyer,by choosing to start flying again has made the choice to care less.
The frequent flyer will still spew tons more carbon into the air than the other person but is in the process is becoming a more caring person while the other person is becoming less caring. Does it matter. I don’t know, but it feels like it might.
Another thought I have on flying is that it is held up in our culture as the pinnacle of what we deserve.To get away, to see the world, to experience any where but here.
Flying around on planes is not equal to enjoying ones life. For some people maybe,but for most of the people I know, the planes they get on bring them to half dead place (think Disneyland or a convention center) where their ability to enjoy life is no greater.
My friend who decide to fly after all, came back exhausted and said “I am SO glad to be home!” I say, be glad to be home before you leave, need less money , work less,create less economic activity and one will find there is lots of time to enjoy life. I am not saying that I know what other people should do for enjoyment but there is a good chance that there is plenty of it to be had right where they are.
I have often been called a hypocrite by people I come in contact with. People I work around(not exactly with,since I work for myself) will ask me questions like “Why do you only have one car for 3 adults? or How come you are only willing to drive here once a week? or of course, Why don’t you just kill yourself?)
I only bother explaining things when people ask but they usually don’t like my answers. Invariably the person will get to the point where they will say “but you still do a,b,c and d so don’t you think thats hypocritical?”
I noticed that everyone else around me could be doing the exact same things as I still do; Drink tea,eat chocolate,watch a movie,etc. without being called a hypocrite.
The difference was that they did not try to do any of the other things such as use less,need less,want less. People avoid hypocrisy by wanting to be exactly as they are.I am called a hypocrite for working towards being different then I am.I have come to see being called a hypocrite as a complement. It reminds me that I am still trying.
Once again,thanks to you all for your insightful thoughts. All your different views give me much to think about while I am enjoying my life!
January 11th, 2013 at 9:26 am
Regarding the remaining H/G groups that themselves do not use fossil fuels, you seem to be saying that because their way of life is “protected” by the police and military forces (which require enormous amounts of fossil fuels) of the country within which they are situated, for all practical purposes they are just as culpable as the rest of us?
January 11th, 2013 at 9:35 am
Kathy C
The onslaught on Libya was heartbreaking to me.
You said:
“You surely can see
Unless your name is Gadaffi
OK that was really bad….”
I agree with your last sentence
and want to offer you a transcript of a speech this man made before the “United Nations” in 2009.
(And was called crazy for that).
He saw – and said, too much. Besides Libya having sweet crude for 60 more years at this time. Well, now it will not last nearly as long.
http://metaexistence.org/gaddafispeech.htm
Peace.
January 11th, 2013 at 9:38 am
Daniel and anyone else who’s interested……I do a little tour of the Kentucky property on the blog:
http://www.igotsomethin.wordpress.com/Kentucky Dreamin’Part 1
http://www.igotsomethin.wordpress.com/Kentucky Dreamin’Part 2
January 11th, 2013 at 9:41 am
And I really still wish, one – 1 – uno, of the so called leaders of the “free” world would have addressed things that clearly.
Prudence before Reaching the North Pole …..Take Your Hands off the North Pole
My concern in tackling this new challenge is world peace and the security of peoples
*** 18.11.2010
http://english.algaddafi.org/al-gaddafi-speaks—english-the-address-of-brother-leader-to-the-students-and-faculty-of-meiji-university-japan—1
January 11th, 2013 at 10:27 am
Bernhard – there are only so many words that rhyme with coffee.
http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=coffee&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl&org2=l&org3=y
When you start out a limerick with an ending word that doesn’t rhyme with much you should reorder your first line to end with something that has tons of rhymes but I just went with Ghadafi as sort of a joke. Bad joke.
I am aware that the picture of who Ghadafi was is of course skewed in the US and later will read the speech to learn more. Thanks for sending it.
January 11th, 2013 at 10:40 am
Kathy
Didn’t want to overly criticise your rhyme. It’s just this, whenever Libya, Gaddafi is mentioned I feel that pain anew. So many honest, serious people got killed and the picture of who and what they have been distorted along this path of mankind.
P.S.: How is Gabi?
January 11th, 2013 at 11:07 am
Kevin wrote: “Indeed, there was movement in the right direction around that time. But it was crushed by politicians, economists, bankers and industrialists.”
The problem, the deepest root cause of the problem, and the solution to the problem are right there in front of your noses, right there in those 2 sentences.
And yet, incredibly, not even Kevin appears to fully appreciate what the words he wrote MEAN – or he would have spelled out exactly what must be done as Humanity’s Job 1.
No one in this conversation has come anywhere near seeing the obvious for what it is. Instead, after that comment, the same fatal self-deception and misdirection repeated by so many environmentalists got posted up here – namely, that this is not, at least primarily, an economic problem.
Nothing could be further from the truth. People are as far from reality as it is possible to get when they deny that any and every issue you can name is an economic problem.
The truth is this: It is overpayunderpay that is killing us all and this planet. Overpayunderpay is not just another issue – it is the Mother of all issues, it is the issue that cuts across all other issues, it is the issue that guarantees you can fix no other problem if you don’t tend to overpayunderpay first and fast.
Read Kevin’s sentences again. We humans are lost in the far-too-manyness of life. Shut off all the noise and static. Be still. Still your mindchatter, breathe deeply, and read those 2 sentences again, read them very, very deeply. They are screaming the clue, the key, and the only solution that has any hope at all of allowing the human species to retrieve our chance to have a future. Taking to heart what those 2 sentences really mean can drive us to finally become realists.
Money is power. There is no one on this planet who does not know money is power. Billions of people get up and go to work each day precisely because they all know money is power – power to purchase the means to stay alive. Money is food, shelter, medicine, education.
And money is social power, too: overpay money is power that wealthpower giants use to influence, to control, to write the laws and put themselves above the law, power to keep inventing new legal thefts by which to funnel worldwealth to themselves, power to prevent the wishes of the vast majority of people to leave an intact Earth and good quality of life to future humans. 1% of people on this planet are overpaid. 99% are underpaid. For as long as a few are allowed to have overpay they are going to have the overpower to make human history be what they say it will be. The sorry history of this species is the sorry history of allowing overpayunderpay. For as long as the people fail to prevent overpayunderpay-overpowerunderpower we are all co-conspiritors in a plan to take our genosadism too far.
Money is not the root of all evils. The love of money is not the root of all evils.
The root of all evils is the love of having the chance to have other-earned money.
Capitalism is not the problem. Socialism will not correct the problem. Yes, I do know how counter-intuitive those sentences sound to you, but I have all the rational proofs with which you can convince yourself they are correct. I can help my species unlearn everything about economics that isn’t true – and help all to learn what IS true.
The truth about economics has so few moving parts, it’s hard for people to see it.
The future is approaching at the rate of one second per second.
Don’t get everyone focused like a laser on fixing the overpayunderpay-overpowerunderpower problem, and you can fix nothing.
Focus like a laser on the deepest root cause of every other issue and you have removed the bulwark that has prevented your success in spite of all the hard work many millions of good people have done combined.
Even if you suspect it may already be too late, how can you throw in the towel without being ignoble? Snails have more dignity than that – snails are willing to shoulder the burdens of life and get on with living life. It is unrealistic to be certain it is too late to reverse the colossal destruction of everyone’s everything. It is claiming to know what is unknowable.
What is certain is that the human species is either going to rid ourselves of the diabolically stupid idea to allow overpayunderpay or we WILL succumb to the results of having the next and the next and the next wealthpower giants ad infinitum until we really do pass the point of no return.
Show me where I’m wrong. Show me how you are going to succeed whilst wealthpower giants exist to thwart your every effort. Show me why murdering the diabolically stupid idea to allow wealthpower giants on Earth is NOT every human being’s most crucially correct first priority.
Fatalism is a self-fulfilling prophesy, is it not?
JUSTICE is the non-negotiable price of human survival.
I am payjustice at fastmail dot fm
January 11th, 2013 at 11:13 am
wildwoman – I think you put the same link twice.
anyway – you are so lucky! I went to visit middle daughter last summer who is interning at a race horse clinic in Lexington, so while she was working I went to a couple of parks. If you scroll down about half way there are pictures from Daniel Boone National Forest, which was one of the most wonderful places I’ve ever been. It took all my courage to cross the natural stone bridge!
http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2012/08/we-fell-from-dying-tree-asphodel-meadow.html
At the end, there’s a wonderful song by Cold Specks, Winter Solstice, from her album, I Predict a Graceful Expulsion:
We fell from a dying tree
We wait for it to leave
I wanna be, I wanna be
Leave ashes for borrowed instruments and borrowed hearts
We will pass them on to every saint and dead lover
I have my God so give me my ghosts
Sons and daughters,
may you kill what my blind heart could not
Sons and daughters,
may you kill what my blind heart could not
Sons and daughters,
may you kill
I saw your grandfather’s death on the news
Remembered when you took me to your room
You put your hand over your chest
Swore that the fire would rage
Whoa I…
I put my hand over my chest, sons and daughters
I put my hand over my chest, sons and daughters
I put my hand over my chest, sons and daughters
Swore that the fire would rage
Yeah, you know better ways to fall
Yeah, you know better ways to fall
You know better ways to fall
You knock me down, knock me down
Put my cold hand over my cold heart
Turn the fire and die whoa
Turn the fire and die whoa
Turn the fire to die
January 11th, 2013 at 11:38 am
I’m still home sick today, so I thought I’d sit here and address some of the issues we’re dealing with. All IMHO. First, humanure.
I’ve read the Humanure Handbook and gone through his site. Using drinking quality water to float sewage to rivers, lakes and eventually the sea is really stupid. Especially when you then go buy fertilizer. But corporations really want that system to continue because they use if for disposing of toxic waste.
At our home, the problem is that we can’t get enough heat going to cook the humanure. There is one thread in the comments on Jenkins’ site that talks about using compost worms to eat humanure. Well! That’s right up my alley. I do workshops in this town on worm composting and had a composter in the laundry room. Putting the finished compost on one of the gardens introduced the worms there and that made me sad because everything I read said that they wouldn’t survive where the ground froze. Apparently that’s not so.
Every spring there are more compost worms than before in the garden. They apparently stay down deep and then come up when it warms. In fact, they have moved into my flower garden from one of the veggie gardens. So I made two cylinders of “guinea pig wire” or “hardware cloth”, you know, that wire with quarter inch squares in it. I put these in a corner of the garden closest to the house. I started throwing into one of them kitchen waste, shredded paper, a bucket of coffee grounds once in a while, some garden debris in the fall, a shovel full of dirt once in a while, and humanure.
We have a five gallon bucket with a little toilet seat on top. It’s the kind they sell for ice fishermen to use in their little tents, or for those campers taking a tent to the woods. We use a mixture of shredded paper, shredded cardboard and sawdust to cover the deposits. Don’t pee in it! I’ve seen the worms literally run from urine, oozing out of the pile into which I poured urine. I’ve seen them come up through snow by the dozens to escape the urine I was sprinkling on the garden in the spring. They hate pee. Besides, urine is too valuable to compost, and besides, it’s the cause of the smell, not the solids. We keep a two-gallon plastic sprinkle can by the toilet. It’s easy for men to stand there and pee into the can and eliminates the splash factor, too. I use an empty peanut butter jar and then pour it into the sprinkle can. When the can is one fifth full, take it outside and fill it up the rest of the way with water. Then sprinkle it on your lawn or in the winter, I pour it at the base of one or more of the Douglas fir trees.
You’ve seen what happens when a dog pees on your lawn, right? There’s a dead spot in the middle, and a ring of very green lush grass where the urine was dilute. That means you just have to add water and then you can pour it on your lawn or trees and they will thank you with tremendous growth next year.
So back to the humanure. Where to put the bucket? Outside in the summer is nice because you can sit with the door of the garden shed open and listen to the sounds of birds. But this means you have to use toilet paper and we don’t do that. We have a hand held bidet in the house. I’ve heard it said, “Wash your crack – you’ll never go back.” It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, let me tell you. We use it and have a little pile of wash cloths on the back of the toilet tank to use to dry yourself off. Well I didn’t want to go back to toilet paper, so I brought the bucket into the house, and the bucket of shredding. So you position the bucket next to the toilet, use it, move your butt over to the toilet, wash off, dry off, stand up, cover the deposit, close the lid and put the bucket back into the corner of the bathroom. When the bucket is near full, take it outside and dump it into the wire cylinder. Wash it out and leave it in the sun and put the seat on a different bucket, put some shredding in the bottom and put it back in the bathroom.
I fill one wire cylinder and let it sit for two years. The worms come up from the bottom, apparently from all over the garden, as I’ve seen masses and masses of them swarming all over the contents, and they eat everything. I mean everything. At the end of two years the pile is half the height it was, and the result is black fluffy mycelium-scented compost that people would pay a lot of money for. I spread that on the garden and don’t need to use anything else. I throw on some lime and seaweed, but soon we won’t have those, I’m sure, but I don’t think I’ll need it.
Needless to say, I don’t have my inside worm composter anymore. They do all their work out in the garden. Now remember, these are compost worms, not earthworms. Earthworms eat earth, they are grey and mostly lethargic. Compost worms are brick red, very lively, and eat decaying matter. Actually they eat the creatures that eat the matter, bacteria and fungi and nematodes, etc. but it just looks like they eat the decaying stuff because they’re all over it.
We have huge compost piles and I’ve added worms to all of them and they break it all down. Every weekday we bring home 11 or 12 five gallon buckets of coffee grounds home from the university outlets. Twice a week we bring home 20 five gallon buckets of spent grain from the local brew pub. We also bring home shredded paper. We have an office shredder and shred cardboard that we bring home from the U. In the fall we get all the leaves we can from the yards of other faculty who rake them up, put them in bags, and let us come pick them up. We buy rotten hay and straw. So we compost all of this and then spread it on the gardens after it’s broken down by time and worms. We have to make our own dirt because we live on an ancient rock slide and all we have is neatly terraced gravel beds, two of which are now three feet deep in beautiful soil.
Anyway, I highly recommend composting humanure and using it on gardens. If you read the thread on the Humanure website, you’ll see references to the studies that show worms rid the compost of heavy metals and infectious agents. But I still don’t encourage guests to use our system because I don’t know who’s on hormones or what. Besides, they’d probably be embarrased as hell.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:59 am
Permaculture. IMHO, it’s a great idea BUT not for making money, selling the produce. It’s not farming. It’s not for one family, it’s not for one village. It works only for large areas with few people, hunting and gathering. In the book 1491, Charles C. Mann describes what is now being learned about the Amazon basin before European contact. The people of the Amason basin were not contacted early in the era, which means that smallpox and measles, etc. swept through the entire basin by indigenous trade routes before Europeans got there, wiping out millions of people and sending the forest back in. Because of clear cutting, we now know that there were thousands of miles of interconnected berms planted with food producing trees and fish weirs for trapping fish when the water was high. Millions of people hunted and travelled the berms and waterways round and round following the seasons and eating well.
Yes, there were huge cities along the Amazon itself, as described by Gaspar de Carvajal, chronicler of the lost men of the Gonzalo Pizarro expedition. Most of these people died soon after those men floated down the Amazon and before others journeyed in. When others arrived, they found only the few remaining bands of people who somehow survived the diseases and were barely ekeing out a living. The equatorial forest covered the evidence of widespread permaculture very quickly.
Similar permaculture arrangements can be found in pre-contact North America and they were all ruined by Europeans who imported their type of agriculture. Wade Davis calls agriculturists “people of the cult of the seed.”
January 11th, 2013 at 12:08 pm
please excuse the personal note: my husband is reminding me our cupboard is bare and i promised to pause my fairpay justice education work long enough to go purchase groceries before temps plunge again here tomorrow. i’m happy to answer questions about my first post if any arise, but i cannot avoid the need to be away from my computer for awhile, first. my apologies for this interruption.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Dear Guy,
May I ask how much longer do my children get to live on a dying planet? If we are coming close to extinction level temperatures and it is fair to say I will not see my children live longer than me… Quite simply… How much longer (approximately) will I get to enjoy them, love them, find hope through them? How does one prepare for such a scenario? How do I ever explain to them the why and how’s… Are we so surely lost? Are they so hopelessly doomed? Thanks for opening my eyes… And also goddamned you for opening my eyes.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Learning skills for independence. Here is the website for the Foxfire books:
http://www.foxfire.org/
I have six of the twelve books. There is lots to criticize here, but you can’t say they didn’t describe the skills of their elders. If you buy some of these books, you’ll see chapters devoted to:
fiddle making
spring houses
sassafras tea
berry buckets
gardening
animal care
banjos and dulcimers
hide tanning
wild plant foods
butter churns
ginseng
midwives
spinning and weaving
burials
corn shucking
wagon making
hog dressing
log cabin building
hunting
faith healing
moonshine
chimney building
livestock
cheese
smelting iron and blacksmithing
shoemaking
toys and games
wooden locks
a water powered saw mill
and a whole lot more. One of the problems is that the plants and supplies they have in the Appalacian mountains are not available everywhere.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:21 pm
Carrie, yours is a question to which I wish I had an answer. We don’t know. I doubt we have five years in the interior of North America. I suspect New Zealand and similar places, including southern South Africa, southern Chile, and so on, will support human life for more than ten years. But these estimates are merely speculation, and are worth what you’re paying for them.
You’re welcome. And I’m sorry.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:24 pm
Carrie: How much longer? Not long, but please don’t despair, just stay here and work through your thoughts and feelings with us. We’re all dealing with the same things you are.
Once seen, cannot be unseen. Sorry about that, but we had to have a public place to support each other. Welcome.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Thank you for your honesty. I’ll love them harder than ever for whatever gift of time is left.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:40 pm
I’ve been here before … I’d just never worked up the courage to ask how long is left. Maybe knowledge is power and maybe ignorance is bliss… All I know for certain is that my love for my kids is all consuming and even in the face of destruction I will do what I can to ease their fears and love them into the next life – or at least out of this one.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:43 pm
Carrie,
If you live in the Southwest or Great Plains region of the U.S., consider moving somewhere near the Great Lakes. Doing so will buy you some time.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:54 pm
Source: Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, v12 n1 p127-142 2007
Sri Dattatreya’s 24 Gurus: Learning from the World in Hindu Tradition
Martin Haigh, Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom
Abstract
Sri Dattatreya, who Lord Krishna quotes in The Uddhava Gita, has been evoked as a guru for environmental education. Sri Dattatreya gained enlightenment by observing the world, which provided Him with 24 instructors. These taught Him the futility of mundane attachments, the benefits of contemplation and forebearance, and a path towards the spiritual self-realization of the Supreme. Sri Dattatreya, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, features in several Puranas where His teachings involve direct challenges to the pretensions and prejudices of the learner. His core message is “never judge by surface appearances but always seek a deeper Truth”: the Earth is sacred, an aspect of God, and a puzzle that challenges the spiritual self to awaken to its true nature.
In The Uddhava Gita, Lord Krishna tells how Avadhuta Dattatreya discovered 24 gurus by observing this world. His teachers were: the Earth, wind, sky, water, fire, the Moon, the Sun, some pigeons, a python, the ocean, a honeybee, a beekeeper, an elephant, a deer, a fish, a reformed prostitute, a small squirrel, a child, a hawk, a young housewife, an archer, a snake, a spider, and a wasp.
January 11th, 2013 at 12:57 pm
I live in British Columbia Canada. Thanks for the info. My youngest was faced with a congenital heart defect. There is nothing worse than coming to terms with death when it pertains to those you have no compunction to live without… If only people had understood that sooner. If only life was power and not ” money” as one poster has claimed. I watched the news the other day and was struck by how quickly we act when we empathize with life, when its extinction lay open before us… How many people rallied around a pod or orca whales trapped in the arctic, begging govt for intervention… While they themselves faced their own certain extinction. Where’s the rallying cries for us. Where’s the demands, and screams of intervention… Lost in the denial of a lifetimes worth of mistakes. I only want to tell my kids, I tried, I didn’t contribute to the problem… Even now I want to be absolved as I type at a device derived from oil and the very industry that doomed us.
January 11th, 2013 at 1:01 pm
anyone seen this?
(hopefully not, i just came across it in passing):
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/eric-bolling-schools-pushing-liberal-agenda-
Fox News host Eric Bolling on Wednesday accused some schools of “pushing the liberal agenda” for teaching an algebra lesson about the distributive property.
January 11th, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Don’t beat yourself up too much, Carrie. In this same comment section are others who are also typing on a device derived from oil who don’t feel your guilt. We can’t grant you absolution, but if you refrain from Eastern arcana and the use of the word “whatsoever,” you’ll be doing a-okay.
January 11th, 2013 at 1:08 pm
Gail, there was a two part entry, which is why the link is posted twice. I try to limit the lengths of my blogs. I’m really glad to meet you because we know nothing about trees and will want to do whatever we can to nuture what is left on the property. It’s been recently logged (within the last 5 years or so). Be free with advice!!
BC Nurse Prof, I have one of the Foxfire books. Joel Salatin recommended them in “Folks, this ain’t normal”. I’m attracted to anything appalacian as well. They do assume more knowledge than the average middle class American will have of the natural world. I speak from experience.
Also, want to ask your opinion (and everybody else, too) of composting toilets. My husband is not at all interested, but I think we should look at everything.
Last, I keep forgetting to mention, but loved Barbara Kingsolver’s new book, “Flight Patterns”. Climate change comes to rural Tennessee. I thought it was brilliant.
January 11th, 2013 at 1:11 pm
Carrie,
Living in BC, you’re in an area with plenty of water (much like the Great Lakes region), so I’m reasonably confident that you’ve got more than five years. You could be in for some really wild rainstorms, though, some lasting for weeks on end. I (along with ulvfugl) am among the most “optimistic” commenters on this blog, but even I can see that the U.S. can’t endure very many consecutive 1 degF increases in yearly avg temperature (as we did this year) before the entire agricultural sector simply burns up and goes away.
As for how we got here in the first place, not everyone is lost in the denial of a lifetimes’ worth of mistakes (great expression, btw). Some of those people who do understand the situation just simply like to watch the world burn.
January 11th, 2013 at 1:21 pm
Arthur,
You are right. Some people do hope to watch the world and everything in it burn. Scary to know that many of these psychopaths are encouraging and contributing to its demise. Scarier to realize that some have even been elected by the masses through ignorance or worse sheer apathy.
January 11th, 2013 at 1:28 pm
Wildwoman, its hard to believe but a composting toilet is not smelly. With the type from the humanure handbook it works just fine. Make your deposit, cover with leaves and smell gone. Smells a bit when you dump a full bucket into the compost pile, but cover with more leaves and the smell goes. I made my beds for my edible pod peas today and enriched it with some well aged (at least 2 years) humanure compost – its so lovely. Planted my first peas too – 69 outside, working in short sleeves. But you can also buy commercial composting toilets that are more aesthetic.
Of course you can have both – put the humanure toilet outside in a small shed and do a regular one in the house. Thing is once we have no electricity for pumping water we all need to be ready to deal with our own waste eh?
January 11th, 2013 at 1:47 pm
whether it was lawful to pluck grain on the sabbath day
ל״ט אבות מלאכות
lamed tet avot melakhot (thirty-nine forbidden actions)
January 11th, 2013 at 1:52 pm
Are some people more guilty than others for the complete destruction of the planet? Are some groups less guilty than others? Are Americans more guilty? Are the hunter gatherer groups in South America and the aboriginal groups in Siberia less guilty?
I’d like to weigh in on this debate because I think it informs the ways we choose to act here at the end of the world.
We are one species and we all have the genetic abilities of each other. It is humans that are doing this to the planet. I don’t see dolphins or cockroaches doing it. It’s what we do. Species consume resources and reproduce until some environmental roadblock kills off a bunch of them (“dieback”) and then they breed up again. As a species, we have eliminated way too many environmental checks on our ability to reproduce. The only places on the planet where people are still “in balance” with their environment is where there are mass famines, epidemics, fires, floods, collapses of food supplies, and other disasters that keep the population in check. The San of the Kalahari desert come to mind, although aid agencies are trying to dig wells for them so that they don’t have to wring water from the guts of animals to rehydrate themselves and their children in the dry season. If these wells are installed, it will be the end of the oldest culture on the planet.
“Oh, my God, those poor children! They’re dying! We must prevent that!”
“They die so that the culture lives, you fruitcake. Leave them alone.”
Now, however, humans have filled up the planet and eaten and reproduced ourselves out of house and home. All people are still eating and reproducing. The final environmental barrier has now been reached and we can’t fix this one. We will try, no doubt. See Paul Beckwith’s proposal on Arctic News today. But it won’t work and the the population of humans all over the world will die, probably taking all of the other species with us.
And we’re bickering over who is to blame? Typical of humans, really. Blame is a concept invented and wielded by humans in order to further their own interests. Consciousness is also one of those concepts. Science is another one. Each is a system with unique rules of evidence to support claims of truth. You can’t argue a scientific claim with an appeal to religion and vice versa. You can’t argue a legal case by appeal to “what my dear departed granfather used to say.” All spiritual claims appeal to some text of revealed truth. All scientific claims appeal to rules of evidence that include rules of method and dissemination.
None of these internally consistent systems of evidence will help us now. All of us can argue positions until we are blue in the face bit it won’t help. We’re all going to die, this time with none to carry on.
I imagine cattle in the pens at the slaughter house. They see each one get positioned in the chute that leads to the kill floor. They talk among themselves.
“So this is it then?”
“Looks like it.”
“You know, I’ve been studying the Angus and Herefords. I think it’s their fault. I mean look at them, all fat and marbled meat.”
“We’re all goin’ down, Dwayne.”
“Not me, I know my conciousness will merge with the One-Steer-Who-Exists-In-The-Sky.”
“Hey, you guys, I think we could bust down that weak panel in the fence over there.”
“No chance. They’d use the cattle prod on us.”
“Yeah. It wouldn’t work anyway. Who would feed us if we got away?”
“So where did we go wrong, Ted?”
“We didn’t pray hard enough.”
I find these debates amusing.
We don’t even know what other species talk about to themselves, but we do know enough to see exactly what we have done to the biosphere. We also know how to stop. But I also think we know that we are not smart enough to stop doing what we’re doing in time. It’s too late.
So again we get back to the question that keeps coming up. So how do we behave? It’s too late for arguing that “we” should do one thing or another. We can’t stop it now.
Here I believe we need to distinguish between a global problem and a universal problem. A universal problem is one that everyone has to face for themselves. How to I face my own death? People have always had to deal with this. Many use religion or some other cultural response they are familiar with. Others will try something different, or at least something they think is different. Suicide? Denial? All have been used. None of them are better or worse than any other. But as humans, we want to behave in a certain way, even at the end of life, to either impress other humans or be true to some inner set of beliefs we have adopted or developed. Fine, go for it. It will be interesting to see the permutations people come up with.
A global problem, however, is one that involves decisions that need to be made globally. Climate change is a global problem. No group will take unilateral action on this global problem because it will involve giving up an advantage to another group. Stop using fossil fuels and you may be conquered by another country that didn’t stop using fossil fuels. Nope. Won’t happen. We’ll keep making truth claims using petty little systems of justification right up until the time when the last two people on the earth die of heat exhaustion while threatening each other with stones.
The advantages of our species got us here, but the deficiencies of our species will take us over the edge, no matter how many of us, by total accident, “get it” and nonetheless get swept up in the mob as we run into the fire.
But wouldn’t it be fun, right now, to take down civilization anyway?
January 11th, 2013 at 1:58 pm
.
The anger stage features a quest:
Blaming others for feeling distressed;
But we just overshot
(Critters do that a lot),
And the universe stays unimpressed.
January 11th, 2013 at 2:04 pm
You got it, BtD. Let’s give a cheer to the lowly virus:
“WHO calls scientists to meeting on new coronavirus”
http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/calls+scientists+meeting+aimed+bringing+info+coronavirus/7807090/story.html
January 11th, 2013 at 2:09 pm
January 11th, 2013 at 2:12 pm
BC Nurse Prof,
Beckwith’s mitigation proposal will not make any difference at this point. Besides, global political leaders have already stated that they will spend 2013 concentrating on global financial matters–fiscal cliffs, debt ceilings, minting platinum coins, that sort of thing. On climate, all the talk amongst TPTB now is about “adaptation”, not “mitigation”.
Arctic sea ice extent is going to be down to about 2.7 million sq km by mid-September.
January 11th, 2013 at 2:14 pm
Wildwoman, best advice (perhaps apocryphal) “…In the early 19th century, Marshal Lyautey, one of Napoleon’s greatest generals, was reported to have the most beautiful garden in France. Standing with his head gardener, looking out over his estate, he observed the wonderful specimens of the world’s great trees planted there. Lyautey then turned to the gardener and said, ‘I see no copper beech tree.’ His gardener replied, “but, mon general, such a tree takes one hundred and fifty years to grow’. Lyautey without a second’s hesitation said ‘Then we must plant today – we have no time to waste.’”
I also hear sea minerals are very effective natural fertilizers and that will help protect and strengthen.
January 11th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
@ Robin D.
His teachers were: the Earth, wind, sky, water, fire, the Moon, the Sun, some pigeons, a python, the ocean, a honeybee, a beekeeper, an elephant, a deer, a fish, a reformed prostitute, a small squirrel, a child, a hawk, a young housewife, an archer, a snake, a spider, and a wasp.
Hehehe, delightful list, especially like ‘some pigeons’
January 11th, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Re Thomas Nagel If we’re to believe science, we’re made of organs and cells. These cells are made up of organic matter. Organic matter is made up chemicals. This goes all the way down to strange entities like quarks and Higgs bosons. We’re also conscious, thinking things. You’re reading these words and making sense of them. We have the capacity to reason abstractly and grapple with various desires and values. It is the fact that we’re conscious and rational that led us to believe in things like Higgs bosons in the first place.
But what if science is fundamentally incapable of explaining our own existence as thinking things? What if it proves impossible to fit human beings neatly into the world of subatomic particles and laws of motion that science describes?
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/philosophy/thomas-nagel-mind-and-cosmos-review-leiter-nation/
January 11th, 2013 at 2:34 pm
BC nurse – I never get my humanure piles to heat up. The humanure handbook says that after 2 years even without heat the only thing that survives is round worm eggs. I just decided to trust that. I let my piles sit for at least 2 years after I stop adding new stuff. Sometime after 1 year I dig it out from the compost bin onto a nearby piece of ground. The loosening and turning seems to speed up the final decomposition. My bins are just four posts with hardware cloth around them. Each fall I pile up vines from pumpkins, field peas, stems from asparagus etc. I use these around the outside of the bin before I fill it to contain the stuff I dump in.
At first I only used the composted manure on flowers and to dig into holes for such things as tomatoes etc that grow up. But now I use it even on our sorrel and kale. We do not get sick. If we got some serious disease I suppose I would bury it outside the garden until we were well.
Since I gather leaves in town for mulch, I save the bags of the nicest dry leaves for our humanure. I have learned which kind break down the fastest and which tend to clump and avoid the latter. We have 3 buckets in our bathroom – one with an old toilet seat on it to poop in, one with leaves, and one for pee. I don’t try to catch pee when I poop, but use the pee bucket whenever I just pee. I mix it about 1/2 water and dump it out every day and whatever plant I want to bless. I rotate my pee buckets so they can set in the sun for a day, and in the summer I give them a rinse with peroxide or alcohol as the bacteria that create the smell get more active.
The system is one each person can adapt for themselves.
For any considering it, at http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html you can download the chapters for free, but if you can afford it it would be nice to buy the book and reward the work of the author.
January 11th, 2013 at 2:44 pm
Wildwoman: Listen to your husband on the composting toilet. In our house that is nearing completion we are going to go with the 5 gallon bucket and sawdust. We had a top of the line composter and it used a large amount of electricity. Since then we have learned that the secret is getting one that seperates the urine from the poop. Ask the locals if you can get away with a dry well instead of a fullblown leach field. We have so many Amish and Mennonites around us who have no plumbing that the rules are a little lax.
You have a really amazing piece of property. I wouldn’t be afraid to get some heavy machinery (while you can) the spring in the orchard looks like a great place to put in a pond. You will find that you won’t be able to do 10% of what you want to with just your backs. We have been at it for 6 years now.
http://books.google.com/books?id=lG9ADm38SXIC&pg=PA22&lpg=PA22&dq=boone+national+forest+edible+plants&source=bl&ots=ZP8JykC3ok&sig=YFCltd2j1etC1W4pz1QKgcsGmPo&hl=en#v=onepage&q=boone%20national%20forest%20edible%20plants&f=false
You would seem to live in paradise
http://www.tnnursery.net/ is just down the road from you. Lots of wetland plants, and the best prices around. We have a hard time using them because their stuff breaks dormancy way earlier than we can put them in the ground.
January 11th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
Most posters on NBL think
Humanity stands on the brink
With Extinction so near
Our choices seem clear
Should I have or not have a stiff drink?
January 11th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
thestormcrow, definitely yes!
ulvfugl Says: But what if….
While I have some issues with Pinker (whom I’ve met), I’m inclined to agree with him this time:
Linking to one particularly damning review in The Nation, Steven Pinker tweeted, “What has gotten into Thomas Nagel?
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blog/philosophy/thomas-nagel-mind-and-cosmos-review-leiter-nation/
Nevertheless, given NTE, WTF is the difference?
January 11th, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Whether NTE or LTE, once we’re gone, where will souls go? Where will gods go? Where will consciousness go?
Does anyone believe it the Egyption gods or the Norse gods or the Roman gods anymore? Of course not – they are myths! Is there any reason that current versions are anything other than myths?
Souls, gods, and consciousness only exist because we made them up. With our brains.
Duh.
January 11th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
Yes, Kathy, there are many ways to do humanure composting, as long as you follow some principles. I always feel I’m “wasting” something valuable when I have to poo at the university and flush it.
January 11th, 2013 at 3:04 pm
B the D, I don’t agree with Pinker about anything, I can’t stand him, strikes me as classic establishment academic shill. Doesn’t mean Nagel is right, just interesting, as are the comments there.
Given NTE, standing on the beach waiting for the tsunami, what is there to talk about ? The weather ? I think this stuff is interesting. Apologies to those who don’t agree, and prefer to talk about shit. I already know all about composting toilets. I’ve exhausted that subjects as a topic that stimulates my intellect.
January 11th, 2013 at 3:04 pm
Someone explain to me, please, how compost builds soil structure.
David
January 11th, 2013 at 3:11 pm
B.C. Nurse Prof:
“Animal Dialogues”, was, so far, the cleverest comment of the year.
It should be used more often. A great bullshit filter.
January 11th, 2013 at 3:22 pm
ulvfugl
Stumbled on this temperate forest example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehBQUJJwQpE
One lovage plant is enough for us for a year, but this is the first Z5 I have seen from here in the US. It doesn’t look like a huge piece of property, but Robert Hart pretty much fed himself on less than 1/4 acre.
The Siberian Pea Shrubs are amazing. No nuts?
January 11th, 2013 at 3:25 pm
Mr. Heretic:
““Animal Dialogues”, was, so far, the cleverest comment of the year.
It should be used more often. A great bullshit filter.”
Agree! Laughed out loud & made me miss ‘Far Side’.
January 11th, 2013 at 3:31 pm
The key to sustainability is (was) maximum acres/person, not minimum acres. Economics isn’t the answer. Efficiency is the road to hell.
January 11th, 2013 at 3:31 pm
@dairymandave
Short version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_structure
Of interest:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010173.hensel.pdf
January 11th, 2013 at 3:37 pm
@ David, there are three main components to soil, the inorganic mineral portion, the organic portion and the living portion, which is micro-organisms, fungi, insects, worms.
Compost provides decaying vegetable matter, the organic portion, as food for the micro-organisms.
You can’t really have too much of it, the more the better. The micro-organisms break it down into chemicals which plant roots can absorb.
Anything else you want to know ?
January 11th, 2013 at 3:44 pm
Wonderful comments on the humanure options. We are in the process of enclosing our carport and our new bathroom will feature a composting toilet. It’s going to be fun!
January 11th, 2013 at 3:46 pm
BC Nurse Prof, excellent post above in response to the discussion about guilt, etc. Thanks!
January 11th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
@BCNurseProf and Kathy C, thanks for the great tips on your humanure systems.
@Ozman, yes, the notion of personal wealth is an issue. Compared to what I’ve experienced in the US, in my husband’s Italian family there is less a sense of what belongs to any single person. If I happen to leave anything at their house, it disappears into the collective (although they are not left-wing politically). They just aren’t that attuned to items being personal and will use whatever is to hand. They are more oriented towards security by dint of being within the family/home/territory rather than security through accumulation of and attachment to objects (which they tend not to even have room for storing).
I have to disagree with “FairPay…”. Money is a huge issue, THE issue. To be more precise, Interest-Bearing Money is a toxic problem in and of itself.
Both Interest-Bearing Money and Capitalism IMPOSE consumption and waste beyond even the greediest person’s individual desires. The mathematical nature of exponentially-increasing interest/debt/profits IMPELS exponentially-increasing waste at ever-faster, compounding, rates.
This is just a mathematical inevitability and is independent of ideology. The phenomenon is explained pretty well in some presentations which have been floating around the internet and which many commenters here may already have seen, but I might as well offer some links:
“Money as Debt”: an animated presentation, this has gone behind a paywall after several years of being freely accessible. Perhaps you can find it for free here: http://www.esoterictube.com/money-as-debt.html
Charles Eisenstein appears in this brief video with similar material, but a happier ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZkQv25uEs
Albert Bartlett on the Exponential Function:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
Interesting books are:
“Money: Whence It Came, Where it Went” by J.k. Galbraith.
Frederick Soddy: “Wealth, Virtual Wealth, and Debt” (Nobel-winning chemist writing in 1926; whether the first “ecological economist”, I don’t know)
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: “The Entropy Law and the Economic Process”
David Graeber: “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”
When I ask myself the question of whether exponential human population growth alone could have brought us to our current impasse, I have to conclude, “no”. Only the abstract concept of Money can author a situation where it “makes sense” to ship bottled water from Country A to Country B, and bottled water from Country B to Country A, consuming untold resources for no net material gain. Though I am not usually prone to such exaggeration, it is a truly evil—bordering on supernaturally evil—force.
“Society Against the State” (Clastres) has some descriptions of how tribal populations viewed money (didn’t want it even when they could get it) and why, as does “The Gift” by Lewis Hyde, I believe.
Apologies if this is material everyone is familiar with…
January 11th, 2013 at 4:00 pm
@dairymandave, I thought this was a good book about soil:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/587916.Dirt
athough you can probably find a lot of materials more pertinent to modern “grass farming” and livestock. The UK has the “Soil Association” (http://www.soilassociation.org/farmersgrowers), not sure what is around in the US.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:04 pm
Thanks, all. See? All I need is to stay home sick and I can write insightful crap.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:19 pm
BC nurse – looking forward to when you retire and you don’t have to be sick to write insightful stuff about crap.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Money is food, shelter, medicine, education.
Money is sheets of dead tree coloured green with pictures of dead presidents. Magnetised patiez on rust-coated discs. Their symbolic nature is concealed through a grand delusion foisted on the sheeple and is enforced by guns where needed.
The truth about economics has so few moving parts, it’s hard for people to see it.
The entire paradigm of economy is a concept of dynamic interactions: conversion from the primary economy (resources) to the secondary economy (usable procucts) and their distribution (mediated in part by symbols – money).
All scientific claims appeal to rules of evidence that include rules of method and dissemination.
The entire structure depends upon awareness. One’s own awareness needs no confirmation.
We’re also conscious, thinking things. You’re reading these words and making sense of them.
The thinking is a component of the meat robot. The conscious has neither parts, nor is it a part. It has neither inside, nor outside nor beside. Reading words and making sense of them is a part of the meat robot. The awareness of the reading and the awareness of the making sense is consciousness.
The ability to discern the difference is one of the characteristics of the enlightened. Even comprehending it intellectually can be a tall order. It does not come through meditation. Matthew 5:8 King James Version: Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Consciousness has no content: it is Void.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:23 pm
Ulvfugl, “Given NTE, standing on the beach waiting for the tsunami, what is there to talk about ? The weather ? I think this stuff is interesting. Apologies to those who don’t agree, and prefer to talk about shit. I already know all about composting toilets. I’ve exhausted that subjects as a topic that stimulates my intellect.”
Are you trying to prove that you think you are the center of the universe. If you don’t like the topics people discuss here, if we don’t stimulate your intellect go back to your own blog or somewhere else. I think you have just revealed quite clearly where you come from. You want this blog to be about what you want it to be about. That is what YOUR blog is for.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:26 pm
@ ed
Looks like a very nice garden, ed. I’m not familiar with most of those plants. He did mention hazel nut. The basic principle is to mimic natural woodland structure, but using species that provide stuff we can eat, but of course, it’s always moving towards a natural climax of a closed canopy eventually, so has to be managed.
I think the key to success, is that the person has to be pretty obsessed and enthusiastic, you know, laying in bed at night thinking about their garden, and fiddling with it every day, taking an interest, learning all the time, because it’s a long project, like raising a child to adulthood and through college
I have a tree, for twenty years, only last year it had many wonderful golden plums for the first time, it wasn’t even supposed to have fruit, it was supposed to be an ornamental species, I often thought to cut it, because it’s a straggly thing, not even pretty, except for nice little white flowers for a week….
Up until last year, I’d be saying, look this is what we need to be doing, forest gardens, if we are interested in surviving, like Geoff Lawton says, all the world’s problems can be solved in a garden… but last year I realised that human stupidity cannot be solved, not even with gardens…
But there we are. It’s still something soothing to do, and something to eat.
Btw, R. Hart still went shopping once a week, and from what I gather new people that bought the place were not interested and destroyed that garden.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:29 pm
Kathy C. I don’t mind you talking about shit, not at all, you talk about whatever you want to talk about. Doesn’t interest me, that’s all.
January 11th, 2013 at 4:29 pm
Magnetised particles on rust-coated discs
January 11th, 2013 at 5:00 pm
@ BC Nurse Prof
Nice comment.
However Consciousness is also one of those concepts.
It is a concept, pointed to by that word, but that’s very much secondary. Whatever ‘it’ is, – and nobody knows what ‘it’ is, nobody can even agree upon a definition, – without it, there’d be nothing, we would know we existed, there’s be no world, no Universe, no people, no self. It’s axial to everything.
That’s why it is fundamental and interesting, far more so than any other concept, to science, particularly re quantum physics, to philosophy, indeed to anyone to thinks about their own existence. Isn’t the time when facing death, one’s own, and that of most life on Earth, an appropriate time to ponder such things ? I’d say so.
But wouldn’t it be fun, right now, to take down civilization anyway?
Do you see any practical realistic approach towards achieving that objective ?
January 11th, 2013 at 5:28 pm
@ BC Nurse Prof Permaculture. IMHO, it’s a great idea BUT not for making money, selling the produce. It’s not farming. It’s not for one family, it’s not for one village. It works only for large areas with few people, hunting and gathering.
That seems to be a misunderstanding. Have you not read Mollison’s Designer’s Manual. Nothing to do with large areas or hunting and gathering.
It’s about designing systems.
Sure, the systems you mention, in the pre-contact Amazon, can be regarded as excellent examples of permaculture. But you seem to be reading back from those, as if that is what permaculture is. That’s not correct. There’s urban permaculture, for example. Permaculture is about applying principles, and they can be applied on any scale, large or small, anywhere.
As I see it, these are the problems with it. First, in some cases, it’s become a middle class indulgence, far removed from the kind of harsh realities of survival, been co-opted and exploited by new agey ‘resilience’ gurus and the like, who hype it as a catchphrase, for commercial reasons, which I think just produces disappointment and disillusionment. There are no easy answers. Survival from growing stuff is hard work.
Second, it’s a system designed by people for people. What about wildlife ? What about the species that don’t fit neatly into the zone system ? Does nothing for them.
Third, the fatal one. Climate change wrecks the whole thing. The only thing in permaculture’s favour is that it is inherently more flexible that other systems. But there’s a limit. Unpredictable extreme weather events make almost anything unworkable, you just have to hope to be lucky.
January 11th, 2013 at 5:33 pm
Federal Advisory Committee Draft Climate Assessment Report Released for Public Review
http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/download/NCAJan11-2013-publicreviewdraft-chap1-execsum.pdf
“U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5°F since 1895; more than 80% of this 21 increase has occurred since 1980. The most recent decade was the nation’s hottest on record. Though most regions of the U.S. are experiencing warming, the changes in temperature are not 23 uniform. In general, temperatures are rising more quickly at higher latitudes, but there is considerable observed variability across the regions of the U.S.
U.S. temperatures will continue to rise, with the next few decades projected to see another 2°F to 4°F of warming in most areas. The amount of warming by the end of the century is projected to correspond closely to the cumulative global emissions of greenhouse gases up to that time: roughly 3°F to 5°F under a lower emissions scenario involving substantial reductions in emissions after 2050 (referred to as the “B1 scenario”), and 5°F to 10°F for a higher emissions scenario assuming continued increases in emissions (referred to as the “A2 scenario”) (Ch. 2).”
Released late on a Friday afternoon so as not to disturb the unwashed masses from their peaceful slumber. Crap. Executive summary link is provided above.
January 11th, 2013 at 5:35 pm
http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/
Link here is for the US Global Change Research Program’s main page for the the entire document.
January 11th, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Experts on the health of our planet are terrified of the future. They can clearly see the coming collapse of global civilisation from an array of interconnected environmental problems.
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/01/experts-fear-collapse-of-global-civilisation/
January 11th, 2013 at 6:36 pm
Ed, dude, those are amazing links! Thank you so much and very pleased to meet cha. Where are you located?
Edible and medicinal plants, especially in the wild, are of great interest to me. I’ve got books, but need the forest too, and it will literally be in my backyard. I’m also hoping to plant some medicinals as well
I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading about the Ohio River Valley. Native Americans didn’t live in Kentucky, but several tribes hunted it and used the salt licks and other abundant natural resources. White people came flooding in and claiming land and the logging started in earnest. Whole state was clear cut, essentially. Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone both noted the loss in game from just one year (1878-79). Of course, this was primarily caused by their own efforts, but hey, progress, right?
Sorry, I could go on for days, but it’s been very encouraging to have you and Gail comment positively. I feel an affinity for this land that I can’t quite describe, which could blind me to realities that would be better faced squarely. I don’t want to live blindly.
BC Prof Nurse, I’ll second Kathy C and say I’m really looking forward to hearing more great stuff about crap.
Really nice to see new (to me at least) posters. I not only like coming here, I NEED it.
January 11th, 2013 at 6:38 pm
Al Barlett: The Dust Bowl, global warming and sustainability
http://blogs.denverpost.com/opinion/2013/01/08/dust-bowl-global-warming-sustainability/31901/
“When farmers first arrived in the large area surrounding the Oklahoma Panhandle, the ground was covered with hardy buffalo grass that firmly protected the soil from erosion by the wind. Then each farmer acted freely and independently to do what was economically best for him. He plowed up the buffalo grass and planted wheat. The more land he plowed and planted, the greater was his income. Almost a decade of very low rainfall dried up the land, but the farmers hung on, plowing up even more land and hoping that there would be rain next year. Most important, there were no government agencies interfering with the freedom and independence of the farmers by trying to promote conservation or to limit the acreage of buffalo grass that was being plowed. The collective action of all of the individual farmers, each acting in his own best interest, resulted in the buffalo grass being stripped from enormous areas of the Great Plains. When the wind started blowing over the exposed soil, the dust began its assault on all living things in the area and beyond. The suffering was so severe as to be difficult to imagine.
A few doomsday voices pointed out the destructive consequences of the elimination of the buffalo grass over such a large area but these voices were ignored by the farmers who resented any suggestion that their agricultural practices were responsible for the disaster. The relief and public works programs initiated by President Franklin Roosevelt provided some immediate help to the suffering people, allowing them to hang on a bit longer.”
January 11th, 2013 at 7:50 pm
Ulvfugl, the link to IPS is astonishing in that such doom and gloom is being published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. That’s about as mainstream as it gets.
Unfortunately, I suspect it’s too little too late.
January 11th, 2013 at 9:59 pm
@ Dr. House
I think many will just shrug, ‘It’s Paul Ehrlich, the Population Bomb guy, he’s been forecasting doom forever, never happens…’ kinda thing, but yes, I was surprised to see it there.
@ B the D
Nevertheless, given NTE, WTF is the difference?
re consciousness…
What Kathy C., Gail, BC Nurse Prof, some others here, don’t seem to comprehend…
Given NTE, what becomes extinct ?
Yes, civilisation goes, along with all the art, music, literature, dance, architecture, science, medicine, knowledge and learning that humans have accumulated…
Yes, all the cultures and languages and traditions of the world go…
Yes, all the other wonderful species, the horses, elephants, dogs, whales, lions, go along with us…
Yes, all the ideas we have are all swept away…
But that’s not really it, is it. Evolution took 4,500,000 years, and ended up with us, and in a few centuries, the result, the Earth that sustains us, gets wrecked by us.
Not even a few centuries, mostly, just over a couple of lifetimes.
But we don’t go extinct and leave behind 7 or 9 billion rotting corpses, dead ‘meat robots’, as Robin calls them. That’s not what vanishes.
What vanishes, the ‘thing’ that took all that time to evolve, is CONSCIOUSNESS.
That’s what goes away. No more knowing, no more knowers. The light goes out.
For all we know, forever. Everywhere. Completely.
Seems to me quite extraordinary, astonishing, that anyone should dismiss that, as being of no interest. It is the one huge step change from what we have now, a world with millions and millions and millions of beings which know they exist, to a dead world where nothing is known. By anything.
That’s the qualitative change that occurs with extinction. That’s what we will have caused. The end of consciousness.
January 11th, 2013 at 11:04 pm
According to the materialist hypothesis consciousness must be a result of energy in Matter; it is Matter’s reaction or reflex to itself in itself, a response of organised inconscient chemical substance to touches upon it, a record of which that inconscient substance through some sensitiveness of cell and nerve becomes inexplicably aware. But such an explanation may account, if we admit this impossible magic of the conscious response of an inconscient to the inconscient, -for sense and reflex action [yet it] becomes absurd if we try to explain by it thought and will, the imagination of the poet, the attention of the scientist, the reasoning of the philosopher. Call it mechanical cerebration, if you will, but no mere mechanism of grey stuff of brain can explain these things; a gland cannot write Hamlet or pulp of brain work out a system of metaphysics. There is no parity , kinship or visible equation between the alleged cause or agent on the one side and on the other the effect and its observable process. There is a gulf here that cannot be bridged by any stress of forcible affirmation or crossed by any stride of inference or violent leap of argumentative reason. Consciousness and an inconscient substance may be connected, may interpenetrate, may act on each other, but they are and remain things opposite, incommensurate with each other, fundamentally diverse. An observing and active consciousness emerging as a character of an eternal lnconscience is a self-contradictory affirmation, an unintelligible phenomenon, and the contradiction must be healed or explained before this affirmation can be accepted. But if cannot be healed unless either the lnconscient has a latent power for consciousness -and then its inconscience is phenomenal only, not fundamental, -or else is the veil of a Consciousness which emerges out of a state of involution which appears to us as an inconscience.
Sri Aurobindo, Essays Divine and Human
Materialism, which is the religion of the western secular mind, posits that the world is nothing more than a giant pile of dead stuff whirling in seas of unconscious energy. Is it just a coincidence that a world view which believes that the universe is essentially dead took only a few centuries to kill itself by destroying the mother planet which sustained it?
January 11th, 2013 at 11:51 pm
But what if science is fundamentally incapable of explaining our own existence as thinking things? What if it proves impossible to fit human beings neatly into the world of subatomic particles and laws of motion that science describes?
Wow! What a concept! Does that mean that science was not the only valid way of knowing? That instrumental reason was only a narrow form of intelligence? That we can’t prove to ourselves that we don’t exist? That we can’t establish that our awareness is just a mere epiphenomenal by-product of brain stuff?
No wonder we’ve destroyed everything that is vibrant and beautiful. Our so called “best minds” are obsessed with the effort to prove that we’re nothing … that our awareness (which is what the self is) is a pointless side-effect.
January 12th, 2013 at 12:35 am
“But wouldn’t it be fun, right now, to take down civilization anyway?”
OK – now I get it. The objective of this place is to destroy civilisation for your own amusement. Well, I want it on record before I get as far from this hateful place as possible that I think that is the sickest, most twisted thing I’ve ever read. Exactly when did y’all divorce your humanity anyway, eh? And the denial that money is power? Priceless head-in-the-sand fantasy. The exact fantastical thinking that got us where we are today!
OF COURSE money is symbolic wealth – DUH. It’s a symbol of the real wealth, the goods we produce and the services we provide using the work that mother nature did for all in equal measure for free. Money is symbol of WORK, which is the sacrifice of a human being’s time and energies. My whole point was that Nature decreed inarguable limits on how much time any individual can possibly sacrifice to working, yet humans allow unlimited withdrawals from the finite pool of wealth, thereby getting farther and farther from reality, sanity, justice, safety, liberty, freedom, peace. Pathetic that nobody here makes the least objection to allowing wealthpower giants on Earth, when it’s physically impossible for anybody to be working more than twice as much as average people do.
I’m on the side of life and grace. I wasn’t built to duck and run. Glad to have discovered that I certainly don’t belong here!
January 12th, 2013 at 1:56 am
What vanishes, the ‘thing’ that took all that time to evolve, is CONSCIOUSNESS.
What vanishes is the apparent content of consciousness. What remains is consciousness, the Void, Sunyata, Ein Sof. To cognition it is empty, nothingness, ungraspable: it has no handle to grasp. It is unknowable there is nothing besides it: no “knower, knowing and knowledge”. One can only BE It. In fact one is always It, and no one ever “knows” it. The enlightened dwell in Its Self-Awareness, the Awareness of Awareness devoid of content.
the lnconscient has a latent power for consciousness
Nothing “has” consciousness; nothing “has” the latent power for It. Consciousness is the screen upon which the image is projected, is the projector, is the awareness in the viewer of the image and the awareness of the concept “image”. None of these “have” any consciousness of their own. Even the most creative of works is an aspect of the material world, just as is a stone.
that our awareness (which is what the self is) is a pointless side-effect.
Awareness is not “ours”. Nor for that matter does awareness “have” us. Our existence is apparent (“in”) awareness. The “self” is an apparition possible only because of awareness, (and not the other way around).
January 12th, 2013 at 2:11 am
@ Fairplayjusticetotherescue
Yes, you clearly don’t belong…….this is a place for coherent thought. Now, please go rescue humanity from your wealth-power giants.
January 12th, 2013 at 2:24 am
Actions are performed with anticipation, whether or noy that anticipation is at the level of a thought process. This anticipation is usually accompanied by a certain expectation. With action directed at a erting NTE, neither the anticipation nor the expectation is in the “pleasant” category – if NTE is viewed as inevitable. For those who can act without expectation, the issue becomes what gives them greater satisfaction. Some may gain more from doing what is “right” even though it is pointless. Others may see no point – in doing what is pointless, and turn towards something more satisfying. And some may do what they can to create and widen a bottleneck. None of these courses of action are right or wrong.
However, just as one can be proud of being humble, so too one may luxuriate in austerity.
January 12th, 2013 at 2:28 am
whether or not; action directed at averting NTE
January 12th, 2013 at 3:07 am
Haiku
Myths: a solution
To TheProblem that’s hiding
And once found is lost
Limerick
With hubris great, a culture
Can build an elaborate structure
Of mind for the heart
That pull us apart
And creates meat for the vulture
cc 2013 greg
January 12th, 2013 at 4:05 am
ulvfugl you have seen the light finally “That’s the qualitative change that occurs with extinction. That’s what we will have caused. The end of consciousness.”
Yes when we humans go extinct consciousness ends because it is created in our brains. Wow I never thought I would see you admit that.
January 12th, 2013 at 4:25 am
Lidia “Only the abstract concept of Money can author a situation where it “makes sense” to ship bottled water from Country A to Country B, and bottled water from Country B to Country A, consuming untold resources for no net material gain. Though I am not usually prone to such exaggeration, it is a truly evil—bordering on supernaturally evil—force.”
Actually it is far easier to believe in a supernatural evil-force than a supernatural good-force. It goes far beyond the stupidity, it plays out in the lives of billions of humans around the world. I remember when they began a campaign to stop mothers in South America from nursing and take up mixing powdered formulas in bottles – of course the water they had available was often contaminated but did the powers of evil care – no. In the book Blindsight by Peter Watts (available on the web for free http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm ) he uses a science fiction mode to explore what is consciousness and more importantly what is it good for. He suggests that the elite by selective breeding are becoming more psychopathic and perhaps beginning to de-evolve consciousness.
Mostly I just think we evolved to live as hunter-gatherers and our programs just don’t work very well in civilization, which is why hunter-gatherers had such a long run, and civilizations always collapse.
There is a great scene in the movie Alive – true story of a group of people stranded by a plane crash in the Andes. At one point they pull out all their money in their wallets and use it for the only thing it is good for anymore – making a fire. Don’t know if that scene was added for the movie but its great. Even gold as money is just a promise that facilitates trade. You can’t eat it or burn it. Too soft to make tools.
January 12th, 2013 at 5:21 am
Kathy C. ulvfugl you have seen the light finally “That’s the qualitative change that occurs with extinction. That’s what we will have caused. The end of consciousness.”
Yes when we humans go extinct consciousness ends because it is created in our brains. Wow I never thought I would see you admit that.
You, as so often, put words into my mouth which have I never said, presumably, on this occasion, to conceal your intellectual limitations ad inability to grasp even quite simple and elementary principles of reasoning and logic in scientific understanding.
CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.
January 12th, 2013 at 5:38 am
Thanks, depressive lucidity, two great comments. Seems only a tiny minority of people are capable of thinking in a way which rises above the tedious binary oppositional black and white, mythos versus logos, as if being in the world was like a football match which had to have a winning argument to make it valid.
January 12th, 2013 at 6:04 am
Back to the beginning:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2013/01/11/earth-to-humans-get-off-your-merry-go-round-ride-to-extinction/
(begins)
Hello dominant life form of planet Earth. Yes, that means you Homo Sapiens. I’ve watched as over the millennia you evolved from a primitive ape-like hominid species, surviving purely by instinct, to the technology-wielding, sophisticated-thinking creature of today. Truly, the planet became your smorgasbord and you have partaken freely. As a matter of fact, you have very nearly emptied the planet’s entire refrigerator and cupboards and are now preparing to lick your plate clean. I’ve been throwing up some warning signs, especially this past year, to try to get your attention and perhaps make you reconsider your current omnivorous appetite. After all, you do share the planet with other life forms who have been hoping someone or something will put an end to your callous industrial rampage. I’ve even set in motion a sort of evolutionary check-and-balance, a doomsday device if you will, in the form of atmospheric heat-trapping gases, ensuring your demise just in case you don’t get the message of behavior modification. In other words, your dominant socio-economic paradigm of capitalism is fatally flawed.
January 12th, 2013 at 6:43 am
@Kathy C re linguistic challenges:
Do we not live–does not our consciousness swim–in an ethos/myth of avarice-as-good? Does not the current lexicon lack the words to make such easy to talk and communicate about towards effecting a comforting response that is not, itself, a positive feedback for the dominate myth–a myth which you may indirectly (via projection) be noting imposes social-psychological immaturity as our as-good-as-it-gets? Much of what I read argued in these comments seem to be efforts to create in the comment section of NBL, an exclusive and excluding ‘community’ based on such. Am I lost to my own iteration of motivated reasoning with these questions and observation?
BTW, how far are you from Lumpkin, GA? Back in the early ’70s, when I was doing the “alternate service” part of my sentence for the felony of refusing induction into the military, my wife and I lived at Koinonia Farm in Americus, GA. The reconstructed colonial village in Lumpkin was a place that visually gave insights into what a less unsustainable way of living might be like. DX Gordy, then, the resident potter, offered pottery classes my wife and another long-term volunteer at Kononia took. The two-day process of firing the wood kiln at the pottery was an experiential lesson in the energy–and carbon resources–’simple’ fired clay vessels require. The ‘subsistence’ homesteading we went on to do within a suburbanizing community in the Mid-Hudson Valley, evolved, with motivated reasoning–including our creation of a family–into a distant memory of a lost sence of privileged piety. And though I’ve returned to ‘homesteading’ for the comfort of the oxytocin that the ‘tending and befriending’ behavior involved in such husbandry invokes for me, I’ve done so consciously. The invoked oxytocin helps me retain a sense of homeostasis and health in the midst of our chosen NTE.
Regardless, does the assumed powerlessness the dominate myth seems to invoke among the NBL comment leaders, which I observe is born of our choice to affirm the individualism and immaturity of the dominate myth–globalized capitalism–and that such, linguistically, relegates the personal and social concepts vigilance and responsiblity into their meaning, in action, the opposite of what they could define. To what degree does the vigilance and responsibility framing the comment dynamics function as a positive feedback for the dominate myth? Does the conversation here tend to devolve to a lowest common denomitator: arguments over various solutions to living with consciousness in the midst of NTE, while assuming, without thought (i.e. with motivated reasoning), what TheProblem is? If so, and to the degree such is trusted, isn’t such ‘tending and befriending’, like caring for ones flock, similarly comforting–but here in the comment section of NBL–both individually AND socially–a means of invoking comforting oxytocin and dopamine while avoiding the challenging and hard discourse and discovery of what might constitute a highest common denominator; move a community toward becoming an evolving learning community; empower the creation of an intelligent inclusive social myth for this time of NTE; merit, systemically, the linguistic lable of a disciplined quest for truth regarding TheProblem?
Anyway, is that working colonial museum still functioning?
January 12th, 2013 at 6:48 am
4th straight say hitting 80 in NE Fl and many more to come here in the middle of fricken January! The leaves never really turned and now it’s spring (temporarily). Even citrus and other fruit trees are starting to bud, so if we have a late freeze, it’s over.
This cartoon about wraps it up..
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UzIZKheZZfU/TdJelYm0viI/AAAAAAAAA9U/QIh5BUhvwLk/s1600/inconvenient_truth.jpg
January 12th, 2013 at 7:02 am
Hi Bailey, Thanks for the cartoon. Laughter is essential.
Here in Al we are predicted to be 77. My early narcissus is blooming at least 2 weeks early. More surprising my sorrel is putting up flower heads – that seems about 2 months early. But the danger to fruit trees is substantial for sure.
January 12th, 2013 at 7:06 am
@ depressive lucidity
Fascinating that right brain, mythos, an angel, gave Descartes his insight, that produced the left brain, logos, scientific child, and Cartesian dualism and Enlightenment materialism.
Even more fascinating, Parmenides, the founder of Western logic, was given it by a goddess. Something to throw into the mix.
In both cases, the sources, origins, of these powerful cultural influences have been written out of the history.
Peter Kingsley.
http://youtu.be/Ow-_G26lpOk
January 12th, 2013 at 7:08 am
Ah Greg, my ex and I volunteered at Habitat for Humanity in Americus GA for about 7 years. We often went to the potlucks at Koinonia. That would have been in the mid 80′s. Was Clarence still alive when you were there?
They were still functioning fine when we were at Habitat although beginning to flounder. After we left we heard from people there that they had gone to paying salaries and acting more like a company than a community. According to wiki they have reverted somewhat – I am now out of touch with anyone there.
per wiki “In 1993, Koinonia abandoned its “common purse” and experimented with a corporate non-profit structure. During this period the organization was known as Koinonia Partners, Inc. A board of directors and staff and volunteer positions were established to govern and operate the community, in place of the former community-based structure. This corporate structure was not suitable financially for the community, so in 2005, Koinonia again reorganized, ending the distinction between staff and volunteers and committing once more to the intentional Christian community model. The common purse has not been readopted; rather, each member receives an allowance based upon his or her needs, family and responsibilities.”
Now I am a bit north of Auburn, AL.
January 12th, 2013 at 7:11 am
Ulvfugl your comment at January 11th, 2013 at 9:59 pm says “That’s the qualitative change that occurs with extinction. That’s what we will have caused. The end of consciousness.”
That is what you said. I didn’t put those words in your mouth – you wrote them.
January 12th, 2013 at 7:13 am
“…a gland cannot write Hamlet or pulp of brain work out a system of metaphysics.”
I’ve always been pretty impressed with Hamlet…but is anything produced by humans really more miraculously conceived than the migration of the monarch butterfly? Is the monarch butterfly conscious? Or is that evolution at work?
Awesome documentary: http://www.hulu.com/watch/181080
January 12th, 2013 at 7:13 am
FairpayJusticeToTheRescue: Oh wow! Not sure you’re still reading, but, yeah, you definitely have stumbled upon a group of people who discuss views which are diametrically opposed to the ideas you espouse.
It’s not that most of us don’t believe there’s been and continues to be horrible injustice with respect to pay equality, it’s just that we believe that on a scale of problems facing humanity and the earth ranging from 1-10, it’s a negative 5.
Pay equality doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, if there aren’t any beans (nor people either).
This is a mostly open forum, but I recommend you go back and read some of Guy’s essays before you post again. You’ll see what really matters now.
January 12th, 2013 at 7:14 am
Ulvfugl, or maybe Ivy Mike stole your identity and wrote them?
January 12th, 2013 at 7:40 am
Kathy C. Ulvfugl your comment at January 11th, 2013 at 9:59 pm says “That’s the qualitative change that occurs with extinction. That’s what we will have caused. The end of consciousness.”
That is what you said. I didn’t put those words in your mouth – you wrote them.
And where, there, does it state that ‘the brain CREATES consciousness’ ?
It says no such thing.
Ulvfugl, or maybe Ivy Mike stole your identity and wrote them?
How juvenile and petty. Why do you drag the discourse down to such a level ?
January 12th, 2013 at 8:15 am
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.
Guerilla Open Access
http://pastebin.com/cefxMVAy
January 12th, 2013 at 9:29 am
Ulvfugl, I was seriously considering that Ivy Mike might have stolen your identity and didn’t mean that as a poke at you. IM and/or MB have done that in the past to others.
OK I concede you didn’t say anything about the brain, but you did say that the end of life is the end of consciousness.
So consciousness doesn’t exist outside of the organization of molecules we call life.
WE agree. (I don’t think Robin does)
I just think that it takes the higher organization of the brain to create consciousness (as it interacts with the body per Damasio)
And of course probably none of us are using the same definition for consciousness.
And yes I do not any longer think the loss of consciousness in the world is all bad, for it takes the bad with the good.
Of course there is the possibility that other life exists and the extinction of life on earth won’t mean the end of consciousness, just the end of a planet that evolved creatures that self destruct.
I have just started reading The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? by Peter Ward
Should be an interesting read….
January 12th, 2013 at 9:50 am
I’ve got the Humanmanure Handbook and the Foxfire books on my list of future purchases.
For your consideration: Earth Medicine – Earth Foods by Michael A. Weiner. Subtitle is: Plant remedies, drugs, and natural foods of the North American Indians. With illustrations. Am finding it very informative. It’s got a 1972 copyright on it.
Any other must have/must reads?
January 12th, 2013 at 10:09 am
Kathy C. OK I concede you didn’t say anything about the brain, but you did say that the end of life is the end of consciousness.
Ok.
So consciousness doesn’t exist outside of the organization of molecules we call life.
That does not follow. That’s your own personal opinion, a belief you hold, a faith, an idea in your head, no different to a religious conviction, or any other story that people tell themselves. For it to be more than that, it needs a corresponding established empirical chain of evidence that can be demonstrated. Nothing even approaching that level of understanding has yet been found. Nowhere near.
WE agree. (I don’t think Robin does)
No we don’t. I think that you complain ( if that’s the right word ) that humans have caused harm to nature, the planet, etc, via Fukes, etc, etc, and see religious fundamentalism. all other religions, as a bogeyman which you have rejected, in favour of your own version of ‘science’ and ‘rationalism’.
I take a very different view. I see your view of ‘science’ as essentially an outdated scientism, materialism, derived from cartesian dualism, physicalism, with Judaeo-Christian overtones or influences, which is just as much responsible for the environmental disaster as industrialism and capitalism, the way I see it they all go hand in hand.
Btw, I really don’t think that it matters that we disagree over these issues, it’s only of academic interest, it doesn’t make the slightest difference to what’s going to happen, as BC Nurse Prof put it, it’s arguing about the merits and weaknesses of cattle breeds as they get herded into the abbatoir… I pursue the subjects that interest me because I like to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and learn new stuff.
I am in full agreement with Robin as to Ein Sof, Sunyata, and similar terms from many separate traditions, all pointing to a profound truth. After that, when I’ve tried to get Robin to clarify what he really means, concerning consciousness, sorry to say, we seem to lose any mutual understanding, so I’m not clear what he thinks. Incidentally, I think Peter Kingsley is referring to the same truth, in the video I posted, but he’s calling it Eternity.
I just think that it takes the higher organization of the brain to create consciousness (as it interacts with the body per Damasio)
You’re entitled to that view. Many respected figures share it. But it is very far from being the consensus, and demonstrably proven, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that it is IMPOSSIBLE to accept. The key word is CREATE. A radio plays music, but it does not CREATE that music, it just receives radio waves from a transmitter, which it processes and reproduces, in an audible form. It is, like the brain, a complicated device. If you smash it up, it stops playing music. That does not ‘prove’ that it was CREATING the music.
And of course probably none of us are using the same definition for consciousness.
Yes. +10 for that insight. It is totally absurd to be arguing about a concept which signifies a ‘thing’, which nobody understands, and for which nobody can even supply or agree upon an adequate definition. We all know what it is, to some degree, because we all have it, to some degree. But we only know we have it because we have it. And we cannot even describe it.
And yes I do not any longer think the loss of consciousness in the world is all bad, for it takes the bad with the good.
I think we are, here, very far beyond the realm where it makes any sense whatsoever to assign tags ‘good’ v. ‘bad’.
Of course there is the possibility that other life exists and the extinction of life on earth won’t mean the end of consciousness, just the end of a planet that evolved creatures that self destruct.
Yes, that is theoretically possible, and seems statistically likely, given the immense size of the Universe and vast numbers involved, but no evidence, Fermi Paradox.
Here is a long, serious video on the geo-bio (!?) engineering of the atmosphere. Perhaps there is a plan in place to remove most of us without any consultation or warning ?
http://youtu.be/cTVpsmBNvL8
January 12th, 2013 at 10:10 am
.
If you pee when you stand or you sit,
If you’re rich or good in your obit,
To which faiths you submit,
If mind’s one or it’s split—
Extinction wipes out all that shit.
January 12th, 2013 at 10:37 am
….and if you dare to question the appalling propaganda that gets presented as ‘faux-journalism’ by the MSM, as Prof. James Tracy has re Sandy Hook, then the MSM machine destroys you…
http://theinfounderground.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17051&sid=fefc636b977113edd9437b44007a9ac3&start=285
January 12th, 2013 at 11:08 am
Ulvfugl
I wrote: So consciousness doesn’t exist outside of the organization of molecules we call life.
You wrote: That does not follow.
Then why does consciousness end with extinction? You wrote: “That’s the qualitative change that occurs with extinction. That’s what we will have caused. The end of consciousness.”
January 12th, 2013 at 11:18 am
Kathy C says: …we evolved to live as hunter-gatherers and our programs just don’t work very well in civilization….
We evolved our survival kit
For a world that’s long seen its obit;
The moving finger’s writ,
So get ready to split:
It turns out we no longer fit.
January 12th, 2013 at 12:14 pm
Kathy C. You wrote: That does not follow.
Then why does consciousness end with extinction?
Perhaps it seems to you that I’m being pedantic, I’m not, the precision of the language matters, just as in a court of law, where a case hinges on the exact definition of a legal term, in science, for people who are actually sincerely interested in understanding, rather than seeking support for ideological positions, the wording matters.
Look, if brains were like tv sets, they wouldn’t be ‘creating’ the programmes, the consciousness, would they, that would be done in studios, then filmed, transmitted and distributed. You could smash all the tvs ( brains ) and there’d be no more consciousness. Nobody left to receive the signal. Just a sad lonely transmitter beaming out into nothingness….
I’m not saying that the reality is anything like this very crude analogy. But what seems absolutely clear to me, ( and from what I understand, about roughly a quarter of quantum physicists agree ) it is simply not possible for that lump of stuff inside the skull to be ‘creating’ consciousness. What it is doing is more akin to ‘perceiving’ or ‘transducing’ consciousness, although probably both words are misleading.
There is certainly clear correlations between all kinds of brain activity and variations in consciouness, no argument about that. Person falls asleep, brain waves change, areas of activity change, and so on. As you’ve often said, damage parts of the brain, functions are effected. But all of that is correlation, not evidence of causation. Same can be said of a motor car or a radio. Mess with the systems, function gets impaired.
If, as seems shown beyond doubt (imo), consciousness influences the double slit experiment, etc, it’s not just ‘in the head’, a product of the complexity of the brain, something quite different is going on, an ‘interaction between mind and matter’, so to speak, although that is just concealing the problem, that we don’t know what mind is and we don’t know what matter is.
This is why I find it so interesting. It’s the ultimate challenge, the ultimate puzzle, the riddle that nobody can solve, that has defeated the finest intellects.
But it’s not just the quantum stuff. If you put that together with all the anecdotal and experimental PSI data, siddhis, etc, ( which I know you don’t accept at all ) there are actually theories of consciousness which I find more plausible that the ‘created by the brain’ versions.
But there we are. Whatever the truth of this may be, the result of extinction is the same. No beings with conscious minds. We will have extinguished consciousness.
Some people, ( I think maybe Ken Wilber ? ), have theorised that the whole purpose of the Universe and evolution upon Earth was to produce consciousness, so that the Universe/God could become aware of itself… so much for that project…
January 12th, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Kathy C. So consciousness doesn’t exist outside of the organization of molecules we call life.
I think it is incredibly hard to see a clear line between chemicals which are ‘dead’ and chemicals which suddenly get classified as ‘alive’. There are forms which seem to be intermediate.
And then the enormous gulf, chemistry becomes consciousness… how does that happen ? well, nobody knows. Every year another slew of books.
But I think the problem lies with us, not with ‘the stuff’ out there. We mapped the ‘out there’ in line with the cultural values, going back to Linnaeus and Aristotle, and generally, we’ve put elderly white male english speakers as the pre-eminent pinnacle of all that exists… or they put themselves there, because they had the power to do so, and the stories they told kept it that way…. Obviously, I’m one, myself, hahahaha, hopefully a genuine honest traitor… hahaha, anyway…
Prairie dogs were varmints, vermin, dumb critters, creatures, stupid animals, not like us smart highly evolved Church goers made in God’s image, who discovered science and evolution and quantum physics, hahahaha…… who’ve fucked up EVERYTHING, which the humble prairie dogs never managed to do…
Anyway, turns out, simple prairie dogs are remarkable smart, they have a word for human, a word for coyote, another word for an ordinary dog, they can describe the colour of the clothes a person is wearing, and whether they are tall, thin, short, or solidly built, and how fast they are moving…. etc.
I learn this from the spendidly named Con Slobodchikoff, PhD, who learned it from the prairie dogs… ( Chasing Doctor Dolittle )
January 12th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
I just added the following paragraph to the essay above. It was brought to my attention — again — by the inimitable Cory Morningstar.
Let’s ignore the models for a moment and consider only the results of a single briefing to the United Nations Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen (COP15). Regulars in this space will recall COP15 as the climate-change meetings thrown under the bus by the Obama administration. A footnote on that long-forgotten briefing contains this statement: “THE LONG-TERM SEA LEVEL THAT CORRESPONDS TO CURRENT CO2 CONCENTRATION IS ABOUT 23 METERS ABOVE TODAY’S LEVELS, AND THE TEMPERATURES WILL BE 6 DEGREES C OR MORE HIGHER. THESE ESTIMATES ARE BASED ON REAL LONG TERM CLIMATE RECORDS, NOT ON MODELS.”
January 12th, 2013 at 2:01 pm
Guy, when you write “As one little-discussed example, atmospheric oxygen levels are dropping to levels considered dangerous for humans”, I really think you do your credibility much dis service……
Rising CO2 levels are measured in parts per million (ppm), oxygen levels in the atmosphere are measured in percent (%), which could also be termed parts per hundred. In our case it is 21%. Currently CO2 is about 394 ppm. In the same units oxygen (O2) is 210,000 ppm. CO2 is a trace gas (meaning small fraction). We are NOT running out of Oxygen, we wouldn’t even if every last bit of FF was burnt…….
January 12th, 2013 at 2:18 pm
Just to emphasise Mike’s point, here is a post by a concerned climate scientist addressing the oxygen level issue:
http://www.peakprosperity.com/comment/145560#comment-145560
January 12th, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Mike, did you bother to follow the link and read the essay? As a reminder, it’s here.
January 12th, 2013 at 2:23 pm
“How juvenile and petty. Why do you drag the discourse down to such a level ?”
ulvfugl, it seems to me that you are the one being juvenile and petty. You are always sniping at KathyC for no good reason that I can discern. You go out of your way to do so, which doesn’t seem to me to fit in with someone who pretends to enlightenment.
I also took this to be offensive:
What Kathy C., Gail, BC Nurse Prof, some others here, don’t seem to comprehend… Given NTE, what becomes extinct ? …CONSCIOUSNESS.
We are well aware of that. Why do you talk down to us as though we were retarded children? If it so irritates you to keep casting your pearls of wisdom before such swine as we then why, pray tell, do you continue doing so?
• Either all life on the planet will soon be extinguished, or it won’t.
• Either all consciousness associated with this planet will be extinguished at that moment, or it won’t.
• Either all consciousness in the universe will be extinguished at that moment, or not.
You don’t seem to have reached equanimity regarding these phenomena. It seems as though you are vehemently attached to some idea that you are trying to prove or to pugnaciously convince us of, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is. Maybe I AM retarded!
–
*For “precision of language” this can’t be beat, from your sidekick Robin:
“when someone says ‘Are you conscious of that sound?’” A meat robot would answer “Yes”, even though it would have no awareness.
Why can’t it read, equally:
“Are you aware of that sound?” A meat robot would answer “yes”, even though it would have no consciousness”?
(Don’t bother answering, as it is just a rhetorical question.)
January 12th, 2013 at 2:37 pm
@Daniel, Fairpay appears to be at Stage Two of Chefurka’s scale:
2. Awareness of one fundamental problem. Whether it’s Climate Change, overpopulation, Peak Oil, chemical pollution, oceanic over-fishing, biodiversity loss, corporatism, economic instability or sociopolitical injustice, one problem seems to engage the attention completely. People at this stage tend to become ardent activists for their chosen cause. They tend to be very vocal about their personal issue, and blind to any others.
January 12th, 2013 at 2:51 pm
Lidia – thanks. I suppose U snipes at me most because he is more successful at baiting me into an argument than with others. Its a failing I have that I let him do it. Jan. 12th resolution – No More.
January 12th, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Hmmm…. Where to begin?
I’m of the opinion, and have been for a good many years, that we’re all toast and have been for a very long time – we just haven’t completely noticed as yet; kind of like the proverbial frog-in-the-pot, but now it’s starting to sting a little. Also, since I’m an old fart, I’m acutely aware that everything dies somewhen and that nothing is permanent.
Anyway, I read Guy’s post and most (but not nearly all) of the comments that followed and I came away with a couple of notions:
1) Many of the respondents to Guy’s article appear to be scared shitless that ‘…it’s all going to end.’
Well, of course it is – what else did you expect?
2) Many of the respondents appear to think there’s something to be done about it, like Move-to-the-Country-and-grow-veggies, etc.
Nonsense, move out and grow veggies if you like (good idea, in any case), but don’t expect it to change the inevitable.
3) And it appears there’s something of a consensus that it’s all going to end at 2:00PM (GMT) on Wednesday the 4th of _____ in 20__.
‘Taint so. It will indeed end, as everything does, but only when it’s ready – could be tomorrow, maybe next week, or (probably) sometime between Now and the advent of the next century – nobody knows.
Meantime, I expect to live my life as best I can (and frugally, since I have no choice anymore) and enjoy the day – everyday.
January 12th, 2013 at 3:48 pm
KathyC, it’s understandable to assume that an interlocutor naturally desires a mutually-fruitful exchange. Some people are just not wired that way, though.
January 12th, 2013 at 4:10 pm
@ Lidia
…someone who pretends to enlightenment.
Now, when and where did I ever do that ? Whatever ‘enlightenment’ may be, Lidia. Perhaps you’ll tell me.
We are well aware of that. Why do you talk down to us as though we were retarded children?
No you are not well aware of that. I’m ‘speaking down’ to any of you. Or rather, them, because you were not included. I was responding to specific instances where they have used the word.
• Either all consciousness associated with this planet will be extinguished at that moment, or it won’t.
• Either all consciousness in the universe will be extinguished at that moment, or not.
Forgive me Lidia, but you are simply out of your depth here. You’ve plunged in to support the others but you have not understood the argument AT ALL.
….but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.
Well, I’m glad you are smart enough to have understood that !
Maybe I AM retarded!
No, but the issues are difficult and subtle and hard to understand. Because you are not familiar with what i am trying to convey, please don’t assume that I am just being rude and arrogant.
I probably am being rude and arrogant, sometimes, I’m sick to death of stupid ignorant people who have fucked up the world I love, but I attempt to conduct myself with courtesy here most of the time. Kathy C. frays my nerves sometimes when she promotes positions which I find offensive. There’s plenty of people here who have strong views on all sorts of issues, that are irreconcilable. There’s bound to be clashes. Isn’t that inevitable ?
Robin is not my ‘sidekick’, whatever that means. I’ve said I find his use of that term ‘meat robot’ offensive. You’ll have to ask him to clarify what he means by what he says, I’m not responsible for anyone else’s words. I already asked him myself and didn’t get very far.
January 12th, 2013 at 4:11 pm
Kathy: 1/12/13, we are going to hold you to that, and thanks, it was getting silly. Finally have the sheepherder fired up and it’s working really well. Appreciate your advice.
WW: We are at 1600′ and 35 acres in the only county in NY that is in Appalachia. I don’t even know how many trees, shrubs, perrenials that we have planted since we started here 6 years ago, maybe 2,500-,3000. Two books by the same author that you may like are Nature’s Garden and The Forager’s Harvest by Samuel Thayer. Based on those books we probably wouldn’t go hungry. If you want more info e-mail Guy and he can forward it. We are more than happy to help with anything we can. Sometimes we think we should change our farm’s name to Do Over. Thanks Guy.
January 12th, 2013 at 4:11 pm
Guy, I DID read the essay…. things like “Notably, the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere has dropped from 35 to 21 percent from prehistoric times to now”, is mumbo jumbo, because the last thing we need is 35% O2, because according to James Lovelock in his Gaia books, any more O2 than we have now would create out of control fires…..
The amount of O2 we currently have is ideal, not too oxydising for fires, and not too low for life to get on with…..
I think the essay is hysteria…..
January 12th, 2013 at 4:19 pm
@ Lidia it’s understandable to assume that an interlocutor naturally desires a mutually-fruitful exchange
That cuts both ways, both for you and for Kathy. Sometimes it’s impossible, because the it’s basically a verbal fight. However, mostly, everybody here gets pissed off by that. I’m actually deeply interested in this consciousness stuff, so I like to talk about it with anyone who’ll listen.
January 12th, 2013 at 4:22 pm
For those interested in either seeing or participating in the latest 4 year U.S. NCADAC Report, see below. It is basically a U.S.-centric mini version of the IPCC climate assessments. The full draft report or sections of interest can be found here http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/ (scroll to the bottom of the page). This is a work in progress, so if you want to see it before it is ‘official’, or even have your comments about aspects of it addressed, here is your chance.
January 12th, 2013 at 4:27 pm
That essay also says “How alarming? Some cities are down to just 15%, far lower then safety standards dictate.
If the oxygen level in such an environment falls below 19.5% it is oxygen deficient, putting occupants of the confined space at risk of losing consciousness and death”.
I find that very very difficult to swallow……. ever heard of WIND? The atmosphere is generally very homogeneous. Sure, cities would have anomalies, but for O2 levels to drop to 15% would surely need zero wind for days on end such that the air would not be replenished. There are very few places on Earth where such still weather occurs, and they are usually in the tropics, and over the oceans….. like the Doldrums.
January 12th, 2013 at 4:38 pm
@ Lidia
Why can’t it read, equally:
….have no awareness
….have no consciousness
The fault is with you, Lidia. Your assumption is that these are synonyms. You assume that Robin is using the word Consciousness in the same way that you do. He is not. When he posts here, he draws upon terminology from Hindu and Buddhist traditions which have VASTLY more complex technical literature concerning these matters than does American or British common language, even technical scientific psychologic literature simply doesn’t compare.
But then the fault also lies with Robin for either not understanding this or not making this clear. Words like ‘attention’, ‘awareness’, ‘consciousness’, are not really synonyms, although in casual everyday usage they may appear to be. That’s where a lot of the confusion and acrimony here arises. Everybody is using the word ‘consciousness’ to mean different things.
January 12th, 2013 at 5:47 pm
Dust storm australia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EqHez-yoC8g#!
January 12th, 2013 at 5:50 pm
Ed so glad the sheepherder stove is working for you. We love ours.
Others who might be interested
http://www.transoceanltd.com/appliances/stoves/sheepherd.html
The have a larger version too.
January 12th, 2013 at 7:12 pm
It’s the ultimate challenge, the ultimate puzzle, the riddle that nobody can solve, that has defeated the finest intellects.
Unsolvable because one cannot know the solution. One can only be the solution. And is the solution.
Meditation alone is like riding a unicycle. Bicycles, tricycles, etc. are also used and can be easier. More stable, one is less likely to fall off. In this journey, when one falls off, one often does not realise it, and in such cases may believe that the whole enterprise is worthless. Even worse, one may believe that one has reached the goal. But the journey has no goal – and the idea of a “goal” is yet another delusion/distraction to be overcome. This hazard has been pointed out, and given a name:
Makyo
“Makyo refers to the hallucinations and perceptual distortions that can arise during the course of meditation and can be mistaken by the practitioner as “seeing the true nature” or kensho. Zen masters warn their meditating students to ignore sensory distortions. These can occur in the form of visions and perceptual distortions, but they can also be experiences of blank, trance-like absorption states. In the Zen school, it is understood that neither category of experience – however fascinating they may be – is a true and final enlightenment.”
January 12th, 2013 at 7:33 pm
@ Robin D.
I was not talking about the understanding that comes from meditation, or from any of the Hindu or Buddhist or Taoist or other traditional teachings. I was talking about the modern understanding that comes from neuroscience and from quantum physics ( although there is an overlap, I’m happy to acknowledge ), so your first comment, re ‘being the solution’, isn’t pertinent and has no relevance.
The answer would be one that would be framed in intellectual terms, that could be communicated in normal verbal logic, although it might be very difficult to explain and to comprehend.
Yes, I’m also aware that meditation with a goal or purpose is an elementary mistake.
Yes, I’m familiar with makyo.
January 12th, 2013 at 8:44 pm
Okay, Lidia, Kathy C. anyone else, re consciousness, then I’ll shut up about it.
Here’s the problem. The mental models, the concepts, that you hold, that consciousness is some sort of awareness thingee, created by the brain, is ancient history, in terms of cultural ideas. It’s the idea that there’s a conscious self, a ‘me’ inside the skull, and a material world ‘out there’ that is quite separate and objective, which is sensed, via eyes, ears, nose, etc.
Okay, it works in everyday practical terms, if you just want to do shopping and type at the computer and stuff. But let’s assume one was interested in what’s really going on, in the spirit of the best science and philosophy.
There’s this little problem. When the conscious observer observes ‘reality’, that reality ‘out there’ gets changed.
There’s no getting around or away from this. It’s accepted physics that’s been known and demonstrated many times and taught for more than half a century. There are no physicists who don’t accept the phenomena, just that they can’t agree on the proposed explanations or what it might mean. Fwiw, it means there is no such thing as an ‘objective reality’.
Here is a very short simple video explaining what goes on. As I understand it, it is the conscious observer that collapses the probability wave function, via Von Neumann Chain. Some people dispute that, but there is no consensus, just a range of ideas, some far wackier, e.g. multiple universes created every time we observe, and the more you look into the subject the stranger and weirder it all becomes. Anyway, it is completely ridiculous to propose any paradigm regarding ontology and epistemology and brain and consciousness, which disregards this fundamental information regarding the physical reality we exist in.
http://youtu.be/DfPeprQ7oGc
Okay, now I’ll stop boring everybody, unless anyone chooses to discuss it further.
January 12th, 2013 at 8:53 pm
From Max Keiser’s site:
Talk about grasping at straws.
Neo-feudal castles with moats popping up in America as economy collapses
“…The pitch is “Libertarian Paradise” – but that’s just the way they figure they can hook you. It’s snake oil. It’s BS. It’s people trying to build sheltered communities protected by their own military to protect them from the people they fucked over pursuing their vision of a ‘libertarian paradise.’ Glenn Beck wants to start one of these in Texas (he’s raising $2 bn. dollars)
Glenn Beck is Planning a $2 Billion Libertarian Commune in Texas
“…On his program last night, Beck …unveiled a grandiose plans to create an entirely self-sustaining community called Independence Park that will provide its own food and energy, produce television and film content, host research and development, serve as a marketplace for products and ideas, while also housing a theme park and serving as a residential community…”
Far Out
Nice to see ‘sane minds’ coming to grips with eco-apocalypse.
January 12th, 2013 at 10:42 pm
@ Ulvfugl
“……..then I’ll shut up about it.”
I’m going to hold you to that.
It’s not that it’s not fascinating, it’s not that it doesn’t merit consideration, it’s just not “appropriate” for a site that basically addresses observable phenomena.
Peace brother
January 12th, 2013 at 11:11 pm
ulvfugl
I knew if I waited long enough the conversation would get around to quantum physics (doubtless evidence of universal consciousness).
I explained in the previous thread why observing a particle collapses the quantum wave function (due to interaction being a pre-requisite of observation). I find the Von Neumann Chain explanation as to why it is the mind that is collapsing the quantum wave function unconvincing. Why assume the quantum wave function only collapses in one place due to the mind? It is far simpler to assume the wave function is being collapsed at each link in the chain due to wave/particle interactions without bringing the mind into it.
In fact, it’s impossible to prove whether or not the result of an experiment is affected by the mind of an observer (consciousness is creating reality, if you like), because by definition the result of an unobserved experiment can never be known. Believing or not is purely an act of faith.
January 12th, 2013 at 11:26 pm
@ Daniel
….addresses observable phenomena.
Hahaha, happy to concede, because I have a lot of respect for you, Daniel, but THAT can’t be the criterion…. most of the stuff we discuss here can’t be directly observed, can it ? and what I’m talking about IS everything we observe out there, that’s how we see what we see… photons… it’s effing hard core science, not metaphysics, but yes, I’ll still shut up about it anyway.
January 12th, 2013 at 11:30 pm
@ Yorchichan
I think you’ll find, if you read up on the subject, your objections have been eliminated from the range of possibilities many years ago by much better minds than my own, but I’m dropping the subject, at least for the moment.
January 12th, 2013 at 11:36 pm
I was talking about the modern understanding that comes from neuroscience and from quantum physics ( although there is an overlap, I’m happy to acknowledge ), so your first comment, re ‘being the solution’, isn’t pertinent and has no relevance.
Consciousness has no handle that can be grasped by intellection or cognition. It cannot be addressed by any branch of knowledge: it is not an object to be known. It is the subject that is aware of the knower, the knowing and the knowledge. From any perspective attempting to look at it, there is only Nothingness – and everyone is a meat robot.
January 12th, 2013 at 11:49 pm
I knew if I waited long enough the conversation would get around to quantum physics (doubtless evidence of universal consciousness).
There is no universal consciousness. There is no consciousness in the universe. Any attempt to grapple with consciousness for any purpose, including connecting it to a universe will grasp at Nothingness.
January 13th, 2013 at 12:02 am
@ Robin D.
Consciousness has no handle that can be grasped by intellection or cognition. It cannot be addressed by any branch of knowledge: it is not an object to be known. It is the subject that is aware of the knower, the knowing and the knowledge.
Thus far, I’ll agree. That is what was found, by the people who studied and discussed over the last couple of thousand years in the various wisdom traditions, and that’s what is taught in those traditions which you have learned
However, much more recently we have discovered quantum physics, which has revealed details of the structure of the ‘material’ that everything is made of, that were never previously available, and much more recently still, we have neuroscience and scanners which reveal workings of the brain, which that were never previously available. Thus science can be applied to the questions regarding the nature of consciousness in ways that were not possible via subjective introspection and meditation of the wisdom traditions.
As for ‘everyone is a meat robot’, imo, that’s a ridiculous remark. You’re perfectly entitled to think of yourself as a meat robot, of course, but personally, I reject the label and find it offensive and demeaning. I also recall that you believe there is no difference at all between ‘hardware’ and ‘wetware’ and a computer program can be just as sentient as an organic animal, following Kurzweil, which is a notion I actually find quite grotesque, disrespectful of nature and spirituality, more offensive than Kathy C.’s hardline materialism actually… anyway, nevermind…
Now I don’t discuss this with you any further for the time being.
January 13th, 2013 at 2:29 am
We kinda like global warming…so far. The winters are less severe. Yesterday we loaded and spread 100 tons of crap, from heifers. (I’m trying to bring the discussion back to earth.) It was just another 17 hour day…work day, that is. It cost about $20 of fuel to do the job. We could have done it by hand but couldn’t find anyone who would do it for 20 bucks. I read somewhere, Doomstead Diner I think, that a gallon of fuel is worth about $75,000 of labor. That’s about right. So what’s a farmer to do? Since my profit per quart of milk is 2 or 3 cents, I take what ever agribiz hands out. Food is really cheap. Monsanto helps to keep it that way.
What if there were no fuel? Well, there would be 40 farms with 2 cows per farm and yesterday just about everyone in the neighborhood would have been forking shit, not sitting around discussing what consciousness is or isn’t. Full employment. I truly think that most people, even those in this group, would rather die than go back to the old ways of the “mud hut”. We are too spoiled, including me.
January 13th, 2013 at 2:45 am
Notice how the fronts are deep and don’t move:
http://weather.unisys.com/sat_sfc_map_loop.php
All of agribiz and all farmers are holding their breath, waiting to see if Mother Nature will send rain or not. I’m making plans for “not”. Expect conditions here in the northeast to be less bad than the mid west.
January 13th, 2013 at 3:36 am
ulvfugl
Clearly quantum physics is not a popular topic on NBL, so I’ll try not to engage in discussing it again after this post.
I like your worldview and wish I could share it, but I can’t see the evidence. To me, free will is impossible. There is no “I” existing outside of one’s physical body that can choose which neurons fire and what decisions are arrived at. Either the firing of neurons is completely deterministic or, less likely, quantum effects introduce a random element. Either way, no free will.
I don’t like the term meat robot either, but I couldn’t argue against its appropriateness.
January 13th, 2013 at 3:53 am
@ dairymandave
…there would be 40 farms with 2 cows per farm and yesterday…
So you’ve ‘stolen’ the livelihoods of those invisible people, put them out of business, so you can have ‘more’, that’s what capitalism does, isn’t it ? …just about everyone in the neighborhood would have been forking shit..…could always design a different system…without the fuel, or the people you’d have to anyway…I truly think that most people, even those in this group, would rather die than go back to the old ways of the “mud hut” at the moment, it’s other people and creatures are forced to die, so that you can live like that, isn’t it ?
January 13th, 2013 at 4:20 am
Dairyman Dave, yes my sister once told me she would rather die than not have a hot shower every day. But when the shit hits the fan instead of your land I expect many will scramble to stay alive. But they won’t know what to do.
My sorrel here normally stays alive all winter, providing some greens but not a lot in the winter months. About March or April it starts to take off and very soon starts sending up flower stalks. I cut three flower stalks off yesterday….Taking a cue from my plants I planted my first bed of English Peas yesterday.
However after a high of 77 yesterday the temps will start falling and in 10 days we will have 47. So it goes
January 13th, 2013 at 4:25 am
Speak Softly
Glen Beck – a self sustaining community in Texas – ah well if you don’t think global warming is real you can just pretend to believe that your stomach is full too.
January 13th, 2013 at 4:34 am
@ Yorchichan
I could discuss, Y. but I’m sticking with my comment to Daniel, from whom I learn valuable insights, even though I’m still laughing about the ‘observable phenomena’ bit
Because that must be what so much of this is all about… ontology, epistemology, phenomenology, how our brains construct the appearance of a world ‘out there’ which physics and neuroscience tells us is nothing like what is actually out there… and we are all here, discussing CO2, which none of us have ever observed, on computers which only work because of the knowledge gained via quantum mechanics…. which we observe via photons, with consciousness, which is really the only remarkable thing which distinguishes us, momentarily, from effing dirt, rocks, turds, etc,
Peace.
January 13th, 2013 at 6:22 am
ulvfugl; I have an extra fork or two. Where did you say you live?
January 13th, 2013 at 6:31 am
@ dairymandave
…just about everyone in the neighborhood would have been forking shit, not sitting around discussing what consciousness is or isn’t.
I think that’s part of capitalist propaganda, the mythology that says that if it wasn’t for industry and capitalism and modern technology we’d all be back in the horrors of the dark ages when everyone had to work every minute of the day just to survive and there’d be no time for leisure or pleasure or conversation, which is not true, just a story to convince slaves that they don’t have any alternative to slavery…
One of capitalism’s most durable myths is that it has reduced human toil. This myth is typically defended by a comparison of the modern forty-hour week with its seventy- or eighty-hour counterpart in the nineteenth century. The implicit — but rarely articulated — assumption is that the eighty-hour standard has prevailed for centuries. The comparison conjures up the dreary life of medieval peasants, toiling steadily from dawn to dusk. We are asked to imagine the journeyman artisan in a cold, damp garret, rising even before the sun, laboring by candlelight late into the night.
These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html
January 13th, 2013 at 6:51 am
@ dairymandave
I have an extra fork or two. Where did you say you live?
Much too far away, I’d have to fly, which is against my principles, but thanks for the offer.
Both my neighbours, on either side for last 25 years, keep beef cattle and sheep ( although one is now too ill and has sold his ) which they house for part of the winter, so they have the muck to spread, and across the valley, the view from my window, they keep dairy cattle and sheep, so I have a fair idea of what’s involved.
January 13th, 2013 at 7:09 am
An interesting look at basic demographics of population aging in North America and Europe. From 2009.
‘The Western Civilization Will Go Extinct.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LA5xhXk_4U&NR=1&feature=endscreen
Note at 5:10 it begins to talk about Japan and shows the real graphs on its decline, and why.
January 13th, 2013 at 7:45 am
DairymanDave, Tom Murphy has a pretty good essay on the equivalence of fossil fuel energy vs. human food energy. It’s a pretty good read, IMO. Not surprisingly, fossil fuels allow one person to do a lot more work than they could otherwise.
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/mpg-of-a-human/
January 13th, 2013 at 8:18 am
wildwoman says: I not only like coming here, I NEED it.
Doom is a serious addiction
Which studies our fatal affliction;
We’d make no prediction
Of earthly eviction
If species extinction were fiction.
January 13th, 2013 at 8:44 am
.
The wise have had time to assess
Basic reasons that life is a mess;
We won’t have more success,
And our current distress
Brings new issues we ought to address.
January 13th, 2013 at 9:00 am
We’d make no prediction
Of earthly eviction
If species extinction were fiction.
Btd – right on! People die, civilizations fail, species go extinct, suns burn up – we don’t get a pass on all of these type events just because we think we are so special
January 13th, 2013 at 9:03 am
Re Dave’s 40 farms with 2 cows per farm and pitch forking muck…
It used to be like that here, prior to WW2, then ideas came from USA, to modernize, in the name of efficiency ( which was a front to sell Henry Ford’s type of stuff really ) so the Gvt subsidised farmers who wanted to buy a neighbour’s land ( I think 30% ? ) to make larger holdings, and subsidised ripping out woodland and hedgerows, to make larger fields to suit tractors, not horses.
That had the effect of harming the social fabric, drove a lot of people off the land into towns and cities, and harming the ecology, destroyed a lot of wildlife habitat.
So now, the farms are larger. It’s a very long time since I did the work, and I don’t have the numbers and my thinking is rusty, but, in terms of EROEI, and so forth….
My neighbour has 2-300 dairy cows, which are fed through the winter on haylage/silage, which is harvested by contractors who come for a couple of days with a fleet of massive machinery, about ten huge tractors which zoom around the fields like they were race tracks.
If you work out the actual energy, joules kind of thing, that has gone into mining the metals, transporting them, smelting them, making them into those machines, transporting those machines, the fuel they consume, etc, etc, everything that goes into feeding the cows, the fertilizer for the grass, milking and distributing the milk to the supermarkets and the consumer, etc, it actually works out as a negative sum. That is, it’s a system that is putting in more energy than it gets out, in terms of food value as calories, minerals, vitamins, food to the end user.
And on top of all that, in the whole chain, from the mining of the metals, fertiliser, transport, etc, nobody pays for the externalities, the pollution, the CO2 emissions, the N2O emissions, the chemical fertiliser runoff that goes into the streams and into the sea, the slurry that goes the same way, those all get dumped onto the rest of us and future generations, and are made invisible by capitalist accounting and neo-classical economics, as if they didn’t exist.
So, looked at in this way, the whole system is hopelessly INefficient and destructive and absurd.
It’s held together by subsidies, there is no tax on the diesel fuel. There was, maybe still is, subsidies for the fertiliser, etc, so the public pays, via taxes, for this system to continue.
On top of that, the farmers ( two brothers ) work every day of the year, with no holidays, milking twice a day, up very early, 5 a.m., for a profit on the milk which is so small that it is only just sufficient for them to keep going.
If you ask me what I think of this, I think it is barking mad. If you ask anybody what they think of this, they’ll say the same. But, as with so much else, even though everyone recognises the stupidity, changing things appears to be impossible.
That’s possibly because decisions are made by people who sit in offices and boardrooms who have quite likely never even been anywhere near a cow in their whole life, for expedient political reasons, who are ‘advised’ by people who are making money from the status quo…
January 13th, 2013 at 9:29 am
Does my [gut / butt] look like I’m getting fatter?
Or do doomers look mad as a hatter?
Even if it’s the latter,
The world’s going to shatter,
So most of that shit doesn’t matter.
January 13th, 2013 at 10:02 am
Greenland Melting, video, if you havn’t seen it
http://www.greenlandmelting.com/index.html
January 13th, 2013 at 10:20 am
BtD,
January 13th, 2013 at 10:41 am
Happened across this place the other day and I’m trying to catch up. Being a pessimist by nature, I’ll probably be very sparing in the number of posts I lay on y’all…this is a test post, mostly.
January 13th, 2013 at 10:42 am
Former farmer/rancher who’s now a wage slave.
January 13th, 2013 at 11:59 am
Guy and gang,
According to this guy, we have nothing to worry about in terms of global warming:
http://www.nationofchange.org/end-pasta-1358074168
(Seriously, I thought this might be another Onion article, but alas, it seems not.)
January 13th, 2013 at 12:19 pm
Cat Herder, welcome – plunge on in! You can ask about Guy’s dire predictions, debate whether they are right or not, ask what folks are doing to prepare, talk about what the idea of NTE near term extinction might mean to how you would live the same or differently. You can also share your knowledge from when you were a farmer/rancher. I dare you to be more pessimistic than me
If you are a cat herder you might actually be an optimist. I like to think of myself as a chicken herder but the chickens disagree – lately I have been trying to mimic owl calls to get the late strays into the coop. I haven’t fooled any chicken yet. They just look at me like I am insane. Given the circumstances in the world, how could we not be insane.
My husband and I have a flock of about 100 chickens and a fair size garden (in AL), and given our age expect to exit before extinction becomes a fact.
January 13th, 2013 at 12:22 pm
@ Judy
No, it’s not the Onion…..it’s just Bjorn Lomborg, the highest profile climate denier of the last ten years!
January 13th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
What is NBL?
A virtual retirement plan for cat herders, come have seat, there’s an open deckchair next to me.
January 13th, 2013 at 12:39 pm
Mike Says:
January 12th, 2013 at 2:01 pm
Guy, when you write “As one little-discussed example, atmospheric oxygen levels are dropping to levels considered dangerous for humans”, I really think you do your credibility much dis service……
Guy McPherson Says:
January 12th, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Mike, did you bother to follow the link and read the essay? As a reminder, it’s here.
Mike Says:
January 12th, 2013 at 4:11 pm
Guy, I DID read the essay…. things like “Notably, the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere has dropped from 35 to 21 percent from prehistoric times to now”, is mumbo jumbo, because the last thing we need is 35% O2, because according to James Lovelock in his Gaia books, any more O2 than we have now would create out of control fires…..
The amount of O2 we currently have is ideal, not too oxydising for fires, and not too low for life to get on with…..
I think the essay is hysteria…..
tvt speaking: i did more than read the essay. i too found it’s assertions outlandish, so i decided to dig a little deeper into it’s source materials, and sources. here is some of what i found:
one of the sources is a ‘terrance aym’, author of this ‘classic’:
http://www.helium.com/items/1965918-keeling-curve-co2-and-loss-of-atmospheric-oxygen
he also wrote this: http://www.amazon.com/Mysteries-Of-The-Multiverse-ebook/dp/B0067MZCYE
check out some of the chapter topics and reviews and it immediately becomes clear that ‘terrance aym’ is a scientific charlatan self-promoter who name drops legitimate scientists like this guy: http://scripps.ucsd.edu/Profile/rkeeling to try to lend an air of credibility/legitimacy to his bullshit.
then there’s this: http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/atmospheric-oxygen-levels-fall-as-carbon/ written by a mike johnston. he’s a music critic, not a scientist. of course, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in the realm of science, but dig a little deeper and u see he’s also written crap like this in which he makes clear he’s a skeptic of agw: http://blogcritics.org/scitech/article/global-warming-human-induced-or-natural/ so much for the credibility of mike johnston as an amateur science blogger.
imo, score one mike (the commenter to this blog who questioned guy’s assertions/sources, not ‘mike johnston’). guy, u surreally should do a much better job of source checking your material. not all cries of ‘doom’ with a reference to scientific evidence stand up under scrutiny.
oth, what’s it matter? it’s not like cassandras who refrain from including bullshit in their appeals for radical change to potentially avert the worst effects from omnicidal industrial civ. will be taken seriously by more than a small minority of sheeple in our dogma addicted, ignorant and delusional culture. still, it would please me enormously if guy would cut the bull from his cassandra schtick… and stick only to credible scientific assertions.
January 13th, 2013 at 1:33 pm
Ok Terry then how about this one
O2 Dropping Faster than CO2 Rising
Implications for Climate Change Policies
New research shows oxygen depletion in the atmosphere accelerating since 2003, coinciding with the biofuels boom; climate policies that focus exclusively on carbon sequestration could be disastrous for all oxygen-breathing organisms including humans Dr. Mae-Wan Ho
…Within the past several years, however, scientists have found that oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere has been dropping, and at higher rates than just the amount that goes into the increase of CO2 from burning fossil fuels, some 2 to 4-times as much, and accelerating since 2002-2003 [1-3]. Simultaneously, oxygen levels in the world’s oceans have also been falling [4] (see Warming Oceans Starved of Oxygen, SiS 44).
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/O2DroppingFasterThanCO2Rising.php
Dr Ho per wiki
Mae-Wan Ho (b. 12 November 1941, Hong Kong; UK citizen) is a geneticist [1][2][3] known for her critical views on genetic engineering and neo-Darwinism.[4][5] Ho has authored or co-authored a number of publications, including 10 books, such as The Rainbow and the Worm, the Physics of Organisms (1993, 1998), Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare? (1998, 1999), and Living with the Fluid Genome (2003). Ho is the director of the The Institute of Science in Society (ISIS), an interest group that campaigns against what it sees as unethical uses of biotechnology.[6]
Since you spent so much time investigating the particular essay Guy posted you could have also done the favor of investigating the topic to see who else might be indicating the O2 is dropping before you started your bashing.
January 13th, 2013 at 1:35 pm
Or this Professor Robert Berner of Yale University has researched oxygen levels in prehistoric times by chemically analysing air bubbles trapped in fossilised tree amber. He suggests that humans breathed a much more oxygen-rich air 10,000 years ago.
Further back, the oxygen levels were even greater. Robert Sloan has listed the percentage of oxygen in samples of dinosaur-era amber as: 28% (130m years ago), 29% (115m years ago), 35% (95m years ago), 33% (88m years ago), 35% (75m years ago), 35% (70m years ago), 35% (68m years ago), 31% (65.2m years ago), and 29% (65m years ago).
Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University and Professor Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona concur. Like most other scientists they accept that oxygen levels in the atmosphere in prehistoric times averaged around 30% to 35%, compared to only 21% today – and that the levels are even less in densely populated, polluted city centres and industrial complexes, perhaps only 15 % or lower.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/carbonemissions.climatechange
That took about 5 min. While you were trying to prove Guy wrong, you could have more quickly proved him right.
January 13th, 2013 at 3:09 pm
It’s only logical that O2 is lower. Less trees and other plants, less phytoplankton, and more roads and parking lots and deserts along with more O2 burners. The question is how much. We know that some people need O2 to help breathing problems. Must be a good thing. What is the truth about fire? We do know that O2 from a torch burns/cuts iron and thermite melts/cuts I-beams.
January 13th, 2013 at 3:25 pm
Wood stove porn! Hey, I like that sheepherder’s stove. I have one of these:
http://www.enterprise-fawcett.com/monarch.php
made in New Brunswick. Our local fireplace dealer ordered it for us, came and installed it and the chimney, too. I love cooking on this thing in the winter, but as soon as it gets above freezing in the spring I have to stop because it roasts me out of the house. Made biscuits in the oven this morning. It was -15 C last night. First cold night we’ve had this winter.
January 13th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
We also have one of these:
http://www.hearthstonestoves.com/wood-stoves/stove-details?product_id=3
because we can load it and not have to put wood in for an hour or so. If we tried to use the cookstove for heating the house, I’d have to be standing there feeding pieces of alder at a rate of one every five minutes.
We have access to red alder, Douglas fir, lodgepole pine, Ponderosa pine, alpine spruce, and a scrub maple.
January 13th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
This particular 2 min video is well done!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u_0JZRIHFtk
Also, look at this:
http://arctic-news.blogspot.fr/2013/01/arctic-sea-ice-volume-2012.html
January 13th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
White House blog post regarding the third National Climate Assessment:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/01/11/expanding-climate-change-conversation
January 13th, 2013 at 5:06 pm
@ Lidia
You asked about permaculture.
To be honest I’m somewhat reluctant to diminish anyone’s pursuit of permaculture. Ulvfugl is right, all things considered, pursuing it, especially if you have the acreage and are open to any number of collective land sharing schemes–and of course this depends on the topography and existing state/use of the land itself–then I can’t imagine a better way to watch the world burn. It’s clearly the most proactive and “wholesome” application of system theory available–hence its appeal–and if you’ve the time, money and energy, it will more than consume all you’ve got to give.
Ultimately, it comes down to what your objectives are, and how able bodied you might still be. If you’re looking at your land as a way to just leisurely enjoy the rest of your life, then I wouldn’t put too much energy beyond zones 1 and 2. But if you’re striving for near sustainability, and you’re just now getting started, then I believe you’re going to find yourself in a serious dilemma in justifying the enormous amount of work involved, in light of this fairly new acceptance, which is still in the process of reorganizing all of our past presumptions.
What has been lost in its appeal, is permaculture is no longer a counter to collapse, and it surely isn’t a key proponent to local food security, as it has been hailed ever since the early days of peak oil awareness–and it’s highly debatable if it ever was.
I hate to admit it, and I’m as guilty as anyone, but the entire collapse preparedness ethos, has been a classic example of cherry picking from the bowl of catastrophes, while completely ignoring the confluence within the bowl itself. We’ve been preaching the interconnectedness of the web of life, all the while never honestly applying such interconnectedness to the contraction of life.
A clear example of this, is with Wildwoman having to put up a fence to keep people from dumping on her undeveloped property. Whoever is doing it, is mostly likely her neighbors. This is just one of a thousand considerations we ecologically simple minded folk, tend to overlook. Most everyone here, as well as probably anyone who even knows what permaculture is, would never think to just dump garbage out in the open, not alone, on someone else’s land. But you–as well as Wildwoman–are most likely surrounded by people who simply don’t give a damn about ecology, other than hunting in there 4×4′s.
Of course, there are always exceptions, and maybe you’re lucky and are surrounded by other homesteaders, but there is just a massive ideological chasm between liberal urbanites and rural conservatives that is already unbridgeable. Imagine how this will play out, when the proverbial shit hits the ceiling fan and starvation runs rampant.
And let us not forget the near state of lawlessness that already exists in many parts of poor rural meth America. If you’re going to be in a position of providing for yourself, this isn’t going to go unnoticed by your neighbors, because many, if not most rural living, is as dependent of long haul distribution of goods and services as any urbanite, and in many ways, even more so. And if you’re not from around the area, and have not already built good reciprocal relationships with your neighbors, then this too will not go unnoticed.
As the economy continues to contract, limited public resources will be directed towards urban centers, leaving outlying rural areas to wither in attrition. How many rural conservatives are going to embrace comparatively wealthy urbanites moving into their region?
This in fact, is what compelled Toby Hemingway (editor of Permaculture Magazine) to eventually abandon his ten year old homestead and move back to the city.
So, are you willing to violently protect what you have, because if you’re not, then you had better not have anything “others” are going to desperately need when the time comes. For it’s a fantasy to imagine that when famine descends around the world, that our neighbors will suddenly discover the ethical values of mutual aid, if it hasn’t already been well established. It will most likely be our neighbors who will beg, still, and kill us. Particularly, if they have young ones to feed. Because, if I was in their position, that’s exactly what I would do, if my children were starving.
In other words, if you’re looking at permaculture as just a pet project, then why in the hell not, but if you’re imaging it to be a “solution” that is somehow going to protect you from the ravages of collapse, then your time might be better spent in turning your land into a wildlife refuge, and instead, take a cue from Kathy C, BC Nurse Prof and Wildwoman–especially in regards to exit strategies–and just focus on basic gardening and small animal husbandry.
But then again, that’s just my opinion. Take care, D.
January 13th, 2013 at 5:16 pm
BC nurse – we do have to load our Sheepherder every 1/2 to 3/4 hours. But we don’t usually heat all day- usually just at night and sometimes night and morning. But of course this is AL. One of the things I like about it is the small firebox – when cutting wood gets hard we can get some sort of warmth just from twigs and branches that are down.
What I also like about it is its simplicity – sturdy basic parts. I got it without the window in the oven door just because glass breaks easier than metal
January 13th, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Daniel “but the entire collapse preparedness ethos, has been a classic example of cherry picking from the bowl of catastrophes, while completely ignoring the confluence within the bowl itself. We’ve been preaching the interconnectedness of the web of life, all the while never honestly applying such interconnectedness to the contraction of life.”
Yes exactly. We who did Peak Oil looked at Duncan’s Oludvai theory and said yeah Industrial Civ over by 2030 perhaps due to the collapse of the grid – yeah we can prepare for that (except as you note for those who want to take what you have done for themselves), and then whamo Fukushima and we realized that the grid down meant the nuclear plants blow up. We got hand pump wells, and built up soil in our gardens and never thought that when forest fires became more frequent AND oil was less available, those fires were going to burn unimpeded. And we found out when BP’s well blew that well’s blowing is a big deal, in fact there are 27,000 plugged wells in just the Gulf. After collapse who is going to maintain those – what will the oceans look like when those plugs finally fail. Of 50,000 wells drilled over the past six decades in the Gulf, 23,500 have been permanently abandoned. Another 3,500 are classified by federal regulators as “temporarily abandoned,” but some have been left that way since the 1950s, without the full safeguards of permanent abandonment. Petroleum engineers say that even in properly sealed wells, the cement plugs can fail over the decades and the metal casing that lines the wells can rust. Even depleted production wells can repressurize over time and spill oil if their sealings fail. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/07/gulf-abandoned-oil-wells-gas_n_637315.html
I could go on. So whatever you do, prepare or not, do it in a way that brings joy first and foremost.
January 13th, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Thanks, Daniel. That explains it, then(Bjorn Lomborg). I was not familiar with him, but now that I am, I will avoid him like the plague. I felt as if I had found myself in an alternate reality.
January 13th, 2013 at 5:42 pm
The Amish have worked out a rough approximation over time of the optimal sized farm for a single family unit using 19th draft horses. It’s about 12 acres. Smaller and it does not make sense and larger means scaling up with a tractor. About twenty five percent of the total 12 acres has to be for growing oats and silage for the draft horses, their ‘fuel’, their fossil fuel equivalent.
Scaling laws are interesting. E. O. Wilson’s island biogeography was a theory that attempted to predict the number of species that would exist on a island of a certain size.
In a countryside populated with 12 arce family farms powered by horses, how much more bio-diversity would there be vs industrial farms?
Industrial farming makes a desert of the landscape for bio-diversity.
Small pockets of 12 acre organic farms would be like islands in a sea of sterility. Unless there is a critical mass of small farms in one continuous area, bio-diversity would never recover. It does no good in the general over all sense to be a fly in the industrial Ag oinment. To be that one lone farm or two in a sea of Agra-biz insanity.
I simply do not see a critical mass of small farms popping up anywhere in one area anywhere in North America.
January 13th, 2013 at 6:10 pm
Great points brought up by Daniel and Speak Softly, on the rural escape delusion.
Like I said before, it is the rural, exurban, suburban sectors that will die first, when the end we’re all so fervently rooting for, comes. These are the most oil wasteful and most oil dependent sectors of the entire matrix. Peak oil and collapse fetishists who try to live out this Fantasy Island for upscale enviro-types are going to be in for a few surprises. Like the fact that all that fire wood they use, was cut down and hauled to them by means of gasoline powered chainsaws and trucks. And when gas hits $30, $40, $50 a gallon, these child hating types are going to discover why, before the oil age, rural people (like the Amish) had large families with plenty of young strong hands to do all the chopping and hauling. This is a key missing element of the fantasy. So good luck to all these elderly, feeble, ex-hippy, loners when the shtf. All these people have done is transport their failed, isolated, atomized, suburban existence to the countryside.
January 13th, 2013 at 6:39 pm
I couldn’t believe it. Farm Journal published an article titled “What Makes Healthy Soil?” I dislike this magazine and refuse to subscribe but they send it anyway. The article is truly a Nature Bats Last work and I agree with every word of it. IMO it is the best and most important article they have published in a long time. You see, farmers in the midwest were humbled last year and Agbiz knows that ultimately crops must grow or Agbiz is done too. NBL. Any of you folks who intend to grow food with drought conditions should link to this article. (It may not be posted yet on their site) They left out just one word: ENERGY. What is needed most for healthy soil is energy. That’s the reason I don’t favor composting. The author hints about this fact but you will understand he didn’t dare come right out and say it. Better left between the lines.
David
http://www.FarmJournal.com/soil_health
January 13th, 2013 at 6:46 pm
@Daniel
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/#comment-57936
Excellent advice IMHO.
January 13th, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Did I post earlier that my 2011 corn yield, a dry year, was 7.6 tons/acre while the neighbors got 3 to 4. This works. It’s very respectful towards the ways of nature.
January 13th, 2013 at 7:12 pm
Ripley
I thought rural people before the oil age had large families because there was no contraception and sex was the only form of entertainment.
But quite. I don’t see having children as immoral due to the risk of their lives being cut short. That is merely a return to the natural way of things. If anyone doesn’t believe me, look up historical childhood mortality rates.
ulvfugl
Keep the faith and keep on posting. Many of your recent posts have been amazing. As I wrote to Victor (hope you’re OK) last year, each of us has beliefs that seem strange to others but perfectly natural to ourselves. For instance, I believe that increased water vapour in the atmosphere will act as a strong negative feedback due its albedo effect outweighing its greenhouse effect. Further, what I have mostly taken from global dimming is that pan evaporation rates have reduced 20% in recent decades due to the particulate pollution. Once the collapse comes and evaporation rates go up, I remain optimistic the extra water vapour will dampen global warming. Controversial!
January 13th, 2013 at 7:40 pm
@ dairymandave
They left out just one word: ENERGY. What is needed most for healthy soil is energy. That’s the reason I don’t favor composting. The author hints about this fact but you will understand he didn’t dare come right out and say it. Better left between the lines.
Or, maybe, he’d want, like me, to ask you what the heck you are talking about when you say ‘energy’, because to me, it’s completely meaningless.
Certainly has no connection to composting, does it. The author says :
Characteristics of Healthy Soil:
Deep topsoil, based on soil type
Balanced nutrients and proper pH
Good drainage
Usable water-holding capacity to withstand drought
Good soil tilth
Resistant to adverse events
Strong and diverse microbial populations
Free of toxins
I seem to recall you don’t know what the pH of your soil is, or what pH means, from the previous discussion re ocean acidification, is that correct ?
The author says :
Healthy soil contains strong and diverse microbial activity. “In a handful of soil, there are more microbes—bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes—than there are humans on the face of the Earth”
Right. So, what do those things eat ? Decaying vegetable matter, mostly. Which is the definition of compost.
http://www.agweb.com/farmjournal/article/what_makes_healthy_soil/
January 13th, 2013 at 8:01 pm
I also recall that you believe there is no difference at all between ‘hardware’ and ‘wetware’ and a computer program can be just as sentient as an organic animal, following Kurzweil
And Thomas Warren Campbell.
However, much more recently we have discovered quantum physics, …….
much more recently still, we have neuroscience and scanners which reveal workings of the brain,
All by meat robots. Neither of these two disciplines can demonstrate awareness in the meat robots. Yes, appropriate responses to stimuli most certainly can be demonstrated.. But awareness: only the individual experiences h(is/er) awareness. Even the individual’s attestation to that experience in response to a query is merely a stimulus-response pair, and does not in any way convey that awareness to another.
There is no “I” existing outside of one’s physical body that can choose which neurons fire and what decisions are arrived at.
Thanks, Yorchichan, like the virgin terry, you too have advanced understanding.
January 13th, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Many who follow environmental news are probably aware that the particulate pollution from industry has had somewhat of a moderating effect of warming due to reflection of heat skyward. In fact, one worry of cleaner industry is that, though it will yield needed cleaner air, it will also hasten warming. SOoo, just think what will happen to warming when the industrial economy fails and the temporary dampening effect of particulates are lifted (smog is the only exception)!
January 13th, 2013 at 8:13 pm
..Adding to the above, there is some thought that air traffic contrails have some dampening effect on global warming – as was noted in the temperature anomalies coincident with grounded flights after 9/11. With millions of planes absent from the skies, what sort of effect might we see? All sort of surprises await us!
January 13th, 2013 at 8:16 pm
@ Yorchichan
Many of your recent posts have been amazing.
Thankyou for that lavish and extravagant compliment which I do not think I deserve.
You mentioned something about my worldview, and Lidia threw something at me about my claim to be enlightened. I make no claim to be enlightened, have never made any such claim. I follow the practice of soto zen, which is a means, a way, to get liberated from all worldviews. It’s the best thing I ever found in my time on this Earth. I recommend it without reservation to everyone. To have no worldview is terrifying, but also exhilarating. Standing on the edge of the 10,000 foot cliff.
@ Ripley
You’re very right, of course, but also wrong. It all depends on the location. People can easily make terrible mistakes. It’s impossible to give advice to cover all the things that they could do that could lead to disaster. I watched thousands move here in the sixties seventies, eighties, from the cities hoping to do the self-sufficient homesteading dream, and so many ended up in terrible disappointment over really quite simple errors of judgement. You know, hoping to grow fruit, in a frost pocket, on rock with about two inches of soil, with no reliable water supply, is enough to break anyone’s heart, and the place looks so nice in summer on a fine day, and they don’t realise that for half the year it’s nothing like that…
And neighbours are so important, they can make your life into daily hell, or they can be the greatest asset…
I lived in a lot of different places before I came here, made lots of mistakes, saw lots of others make lots of mistakes, so I knew exactly the sort of place that was going to be right for me…
@ Speak Softly
Hi, yes, right what you say. I have 25 acres, half is woodland, an island like you say, but the farming here isn’t the real intensive agribiz because it’s much too hilly, and the steeper slopes are woodland nature reserves, but basically I agree, and island nature reserves don’t work, they need corridors to connect them, and, with climate change they don’t work, because species will have to move to follow the thermoclines, either moving northwards or up hill to higher ground, and the species that are already high up will have nowhere to go, and the species that can’t move quickly enough, can’t cross cities and motorways, have no chance. And anyway, many species can only exist within an ecosystem with the other species, so it really needs the whole ecosystem to migrate, which is impossible too….
January 13th, 2013 at 8:17 pm
What? No music?
Buena Vista Social Club – Chan Chan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INkLVwtIr_I
January 13th, 2013 at 8:23 pm
@ Robin D.
Personally, I do not think that de-humanising human beings can be regarded as ‘advanced understanding’.
January 13th, 2013 at 8:26 pm
Bailey, I wrote about grounding the planes several months ago. The essay is here.
January 13th, 2013 at 8:35 pm
First, I would like to thank everyone who writes on this site for doing a lot more thinking, and especially expressing their views on the many varied components of the dire conditions we find ourselves in. Just wanted to chime in on Daniel and Ripley’s last comments concerning living in rural areas. I live in a rural area and couldn’t agree more that it is going to be much worse (at least in the beginning)in rural areas than in cities. People are so much more dependent on fossil fuels with the huge travel distances between work and food sources (supermarkets). Generally, folks are very anti-conservation minded, racist, misogynist, homophobic, etc. etc. – and those are the liberals!! Not that anywhere is going to be a good place to live, and cities are an anomaly and an abomination. I believe if you can find some sort of meaning in living simply (wherever that may be) by gardening and raising critters (I am quite envious, Kathy C.!!) then, go for it. You are doing yourself and the planet a little bit of good, and that is what most of us can only do anyway.
Both professionally and on land I co-own, my focus is on enhancing and restoration of wildlife habitat, though, it may be short-term and futile anyway. Seeing lots of bear scat (crap) on our property, as well as cougar kills, means we (my family) are doing a little bit to help some of the non-human life on this planet.
Here in the inland Pacific Northwest, we are actually having a decent (cold and snowy) winter, and it is where I plan on being ’til the end.
January 13th, 2013 at 8:51 pm
From the Wikipedia’s entry on the Oxygen cycle, there are three reservoirs of oxygen: the Atmosphere, the Biosphere and the Lithosphere.
Atmosphere
Reservoir Capacity (kg O2) 1.4*10^18
Flux In/Out (kg O2 per year) 30,000*10^10
Residence Time (years) 4,500
The flux is the amount that enters and leaves the reservoir per unit time when the reservoir is in balance. The residence time is the time in which the amount entering or leaving a reservoir would equal the total amount of the reservoir. If the entering amount was decreased to zero, it would be the time to empty the reservoir at the same rate of outflow.
Although the article addresses the element oxygen to include its chemically compounded forms, the extreme preponderance of its molecular form in the total oxygen content of the atmosphere allows one to consider the atmospheric oxygen reservoir as consisting of the molecular form.
Even doubling the rate of outflow and reducing the inflow to zero in this case would allow the reservoir to last 2,250 years. To reduce the oxygen in the reservoir to half its present amount (not to be confused with present concentration) would take 1,125 years.
That is one can we can kick down the road.
January 13th, 2013 at 9:13 pm
consciousness is the great mystery. how and why (the nihilist might say for no reason, for there is no reason for anything!) did consciousness come about? is it merely a matter of ‘meat robots’ and such, purely biological? how can ‘i’ possess consciousness while the mass that is me, all those atoms and molecules, does not?
just watched an interesting commercial ‘news magazine (cbs 60 minutes) report about how robots are increasingly replacing humans in industry. they anticipate a surge in manufacturing in the usa as robots are economically competitive with low wage chinese workers, but that’s besides the point. the point is, artificial intelligence has progressed to the point that robots are now capable of learning, according to this report. does this mean they’re becoming sentient? if ‘meat robots’ are conscious, why shouldn’t artificial robots be the same?
‘Since you spent so much time investigating the particular essay Guy posted you could have also done the favor of investigating the topic to see who else might be indicating the O2 is dropping before you started your bashing.’
kathy, i too read the legit science report that u provided a link to that says oxygen is decreasing some 3 times (on average, globally) faster than co2 is being added, but as others have pointed out, considering that oxygen exists at such a greater concentration than co2 (210,000 to 394 ratio), the rate of depletion is no cause for alarm. i’ll spell it out: co2 is now increasing at a rate of about 2ppm/year, and oxygen is depleting about 6 ppm/year. at that rate, it would take 10,000/6, or roughly 1,667 years for it to deplete from it’s current 21% of the atmosphere down to 20%, which is still above the reported threshold of 19.5% where the concern comes in. considering all the things for which there are causes for more immediate alarm, bringing up oxygen depletion is nonsensical.
there’s a world of difference between pointing out scientific facts which aren’t alarming like this matter of minor oxygen depletion, and linking it to hysterical claims made by idiots or charlatans who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, or perhaps purposely seeking attention and deception via mixing legit facts with bullshit in order to contrive hysterical fear/angst in the gullible and ignorant.
i’ve praised guy often for the gist of what he’s done and is doing. i wish he was infallible or as infallible as some regulars to this blog seem to take him to be, considering he routinely gets away with stirring bullshit in with the facts when he writes and speaks. i don’t know how or why he combines brilliance with bullshit. such an incongruous mix, but that’s surreality for ya. idiot savants.
it makes no difference, of course, in the big picture. it’s just that in my little picture, i prefer my surreality sans bs. i prefer my cassandras to take fictional police seargeant joe friday’s advice when presenting information: ‘just the facts, maam/sir’. that doesn’t mean they can’t be presented with passion and poetry; such traits as these guy possesses and they add much weight to his presentation. just leave out bullshit like fear that oxygen depletion may be a dire problem in that belongs in a list that includes runaway agw. put things in proper perspective, and refrain from bullshit hysterics!
Kathy C Says:
January 13th, 2013 at 1:35 pm
i also read the link u provided in that post to the guardian article BEFORE i posted my original criticism earlier today, so i take offense at your accusation that my research was shoddy and biased. i read all that shit before and none of it came close to impressing me that guy’s assertion backed by his link to a survival acres article was sound. it’s all based on distortion (which occurs also in ‘respectable’ journalism like the guardian) which i perceive as designed to sensationalize shit to sell papers. it’s very title (the oxygen crisis) is hysterical bs. what crisis? from the article:
‘Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%.’
this is written to mislead. it’s declined by over a third going back how many millions of years? how much has it declined in the last 10,000 (gonig back to pre-history)? they don’t say, but i’ll betcha it’s not even close to 1/3.
‘Professor Robert Berner of Yale University has researched oxygen levels in prehistoric times by chemically analysing air bubbles trapped in fossilised tree amber. He suggests that humans breathed a much more oxygen-rich air 10,000 years ago.’
what’s much more mean here? why no figures given? probably because if they were, it would detract from the article’s sensationalism and hysteria. to a scientist, in this case ‘much more’ could be less than 1%. all things are relative, and without proper context, subject to severe distortion and outright misrepresentation.
‘That took about 5 min. While you were trying to prove Guy wrong, you could have more quickly proved him right.’ -kathy
the guardian article does assert that in some urban areas due to pollution oxygen depletion is an immediate concern. however, outside of cities or areas of concentrated pollution, there is no imminent ‘oxygen crisis’. thus i still think guy’s assertion is misleading and based in part on hysterical bs. it detracts rather than adds to his credibility.
January 13th, 2013 at 9:30 pm
http://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2013/01/why-are-minnesotas-moose-dying-app-will-rush-examiners-scene
—-
@Daniel, thanks for your thoughtful further explication. I think we will give it a shot but certainly without the expectation that it’s going to save the world or feed our family. I would just be happy to be the custodian of a short-term oasis, if I could. We’ll definitely plant a wider range of plants to see what might take hold in the near term just out of curiosity. We are in an area where there is a decent amount of small organic agriculture and local livestock and we hope to assist them in expanding and being able to process more food locally.
@ulvfugl, I never said you “claimed” to be enlightened; I said that I assumed you “pretended to enlightenment”, given your acknowledgedly wide range of committed religious and metaphysical inquiry. Since you are so careful with word definitions, I’m surprised that you mistook me. You know nothing about my background, so your claims that I am ignorant of quantum physics are incorrect. I studied physics at MIT, so I am not unfamiliar with the discoveries leading to the theory in which observers are said to modify what is being observed. I’m not sure what I am “at fault” of, except that I don’t find this as fascinating or as monumental a phenomenon as you do. Nor am I impressed by specialist jargon, in particular when it is of an unproven and unprovable, religious, nature.
January 13th, 2013 at 10:52 pm
Dear Guy,
The Doomers are apparently doomed.
Sincerely,
The thread from hell
January 13th, 2013 at 11:29 pm
‘total estimated industrial O2 depletion on Jan 1, 2005 would have been (35.3)/(37050)x100 = 0.095% of the preindustrial amount’ – from the mike johnston article linked to in a previous post, quoting prof. ralph keeling
so, assuming we have burned roughly 1/2 of fossil fuel deposits, and this has brought about less than 1/10 of 1% depletion of pre-industrial oxygen, it’s clear that the ‘oxygen crisis’ is sensationalized bs.
just added this since previously, it was less clear just how little oxygen depletion due to industrialism has occurred. .1% of 21% (oxygen concentration in atmosphere) comes out to a decrease of roughly .02%, or 2,000 ppm out of nearly 210,000 ppm. as robin succinctly put it, that’s one problem that can be kicked down the road for quite some time. runaway agw will kill us way before oxygen depletion.
i do find the claim of substantially lower levels of about 15% oxygen concentration in (i assume very large) cities odd. however, like the problem of particulate pollution, this will go away as industrialism withers.
January 14th, 2013 at 1:02 am
Aren’t we capable of measuring the O2 accurately in various places? Aren’t measurements facts? I would tend to doubt measurements of bubbles in ice millions of years old. Could do an experiment: close off an area, add O2 to 35%, and burn wood. Watch. “The best way to see something is to look”. Might learn something. What would a forest fire do at 35% O2?
January 14th, 2013 at 2:53 am
Wood stoves: We live in an old, 2 story, 4 bed house and have heated it with wood for 39 years. Use a Vermont Casting cast iron stove. Load it every 12 hours. Store wood 1 or 2 years ahead of burning. Also have oil heat.
Length of work day on farms: hours not even considered; do what needs to be done when it needs to be done and don’t quit until it is done. Whoever wrote that “liesurely pace” stuff never did it.
Small farms in rural areas: Back in 1970′s during the oil crisis, many city folks moved to rural areas and bought up small farms that were going out of business. There were several on this road. I now run most of that land at their request.
Ulvfugl: Thanks for the correct link to Farm Journal. The magazine had it wrong. You tend to under estimate people. I tested Ph as a kid for my dad. The article about soils was very close to what I learned 50 years ago at Cornell from an old professor with white hair. Haven’t heard much more about it until now. Nature humbled some folks, even Big Ag folks. Expect more of that. Humans, birds, and bugs are all energy burners. There are more organisms in a cc of soil than hummans on earth. They all get their energy from the sun. How? Man has been starving them. We want it all for ourselves. We should feed the soil so the soil can feed the plants. Now the cellulose to ethanol folks want to take even more energy from the soil. Farmers aren’t going to let that happen. The gist of the article is the more energy we give to the soil, the more energy (food) we will get from the soil. Soil structure is built by organisms using energy. Releasing that energy in your back yard doesn’t benefit the microrganisms trying to build the soil. They need it where they work.
Maybe a simple story will help. A man has a property and wants a house on that property. He calls a contractor, orders a particular house and the contractor delivers all the parts of the house to the mans yard. The man gets the bill for the house. “But I want the house built” says the man. “Oh, you didn’t say that. It will take energy, work and time to build your house…and the cost will be double in amount.” There is no such thing as an “instant house”.
Another: What is the difference between the Twin Towers on Sept. 10 and Sept. 12? On Sept. 10 they were built and on Sept. 12 they weren’t. Also, it was a bit easier to live in them on the 10th than on the 12th. Sorry I had to talk down to you. You asked for it.
David
January 14th, 2013 at 3:50 am
@ Lidia
I never said you “claimed” to be enlightened; I said that I assumed you “pretended to enlightenment”, given your acknowledgedly wide range of committed religious and metaphysical inquiry.
Okay, I didn’t bother to scroll back ip the thread find your exact phrase because I don’t care what it was, I took it as more of an insult than an attempt to be precise, but now you provide ‘pretended to enlightenment’ perhaps you’d care to explain what that is supposed to convey or to mean ?
….your claims that I am ignorant of quantum physics are incorrect. I studied physics at MIT, so I am not unfamiliar with the discoveries leading to the theory in which observers are said to modify what is being observed.
I did not claim that you were ignorant of quantum physics, ( quantum physics, in itself, is not the issue ) but now you say that you studied physics I’m slightly surprised that you didn’t contribute something more constructive to that part of the discussion at the time.
I would pursue this further, but it would only lead to further acrimony and discord so I’ll drop the subject.
I’m not sure what I am “at fault” of, except that I don’t find this as fascinating or as monumental a phenomenon as you do.
Apparently so. Perhaps because, like most here, indeed most everywhere, not many people take the broad view. Bruce Lipton, Thomas Campbell, Rupert Sheldrake, Lynn Margulis, others, all point to fundamental issues which the current mainstream scientific paradigm cannot deal with, but just ignores. I think that is basically, lazy and dishonest and a betrayal of the true spirit of science.
Since it’s beginnings with the Enlightenment, for science to work, it has had to assume an objective, separate, completely detached observer. It’s a fundamental premise of the whole project of science. It was never established experimentally of course, there was no means of doing that, but philosophically it was assumed and taken for granted ever since.
Once that premise has been broken, ( as it has been by quantum physics I think you must agree and accept ) this is a radical change, a cornerstone removed. Of course, everyone will say, as you do, that they don’t see it as ‘monumental’, but that’s because nobody has got the slightest idea as to how to address the problem… so best pretend there isn’t one, eh…
January 14th, 2013 at 4:11 am
@ dairymandave
Sorry I had to talk down to you. You asked for it.
You’re not talking down to me, dave, you’re just talking nonsense. You say ‘feed the soil’. What do you think compost is ? It’s waste vegetable matter, mostly. That you use to feed the microbes in the soil, in turn to feed the plants, through their roots.
Your objection to compost makes no sense at all. People use compost to do just what the guy in that article recommends. Just that they are usually gardeners not farmers. Farmers could do it too, if they could get compost in large quantities.
January 14th, 2013 at 4:48 am
In what looks set to be one of the most one-sided struggles in the history of Amazon forest conservation, an indigenous community of about 400 villagers is preparing to resist the Ecuadorean army and one of the biggest oil companies in South America.
The Kichwa tribe on Sani Isla, who were using blowpipes two generations ago, said they are ready to fight to the death to protect their territory, which covers 70,000 hectares of pristine rainforest.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/13/ecuadorian-tribe-die-fighting-rainforest
January 14th, 2013 at 5:05 am
As a cynic may expect ‘we’ are getting a raft of ‘human interest stories’ on the MSN and the ABC, (which now is conforming to the standards of MSN IMO), regarding the bushfires and very high temperatures in central Austraila, and Tasmania.
The stratergy is to heroise the firefighters, and of course console and dignify any fatalities of firefighters, and to present humans under threat of ‘fire’, not catastrophic heat waves.
I don’t try to follow all the news, as I am out doing things in the local community more and more, but when you hear a bit of coverage that treats these events in the somewhat traditional , ‘Man verses Nature on a rampage’ line it is terribly disapponting, because you know the great opportinity these events have as observable evidence of the effects of AGW from fossil fuel ‘re-atmosperisation’(?), but heck there goes the preped news editors spinning the general public once again.
Is the frog finding it a bit toasty yet?
Perhaps this time next year we will all be talking to people in the street, much like we try to now about this ‘emergency’ but we won’t be treated like there is three heads between one’s shoulders, or you forgot your lithium based pharma suppliment today, or even ever since they met you.
Will two years in a row compute?
James Lovelock is now trumpeting 7 out of 8 humans may perish very soon, yet still advocates nuclear power for countries like Britain.
His book, ‘The Vanishing Face of Gaia’
‘Doomsday Pending? James Lovelock on The Hour.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRQ-NqaYFzs
Wow! I have no desire to get in that headspace and see the dots join up there.
In this interview he completely states it is all an unintended accident. I feel like vomiting again…..
Re soils….
Does anyone have any recent information on the South American deep soils yet? Has anyone cracked them yet?
January 14th, 2013 at 5:14 am
A review of the book, The Great Aridness (Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest) by Wm. deBuys here:
http://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/
January 14th, 2013 at 5:58 am
From Ugo Bardi at Cassandra’s Legacy: We are stuck on this planet and this planet seems to have had enough of us. Hat tip Robin Datta.
January 14th, 2013 at 6:06 am
Left math prof writes about our imminent extinction: Climate change will be much worse and much sooner than you’ve heard from most climatologists.
January 14th, 2013 at 6:43 am
Terry, you assume that only the burning of fossil fuels depletes oxygen. What about the peat fires that will only increase as warming continues. What about the burning of the Amazon that is sure to increase, not only releasing Carbon and binding up oxygen but also removing a carbon sink and an oxygen producer. As I understand it methane when it oxidizes in the atmosphere uses up O2 as well. If we are in positive feedback that can no longer be stopped the vast stores of methane will be released. It won’t matter if the rest of our fossil fuels remain in the ground.
You also assume that the reduction over time of O2 will remain linear at a time when non-linear events are becoming common, especially in the Arctic.
Some scientists are worried. As you will recall I presume early on in climate change nobody was worried, some even thought warming might be good – forestall another ice age. Now lots are very worried.
From the Guardian article Ervin Laszlo thinks it is a worry
In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes:
Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth’s atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.
Things are going to burn Terry, lots of things. When we can no longer use oil to put out forest fires, it will not just be forests that burn but cities as well. More peat fires will burn. Less and less plants will be able to grow in the droughts, and without irrigation. Meanwhile the plankton are dying in the ocean. So we have both O2 being removed and sources of O2 being removed.
Change is not always linear as this summer in the Arctic showed us
January 14th, 2013 at 6:50 am
Monsanto versus the people
January 14th, 2013 at 7:03 am
fire maps for 1/1/2013 to 1/10/2013
http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/imagery/firemaps.cgi
January 14th, 2013 at 7:20 am
“Peat fires continue underground and…they will not be extinguished in Russia before winter rains and snow set in,” said Hans Joosten, professor of peatland studies and paleoecology at the University of Greifswald in Germany.
To put out fires “you must inundate the area completely,” he said, adding that one peat fire in South Africa near the border with Botswana, for instance, had smoldered for 5 years. Peat is formed from partly decayed vegetation.
Environmental group Wetlands International estimated 80 to 90 percent of the smog in Moscow was from peatland fires near the capital, rather than forest fires linked to what weather officials call Russia’s hottest summer in a millennium.
“In Russia, peat fires can sometimes last under snow cover through the winter,” said Ilkka Vanha-Majamaa, a scientist at the Finnish Forestry Research Institute.
Water dumped from planes, part of Russia’s response, is rarely enough to halt peat fires, said Alex Kaat, spokesman for Wetlands International. Moscow has pledged more action to extinguish the blazes.
“Russia promised the same after peat fires in 2002 and nothing was done,” Kaat said, saying past efforts to use water from the Volga River to soak peatlands had been half-hearted.
“CATASTROPHIC FIRES” WARNING
Russia has the largest national carbon emissions from peatland destruction after Indonesia, according to Wetlands International
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/08/12/us-russia-heat-peat-idUKTRE67A3H120100812
What will peat fires look like when we can no longer pump water to innudate them completely?
January 14th, 2013 at 7:22 am
@ Lidia
@ Yorchichan
NOT to spark another debate. There is no consensus. About a quarter support my view. That does not mean the other 75% agree, there are many other possible interpretations. And anyway this sample is too small to have much meaning at all… just sayin’, ok ?
‘Experts still split about what quantum theory means’
http://www.nature.com/news/experts-still-split-about-what-quantum-theory-means-1.12198
January 14th, 2013 at 7:30 am
The Lefty Math Prof said, “We need to end the biggest creators of greenhouse gases: cattle farming and military transport”.
I got out of the former line of work in the late 1970s. It was grossly energy & resource intensive. Not to mention a helluva lot of work for generally negative returns.
As far as military transport goes, anyone have a clue how much of a contributing factor that is to the big picture? A whole lot more than commercial airlines, f’rinstance?
January 14th, 2013 at 7:32 am
…fascinated with Dairymandave’s observations (as a former [beef] cattleman myself)…
January 14th, 2013 at 7:36 am
David Price talks about O2, energy in the soil, carbon, and just about everything else. This has been around since 1995 but is a good review:
Energy and Human Evolution
http://www.jayhanson.us/page137.htm
January 14th, 2013 at 7:41 am
Cat Herder: Yea, that’s why I was up at 1:30 this AM. Fascinated with a calf that was upside down and jamed against the pelvic bone.
Used my spare time to post. Can’t waste time, you know.
January 14th, 2013 at 7:45 am
This thread has gotten so long I’m reluctant to add anything else, but what the hell . . .
re: Permaculture. I’m not sure I buy the idea of “permanent”. There is little on the planet that is permanent, but perhaps that’s just semantics. For routine gardening that is less damaging to the soil, and more “in tune” to the way that nature does things (though still not perfect), I recommend the methods taught by Masanobu Fukuoka in The One Straw Revolution as well as those taught by Ruth Stout.
I tend more toward Ruth Stout’s methods but actually combine both techniques. I’ve been gardening here for four years and have never tilled the ground (Fukuoka) – my neighbor who grows a respectable “traditional” garden has offered to come plow it with his tractor, but I politely refuse every year. And I had awful ground to start with. I had about 3 inches of sod overlying a former gravel parking area. I didn’t know about the gravel when I started or I might have chosen a different spot. But, by adding compost and lots and lots of mulch (Stout), I am able to grow a respectable amount of food. I will qualify that and say that since I work full time at my clinic as well as care for our goats and chickens, I don’t have nearly enough time to spend in the garden. Consequently, by late summer, the bermuda grass has overtaken the ground and begins to steal nutrients from the plants – but not too badly. Other than that, I’m pleased with the outcome.
January 14th, 2013 at 7:49 am
Mongooses talk like us
January 14th, 2013 at 7:53 am
Forgot to mention that this year I’m going to build five hugelkultur mounds. It will be my first attempt to use this method but since we have TONS of dead and decaying wood lying around in the woods after an ice storm 4 years ago, I have plenty of the ingredients needed.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:04 am
@ TRDH
There is little on the planet that is permanent, but perhaps that’s just semantics.
From the perspective of a human lifetime, I’d say the 50,000 years or so that the Australian Aborigines or the Kalahari San kept going must have seemed kinda permanent, compared with the rate of change now… but the -culture part, ( which some people say is meant to mean permanent-agriculture ) the Estonian/Latvian/Lithuanian area developed a peasant farming system that enriched biodiversity, as well as providing a rich social life, that lasted around 3000 years, with some minor developments, probably the best example I know of… also maybe some in Japan, of similar longevity ? where people got everything they needed from the land, lived in relative abundance, had high quality lives, and did not degrade their environment, on the contrary, more species than if people were absent.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:07 am
Ripley, obviously I’m biased since I live in a semi-rural area, but I disagree with your comments (or did I just misunderstand them?). In a sudden collapse scenario, there will be nothing but death and chaos in the cities. No food, no water, no sewer, no power. People stacked on top of people. A deadly combination no matter how you look at it.
Even in a gradual or step-wise collapse scenario, rural areas still look better for those who have taken at least minimal steps toward preparation such as a food source and a water supply. State resources will, no doubt, be targeted toward areas with the greatest return on investment (cities) but it won’t be enough. Riots, looting, food shortages, blackouts, water shortages, rapid spread of communicable disease, all those things happen in that scenario too, just not as quickly and not all at once.
It’s true that rural areas require lots of gas to get from point A to point B. But how are cities better off when their food comes from rural areas? There are no winners. (Don’t forget that almost all food is processed these days – not going to happen in a collapse situation.)
Knowing what we know about nuclear reactors, all of this is moot anyway. Radiation/fallout, knows no boundaries.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:07 am
Chris Hedges: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/01/14-0
January 14th, 2013 at 8:17 am
Gail,
I was just about to recommend Hedges piece when I saw you had already done so. Probably no one here at NBL will be surprised by anything he discusses, but it is worth a look.
Michael Irving
January 14th, 2013 at 8:22 am
I hope the one thing we can all agree on is that collapse is going to be painful wherever you live.
Daniel has pointed out the risks of rural living.
The REAL Doctor House has pointed out what city dwellers will deal with.
And everybody is armed to the teeth no matter where you are (in the USA).
How do you want to die? Ultimately, that is the only question to be answered.
I hope I can die where I can hear birdsong and wind in the trees.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:26 am
@ Ulvfugl, you’re right, of course, about the aboriginal species. But that’s a whole different discussion. No more than a few of us today can live like that. There isn’t enough room, nor is there enough wild area left. Common areas (parks) are not allowed to be altered – at least here in the U.S.
When I visited Scotland a few years back I was really impressed by the “Freedom to Roam” law (see wiki for more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam). In that situation, a person might be able to forage some small foods, but hunting would get you into trouble quickly. And here in the U.S., forget about it! You’d be shot the first day!
Of course, if a person owned a large enough parcel of land, they could conceivably live like the aboriginals or other primitives you mention, assuming that person also had a bank account large enough to pay the annual property taxes for the rest of their days.
But since we are talking about options for those already living in the industrialized world, I’ll stick with my original assessment about permanence.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:47 am
State of the grid, 4 min vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czi5vXH5NiY
Office buildings still using generators after hurricane Sandy among other things
January 14th, 2013 at 8:52 am
Cat herder http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2007-05-21/us-military-energy-consumption-facts-and-figures not sure this includes everything that is military related tho. Gotta feed chickens so just did a quick search.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:53 am
For many of us, there are several major concerns that will affect us prior to collapse entering the “hockey stick” phase.
1. food shortage. There is ample evidence that food is going to be in short supply soon, even in the developed world. Reports of fish species with declines of 96%, drought, crop failure, loss of pollinators, etc.
2. medicine/medical treatment shortage. The list of medicines which are unable to be obtained grows longer almost daily. I wrote an rx for doxycycline last week (a very popular, generic antibiotic), only to have the pharmacy call and say that we had to write something else because, suddenly, they couldn’t get that drug. They weren’t sure when they would be able to. That’s just one example. There are hundreds! Physicians too are going to be in short supply increasingly. Here in the U.S. baby boomer physicians are retiring in record numbers. Combine that with funding problems (major problem around the world), and there will be fewer doctors to care for more patients.
3. fire/flooding. As climate change intensifies, extreme weather will lead to far larger catastrophes than we have resources to handle. Areas that are heavily wooded and populated which have never had to worry about fire due to lots of rain, have been in drought for several years. It would take next to nothing for some of those to literally explode into megafires overwhelming all attempts to douse it. Flooding too can be a huge problem – particularly if an area was previously in drought and many of the plants which help prevent erosion are now dead. Both of these feed back directly into the food shortage issue.
The list could go on, but I think those will be the most obvious over the next few years.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:55 am
@ TRDH
Oh yes, I agree about all that, i was thinking more about the semantics part.
Several people here have mentioned humans as ‘top predator’ which, by the biological definition of the word, is nonsense. We are more akin to locusts. We probably evolved eating wild tubers and so forth, lizards, and scavenging what the real predators left behind, until we got technology. Take any one us stripped naked, dropped alone in the countryside for a week, and what are we going to predate ? Probably we’d be lucky to find and catch anything much larger than a beetle and by the end of the week we’d be dead. There’s plenty of rabbits, squirrels, wild birds of many kinds, around here, that you catch a glimpse of on a walk, but actually catching or killing one is an entirely different matter, and doing that every day, so that you eat every day… hahahaha…
I’ve done it in my youth. With a gun, with snares, nets, fishing rod and so on. Without those, no chance. Maybe on the seashore collecting crabs and shellfish would be the best bet.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:55 am
Thus, we must restore the commons, and to do that we must overthrow the market. And that has some side benefits, besides averting our extinction: Wars and poverty will end when they no longer bring profit to a few.
I liked LeftyMath’s essay, but his solutions to the extinction crisis leaves out the hardest part: about 6 billion people need to drop their bodies ASAP and get the f%$k off the planet. Again, more cheerleading bromides. We just need to end civilization, eliminate the market system, convert the pigs who control our lives into mystical swans, convince the monkeys that they are angelic altruists and build some big ass carbon scrubbers … and we must do all of that by Wednesday.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:58 am
Thanks, Kathy C.
January 14th, 2013 at 9:09 am
Here is a nice synopsis by Chris Hedges of the western, post-Enlightenment materialist mentality and its consequences. It illustrates my point about the results of materialism. When we convince ourselves that we are just sides of beef (who happen to possess this weird side-effect called consciousness) running around in a dead universe, gorging ourselves on dead stuff until our meat suits break down, then this is what happens:
The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth—as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury—as well as unrivaled military and economic power—for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation has become a curse, a death sentence. But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, after the hottest year in the contiguous 48 states since record keeping began 107 years ago, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism. We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates.
Of course we can’t wake up from the nightmare. Meat is asleep. Only sentient beings who possess this spooky thing called a soul are capable of transcending the material coordinates of their immediate circumstances. Not animated beef.
January 14th, 2013 at 9:11 am
kathy: ‘You also assume that the reduction over time of O2 will remain linear at a time when non-linear events are becoming common, especially in the Arctic.’
i assume no such thing, kathy. i simply pointed out that currently oxygen depletion is a non-issue, that those trying to make a big deal about it are relying upon sources which lack credibility, and that going all the way back to the beginning of fossil fueled industry, oxygen depletion has been less than .1% of 21%, very minor. even taking into account likely accelerating rates of depletion from vast forest/peat fires, it will still take a long time to become an issue of concern, by which time it will no longer be of concern because we’ll be extinct. to try to add this issue to the mix of imminent environmental concerns is kind of like standing in the middle of a road with a truck bearing down u at high speed, about to hit momentarily, and bringing up the subject of, say, the danger of smoking to one’s health. it’s absurd. it muddies perceptions. it gives an impression that the person bringing up this ‘concern’ sees imminent danger in everything, thus weakening his credibility when he does bring up something which is an imminent danger. it’s crying wolf too often, about too many different things. it can lead to the conclusion that such a sherson isn’t to be taken seriously.
January 14th, 2013 at 9:47 am
@ dl
… and we must do all of that by Wednesday.
Shit. 5.30pm Monday already… Panic, panic….
Only sentient beings who possess this spooky thing called a soul are capable of transcending the material coordinates of their immediate circumstances.
Good, thanks, that’s my position too. Although I’d call it a subtle body, to get rid of the archaic Christian dogmatic associations, because I think it can be explored and experienced empirically and scientifically.
January 14th, 2013 at 10:10 am
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/01/13/greeks-raid-forests-in-search-of-wood-to-heat-homes/
original article is in the WSJ but you need a subscription – this is just an excerpt
EGALEO, Greece—While patrolling on a recent cold night, environmentalist Grigoris Gourdomichalis caught a young man illegally chopping down a tree on public land in the mountains above Athens.
When confronted, the man broke down in tears, saying he was unemployed and needed the wood to warm the home he shares with his wife and four small children, because he could no longer afford heating oil.
Tens of thousands of trees have disappeared from parks and woodlands this winter across Greece, authorities said, in a worsening problem that has had tragic consequences as the crisis-hit country’s impoverished residents, too broke to pay for electricity or fuel, turn to fireplaces and wood stoves for heat.
Such woodcutting was last common in Greece during Germany’s brutal occupation in the 1940s, underscoring how five years of recession and waves of austerity measures have spawned drastic measures.
“The average Greek will throw anything into the fireplace that can be burned, ranging from old furniture with lacquer, to old books with ink, in order to get warm,” said Stefanos Sapatakis, an environmental-health officer at the Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
January 14th, 2013 at 10:18 am
Terry you wrote “it gives an impression that the person bringing up this ‘concern’ sees imminent danger in everything, thus weakening his credibility when he does bring up something which is an imminent danger. it’s crying wolf too often, about too many different things. it can lead to the conclusion that such a sherson isn’t to be taken seriously.”
Does it matter? Nothing is going to be done and it is too late anyway so we will go extinct. The nuclear power plants are all going to go Fukushima, the forest fires will no longer be controlled, the crops will die off. So even if you are right, what the hell does it matter anymore???? If we are lucky when we can’t run from the fires anymore the local depletion of oxygen will knock us out before we burn.
However Institute for Science and Society, who published the article on oxygen, thinks the biochar initiative could well speed up the O2 crisis “These findings show that biochar is a substantial oxygen sink, and could deplete atmospheric O2 fairly rapidly if massive amounts are produced in a hurry!” http://www.i-sis.org.uk/bewareTheBiocharInitiative.php
If in fact we aren’t quite on the edge of extinction perhaps the O2 problem deserves attention rather than dismissal.
per wiki they are “The Institute for Science and Society (ISS) is an international centre of excellence in Science and Technology Studies located at the University of Nottingham, UK. It was founded in 1998 as the Genetics and Society Unit (GSU) and was later (2001) renamed the Institute for the Study of Genetics, Biorisks and Society (IGBiS) before its remit was expanded in 2006 to cover the social, legal, ethical and cultural implications of any field of science, medicine or technology, at which point it became ISS”
January 14th, 2013 at 11:48 am
fuking thick fog in north of china:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2013/01/14/01003-20130114DIMFIG00603-une-partie-de-la-chine-plongee-dans-un-epais-brouillard.php
and what does the caption say?
we unfortunately had to cancel flights and close roads… sorry folks…
guess them feel like gasping for oxygen, even if it is not true
January 14th, 2013 at 12:17 pm
As has already been posted, Chris Hedges latest, is another fascinating case study that in many ways, yet again, sadly mirrors our own awakening……….it’s just that he is a little tardy.
Having read pretty much everything he has ever written, and considering him to be among America’s leading “next generation” of dissidents–given he is openly calling for revolt–it has been both sad and strangely rewarding to see him now coming to terms with “collapse”, given he is primarily quoting Ronald Wright’s “Short History of Progress”, which is over seven years old. He’s even now referencing Tainter!
The first paragraph in his latest article is worth quoting, because it really does represent a significant evolutionary step in his acceptance, especially given he now has four children:
“Clive Hamilton in his “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that “catastrophic climate change is virtually certain.” This obliteration of “false hopes,” he says, requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means that those we love, including our children, are almost certainly doomed to insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades, if not a few years, is much harder to acquire. To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth—intellectually and emotionally—and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us.”
A part of me, suspects that this might be as “mainstream”, at least among liberal progressives–whatever that defunct labels means anymore–that collapse will ever get.
I don’t know why Chris Hedges’ personal narrative is so compelling to me, for I take issue with several of his positions. Maybe it’s because having personally dwelled for probably far too long out on the radical fringe, to ever be considered sane within the suicidal culture I exist, that some kernel of hope, buried under decades of futile cultural negation, has always desired to be wrong about everything. And that it’s some infantile urge of wanting to submit to a “higher authority”, that I’ve naively abdicated power to him–as well as others–to prove me false.
What words within our lexicon, describes the almost desperate desire to be wrong?
January 14th, 2013 at 12:18 pm
Re O2: We might have to deal with those pesky bacteria that are waiting to bring the oxygen regime to a close. As he says, “They want their world back.”
http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_ward_on_mass_extinctions.html
January 14th, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Permaculture: We live so far away from any large city that there is lots and lots of Crown land, all under grazing rights and timber licenses. Since there are quite a few plants, bushes and trees from other parts of the world that would grow here, we could walk into the bush, plant an apple tree, walk more, plant a pear tree, saskatoons, raspberries, blackberries, chestnuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, paw paws, kiwis, etc. Bears would share your harvest, but then you take a few bears, too.
There is way too much snow in our area this year. The deer are running out of browse and getting desperate. They have begun eating spent grain out of the compost pile. Yuck, but they’re eating it anyway. Last night there were seven deer fighting over the pile. Wish I had a deer tag, but then, all the freezers are full right now.
Those that can hunt and gather will last longer than those who are settled in one place, working 20 hour days and sleeping with weapons to protect their homestead from ravenous hordes. Hunter/gatherers don’t work very many hours per day, and then they disappear into the night. That’s why they have superior cultures to ours – they have a lot of time to create.
Military use of fossil fuel: Read the book, “The Green Zone” and you’ll see that, all by itself, the U.S. military will push us over the edge of runaway climate change. Forget changing light bulbs. We’re done.
http://www.amazon.ca/The-Green-Zone-Environmental-Militarism/dp/1904859941/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358191518&sr=1-5
January 14th, 2013 at 12:56 pm
One interesting development I have noticed is that, as more people wake up to how screwed we are from climate change, they pin the blame on capitalism, as though if we could get rid of capitalism, people would behave differently. It’s kind of absurd, since people created capitalism, not the other way around. But it’s almost a new religion that the culture is shaping peoples’ greedy and selfish and short-sighted behavior, and not the other way around.
You can’t argue with them any more than deniers, I’m discovering. Demonizing capitalism is what gives them hope. It goes hand in hand with a romanticized view of earlier civilizations that doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. Even if there were some prior cultures that lived in balanced harmony with nature (which is far from convincing) they were surely so rare and small compared to those that patently DIDN’T that their existence is meaningless.
January 14th, 2013 at 1:59 pm
Native American Society
http://cdn.prosebeforehos.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/native-american-society-quote.jpg
January 14th, 2013 at 2:32 pm
@ Daniel
…this might be as “mainstream”, at least among liberal progressives–whatever that defunct labels means anymore–that collapse will ever get.
Won’t the next stage be ‘something must be done !’ ?
It’s difficult for me to make informed judgements, never having experienced USA… I’ve always been of the far left anarcho fringe, and find Hedge’s Christian liberalism sounding a bit like effing Neil Kinnock of the Labour Party here, years ago, who turned out to be just another self-serving hypocritical power-seeker once he got what he wanted.
What words within our lexicon, describes the almost desperate desire to be wrong?
Dunno. You could try
http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/
January 14th, 2013 at 2:32 pm
Contemporary Tea Partiers aren’t the only people capable of romanticizing the past. It seems to be a human trait.
Note: “…cultural traditions for dealing with captives predated the arrival of Europeans.”
Common torture techniques included burning the captive- which was done one hot coal at a time, rather than the Hollywood-style pile of firewood around the captive – cuts from knives, beatings with switches and jabs from sharp sticks. Prisoners’ fingernails were ripped out. Their fingers were broken, then twisted and yanked by children. Captives were made to eat pieces of their own flesh, and were scalped alive. To make the torture last longer, the Native Americans would revive captives with rest periods during which time they were given food and water. Tortures would begin with the lower limbs, then gradually spread to the arms, then the torso. The Native Americans spoke of “caressing” the prisoners gently at first, which meant that the initial tortures were designed to cause pain, but only minimal bodily harm. By these means, the execution of a captive, especially an adult male, could take several days and nights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captives_in_American_Indian_Wars
January 14th, 2013 at 2:48 pm
@ Gail
…they pin the blame on capitalism, as though if we could get rid of capitalism, people would behave differently.
Speaking only for myself, it’s obvious that, capitalism is only one of many problems causing the present crisis, and we are past the point where reform will fix the mess.
However, it is still interesting to look back over history and see what got us into the mess, and I don’t see how it is possible to deny the role of capitalism. People do behave quite differently under different systems. The attitude of people in Norway, for example, a socialist system, towards other people and the land, is completely different to that of the USA.
You seem to be saying that culture makes no difference to human behaviour, which is a startling conclusion, in light of all the anthropological evidence.
January 14th, 2013 at 3:00 pm
http://www.historydoctor.net/Native%20American%20History%20and%20Cultures/Native%20American%20Notes%20-%20Part%20Four.htm
Europeans and others went to war for the same reason that others do: Land, Politics, Religion. This was NOT a motivation for Indian warfare until after contact with Europeans.
In the Woodlands, Indians normally fought for survival, or for revenge.
Survival: This was particularly true in the Northeast. The population grew greatly in the last two centuries before European contact. Because of the colder climate, hunting and fishing were more important than agriculture. As populations grew, they needed more and more territory in which to hunt and fish; this brought them into closer contact with other groups who were expanding for the same reason.
Bottom line: Competition for food.
Indians never claimed to “own” the land; but did claim the right to pursue, hunt animals in it.
Revenge: As the Indians moved farther away from their own area, they often encountered and fought with others, and death resulted. This was much more likely in the Northeast than the Southeast. In the Southeast, there was more land, and more agriculture. If one of one’s compadres was killed, one attempted to kill one of the other tribes members as revenge.
Weaponry:
· Normally used hand-held clubs for crushing a skull. (see diagram).
Knives were also preferred. They sometimes used the bow and arrow, but preferred close contact which
· brought more honor; one risked one’s own life by this face to face encounter with the enemy
· Hand to hand combat also evidenced one’s physical and emotional strength.
Eastern Indians often practiced siege warfare. This involved a prolonged attack on another tribe’s palisade. Arrows were used for this, but also were used for ambush, which created something of a “shock value.”
The growing population in the Northeast created almost constant warfare, but it was a seasonal affair. It almost always occurred in warm weather, never in winter. Farming areas, etc. were important. War parties would raid crops, so they needed to be defended in the fall. Also animals were roaming, not hibernating in warm weather; which increased the opportunity for contact.
Tribal survival and population were big factors. Population was often diminished by warfare; if too many men were killed, (and often many were), then the death of the tribe might follow.
For this reason, the Woodlands Indians purposely sought capture. They often kidnapped children and adopted them into their culture. The younger the child, the better. Very young children were difficult to handle, therefore they were seldom kidnapped.
Since these Indians traveled on foot, and often walked several days to the village attacked; they had to be very careful that children did not give away their position. If a child threatened to give away their position, he would be killed; often by smashing his head into a tree trunk.
January 14th, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Arctic sea ice second lowest for December
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
January 14th, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Kathy C: Regarding the article about biochar reducing O2, I agree with this commenter. It is BS. Several other commenters agreed.
“I find the discussion of O2 depletion very misleading. Oxygen is released from split water in the creation of biomass. Burning, or decomposition reunites it with this oxygen. All that was described in this article was that the black carbon isn’t as stable as might be wished, and that gradual oxydation was taking place, which moves it slowly back towards no net change in global oxygen when it reaches completion. As long as it lasts, its matching O2 from the time of growth is either contributed to the atmosphere as a net gain or reacting with something else.”
David
January 14th, 2013 at 3:36 pm
kathy, i’ve been thinking more on this topic of o2 (oxygen) depletion, and what u wrote this morn. about it’s going to accelerate significantly once forest fires and peat bogs start burning uncontrolled in the wake of collapse and climate change, and it occurs to me that in attempting to continue to defend this o2 depletion scare, your now clutching at straws. yes, u’re right it will be worse, but how much worse? remember, fossil fuels represent millions of years of stored sunlight energy, eons of accumulated dead vegetable/plant matter. compare this with present forests and surface carbon stores, and i suspect that the carbon in fossil fuels far exceeds the carbon in forests and peat, so that even if the latter all do burn, it won’t be a game changing event re. o2 depletion.
i have the old pbs nova doc. titled ‘dimming the sun’ on tape and just watched the last few minutes of it to refresh my memory in this matter. it mentions the possibility of the amazon going up in flames and that this will exacerabte warming or co2 emissions. it doesn’t say how much. it also mentions methane hydrates becoming destabilized yada yada, and that this could/will have greater effect than all the fossil fuels combined. i suspect had forest fires had a similarly large impact, they would have sad so, but they didn’t.
according to my memory of projected co2 concentrations, they are going through the roof this century. they began at 280 ppm at the dawn of the ind. rev., are today around 395, and are projected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 ppm by 2100, which of course is beyond catastrophic. this is taking into account everything, including methane hydrates and forest burns. seriously bad shit. but what does this mean for o2? given that it’s concentration has hardly changed (going from something like 20.97% to 20.95% over the course of the industrial age), i suspect that by the year 2100 it will still be well over 20%. it’s just not that big of a deal, and it seems to me that guy or anyone else for that matter with a good head for science ought to know better than to follow the lead of the likes of terrance aym in crying wolf over this non-issue. it’s like sounding the alarm about a wolf that’s not only out of sight, it isn’t even on the same continent. it’s no threat whatsoever. and everytime an alarmist sounds a false alarm, it decreases the likelihood of being taken seriously when sounding an alarm that’s legit. that’s what i object to. and if guy, or anyone can present some sound evidence that i’m wrong, let’s hear it.
January 14th, 2013 at 3:40 pm
I think some people worry about O2, a minor matter at the moment, compared with everyday impact of the Pentagon fuel budget and capitalist economy in general… you know, it’s business, these guys need to make money, they don’t care about Tainter’s theory of collapse, or any of that stuff… so long as fossil fuels are affordable, and they can dump the CO2 into the atmosphere for free, and make a profit, they’ll do it…
Dawnfresh, a Scottish seafood company that supplies supermarkets and other large retailers, cut 70 jobs last year after deciding to ship its scampi more than 5,000 miles to China to be shelled by hand, then shipped back to the River Clyde in Scotland and breaded for sale in Britain.
http://www.airportwatch.org.uk/?p=1116
January 14th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Gail Says: romanticizing the past
The Noble Savage
E-mail (c. 2013):
I don’t like how people behave,
There is nothing here that I crave;
But I’m sure I would glow
Living long long ago—
I wish I were back in a cave.
Cave painting, (c. 32,000 years ago):
The economy’s bad, I would say,
We struggle from day to day;
Each day’s a repeat:
We go hunting for meat—
I wish we could pile food away.
The higher-ups like to harass
When we go out to hunt in the grass;
Whatever I do,
If it’s old or it’s new,
The team captain chews on my ass.
Our government sucks, it’s a rat,
The dominant guys get the fat,
The Crones got their tricks,
The Elders are dicks,
And the Old One, he thinks he’s all that.
The wife, well, you know how that goes,
She wants a new bone for her nose,
And leopard-skin clothes—
If she washed, I suppose
She still wouldn’t smell like a rose.
There’s a rumor that working the soil
Is the next stage—that’s even MORE toil!
It’s all a disaster,
I wish time went faster,
I wish we had something like oil.
January 14th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Nothing as big a ecological collapse is the result of just one factor.
The “argument” or “disagreement” about O2 levels is just another thing to be concerned with, in that it will also factor into the “equation” of our demise. Personally, i think that it’s more complicated than just the “numbers” tells us. For example, as Gail so studiously points out in her Wit’s End blog, the level of ozone in the air, as a percentage, effects trees in the way that they “breathe” (without going into all the detail she provides) and causes various problems leading to their death – and this is happening on a widespread scale. So too, it’s likely that all the chemistry we’re screwing up with our constant pollution – from brake dust to cement particulates, soot, and all the noxious gases we’re spewing as a civilization – is definitely going to alter the balance of the “air” we breathe, which will effect us biologically one way or the other – just like the radiation raining down on us from Fukushima. There’s no getting around it, no matter what stance we take regarding it’s “depletion.” It’s another concern, whether it’s severe now or not, and it may become another in the long line of “nails in our coffin.” We’ll discover more and more of these problems as we continue down the road to ruin. Most will atart small and get bigger, like the methane problem.
January 14th, 2013 at 4:15 pm
@Gail
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/#comment-58023
While a great deal of what you say is true about the early history of our Native American brothers and sisters I get the distinct impression that the carnage was greatly exacerbated between the tribes when the Europeans arrived on the scene.
http://www.tolatsga.org/iro.html
January 14th, 2013 at 4:24 pm
BtD – THANK YOU! You have made me feel like a muse…I always wanted to be a muse!
Because trees make oxygen, I once asked a chemist friend quite some time ago whether our supply of oxygen should be a concern and his answer was, not really. CO2 is called a “trace” gas precisely because it is so minor (although it has a tremendous greenhouse effect) as I believe somebody explained earlier. So when Guy first posted the link to Survival Acres, I was unconvinced – I had already read the original, I really like the Admin at SA. But in this instance, I thought he was just plain wrong.
Yes, other pollutants and contaminents are going to impact healthy breathing, but that’s not the same as insufficient oxygen. So I have to agree with the virgin terry that in this instance, it would have been better left unsaid because it’s not supportable and there are so many dire threats that are, undeniably, accelerating, there’s no need to add claims that can’t be demonstrated as facts.
I suppose it’s possible that some effect could reduce oxygen to levels where we suffocate, but it hasn’t been documented yet as far as I can tell, certainly not before something else cooks our goose.
January 14th, 2013 at 4:31 pm
Interesting blog post by Alabaster Crippens re DM festival
“The book burned, but not by consensus; the owner took charge. A line was drawn between burning ‘civilisation’ and burning ‘Civilisation, by Kenneth Clarke’. The knowledge inside it was given respect by some, the author disdain by others. The iconography was terrifying. Reminders of oppression. Oppression is still everywhere. This is not safely ironically distant territory.”
http://alabaster.wordpress.com/2013/01/13/mounting-darkness-and-creative-destruction-on-the-dark-mountain-uncivilisation-2012/
January 14th, 2013 at 5:29 pm
The end product of the composting process is humus:
“The importance of chemically stable humus is thought by some to be the fertility it provides to soils in both a physical and chemical sense, though some agricultural experts put a greater focus on other features of it, such as its ability to suppress disease. It helps the soil retain moisture by increasing microporosity, and encourages the formation of good soil structure”
“Effective humus and stable humus are further sources of nutrients to microbes, the former provides a readily available supply, and the latter acts as a longer-term storage reservoir.”
P.S. in my experience, all food magicay appears in the supermarket and at Costco.
January 14th, 2013 at 5:38 pm
Here is an interesting experiment (I am sure other’s have done it); Pretend like you are an alien coming down from space, and pull up google maps or google earth, and go to satellite view. Now zoom out and then closely in on many areas of the US – or other parts of the world. Look an area of green, and realize just a few hundred years ago it was all like this, and now EVERYWHERE you look is a patchwork of development, farms, etc. Now go to some rare areas like Bolivia or Peru and compare.
I just did this with the east coast of the US, and except for high mountains or right next to some rivers, 90% of all vegetation is gone. In addition to the effects on habitat (and the polutants and water usage from maintenance), how can this not effect oxygen? Are we to assume that mowed grass can produce as much oxygen as the once mighty canopy of trees and dense vegetation?
January 14th, 2013 at 5:53 pm
Gail says: …I always wanted to be a muse!
O.K., how about this one: a guy walks into a bar…sorry, I thought you said “amused.”
Gail says: Demonizing capitalism is what gives them hope.
To hope that some alternate view
Will invent human nature anew
Is bargaining—Stage Three,
But it also vents free
Some anger still there from Stage Two.
January 14th, 2013 at 7:10 pm
‘Those men and women [2] who were not adopted, as well as teenage boys,[3] could also face the alternative fate of death by torture.’- from the wikipedia article on native american captives, gail’s link from this afternoon.
i have a ? for gail and everyone: do u ever hate anyone or any ‘group’ of other sheeple, at least in the abstract? hate passionately enough that dangerous taboo fantasies of violence and torture, however vague, cross your mind? think ‘that sob, or that group of sobs, ought to be rounded up and exterminated, and then this would be a better world’ ?
i certainly do, no doubt in part because i know it’s mere harmless fantasy (robin and others may differ) and there’s no punishment incurred by idle thoughts kept to oneself (maybe i shouldn’t share this on an open blog, but fuck it!). hate’s an ugly motherfucker. part anger, part fear, sometimes throw contempt into the mix, amped up and given free reign to vent…. i forgot to add a vital and oft overlooked component of hate: frustration. i suspect in cases of surreal life malicious violence including torture, the impulse to sadism is a means of venting frustration, frustration that transcends any personal grievance, frustration stemming from anything and everything. it’s using someone as a scapegoat for all past grievances/failures, especially those most recent and enduring.
being a torturer might also be a way of gaining a certain status/respect within one’s tribe. a way of saying non verbally in the most emphatic manner to those who witness your cruelty that u’re someone not to be fucked with.
i, no doubt like some of u, have led a very ‘sheltered’ privileged existence, benefactor of industrial imperialism and cultural omnicide, without ever having to get my hands or ‘soul’ dirty in the process. i’ve never had to kill to eat meat (i have caught and ate fish), never had to kill another sherson in self defense, and never had to witness such in person (not counting a time as a kid when i helped some older neighbor boys one day to slaughter and pluck chickens). i suppose had i been less sheltered, i may well have been more exposed to violence, have been forced to participate in hunts, slaughters, warfare including hand to hand combat, brutal, ugly violence. i suppose such experience/exposure changes one’s fundamental perspectives. perhaps pacifism including pacifism that transcends species boundaries, is a luxury that some can ill afford, given their circumstances.
anyhow…life has an ugly side, doesn’t it? being human has an ugly side that includes things like hatred and torture. harboring a lot of hate and frustration plagues me. if i wasn’t such a privileged and sheltered softy, maybe i’d make a formidable torturer. i doubt it. i can’t see ever translating fantasy into surreality when it comes to idle thoughts of self righteous vengeful violence, because i hate it, find it probably even more repulsive than perceived enemies whose elimination i think would result in a better world. it’s like one must become that which one hates, in order to overcome that which one hates. plus, deep down i understand it isn’t a matter of individuals or groups of individuals which fuck everything up. it’s something much larger which can’t be destroyed or defeated, something intrinsic to NATURE. something that resides in us all. (it just seems to be more obvious in some, i suppose)
i have such frustration from a fruitless search for anyone or any group that isn’t partially fucked up (as if i’m not partially fucked up!). guy is so fucking gifted imo with intelligence, charm, (insert your complimentary term here which i omitted), confidence/courage, sanity; such a contrast from most sheeple. maybe this is why his perceived idiot side bothers me so. aren’t there any fucking savants out there who don’t have an idiot twin within? probably not, anyone who isn’t an idiot savant. at least in guy’s case, the savant overshadows the idiot.
speaking of someone whose idiot side overshadows the savant, ex pres. george w bush. i still marvel how anyone could have been stupid or crazy enough to vote for that motherfucker once, let alone twice. how many tens of millions of americans did? living in a culture wherein stupid/crazy mofos seem to outnumber the relatively sane ‘good guys’ by about a zillion to one…(deep exasperated sigh)
i brought up ex pres. bush for a reason. his policy of pre-emptive arrogant i-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-anyone-else-thinks warfare has given me an idea for an alternative term for suicide: pre-emptive self inflicted death (too long and awkward to be catchy). the fact of his existence and the countless others who are more like him than guy mcpherson gives me all the reason i need to include in my idle taboo thoughts, thoughts of pre-emptive death for myself, as the only possible means of escape from this surreal nightmare of madness.
instead of arguing i think i/we(?) ought to spend time more constructively. anyone have ideas to share on how to prepare and gird oneself psychologically for pre-emptive death while times are still relatively good and easy and life addictive, if unfulfilling? i doubt such a path exists. if it does, it’s probably too hard for a sheltered privileged softy to endure. but considering how fucked/frustrating/hopeless/daunting my present and future appear to be (and, of course, yours too, probably), pre-emptive death must be kept a part of this conversation, at the very least, don’t u agree? if pre-emptive death is not chosen, if one survives long enough chances are a much worse fate awaits. maybe something like being the tortured, not the torturer.
January 14th, 2013 at 7:22 pm
While romanticizing the past is a danger, I do suggest a reading of “Don’t Sleep there are Snakes” by Daniel Everett. He went to convert the Amazon Basin’s Pirahã and found they were so happy without God that in the end the de-converted him (he lost his missionary wife as a result) He doesn’t romanticize them. Once they were planning to kill him and his family because he interfered in tribal affairs. He talked them out of it. But he brought in a couple of sociologists and the counted how often they smiled and laughed and deemed them the happiest people they had ever studied. Well I don’t do the book justice – its a good read
January 14th, 2013 at 7:25 pm
In the previous thread, Gail says: “Which, I meant to mention last comment, is why I really appreciate our host, Guy McPherson. He is one of the very few that doesn’t dance around our prognosis which is sort of like the earthly equivalent of pancreatic cancer.”
Indeed! Let’s hear it for Guy,
Who’s brave enough to defy
Deniers who lie,
And who helps us learn why
It’s not very long till we die.
January 14th, 2013 at 7:27 pm
@Robin Datta, I read recently that the words “humus” and “human” have the same root.
@Gail, capitalism has an especially pernicious effect on human activity in that it unthinkingly and unfeelingly IMPELS exponential growth/waste far beyond even a natural population increase’s consumption, as I mentioned earlier. Let’s take a rough rate of population growth which, I believe, has been something like 2%p.a. Capitalism generally imposes, mathematically, extraction rates significantly beyond that. It’s the difference between a slow amble off the cliff over a period of millennia and riding the crazy train with our hair on fire towards collapse in a matter of decades. Furthermore, capitalism has no reverse gear whatsoever. There is no provision at all for negative growth; negative growth is incompatible with capitalism, which is why we’re seeing wrenching dysfunction in the capital markets increase daily.
January 14th, 2013 at 7:29 pm
BenjaminTheDonkey Says:
January 14th, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Gail Says: romanticizing the past
The Noble Savage (poetry)
that was so funny! u’re an awesome poet, don’t ya know it, btd?
January 14th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
@TVT
You stated:
“….but considering how fucked/frustrating/hopeless/daunting my present and future appear to be (and, of course, yours too, probably),pre-emptive death must be kept a part of this conversation, at the very least, don’t u agree?”
As you know, there are many here who both agree and disagree with you, but I think this Uber topic is still a ways off, and IMO, it is directly connected to the debate concerning our sense of hedonism and moral imperatives. But since this thread is closing in on 550! It’s probably best left for another day, especially after we’ve all had more time to let all this new phenomena rework many of our past assumptions and prejudices in ways we never imagined.
But for what it’s worth…..I couldn’t agree more!
January 14th, 2013 at 7:46 pm
‘capitalism has an especially pernicious effect on human activity…’ -lidia
first came the notion, a powerful potion, that nature was created for us to own/manage/exploit, then came capitalism, which involved the privatization and consolidation of ownership, management, and exploitation. a crazy thing to do, but it enriched a fortunate few… (take it away, btd!? for my poetry skill rarely fulfills…i wish to impress, but am simply a mess!)
‘It’s the difference between a slow amble off the cliff over a period of millennia and riding the crazy train with our hair on fire towards collapse in a matter of decades’ -lidia re. capitalism’s effect on the path to disaster..
agreed.
January 14th, 2013 at 7:55 pm
‘hedonism and moral imperatives’ -daniel
bit of a conflict between the 2, as i see it. on the one hand is the desire to stick around for as long as possible, so as not to miss out on any pleasure (physical and psychological), and on the other hand is the knowledge that the best thing, the most ‘moral’ thing one can do in service to others and out of a spirit of self sacrificial love, is to lead by example when it comes to self inflicted pre-emptive death. it seems everyone agrees population must be sharply and very soon reduced, for the good of all life, but no one is willing to lead the way…
January 14th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
tvt, I don’t see it, but thanks!
January 14th, 2013 at 7:59 pm
and if anyone does lead, who shall follow? should this thought even be shared by one unwilling to lead… as it may entice another to take that leadership role, with a burden of guilt for the one who cajoled?
January 14th, 2013 at 8:02 pm
If my stuff were good enough, it would break out beyond the choir.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:03 pm
re: Lidia’s observation, I agree. But I think that capitalism is simply the exponential part of the continuum. Over millennia, there’s been a slow almost imperceptible increase in population, resourse depletion and pollution, which has been facilitated by the ability of failed civilizations to exploit new, relatively unspoilt lands and fisheries, and fossil fuels, and fossil fuel fertilizers for industrial agriculture. But we’ve now run out of new places, and the sinks are saturated, and so the endgame – capitalism – is racing towards its foregone conclusion. It appears to be a classic exponential curve.
January 14th, 2013 at 8:31 pm
Daniel, I was thinking along those same lines while reading TVT’s post. It’s too late for me to compose a coherent response, so I’ll wait for a new thread.
January 14th, 2013 at 9:20 pm
anyone have ideas to share on how to prepare and gird oneself psychologically for pre-emptive death while times are still relatively good and easy and life addictive, if unfulfilling?
Can one suggest non-violence in its fullest implications – Ahimsa
Any of the characteristics of the enlightened pursued to its fullest will lead to a place where all the other characteristics also dwell in their fullest.
“If you are established in Ahimsa, you have attained all virtues. Ahimsa is the pivot. All virtues revolve around Ahimsa. Just as all footprints are accommodated in those of the elephant, so also do all religious and ethical rules become merged in the great vow of Ahimsa.”
Tradition has it that each characteristic brings with it its own supernatural power (“siddhi”).
“Such a Yogi can give definite orders to lion and tigers. They will obey. This is Bhuta-Siddhi (mastery over the elements) obtainable by the practice of Ahimsa.”
pre-emptive death must be kept a part of this conversation, at the very least, don’t u agree?
Only prior to The Great Death. Once one has The Great Death, the “I” disappears. If still embodied beyond that point, the body-mind must necessarily perish – a little death, but are of no more significance than a passing breeze.
January 14th, 2013 at 9:45 pm
Dr H, if you really are a doctor, you must know that the extremities are sacrificed before the core. Obviously we haven’t been very good at predictions around here, have we? We’ve done a very bad job of gauging the resilience of industrial civilization and empire. This is something Sun Tzu warned against, when he said don’t underestimate your enemy. Rural survivalist fantasy makes for great sci-fi novels and movie scripts, cheaper film locations, lots of space for exciting Road Warrior type chase scenes, etc., but it has nothing to do with reality. The serious study of history no longer exists in my country (the US), so this kind of delusion is no surprise since people can’t even think back as far as WW2 when the national gov imposed strict rationing of resources and took complete control over the economy, practically overnight. The same thing happened in all the other wartime powers, and since we are all expecting a much graver crisis, we should expect much more draconian measures than happened during WW2 (ulvfugl if you want to know what is going to happen to your land, see how the wartime British gov disposed of it, then imagine something much worse.) Under a national emergency scenario, the rights of a few rural property owners are going to be summarily sacrificed to the needs of the state. Land, water, wood for fuel, will be impounded as state resources too important to be left to a few people who think they’re going to be allowed to listen to the birds and the wind. Anyone remaining in rural areas will likely be put to work on state run farms. People who resist will likely to find themselves as stars in the #1 hit TV show of the near future–America’s Funniest Drone Strikes. Of course, I could be wrong, the greatest empire in human history could become as helpless as a kitten overnight, and a few aging hippies could have it all figured out and become masters of the universe. Let’s see how likely it is that people who now control thousands of nuclear weapons will lose their resolve before people who are good at composting.
January 15th, 2013 at 12:50 am
Dr H, if you really are a doctor, you must know that the extremities are sacrificed before the core.
Regardless of Dr. H’s status, in adults it is the kidneys that sustain injury in prolonged hypotension. If the hypotension is severe enough the brain goes first and quite promptly. I have had many instances of cardiopulmonary arrest that after resuscitation were brain dead – suitable organ donors. And enough instances of hypotensive acute renal failure. In neonates, there is usually intestinal necrosis associated with hypotension, and intracranial haemorrhages.
January 15th, 2013 at 2:13 am
@ Ripley
ulvfugl if you want to know what is going to happen to your land, see how the wartime British gov disposed of it, then imagine something much worse.
Excellent point, strongly made. I see much of UK agricultural policy, since WW2, ( which was imo ever more intensive destruction of the ecology ) as being as a result of the total state control which was retained after wartime. Here ( Wales) I’ve heard many stories during my life, of folk who just vanished over the period of WW2 and quietly re-appeared when it was all over, having spent the time living very low profile lives in the mountains. But that’s in the days before computer databases, and those folk probably were not on any records anywhere to start with. These days, a letter saying that a person is required to report for duty somewhere, backed by the power of the State, would be scary and difficult to evade…
Yes, all land in UK belongs ultimately to the Crown, delegated to the State, and could be requisitioned by statute overnight, as happened to many properties in WW2. All comes down to power, power backed by violence, the barrel of a gun as Mao said.
…people who now control thousands of nuclear weapons will lose their resolve before people who are good at composting.
Hahaha, nice line. What they are, imo, is a whole bunch of Breivik-types, who have gathered together. Normal, sane, people, one hopes, might think things through, as Breivik did, or Kaczynsci for that matter, in a logical fashion, and arrive at a conclusion but when they contemplated the morality and gruesome horror involved would have a re-think and find an alternative strategy. But we know, some people are not like that.
Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld, M. Albright, ‘the price in other people’s dead children is worth it’, and Sun Tzu, the General’s job is just to win the war for the Emperor, who has the Mandate of Heaven, not to ask the Emperor why there needs to be a war, and so it goes, all the way down the chains of command to the foot soldier who knocks on your door ‘Just obeying orders, Ma’am’, which was deemed not to be a defence for war crimes by the Nuremburg Tribunal…. but laws are made by power to serve the interests of power…
January 15th, 2013 at 2:35 am
Robin Datta
I think this comment by Ripley:
“Dr H, if you really are a doctor, you must know that the extremities are sacrificed before the core.”
was less a statement about anatomy and medicine, and more a metaphor about what part of the Empire is seen as expendable, aka the extremities, e.g. the ordinary folk trying to get their composting and soils just right to sustain….BANG BANG !!! Drone strike on recalcitrant tree hugger ne’er do non-compliers to police state orders.
On this front I am thinking along the same lines as Ripley, re the little guys and state orders and compliance.
Although it is obvious that drones are excellent deployable units in a foreign theater of war, it should be equally apparent to any here that drones are equally useful for homeland dissent rectification, and surveilance.
All
In reply to this call for help:
“anyone have ideas to share on how to prepare and gird oneself psychologically for pre-emptive death while times are still relatively good and easy and life addictive, if unfulfilling?”…
Duplicate many times what you need to keep some semblence of life going, and bury some of these units, packages or information several meters underground in many locations no one but you knows, and do not tell anyone what you have done. Try to accomplish this without letting anyone else in on the process, so no one can be tortured to get you to reveal it.
Make sure you have no phone or GPS device with you when you do all this skullduggery. Leave it at home, and switched off, so no unanswereed calls can be logged. If your vehicle has anetag and you use it then you risk some backsearch will reveal a pattern. Ye,p it going to be that fucked up.
I am not advocating weopons and ammo here, (but many may wish to do so just to be sure they are available iff needed in the future, eg for hunting.) But I am saying 3 to 6 months worth of gas cylenders and several gas cookers to begin with, and igniters.
Don’t do any maps, just commit to memory. And choose places that people who know you wont suspect.
I am including things that help in knowing about simple tech stuff, and plant growing details, plenty of seeds and some reading matter . Lots of human hygrene products in some dump areas too. I also think it is wise to have some stores hidden at home and to defend them up to the human violence threat level, and then reluctantly surrender them. No need looking healthy and having no stores, smart, armed scavengers will soon pick those who have got stores in remote locations.
If it sounds pretty despirate, it will be, and no quick fixes will suffice to fight the state. All that stored data will mean you cannot go back to any place of routine, for a drone will be programmed to look for you, or your bio signiture, or you phone signal, and either report or pounce.
If I were designing these drone fuckers, it would be a propellent imobo-gas and by by to you the citizen. Some one will swing by to collect you for reprocessing very soon. Either soylent green or slave labour.
What good would a guru be in these circumstances? one might ask, as the SHTF?
Well IMHO, you will get help, by using your Intuition. For those very new to this real world, who know only screen based communications and interactions with ‘others’, well, Intuition is kinda like a quiet SMS message to your consciousness, from your Heart telling you that something may be about to happen that is of survival value, or at least has species-needed cultural understanding value, and you better stop your present activity, even if it is sleeping, and take action.
Oh, and when burying items, the containers you use need to be very watertight, as groundwater can move a lot over time, seep in and destroy all your hard won stores. Dont even think of tatooing a map on yourself or a rabid looking child, as in ‘Prison Break’ and ‘Waterworld’, use the best memory storage system ever evolved, your mind.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:34 am
@ Ripley
Thinking about your core and extremities analogy, just as in USA, the core is the Pentagon, Goldman Sachs, Fed, etc, in UK, it is the City of London ( not London, the city, but the semi-independent financial district, the Square Mile, something completely different ).
There is not one collapse scenario, is there, there are many possibilities. At the moment, TPTB would protect the C of L at all costs, because that’s where their major interests lie, but should that implode and become irrelevant, who knows, the whole British power structure would re-arrange itself, former chains of command would no longer function, military and police only follow orders because of their wages and promises of a pension, although a few might do it out of ‘duty’ or whatever.
In the event of major collapse and chaos, how is any central authority here going to provide an incentive to follow orders ? Somebody has to pay the troops with money and/or food to get them to go out and seize the assets, whatever. I can envisage scenarios where the whole thing just unravels.
If there’s no electricity grid running, if there’s contagious diseases all over the place, if there’s crazy starving desperate people, if there’s no fuel coming into the country for vehicles, if paper money is not worth anything, Fukes, it could be very hard for any central core in London, the administrative capital, which would be overwhelmed with all kinds of conflicts and demands, to exert control outward toward the periphery, even on this tiny British Isles…
But there are many potential scenarios… USA is very, very different, as is Australia, Ozman.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:37 am
a letter saying that a person is required to report for duty somewhere, backed by the power of the State, would be scary and difficult to evade…
As a retired uS Army officer, I am technically always subject to recall, and neither find it scary nor necessary to evade. But as I understand it, they will “scrape the bottom of the barrel” before they start recalling retirees. Might not be long now?
deemed not to be a defence for war crimes by the Nuremburg Tribunal….
As Josef Stalin said, it does not matter who votes or whom they vote for, but only who counts the votes. Likewise, it matters little what the laws are, but only who interprets and enforces the laws.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:40 am
Ripley, if a person’s name shows in blue it means that it links to a Web site or blog belonging to that person. If you click on Dr. House’s name you will see his blog, his full name, and his picture. You can then do further googling and find out that he is in fact a genuine Dr. It is irresponsible to throw out “if you are really a Dr.” without taking the very simple and easy steps to find out. Dr. House has been more than open about sharing his personal information. Next time, before you make an insinuation about someone do a tad of research.
January 15th, 2013 at 4:06 am
Dairyman Dave – I understand that the weathering of biochar is not a creation of new oxygen, but the point of biochar is to sequester carbon is it not. If it doesn’t sequester it longer than the trees cut down to make it, then the removal of the forests that were creating oxygen means a loss of oxygen production without a corresponding sequestration of carbon. I don’t think the article stated it clearly. The biochar initiative is of course going to be something like Guy making biochar out of weeds, but another way for capitalists to make money = I see the key statement in the article as “as in the biofuels boom that has already apparently speeded up deforestation and oxygen depletion since 2003 [2], if biochar is promoted under the Clean Development Mechanism, it will almost certainly further accelerate deforestation and destruction of other natural ecosystems (identified as ‘spare land’) for planting biochar feedstock, and swing the oxygen downtrend that much closer towards mass extinction.”
As trees are cut down to make biochar they will be replaced with ever quicker growing plants to turn a buck and if this manmade, mass manufactured biochar breaks down much more quickly in the soil than the biochar in terra preta the destruction of the forests for another get rich quick scheme will be a loss.
January 15th, 2013 at 4:22 am
OK about oxygen for which I am taking a lot of flack. As I understand it, there was no animal life before the plants started producing oxygen.
For some untold eons prior to the evolution of these cyanobacteria, during the Archean eon, more primitive microbes lived the real old-fashioned way: anaerobically. These ancient organisms—and their “extremophile” descendants today—thrived in the absence of oxygen, relying on sulfate for their energy needs…So a date and a culprit can be fixed for what scientists refer to as the Great Oxidation Event, but mysteries remain. What occurred 2.45 billion years ago that enabled cyanobacteria to take over? What were oxygen levels at that time? Why did it take another one billion years—dubbed the “boring billion” by scientists—for oxygen levels to rise high enough to enable the evolution of animals?
Most important, how did the amount of atmospheric oxygen reach its present level? “It’s not that easy why it should balance at 21 percent rather than 10 or 40 percent,” notes geoscientist James Kasting of Pennsylvania State University. “We don’t understand the modern oxygen control system that well.”
Climate, volcanism, plate tectonics all played a key role in regulating the oxygen level during various time periods. Yet no one has come up with a rock-solid test to determine the precise oxygen content of the atmosphere at any given time from the geologic record. But one thing is clear—the origins of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere derive from one thing: life. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere
If all the atmospheric O2 is created by plants and we kill off the plants will we not have an O2 crisis. If half of the O2 in the atmosphere is made by phytoplankton can we keep killing them off and still have enough oxygen. If we also turn more and more of the planet into a desert don’t we at some point have an oxygen crisis. I understand that it might take some time because there is a lot of oxygen in the atmosphere, but how much time? No doubt we will all be gone for other reasons before we die of lack of oxygen. But is there some other source of oxygen other than plants?
I hear the arguments all the time from deniers that humans couldn’t possibly be changing the climate because the climate system is too vast for us humans to affect. I understand that until the ozone hole was found no one thought that it could be destroyed by human actions. So I am a bit suspicious of hearing that there is too much O2 in the environment to consider that there ever could be too little no matter how many of the oxygen producers we destroy.
How low does anyone think phytoplankton levels in the ocean can sink to before its failure to produce 50 percent of our oxygen is a problem? How many more trees can we cut down before their failure to produce oxygen is a problem?
January 15th, 2013 at 4:24 am
@ Robin D.
I didn’t have retired military in mind, although I did not make it clear. In WW2, in UK, ordinary civilians had to do whatever they were told, e.g. Women’s Land Army, urban females to work on farms to replace men who were compelled to join the armed forces, men deemed unsuitable as soldiers sent to labour camps to cut trees, that kind of thing.
Anybody who resisted, e.g. Quakers, conscientious objectors, did not actually get killed, but had a very hard time, I’ve met some personally. They didn’t tell them they weren’t going to be killed, just the opposite… that’s what I meant by scary, the Bradley Manning kind of treatment…
January 15th, 2013 at 4:26 am
tvt: i had that conversation with my wife and another guy who was staying with us for a week, a few years ago. His method was to do it in the winter (he lives in upstate NY where it still gets cold) by drinking a fifth of vodka and falling into a drunken slumber in the snow and cold and hopefully freeze to death. As long as the electrical grid is still working, electrocution is pretty simple to arrange. My wife and i talk about not going into a home for the aged to await death while they keep you alive for as long as possible (to suck all the money from your bank acct). i read on-line of a group that assists in Kevorkian style self-termination and it’s pretty easy (especially if you aren’t worried about insurance claims by children or others) and the means are very easy to obtain and completely legal.
[Just as a side note, my cousin who stopped eating 58 days ago because he's hypersensitive to everything including food and meds weighs less than 90 lbs now but is still here suffering.]
Ozman: i too foresee all kinds of collapse scenarios. If martial law is to be imposed, the government will have to do it before the electrical grid fails or there won’t be any means of communication (among other problems of control), so maybe we should expect it sometime soon. We’ll probably have to wait and see which way things play out in order to respond.
January 15th, 2013 at 4:26 am
meanwhile some of the nuclear plants may get us even before the grid goes down
http://fairewinds.com/content/repairs-four-nuclear-reactors-are-so-expensive-they-should-not-be-restarted
Among other things Arnie Gundersen addresses the real concern of an upstream dam failure on Fort Calhoun, more on San Onofre and a new proposal by the Department of Energy to melt radioactive scrap metal and reuse it in consumer goods like knives and forks. Arnie sounds ever more pessimistic with each new podcast.
January 15th, 2013 at 5:06 am
The Art of Dying
January 15th, 2013 at 6:15 am
I wonder if anyone has done analysis of the possible increased oxygen because of the increased algae blooms from nutrient runoff (in both fresh and salt water worldwide)?
January 15th, 2013 at 7:32 am
The problem with algal blooms from overfertilization of nitrogen/phosphorus is that they gobble up all the dissolved oxygen and many produce neurotoxins. Eutrophication of the water kills plants and fish. A net loss.
http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/wq/ess/eco/blooms
Algal blooms produce large amounts of oxygen during photosynthesis that may lead to supersaturated levels of DO in the water column. Conversely, during respiration, algal blooms remove the DO from the water column which may lead to little or no oxygen in the water column. These conditions can also be created when a large quantity of algae die and decompose. Supersaturation of DO (> 110% saturation) can also be an indicator of photosynthesis by large quantities of algae, particularly during mid-to-late afternoon.
Algae are a concern in drinking water supplies and reservoirs. Some algae, such as Microcystis, produce toxins and have been linked with the deaths of livestock and domestic pets*. They can also cause taste and odor problems, water discoloration, or form large mats that can interfere with boating, swimming, and fishing. Algae and their blooms may be associated with fish kills.
January 15th, 2013 at 7:51 am
Kathy C: Good research with valid points, as usual. O2 comes and goes and writers can cherry pick either one to suit their bias. Nature does provide lots of forest fires. Man didn’t discover fire; he ran from it. The fires would have formed some charcoal but most of organic waste was decomposed to provide food energy for the soil organisms so more trees could grow.
I think (just my opinion here) that Guy uses the O2 story just to try to reach people who don’t know much. Face it; most people know they need to breathe, they probably know that O2 comes from “trees” and they know the earth is covered with roads and parking lots. That’s where he can reach them, connect. Kinda like telling parables. (Oops, shouldn’t have said that!)
David
January 15th, 2013 at 8:01 am
Daniel, I’ve been watching Chris Hedges evolution with interest, too. He’s still clinging to the non violence, though.
January 15th, 2013 at 8:22 am
From America2Point0: “In medicine, there’s something called multisystem organ failure that is essentially a tipping point to organism death …”
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/America2Point0/message/26940
A fascinating idea, but I think the components of physiology and doom and how they fit together are too dissimilar to make any cute analogy out of it (Robin or TRDH might prove me wrong).
January 15th, 2013 at 8:35 am
Dave, it is true that fires come and go, but with increased warming killing off trees for various reasons (pine beetle, drought etc.) I expect we will see much larger fires that without control (post peak oil or peak economy) will eat up cities as well as countrysides. Tundra fires per this article are returning after a 10,000 year lapse ” After a 10,000-year absence, wildfires have returned to the Arctic tundra, and a University of Florida study shows that their impact could extend far beyond the areas blackened by flames.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110727131415.htm 10,000 is of course about the age of civilization which is not to say that civilization kept the fires at bay but more to note that civilization arose in a specific era, the Holocene. We seem to be making that era be rather short as era’s go.
Robin posted a link to watch the Waldo Canyon fire on Jan 7th. Watch that and think about that fire with no efforts being made to stop it. I think that will give a good preview to our future.
I agree that the o2 story is not a big deal, not because we might be heading to oxygen starvation, but because food starvation will likely get us first. The dying off of food plants will kill us from lack of food before it has a major impact on our oxygen supply.
BTW when my ex and I lived in TN we had a coal stove. Anthracite wasn’t available so we used a lower grade of coal. We sealed up our house really well to keep it warm. One night our fire died down to a mouldering fire and almost killed us as it ate up the O2 – we woke up with headaches sick to our stomachs and I was scared to look and see if my young sons were OK – luckily they were. After that we put a vent in the floor to the basement to pull air up right in front of the coal stove and never had the problem again.
That is one feature I really like about the Sheepherder stove. To make them safer for use in trailers the added a vent in the back that can be connected to pipe going outside. I think that is on all their stoves now. It allows you to increase or decrease or stop air coming in below the fire. Makes it easy to start a fire and control it while making sure the fire isn’t using up oxygen in the house.
January 15th, 2013 at 8:55 am
Natural fire outbreaks have varied on different parts of the planet, in N. America, Australia, some tree species have evolved to survive fire, even need fire, not so in Europe, where natural forests do not burn, until recent times and manmade fires which cause great ecological damage.
January 15th, 2013 at 9:04 am
This is a bit off topic, but nevertheless pertinent. As has been discussed here in the past, TPTB continue to suppress the truth about the imminent threat of climate change, as well as anything else that challenges their power and privilege. Days ago, boy genius and internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz was found dead in his apartment after allegedly hanging himself. This occurred just a couple of weeks before his scheduled show trial in Boston for hacking into data bases and liberating academic journal articles. Some are calling the “suicide” suspicious … especially since his trial would have afforded him a very public stage (a’la Danton) on which to condemn the government’s efforts to keep the public uninformed.
He was an Internet folk hero. He supported online freedom and copyright reform. He advocated free and open web files. He championed a vital cause. He worked tirelessly for what’s right.
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle called him “steadfast in his dedication to building a better and open world. He is among the best spirits of the Internet generation.”
Who’ll replace him now that he’s gone? He called locking up the public domain sinful. He selflessly strove to prevent it.
In July 2011, he was arrested. At the time, he was downloading old scholarly articles. He was charged with violating federal hacking laws. MIT gave him a guest account to do it.
He developed RSS and co-founded Reddit. It’s a social news site.
He was found dead weeks before he was scheduled to stand trial. He was targeted for doing the right thing. He didn’t steal or profit. He shared. His activism was more than words.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/01/15/aaron-swartzs-suspicious-death/
January 15th, 2013 at 9:27 am
In the current issue of Men’s Journal, an engineering expert (last) named Bea says that our infrastructure is so bad from neglect that it needs $2 trillion of immediate investment just to keep it up. Besides bridges, water and sewage treatment plants, gas lines and our electrical grid, he points out that where he lives in CA, if the levees fail there, due to age (they’re 150 years old) and increased rainfall, that seawater would flood the entire valley where 1/2 of our produce comes from in the U.S. (contaminating the soil there forever) and ruin the only source of potable water for 9 million people.
January 15th, 2013 at 9:31 am
Ripley, you make a good point about predictions. They are difficult, at best, to get right. That being said, it’s important to note that while history can be a helpful guide, what we are facing now has no historical precedence of which I’m aware.
If we have a long, slow, collapse – which is what we’re experiencing now – then I thoroughly expect martial law to be imposed. Whether my little scrap of land or my services will be of interest to the state would be up for debate. It could go either way.
If the pace of collapse picks up, which I am confident it will do, and we see grid failure, fuel disruptions, collapse of the monetary system, then as someone else noted above, it becomes very difficult for the state to maintain control. At that point I don’t see any way that cities will be better off than those in rural areas, regardless the steps that the state takes.
Ultimately, the argument is moot. Each of us will do what we are most comfortable with. As I’ve gotten older, I can’t stand being in cities. The commercialism alone sickens me, the destruction of anything natural breaks my heart, the crowds finish me off. I left South Florida after 14 years for those very reasons – and that was before I knew anything about this topic.
The argument is made further moot (is that possible?) because it doesn’t matter. I honestly don’t think that any preparations will make much difference no matter where someone lives. A person can only stockpile so much food and water. When that’s gone because we’ve so destroyed the environment, then humans are gone. Period. End of story.
January 15th, 2013 at 9:44 am
Dr. H., I agree with your assessment of the collapse. I would only add that the deterioration of the infrastructural grid will not necessarily preclude the police state from establishing and maintaining dominance. At the end of the day, the government has all the big guns, many piglets will be more than willing to wear a uniform and enjoy minor privileges in exchange for their oppression of the people … the Nazi concentration camps and the Soviet gulags offer ample evidence of this. The grid may fail for us, but not for them. We rely on the grid to sustain a middle class lifestyle, they only need enough of a grid to maintain supply lines and troop deployments. Imho, when the consumer model of fascism becomes unsustainable, they will control the food supply and keep us under the boot via our bellies. As Henry Kissinger commented in 1970, “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”
January 15th, 2013 at 9:45 am
@ dl
Remembering that the FBI sent MLK a letter ‘encouraging him to commit suicide’
http://occupythebanks.sharedby.co/share/JEDCsJ
January 15th, 2013 at 9:57 am
Kathy C, Are big cities really 15% or not? Can’t it be measured accurately? Jeeze, give me the equipment and I’ll go do it myself!
We are on our 3rd wood stove, this one doesn’t have a catalytic burner but does have an afterburner. It also draws air from the cellar, which has plenty of holes; the foundation was built from flat field stones, no mortar. The house frame is hand hewn beams. Still a nice house with a new kitchen, of course. But, like the doctor says, who cares. Trouble is, we still do care.
David
January 15th, 2013 at 10:00 am
depressive lucidity, good point. The one caveat that may change that possibility are the nuclear power plants. There has been quite a bit of discussion here about them over the last few years, but the take home point is that very little, if any, planning has been done to keep them from melting down (the storage pools in particular) in cases of extended power outages. Once the electric grid goes down, there are only a few weeks before the nukes go. Once that happens, all bets are off.
January 15th, 2013 at 10:01 am
@ulvfugl
Despite the cover of apparent incompetence, the shadow government is very good at dispensing with folks who challenge the Matrix. Here are just a couple of minor examples:
James Hatfield
The troubled author of a biography accusing President Bush of hiding a three-decade-old cocaine arrest committed suicide Wednesday. James Howard Hatfield, 43, was found in a hotel room in Springdale, Ark., and appeared to have died from a overdose of prescription drugs, police said.
http://www.lovearth.net/fortunateson.htm
Gary Webb
Webb’s important historical role began in 1996 when his “Dark Alliance” investigative series for the San Jose Mercury News revived public interest in the CIA’s tolerance of cocaine trafficking by President Reagan’s beloved Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s, at a time when Reagan was promoting a “just say no/zero tolerance/war on drugs.”
Dr David Kelly
The recent death of microbiologist Dr David Kelly, the BBC’s mole in the Iraq intelligence dossier scandal, is particularly poignant as he was at odds with what both George Bush and Blair were claiming about post-war discoveries of Iraqi weapons. Though an apparent suicide, rumours are beginning to circulate that this might be another case of a man with vital information being ‘suicided’ as a warning to others to keep their mouths shut? Days after his name was leaked, reportedly by the Ministry of Defense, as the suspected source for the BBC’s May 29 report, Kelly was grilled by a Parliamentary committee set up to investigate the justifications of what led Britain to war in Iraq. Two days later Kelly’s body was found in a wooded area near his home, his wrist slashed and a partly-empty package of painkillers nearby.
http://www.globalcomplexity.org/DeathbyAssociation.htm
January 15th, 2013 at 10:01 am
As a farmer, I expect some kind of control over ag. Thinking I might quit right about then. How long do I want to watch others die before it’s my turn. It’s the children and grandchildren that complicate the situation.
Davod
January 15th, 2013 at 10:37 am
First, maybe last, film of Spoonbill Sandpiper chicks, only 100 pairs left.
January 15th, 2013 at 10:52 am
http://ncadac.globalchange.gov/download/NCAJan11-2013-publicreviewdraft-fulldraft.pdf
Any thoughts on this?
January 15th, 2013 at 10:56 am
http://www.france24.com/en/20130114-fast-food-linked-child-asthma-study
“Children who frequently eat fast food are far likelier to have severe asthma compared to counterparts who tuck into fruit, a large international study published on Monday said.”
Yeah but quality fresh fruit is expensive while McDonalds is relatively cheap. Since the number of working poor families is growing, i expect more kids will be suffering from asthma, obesity (or it’s counterpart – starvation), and lots of other (poor quality) food related problems like high cholesterol and blood pressure troubles.
The link to my second sentence is below, so i don’t get moderated.
January 15th, 2013 at 10:57 am
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/number-working-poor-families-grows-050253385.html
The number of U.S. families struggling with poverty despite parents being employed continued to grow in 2011 as more people returned to work but mostly at lower-paying service jobs, an analysis released on Tuesday shows.
More working parents have taken jobs as cashiers, maids, waiters and other low-wage jobs in fast growing sectors that offer fewer hours and benefits, according to The Working Poor Project, a privately funded effort aimed at improving economic security for low-income families.
The result is 200,000 more such working families – the so-called “working poor” – emerged in 2011 than in 2010, according to the report, based on analysis of the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.
About 10.4 million such families – or 47.5 million Americans – now live near poverty, defined as earning less than 200 percent of the official poverty rate, which is $22,811 for a family of four.
Overall, nearly one-third of working families now struggle, up from 31 percent in 2010 and 28 percent in 2007, when the recession began, according to the analysis.
January 15th, 2013 at 11:27 am
How much degrowth is enough? Interesting but deals with only part of the problem, a rather unimportant part. Getting rid of all of it won’t be enough, so I hear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcQYI4yo8mM
January 15th, 2013 at 11:49 am
@BtD: re. multisystem organ failure
A fascinating idea, but I think the components of physiology and doom and how they fit together are too dissimilar to make any cute analogy out of it…
I don’t think they’re angling for a “cute analogy”. “Doom” is not separate from physiology. There is a fractal nature to things: the failure of cells causes failures in the whole body. A failure in energy or nutrient delivery in the environment causes failure to cells. There’s plenty in common, imo, between human, animal and plant sicknesses and the overall sickness of the planet. Moose are just plain dropping dead (see my earlier link); humans are increasingly afflicted with unusual systemic problems like allergies and auto-immune diseases, autism and behavior disorders; plants are expiring as Gail has been monitoring. Like JMG says about collapse, it’s not something that’s looming on the horizon—this is exactly what doom looks like here and now—we’re in the middle of it.
Off to read the yahoo piece now that I have sounded off
.
January 15th, 2013 at 11:53 am
@BtD, if you could share the pertinent parts of the physiology post I would be interested in reading it. After going through a bunch of levels of authentication just to get into the Yahoo! universe I find I have to sign up for that group to be able to read the link you posted.
January 15th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Guy I want to thank you for doing the Hanson discussion (Lidia it is worth signing up), I got a lot out of it, maybe the best link (for my current obsession regarding inevitable doom based on our compulsive, inherently greedy tendencies…or, put another way, the inescapable process of competition, natural selection, evolution, and extinction) this one:
http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jun/07-is-war-inevitable-by-e-o-wilson#.UPWZJonjms0
January 15th, 2013 at 2:06 pm
Depressive – an interview on Democracy now with Aaron friend and mentor Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig – towards the end of the interview Lessig breaks out in tears as he tells this.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/14/an_incredible_soul_lawrence_lessig_remembers
LAWRENCE LESSIG: Yeah, he was dedicating his life to building a world, a nation at least, but a world that was as idealistic as he was. And he was impatient with us, and he was disappointed with us, with all of us, as we moved through this fight. And he—as he grew impatient, he called on people to do more. And it is incredibly hard for all of us who were close to him to accept the recognition that maybe if we had done more, maybe if we had done more, this wouldn’t have seemed so bleak to him, maybe if we had stopped this prosecution.
I received an email from JSTOR four days before Aaron died, from the president of JSTOR, announcing, celebrating that JSTOR was going to release all of these journal articles to anybody around the world who wanted access—exactly what Aaron was fighting for. And I didn’t have time to send it to Aaron; I was on—I was traveling. But I looked forward to seeing him again—I had just seen him the week before—and celebrating that this is what had happened. So, all of us think there are a thousand things we could have done, a thousand things we could have done, and we have to do, because Aaron Swartz is now an icon, an ideal. He is what we will be fighting for, all of us, for the rest of our lives.
Although the harassment of the government was surely a factor if it was a suicide, this news might well have been a factor if it wasn’t a suicide. If JSTOR was going to release all the articles Aaron downloaded it wouldn’t look good for their case.
January 15th, 2013 at 2:54 pm
Dave, the Guardian article quotes as follows “Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University and Professor Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona concur. Like most other scientists they accept that oxygen levels in the atmosphere in prehistoric times averaged around 30% to 35%, compared to only 21% today – and that the levels are even less in densely populated, polluted city centres and industrial complexes, perhaps only 15 % or lower.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/carbonemissions.climatechange
I can’t find any other confirmation of that. So since it was an article that Guy posted that started the whole thing, take it up with Guy or with
Peter Tatchell who wrote the article. With all that concrete, automobiles and few plants in cities, on days when the air doesn’t move much I suspect it is lower than 21% but I can’t prove that. Since plants are what produce the world’s oxygen, I presume that as forests are replaced by deserts and ocean life dies from warming and acidification, oxygen levels will go down at some point. How could they not? I can’t prove that either.
So as I said, go take it up with Guy or Peter Tatchell – I yield.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:01 pm
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/01/13/greeks-raid-forests-in-search-of-wood-to-heat-homes/
This is not a good sign.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:11 pm
@ Kathy C.
I think the reference from Mae Wan Ho should be good, she’s an excellent biologist who taught at the Open University and I respect her scholarship and integrity, Plimer is a geologist and AGW denier who thinks the Sun is made of molten iron, although he could be correct about O2 levels, I don’t think Tatchell is any sort of scientist, he’s a gay rights campaigner, afaik… I think the word ‘prehistoric’ is highly misleading, usually before written records in human history, not many millions of years ago… I’m on your, and Guy, and Survival Acres side, in this, just that I don’t think the O2 is very high priority, not over the next couple of decades at least…
January 15th, 2013 at 3:40 pm
Hi everyone.
It will be impossible for me to catch up. You knew that already, of course
Next time I will take better notes; this time it was all I could do to scan the 585 comments for links. I did notice the conversation on consciousness and also about whether the loss of oxygen is an actual or exaggerated threat. Both of these topics I hope to pursue. Plus there was a lot on soil and home heating. Bits of music thrown in for inspiration or to soothe, some periodic poetry. Nice affirmations (not too many) and occasional skewerings (also not too many – recognizing that “too” is subjective and “many” is also a relative measurement).
The video @dairymandave just posted, that engages the question, “How much degrowth is enough?” seems very well done to me – yes yes yes despite the fact that Jack doesn’t mention a single detail about climate shift (but give him credit for alluding to it, he is not ignoring it because he’s dumb).
@Arthur Johnson, thank you for the recommendation to focus on reforestation. That’s another theme, albeit minor (at least in this thread), of what different aspects of a solution might be. I know I know there’s NO SOLUTION. But still, why not apply the smarts we (collectively) have in a strategic attempt to counter the known human tendencies of fear-mongering which are the precursor to violence?
@depressivelucidity, thank you for your list of Paul Chefurka’s 5-Step Ladder of Awareness
@Daniel, nice label for this group: “seasoned collapseophiles”
I also enjoyed the cartoon from @Bailey.
Meanwhile, I posted my once/week blogentry this morning: Deepening
As you already know, it’s a helluva ride.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:41 pm
@Riley & depressive lucidity
At this point in the game, everyone knows what the other is planning. The only known unknown is the actual outcome. Or, as the inimitable Iron Mike Tyson so profoundly observed, “everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth”.
Did Great Britain, even in their wildest considerations of possible downside risk, envision that in 6 short years, they would suffer their greatest military defeat to date (Yorktown), and loss of N American colonies, after a simple little foray to confiscate some arms @ Lexington?
Yes, fed.gov will enact martial law & nationalize all resources. Ok, now what? To use another sports metaphor, that’s why they play the game ie in order to actually finds out who wins.
Seems the Soviets, who were much further along the path towards full spectrum security, and also were in possession of thousands of nukes, decided to make a quiet exit after all.
January 15th, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Hi Lidia! Yeah, I’m having a little trouble navigating Yahoo myself! Here is the entire post by Gregory Schaller:
In medicine, there’s something called multisystem organ failure that is essentially a tipping point to organism death …
I wonder if there is a specific tipping point at which when the last straw “happens” (whatever that item is),and then organism (ie ecosystem) death occurs.
Yes nature is obviously resilient, but so are rubber bands until they snap …
Does anyone have any quant type thoughts on this? Is there in vitro evidence for this sort of dynamic? Are their quantifiable limits to resilience?
OR, does the (meta)physical “morphogenetic pattern” persist, leading to continued “life” in a different form.
Just askin!
Thank you Guy for participating with us! (I just started reading your book and it is encouraging in my path to disconnect from the industrial /death system.
GS
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/America2Point0/message/26940
Yes, overall the analogy sounds promising with many parallels, but developing it brings problems in the mechanisms of shutdown: which global catastrophes (heat, radioactivity, etc.) neatly correspond to which organ systems and processes (renal failure, sepsis, etc.)? Anyway, I couldn’t make it work.
January 15th, 2013 at 4:05 pm
part of collapse (Syria):
«Many refugees told the IRC that sexual violence was the main reason that they fled the country, saying gang rapes are often committed in front of family members.
Refugees said girls and women had been kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed.»
http://www.tehrantimes.com/world/104890-staggering-humanitarian-crisis-unfolding-in-syria-aid-agency
January 15th, 2013 at 4:37 pm
NASA Finds 2012 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012-temps.html
“NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.”
9th warmest globally, warmest ever in US.
January 15th, 2013 at 5:20 pm
@ Ben the Donk …the analogy sounds promising with many parallels…I couldn’t make it work…
I think that although there are superficial similarities, nations, infrastructure, economic systems, human physiology, ant colony, bee colony, etc, the organising principles are fundamentally different, that’s why it won’t work, e.g. George Robie’s favourite word, the mystery of homeostasis, how does the human body self-repair, allocate resources, without any central planning authority ? Ant heaps self-organise, until the queen is removed, etc, anarchist autonomous zones self-organise, but no way they’d run the U.S. electricity grid, hahaha… fascinating subject, ecosystems have stability, homeostasis if you like, all kinds of oscillating rhythms and self-organising patterns, pull out the keystone species, you get a different ecology…
Adam Curtis did a good documentary on this, but imo, he got the ecology part all wrong, and I was glad to see comments by a real proper high power ecologist supporting critique of statements in the film. I expect Guy knows a lot on this subject.
January 15th, 2013 at 5:49 pm
Hahahaha, here’s a guy with refreshingly strong views about the MSM ( swears a lot )
http://youtu.be/R-BLEXeY3N8
January 15th, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Should anyone perchance be really interested in comparison of systems, here is a piece by Adam Curtis, referring to the film he made. Imo, he gets the ecology part wrong, and some of the comments ( e.g. biophiliac ) are actually rather more interesting than what Curtis says.
How the ‘ecosystem’ myth has been used for sinister means.
When, in the 1920s, a botanist and a field marshal dreamed up rival theories of nature and society, no one could have guessed their ideas would influence the worldview of 70s hippies and 21st-century protest movements. But their faith in self-regulating systems has a sinister history
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/adam-curtis-ecosystems-tansley-smuts#show-all
January 15th, 2013 at 7:20 pm
@ Ulvfugl
In the spirit of Douglas Adams “so long….and thanks for the cockroaches”
January 15th, 2013 at 7:30 pm
@ Daniel
Hahaha, yup, sums it up doesn’t it… Don Marquis, What The Ants Are Saying…
@ Tom
Re the sad and moving story of your cousin, this is sort of related, in a way, the general brutality of the culture and of humans…
American courts recognize rights to refuse life-saving treatment. So why won’t the State of Connecticut let William Coleman die ?
http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-longest-hunger-strike/
January 15th, 2013 at 8:08 pm
@BtD, I still see many parallels between the ecosystem that is the human body and the ecosystem that we live in on earth. “Sepsis”: that means that smaller organisms and their toxic byproducts have overwhelmed the human body’s capacity for flushing them out or for hosting competing non-toxic organisms in a state of balance. On Earth, humans have crowded out the other organisms resulting in an imbalance and excesses of humans’ particular modern brand of toxic buildup. “Renal failure”: this is the more particular failure of the kidneys to filter out toxins. Imagine that the Phoenix AZ sewage treatment system no longer works—you’d get backups of toxic substances that could lead to a societal condition similar to sepsis.
Organs can fail when exposed to too much heat, or too little oxygen. There are positive feedback loops just as in the earth’s ecology: when you start out with a lung problem, that puts stress on your heart enough to potentially cause you a heart attack or bring on high blood pressure which could lead to a greater risk of stroke. With circulatory problems, you are set up for problems in the extremities, like not being able to feel if you are burning yourself or are getting frostbitten, which circumstances can then lead to tissue death, opportunistic infections and we’re back to sepsis again.
For the body to be healthy, every system has to be working in concert within a healthy range of parameters.
The Yahoo commenter asks “does the (meta)physical ‘morphogenetic pattern’ persist, leading to continued ‘life’ in a different form?” which I consider an absurdity.
As to whether an organism’s capacity for resilience in the face of toxic assaults is quantifiable, I would say in theory yes, but you would have to be in *complete* awareness of *every* parameter (which we can never be), and on top of that any numerical “resiliency quotient” would still be entirely individual to the individual organism. Since we only have one planet and we can never be aware of all the parameters affecting it, these are idle speculations, just as it’s idle for me to try and quantify exactly when my mom will die (persons of all ages diagnosed with IPF usually succumb to that disease within six years, yet it’s been 10 since she has been diagnosed).
I think a preoccupation with life after death as well as an obsession with quantifying natural processes are issues of Control. If you can circumscribe it, predict it and measure it, then it’s happening on your terms.
Men (it tends to be men) have a hard time not being Protagonists.
January 15th, 2013 at 8:25 pm
@ulvfugl “why won’t the State of Connecticut let William Coleman die ?” Surprising that the question is even asked, as it is perfectly consonant with the obsession with Control I mentioned above. The reason why Coleman CAN’T die is the same as why Terri Schiavo MUSTN’T die. Because either outcome (life/death) would be taken away from “the deciders”: the paternalistic State, paternalistic medical entities or paternalistic family members whose interests don’t lie in letting Nature take her course. Remember that authoritarians regarded Schiavo’s non-custodial father as a more valid executor than her legal custodian.
January 15th, 2013 at 8:27 pm
Likewise, it makes no sense to put extra resources into “suicide prevention” for death-row prisoners, but there you have it.
January 15th, 2013 at 9:03 pm
I’ve posted a new entry here. The post takes you, with a cryptic introduction, to an audio interview with me on the topic of climate change. It’s quite elementary.
January 16th, 2013 at 10:08 am
@Lidia
I think a preoccupation with life after death as well as an obsession with quantifying natural processes are issues of Control. If you can circumscribe it, predict it and measure it, then it’s happening on your terms.
Men (it tends to be men) have a hard time not being Protagonists.
The reason why Coleman CAN’T die is the same as why Terri Schiavo MUSTN’T die. Because either outcome (life/death) would be taken away from “the deciders”: the paternalistic State, paternalistic medical entities or paternalistic family members whose interests don’t lie in letting Nature take her course. Remember that authoritarians regarded Schiavo’s non-custodial father as a more valid executor than her legal custodian.
Lidia, these are excellent points that touch on some very deep questions about the human condition. As a male protaganist I concede that a lot of philosophical and theological speculation is driven by the neurotic desire to control the world, including aspects of reality which are almost completely opaque to us. I suppose a lot of this is evolutionary baggage … for most of our existence as a species we were helpless against all sorts of mysterious natural forces, from germs to hurricanes, and we developed certain psychic mechanisms to cope emotionally with our powerlessness. Of course, there’s also the issue of patriarchy and the male fantasy of subjugating the female body.
So many deep, dark issues, so little time.
January 16th, 2013 at 7:58 pm
kathy, re. the global death of plants depleting oxygen by no longer producing it, u’re overlooking something just about as big. as the world dies, plants and animals must go down together. animals consume oxygen. it’s my understanding that the oxygen comp. of the atmosphere has been in near equilibrium for many thousands of years, thanks to the opposing effects of plant production and animal consumption. i think it’s wrong to assume that as the world dies, severe oxygen depletion will occur.
the world has been dying for some time as guy often points out. the anthropogenic mass extinction has begun, with species dying at mass extinction rates. yet oxygen has changed by only about .1% of 21%, going from 20.97 to 20.95% over the period when most of the damage has been done, the past 2-3 centuries of fossil fueled cancerous growth of industrial civ. localized urban pollution resulting in temporal anomalous and unhealthy low levels of o2 should not be conflated with the relatively stable global picture of o2.
(yes, i read the book UNDER A GREEN SKY that asserts anoxic oceans and sulphurous atmospheric conditions have reigned during past mass extinctions. whatever. presently, there is no o2 crisis, imo)
January 16th, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Great choice of music to go out with.
January 17th, 2013 at 9:18 pm
Regarding oxygen. Reading the discussion here, and elsewhere, it’s clear, to me, that atmospheric oxygen is of no concern to us now. If trends show it likely to become a problem in the future, it will be so far away, compared with what’s coming down the road in our immediate futures, that it really should not be brought up as an issue. The kinds of situations that may cause it to become a near term issue will, themselves, cause a pretty catastrophic event, rendering any associated oxygen problem irrelevant. Of course, the unrelated dead areas in oceans are a big immediate concern.
I think this is one of the few pieces of disinfo that Guy puts into his essays and talks. I only recall a couple of others – one is the short-lived data point, in one Arctic measuring station, apparently indicating a surge of methane. There is now no data to support the notion of current huge scale methane releases in the Arctic (though that doesn’t mean they aren’t occurring). The other was the point about the diurnal temperature range increase of 1 degree C during the post 9/11 air shutdown, which was taken to be an overall global temperature increase of 1 degree C.
So much of what Guy points out is cause for serious concern that he really doesn’t need to include dubious reports, which can be jumped on by the deniers.
January 26th, 2013 at 6:28 pm
In Oct.- Nov. 2011 lead researcher Igor Semiletov observed hundreds of one kilometer methane plumes exiting from the surface of the Arctic ocean.
His observations exceeded all the feared possible methane releases from the arctic sea bed.
Even Semiletov was shocked by the number & size of the plumes.
IT HAS BEEN MORE THAN ONE YEAR,& THERE HAS BEEN ABSOLUTELY NO UPDATES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE OBSERVED & REPORTED GIANT PLUMES OF METHANE.
This crucial information is, most assuredly, being suppressed.
This obvious suppression from above is strong evidence that runaway global heating has arrived with an accelerating vengeance.
The recent American Geophysical Union meeting in Dec. 2012 made no mention of any methane plumes anywhere.
We can be sure that The methane plumes did NOT disappear.
It is NOT a reach to claim that this censored information holds the key to our stay on th eplanet
Our jig is up.
January 31st, 2013 at 9:29 am
One concern over looked by Guy and all posters is the concern that how our mind developed is mirrored in how our society developed. The natural failure we see is inherent in our own mental system. That system of thought needs to be healed and an alternative created. Simply living as we imagine we did in the past is doubtful to be enough. To heal or change our thinking will take as much if not more diligent effort to accomplish. This factor is little understood and even less acknowledged. It is however one of the number one drivers in our headlong race for extinction. When we heal our psychic capacity to a balanced system with nature, we will find many answers and ways to potentially head off our cataclysmic behavior on the whole. It would not be a waste of effort to co-join these efforts to change thought and so behavior too. So beware and be aware what must be held in one hand is that what we perceive in general is false or based on old paradigms and fixes us in the trap of the system we wish to get beyond. None are exempt yet. We are not beyond the system in our minds yet and the conversation here points to that very clearly.
February 14th, 2013 at 6:21 am
Hey Guy,
I was wondering if you have any links to the large scale assessments you’ve posted. I’m having trouble finding them. And google searches are all bringing me back to this page.
February 20th, 2013 at 3:44 am
You did all the hard work, Guy. All I have done is to help publicise it! I am therefore almost embarrassed that you have inserted a link to my blog in the Introduction here. However, I will just stick to being very grateful for the reciprocated publicity! Furthermore, I hope you will feel entirely free to use the links (I added into the HTML on my blog) in your list of Positive Feedback mechanisms here. Either way, keep up the excellent work; and I will keep drawing attention to it!
March 5th, 2013 at 7:03 pm
Fantastic advice.. and what better voice to have reflecting it than the earth angel Joni Mitchell.. Bring back the 70s!
March 10th, 2013 at 7:05 pm
Liars and hypocrites abound on both sides unfortunately, Atamai Village is used as an example of living for the future yet the reality is quite the opposite. This so called ‘village’ doesn’t exist, there is only one rather ramshackle temporary hut on site. The ‘developers’ over 6 years have spent countless dollars and hours on carbon spewing diggers shifting thousands of tonnes of soil to no avail and on top of that it would appear that the erstwhile developers are actively being investigated by the authorities for various ‘irregularities’ – so buyer beware!!!
March 20th, 2013 at 8:35 pm
Thank you for this important information
March 26th, 2013 at 11:20 pm
I seem to recall in the late 80′s, a guy from the CSIRO here in Australia, warning of the impacts of the way things were going if there was not immediate change in the way we treated the planet. Lots of us then were listening and made our efforts, but it seems the masses were unable or unwilling to partake.
How long does it take for humans to get it?
April 7th, 2013 at 6:05 am
Methane hydrates.
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/04/methane-hydrates.html
April 7th, 2013 at 7:40 am
The evidence is very convincing that a society will destroying itself if it decides to live by the idea that it can have infinite growth on a finite planet. But as the discussion proceeds, it seems that few seem to taken notice of the fact that the dominant entities on this planet, the ones that we have now given nearly total power to rule over us, are corporations whose sole goal is to have infinite growth. Does anyone else think this might be an area that requires some of our focus and attention?
April 7th, 2013 at 11:04 am
Geoengineering Could Trigger Disaster in Parts of Africa
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/geoengineering-could-trigger-disaster-in-parts-of-africa-15820
April 7th, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Guy, I think that there is a mistake in the link regarding depletion of atmospheric oxygen. It claims that increasing CO2 is displacing O2 in the air. The oxygen content of normal air is 21% by volume. CO2 is only about 400 ppm (or 0.040%), both measured by volume. The O2 levels may indeed be dropping in cities, etc., but there is no way they are being displaced by increasing CO2. One is a major component of normal air, and the other is minor to trace in abundance. You address many worrisome trends, but O2 depletion of the air is simply not among them.
Cheers,
Doom
April 7th, 2013 at 10:15 pm
FWIW:
In my area, east-central Asia, I have measured atmospheric O2 with three different sensors from November of last year to March of this year. The results have been 17.00% +- .1%
C02 has been over 1,000ppm. I will be taking ad hoc measurements until mid-June.
April 7th, 2013 at 11:33 pm
ulvfugl
From NTE…
“Trouble is, while all the verycleverpeople (TM) enquire into where the heat goes and what it does, and get more data and write more papers, this is all entirely irrelevant to the rest of us. What WE needed to happen was for emissions to be cut, so that we don’t get cooked, so that the children and their children don’t get cooked..”
Do you remember where I wrote at the age of 12 I decided not to own and drive motor vehicles?
That is 32 years(less 6 for 18) of average Anex-1 Nation male motor vehicle habits less in the atmosphere, (plus the carbon footprint from public transport, bicycle and passenger rides in private cars, vans, trucks hitchhiking I actually did use).
Would I have stuck to that if I was only relying on dreams and non-scientific rationale ?
No.
I use both, and your characterisation of me is inaccurate when you suggest I don’t use or heed or honour scientific work and data. Baloney! I am putting the emphasis on my intuition, without ignoring the science climate data.
Rant all you want but it is still largely about yourself that you rant, all the while holding the NTE of life up to everyone else.
I have advocated understanding the limitations of the ‘Scientism’ highly active in this phase of human culture, drawn a long bow, and pegged that as par for ‘Adolescent stage thinking’, pointed out other functions, long suppressed in Western nations and their colonies, Feeling and Intuition, and when I use them, communicate some of what they are informing me, and why, all you can do is call me a ‘nutjob’, or some such degraded term.
This is why I wrote before I feel sorry for you, even as I admire you. Full respect, I mean it. But you lack the said communication of compassion needed to be social here, full stop.
An this…?
“Ozman talks about ‘debunking science’, a feat of which he is utterly incapable, because he would first need to acquire an understanding of what science is. He has never achieved that understanding, so he tilts at windmills.
Science needs to be attacked, must be attacked, deserves criticism, because it falls short of the ideal in many ways, but the attack is worthless unless it comes from an intellectually respectable quarter, e.g. Sheldrake, or Charles Tart, people who actually comprehend something about the scientific method, and the history and philosophy surrounding the subject.
Sadly, dear old Ozman is not yet in that league”
Here , this is priceless. You agree science needs a good looking at, but I, OzMan, am not worthy. So there it is.
I actually do have a handle on Science, contrary to your assertion. Pretend otherwise if it reinforces your position on my unsuitability to enter the debate.
Have it both ways ulvfugl, that way you always get to feel superior, and can whinge when someone else has something to offer, from experience.
Ho hum. If I call myself ‘Sheldrake’ or ‘Rutherford’ I would get some respect….just as I suspected, ulvfugl, you are prone to credentialism – loosely defined here as the elitist practice of only associating in meaningful debate with credentialed, notable, publicly known individuals, for the purposes of Kudos by association, (a hubris by association in fact)It is called brownnosing for good reasons.
What a shame.
Not that I have anything against him in particular, but go and brownnose with Paul CH. about big game meta ideas, and get lost in the huge-ium implications of all the entropic implications. That will keep your highbrow elitist high functioning mind occupied. Leave the subtler questions of belief and the nature of reality to better equipped(had the dreams yourself have you? Had the 52 cards all correct have you? No then you don’t qualify….Ha Ha.)
We will broach the actual difficult questions needing answering, ‘What is real?’
Your experience ulvfugl is not up to it, sorry.
You will find that many, many people, without any other distinguishing ‘notable biography’, have experienced stuff like me. My experiences are not unique, but they are my experiences, which I will not deny, nor rationalise away as ‘subjective’ and therefore not evidence of anything meaningful, nor ‘real’.
I will be happy to trade notes with them, who are qualified to do so.
Should you acquire qualifications in these non-scientific areas, please feel free to bring them to my attention, and I will look over your notes and comment accordingly.
Wow, that was empowering….not!
Best wishes. Full respect.
April 8th, 2013 at 12:49 am
“How much oxygen is needed to remain in the air before a person goes unconscious?”
Replies:
This would vary greatly depending upon the condition of the person.
The following site offers an approximation:
http://ehs.ucdavis.edu/hs/ConfSpace/index.cfm
* 20.9-23.5 percent: Maximum permissible oxygen level. No effect.
* 20.9 percent: Percentage of oxygen found in normal air. No effect.
* 19.5 percent: Minimum permissible oxygen level. No effect.
* 15-19 percent: Decreased ability to work strenuously. May
impair coordination and may induce early symptoms with individuals that have coronary, pulmonary, or circulatory problems.
* 12-15 percent: Respiration and pulse increase; impaired coordination, perception, and judgment occurs.
* 10-12 percent: Respiration further increases in rate and depth; poor judgment and bluish lips occur.
* 8-10 percent: Symptoms include mental failure, fainting, unconsciousness, an ash-colored-face, blue lips, nausea, and vomiting.
* 6-8 percent: 8 minutes – 100 percent fatal; 6 minutes – 50 percent fatal; 4-5 minutes – recovery with treatment.
* 4-6 percent: Coma in 40 seconds, convulsions, respiration ceases – death.
Steve Sample
Per the above information, Anthony, your area measures in the “Decreased ability to work strenuously” level. The 1000 ppm CO2 is high, but not dangerous. You may have some folks with heart and lung problems seeing ill effects. The healthy air O2 range is actually very narrow, from 19.5 to 23.5 %.
April 8th, 2013 at 1:00 am
Also Anthony, what is the average elevation of your area? The values quoted above are for standard temperature and pressure (STP). You may have all major gases at lower apparent concentration unless you are correcting to STP. If so, then your CO2 values are above 1000 ppm.
April 8th, 2013 at 1:59 am
@ Ozman
What IS all that gibberish ? Completely irrelevant nonsense about you ?
I took that argument over to NTE, because this a thread about latest update to climate change, and the other thread, to ecological collapse, and you wanted to ‘debunk science’.
I’m more than happy to discuss science versus non-science, etc, with you and anyone else, over on NTE. There have already BEEN recent very lengthy arguments here on this blog, which tested everyone’s patience. Have you completely forgotten that, already ?
You claim that you don’t accept what Guy says on this blog in his lectures, re NTE and the climate, because your dreams tell you differently. I say you’re living in cloud cuckoo land. I say I go with what the physics, biology, ecology, climatology, etc, and what is being observed in the Arctic. That’s what matters, to me, the rest of life on Earth.
Does that mean science is perfect, knows everything, is beyond criticism ? Of course it does not. I never said that. But it’s a damn sight more useful to us than Ozman’s dreams.
Now, if you want to argue about this, fine, on NTE. But I will say no more HERE, because it’ll only cause further acrimony and discord for everyone else, which you know bloody well, because you stir up shit as often as anyone and then feign innocence.
Just a click away
http://neartermextinction.ning.com/forum/topics/the-floating-random-science-topic-thread
April 8th, 2013 at 6:25 am
ulvfugl
Shall I be a monkey and obey?
I think not.
Look you try to frame my comments as me disregarding the Scientific evidence, and Guy’s general thesis on catastrophic climate change and NTE as though I break some golden rule, by not completely accepting that postulated future conclusion of NTE. I only refuse to endorse that proposal because it is not done, and cannot be done until it is done -get it?
It is very likely, even very, very likely, I agree, but I won’t bleat something if it is not based on a full understanding of ‘REALITY’ OK?
You don’t seem to get that Scientific data is Scientific, and therefore not explanatory, or even able to, account for what is going on in the complete universe.
I don’t give a shit if you want to go outside and fight it out, I don’t fight, it wont do any good.
The NTE site can be or not I don’t care.
I brought up Spirituality way back because the dominant message here was only from a scientific POV. That view is not baloney IMO, but it is not the whole story –can you see that?
You may, but you may just be undecided on what else goes on, fine, so if you want a lesson in logic here it is.
If you just rely on the science to evaluate our FUBAR-ed predicament, then we are done, I would be there with bells on, the evidence is overwhelming and even a monkey playing with his nuts could see that.
What I am pointing to, by way of specific evidence that challenges some of the basic precepts within Science, like precognition, while dreaming or awake, both of which I have directly experienced(without hallucination)is that the present assumptions of Science are not sound and at best incomplete in how they describe and account for actual reality.
So I am putting the view, even it you disagree, or don’t approve, that Science is only describing a subset of how the universe operates. Too bad if you don’t approve. My comments are not only for you, and they weren’t in the first place here, they were a different view from what was predominating.
You want to enforce some Scientific agendas regarding evidence proves NTE. Well until we are all dead, it is only a thesis, theory, and well argues possibility – agreed, looking very likely.
But it aint over yet.
I do not use that view as an excuse to overlook and disregard the evidence, nor Guy’s view that NTE is a done deal.
I don’t refute the evidence, I tell anyone who will listen,(not yet sandwich board style), but I am also aware of other processes, which are yet not well understood by Science generally, and therefore, not willing to go the whole hog and endorse NTE as a done deal.
I don’t say you or Guy are ‘wrong’, just not looking outside that Scientific box, as it were – and no insults intended.
Anyway, you seem to have completely forgotten the vast implications of the screwdriver story you wrote here about.
That is something I would not forget so easily.
Would you care to explain away precognition, which does not fit the Science Orthodoxy?
No, I don’t suppose there is ‘time’ for that.
If you want to dismiss precognition as a fact, or real, go ahead, but lets be clear, that Scientific ideology which produces the evidence you are holding so near and dear denies it too, and can’t explain Quantum uncertainty either, it can’t even find the pissy small funding to look into it properly – why is that I wonder?
Answer: because they know that they will have to broaden the concepts and reality envelope they presently milk us with in order to go there. No one wants to who is anywhere near the power buttons, because it means reputation.
Sheldrake is having a go. But he is considered a heretic by the ‘other scientists’.
My dreams do not chart the future in detail, and I never said they did, but the very fact that almost all in the series I mentioned, and recorder have, has a kind of empirical tone to it for me at least.
I am leaving the door open on the real outcome for the planet, while you want to proclaim NTE is all over and shut the door.
Even Guy does not push so hard, and if you pish so hard, you may just add to the ‘certainty’ of it happening.
But of course, how could your attitude or observation effect the experiment….?
Are we there yet…?
Read your own blog for Blarneys sake!
April 8th, 2013 at 6:36 am
“I made a pilgrimage to save this humans race
Never comprehending the race has long gone bye….”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuN6gs0AJls
April 8th, 2013 at 6:49 am
@ Ozman
As I said, you’re in Lalaland, imo.
I don’t care what you do. You’re the one who said you could write an essay ‘debunking science’.
Nothing you’ve said in this comment is of any value or carries any weight or throws any light on anything. You tell me to read my own blog, that I wrote. Why ? You think I’ve forgotten what I wrote there ? I post stuff there every day, i know where I’m at Oz, on all these issues.
Obviously, everything I argued HERE went over your head, or YOU have forgotten, just as what Guy says in his talks and on his blog posts, over recent years, seems to have made no impression upon you.
It really doesn’t matter to ME at all, what goes on in your head, does it. Just that when you respond to something I’ve written telling me about your kung fu class, whatever, I’m bound to reply. Was all a waste of time, as it turned out. No more.
April 8th, 2013 at 7:36 am
ulvfugl
Obviously the nexus of Postmodernism is way over yours.
April 8th, 2013 at 9:08 am
@ Ozman
You think I am not familiar with postmodernism ? I see the critique that postmodernism brought to science as extremely valuable. But it has absolutely no effect upon what happens to the Arctic ice and what happens to us as result. All that you do is indulge in wishful thinking. Lalaland. Sorry, I can’t help you.
April 8th, 2013 at 8:12 pm
at this little place we call The Land the frogs recently began to errupt in opera. up on Old Lady Bug Hill a shadowed snowpack still hugs the edge of the tree line. the Great White Watcher was covered again by half a foot of snow this weekend and his sisters stand in their ice palaces. we found a small snail in the herb spiral. where might she have come from? and out the bedroom window to my awaking eye a brown hummingbird sneaking a peak , scouting friend or foe. we spoke softly to the passing monarchs and one came to fluttering back to bless us with her gifts . a flock of blue jays held an afternoon picnick. slugs. slugs. slugs. the red huckleberries are budding. the beavers work their ancient pond. the darling little salmon come down the stream. and the first time in almost a year the powerful yelps, yips, and howls of coyote. Harvey The Bear took a big fat shit on the plateau under a giant maple above the upper pond that looks down the valley watershed and up to the mountainous jewels. we don’t blame him. the kale is up, so is the chard, so are the peas, strawberries, potatoes, oats’n barley, little baby beat seedlings, and the chickabooms lay away! the earth still holds much. moonbeam lovemaking, star gazing, running naked in the rain through the forest, climbing trees, shooting bow and arrows, chopping wood, reading artistic autobiographies, getting high, wrestling with dogs.
only seek out the marvelous
April 9th, 2013 at 12:54 am
I didn’t ask for your help.
I never said postmodernism was ‘connected’ to the Arctic sea ice. Or at least I never postulated a direct connection.
I don’t need to do that, but you are trying to disprove my POV by setting this as the crazy criteria to defeat my POV.
I merely point to huge holes in the ‘Scientific’ conceptions of reality and you think I am connecting Arctic sea ice loss and ‘silly mind powers’ gibberish type stuff.
You only have data for scientific quantities, not for all the other ‘stuff’ going on, and thus can’t comment on it.
Piss on my POV all you like, call it La La Land if you like, but you aren’t the arbiter, and lucky for all of us that is so.
It is a small box you are in there, and I feel sorry for you. One day you will have to leave that box, and good luck for that stage of your journey.
The temperature, the physical quantifiable constraints on life do matter and will bring great disruption, but you and your science have no way of understanding the other forces working in the REAL domain we inhabit.
I can’t help you if you stay in your box, shades drawn, waiting for NTE by the numbers.
Best wishes with that.
April 9th, 2013 at 4:42 am
Over on Doomstead Diner i found this:
http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/08/10/geotectonic-ocean-heat-transfer-theory-revisited/
the last comment is pointed at Guy
April 9th, 2013 at 9:10 am
In reading this article found at Resilience.org http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-04-09/probing-the-reasons-behind-the-changing-pace-of-warming and find it to be in conflict with many assertions made at this site. Not being a scientist, though extremely concerned about the climate situation, I am relying on the brighter folks here to tell me why the studies mentioned in this article that point to a “plateau” in the pace of warming are incorrect. I would have assumed that the positive feedback loops often referred to here would preclude this leveling in the pace of warming. Are the scientific studies quoted in the article flawed in some basic fashion?
This is an honest question. I am not engaging in debate or seeking to insult or be insulted.
April 9th, 2013 at 9:30 am
@ Tom
Nice to see you around, Tom.
That Reverse Engineer is a pretty formidable fellow. I read all that stuff before. Not sure that either he or G. Tverberg are scientifically qualified to say how much of a problem there is. I don’t think the mainstream guys see it that way, do they ?
Nice to see Guy regarded as a brick wall
April 9th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Thanks for your question, Mo Flora. The article at Resilience.org is typical for that site and also for Yale Environment 360. The primary concern of the article is that feedbacks might be triggered, if we’re not careful. There is no mention of 10 feedbacks already triggered, or the importance of 1 C, or the importance of collapse in stopping runaway greenhouse, or the inability to extract carbon from the atmosphere, or the profound melting of ice in the Arctic. There’s a reason my writing never appears at Resilience.org: It’s too dire (aka too honest).
April 9th, 2013 at 3:01 pm
@ Mo Flora
I read the article, and the answer to your question can be found in the article itself. The problem is the question is a bit of a misnomer, and the how Pearce chooses to end the essay surely doesn’t help us parse the subtle distinctions being referenced. The “plateau” is only in reference to the atmosphere, from the ground up. However, earths largest heat sinks are the oceans. Therefore, the last ten year plateau in air temperature, is not to be confused with a plateau in overall global warming, where we have seen an accelerated warming in the oceans, especially at greater depths than previously thought. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to why we’ve seen a slowing in rising air temps, it could be any number of things.
Here is an article that might help explain it a little better:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/why-the-globe-hasnt-warmed-much-for-the-past-decade-15788
April 9th, 2013 at 4:00 pm
Off topic but…
‘Maralinga’s radioactive fallout still blowing in the wind’
http://nuclearnewsaustralia.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/maralingas-radioactive-fallout-still-blowing-in-the-wind/#more-555
“Australia, dust storms and the fallout Britain left behind
Idealist.ws 1 Oct 09 “………What is Maralinga? How did plutonium get there?
In the 1950s and 1960s, Australia was the host of a handful of U.K.-sponsored atmospheric nuclear tests and related nuclear experiments on the Montel Bello Islands (off the northwest coast) and at Emu Field and Maralinga, both located in the Great Victoria Desert in South Australia. At Maralinga2 between 1957 and 1963, the U.K. conducted several plutonium dispersal experiments, dubbed ‘minor trials’ (very similar to the ones conducted at the Nevada Test Site; see: safety experiments), which scattered radioactivity (tens of pounds of Plutonium 239) far and wide into the bush.
Through the 1990s, the Emu and Maralinga sites were physically blocked off by a 100-mile radius security zone, which might have been a good enough barrier for un-remediated (not cleaned up) nuclear sites but in reality is no match for a dust storm the size of several hurricanes. (If the same sized-radius were blocked off around the Nevada Test Site, it would force the evacuation of Las Vegas.)
Although the ‘Maralinga Rehabilitation Project’ – finished in 2000 – cleaned up some of the ‘minor trial’ plutonium, not all of the plutonium is cleaned up and the waste burial practices have been SERIOUSLY3 called into question mostly because the plutonium was buried only 3 to 4 meters deep. Australia’s Senator Lyn Allison noted in 2003: “No matter how many reports are produced, the fact of the matter is that 22kg of plutonium is buried in simple, unlined earth trenches, some of it just a couple of metres below the surface.” The Sunday Age article titled “Agenda – Maralinga’s Afterlife” on May 11, 2003, stated that: ‘The vitrification method was abandoned by MARTAC three-quarters of the way through the project, in favour of the much cheaper trench-method. Most of the waste – including broken-up vitrified material – was then buried in unlined pits covered with just three metres of clean soil. The rest was left on the desert surface. As a result, an area the size of metropolitan London – 300 square kilometres – remains infected with lethal plutonium that will stay active for a quarter of a million years.’ That section of land is dubbed the ‘North West Plume,’ located northwest of Taranaki and contaminated largely from the ‘Vixen B’ trials …………. Australian authorities have denied there is any radiological health problem with the red dust………………………………. Although it is commendable that ARPANSA acknowledged that radioactive material was in the red dust that coated most of the populated areas in Australia and New Zealand, ARPANSA’s Burns is saying more to allay fears than educating Australians about the consequences of their actual radiation exposure to the dust…………… Even if the winds significantly diluted and reduced the concentration of the Maralinga soil-laden plutonium in the red-dusty air, it will still be extremely toxic because it takes just one millionth of a gram of plutonium to deliver a lethal dose and even more minute quantities (billionths of a gram) might induce cancer. Theoretically, even a single atom (particle) of plutonium has the ability, from its extremely strong alpha radiation (like a very strong, mini X-ray machine), to produce free radicals and alter DNA in our body’s cells – both are precursors to cancerous growth.
Since any population exposure to radiation increases the risk of cancer in a population, the dispersion of plutonium dust from Maralinga over thousands of miles of populated Australia has increased Aussie’s cancer burden………. In the Southern Hemisphere, wherever this red dust is now lingering, if it is brought down to Earth by rain it will contaminate surface areas (shingles, pavement, cars, crops, etc…) and water supplies as long as the radiation’s half-life, which can be hundreds or thousands of years. Ingesting radiation from contaminated foodstuffs and water constitutes the greatest danger from radiation exposure.”
So if anyone was considering migrating here to Australia to get away from the ‘inevitable’ Northern Hemisphere climate catastrophe, be warned, we breathe the Plutonium, Strontium, and Caesium from tests in the deserts from the 1950′s.
April 10th, 2013 at 5:05 am
Hey OzMan:
It’s not off topic if it’s related to NTE, right? Well here’s some more information on that same topic:
http://rt.com/usa/us-nuclear-reactors-should-replaced-592/
(the article opens with a panoramic view of Limerick – plumes of steam from which i can see from the Rt 30 by-pass on my way to work)
‘Irreparable’ safety issues: All US nuclear reactors should be replaced, ‘Band-Aids’ won’t help
All 104 nuclear reactors currently operational in the US have irreparable safety issues and should be taken out of commission and replaced, former chairman of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Gregory B. Jaczko said.
The comments, made during the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, are “highly unusual” for a current or former member of the safety commission, according to The New York Times. Asked why he had suddenly decided to make the remarks, Jaczko implied that he had only recently arrived at these conclusions following the serious aftermath of Japan’s tsunami-stricken Fukushima Daichii nuclear facility.
“I was just thinking about the issues more, and watching as the industry and the regulators and the whole nuclear safety community continues to try to figure out how to address these very, very difficult problems,” which were made more evident by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, he said. “Continuing to put Band-Aid on Band-Aid is not going to fix the problem.”
According to the former chairman, US reactors that received permission from the nuclear commission to operate for an additional 20 years past their initial 40-year licenses would not likely last long. He further rejected the commission’s proposal for a second 20-year extension, which would leave some American nuclear reactors operating for some 80 years.
Jaczko’s comments are quite significant as the US faces a mass retirement of its reactors and nuclear policy largely revolves around maintaining existing facilities, rather than attempting to go through the politically hazardous process of financing and breaking ground on new plants.
Though the US maintains a massive naval nuclear program, all of the country’s current civilian reactors began construction in 1974 or earlier, and a serious incident at Three Mile Island in 1979, along with an economic recession, essentially caused new projects to be scrapped.
A modest revival of enthusiasm for nuclear power emerged in the early part of the last decade, leading to the construction of four reactors at existing facilities within the last three years, slated to be completed by 2020. Despite the lack of new projects, the US is still the world’s biggest producer of nuclear power, which represents 19% of its total electrical output.
Fittingly, Jaczko’s comments came during a panel discussion of the Fukushima incident, which has brought greater attention to aging US reactors – some of which were quite similar to the General Electric-designed models overwhelmed by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011.
In response to those comments, Marvin S. Fertel, president and chief executive of the Nuclear Energy Institute, told the Times that the country’s nuclear power grid has, is, and will operate safely.
“US nuclear energy facilities are operating safely,” said Fertel. “That was the case prior to Greg Jaczko’s tenure as Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman. It was the case during his tenure as NRC chairman, as acknowledged by the NRC’s special Fukushima response task force and evidenced by a multitude of safety and performance indicators. It is still the case today.”
Since the first nuclear reactor went operational in the US, there have been very few fatal incidents at nuclear power facilities, though there were a number of high profile stories written over the inherent dangers of large nuclear reactors during the mid-1970s. One of the most recent incidents at a US reactor was in April of 2013, when an employee was killed at the Arkansas Nuclear One plant while moving part of a generator.
Jaczko served as chairman of the nuclear regulatory agency since 2009, and according to the Times resigned in 2012 following conflicts with colleagues. He was seen as an outlying vote on a number of safety issues, and had advocated for more stringent safety improvements during his tenure.
April 10th, 2013 at 12:57 pm
When thinking about radioactive materials it is wise to consider the half-life.
Isotopes with a half-life in the range 1 millisecond to a few days have effectively completely disintegrated after a year.
Isotopes with a half-life measured in tens of thousands of years or more disintegrate at such a slow rate the chance of being hit by sufficient particles to cause serious genetic damage is very low unless the concentration of isotopes is high, i.e. a lump.
It is the isotopes with half-lives in the range 1 month to 1000 years that tend to be the most dangerous. They hang around for a relatively long time emitting huge a huge amount of potentially damaging radiation.
Six times ten to the power twenty-three is a useful number to remember when thinking about atoms.
As most of us know, radio-isotopes within the body are far more dangerous than outside the body.
The cilia that line the upper respiratory passages and coughing do a wonderful jobs in bringing undesirable material upwards. However, it is important to spit, not swallow.
April 10th, 2013 at 1:00 pm
Oops, repetition error there. Sorry. Edit function would be useful.
April 11th, 2013 at 5:29 am
This doesn’t bode well for Japan:
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/04/10/russian-scientist-predicts-massive-earthquake-to-hit-japan-by-end-of-2014/
Russian Scientist Predicts “Massive Earthquake” to Hit Japan by End of 2014
During the European Geosciences Union (EGU) Convention in Vienna on 9 April, a Russian scientist declared that Japan would face a giant earthquake of magnitude 9.0 within the next year and a half.
Alexei Ryubushin of the Schmidt Institute of the Physics of the Earth presented his findings which were arrived at from collecting low frequency seismic noise data through F-net.
F-net is a “full range seismograph network of Japan” which promotes earthquake research by providing high sensitivity seismic data, crustal deformation observations and other information which could be useful in monitoring the behavior of earthquakes.
During the convention he pointed out that there is still stress remaining on the crust following the Great Tohoku Earthquake of 2011. However, he predicts the next quake to take place in another location.
“From 2013 to 2014 a great earthquake will occur in the region of the Nankai Trough (a trench that extends along the bottom of the sea from Shizuoka to Kyushu pictured below).”
(see map and remainder of article)
April 12th, 2013 at 2:35 am
Small quibble with the way “At the 11:20 mark of this video, climate scientist Paul Beckwith indicates Earth could warm by 6 C within a decade” is portrayed. Yeah, he sort of said that but not as a prediction of what might, could or will happen to the planet by 2023 (10 years from this year). I think the way you presented it, Guy, wasn’t the way Beckwith meant it.
April 12th, 2013 at 7:31 pm
The earth’s warming by 6 degrees within a decade, may occur earlier than 2023. Have we already caused runaway global warming? Does anyone really know for sure?
I suggest that we end modern industrial society by tomorrow at noon, and sit back and wait and see. If we determine that we haven’t already passed the tipping point, then we can return back to business as usual, until we do.
April 21st, 2013 at 3:36 am
Hi Guy. Thanks for the update. It was the blatent intellectual incoherence of James Delingpole that drew me into the blogosphere* over two years ago… I still cannot work out whether he actually believes his own message or is just doing it to annoy those he calls “liberals” and “greens”. If it is the latter, he truly is a fool who has been duped by big business into doing their dirty work for them.
* See http://lackofenvironment.wordpress.com/background/
April 28th, 2013 at 8:12 pm
From a VT biweekly.
We need to fight the present fossil fuel battles, but wouldn’t a prudent course of action also include winning the war, so that we stop burning fossil fuels in time to save us from unnecessary destruction? Bill McKibben states we need to reduce CO2 emissions and develop alternative energy resources. I agree. But imagine a future of windmills, solar panels and wave generators encroaching upon our land and waterscape, while we are still drawn into Kunstler’s “reality mandated economic contraction.”
McKibben declares, without the incumbrance of research, that there is no energy silver bullet to replace fossil fuels. Fortunately for humanity, he is profoundly mistaken. If he bothered to look around, and not worry about his current career and social standing, he would see there is compelling evidence to the contrary. If you approach the subject of extraterrestrials and zero-point energy with an honest look at the evidence, you’ll be hard pressed to find a valid reason to be derisive. Go to the website disclosureproject.org to read about the Disclosure Project, which is working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems.
“The earth has been visited by people from other worlds who are not malicious but in fact concerned for the future of humanity. A cabal of military, industrial and financial interests have kept this contact and what we have learned from it secret for over 60 years. Their secrecy is meant to suppress the knowledge that can liberate the world from the yoke of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power and replace the current world order with one of new energy and true freedom.” Remember: If the people will lead, the leaders will follow.
We intend to give it our best shot and invite anyone who feels they can make a tangible contribution to our efforts – with finances, with creativity and intelligence, with sweat and effort – to step forward and get on with it.
May 2nd, 2013 at 5:00 pm
If you’re too busy to read the evidence presented below, here’s the bottom line: On a planet 4 C hotter than baseline, all we can prepare for is human extinction (from Oliver Tickell’s 2008 synthesis in the Guardian). According to an informed assessment of BP’s Energy Outlook 2030, published in January 2013, global average temperature of Earth will hit the 4 C mark in 2030. In the face of near-term human extinction, Americans view the threat as distant and irrelevant, as illustrated by a 22 April 2013 article in the Washington Post based on poll results that echo the long-held sentiment that elected officials should be focused on the industrial economy, not far-away minor nuisances such as climate change.
Actually BPs Energy Outlook 2030 never says anything even close to that. If you search the document for “4 C” you get zero results. (I read the entire thing and unless I missed something major it predicted nothing of the sort. The source you linked also said nothing about “hurtling towards 4 C by 2035″.
What it actually said if you’d bothered to read it was that by 2035 we will be locked into a scenario that will mean 4 C of warming by the end of the century. Even if he did predict 4 C by 2030 it is worth remembering that he is a JOURNALIST not a Climate Scientist. The chart which is where I’m assuming you get your 4 Celsius number is projections for warming by 2100 based on current emissions scenarios. I’d highly advise you to look at the chart again.
Next your positive feedback loops. Yes they are concerning however you exaggerate. We do not know how much they will contribute to warming in the future. However your claim to have positive knowledge they will cause the human species to go extinct is at the very least hyperbole and at the worst intentionally disingenuous. Many respectable climate scientists are very concerned with positive feedbacks. However you can’t know how fast or slowly they will kick in. I will remind you the earth has been at 5000 PPM before and life survived.
“An increasing number of scientists agree that warming of 4 to 6 C causes a dead planet. And, they go on to say, we’ll be there by 2060. The ultra-conservative International Energy Agency, on the other hand, concludes that, “coal will nearly overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017 … without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change.” At the 11:20 mark of this video, climate scientist Paul Beckwith indicates Earth could warm by 6 C within a decade. If you think his view is extreme, consider the reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years published in Science in March 2013. One result is shown in the figure below.”
In the article you linked about the “dead planet” no one actually said it was dead. Also an “increasing number” by my count means 2 that were mentioned directly. Secondly I watched the Paul Beckwith video. I have no doubt that he is a smart guy but he is one scientist in thousands. He is the ONLY Climate scientist I have EVER heard say we could go from 15-21 C within a decade. I would remind people to take everything with a grain of salt for as the great Carl Sagan (Whom you are fond of quoting yourself said) “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
Regards,
Eric
May 2nd, 2013 at 5:45 pm
Posting my second (And presumably last comment). After doing a bit of research it turns out the IEA number of 6 C by 2050 is completely bogus. He was misquoted and Reuters has since issued a correction which can be found here
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/05/30/co2-iea-idUKL5E8GO6B520120530
As far as I can tell nearly every source Professor Mcpherson links is either
A: Written by a reporter with no actual knowledge of climate science
B: Misquotes a climate scientist
C: Doesn’t actually say what he claims it does at all.
As far as I can tell his two primary sources for believing we’re in for extinction within 20 years were
An article by a reporter in the VanCouver Sun and a misquote which has since been corrected by an official at the IEA. I’m not saying climate change is a non issue- In fact I happen to think that it is humanities BIGGEST issue. However hyperbole and exaggerated threats serve no purpose but too slow down the response and make people lose hope. I appreciate your time and I hope I have contributed to the discussion in a meaningful way.
Best Wishes,
Eric
May 5th, 2013 at 10:32 am
There is an another positive feedback which is massive ice loss on land and sea level rise can cause volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Earthquakes on Artic region can destabilize methane clathrate deposits on the continental shelf.
Below is sources I found and there is certainly more.
http://news.yahoo.com/climate-change-may-increase-volcanic-eruptions-144852255.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDWNPbGjm38
May 6th, 2013 at 9:45 am
Will you be responding here before you go to the Limits conference?
I am anxious to see your response to Eric, and hope that it is thorough. I am not taking sides but rather see this as a golden opportunity for you to carry out your mandate.
Also, I agree with NTE, but need more back up detail regarding your estimate of five years at most for the US southwest. For example,is it negated by the plateau in atmospheric temps that was referenced??
I am educated to the doctoral level, so I am good at research and evaluation of evidence; but I would so appreciate time-saving help with these questions because I am writing my own opus (on the meaning of human existence) and time is SOOOO short.
Many thanks and blessings!
May 6th, 2013 at 11:17 am
Thanks for your question, Will Ganson. I will not take time to deal with Eric the denier. No amount of evidence will convince deniers of anything, so I’ll not waste my time. If you’re interested in evidence, there’s plenty in this post to support all I’ve written and said.
May 10th, 2013 at 12:36 am
I wonder at what ppm CO2 reaches that the majority of humans will say “Now we’ve done it.We’ve started something we can’t stop.”
May 10th, 2013 at 10:14 am
Many thanks for your response regarding the climate denier. It is reason and hard evidence that need be be central in a subject that has been so politicized for so very long.
You overlooked my other question: I quote it below.
“Also, I agree with NTE, but need more back up detail regarding your estimate of five years at most for the US southwest. For example,is it negated by the plateau in atmospheric temps that was referenced??”
Once again, all our thanks for your daring to confront the unimaginable.
May 11th, 2013 at 6:01 am
There is some preliminary evidence that we may be in for a Mauder Minimum – it may be are only hope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/01/nasa-we-may-be-on-the-verge-of-a-mini-maunder-minimum.html
May 13th, 2013 at 12:40 pm
Dear Guy, and all
Are you aware of The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (2007, pb 2010)? It is an anthology of articles by the best minds in the world from ALL spiritual traditions, and it covers the seeming hopelessness stemming from the trends you write about.
It is “required reading” for all Collapse/NTE specialists: it will increase their credibility simply for being able to say they still hold their views after having read it.
It is also a must for those who are seeking hope.
For anyone in despair, please look at the table of contents at amazon.com This book has given me the fire to keep on keeping on!!!!!!!
May 16th, 2013 at 7:42 am
Dr. McPherson,
Is it true that current climate models do not take into account the positive feedback loops that you enumerate in your post? Why not, and what stops researchers from doing so?
May 16th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Ravi Nathan, that’s correct. The models do not take major feedbacks into account. Apparently they’re too complicated to model.