by Brutus, who writes at The Spiral Staircase, where he specializes in reviews, armchair social criticism, diatribes, rants, and jeremiads. This essay is cross-posted here.
Prior to the 20th century, the specter of early death was never far from people’s minds. Accordingly, death was integrated into life, meaning that as a normal fact of life, everyday knowledge of death made life precious. Average life expectancy in the mid-40s back then masks the reality that people, if they survived childhood, did in fact get old. What lowered the average was infant and child mortality. Cemeteries with graves preserved from that era demonstrate this pretty clearly. When early mortality rates began dropping due to a variety of factors, including improved diet, hygiene, and medicine, it may well be that omnipresent awareness of early death receded while a sense of stalking death remained. Today’s child mortality rates vary widely across the globe, with many African and Southeast Asian countries still reporting rates well above 100.
As early mortality rates declined, so, too, have fertility rates. Factors balancing these two trends are too complex to sort and summarize succinctly, but it’s curious to observe that as GDP per capita rises, wealthy populations tend to fall below the minimum replacement rate of 2.33 children per woman. The cluster of poor countries along the vertical axis of the graph below suggests that some peoples are still over(re)producing, perhaps in part because a high rate of early mortality requires more births to raise a child to reproductive age successfully.
This excess of reproduction is reflected in human history prior to the 20th century and throughout biology, where many species, especially insects, have very large broods. Even small mammals reproduce in litters. But survival is exceedingly difficult, as the young are often killed and/or eaten by their own parents and siblings. Calls to mind Tennyson’s famous lines from his poem In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849):
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law?
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed?
There is ample reason to remain mindful of death, despite its being shoved to the margins of awareness in the modern world. It may also be understandable why we would rather not acknowledge death, considering our forgotten history with early mortality and the hideousness of so many 20th-century wars and genocides. The biggest reason to be mindful, however, is simply that we are and always have been, like the rest of nature, in an ongoing, survival-of-the-fittest struggle, though survival pressure is also shoved to the margins of awareness.
An impressive article by Ross McCluney entitled “Intentional Ignorance” at his blog The Future of Humanity correlates population demographics with resource availability and provides this familiar graphic of world population extending back 12,000 years:
World Population Curve
It should be obvious that exponential curves don’t lead to infinity but have hard ceilings, but we ignore that inconvenient truth. When world population falls back down the other side if the the curve, as it inevitably must, the population spike might be better described as a death spike (referred to elsewhere on The Spiral Staircase as a megadeath pulse). Popular culture has made this a big joke (see here as well):
Dr. McCluney’s headings are reproduced here to show the comprehensiveness of his survey:
Preamble
1. Introduction and Background
2. System Simulations
3. Reading the Records
4. Peak Oil, Peak Lithium, Peak Everything
5. Species Dieoff — Is that our fate?
6. Are We Smart Enough?
7. Political Failures
8. Are We Intelligent Enough Politically?
9. What’s a Person to Do?
10. PostScript
Although Section 5 acknowledges the possibility of human (and other) extinction, which is inevitable over evolutionary time anyway, the text doesn’t actually discuss or project what might happen with much clarity. For instance, he never uses the phrases mass extinction or extinction event so remains open-ended about our collective fate, though not thoughtlessly optimistic.
Others have read the same writings on the wall and come to the worst possible conclusion: near-term human extinction. See, for example, here, here, here, here, and here. (If I tend to cite the same websites again and again, it’s partly due to my limited intake of mainstream media — by choice — and my assessment that only a few individuals, certainly not governments or corporate entities, are capable of and willing to tell the truth, awful as it may be. The conspiracy of silence is actually pretty bizarre.) For these truth-tellers, near-term human extinction isn’t merely a scenario, it’s a surety on par with death and taxes. But the death contemplated here isn’t the final resting place or other euphemistic mythology we all know will be our individual fates. Rather, it’s the extinction of homo sapiens sapiens sooner rather than later, and with it most of the rest of the biosphere. Quite a different matter. That’s the meaning of specter, by the way:
noun — 1. a visible incorporeal spirit, especially one of a terrifying nature; ghost; phantom; apparition; 2. some object or source of terror or dread
If the mounting evidence of this eventuality, delayed only slightly (perhaps a few decades, but who really knows? — by definition we won’t be around to witness it), hasn’t yet gotten through to you, I accuse you of being brain dead. Scared, haunted, dispirited, depressed, and even nihilistic I can understand; ignorant or in denial I can’t. Not anymore. So grok this: it’s done, we’re cooked / doomed / screwed / fucked, our fate is sealed, it’s all over but the shouting (and I would add, the suffering). But memento mori, for what life is left to us is precious and shouldn’t be squandered like we did engineering for ourselves an early death as a species.
February 19th, 2013 at 9:07 am
Good essay Brustus – I grok it.
By the way I think better than saying “survival of the fittest” we should say “survival of those best adapted to current conditions”. As we know when the big asteroid hit Mexico, dinosaurs became less “fit” and mammals more fit not because they changed but because the environment changed. Fitness itself tends among many humans to carry connotations of big husky fighters, when in fact many if not most of the “fittest” organisms are small and hide well. Nor should we ever forget the lesson of the anaerobes that put their Oxygen waste into the atmosphere until it made them less fit for life on the surface and sent them off to find environments they could live in (underground, puncture wounds). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event Fitness is always conditional on the environment, physical and other species. As we warm malaria bacteria find increasing areas of habitation, those of African descent who carry one gene for sickle cell anemia gain an advantage because although 2 genes kill, one gene prevents malaria. And all the anti malarials are losing effectiveness in this last round of humans against malaria bacteria and the mosquitoes that carry them (takes 7 years or less for mosquitoes to evolve more “fit” version that aren’t killed by DDT). In a fast changing environment it would seem the little critters who reproduce quickly will gain a big advantage.
But for those who wish to get a clear idea of the scale of daily death and its causes you can watch it on the Realtime JavaScript Death Counter This morbid and tasteless JavaScript displays the deaths caused by 69 different causes happening right now in realtime all over the world. Easy configuration of death-causes, background-color and font-attributtes.
http://www.fabulant.com/downloadcenter/deathcounter/deathcounter.html
1 min in and I saw 100 people statistically die (using the meaning of that word that is the type of event that would trigger the loss of Social Security benefits, the creation of a death certificate, the planning of a funeral etc.) Watch a bit then pinch yourself and after momento more, carpe diem.
February 19th, 2013 at 10:08 am
Thought provoking essay Brutus. And Kathy C…that brought it home. Yesterday my first cousin in GA, Dianne, passed from pancreatic cancer. I had seen her last June when her brother Geary was killed in an motorcycle accident. She was well over 100 lbs. overweight and we went to eat at Macaroni Grill two nights and the rest of the time Drive-through fast food. The sparks from the knives and forks could have illuminated the room. No-one walked anywhere much less rode a bicycle. Peak Oil or climate change aware? Are you kidding me! They don’t even accept Darwin’s theory of evolution while they sincerely believe that one of Noah’s chores on the Ark was feeding the dinosaurs. I sent flowers but I’m not burning any more aviation fuel burying my deluded kinfolk. I guess when the death counter starts running like a NY Cab meter we’ll be in population decline. Until that time Stupidity seems to runnin’ things.
February 19th, 2013 at 10:46 am
Near term human extinction is a certainty. I consider a date of 2030 optimistic, but a possibility. But does it make any sense to continue talking about it? Should those who know feel an obligation to force the truth upon those living happily in denial? For example, take a young mother with small children. I myself like children, but when I see such a mother it only causes me grief. Those children will never have a life. Now is it better for that woman to know this and suffer every day along with me as she looks at her children with pain in her heart instead of enjoying them for now and giving them some happiness, however brief? Having lost many friends trying to spread the news when I still thought there was some hope and afterwards when I didn’t, I no longer see any good in it. Does anybody?
February 19th, 2013 at 11:13 am
@Michael
Now is it better for that woman to know this and suffer every day along with me as she looks at her children with pain in her heart instead of enjoying them for now and giving them some happiness, however brief?
Good question, but perhaps as this meme spreads, there will be less people birthing more children into an inevitable nightmare. AND, this is selfish of me, but because I am depressed as hell over what we have done to the planet, I want to spread some of the joy around (especially those who have been completely negligent and have cared less). I realize this is not ‘saintly’ of me – but I never claimed to be a saint.
February 19th, 2013 at 11:31 am
Bailey, yes if the meme spreads perhaps people will forgo having children, perhaps not. But it seems it is worth the try.
A book that asks such questions (in an unconvectional format for a novel) is the book Everything Matters Here is wiki’s description which is not 100% accurate and includes plot spoilers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_Matters!
I don’t however talk to anyone about this except on the blogs anymore. It slides off like hot grease on teflon. I don’t know anyone thinking about having children, but do know people with young children. When there seemed like there might be life after oil I talked to them, with no results in changes of lifestyle. Now I just keep my mouth shut.
I watched a show once on possible planetary ends. Various people were asked what they would do if they knew that in 10 years a meteor would hit earth that would kill everything on it. One young woman said she would have a child so she could “experience” having a child before she died. That about covers it eh?
February 19th, 2013 at 11:52 am
40% phytoplankton decline challenged by new publication in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7342/full/nature09952.html
February 19th, 2013 at 11:53 am
Here’s a website new to me reporting on daily conditions on the Greenland ice sheet. http://nsidc.org/greenland-today/ Last year, as we know, was astonishing, with a mid-summer melt event extending over virtually the entire surface, even at very high elevations, destroying bridges over melt rivers and other structures which had been placed on what was presumed to be permanent ice. This year has already seen quite a few melt days (including today) near the southeast coast. A graph provided on the site shows that this is unprecedented. Midwinter ice melt, if it happened at all, occurred on the west coast.
Is the east coast melt happening because of warm water from the gulf stream which is now flowing into the arctic ocean instead of veering across the Atlantic? Is another positive feedback going into the handle of the hockey stick?
February 19th, 2013 at 11:53 am
Very True Kathy!
Just reading this latest post of an older article, and some of the excellent comments. One person writes “this might wake people up.” Yeah, nothing like waking up in a coffin lol!
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/26/745571/why-the-arctic-sea-ice-death-spiral-matters/
February 19th, 2013 at 12:02 pm
Please join me in supporting OWS
February 19th, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Why the Nuclear Industry Is Beginning to Collapse:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/why-nuclear-industry-beginning-collapse?paging=off
February 19th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
Brutus, well presented. I grok it fully.
Michael Doliner, I’m very glad that someone explained to me what was happening in the world. I would much rather face my demise head on and fully aware than to have it sneak up and take me from behind. We aren’t all the same, of course, but each person deserves the right to make that choice.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:16 pm
Michael Doliner: “Should those who know feel an obligation to force the truth upon those living happily in denial? For example, take a young mother with small children. I myself like children, but when I see such a mother it only causes me grief. Those children will never have a life. Now is it better for that woman to know this and suffer every day along with me as she looks at her children with pain in her heart instead of enjoying them for now and giving them some happiness, however brief?”
I also struggle with this question. Most people do not like suffering (experiencing it, or seeing it), so the sensible answer would be no, it is better for someone (this mother) not to know.
But then, I am glad that I know. So that makes me wonder if we know what is best for her, or anyone else?
(Isn’t that what the media blackout on the topic is all about? ‘We can’t handle the truth?’)
Who here is glad to know, and who would prefer to go back to wonderland?
February 19th, 2013 at 12:23 pm
I was speaking to my sister a couple of days ago. During the call she mentioned that one of my nephews was having his SECOND child. Being a grandmother herself, of course she was quite excited about the news. I couldn’t share her excitement.
Also during that call I asked her if she had read Guy’s website, which I have referenced a few times in my blog, and her simple answer was “NO”. It was the way she said no, that told me that at this point it seems almost pointless to spread the news about NTE because most people, especially family and friends, just don’t want to know the truth. Be that as it may, I will continue to speak this truth at every opportunity.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:29 pm
Grok? This word is new to me. Can someone explain?
I tried to wake a sleeping person a couple of weeks ago. She has a small child. I didn’t see any defense mechanisms….I saw terror. I don’t know that I’ll try it again.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:41 pm
Preaching to the choir – Et tu, Brute?
Thank you!
But personally, I would be delighted if we got a new hymn-book. With regard to our NBL preachers, I sometimes think that
If I were a cassowary
Upon the plains of Timbuktu
I would eat a missionary,
Cassocks, socks and hymn-book too.
(Various versions attributed to Wilberforce, Thackeray, Tennyson & others).
February 19th, 2013 at 12:51 pm
A whole shelf of dictionaries at your service:
Grok
Basically it means to grasp beyond logical understanding, with what might be in the realm of intuition. To “feel in one’s bones”, “gut feeling” etc. comes close, but those are feelings. This is certitude beyond knowledge.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
The question whether to spread the word (or not) is an honest one. Based on what I see around me, most folks are willfully determined to keep their heads buried in the sand, blissfully ignorant. Me? I guess I wanna see the truck that hits me, if only because my personal integrity demands it. Do I want to run around telling kids there is no Santa Claus just to watch them break down in tears? Nope.
So yes, I’m preaching to the choir here at NBL, but the point is in the final lines: memento mori, because life is precious. How we understand and approach death is meaningful, and doing so with further blind destructiveness is not my cup of tea. That’s for the ignorati.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
The conceit of every generation is they think their experiences are unique. In my small library, I have a couple of classic books that provide an excellent perspective on how man has always reacted to doom.
Up first, a few passages from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Merry Men” (1881):
***
Already the men on board the schooner must have begun to realise some part, not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their doomed ship …
I heard the schooner was losing ground, but the crew were still fighting every inch with hopeless ingenuity and courage; and the news filled my mind with blackness …
Eh, Charlie, see to them! See them dancing, man? Is that no wicked? They’re yowlin’ for thon schooner, an she’s comin aye nearer an’ nearer; and the folks kens it, they ken weel it by wi’ them. They’re a’ drunk in yon schooner, a’ dozened wi’ drink …
When the wind was silent, the clear note of a human voice. We had heard the sound, and we knew with agony, that this was the doomed ship now close on ruin, and that what we heard was the voice of her master issuing his last command.
The strong ship, with all her gear, and the lives of so many men, precious surely to others, dear, at last as heaven themselves, had all, in that one moment, done down into the surging waters.
***
Alternatively, I’ve always enjoyed this Henry Miller little vignette in “Tropic of Cancer”:
***
At ten years of age she was given in wedlock to this old roue who had already buried five wives. She had seven children, only one of whom survived her. She was given to the aged gorilla in order to keep the pearls in the family. As she was passing away, she whispered to the doctor:
“I am tire of this fucking … I don’t want to fuck anymore doctor.”
***
So, you can continue to whine, bitch & moan, or you can grasp that the essence of living is to die. Since that’s the case, isn’t it most logical to simply party on? I mean, really, what is the point of complaining? Because you have nothing better to do? Gee whiz.
February 19th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Brutus: well written, great link and point taken. i was initially only intellectually cognizant of the population overshoot problem when i was in college. i’ve done what i could to protect the environment, lower my footprint and try to get away from suburbia – but only in the last 10 years “got it” that it was going to occur in my lifetime. One of my sons sneeringly yells at me for being a doomer, his argument going something like “So, the universe evolved down the eons to exactly this time and place so that you could witness it all come undone; yeah right.” My wife says she’s not giving up (meaning working full time for as long as she can for the money and the lifestyle she’s comfortable with). i haven’t actually given up per se (i haven’t killed myself) but i don’t care about any kind of work – i do what i can to bring in money, but it doesn’t motivate me now. i teach college math classes when i can get them (tell me agism isn’t alive and well – i feel like i’m being put out to pasture), tutor when someone finally calls me, and try to help causes like fracking bans, air and water protection, anti-violence of all kinds, you get the picture: i’m involved beyond working in education, maintaining the house and gardens – but i know how it’s gonna end.
i once mentioned how the world economy is bound to implode in the near future as an aside during a lecture – how it’s going to be “back to the Stone Age” soon afterward for humanity – and one girl in the audience had a mild panic attack. So i have to agree with Michael (above) that it’s probably not gonna do much for either teller or listener at this point and i only talk about it with people mature enough to hear the message (and then it’s more like comparing notes and sharing a solemn moment together). i’d rather refer people to this site to read or hear it for themselves. i still do what i can, when i can, but it’s always just part of the crashing titanic.
i’m a functioning depressed person, a real meat robot – i feel helpless, scared out of my mind, and bewildered that i’m walking around in a train about to go off the track, where most of the people aboard are oblivious and just keep doing what they’re doing with no sense at all of what’s happening around them. i pointed out in another class how the trees seem to be dying on campus – and everyone in the class starting thinking about it and realized (through their comments) that it’s in their neighborhoods too . . . i try to lead them to the path now.
Mike – i hear ya. “VU beat UConn!” is some of what i have to endure. Now don’t get me wrong here. i enjoy the moment, but if that’s all ya got, eh, i gotta go. i’m starting to go a bit buggy i think, because my son wanted to watch golf the other day on tv, and while everyone was concentrating on the PGA players, i remarked after a while about how many dead trees were in the background. While driving along past the everyday commerce of my town, i look around and see an overgrown waste-land of abandoned automobiles, burned out storefronts, giant, empty, weed-infested delapidated former big box sites that hasn’t arrived yet. Trees down everywhere, telephone poles draping useless disconnected wires – it’s not actually there, but i can “see” it.
Kathy: that is one amazing link! Thanks again. The bottleneck is beginning to constrict on many levels – economically, environmentally, socially, et al and sure signs abound. i fully expect it to turn into a dark nightmare of chaos, violence, deprivation and wild/survival type living (heated homes will become a thing of the past). i’ve been reading about large military convoys deploying outside of L.A. and of shady urban-training missions involving combinations of US and foreign troops in other places here in the states. Meanwhile DHS just bought another 2.1 million bullets to add to the over 1 billion they purchased over the past year. What are “they” training for, what do they expect is going to happen?
The constriction is gettin’ real close to obvious and i’m afraid civil unrest or military aggression is going to erupt like a volcano sometime soon (this year?). The signs of economic collapse are a little harder to see, but most of us don’t know what’s going on in the big money world of banks and Wall Street. The last bank panic happened “all of a sudden” for most of us, and it hasn’t gotten any better despite all the money printing and financial shenanigans keeping the American empire corpse alive for another day.
Stay tuned.
February 19th, 2013 at 1:04 pm
Malaria is caused by a single-celled organism that has a nucleus, and so is a “eukaryotes” (“normal kernel”). Bacteria do not have a nucleus, and are “prokaryotes” (“before kernels”). In fact the malarial “parasite” (that is the way it is referred to) still carries a few DNA fossil sequences for parts of the genes to build the photosynthetic apparatus of its ancestors, but it is regarded as now on the animal side of that divide.
February 19th, 2013 at 1:34 pm
Robin, I stand corrected – thank you.
February 19th, 2013 at 1:37 pm
@wildwoman
I think the term “Grok” originated in Robert A. Heinlein’s book – Stranger In A Strange Land. Tom Wolfe uses the term in his book – The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test as well. Both classics imho. *See Grok
Leon Russell-”Stranger In A Strange Land”
February 19th, 2013 at 1:38 pm
More on grok from wiki and more at the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok
To grok (pron.: /ˈɡrɒk/) is to intimately and completely share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. Author Robert A. Heinlein coined the term in his best-selling 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. In Heinlein’s view, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed. From the novel:
Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because of our Earthling assumptions) as color means to a blind man
February 19th, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Yes, thank you. I read Stranger in a Strange Land, oh about 35 years ago, and can’t understand why I haven’t retained that bit of knowledge! Only have seen the word used here, so thought it was an inside joke or something. Many thanks.
February 19th, 2013 at 2:27 pm
It seems the gusher in the Gulf hasn’t stopped yet. I’m guessing it never will. Well, not for a few hundred years.
February 19th, 2013 at 3:31 pm
You can’t force anyone to know anything they don’t want to know.
“A man convinced, against his will,
is a man, unconvinced, still.”
I try to keep myself well informed on many aspects of climate change, so I can provide any amount of information someone might want to know. And, I try to provide it gently, so they will be able to absorb it. Maybe it will gestate in their minds a little bit and stimulate more desire to know. And maybe not.
February 19th, 2013 at 3:36 pm
Yes, Guy – and the sink hole in Bayou Corne is getting worse too.
Have a look:
http://enenews.com/new-extended-flyover-bayou-corne-sinkhole-first-7500-square-feet-land-fell-oil-sheen-before-video-photos
“The old sinkhole she ain’t what she used to be…..”
February 19th, 2013 at 3:36 pm
Guy, I am sure the BP well will not stop until there is no more oil to leak out. Likewise dangers exist with inactive wells that should have been plugged but haven’t
U.S. says idle gulf wells must be plugged
By Steven Mufson
Thursday, September 16, 2010
The Interior Department said Wednesday that oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico need to do more to permanently plug nearly 3,000 inactive wells and dismantle about 650 production platforms that are no longer in use….Although the Interior Department has regulations requiring that old wells be permanently plugged with subsea safety seals and old platforms dismantled, the regulations are rarely enforced, industry sources said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/15/AR2010091506959.html
February 19th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
And then one also has to ask how long are the plugs good for on the ones that have been plugged
More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/27000_abandoned_oil_and_gas_we.html
And of course come the crash active wells may end up being abandoned depending on how the crash proceeds. The farther into peak oil we get the dirtier it will become, controls on emissions, drilling etc will be relaxed more and more in the last gasp to keep industrial civ going
And these are just the figures for the gulf eh?
February 19th, 2013 at 3:42 pm
And if you need a boost to your cynicism have a listen to the latest podcast by Arnie Gundersen
Are Whistleblowers Being Protected By The NRC? Not Really! Fairewinds Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen and special guest David Lochbaum, the Director of Nuclear Safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists, compare experiences about how nuclear whistleblowers are NOT protected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission if they bring safety concerns forward. They will also discuss examples citing instances of the NRC failing to support the legitimate concerns of whistleblowers in the nuclear industry, including inside the NRC itself.http://fairewinds.com/content/are-whistleblowers-being-protected-nrc-not-really
In it for the first time I have heard his personal story of how he got shafted for being a whistle blower.
February 19th, 2013 at 3:46 pm
I’m glad to see others are troubled about the question of whether or not to tell others about the awful news. What I sometimes do is start a conversation about the movie, “The Matrix.” Then I ask the person what she would prefer– to live in the completely illusory but pleasant imaginary world the matrix supplies, or know the truth. If the person chooses the imaginary world I shut up.
February 19th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
@B9K9 The conceit of every generation is they think their experiences are unique.
Something a professor said during a critique, long ago in art school, has stayed with me, I think for it’s ability to humble and empower at the same time. Well, three things, really.
1. Everything has been done before, but not by you.
2. Nothing is created in a vacuum.
3. Nothing is benign.
Granted, this is in regards to making art, but life is art, in that we create each day in what we decide to do, how we act/react, and so on. I’ve noticed that this topic of “spreading the NTE gospel”, as depressive lucidity so described it in a previous thread, comes up often. I can’t speak for others, but I really wrestle with it, because, as I stated before, I would be furious if a close friend or family member had this information and did not share it with me.
Myself, I just stumbled my way along the path of environmental awareness over many years, so that when the notion of NTE was the only probable outcome, after learning about the many positive feedback loops already triggered, after noticing the trees, it was just something that clicked, because it made the most sense. But if my life had followed a different narrative, I wouldn’t have noticed anything, and this “information” would not fit in with my “story”. Plus, these days, there is an overwhelming amount of information blasted at us on a daily basis, it’s hard to know what is true or important.
Well, anyway, @Michael Doliner Should those who know feel an obligation to force the truth upon those living happily in denial?
Forcing the truth sounds like hitting someone over the head with a baseball bat. I’ve been approaching telling one of my six younger siblings about my ‘concerns’, via discussing weather and climate, and it is amazing to me that not only is it not on her radar, but it’s like I’m speaking a different language. She’s too caught up in an ugly divorce, soccer trips, and iPhone 5′s to pay any heed to the weather. I often say that I feel like I live in a different universe than my friends and family, and that’s about right. So, do I continue to try to break it to them gently, or go full baseball bat?
I really believe that people are aware of all of this on some basic level, and they know things are happening, they are just too easily distracted to look outside and really SEE whats going on. Maybe they don’t realize how interconnected the world is. Who knows what will get through to them? Maybe nothing. Maybe a voice that is not my own? I will just continue to live the truth of my own life, and maybe that will be noticed?
And I have to tell you, as the mother of small children, I can’t look into the future and see what their world will be, but I can say that living in the dark at present would not bring ease of life, happiness, or joy. To be a mother is to suffer. Every mother looks at her children and suffers at the knowledge that they will die. It doesn’t matter how or when, in the face of NTE, or not. For me, it’s important to know the truth, because it allows me to do away with all the bullshit and to prioritize. Our society is excellent at attributing false importance to stuff that doesn’t matter, at eating up our precious time.
I can’t begin to explain the difficulty in facing each day, the reality of living in two different paradigms, because you cannot possibly raise children as if there were no future. My partner had to go to a funeral last weekend, and so this led to a discussion about death, in which I explained that everything that is living has to die someday- plants, animals, people. To which the five year old replied, “But I can’t die, I’m new. I’m a new person!” I think about how he has already come close to death more than once in his short life, the terror of it. Then I think about my own brushes with death, and how liberating it was for the mystery to be taken away, how peaceful to understand that it is just right there, a huge relief in the face of life’s suffering. And then I think about the loss of many loved ones I have experienced, and how painful that loss is. So where does all of this conflicted understanding meet up?
So far I have not been able to reconcile these things. Sometimes I think there are different species of humans walking the earth, and that is why we can’t get our shit together and act like one species sharing the earth, which is nothing but a squandered gift now. I want to show my kids how special our planet is, but how? Do I take them to see the redwoods, the pacific ocean, national parks, the zoo? Kids are naturally in awe of the world, so maybe camping and hiking is enough. I feel like I really owe them.
@Brutus To your list of acceptable feelings Scared, haunted, dispirited, depressed, and even nihilistic, can you please add guilt.
February 19th, 2013 at 3:53 pm
Another reason for telling people about the dire straits we face just occurred to me: if a person is aware of what’s going down and begins to take minimal steps toward preparing – physically, emotionally, and mentally, then maybe when the shit begins to hit the fan in earnest, that will be one less person rioting in the streets demanding to know why everything is falling apart. Maybe there will be one less person trying to loot my place. Might not make any difference at all, but it might.
February 19th, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Badlands and all who have children still at home, especially small children, how I wish there was some magic to make the truth go away. How many of us thought when we conceived children about how and when they might die. Instead we thought about how they would live, and assumed that somehow we could make their lives good, and for many of us we wished we could make their lives better than our own. How difficult that turned out to be for we were not in control of the world and most of the time not even in control of ourselves. All I can say is don’t let the guilt overwhelm you. Ahead is the task of being there for them as best you are able, and no better. That is enough.
Meanwhile all you out their with your tubes still not tied, think about the guilt you will have if you father or mother children with full knowledge of the future. Think long and hard about getting permanent birth control now while you can. It is the only thing left that I know of to tell people as far as preparing.
February 19th, 2013 at 6:08 pm
Great picture of human intelligence at its peak:
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2013/02/on-peak-of-intelligence-3.html#comment-form
February 19th, 2013 at 6:18 pm
Speaking of the BP oil disaster, does anyone have an idea of how many metric tons of methane were released into the atmosphere during the months of it’s full throttle release? Would it have been enough to have made a noticeable contribution to warming?
February 19th, 2013 at 7:01 pm
According to research from two years ago, methane release was 260,000 to 500,000 tons. The highest estimate is equivalent to 50 million tons of carbon dioxide (in the short term), which represents less than four day’s output by the United States. I doubt it can be measured, even when it makes it into the atmosphere.
February 19th, 2013 at 7:01 pm
Bailey: it all adds up!
Here’s a comparison between the Carnival ship Triumph and the ship of state:
Adrift at Sea
http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=49315
(toward the bottom)
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Our cruise of illusions and delusions is headed for troubled water. The math challenged citizens on this ship have been enjoying the 24 hour pizza buffet without the labor required to pay for the bounty. When your leaders boldly lie and tell you we don’t have a spending problem, refer to proposed spending increases as “investments”, and hail $1.6 trillion of spending cuts that did not happen, you’ve got a ship that will be signaling SOS in the imminent future. Both political parties are laughable in their blathering about spending cuts as Bush and his Republican cronies drove spending from $1.9 trillion in 2001 to $3.0 trillion in 2008 with their unfunded wars, unfunded new entitlements (Medicare Part D), Wall Street bailouts, and creation of police state agencies (DHS); while Obama and his Democrat co-conspirators have driven spending up to $3.8 trillion in four years with new unfunded entitlements (Obamacare), expansion of warfare in the Middle East (they sit on top of “our” oil), $800 billion stimulus handouts, $60 billion hurricane relief pork handed out for $25 billion of uninsured losses, and bailing out banks, auto companies, homeowners, and other gamblers who took undo risks and lost to the tune of hundreds of billions. Politicians and the inhabitants of this country have forgotten there are consequences to their actions and inactions.
February 19th, 2013 at 7:02 pm
Per this it is more likely that the methane from BP is still in the water feeding methane eating critters and
http://bpoilspillcrisisinthegulf.webs.com/methane.htm
BP oil blowout released large quantities of methane into the ocean, most of which is remaining dissolved in the waters deep beneath the surface
The gas represents an under-appreciated pollutant in a drill-rig disaster that has pumped as much as 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons) of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico, researchers say.
Unlike the oil, the methane isn’t coating birds or fouling beaches and wetlands. But it has the potential to wreak havoc on important links in the undersea food chain, researchers say.
By volume, some 40 percent of the hydrocarbons in the reservoir the Deepwater Horizon tapped is gas, of which 95 percent is methane, notes Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia who has been gathering data at sea on the methane plumes.
By weight, she and her colleagues estimate, for every ton of oil spewing from the broken riser pipe, a half a ton of gas is blasting upward as well. “That’s a tremendous amount of gas coming into the water column,” she says.
Yet gas data represents the largest gap in efforts to take the full measure of the blowout, Dr. Joye says. That gap results from “the perception that it doesn’t really matter; the focus is on oil, oil, oil.”
Oil clearly has its own set of serious environmental effects. But the gas’s behavior and fate at depth also is relevant to gauging the blowout’s full ecological impact.
“It’s not the same as the oil, but it’s a big number,” Joye says. “We have to get a handle on it, and we don’t have a handle on it right now.”
As with the undersea oil clouds researchers have been hunting, the main concern regarding methane is the possibility that the action of methane-munching microbes could exhaust oxygen in the affected layers.
That low-oxygen condition would threaten small marine organisms – plankton, fish larvae, and other creatures that can’t roam large distances and form a vital link in the marine food chain. If a low-oxygen plume were to glide across the bottom on the continental shelf, it could have a similar effect on corals and shellfish.
more at the link
February 19th, 2013 at 8:09 pm
This is my first post here and I want to thank you, Guy, and the rest of you for posting your insights, knowledge and struggles. It has brought much comfort to me knowing that I am not alone! Thank you!
@Brutus– great post and much appreciated. Grok!
@Michael Doliner— Should those who know feel obligated to force those living in denial? Much of my adult life has been spent in behavioral change and change management. There is clearly levels of readiness and grief that go along with change. Those that are early to adopt or recognize change needed often are in the minority; but these early adopters are often key to raising awareness and bringing more people into the change. However, “early adopters” tend to be on their own until a bigger motivation or visionary leadership grabs the attention of the masses. Unfortunately, we don’t have that type of visible leadership; and as Brutus pointed out, our leaders are not sharing as it does not behoove them to do so. So, my point is, recognize that others may not be ready to hear the informatin but that doesn’t mean there may not be an opportunity to ask questions and share some of your learnings. I often get asked about my family’s “unusual” lifestyle and that often opens the door. In some cases I have found deep connections with others, and in other cases, I have been called “nuts” or given the eye roll crazy look. But, like The REAL Dr. House stated, I believe in raising a level of awareness in hopes to start preparing people to mentally grasp the situation, but how much and how to start the conversation is so delicate and definitely not easy.
In terms of children, my husband and I chose not to have children. Then I was living in China and my motherly instincts and the one child policy really pulled at my heart so we adopted an amazing baby girl. I can understand the pull for family but it is so very difficult to watch knowing what lies ahead. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about the future and cry inside for what lies ahead for my daughter. No easy answer but I have tried to mention to my nieces and nephews about reconsidering starting a family and it has made no difference. Though I”ll continue to try to raise awareness albeit subtly (or sometimes not so subtly).
Thanks all for the great exchange!
February 19th, 2013 at 9:36 pm
@Carmen,
Those that are early to adopt or recognize change needed often are in the minority; but these early adopters are often key to raising awareness and bringing more people into the change. However, “early adopters” tend to be on their own until a bigger motivation or visionary leadership grabs the attention of the masses.
I have always been one to look way down the road and see the cliffs ahead. However, it has put me into a very lonely place, because I have found that since really grasping NTE, I fit in with society even less than I did before. Unfortunately, I am not the hermit type, so I have a need of social structure, but just can’t relate with the ho hum (and I notice some of my old friends feel uncomfortable around me as well). Not a fun time at all.
February 20th, 2013 at 1:12 am
@ Mike Sosebee
It tool me a while to fully come to terms with it, but now I have: most people in western societies are
1. ignorant (uninformed)
2. stupid
3. stubborn
@ Brutus
Methinks mid-life mortality rates are about to soar, due to obesity, diabetes and other diseases associated with gorging on food of low nutritional value loaded with sugars and oils.
February 20th, 2013 at 1:13 am
Oops, took.
February 20th, 2013 at 5:03 am
Kathy C Says:
By the way I think better than saying “survival of the fittest” we should say “survival of those best adapted to current conditions”.
That’s a very good point. And for humans, culture, especially modern culture, has always created conditions that interfered with the purely biological imperative of life to reproduce. People should breed as soon as they are biologically capable, just like all other forms of life, but they don’t because culture interferes. Look how culture has interfered in the case of Bill Gates, and conspired to deny the species his superior genetic endowment. He only has three offspring, far fewer than the average Saharan tribesman (whose offspring, thanks to modern medicine, have survived and are now also breeding.) By now the genes of a Malian tribesman of Gates’ age already have a huge head-start. Does this not represent a crime against biology? And our culture prevents people like Gates from having harems that would spread these fitter genes. This was not a problem for Genghis Khan. Gates’ only hope is that harem culture will revive in time for his only son, who is now of breeding age (13) to pass on his genetic legacy. Our culture tells us Bill Gates is a great success, but so far, from a biological point of view, he’s a miserable failure.
————————————————-
As for whether to annoy friends and relatives, why bother, we’re just going to have to be patient and let nature do the teaching. And the class will have to meet right where they live, not in the arctic. Persistent and eventually intractable droughts will have to be the teachers. It will take a real body blow, something like the total loss of a growing season to drought here in the US and other main food producing areas simultaneously. Bad as the drought in the US looks now, frankly, it’s just not bad enough. Note that most of the E US is drought free and farmers there can ramp up production to take advantage of price increases due to losses in the plains states. Nature, still only hitting singles when it needs to start hitting home runs.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
—————————————
Regarding children, unless their conditions are dire or abusive, their capability of enjoying life is far superior to adults, because they live in the moment more that we do. It’s hard for parents and other adults not to project the worries and misery of their lives onto children. Instead, we should try to absorb or rekindle their natural capacities for joy and wonder in ourselves.
February 20th, 2013 at 5:29 am
Ripley, you’re probably aware of this already, but drought isn’t the only consideration with respect to water. Most of the plains states don’t get enough rain normally to support agriculture as it’s practiced today and massive amounts of irrigation are required. The Ogallala aquifer is being depleted rapidly – in some areas by as much as two feet a day. As noted in the article linked below, at normal rainfall, it would take 6,000 years for the aquifer to be replenished. As the aquifer falls, eventually, it won’t be available anymore for irrigation or drinking water. Some areas are dealing with that now.
Even in the area in which I live where we receive 40-50 inches of rain a year, our aquifer (not the Ogallala) is being drained due to irrigation. Due to restrictions on pumping water, more and more farmers here are building retention ponds so that they can use ground water. While that’s a good idea and will help some, during droughts it won’t be enough. At least it wasn’t this past year.
Here’s an article from The Washington Post on the state of many of the planet’s aquifers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/10/where-the-worlds-running-out-of-water-in-one-map/
As usual, overpopulation is the culprit here. With so many mouths to feed, what choice do we have but to rape the planet for every bit of resource we can lay our hands on.
February 20th, 2013 at 6:15 am
Ripley, the poor of the world manage to reproduce under the most dire of circumstances. The peasants of the world were food self sufficient until recently because of interventions of the west. The hunter gatherers of the world survived and reproduced in Arctic, Desert, and Jungle environs. I doubt Bill Gates could do any of that. I suspect his abilities are not the ones that make for survival in those conditions either. But all species seem to have programs for successful reproduction. Rabbits will eat babies so I have read if conditions turn to drought, replenishing their bodies for an attempt at reproduction when it will be more successful. !Kung limited reproduction to once every 4 years by a variety of methods. Tribal people used to kill a twin so that one could be successfully raised. Some measure of that has persisted – although middle class families could have more than two, they usually know they can’t educate more than 2 very well. Further, guarenteed that most children born in the first world reach adulthood, and give contraceptives, women can say hell no I don’t want more. I watched in the 60′s as women said I don’t want any but many by the time they were 40 got trapped by that program in their brain that says “have babies”
I used to think the saying “the poor you will have with you always” was in fact a remark about the ability of the poor to continue to reproduce in conditions that the rich would not be able to live in much less reproduce. For some time it was. Now of course the best we can hope for is “the thermopiles you will have until the sun expires”
February 20th, 2013 at 7:13 am
Dr H.
Thanks, you’re right. I forgot about irrigation’s ability to mitigate the effects of drought in the near term, at least. I was also going to mention the fact that there seems to be a lot of tobacco production going on in places like NC and Virginia that could be switched to food if needed. I’m just trying to figure out a scenario that would kill food production near term in a way that people in the US would really feel in their stomachs. Obviously, most bloggers here have more knowledge than I do in this area.
Kathy C.
You’re right about all that, and I was not really serious about Gates being genetically superior to anybody, although social darwinists have justified huge wealth disparities that way. I was hoping people would notice how in our society, wealth has no relationship to the basic biological imperative of producing lots of offspring. That from a purely biological standpoint wealth in our culture makes no sense. Our billionaires each have the means to produce hundreds or even thousands of offspring throughout their lifetimes, but our culture prevents them from doing what biology says any other animal that personally commands such huge resources should do. By forbidding things like harems, I can hear the gods of genetic biology pleading with disgust: “What is all this wealth for you fools!?”
February 20th, 2013 at 7:47 am
@Bailey
Yes, Bailey, it can be very lonely. Some of my friendships have drifted apart, probably a good portion is my own doing. Interestingly though, I have made new friends over the years with people who share the same interests and passions as I around the Earth. Just last week, I met a wonderful woman who turns out to be an envirnmental professor and we hit it off so well. Interesting that the more I’ve put myself out there, then I’ve found new friendships (of course, I’ve also made more than a few people walk away). I try my best to stay present in my conversations with friends and enjoy time with them. This isn’t always easy! Often something is said that makes me feel like running away screaming! Such is the dilemma we all face.
February 20th, 2013 at 8:02 am
I have a rule of thumb when discussing death. That is death of the individual or of all of us.
I kind of just say what I think, let people choose how to react to that, and me. It is the same as all the other shit that comes out of my mouth in any given day. Some of it is just about what is happening then, other stuff, like NTE is just the same. It is more important to me to see the other person, and let them know you see them. That gets people to listen to you, and finally look beyond the cover, and hear you.
My rule of thumb is that people respond in the same way to NTE as they do to the news of their own death, but only if they considder it deeply.
Fear of dying, and contemplated loss of future, is a brick wall to most of us, and we all know you can bargain your way out of most things, but not death. It is a limit on our time here. (A rule of life, if you like)
The ego simply has better things in mind for us and our mental processes, so it pushes this concern to the background of consciousness. Being caught in a life threatening situation can bring that all to the front of mind very fast, but unless it gets deep, it will just be pushed back again.
So if you introduce the topic of NTE, try firstly to imagine having the same conversation with that person as though you were talking about their certain death. How much more personal, more confronting do you want to get?
Most adults have thought about this a bit, or a lot. It depends. However, most don’t like to be reminded of it. It is kind of a social fo par, equivelent to speaking to someone about a personal disfigurement. It seems to only be a downer, and takes the gloss of things. A ballon popper at a party, and that is what it is to be reminded of your certain death – the party is going to be over.
I like the ‘Terminator’ movies for this, because as I read them it is the mechanical aspects of the human being they describe, and if we don’t see it soon, the machine will eat up the sentient side.
As I have posted before here, hearing Sarah Connor screaming “we’re all dead!”( and come to think of it, Ellen Ripley from Aliens shouting “Those people are dead Bourke!” carries the same punch IMO).
But I submit that like Hamlet, when one really considders death, one’s own death and its certainty, it makes ‘now’ the most important decision time for your ‘decision space’(aka ‘consciousness’, thanks ulvfugl @ your blog).
Attention to now is a key to enjoying life while it is with us. If you speak clearly, slowly and with honesty and dignity, many more will listen, but when moments arise with familiars, or little knows I use them. I have yet to be told to my face I am a nut case, (excepting my 13 y/o son that is) Now, just after I turn and leave, that could be another matter.
The other side of the rule of thumb on this is don’t worry about other peoples reactions, that is entirely their concern, all you have done is press a very sore spot which some aren’t ready for, at least not emotionally anyway. NTE is not IMO on most people’s radar, but personal death is, somewhere along their timeline. So when it comes up, I work with that.
It works better if someone asks why I do some of the things I do, and then I just say:
“..well, pretty soon all of us are going to need each other in this community a lot more, to survive….and I am just getting started, things like learning how to grow food.”
That leaves it open for them to thought bubble: “Nutter” or say “Ok, I have to go and pick up my son now, so long” , if they can’t process or don’t want to go there.
Most not in that category say “What do you mean?” They open the gate and I walk in a little further:
“…well, most people don’t know about the full extent of climate change…they know some of it, but they don’t really know that anything above 1 degree average global warming will rapidly lead to 6 degrees, which humans and a lot of other species wont survive…People are going to have to live local lives, and go back to a gift community, here where tey live, or move to one somewhere habitable, but , I don’t want to scare you.. a lot of people are going to starve, and die, and not just in Africa or India, it will be everywhere..”
It helps if I am holding a shovel, or pushing my wheelbarrow around town, because then they know if I am a nutter, at least I am prepared to be a constructive and pro-active nutter, and that meansa committed nutter(ha ha), not just a talker.
I haven’t got to the sandwitch board stage yet.
It would be good to hear others experiences with NTE disclosure, even arguments, and if it is ever received well.
And also Peak Oil disclosure comes in a quick second on the register too, I’ve had plenty more experience bringing that one up.
February 20th, 2013 at 8:22 am
Carmen
I can’t let this go without comment…
“Yes, Bailey, it can be very lonely. Some of my friendships have drifted apart…”
Any form of individuation from the mainstream, which in itself is not supported by a functional subculture will bring some initial loneliness, and cause you, or others, to disentangle friendships. If you grow, you will move into a stage where IMO few, but not no one, will share the same space beside you. It is natural, but comes as a kind of price for your own growth. Better adapt to it now, and be happy with a lot of self time, even omong familiars. As you say, you have met new people who share some of your concers. Very fortunate.
I just decide to do the things that will support the new situation, and keep the door open to others while I do that.
To be brutally honest I have times in the day most weeks I think some Groking good company would be good right now, but I usually figure it might be down the track some day, and then I will have a few jokes or tales to tell, but if not ‘the readiness is all’.
That winbar thing seemed like it might be a good way to get together, but I must admit, I was a bit lost technically on it.
IMO your lonliness is really a human social need just not met at those times, but as time passes, you get to listen to the wind whispering, and get to notice what the clouds and the birds are saying. Even what other people are really feeling, when the text is different or on another topic altogether. To me those things connect me to where I am, even if little human raport is in the offing.
You guys help, and I have no problem admitting so, just makes me all too human.
Keep moving, remain open, see what may come…
February 20th, 2013 at 8:34 am
I’ve only had two experiences with trying to wake up people who are unrelated. The first was with a guy who was cleaning our ducts. A rural person, hunter, etc. This was before the election and I asked him what worried him most about the future. He said, “entitlements.” I said climate change and then moved on. Faux news strikes again.
The most recent exchange was with the woman with the young child and I just sort of dumped it on her, not expecting any reaction other than dismissal. But to my surprise, she took it in and looked so stricken that I felt horrible to be the person inflicting this.
I must be the only person here that is not into science fiction. Have never seen the Matrix. Only recently watched Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451, The Last Wave, and On the Beach just to catch up on the doomerist genre.
Anyway, I think it might be like smoking pot. Set and setting make a difference, as does the relationship to the sleeping person a waker might have.
We are having dinner with my brother and sister in law soon and that will be a hoot. They are not in the 1%, but they know people who are (my brother is on a board along with the Corrections Corporation of America CEO, which just kills me). Trying to wake up the SIL has become a game. My bro hears it, gets depressed for a little while, shakes it off and goes on consuming. She can’t even hear it.
February 20th, 2013 at 8:34 am
My latest cyber-conversation with Sherry Ackerman appeared at Transition Voice today. It’s here.
February 20th, 2013 at 8:49 am
…I asked him what worried him most about the future.
I’d have thought this would be worrying to anybody who was anywhere near half way sane and morally responsible. Training people to murder children, old men and pregnant women ? I mean, whose good idea is that, who authorises that, what’s their agenda ?
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/dhs-supplier-provides-shooting-targets-of-american-gun-owners_02192013
February 20th, 2013 at 9:26 am
Orlov recommends prayer.
http://www.cluborlov.com
February 20th, 2013 at 9:48 am
You are so right, Tom, that there is a sense among people that we are in for something really awful of our own making. here are some excerpts from the latest, “new illuminati” post:
“When you come back from Japan you’d better arrange to bring some more of those young hippies with you,” Cameron laughed. “Save them by bringing them here to this hippy preserve.
“If we make it back,” Zen said, “Before something bad happen.”
“You think something bad is going to happen?” Cameron leaned forward into the heat. “Like what? War with China?”
Zen looked him in the eye. “Maybe that. Maybe something else. Not know what – but something. Many feel it in Japan. Things cannot go on as they are – something big is coming.” The Westerners sat in silence as he continued. “Maybe the Earth will rebel…”
“Tell me,” Ram says between sips of steaming chai, “have you noticed an increase in apathy lately?”
“What,” Wanji smiles, “you mean like my get-up-and-go has got up and went? Funny you should mention that…”
“I’ve heard a lot of people saying the same thing lately,” the dreadlocked feral adds, “like everyone feels unsettled, like they don’t know what to do. Or want to do anything. So most of them are just keeping on doing what they normally do, but noticing that something’s not right… or something. Is that what you mean?”
“I thought it was just my libido,” surmises the clown.
The woman’s brown eyes twist to Ram’yana beneath the puzzled furrows of her frown. Wise eyes, Ram reflects as he nods; she continues after a sip of her tea. “A few people have mentioned the same thing. So what do you think it is?’
“What do you think?” he bats the question back to her.
She looks down into the swirling chai. “It feels to me like everyone realises that the game is about up, you know? Everyone knows the climate is up shit creek and the weather’s gone crazy and water’s running out and food’s probably next. So they’re all kind of in shock, you know?”
“I’ve noticed the same thing,” Phico agrees as she silences herself with a sip, “and that could be what’s behind it… but it could be something else, as well.”
“It’s a little like the shock that everyone felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Remember that?” Ram’yana asks the alchemist, noting the blank looks from the younger man and woman. “You’re a Baby Boomer, aren’t you?”
“That’s right, I know what you mean – now that you’ve jogged my memory,” Phico agrees. “Everyone was in shock and just kept going to work – well, most of them – and that was one major genesis of the mass social changes that followed, I reckon…”
“…During the ‘dawning of the Age of Aquarius’ in 1962 – just after the big line-up…” Ram’yana reminds him.
“That’s right,” Phico avers, “but I think this is something different as well. Sure, everyone seems to be grokking what the hippies and environmentalists have been telling them for yonks, but this is somehow different…. A deliberate, mass hypnotic zoning out…”
February 20th, 2013 at 10:24 am
totally off this topic, but “toilet compost” link I thought was interesting:
http://www2.gtz.de/Dokumente/oe44/ecosan/en-methods-of-using-toilet-compost-in-agriculture-2009.pdf
February 20th, 2013 at 1:24 pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/20/biofuel-craze-wiping-out-americas-grasslands-at-fastest-rate-since-the-dust-bowl/
February 20th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
Decent 40-minute video links climate with weather
February 20th, 2013 at 2:32 pm
A wonderful essay, thank you Brutus – I’ve been catching up with comments all day it seems!
Meanwhile, I’m shocked, shocked…the federal appeals court would not grant petitioners’ application to vacate the stay in the NDAA suit, the legal underpinning for a police state remains intact, so far:
http://www.sparrowmedia.net/2013/02/hedges-v-obama-ndaa-lawsuit-press-conference-supreme-court-stay/
February 20th, 2013 at 2:37 pm
Wildwoman – thanks for the heads up on the Orlov article – NTE is a growing meme. Too bad it is more than a meme.
February 20th, 2013 at 2:40 pm
If you go to google images you can search for memento mori art, and see some pretty amazing work from centuries ago to modern:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GvE8NJs27wE/T0UCUcF6I-I/AAAAAAAAATY/4hDJvsZYLJ4/s1600/vanitas.jpg
February 20th, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Here’s a great one that reflects the many comments on this post about being the unwelcome bearer of bad news (to which I can certainly relate!):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/18/Death_Comes_to_the_Banquet_Table_-_Memento_Mori_-_Martinelli_NOMA.jpg/1024px-Death_Comes_to_the_Banquet_Table_-_Memento_Mori_-_Martinelli_NOMA.jpg
February 20th, 2013 at 3:18 pm
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
The noble Brutus….
Wait a minute, that can’t be right. Start again.
February 20th, 2013 at 3:19 pm
B9K9 says: “I am tire of this fucking … I don’t want to fuck anymore….
I look back now and deconstruct
How much of my life really sucked;
I was forced to compete
Until someone got beat
But I’m pretty much done being fucked.
February 20th, 2013 at 3:19 pm
At the end, we cannot restore
The fitness we once knew before;
We no longer deplore,
But accept to our core
What’s wrong can’t be fixed anymore.
February 20th, 2013 at 4:23 pm
BTD:
What’s wrong can’t be fixed anymore and it became unfixable long long ago – we just had plenty of room not to notice.
If Earth was the size of Jupiter, it would just mean that we have another ten thousand or so years before “the end.”
I’m curious, since we NOW know that what we face TODAY was set in motion many thousands of years ago, who was the first person to record that fact (that the path of mankind was certain doom)? I’m not talking about hippies shouting “down with the pigs!” I’m talking about the first person to recognize the situation scientifically…
Anyway, I’m just a fruit fly trying to get the last bite of the banana.
February 20th, 2013 at 5:12 pm
@ PAT
Not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but I think this guy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Van_Hise
wrote a survey called Conservation of Resources of US or something, (I have a link somewhere , I’ll put in subsequent comment) where he says that if all the forests are cut, coal is burned, etc, it’ll wreck the climate… I forget the details, you’ll have to search yourself if you want them.
February 20th, 2013 at 5:13 pm
http://www.archive.org/stream/conservationofna00vanhuoft#page/viii/mode/2up
February 20th, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for posting Guy. Also, in the part 3 video at 1:44, Dr. Francis gets into the naysayer controversy about the Antarctic.
February 20th, 2013 at 5:46 pm
@OzMan
“IMO your lonliness is really a human social need just not met at those times, but as time passes, you get to listen to the wind whispering, and get to notice what the clouds and the birds are saying. Even what other people are really feeling, when the text is different or on another topic altogether. To me those things connect me to where I am, even if little human raport is in the offing.”
Very nice, OzMan.
February 20th, 2013 at 8:01 pm
RE: Loneliness experienced as a result of being your genuine self; It beats the loneliness from being around people while not being your genuine self. I think of the lengthy times that John Muir spent totally alone in the vast wilderness. The trouble is, few of us have that vast natural world as a cathexis surrogate any longer.
February 20th, 2013 at 8:05 pm
.
Memento Mori
A doomer memento mori
Predicts that we’re going to be sorry;
There’s no future—squat,
So now’s all that we’ve got
Until things become less hunky-dory.
February 20th, 2013 at 9:26 pm
Loneliness experienced as a result of being your genuine self; It beats the loneliness from being around people while not being your genuine self.
Loneliness reflects one’s dislike of one’s own company. Before seeking company, it behooves one to learn to get along with oneself, rather than to impose such undesirable company on others. Birds of a feather do flock together, and as long as one’s identity is invested in one’s feathers, one can be expected to seek an appropriate flock. With it comes the distress of a different flock.
Solitude is the natural state of the Self, the One without a second, for in It there is no second, no “other”. To recognise it, one has to shed ALL one’s feathers. This includes the “I” feather. All other feathers are rooted in it forming a veritable jungle, and have to be shed before or with it. It is generally easier to start with the smaller ones.
February 20th, 2013 at 10:27 pm
who was the first person to record that fact (that the path of mankind was certain doom)?
The name is lost, but the message is still here.
February 20th, 2013 at 11:33 pm
@ Pat
You asked:
“I’m curious, since we NOW know that what we face TODAY was set in motion many thousands of years ago, who was the first person to record that fact (that the path of mankind was certain doom)? I’m not talking about hippies shouting “down with the pigs!” I’m talking about the first person to recognize the situation scientifically…”
1800 BCE The Epic of Gilgamesh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
1651 Baltasar Gracian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltasar_Graci%C3%A1n
1798 Thomas Malthus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Malthus
1864 George Perkins Marsh
http://books.google.com/books?id=q-7wEQi0Gj0C&printsec=frontcover
1896 Svante Arrhenius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
1948 Fairfield Osborn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfield_Osborn
1972 Club of Rome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Club_of_Rome
2006 James Lovelock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
February 21st, 2013 at 3:15 am
@ Robin D.
PAT said …to recognize the situation scientifically…
You think that what you linked to is science ?
February 21st, 2013 at 3:33 am
Pat, per Tainter the seeds of the destruction of a civilization are in the initiation of a civilization as he writes in “Collapse of Complex Societies” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies
February 21st, 2013 at 3:35 am
per Craig Dilworth the seeds of our destruction as a species are in our particular genetic endowment. See his book “Too Smart for our Own Good” or for the much shorter version of his vicious circle theory http://candobetter.net/node/2755
Tainter and Dilworth are IMHO essential reading so we can understand what went wrong. OTOH since all species that went extinct before us went extinct without understanding what went wrong, perhaps as a whole the human species will follow suit.
February 21st, 2013 at 3:41 am
ulvfugl
That link you put up about targets for DHS shooting practice, if genuine, now puts you a hairs breath ahead of Kathy C in groking posters of all time here on NBL IMO.
WTF about the targets, but I guess if you have practiced for years ‘not’ to hit these types as they present at a critical event that requires tactical suppression or SWAT or whoever, then you might really need to retrain in order to follow orders.
My money is on the expectant mother with a handgun, especially if it is her first child, as being the most lethal. I figure my mum would have taken down 7 maybe 8 SWAT roaches, even if she took a few slugs.
Lets hope it is a hoax, or a prank, and it never gets to that ….
February 21st, 2013 at 3:52 am
Kathy C
Nothing went wrong. It all went ‘right’ for us regarding our social rekonning, till recently,(thousands of years) but there is no right and wrong as Nature just keeps on batting away, and we, dodging and weaving. No malice on ‘her’ part, just swinging this way and that.
But I have not read those two sourses you suggest, so my view is just in response to the implied notion of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.
BTW you and ulvfugl are neck and neck in the posting NBL races IMO. He just has the edge for now, (‘Yellow Smiley Face’ would be here idf I knew how to do one).
Cheers
February 21st, 2013 at 4:08 am
You think that what you linked to is science ?
Definitely IS not. What IS science is not what WAS served as science. Ptolemy’s concepts were replaced by Copernicus, progressively refined by Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, Hubble, and others. Hooke’s ideas were refined and expanded by Pasteur, Koch, Ehrlich, Metchnikoff and others. Anaximander and Empedocles were ignored; Linnaeus was incorporated into Darwin; Mendel offered an empirical basis, followed by Crick, Gould and Wilson: that fascinating tale is still unfolding.
The concept of dissolution, now expressed as the heat death of the universe, or the decay of the proton, is reminiscent in periods of time to the ancient versions.
February 21st, 2013 at 5:19 am
@ Robin D.
Good. Well, there is some common ground between our positions.
I think there is a problem, that scientific hypotheses really need some element of experimental testability, and so much of what is passing as ‘science’ from astrophysicists and evolutionary psychologists is speculative fantasy that cannot be tested.
@ Ozman
I’m not in a competition with Kathy C., I think the elite 1% fear the masses, and they think they need their armed thugs as protection, so they need to brutalize them into seeing old men, pregnant women, children as merely ( Robin’s ) ‘meat robots’ so it doesn’t matter if you blow them to pieces because they are not really human beings at all, just targets.
They’ve been training so called ‘soldiers’ to do this in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, and now they train them to do it in USA. Ironic thing is, the purported Moslem enemy has had strict code of religious honour that it is forbidden to kill such people.
Of course, Jesus commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ has been mostly ignored by so called Christians. But to openly target women and children as ‘non-traditional threats’ opens up a new avenue for brutal depravity.
February 21st, 2013 at 5:47 am
ulvfugl
I never suggested you were in competition with Kathy C or anyone else. I just had a fun idea to tell you both I find your limks and posts equally great, and put it in a kind of a ‘race’ metaphore.
Keep your shirt on ol pal, I’m a fellow traveller here like you.
BTW I also got a lot out of the post on your website about quantum physics, reality and consciuosness with the two dudes talking.
Seems to be adding up to me there, I can get a clear sense of their ideas, and in many ways I agree. I like your idea of Consciuosness as a ‘decision space’.
Cheers
February 21st, 2013 at 5:50 am
ulvfugl
Yes, it seems the ‘thou shalt not kill’ commandment would be a big blot on the Christians form card. I mean what was that shit called the Crusades for? It seems a lot of killing went on there.
February 21st, 2013 at 6:19 am
This list goes back a number of years (since at least 2010) but here’s what we have so far this year (and it’s only Feb.):
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/animal-deaths-birds-fish-end-times.html
Worldwide Mass Animal Deaths for 2013
February 21st, 2013 at 6:22 am
OZman
You are tied with Robin
My Count of posts on this thread – you can correct me if I counted wrong – we are both ahead of U but I am well ahead of both of you
Ozman 6
Kathy 14 (now 15)
Ulvfugl 5
Robin 6
However I often post two or three times in a row to be able to provide multiple links without waiting for moderator approval and many of my post are informational links not comments, and one this thread was an admission of my error as pointed out by Robin, and one a thank you to another poster. I count 5 of that nature bringing me down to 9 -still a clear winner on this thread
You wrote Nothing went wrong. It all went ‘right’ for us regarding our social rekonning, till recently,(thousands of years) but there is no right and wrong as Nature just keeps on batting away, and we, dodging and weaving. No malice on ‘her’ part, just swinging this way and that.
You are right of course and I was using the word “wrong” in the sense of the length of our species existence. It is not wrong that our species will go extinct, but it hard to talk about such an quick extinction of a seemingly successful species without ending up using such value laden words. However I pick at words myself such as doomer or survival so I accept in good grace your reminding me that wrong is a human value laden word. I should have simply said that the reason civilizations fail in inherent in their form and the reason our human species will have a short run is inherent in its form. Thank you.
February 21st, 2013 at 6:31 am
In his interview at Transition Voice, Guy says :
McPHERSON: A statement from writer and environmental activist Derrick Jensen comes to mind:
It’s no wonder we don’t defend the land where we live. We don’t live there. We live in television programs and movies and books and with celebrities and in heaven and by rules and laws and abstractions created by people far away and we live anywhere and everywhere except in our particular bodies on this particular land at this particular moment in these particular circumstances.
What he says resonates strongly with me. We avoid physical reality, and it’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop. In avoiding the natural world — which sustains us, in every way — we rely on addictive cultural distractions, all of which push us further from the natural world. How do we break this cycle?
This is something I’ve been trying to point towards. I’ve no idea how to break the cycle on the macro scale, when six ( is it ? anyway, very few ) mega corporations control most of US media, and I think Rothschilds control AP and Reuters, perhaps the best hope is that as pressures mount, they will eat each other.
But on the micro scale, get the junk out of your own head. I used to notice this many years ago on the construction sites where I worked, restoring old houses. The guys were not ‘there’. They were living in last night’s tv shows. They’d be semi-consciously laying bricks or plastering walls, and they’d be saying ‘Did you see that guy, when he was hit with the base ball bat ? Wow, did you see how he went through that plate glass window ? Did you see the expression on her face ?’… All that crap. Far more thrilling and dramatic and indeed traumatic, if it was for real, than anything they’d ever encountered in their ordinary daily lives.
So instead of their proper lives, in the semi-derelict house to be repaired, eating sandwiches made by their wives, birds singing, wind blowing, telling stories about the neighbourhood and the past in that locality, all that got displaced and replaced, brains colonised by this fabricated tv crap, titillating sex, lots of violence, all sorts of sub texts teaching certain political and ideological ways to see the world. In a sense, they were having their potential individual identity, their own personal story, annihilated and having a disjointed fragmented series of tv ads and shocking images implanted into them, instead.
I think zen meditation is the only way I know to get rid of that stuff. Psyche soap. A mind that is completely still, as in mushin, no-mind, buddha-mind, nirvana. Get free from all the belief systems and just observe the raw reality as it is perceived, without any commentary or interpretation. This miraculous pool of vibrating energy, with living forms, trees, frogs, clouds, infinitely wondrous and mysterious.
This is nothing to do with ‘imagination’ or ‘the supernatural’ or ‘religion’. It’s a physical thing. You do it in your body.
February 21st, 2013 at 6:42 am
@ Ozman
….I mean what was that shit called the Crusades for? It seems a lot of killing went on there.
Hahaha, have you read the accounts ? How they rejoiced at being up to their knees in blood in the streets of Jerusalem, and a lot of the people they slaughtered were actually Christians who’d been living there for centuries alongside the Jews and Moslems.
Jesus told them, the most important commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’, and they’ve been ‘Killing for Jesus’ ever since…
February 21st, 2013 at 7:34 am
“Americans are the most drugged and indebted people on earth, with the highest rates of teen pregnancy and childbirth among developed nations. We don’t think much about the future, nor can we envision what it might bring. With no universal health care, many of us don’t even dare to think about our own bodily decline or vulnerabilities. “Kicking the can down the road” has become our mantra. Each speech by the President is a vapid pep talk with no correlation to reality, yet, clouded by virtual or real narcotics, many of us still clap and cheer. Others mumble that it’s time we fight back, but with our enemy ill-defined or out of reach, we’re reduced to shooting innocents or ourselves.”
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/02/deranging-america/
February 21st, 2013 at 7:35 am
Fine photos too
http://linhdinhphotos.blogspot.co.uk/
February 21st, 2013 at 7:45 am
The configuration of 21st century imperialism combines patterns of exploitation from the past as well as new features which are essential to understanding the contemporary forms of plunder, pillage and mass impoverishment. In this paper we will highlight the relatively new forms of imperial exploitation, reflecting the rise and consolidation of an international ruling class, the centrality of military power, large scale long-term criminality as a key component of the process of capital accumulation, the centrality of domestic collaborator classes and political elites in sustaining the US – EU empire and the new forms of class and anti-imperialist struggles.
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=1928
February 21st, 2013 at 7:49 am
The federal government calls them FEMA Corps. But they conjure up memories of the Hitler Youth of 1930’s Germany . Regardless of their name, Obama’s Dept of Homeland Security has just graduated its first class of 231 Homeland Youth! Kids, aged 18-24 and recruited from the President’s AmeriCorp volunteers, they represent the first wave of DHS’s “Youth Corps”, designed specifically to create a full time, paid, standing army of FEMA Youth across the country !
http://counterpsyops.com/2013/02/20/why-didnt-the-media-carry-this-story-fema-youth-obama-ss/
February 21st, 2013 at 7:59 am
Guy McPherson Says:
February 20th, 2013 at 8:34 am
My latest cyber-conversation with Sherry Ackerman appeared at Transition Voice today.
Haha. . .posted the link to the interview and a snip about it being addictive on my students message board earlier today.
Thanks!
February 21st, 2013 at 8:00 am
In 2008, President Obama made statements regarding a “civilian national security force”. Since that day, many have been curious as to what President Obama had in mind when he made that statement.
http://www.examiner.com/article/h-r-748-would-require-all-persons-the-us-18-25-to-perform-national-service
February 21st, 2013 at 8:26 am
Aha, so how come the police are recorded on the radio scanner, looking for Dylan Hockley, two days after he is supposed to have died in the SH shooting ?
And who the fuck are the ‘secret service’ working for the ‘church’ ? Presumably it is code for something else, CIA, FBI, DHS, or some other, is it ? and how could they not be working also for the President, if they are ‘government gentlemen’ ??
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2145664/pg1
February 21st, 2013 at 8:41 am
ulvfugl sez:
In a sense, they were having their potential individual identity, their own personal story, annihilated and having a disjointed fragmented series of tv ads and shocking images implanted into them, instead.
I think zen meditation is the only way I know to get rid of that stuff. Psyche soap. A mind that is completely still, as in mushin, no-mind, buddha-mind, nirvana. Get free from all the belief systems and just observe the raw reality as it is perceived, without any commentary or interpretation
I like this observation except for the singlemindedness of the solution. I’ve heard the problem being called the Culture of Possession, which has (at least) two aspects: commodity fetishization and one’s identity being colonized by others. Think invasion of the mind snatchers instead of body snatchers. (New movie coming out on that topic: The Host).
There are many ways to be present in the world, not a zombie, and to cleanse oneself of the worst trappings of the dominant paradigm. (There is no good way to be free of all of it.) The no-mind solution may be one, but I find it paradoxical to suggest that emptiness hold great depth or promise.
February 21st, 2013 at 8:55 am
@ Brutus
It’s a fair point, Brutus.
McKenna suggests a bag of mushrooms in a dark room. I see that as a way to wake up. But then there’s the problem of staying awake.
I like the analogy of the desert and the market place. You go to the desert for prolonged peace and solitude, to get clear of the noise and commune with the eternal verities.
Then you return to the market place and your peace gets wrecked by the pressure and clamour. So you repeat until you can maintain the peace of the desert within you, despite the madness and clamour of the marketplace all around.
Thing is, that to be free from all belief systems is scary. Takes the strength of the shaman. If you flinch, you think you’ve gone mad, because nobody else will share your viewpoint, and that’s tough for a social animal, so gradual zen training is gentler than crashing into other realities with entheogens, imho, and you learn along the way.
But I agree, it’s not an easy or simple problem. Years ago, i considered withdrawing into complete seclusion, but that seemed like a cop out, when I should be fighting to conserve fauna and flora, which meant getting informed, getting dirty, dealing with disgusting people, getting engaged with all kinds of crap…
Yes, de-colonisation of the mind and identity…. possible ways and means… please, let’s have a blog post….
February 21st, 2013 at 9:02 am
Love Police, fighting back
http://youtu.be/ZdzcRc0LVaQ
February 21st, 2013 at 9:18 am
@ Brutus
The no-mind solution may be one, but I find it paradoxical to suggest that emptiness hold great depth or promise.
I take is you have no experience of this approach ?
Zen is most certainly paradoxical, or appears so. It’s not a position one can arrive at by logical or intellectual analysis, it is far more profound, goes much deeper, seeing the mind and ideation as an obstruction to insight.
Indeed, the expectation that it might offer something, or not hold promise, or any sort of conceptual thinking of any kind, is a hindrance. The point is, to get beyond ALL of that. That is, to have an absolutely still, empty, and silent mind, but fully and intensely awake and aware, and to be able to maintain this for prolonged periods, in fact, indefinitely.
This is something quite unlike other approaches which attempt to build a logical case via a series of arguments or examples, or to give people insights via metaphors or works of art.
February 21st, 2013 at 10:51 am
Kathy C, how does that climate scientist confidence index go? I’m thinking, if we are quick, we could incorporate it into a drinking game and sell it to the preppers out there. A board game, like monopoly, where you drink a shot or hit the bong every time surprise is expressed.
I think there is a market out there.
And because I’m in a seriously deranged mood, does anyone want to predict Bill McKibben’s reaction when Obama approves the Keystone? Could we resurrect the Punk’d show or something?
Whilst waiting for extinction, there is some fun to be had, yes?
(For the humor impaired, this is meant as sardonic irony)
February 21st, 2013 at 11:26 am
wildwoman, getting a board game together is harder than it looks:
http://theoilage.com/doomer-the-board-game-t1982.html
Simpler plan: get a standard Monopoly board, and paste “Unexpected” on every square.
February 21st, 2013 at 11:47 am
@Daniel et al “who was the first person to record that fact (that the path of mankind was certain doom)?”
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Archimedes:
The term power was used by the Greek mathematician Euclid for the square of a line. Archimedes discovered and proved the [b]law of exponents[/b], 10a 10b = 10a+b, necessary to manipulate powers of 10. In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī used the terms mal for a square and kab for a cube, which later Islamic mathematicians represented in mathematical notation as m and k, respectively, by the 15th century, as seen in the work of Abū al-Hasan ibn Alī al-Qalasādī.
Then there is the famous “wheat & chessboard problem”:
***
When the creator of the game of chess (in some tellings an ancient Indian mathematician, in others a legendary dravida vellalar named Sessa or Sissa) showed his invention to the ruler of the country, the ruler was so pleased that he gave the inventor the right to name his prize for the invention. The man, who was very wise, asked the king this: that for the first square of the chess board, he would receive one grain of wheat (in some tellings, rice), two for the second one, four on the third one, and so forth, doubling the amount each time. The ruler, arithmetically unaware, quickly accepted the inventor’s offer, even getting offended by his perceived notion that the inventor was asking for such a low price, and ordered the treasurer to count and hand over the wheat to the inventor. However, when the treasurer took more than a week to calculate the amount of wheat, the ruler asked him for a reason for his tardiness. The treasurer then gave him the result of the calculation, and explained that it would take more than all the assets of the kingdom to give the inventor the reward. The story ends with the inventor becoming the new king. (In other variations of the story the king punishes the inventor.)
***
Again, I repeat, not only were our current circumstances put into motion long ago, but the ultimate outcome could easily be demonstrated mathematically millennia ago.
To get all wound up in a “woe is me” kind of trance is the very definition of juvenile behavior. It is what it is, so you basically have two choices: be happy or be sad. Since neither has ANY bearing on the outcome, it’s simply a matter of what you can actually control in the here & now: your won mind.
February 21st, 2013 at 12:21 pm
In a report titled, “Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally awakens to the disaster we’ve triggered. Ever conservative and optimistic, the agency claims our quick-changing agriculturists will alter course in time to keep the food appearing in the supermarkets.
February 21st, 2013 at 12:27 pm
@Gail “Meanwhile, I’m shocked, shocked…the federal appeals court would not grant petitioners’ application to vacate the stay in the NDAA…”
The double “shocked” hints at satire (if only it was followed by something like “taking place [insert location]“). Well played; however, on the off chance it is sincere, then shame on you.
Look, the sh!t discussed here and elsewhere on the ‘net amongst a seemingly small cadre of ‘those in the know’ are in fact subjects of official meetings stamped with “Top Secret” warnings of 20 year sentences if matters were to leak.
As someone else asked, why are we now in god-forsaken places looking for the last remaining reserves of precious juice? The outcome is known, and, as many surmise, is probably a lot closer than many realize.
All that happened with Hitchens’ lawsuit is that a few people from the puppet’s regime showed the judge what’s really goin’ down on the energy front – and it ain’t pretty.
As continuation-of-government (COG) is the absolute #1 priority (what, you actually believed in that “by the people, for the people” nonsense?), what’s coming down the pike is going to require wholesale abandonment of any remaining Constitutional provisions.
Once they read the judge the riot act, it was a rubber stamp decision. One shouldn’t be surprised; rather, one should take these events as black letter markers on what is really happening.
February 21st, 2013 at 12:48 pm
The government has released a slew of drafts about climate change impacts from various agencies. Comments are open to the public if anyone wants to vent. The USDA forest analysis is a particularly funny one, which is excerpted here: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-emperor-has-no-clothes.html
B9K9 you obviously don’t know me…that’s okay, no reason you should.
February 21st, 2013 at 12:49 pm
B9K9 Says: …not only were our current circumstances put into motion long ago….
What started it all was Big Bang,
From which all of the future sprang;
I’m caused to harangue
In determinist slang
As a part of the whole shebang.
February 21st, 2013 at 1:04 pm
Btd, that pretty much says it all.
Wildwoman, every time any scientist says he or she is shocked, surprised, astonished, amazed, about some new event on the ground with the climate it is one tick down. Each scientist is allowed one tick per event, but multiple ticks may be recorded per event for each scientist who is stunned etc. For instance every scientist who expressed surprise at the demise of 2012 Arctic Sea Ice qualifies for a downward tick. Any non-denier scientist who expresses surprise for something not being as bad as they thought it would be gets a tick up. Maybe we can publish our chart on Zero Hedge.
There is a collapse game already available. Get a set of Jenga blocks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenga Write the name of a feed back on each block – or some percent of that feed back – like Greenland 100% melt for 5 days, 10 days, 15 days. And levels a methane on others. See how many blocks you can pull out of the tower before it crashes.
February 21st, 2013 at 1:13 pm
@Brutus:
There are many ways to be present in the world
And to reach an awareness of its status in the real. The real according to one tradition is that which neither comes into existence nor goes out of existence, is immutable, and can be experienced, (even though it cannot be known: not an object, only the, and the only subject). Getting there requires shedding of all baggage, including the “I”.
Shortcuts may offer to avoid dealing with the mountain of detritus under the rug. With them, one may believe that such baggage has seemingly vanished – while it remains quite obvious to others. Hence the admonition in so many traditions that there is no shortcut.
@wildwoman:
I lived for well over an “age” in Kentucky. An age being seven years, in the Judaic and Vedic traditions. In Louisville and Hoptown. (Hopkinsville, to outsiders).
About seven miles from the Jefferson Davis birthplace memorial, which attracted a throng of white sheets on his birth anniversary. And the slaveowner’s flag flew at many houses. But the mountainous eastern part of the state was, like West Virginia, with the Union. And the birthplace of that other side’s leader is also in the same state.
I think the Appalachians are the only place in ‘mericuh where one can hear English, probably a consequence of their isolation, a consequence of the terrain.
There are only two races recognised in Kentucky (besides the Kentucky Derby): whites and n$&#%§s. And I was not white. Otherwise I might return to Kentucky today.
February 21st, 2013 at 1:35 pm
Public Health, Thermodynamics and the Cat Food Commission
http://healthafteroil.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/public-health-thermodynamics-and-the-cat-food-commission/
“Sixty years ago Karl Polanyi anticipated the present crisis when he wrote that belief in “free market forces” –a dogma at the core of neoliberalism – is a direct threat to the “natural environment…[which also] would result in the demolition of society.”
February 21st, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Comments are open to the public if anyone wants to vent.
February 21st, 2013 at 1:58 pm
@B9K9
At first I thought the coding for this board was bbcode. Low and behold it’s html. So if you want bold you’ll have to use the
anchor tags.
February 21st, 2013 at 2:04 pm
ulvfugl sez:
Yes, de-colonisation of the mind and identity…. possible ways and means… please, let’s have a blog post….
It’s not clear that your call for a blog post is directed to me personally, but I will offer that I’m unqualified to do it. Although I’m well enough read and and try to be honest with myself, I’ve never lived outside the U.S. and am thus a product of this environment even though I resist a lot of it. That’s my type of decolonisation: resistance and refusal to participate, such as my very small information intake from the all the usual and official organs of deceit. But I’m still an analytical thinker, which is the preferred curriculum in schools everywhere.
I sensed early on that such an approach to life is a subtle charade, so I’ve spent most of my adult life examining alternative worldviews, mindsets, and styles of consciousness. But I don’t really try going there — meditation, drugs, naturalism, etc. I’m trapped within the one I inherited. Further, I cannot imagine being the sort of guru needed to chart the way forward to something else and wonder if such a person is really all that desirable, since the teaching ends up being made into dogma. Instead, it’s a very individual journey.
February 21st, 2013 at 2:39 pm
@ Brutus
…directed to me personally…
‘Twasn’t directed towards anyone in particular, Brutus, maybe towards Guy, as it’s his choice and he knows the range of folk available…
Yes, the ‘analytical thinker’ bit. We’re overloaded with them. Getting us nowhere. Imho.
…the sort of guru needed to chart the way forward to something else…
Forward to something else ? NTE ?
We’ve got lots of minor gurus, with visions of alternative tech and eco-communities and so forth… Dave Pollard’s diagram of the new political landscape has a good schematic, I don’t see how any of them fix the mess, they’re just something to do.
…it’s a very individual journey…
Yes, that’s the major weakness. I have nothing else to offer. The so-called wisdom traditions all fail, for changing the masses in a hurry, in the sense of political activism. We don’t have a Ghandi or a MLK, and if the feedbacks are irreversible, we can’t fix the mess anyway.
Perhaps the concept of reality tunnels might be helpful if someone smarter than me wants to think about possibilities, there’s a load of cross references…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_tunnel
February 21st, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Dave Pollard’s link
http://howtosavetheworld.ca/category/environment/
Me, I think mass extinction event inevitable, but H, I, J, in the meantime…
February 21st, 2013 at 3:50 pm
I was sceptical of the 9-11 event from the first time I saw it on television. It was on every major network within minutes. All the guilty partieswere declared before any evidence was shown.The first questions of any criminal investigation were erased. Who had the most compelling motives for the event? Who had the means to turn two central iconic buildings in New York into a pile of steel and a cloud of dust in seconds?[i]
Other questions soon arose in the aftermath. Why was all the evidence at the crime scenes removed or confiscated?
Who was behind the continuous false information and non-stop repetition of “foreign/Arab terrorists”when no proof of guilt existed? Who was blocking all independent inquiry?
Even 11 years on these questions are still not answered.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-moral-decoding-of-9-11-beyond-the-u-s-criminal-state-the-grand-plan-for-a-new-world-order/5323300
February 21st, 2013 at 3:59 pm
Humanure in the MSM science spotlight..
Flushed with success: Human manure’s fertile future
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729042.200-flushed-with-success-human-manures-fertile-future.html
February 21st, 2013 at 4:03 pm
Science digest requires a login, so I am posting the whole thing..
We shouldn’t pooh-pooh the idea of fertilising crops with our urine and faeces – it’s safer than it sounds and the benefits would be huge
See more in our photo gallery: “Sewage solutions: Six alternative toilet technologies”
LOCALS call them honey-suckers, but don’t be fooled by the name. They cruise through the high-tech streets of India’s newest megacity, sucking up its lowest-tech problem: sewage. These trucks empty Bangalore’s million septic tanks and pit latrines, where the majority of its 10 million inhabitants relieve themselves.
In most places, sewage trucks discharge their cargo into streams and lakes, adding to local pollution. But in Bangalore, the honey-suckers head for farms outside the city, where their stinking loads are in demand to fertilise vegetables and coconut and banana trees. The farmers pay good money for human waste; it produces bumper crops. For them, it is sweet.
The honey-suckers of Bangalore are evidence that the world of excreta is being turned upside down. Realisation is growing that our faeces and urine are not simply waste to be disposed of as fast as possible, but a valuable resource. Flushing sewage into rivers is not just an environmental catastrophe, it is also a ludicrous waste of nutrients that could be helping to feed the world.
Consider what you excrete. You produce some 500 litres of urine and 50 kilograms of faeces a year. Besides the water and organic carbon, your annual output contains around 10 kilograms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium compounds, the three main nutrients plants need to grow – helpfully in roughly the correct proportions. This is sufficient to fertilise plants that would produce more than 200 kilograms of cereals, says Christine Werner of the German development agency GIZ.
Scale that up and the world’s population excretes 70 million tonnes of nutrients annually. Applied to fields, this could replace almost 40 per cent of the 176 million tonnes of nutrients in chemical fertilisers used by the world’s farmers in 2011.
Spreading human sewage on fields that grow crops doesn’t sound appealing, but it is safer than you might think. Urine is normally free from the pathogens that cause diseases, while soils help to filter and clean bacteria found in faeces. Processed and handled correctly, the organic carbon and nutrients in urine and faeces makes soils more fertile and better able to hold moisture. The benefits would be huge. Recycling our waste onto fields would increase food output and make life a lot easier for poor farmers, who often cannot afford fertiliser. For example, a typical family in Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries, annually excretes nutrients equivalent to 100 kilograms of chemical fertiliser, worth a quarter of a typical rural income, according to a study by Linus Dagerskog of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden.
Replacing chemical fertilisers would also conserve supplies of phosphate minerals, which are running low. And while nitrogen in the atmosphere may be practically inexhaustible, converting it into fertiliser is a major user of the world’s energy. Just as the world has to find ways to reuse scarce metals, so we need to find ways to recycle nutrients.
Thanks to public health campaigns, most people in urban areas – an estimated 2 billion people – have access to private or communal toilets. Unless they are connected to a sewer, these toilets empty either into pit latrines, usually little more than a hole in the ground that allows liquids to seep away while solids accumulate, or into septic tanks, where bacteria and an anaerobic environment encourage the solid waste to decompose.
These repositories need periodic emptying or they overflow into the streets. Few municipal authorities step up to the task, so private enterprise has stepped in to fill the gap. Latrine and septic-tank emptying is a vast industry, little discussed and little regulated.
In India, despite laws banning the practice, an estimated 1 million people from lower castes, mostly women and girls, are still paid to scrape the shit from the nation’s 100 million or more tanks and latrines, usually with nothing more than a shovel and bucket. They dump the contents in nearby drains or on waste ground. Such places are notorious. In the Ghanian capital Accra, most of the contents of the city’s septic tanks end up on the city’s mockingly named Lavender Hill.
The fast-growing cities of the developing world are trying to deal with their waste in the way most industrialised countries do, by connecting every building to sewer networks. These take sewage to distant treatment plants that remove solids and other dangerous contaminants before discharging the effluent into rivers. But the infrastructure needed is vast and expensive, says Stanley Grant of the University of California at Irvine, and the treatment is energy-intensive. It also leaves behind solids, which contain most of the valuable nutrients, that end up as landfill.
Sewer networks also rely on huge amounts of water to flush toilets – water that in many places could be better used for drinking or irrigation. Dealing with the contents of flushing toilets typically requires more than a third of a city’s water supplies, with growing cities taking water from farmers who need it to irrigate crops and feed growing populations.
Pull down your pants
As a result, few of the world’s megacities – and even fewer of the thousands of medium-sized urban areas – have fully functioning sewer networks. And of those, only around a tenth deliver their contents to functioning sewage treatment works. Most discharge raw waste into rivers, where it turns thousands of kilometres of waterways into lifeless open sewers. Further downstream, raw sewage helps create dead zones that now cover 250,000 square kilometres of ocean. “We need to take the waste out of waste water,” says Grant.
He and others are urging governments to take a fresh look at what we are trying to achieve with our sanitation systems (see diagram). They should be based not on flushing our problem away but on “closing the loop” in our nutrient cycle, says Pay Drechsel of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Drechsel thinks it’s a good thing that farmers in some parts of the world are recycling sewage onto their fields – though they are doing it unofficially, usually clandestinely and often outside the law.
They are reviving an old tradition. Before the invention a century ago of the chemical process for converting nitrogen from the air into the nitrates plants can use, sewage was widely spread onto urban “sewage farms”. Traditionally, it was collected in the dead of night to avoid offending people’s sensibilities – hence the term night soil – and used to grow vegetables and other crops.
Campaigns to improve public health and the introduction of flush toilets meant that the practice grew obsolete in most places. Even so, where sewer systems developed, farmers still sometimes competed for the network’s outpourings. In a few places, this has persisted. Since the 1890s, most of the sewage from Mexico City has been piped untreated to the fields of Tula valley to the north. Today, the megacity’s 21 million people continue to fertilise more than 100,000 hectares with their faeces. The remains of the city’s digested beans, tortillas and chilli peppers double yields of corn and almost triple the rentable value of farms, says Blanca Jimenez of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. Shit has made Tula valley farmers wealthy.
The practice is going through a purple patch in many urban areas in the developing world (see diagram) – especially in dry regions where farmers value the guaranteed year-round irrigation as much as the nutrient supply. In Pakistan, sewage grows a quarter of the country’s vegetables. In the Indian state of Gujarat, farmers compete for the sewage at annual auctions, preferring it to freshwater irrigation.
Now, the honey-sucker trucks are offering farmers another option – the sewage from millions of septic tanks and pit latrines. Increasingly, the drivers of these trucks have found that they do not have to run the gauntlet of public opprobrium by dumping their loads onto wasteland or into drainage canals. Farmers within and around cities will gladly take their “honey”.
“Sometimes the drivers charge the farmers, and sometimes they pay them. It depends on the season and the market,” says Vishwanath Srikantaiah of Biome Systems, a Bangalore-based consultancy that has investigated the practice in the city. Typically, farmers put the sewage into drying pits to kill pathogens and to concentrate the nutrients so that they can be dug into the soil more easily. During the dry season, though, they pour still-liquid sewage into dug channels, like regular irrigation.
The economics are good. Like the outflows of sewers, latrine slops increase the income of some farmers by thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, a single truck driver can service a population of 20,000 people, and generate an income of $50,000 a year, twice the price of a new truck.
Vishwanath says that septic tanks emptied by honey-suckers offer not only a cheap alternative to the construction of sewers, but a superior solution – saving water while delivering fertiliser to farmers, improving soils and boosting food production. Their services should be scaled up not shut down.
Not everyone agrees. The biggest argument against agricultural recycling of sewage – whether from sewers or latrines and septic tanks – is that it carries disease. While urine is largely pathogen free, faeces are rich in viruses, bacteria and worms. There are more than 2 million deaths a year worldwide from diarrhoea and other diseases associated with human waste. Most of these are down to poor hygiene, such as a lack of hand washing, and in areas where people still defecate in the open. Farming or eating the crops fertilised by sewage is thought to play a minor role.
The trouble is there are few reliable studies. A rare investigation of farmers, by Indian researchers, looked at 22 villages near the Musi river, which is little more than a sewer for the city of Hyderabad. It found that almost half of households irrigating their fields with the sewage flow reported fever, headaches and skin and stomach problems during the previous year – twice the rate in a control village that used clean water for irrigation. The highest disease rates were among women who weeded the fields.
Another study looked at what happened to the crops grown by sewage farmers in the cities of Ghana. Most of them grow salad vegetables such as lettuces that are sold in street food and eaten by some 700,000 people, says Drechsel. He calculates this could cause up to half a million cases of mild diarrhoea a year, nearly one per consumer.
The instant reaction is to ban the practice. But a more practical approach would be to improve hygiene. To maximise the benefits of recycling sewage onto land without creating health problems, safe practices for handling faeces are vital, says Drechsel. The parasitic protozoa and viruses present in faeces cannot multiply outside the human body so simply storing the waste in ponds before applying it to the fields kills many dangerous pathogens as the sewage dries out. But this requires months rather than weeks to be fully effective. Things can be speeded up by sprinkling wood ash or rice husks over the faeces, or by adding other alkaline materials such as lime. In combination with washing salad vegetables before sale, this can eliminate more than 90 per cent of the health risks, says Dennis Wichelns, principal economist at IWMI. Incinerating the waste destroys all pathogens and parasites, but it reduces the nutrient content. The problem, Wichelns admits, will be finding ways to encourage farmers and food sellers to adopt such practices.
An end to flush and forget
The best way to grab most of the advantages of nutrient and water recycling without imposing health hazards is to treat sewage before giving it to farmers. A typical sewage works will remove obvious solids like sanitary towels, and leave the rest to settle to the bottom of ponds, before using bacteria to eat some of the organic material. These processes can remove most pathogens while leaving behind most of the nutrients.
Irrigating with treated sewage effluent is increasingly popular in developed countries short of water too. For example, Israel uses around 70 per cent of the treated effluent from its sewage treatment works for irrigation.
With more intense chemical treatment, sewage effluent can be reused for drinking. In Singapore, for example, they have branded their treated effluent NEWater. “It is cleaner than regular tap water,” says Yap Kheng Guan, senior director of Singapore’s water utility. While most of the NEWater goes to industries that need very pure water, such as microchip manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, some is added to the city’s drinking water reservoirs. Orange County in California filters treated sewage through rocks beneath the county, before pumping it up to fill the taps of more than 2 million residents. And London’s drinking water has typically been drunk several times by people living in towns upstream of the river Thames, each time being cleaned up and returned to the river before being extracted again.
The truth is the days of “flush and forget” must come to an end, even in the developed world. We should be recycling our faeces and urine in the same way we recycle scarce metals. In some places, that will involve advanced technology. But in much of the world that is a long way off. And where water is in short supply, even flushed sewer systems may be an unaffordable luxury. For billions of people in developing countries the best option, both economically and ecologically, may be septic tanks, the honey-suckers and the return of the sewage farm.
February 21st, 2013 at 4:07 pm
Thanks to Daniel for educating me, re Baltasar Gracian, whom I’d not heard of, good thing I happened to scroll through or I’d have missed those links
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/02/memento-mori/#comment-61127
February 21st, 2013 at 7:10 pm
You know that story about how the little girl at the seashore with her grandfather happen upon a thousand starfish washed up and stranded on the beach? She agonizes over the mass death, picks one up and throws one back into the ocean. Grandpa says “it wont matter” (or something to that effect) and she says “it matters to that one”. This is where I am.
I do move turtles off the road. I try not to indulge in the anger towards the already dead that run them over. I try and make things better for individual creatures, environments, situations, I encounter. Will it stop the NTE? of course not, but you still have a life to spend on the way there. There is a way to rejoice in the little beauties and also recognize the truth in the Tennyson poem quoted above. Somebody wrote in the comments last post about how life on the farm was an education in the horror of the natural world. I agree. I stopped talking about NTE, PO, collapse, etc. with others; but I do think this, the herd is nervous, death is in the air and everyone can smell it. I think more people are awake than some of you think.
I feel grief; not about my death, about the death of other living things. About carelessness and selfishness and foolish superficial concerns. It blows my mind to still see left/right political arguments considering our collective situation. But I dont feel depressed. I dont argue much, I dont need to be agreed with, I sure wouldnt make it my business to inform a young family their kids are doomed. Then what?
I come here because this is a smart group of people and I have learned so much. This situation is horrific and remarkable somehow all at once. It is standing at the edge of self inflicted abyss as a witness. I cant do anything about it, but i have to know, and I have to be in it fully. I am not checking out.
@Kathy C: I saw the squash borer eggs because I had my reading glasses on.
February 21st, 2013 at 8:06 pm
.
You can prep for a date with perfume,
You can prep the meal you consume,
For the fun to resume,
Or a test, I presume,
But there’s no way to prep for doom.
February 21st, 2013 at 8:36 pm
Musing: I notice that most people – including all of my friends, and even the ones that believe in climate change etc etc. – really don’t seem to care. It leads me to the question of whether there is something wrong with me that I do. What’s the point? Maybe we are supposed to be bacteria blazing through the last of the agar in our little petri dish. But I struggle with why I can’t get comfortable with the hedonistic attitude I witness everywhere. Why the hell do I care when the universe itself doesn’t give a rat’s ass?
February 21st, 2013 at 9:00 pm
‘Be Drunken’
Be Drunken, Always. That is the point; nothing else matters. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weigh you down and crush you to the earth, be drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, or on the green grass in a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and find the drunkenness half or entirely gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flies, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Be Drunken, if you would not be the martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please.”
~ Charles Baudelaire
February 21st, 2013 at 10:12 pm
Kathy C
Re the postings…
My assessment was about quality, not quantity. You and ulvfugl are neck and neck IMO.
February 21st, 2013 at 10:17 pm
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please. But be drunken.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Omar Khayyám
XI.
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse–and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness–
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
In the Sufi tradition, the “Loaf of Bread” is virtue, the “Flask of Wine” is insight, the “Book of Verse” is guidance, and “Thou” is the Reality, the Self of all selves.
February 21st, 2013 at 10:19 pm
ulvfugl
No I have not really read about the Crusads battles, like you mentioned.
I heard somewhere the men on the Enola Gay, were fixated on hitting central Hiroshima, and aimed their targeting on a christian enclave there, from a different denomination to their own, WTF !!!
The Chaplain to those men, I’m not sure if he was also a crew member, had a deeply felt remorse and self disgust for his endorsment of their actions, and publicly recanted any blessings he bestowed on them, saying that no divine being would ever desire such a thing as a nuclear bombing of a city, as they did.
He gets points for coming clean, but somehow I don’t think the guy forgave himself deep down. I would find it well nigh impossible too were it me. But to be fair, I would not have done it in the first place.Imagine if Christians had actually obeyed Jesus on the ‘thou shalt not kill’ commandment?
A different world would be now…perhaps.
February 21st, 2013 at 11:14 pm
Chapter 11: The Universal Form
Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Bhagavad-gītā As It Is
BG 11.32: The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people. With the exception of you [the Pāṇḍavas], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain.
BG 11.33: Therefore get up. Prepare to fight and win glory. Conquer your enemies and enjoy a flourishing kingdom. They are already put to death by My arrangement, and you, O Savyasācī, can be but an instrument in the fight.
BG 11.34: Droṇa, Bhīṣma, Jayadratha, Karṇa and the other great warriors have already been destroyed by Me. Therefore, kill them and do not be disturbed. Simply fight, and you will vanquish your enemies in battle.
To refrain from acting out of anger, hatred, or contempt while continuing to harbour such feelings is detrimental, as is acting with such feelings. Non-attachment is abandoning the feelings, regardless of whether one chooses to act or not act.
February 21st, 2013 at 11:29 pm
The second mission of the Army is to take care of the troops. Not bringing to bear all the force one can exert on a vacillating adversary to quit vacillating, thereby not shortening the conflict by even one minute and not saving the life or limb of even one soldier under command is a betrayal of that soldier’s trust and loyalty.
February 21st, 2013 at 11:38 pm
@ Ozman
…not really read about the Crusads
Essential reading, dear Ozman, if one wishes to understand European history, and indeed much else, and full of incredible, mind boggling incidental stories, google Children’s Crusade, and Melisende of Jerusalem, for example.
…But to be fair, I would not have done it in the first place.
Hahaha, yes, an interesting thought experiment, to place yourself in the role of, well, any character in history, and consider what you would have done, in those circumstances…
Afaik, there’s no solid evidence that Jesus ever existed, although someone came up with those words attributed to him. The trouble with the ‘thou shalt not kill’ commandment, is that it lacks some qualifications and detail. If Christendom had stuck to it, what happens when the awesome magnificent ferocity of Genghis Khan arrives, like army ants, devouring everything in their path ? Didn’t his conquest kill so many people that it actually effected the climate, I seem to recall ?
Some people claim buddhists are superior at pacifism but I think the reality has been they are often just as bad as everyone else, just human. There’s the big difference between what works for an individual, and what works when scaled up for a tribe or a nation or state.
http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2012/11/19/podcast-brian-victoria-on-zen-buddhist-terrorism-and-holy-war/
February 21st, 2013 at 11:47 pm
@ Robin D.
That’s all very well, if you follow that religion, and if you are a part of the soceity, but I personally, do not follow that religion, nor do I belong to any such soceity.
You seem to think that you can apply rationality to war. I do not accept that initial premise.
February 22nd, 2013 at 12:02 am
Heck, we’re all going to die… some music.
http://youtu.be/5gjyOdeidTc
February 22nd, 2013 at 1:19 am
You seem to think that….
Each person has a perspective.
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:25 am
During the middle ages, half the crop land was left fallow. I believe that waste was applied to those areas and left alone for a year. They made it work. Another good idea is to apply human waste to areas that grow animal feed. Then apply animal waste to areas that grow human food. Spreading on fresh vegetables is asking for trouble. Using trucks is not in the future.
In conclusion, it’s too little and too late. First, the cities must go. We need an asteroid…or NTE.
By the way, an asteroid may cloud the air for a while and cause cooling but when the dust clears, we continue to warm up. The CO2 is still up there. So will be the radiation.
February 22nd, 2013 at 3:19 am
@ Robin D.
Each person has a perspective.
Yes. Some 7 billion of them. Each with a mind that tells them stories, according to their belief system, according to their cultural conditioning.
So, my own position would be, move to higher ground, no belief system.
That does not make your perspective wrong or incorrect or faulty, although it means the view, the panorama, is more limited, because you see it through a filter.
In fact, I respect what you said …thereby not shortening the conflict by even one minute and not saving the life or limb of even one soldier under command is a betrayal of that soldier’s trust and loyalty.
If one happens to be involved in that business, then do the work honourably and properly. It’s not the soldiers who make the wars, is it, or who cause the fuck ups.
I see soldiering as controlled violence, which, as in martial arts, is a skilled trade.
It would be much better if there were no need for it. But we ( in Britain ) tried that long ago, re the Vikings, by saying ‘Please don’t come here and kill us, here’s some Danegeld if you’ll go away and kill someone else’. Didn’t work, did it, just encouraged them to come back more often. Bastards.
But what I am saying, I have no such loyalty, I serve in no army, nor follow any religious doctrines, and if I choose to fight for anything, then my constituency is the fauna and flora, and the very small portion of humans who love and respect nature and wildlife.
February 22nd, 2013 at 3:34 am
OZ man “My assessment was about quality, not quantity. You and ulvfugl are neck and neck IMO.” Is that a compliment or an insult?
February 22nd, 2013 at 3:46 am
Bailey “Why the hell do I care when the universe itself doesn’t give a rat’s ass?” Programming. Critters that pass on their gene have their genes in the next generation. Critters that have gene programs to try to stay alive are more likely to have their genes in the next generation. Why are you aware of the mess we are in when others are oblivious – bad programming. The efficient brain uses energy to be aware of the most likely treats. Chickens are afraid of hawk shapes, not duck shapes even though migrating ducks might carry H5N1 and vultures don’t attack live adult chickens. Depressed people do not function as well so the brain uses denial and happy chemicals to keep most people unaware of the fact that life is meaningless and constantly vigilant of strangers.
All that said, the world is awash with meaning. When someone you care about hugs you it usually means they like you. When your dog wags its tail upon seeing you it definitely means it likes you. When you see a snake shaped figure in the grass it means you should make sure its not a copperhead (here in the south anyway). When you hear the phone ring it means someone is calling you, a robo call is in place, or someone dialed a wrong number.
We are meaning detecting devices so we constantly search for meaning, its just that sometimes we try make that MEANING we are searching for when all there is is meaning.
February 22nd, 2013 at 3:50 am
Redeft – ah reading glasses for borer detection. Smart move. Caring about what you can do not what you can’t do, also smart move. That is why I could care for babies in Haiti and not have it get to me. Each night a few would die, each day there would be a few more. What got to me was realizing that with a species out of balance, saving babies might not be good. A big stretch of depression over that realization….
February 22nd, 2013 at 5:49 am
So here we are, a small collection of individuals professing our allegiance to Mother Earth and trying to do the right thing in our everyday circumstances, while down in DC, where our vaunted “watchdog agencies” are on the job everyday protecting us from harm we have this example:
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/usda-got-brand-new-pathogen-warning.html
Unidentified viral-fungal-like pathogen crosses into multiple kingdoms: Plant & Animal/Human. Rarely, if ever, seen in nature before.
Following a 6 year approval battle, the USDA fully deregulated Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa in January 2011. A week later, they partially deregulated GM sugar beets. This occurred despite Secretary of Agriculture’s Tom Vilsack’s knowledge of a stark warning letter by Dr. Don M. Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology, Purdue University two weeks prior, who found a link between the modified organisms and the proliferation of the new pathogen. Huber knew about its presence in Roundup Ready soy and corn and sought to hold off the GE alfalfa calling the situation an “emergency.”
(read the rest if you can stand it)
February 22nd, 2013 at 6:04 am
Now, i know most of us couldn’t care less about the financial sector where it’s like the wild west, but ya just gotta here this short video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg2YYpbMoyE&feature=player_embedded#!
Wall Street Setting Up Financial Armageddon
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:00 am
Jeez, Tom, one could get the idea that TPTB don’t care about us, huh?
Yesterday, I could laugh. Today, not so much.
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:04 am
Kathy, I agree with you and I guess I understand why I care from a causative perspective. But why do I continue to care knowing this has no ‘effective’ value? Even from a local perspective, all my environmental effort has been a waste over the years. I do need some of those happy denial chemicals.
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:08 am
Tom, I am no longer a believer that any ‘soft’ problems can bring the economy down. There has always been and will always be financial rabbits in the hat to keep this machine going. I have been hearing collapse since the 80′s. Only when the ‘hard’ wall of environmental, food, water, resources etc problems hit, will it truly collapse (but then far too late).
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:21 am
@kathy c: what else could you do once they were here? I believe your compassion towards the individual babies was the correct response. Considering the context of species overshoot saving babies was like adding drops to a waterfall.
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:44 am
Kathy C
“Is that a compliment or an insult?”
Nice framing there, which I didn’t foresee of course.
Maybe I will keep my compliments to myself.
But I get it now. In both your and ulvfugl’s view I compared you each to a rotten apple. How could I have been so stupid. I was actually saying I think you both are sweet Cherries, but, not to worry.
No insult nor any complaint intended.
And I was rather specifically pointing to and praising the links you both bring, not the bickering, nor criticism of either of you two.
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:56 am
One cummudgeon does not a feud make.
Healthy self assurence, resolve, doggedness, and determination are fine attributes in a world where people will always be lining up to criticise.
If that turns out to be the case, I would be asking myself why it has turned out that way, at least in the beginning when I first noticed it turning out that way, and then at periodic intervals therafter untill some light came on the subject. But that’s just me.
Of course, it may just be that it is ‘par for the course’ when one discusses things outside the mainstream, and in that case my previous statement could be moot, but those characteristics I just named:
‘Healthy self assurence, resolve, doggedness, and determination’
are also attributes of the terminator, who exists for a special kind of unalterable mission, and purpose, and perhaps where humans are concerned, could be tempered with some greater compassion, flexability, supportive gestures and communality of heart.
Come to think of it, that may just make the terminator human.
Just sayin.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:02 am
Bug city or Bird haven…either way it aint good.
‘Insect Drone Swarms to be “Hidden in Plain Sight”‘
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/02/insect-drone-swarms-to-be-hidden-in.html
A snippet:
“As drone expert, P.W. Singer said, “At this point, it doesn’t really matter if you are against the technology, because it’s coming.” According to Singer, “The miniaturization of drones is where it really gets interesting. You can use these things anywhere, put them anyplace, and the target will never even know they’re being watched.”
This is the promise made to be fulfilled in the Air Force video below. Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), combined with the ability to harvest energy, will enable insect-sized drone swarms to be dropped from military aircraft to stay aloft for a prolonged amount of time, offering a host of functions, including assassination.”
Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it Superman?….no it just a bird.
Think again.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:04 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_58byuLBu0
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:08 am
Orwellian climate double-speak dominating discussion
Groundbreaking study glimpses life in a warmer world:
The 15-year research project, led by the Government’s research company, GNS Science, has found some startling conclusions that have stunned the international scientific community.
Climate change models, used by governments to predict how quickly the planet will heat up due to man-made carbon emissions, are underestimating the dangers, says research leader Dr Chris Hollis.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:11 am
Well stated indeed: Red Eft Says:
February 21st, 2013 at 7:10 pm
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:25 am
OZman – sorry to put you in a bind there. But of course you are a wise person who can see the good in the many multiple ways of looking at the world. So thank you for the compliment
And thank you for being so open to all ways of seeing things. I don’t see some of the things you see but I respect you for the way you treat your seeing what you see, if that makes any sense.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:32 am
@ Red Eft
“I come here because this is a smart group of people and I have learned so much. This situation is horrific and remarkable somehow all at once. It is standing at the edge of self inflicted abyss as a witness. I cant do anything about it, but i have to know, and I have to be in it fully. I am not checking out.”
Me too, except the “checking out” part! I feel totally “checked out” when I listen to people talking about stuff that doesn’t matter anymore, like who will win the Super Bowl or the new car they just bought.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:50 am
@ Guy McPherson
Isn’t it amazing, the scientist, revealing the past and the remarkable insights that science provides, then looks to the future, forgets all about science, and gives us this wonderful fantasy based upon what ? fanciful optimism ? nothing at all ?
Strategies to reduce emissions since the Kyoto Protocol have “failed dramatically”, he said, and given the amount of greenhouse gas that’s already been pumped into the atmosphere, climate change is “inevitable”.
Soaring temperatures and rising sea levels will cause massive disruption, hardship, and famine, and are “certainly going to claim human lives”, he said.
But despite the gloomy outlook, he is convinced mankind will adapt and ride out the storm, which could last for millions of years.
“Over the next few centuries, global warming will impact on human infrastructure and how and where we live,” Dr Hollis said.
“It’s threatening human civilisation, but we’re not talking about survival of the human race. We have time to prepare and the ability to adapt, but we need more debate about how we’re going to do that.”
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:58 am
I’d say it’s a bit of fanciful optimism, but mostly nothing at all
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:58 am
Guy Climate change models, used by governments to predict how quickly the planet will heat up due to man-made carbon emissions, are underestimating the dangers, says research leader Dr Chris Hollis.
I checked the article and it further says The 15-year research project, led by the Government’s research company, GNS Science, has found some startling conclusions that have stunned the international scientific community.
OK the word “stunned” is in there so this is another tick down on the Climate Scientist Confidence chart.
February 22nd, 2013 at 9:26 am
@ Guy McPherson, Kathy C.
Yes, ‘stunned’…. wish they’d STOP being stunned all the time, if they paid more attention they’d stop walking into lamp posts…
It’s rather like when Monsanto talk about ‘sound’ science, you know it means junk
Btw, re Tom’s Monsanto horror story, I think I read last night, bait dropped by air carrying synthetic rabies vaccine, appears to be spreading rabies to species that never previously had it ?? Didn’t keep the link, and anyway it’s all too much, there’s only so many ghastly stories I can assimilate… sigh…
Ah well, I’m listening to this
CONSCIOUSNESS, LANGUAGE AND NATURE: NIETZSCHE’S PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND NATURE
http://cleverbeast.tumblr.com/post/43643430403
February 22nd, 2013 at 9:43 am
Got a big low pressure cell here and plenty of rain on the east coast at the moment, with high winds up further north.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/satellite/nsw
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/radar/nsw
http://data.weatherzone.com.au/data/hourly/images/synoptic/wz_satsyn_aus_640x480.jpg
http://data.weatherzone.com.au/data/hourly/images/synoptic/wz_syn_aus_d1_640x480.jpg
With the last link…notice that on Saturday 10:00 pm, which is still about 19 or so hours in the future from now as I post, the low has split and moved Westward, or perhaps dissipated to nothing… Well’just see if it does….or hang around and keep raining.
Does anyone think they are just not calling it what it is…a tropical storm? On the news it was reported winds reached 188 km/hour at Balina in NE NSW on the coast. The same website states storm and hurricane force winds are 88 km/hr plus.
More flooding I suspect.
February 22nd, 2013 at 10:47 am
memento mori the soundtrack: http://abjo.bandcamp.com/track/memento-mori
February 22nd, 2013 at 11:06 am
Richard Duncan’s latest update to his Olduvai Gorge theory has been posted at The Social Contract. It’s here.
February 22nd, 2013 at 11:20 am
Did anyone see “Dilbert” yesterday?
http://dilbert.com/2013-02-21/
February 22nd, 2013 at 11:43 am
The transition dilemma ( TD) states that a successful transition town would also be a magnet for desperate and dangerous people. This problem could be solved in each town by a reliable communication network and a strong defense unit.
Isn’t that slightly naive and unrealistic ? As Ripley, B9K9, and some other voices have mentioned, there’s sections of the population who are equipped and highly trained to take over anything THEY want.
Re SH freaky weirdness, the priest laughing all through the funeral service, making jokes, as if it was a comedy routine, the inappropriate strange behaviour of so many parents and others, all hints at mind control, imo, Paul Simon singing Sound of Silence at the funeral, which is a military-intelligence code word for certain psychotronic weapons of mass mind-control… does anybody think that such technology and other devastating techniques would not be deployed and used by TPTB, to get whatever they wanted, in the event of social collapse and chaos ? They have long range emotional disruption stuff, how are the transition town permies and hippies and compost makers with their ‘strong defence units’ going to compete against satellite weapons and laser beam weapons and drones and neuro-chemicals and all kinds of classified crap that incapacitates people that nobody has even heard of ?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/illuminating9_11/3183322190/
February 22nd, 2013 at 11:47 am
@Guy McPherson
Guy, thanks for the update on Duncan’s Olduvai theory and other informative links in this thread. I became aware of Duncan’s Olduvai Theory many years ago via Jay Hanson’s website dieoff.org
Brutus, thank you for your essay.
February 22nd, 2013 at 11:56 am
Sounds like fun, HP printers can be hacked remotely, told to die and catch fire
http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/hp-printers-can-be-remotely-controlled-and-set-on-fire-researchers-claim/
February 22nd, 2013 at 1:25 pm
More bad news:
http://www.dailykos.com/blog/FishOutofWater
“A climate tipping point of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels has been discovered.” From today’s journal Science.
And as we all know, we’ve passed that mark, so it’s all downhill from here, folks.
Some will hold on to hope.
Some will deny to the end.
Some will check out early.
Some will think they can be the last ones standing.
Some will turn to violence.
Some will turn inward and wait.
Some will decide to fill their last days with love.
Some will descend into religion, mainstream and/or fringe.
But all will die, some horribly, some gently, some in between.
And all will believe their choice was the “right” one, the “moral” one, even when the circumstances that gave rise to these unreal concepts are gone. But without them, it seems humans are totally adrift!
Bloom County cartoon:
Grandpa and Milo are playing a new war boardgame that Grandpa has just purchased and brought home to the boarding house.
Grandpa has the first move:
“My card says I move one tank division over your border.”
Milo:
“WOOSH! I respond with 500 thermonuclear missiles speeding to the west!”
“What?”
“The ensuing world-wide firestorm burns every living thing off the plant earth as it sails off into space, a charred relic of four billion years of evolution! ** I WIN ** !!”
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:06 pm
Another take:
http://science-pope.com/2013/02/i-bet-you-didnt-know/
Quote: “To really internalize this information means you would need to accept things like:
- You are among the last people that will ever walk the Earth
- Your children won’t survive to middle age
- All of the beauty, culture, and scientific discoveries we’ve unlocked will return to the ether from whence they came.”
Then all these stupid comments at the end of the post, including all reactions you can think of. One commenter says this:
___________________________________________________________
Some of those tipping points that are noteworthy are:
1) the fact that eHux is now missing from over 40 percent of it’s natural range. Ehux is significant because: A) they are the primary carbon pump-down processors for the oceans, B) they are the basis for nearly all food chains, C) they are the primary producers of free atmospheric oxygen, and D) their outgassing of dimethyl sulfide becomes the primary condensate source for 80 percent of oceanic cloud formation, which profoundly affects planetary albedo. —> Positive feedback escalating unchecked
2) a significant portion of the Gulf Stream has split off from the primary current and is now running up the Fram Strait, dumping very warm tropical water onto the underside of the polar ice, increasing the rate of melt from the underside and accelerating the loss of sea ice, as well as increasing the rate of destabilization of glaciers on land that are being held back by the sea ice. —> Positive feedback escalating unchecked
3) another side effect of the Gulf Stream is that the deep sea water in the polar seas begins to warm at a much deeper level than previously, which destabilizes the methane clathrates at or below 3,000 meters. This past summer at least 4 teams took CO2 readings of 400 ppm and identified at least 8 separate ocean plumes of methane a kilometer or more in diameter. Current hypothesis is the CO2 levels are a result of the decay of some of that new methane. —> Positive feedback escalating unchecked
4) those are all troubling enough but the one that scares me most is the effect of latent heat in relation to ice melt and temp increases. We will get some bumps and hiccups along the way over the next few years but the second that polar ice is gone, we are likely to see enormous temp increases. And they are saying it’s very likely the Arctic sea ice will be completely gone by 2017. Another contributing factor to this is that global dimming is masking aproximately 2 degrees of warming that has already occurred. Combine those two – the ice goes out and something disrupts the oil supply so planes, cars, trains, boats and factories all shut down and we are very likely to see an 8 degree jump over the course of one summer. —> Positive feedback escalating unchecked
And the reality is that all these denier asshats are just trolling. They are both ignorant and stupid and the sooner they get deselected the better it will be for the rest of us. They will not be convinced and you should quit trying. Even when something unthinkable happens, say a city like Chicago gets summer temps of 145 for 3 weeks in a row and the power fails and we lose half a million people to heat stroke in 3 days, those deniers will be saying it’s just a fluke.
The science is real, and anyone with a modicum of intelligence can learn what it is and understand it. If you don’t learn the science then you are choosing to remain willfully ignorant, and to me, that is utterly contemptible. There is no controversy about global heating. There are simply 3 groups: 160 governments and 97 percent of thousands of scientists in dozens of disciplines around the world who understand more or less what is happening and are in general agreement about it; the paid flacks owned by the Heartland Institute, the Koch brothers and Exxon-Mobil who are exceptional liars trained to sow confusion; and those who lack sufficient basic scientific education to be able to distinguish between the previous two groups.
While we do not know this for certain, the data is extremely compelling and appears to be warning us that we may be facing our own extinction. If this is true and we can intervene and lessen that likelihood and you idiots laugh and point and make fun without doing your level best to see if it’s true or taking steps to mitigate that possibility, then you deserve every second of a very miserable end. Unfortunately you will take your families along with you, so once again the many innocent suffer at the hands of the ignorant and arrogant few.
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:12 pm
BCN: great cartoons (maybe THAT’S the way to reach the masses!)
U: yeah, i read somewhere where a couple of college kids hacked a drone too (and we know Iran did it, so it’s possible). About the powers that be and their supposed weapons: once there’s nothing to eat and no available water, once the environment becomes too toxic to even be breathing the air or walking around (radiation) their weapons will become useless, like cars, trucks, tanks and airplanes. When we’re all in the same boat (think of a tsunami) people will be powerless, money will buy nothing of any value and all will be swept away. Whether some last another day or weeks may make them wish they had died with the rest. The police and military will be unable or unwilling to continue in their roles as they learn of the predicament that NTE is.
Guy: yeah, i think that the “we still have time” meme gives people the impression that we WILL do something about it, though “what” we can do borders on grasping at straws at this point, and no one ever says WHEN we’ll tackle the problem (wait til they discover it’s far too late). It’s complete nonsense.
Ya know what else is nuts? i told you all that i’m trying to do the best i can with the remaining time, so i’m involved with a few environmental groups. One of them is trying to get our local state senator to co-sponsor a bill to put a moratorium on fracking in our state (PA). To do this we need to convince him that tbe constituents in his district support this. So the group split up the tasks of calling religious leaders, business people, high school and college student representatives and various other environmental organizations to attend a sit-down with the senator in about a month. Well i got to call a conservancy group that does good work here in southeastern PA this morning to ask someone to please attend. The snooty woman on the other end of the line carefully explained how they’re a relatively small group that has limited resources and would have to decline. i was stunned – i though this would be a “no-brainer.” All they have to do is send someone out to sit and listen! How the fuck hard is that! What, you can’t afford the gas? i tell ya – i was so pissed i jumped all over the lady and told her she was sticking her head in the sand. She called me obnoxious and gave me the “don’t lecture ME” routine before she hung up.
i’m probably the wrong person to be schmoozing with comfortably employed desk people so that they’ll participate in this fucking losing battle to care about where they live and what’s going on that threatens us all. i can’t stand the glacial pace of incremental change for the better when the environment is turning to shit every day. These people should know that we’re running out of time and if they don’t – i don’t have time for them!
i’m about this close to throwing in the towel, but i’ll calm down, learn from the experience and try again with a much larger environmental group that already is working up in the area where the fracking is taking place and do more questioning than rhetoric to see if they’ll send a rep. Now i know why some brave people go the “terrorism” route: blowing up equipment, sabatoging plans with petty destruction (like flattening all the truck tires), and chaining themselves to trees and bulldozers.
sorry for the rant .. .
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:24 pm
More coverage of the Science article from the BBC, with some impressive pictures:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21549643
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:32 pm
well, nice to see i’m not the only one:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/20/1613381/activist-vs-inactivist-roberts-calls-out-revkins-handwaving-on-climate-and-keystone/
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:36 pm
BCN: that’s why i think the collapse is going to happen quickly as all that permafrost melts, while humanity tries the feeble “hail Mary” pass of a geo-engineered technical fix (letting jets use dirtier fuel in their commercial flights which will somehow reflect incoming sunlight).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkPml4O5gms
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:39 pm
OzMan says: Sarah Connor screaming “we’re all dead!”
You’re already dead, ‘cause ahead,
Too much heat will become too widespread;
Think you’re safe and alive?
You’re not going to survive—
Everyone! You’re all fucking dead!
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:52 pm
Have a look at the weekly average C02 at Mauna Loa:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:56 pm
Yep as Guy noted Duncan’s latest Olduvai is up
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/twentythree-two/tsc_23_2_duncan.pdf
No mention of what happens to the nuclear reactors when the grid goes down. That will be my main question to him on the discussion on America2point0 – when it commences.
As U notes stunned perhaps comes from walking around with your head in your studies and then suddenly looking up and there is a lamp post. Whack.
Ah well I was stunned when I realized that we had been looking at Duncan’s projection of grid collapse for years and until sometime after Fukushima occurred it didn’t dawn on us what this meant. Yet the information was out there. We just didn’t put two and two together. Duh…
Basically BtD has the best commentary on what is ahead. Forget the experts….
February 22nd, 2013 at 3:56 pm
If you’re a low-lying island state, climate change is not some abstract problem far out on the event horizon, it’s more of an urgent existential threat—the kind of thing you’d hope would spur the leading global security body to take bold action. If only it were that simple.
In the latest episode of Slate’s video series The World Decrypted, Carne Ross deconstructs the U.N. Security Council’s latest puzzlingly passive response to global warming.
Here’s some additional background on the story:
This report suggests that some low-lying states may need to be evacuated within a decade, as the rate of sea level rise is worse than anticipated: Oceans are rising 60 percent faster than the U.N. had projected. The island state of Kiribati is already making plans to relocate its population.
http://www.slate.com/articles/video/slate_v/2013/02/u_n_global_warming_why_the_united_nations_won_t_make_bold_proposals_on_climate.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content
Not sure, will this qualify for a tick on my Climate Scientist Confidence chart? No stunned or surprised scientists but a puzzled former British diplomat – maybe 1/2 a tick.
February 22nd, 2013 at 4:03 pm
@ Tom
About the powers that be and their supposed weapons: once there’s nothing to eat and no available water, once the environment becomes too toxic to even be breathing the air or walking around (radiation) their weapons will become useless, like cars, trucks, tanks and airplanes. When we’re all in the same boat (think of a tsunami) people will be powerless, money will buy nothing of any value and all will be swept away. Whether some last another day or weeks may make them wish they had died with the rest. The police and military will be unable or unwilling to continue in their roles as they learn of the predicament that NTE is.
I agree, when things reach that terminal stage you describe. But that wasn’t my point. I was commenting upon Duncan’s Transition Town defence idea.
Transition to what ? That terminal condition ? Well, long before we’d get there, there’s be the stage I mentioned. That is, some folk have the technological advantage.
Yes, technology depends upon technology depends upon technology. You can’t keep the high tech stuff going without the spares, the back up, the knowledge base, so eventually, that advantage declines.
But look, for example the Mexican drug cartels, folks of that sort of ruthless mindset. They don’t care about ‘transition’. If they want electricity and they see a nuclear power plant that makes it, they’ll seize it for themselves. They’ll kidnap the technicians and make them work it at gunpoint if necessary. I mean, they’ve set up their own alternative mobile phone network. If somebody tries to prevent them, a few disemboweled corpses convey the message.
Perhaps this kind of mediaeval warfare using 21st C. tech only lasts a decade, I don’t know. I don’t know what Transition Towns in USA look like in Duncan’s imagination, or what sort of defences he thinks they’d need to be impregnable and yet still be able to feed themselves. But seems to me, from the lessons of history, so long as there is some oil left, some electricity left, some big guns, then the baddest guys will grab them and carve out territories they think they can hold for themselves, using all the traditional methods, basically cunning and guile, brute force, destruction and terror.
You reward the troops with the looting, rape and pillage. That’s how it was always done.
I just can’t imagine Transition Towns full of gardeners and food being left to get on with life in peace. That would only happen if their defences are so massive and superior that they’d deter any attack from any quarter. To keep that going they’d need their own highly regimented command and control. Who’d really want to live like that ?
And then it’s still all in vain, because, as Kathy C. and others keep reminding us, you can’t defend against climate change or Fukes going off… if it doesn’t rain for a year, or the precipitation is highly radioactive…
It’s back to that thing about prolonging, extending, trying to stretch out survival, which is a very natural response. But how far does anyone want to go down a path that leads nowhere ?
February 22nd, 2013 at 4:50 pm
BC Nurse Prof says:
Some will hold on to hope.
Some will deny to the end.
Some will check out early.
Some will think they can be the last ones standing.
Some will turn to violence.
Some will turn inward and wait.
Some will decide to fill their last days with love.
Some will descend into religion, mainstream and/or fringe.
And all will believe their choice was the “right” one, the “moral” one, even when the circumstances that gave rise to these unreal concepts are gone. But without them, it seems humans are totally adrift!
@ BC Nurse Prof:
#1: Dayum, that’s good!
#2:
With near term doom now intervening,
Blown minds will be wildly careening,
And snag any belief
To get mental relief
And to think that life still has some meaning.
February 22nd, 2013 at 4:52 pm
Six tanks at Hanford are leaking…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/22/us-usa-nuclear-leak-idUSBRE91L19G20130222
…but no reason to worry.
Right.
February 22nd, 2013 at 5:07 pm
A quick update on the massive rainfall hitting the mid Eastern coast of NSW, Australia…
‘Big rain, wind and surf heading south in NSW’
Brett Dutschke, Friday February 22, 2013 – 23:36 EDT
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/big-rain-wind-and-surf-heading-south-in-nsw/23739
A snippet:
“Heavy rain, strong winds and large waves have been hitting the north coast of New South Wales hard but now the focus is shifting further south.
In the 36 hours since 9am Thursday rain has been as heavy as 360mm in Dorrigo, on the Bellinger River, just inland of Coffs Harbour, its heaviest rain in four years. Wind has been as strong as 126km/h at Cape Byron, near Byron Bay. Waves have exceeded 12 metres off the coast of Bryon Bay and Coffs Harbour.
Rainfall, wind and waves this high are typical of a category one cyclone.
Between Lismore and Port Macquarie rain has brought widespread falls of 100-to-200mm, wind has generally gusted 70-90km/h and waves have averaged about four-to-five metres.
As a result, major flooding has affected some rivers and the surrounding areas, trees have come down, roofs torn off and beaches have suffered significant erosion…..
This won’t be the end of it regarding rainfall. The atmosphere will still be fairly humid and unstable. Low pressure troughs and moist northeasterly winds will generate showers and thunderstorms each days for the next week, mainly about the slopes, ranges and coast.
This follow-up rain will cause aggravation for some of these areas, most likely on the north coast, where the heaviest falls should again occur.”
It seems that at 979 Milibars the ow in the South has compressed all the patterns hanging on the East coast, which corroborates some of the predictions of CSIRO climate reports of future extended weather patterns, hanging longer in zones they previously vacated in a day or two. It is the same with hot dry, or wet windy systems, due to the lessened pressure differential in the mid lattitudes, (The Jet Stream in the Northern Hemisphere).
If I went for a waalk in some of the places I usually go for 3-6 hours at a stretch, today, it would seem like a scene from ‘The Road’. I don’t mean boats stranded up here, or trucks in the middle of a pylon bridge, just the ‘wet dark cold grey’, something even Winston Smith would be used to.
Welcome to just the beginning of the nightmare folks, water management, when it comes,and when it doesnt will define our near term existance, along with food availability gaps and housing shortages(due to affordability).
I think it was ulvfugl who stated recently that TPTB have still got an infinite number of trix in their bag of bandages to keep the industrial economy rolling along. I have the same sinking feeing, or better stated, I have the same view, that leads in some weaker moments to the same sinking feeling. Then at other times I feel up for these challenges, everready to just go live in the bush, eek out some kind of neo-scavenge life with dignity.
I went scouting over the last few days for a few sites to build a pallet tunnel humpy, and guess what, inthose two places I found evidence of someone doing the same thing some time back.
These places were abandoned, but both had remnants of tyre planting beds, which was difficult to tell if it was for food or the green ‘alfalfa’ for medicinal smoking rituals…eh..ehm?
Anyhow I have a design that looks like it will hold up ok, which I can replicate several times in various locations.
It’s either that or go walkabout around this Great Southern Land, or just flap in the wind here, so to speak. There is the issue of family, which is still 6 against 1, in old world rekoning.
Might see if Guy would periodically take my journal entries if I go ahead and move to the bush, as an Aussie style HDT living experiment, but in my case living off the debris of the oil age, NOW.(Guy, any chance?) At least it won’t be a shock when down the track it all does pile up and regurgitate itself out it’s own cloacka, (Industrial Civilisation I mean).
February 22nd, 2013 at 5:27 pm
BenjaminTheDonkey
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:39 pm
OzMan says: Sarah Connor screaming “we’re all dead!”
Maybe John Connor was a poet, as well as a geurilla soldier, close to as great as you? He inspired, (past tense on a future scenario,??) the remnants of humans, with the succint wit so in the rubble/varigated trenches they get a laugh before ‘the mechanical foot’ of climate change catastrophe gets them/us.
“Everyone! You’re all fucking dead!”
This brings to mind that if we live mechanically, the walking dead, it is so, we’re all dead.
But, at least we are carrying the fire, we are carrying life! This ai so very clear to me, how does it get missed by the many many many marching to the grave, gravely marching ?
Fucking Spiritual Man!
February 22nd, 2013 at 5:49 pm
And then there is this, just as good a boost as your morning cup of coffee…
‘Chart Of The Decade – Atmospheric Methane Concentrations Over Time – Energy Bulletin’
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112723047#post4
And here for your viewing convenience, so anyone can print a poster for their wall and manually keep track…but you will have to add a few blank sheets on the top to get thes cale right.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NV6UAzfp7Vw/UDkybG1GKfI/AAAAAAAAFpw/OJhQUHJ0EmU/s1600/_CH4_CO2timeline.gif
February 22nd, 2013 at 6:08 pm
BC Nurse Prof Says:
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:52 pm
Have a look at the weekly average C02 at Mauna Loa:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
I have been digging into this inbetween classes this week. The change from the same week last year is approx. 3.5 ppm. The average change from Y.O.Y. Feb to Feb from 2000 to 2012 is 1.87 ppm.
Looking at week to week change from Sept. 2012 and I noted an odd jump in ppm every 4th week starting in November. I’m unable to tell is this is what is actually measured or due to how the data is being assembled.
Now, there is a dramatic increase (eruption?) of methane in the Barents Sea that started last month. See here:
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/02/dramatic-increase-in-methane-in-the-arctic-in-january-2013.html#more
However, it is not at all clear if that could be related to CO2 measurments on Mauna Loa, and I’m not saying it is. That being said, the fact that both are occuring at the same time is interesting. Also interesting is that both are happening the winter after the large decrease in Arctic Ice. It could be that there is an area of the Pacific that has become a source rather than a sink. . . It could be the huge smog cloud from China made its way across the Pacific thereby causing a jump in the reading. Additionally, this is only a few data points. That being said, atmospheric CO2 has been accelerating at an accelerating rate for decades. If this is not a hiccup and is the new normal doubling time then, well, that is very bad.
In my limited view the jump is unlikely to be as simple as one easily identified cause.
Disclaimer: Reducing nature to math is reductionism ad absurdum. It reduces natural processes to the manageable, not the knowable.
February 22nd, 2013 at 6:57 pm
One last thought before I bug out and go put some rain covers on the vegetables in the garden…
Industrial capitalism by its very constituent institutions, agencies and functions systematically alienates humans from each other, fundamentally interrupting an ancient, powerful, and necessary aid in our happiness and survival – what we ordinarily call’ Community’.
But, and here is the unique trick to ‘Industrial Capitalism’, it then sells it back to us. It follows therefor, if you have little money, or assets transferrable t money at will, then you have little access to community.
What was that I heard about an epidemic of mental illness, and psycho-social disorders…..?
An alternative is to make a quick study of human responses to natural disasters, and some industrial dissasters, like the 6.3 magnitude New Zealand Earthquake in Christchurch on Feb 22nd 2011 , where it is people themselves who still respond to their own needs as a complete group, regardless of the usual ‘social wealth gradient’- they all just give to each other, food, water, bus loads of supplies, blankets.
‘Grace Vineyard Community Response to 2011 ChristChurch Earthquake HQ’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl5eBeU2c9s
It is so sad that these manufactured roles are only shifted, and discarded when TSHTF, but still, maybe it will be rediscovering each other as equals that will help us go out with some of our 2 million years of humanity in tact. It may be a continual series of ‘humman induced’ natural disasters that force us into each others homes/remnants-of-homes and allow all to help each other, finally ridding ourselves of such a sick social structure, (especially in the West) that can come up with social inequality as a default.
‘Chinese flood victims in dramatic rescue from raging river’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeFC2BAp_E0
‘China Army PLA mobilized 300,000 people fighting flood natural catastrophe’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJNylm6_Mtk
If you look at the actual people responding, and being helped it is clear they are activating a zone of social and community participation that is fully available to them, their giving selves are in the forfront of conscoiusness, temporarily supplanting the highly ritualised, ordinary boxed in ‘civilised’ norms and constraints of the ‘ modern commercial persona’.
While clearly a piece of soft church propoganda, the ‘Grace Vineyard Community Response to 2011 ChristChurch Earthquake HQ’ video actually shows people, kids doing community activities, some games, music, singing, all of which look to be what normal humans do. Not anymore, excepting a disaster, or a ‘commercial’ festival,( which was probably once a thaksgiving for harveat festival way back.)
Many actually feel relief, after the initial shock passes over. If you have lost a loved one, that may never pass, but others, even complete strangers assist and give unselfish human support.
WTF is all this competition, (the Kardishans….OMG!! competitive cooking, or Uber cooking…! Shoot me now, PLEASE!)…and everything is now mediated by a commercial transaction …. WTF!
To think that human ‘Culture’ could disappear to such an extent…
But, yes, just don’t watch.
I don’t, but billions do.
Maybe we should welcome all the human disasters we can get…sans the suffering of course. That would be a real trick.
Checking garden now…
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:00 pm
@ Ozman
…on the Bellinger River, just inland of Coffs Harbour…
That’s the area where all my family and relatives live, I have not been in contact for many years, we fell out over the sort of issues discussed here.
I’m still thinking about Duncan’s ‘strong defences of the transition towns’ notion.
If perchance, the Fukes get put to bed safely somehow, ( which is impossible, in fact there are a few hundred new ones being planned to be built ) and much of the population dies from some pandemic, and the utopian transition communities keep transitioning to a ‘sustainable’ future, after the ammo has all run out and there’s no more steelworks to make howitzers… then, maybe
The most efficient and effective low tech weapon using sustainable materials was the spear. Anybody can make one, anybody can use one. Simple. Except that, defending the theoretical transition town, how many folks reading this are actually willing to stick a spear into another human being attacking them ? It’s no good being squeamish or hesitant, is it.
Anyway, next green tech weapon is the bow and arrow. Don’t need to be quite so up close and personal. But surely the best ever, in the historical record, has to be the Chinese repeating crossbow. Build a high stone wall around your transition town, and have thousands of these installed ready for use. I reckon they trump everything else until armour, gunpowder and firearms come along.
http://www.atarn.org/chinese/rept_xbow.htm
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:17 pm
BC Nurse Prof Says:
February 22nd, 2013 at 2:24 pm
More coverage of the Science article from the BBC, with some impressive pictures:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21549643
Yeah, one of the scientists is quoted as (paraphrasing) “melting permafrost will be bad for infrastructure built on it”.
Blinders. . . .
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:23 pm
Found this fascinating, about bees and flowers’ electrical fields:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/21/bees-can-sense-the-electric-fields-of-flowers/
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:44 pm
“The blink of an eye”
Pamphleteer: Hello Sir, are you aware of Climate Change?
Norm: “If I think it is something I can do nothing about, or someone else is ‘in charge’ or makes those decidsions, I will switch off, maybe even bleet denial arguments previously scaffolded by MSN.”
Pamphleteer: “OK…(?) Would you like to know more about Climate Change Sir, and what you can do about it ?
Norm: “Eerr..? My life is full just now… I… I can’t cope with anymore truth, er… infomation, um… are they the same…. I don’t have the skills, intellegence or ethical framework to know the difference… I’ve been colonised and branded from birth by corporations, even while at school …. I’m all at sea…I…?
Norms 6 y/o child: “Daddy, daddy, can we go to the movies now, please?
Norm: “Errr….yes, some welcome distraction,( with embedded reinternalizations of the prescribed dominant norms of consumer uncritical thinking heirarchical society), from the stress of self reflection on my limitations as a human being, my silent participation in the destruction of the living planet, my lack of power, and authority to get that power…OMG, I’ve become …a…(Horror in voice) A CONSUMER.(Relief in voice) Now where was I, oh yes…
Pamphleteer: ” Um, Sir, would you like to take a pamphlet, and read it with your daughter later, after the movie ?
Norm: Nah! Not interested. OK, lets go, what would you like to distract with..err. see honey..?
February 22nd, 2013 at 7:51 pm
BC NurseProf left off substance abuse on her otherwise very impressive list. Tom, I suggest a cocktail or some other substance of your choice. Having trouble recruiting from people who should know better is frustrating to say the least.
Kathy C, I think the phrase, “happening sooner than projected/modeled/etc” is just another way of saying SURPRISE…..and so should be added to the index. Thoughts?
Great links.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:03 pm
@ OzMan: Thanks dude!
John Connor
The life that you know is now passed—
Big changes are coming on fast;
It’s just as Mom ranted:
Stuff you take for granted,
It’s just…it’s not gonna last.
February 22nd, 2013 at 8:13 pm
ulvfugl
I hear you. Maybe time to get in touch, eh ?
But in passing, I suggest if you do, that your greeting phrase not be, ‘Hi, heard you are having a bit of rain there…I told you so”.
That will …well, you get the picture.
Also on the issue of ramparts as defences…plenty of C4 and Plastique floating around.
IMO anything we can imagine that is reasonably possible will happen, somewhere, sans widespread nerve agents or bioweapons, or Nuke failure.
Notwithstanding all those, it will probably settle back into cooperative groups, and the occasional aggressive raiders, if some survive the bottleneck, that is.
We will see!
February 22nd, 2013 at 10:13 pm
Early today I read about the ancient-cave study at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/22-4. In the discussion there, a commenter linked to the Limits to Growth graph updated “with every predicted component recalculated with actual data from 1970 to 2000 graphed in broken lines” (http://media.smithsonianmag.co… ). This was my introduction to the graph. When Guy cited the Olduvai Theory, I compared the Limits graph with the picture of the Olduvai cliff. Powerful visuals for a newbie!
In the CD discussion, there was a brief mention of non-maintenance of nuclear reactors due to grid failure, and one commenter posed the question, How fast does a reactor go critical without maintenance?
@Kathy: Would you please assist me by answering that question? Many thanks for your help.
@ Guy: Does your current level of understanding regarding non-maintenance of nuclear reactors due to grid failure alter any views you presented in Walking Away from Empire? My warmest thanks to you.
February 22nd, 2013 at 10:56 pm
The Weather Channel is doing a special on February 28th titled Hacking Mother Nature, basically promising new ways to “control” the weather, i suppose to get people to think that technology will once again save the day and enable humanity to undo all the damage.
February 23rd, 2013 at 3:32 am
Looks like another dry summer -
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/drought-poses-growing-threat-to-western-water-supplies-officials-warn-15638
February 23rd, 2013 at 4:00 am
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2013/02/15/left-in-the-dark-copper-thieves-rob-detroit-freeways-of-light/
DETROIT (WWJ/AP) – The Michigan Department of Transportation says one-fifth of the lights along freeways in Metro Detroit aren’t working — and copper thieves are mainly to blame.
MDOT spokesman Rob Morosi said roughly 20 percent of the lights on poles and beneath overpasses on freeways in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and St. Clair counties are dark.
“We are responsible for about 5,500 light poles and also about 5,000 individual lights that are installed beneath overpasses,” Morosi told The Detroit News. “Right now we’re estimating 1,100 outages to those poles for a number of reasons.”
The main reason for many of the outages, according to Morosi, is copper thieves – who are stripping metal from the transformer cabinets
February 23rd, 2013 at 4:43 am
Getting closer to reality
Dr. Ricky Rood’s Climate Change Blog
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/RickyRood/comment.html?entrynum=254
Should we just adapt—and not worry about our continued emissions of our energy waste into the atmosphere, ocean, and land? What would be adapt to? We started talking about the “new normal” when we calculated, in 2011, the 30-year average of temperatures from 1981 to 2010, and a new, warmer average “replaced” the 30-year average of some earlier period. In 10 more years we will have the next warmer “climate,” then the next, and the next—the “next normals.” There is no new normal. And the warming will be speeding up. There is no “just adapting” to this; there is no stable climate to adapt to. We must manage and limit our carbon dioxide waste or we will still be chasing the “new normal” in a thousand years.
full post at the link
February 23rd, 2013 at 5:36 am
Kathy: that wunderground article comments section shows lots of deniers are still out there arguing about the data, charts and “implications” but don’t, won’t or can’t see the direction we’re heading. It’s sad really.
February 23rd, 2013 at 5:41 am
@Tom
Kathy: that wunderground article comments section shows lots of deniers are still out there arguing about the data, charts and “implications” but don’t, won’t or can’t see the direction we’re heading. It’s sad really.
It’s an excellent psychological study in cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias – even from those who could be presumed as very intelligent otherwise. I have been going back and forth with a local meteorologist (denier) who has been misleading the public. I recently sent him the Climate Summit Dr. Francis videos on the weather climate link. Haven’t heard back from him in a while lol. They have too much invested in being right about their ages old denial position.
February 23rd, 2013 at 5:49 am
Btw, congrats to Brutus for being the first person I’ve come across who has read The MASTER and his EMMISSARY, and who has understood the contents well enough to write an intelligent blog post about its significance ! Bravo !
http://brutus.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/your-brain-on-postmodernism/
February 23rd, 2013 at 5:55 am
Also, slightly related to the actual topic, memento mori, the catacombs of Naples are fascinating
http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/the-san-gaudioso-catacombs-and-basilica.html
February 23rd, 2013 at 6:38 am
@ Ozman
…plenty of C4 and Plastique floating around.
You must have missed my earlier qualification, those low tech wooden weapon scenarios only apply if/when all the ammo and modern stuff is no longer available. It’s an unlikely hypothetical situation. But it followed from the suggestion, by Duncan, that transition towns could have ‘strong defences’. Are they going to be roofed with anti-drone netting with a mesh size similar to mosquito netting, because these thing will be able to deliver nano-bio-infectious agents of all kinds, diseases genetically modified to kill certain racial groups, diseases designed to render a population temporarily paralysed or dysfunctional, whatever…
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/the-coming-world-of-killer-mini-drones.html#comments
February 23rd, 2013 at 7:56 am
Speaking of acceleration of acceleration (in Climate Change) the concept was first brought to my attention in Flight Surgeon’s school in the description of forces causing injury that are generated in aircraft accidents/crashes. It was referred to as jolt, but is widely known as jerk.
Accelerating jerk is known as snap or jounce.
Jounce
In physics, jounce is the fourth derivative of the position vector with respect to time, with the first, second, and third derivatives being velocity, acceleration, and jerk, respectively; in other words, the jounce is the rate of change of the jerk with respect to time. Jounce is defined by any of the following equivalent expressions:
Currently, there are no well-accepted designations for the derivatives of jounce. The fourth, fifth and sixth derivatives of position as a function of time are “sometimes somewhat facetiously” referred to as “Snap”, “Crackle”, and “Pop”.
Velocity = distance per time^1
Acceleration = distance per time^2
Jerk, jolt = distance per time^3
Jounce, snap = distance per time^4
Crackle = distance per time^5
Pop = distance per time^6
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:13 am
Could Humans Go Extinct?
There’s a chance we’re living in end times.
By Fred Guterl|Posted Friday, Feb. 22, 2013, at 10:57 AM
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/animal_forecast/2013/02/human_extinction_could_a_mass_extinction_kill_homo_sapiens.html
The unmentionable is getting more mentioned these days
No matter what we don
We all will die, ’tis true
T’was always so
Mortal ya’ know
So don’t be sad and blue
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:25 am
Bluebird asks: @ Guy: Does your current level of understanding regarding non-maintenance of nuclear reactors due to grid failure alter any views you presented in Walking Away from Empire?
At the time, I believed bathing in ionizing radiation eventually would kill all humans and most life on Earth. I feared that rapid climate change and accelerating environmental decline would do the trick even more rapidly, so I was promoting the notion of collapse as a solution to these disasters. Now, however, as everything falls apart at once with no serious leadership on any issue, I don’t believe there’s much hope for any except a handful of species. They’re still worth resisting the dominant paradigm.
February 23rd, 2013 at 9:36 am
Kathy C says:
No matter what we don
We all will die, ’tis true
T’was always so
Mortal ya’ know
So don’t be sad and blue
All My Trials
Hush little baby, don’t cry,
You know mother was born to die;
Too late, humankind,
Too late, never mind:
All my trials soon be gone by.
February 23rd, 2013 at 10:51 am
Kathy: on your last link – did you notice the secondary title (i thought this was just too ironic to let go)
The Future of Science Brought to You By Statoil
indeed!
BtD: what can you do with this little snippet that i became aware of while driving
adversity (is to) diversity
what insanity (is to) humanity
February 23rd, 2013 at 11:18 am
We watched Bill Maher’s ‘Religulous’ (2008) the other night – I never knew it existed, but came across while mindlessly flipping channels. (We never actually ‘watch’ TV. Rather, we sit down around 8, turn on the TV, start flipping channels, either come across a some kind of freak show to entertain us for a bit, or turn it off altogether and go back to reading, etc.)
While I enjoyed the movie cum documentary, as a devout atheist, I found it ironic that while liberal progressives enjoy mocking easy targets on the religious right (I mean, how hard is it to feel superior about someone with an IQ below the mean, even though they never ‘asked’ to be born or be that ‘kind’ of person?), they suffer a significant blind spot with regards to their own ‘belief gene’.
I speak, of course, about the left’s belief in institutions; that good ‘ole “for the people, by the people” nonsense. Prima facie evidence that this irrational belief exists amongst the intelligentsia, in spades, comes in the form of a constant stream of links, posts & comments lamenting the lack of the ‘scientific community’, protest groups, gov’t departments, etc to “respond”, “coordinate”, or otherwise act in some supposed capacity for the better good.
Well, to take the role of Maher, I’m hear to tell you it’s all a fantasy. Government, like religion, serves no other purpose than as a con, a racket, a means of taking the easy road off the backs of people who actually produce. Long ago, many people figured out that it was better to be fresh & clean, rather than dirty & tired, so they instituted a number of vehicles to enable them the luxury of living off of others.
Until you finally realize that your own false religion is also a con, you’ll forever be disappointed. Think Maslow – that’s what drives this world, and is the only way you’ll be able to survive long enough to watch the entire show. After all, isn’t that what we really want? To not only be proven right, but to watch it play out as predicted?
February 23rd, 2013 at 11:52 am
@U “Look at the Mexican drug cartels, folks of that sort of ruthless mindset. They don’t care about ‘transition’. If they want electricity and they see a nuclear power plant that makes it, they’ll seize it for themselves. They’ll kidnap the technicians and make them work it at gunpoint if necessary. I mean, they’ve set up their own alternative mobile phone network. If somebody tries to prevent them, a few disemboweled corpses convey the message.”
The universal truth about criminals is that they are stupid. That is why they become outlaws ie outside of the law. But, once there is no law, and everyone then becomes an “outlaw”, the IQ curve shifts significantly to the right.
During periods of war, that is, when there is an absence of law upon the battlefront, above avg intelligence Europeans & Japanese have demonstrated how one goes about killing on an impersonal, objective, and wholly unemotional level.
Dumb ass criminals have no idea what’s in store for them when ‘normal’, law abiding citizens decide that it’s finally time to get down to the business of self-sufficiency. While the initial TT’s may have some hippy dippies craving for leniency & community, traditional “hard men” will re-emerge & show how it’s (always been) done.
We may well live to see a return of proverbial public executions and rotting/decayed bodies displayed on stakes/cages upon entry to towns.
February 23rd, 2013 at 11:54 am
Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy as It Produces
Thanks to high global oil prices, industry can afford the large amount of energy needed to extract the oil and turn it into a usable fuel.
By Rachel Nuwer
Feb 19, 2013
Suncor Millenium oil sands mine on the east side of the Athabasca River in Alberta, Canada. Credit: David Dodge, Pembina Institute
The average “energy returned on investment,” or EROI, for conventional oil is roughly 25:1. In other words, 25 units of oil-based energy are obtained for every one unit of other energy that is invested to extract it.
But tar sands oil is in a category all its own.
Tar sands retrieved by surface mining has an EROI of only about 5:1, according to research released Tuesday. Tar sands retrieved from deeper beneath the earth, through steam injection, fares even worse, with a maximum average ratio of just 2.9 to 1. That means one unit of natural gas is needed to create less than three units of oil-based energy….
The latest EROI values for tar sands were calculated by David Hughes, a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, a non-profit devoted to issues such as climate change and energy scarcity, based in Santa Rosa, Calif. The institute released Hughes’ findings on Tuesday.
Hughes’ figures include the energy it takes to mine bitumen as well as to upgrade it to synthetic oil that can be put into a refinery. It also includes the liquefied natural gas used to turn it into dilbit (diluted bitumen) so it can flow through pipelines.
Hall, who wasn’t involved in Hughes’ study, thinks the EROI for oil sands would fall closer to 1:1 if the tar sands’ full life cycle—including transportation, refinement into higher quality products, end use efficiency and environmental costs—was taken into account.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130219/oil-sands-mining-tar-sands-alberta-canada-energy-return-on-investment-eroi-natural-gas-in-situ-dilbit-bitumen
February 23rd, 2013 at 12:26 pm
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14655-worse-drought-in-1000-years-could-begin-in-eight-years
Worst Drought in 1,000 Years Could Begin in Eight Years
Beginning in just eight years, we could see permanent climate conditions across the North American Southwest that are comparable to the worst megadrought in 1,000 years. (1)
The latest research from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University published in December 2012 has some truly astounding news. The megadroughts referred to in the paper published in Nature Climate Change happened around about 900 to 1300 AD and are so extreme that they have no modern counterpart for comparison (these megadroughts will be referred to in the following as the “12th century megadrought”). The research was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
We have been warned for decades that we would be facing a megadrought if we did not do something about climate pollution. We did not, and now according to the projections of a new study, that is just what the future may hold. And remember, projected conditions similar to the worst megadrought in 1,000 years would be the baseline conditions. Dry periods, which we normally refer to as drought times today, would be superimposed on top of the megadrought extremeness.
(oh there’s more if you’re up for it)
February 23rd, 2013 at 1:07 pm
Tom, I learned the hard way that environmental organization – almost all of them – have been completely absorbed and corrupted by corporations. Almost all of them get funding from foundations that were started by corporations and/or wealthy individuals whose fortunes derive from big corporations. The paid staff are more concerned about raising funds to pay their own salaries than upsetting their donors. It is more explicit in some cases than others, but the tendency is pronounced. You will almost never find any climate or green or environmental groups take on the non-negotiable American life-style, for example. Targeting big oil or college divestments is so far from what is required, it’s absurd, as is the pretense that this party can continue unabated simply on wind, solar and other clean tech magic. The activists should be talking about rationing fuel, making it illegal for anything but the most essential purposes, abolishing flying and single-passenger auto travel and imported consumer goods and other frivolous, wasteful, unnecessary squandering. You’ll also never catch them talking about overpopulation. Without population control, everything else is useless.
If you feel compelled to continue approaching conservation groups, be prepared for resistence to anything that gets in the way of “progress” and “growth”.
February 23rd, 2013 at 2:25 pm
Guy, thanks for your response. Kathy, thanks for your earlier posts on the relationship between meltdowns and grid failure. For those who, like me, are new to the issue, check out this abbreviated article by Mat Stein: http://www.matstein.com/blog/400-chernobyls-solar-flares-emp-and-nuclear-armageddon/.
“If an extreme GMD were to cause widespread grid collapse (which it most certainly will), in as little as one or two hours after each nuclear reactor facility’s backup generators either fail to start, or run out of fuel, the reactor cores will start to melt down. After a few days without electricity to run the cooling system pumps, the water bath covering the spent fuel rods stored in ‘spent fuel ponds’ will boil away, allowing the stored fuel rods to melt down and burn [2]. Since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) currently mandates that only one week’s supply of backup generator fuel needs to be stored at each reactor site, it is likely that after we witness the spectacular night-time celestial light show from the next extreme GMD we will have about one week in which to prepare ourselves for Armageddon. …
“… Since spent fuel ponds typically hold far greater quantities of highly radioactive material then the active nuclear reactors locked inside reinforced containment vessels, they clearly present far greater potential for the catastrophic spread of highly radioactive contaminants over huge swaths of land, polluting the environment for multiple generations spanning hundreds of years. A study by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) determined that the ‘boil down time’ for spent fuel rod containment ponds runs from between 4 and 22 days after loss of cooling system power before degenerating into a Fukushima-like situation, depending upon the type of nuclear reactor and how recently its latest batch of fuel rods had been decommissioned.”
February 23rd, 2013 at 3:01 pm
Gail: thanks for the ‘heads up.’ i’ve watched as the Sierra Club went through their changes and became pretty disgusted – so i moved on to more local ones. As i’m finding out – (as you said) they’re no better because everyone just wants to patch up whatever is needed RIGHT NOW to continue the way we live – which is completely unsustainable! During the introductions at this organizational meeting, i said that i believed that the human race wouldn’t survive through the 2020′s but that i was trying to fight to the end (as my reason for becoming involved). i doubt if the others there even registered what i said because there was no comment.
Here’s further evidence that what we’re up against is inter-related and interactive. For example climate change has lead to widespread flooding in some areas and as a result we have sinkholes, landslips and other surface interrupting phenomena all over the world.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/
The Great Collapse: crust weakening, slipping, and collapsing across the planet
check out the videos and pictures too
Kathy: i think that the rise in gas prices is because the “plays” they’re working now aren’t producing enough to even cover the cost of the wells in many cases. Add speculation on Wall Street to that and we have record highs for this time of year. Just wait til summer!
February 23rd, 2013 at 3:32 pm
Tom Says:
BtD: what can you do with this little snippet that i became aware of while driving
adversity (is to) diversity
what insanity (is to) humanity
Don’t drink and drive?
I kid! I kid!
Since we know what kind of insanity
Soon is to come to humanity,
A prep for adversity
Is to have a diversity
Of curses and other profanity.
February 23rd, 2013 at 3:39 pm
As I’ve recently coined our present Era, we are living in the “Age of Ignorant Indulgence.” Cruise ships, jet travel, ever increasing use of automobiles, etc. We just keep living like this can go on indefinitely.
February 23rd, 2013 at 4:31 pm
Btd in other words “oh sheet we’re all fixin to die” or as Country Joe sang decades ago “Whoopee we’re all gonna die”
http://youtu.be/D1LNiymS_pg
February 23rd, 2013 at 5:03 pm
@ B9K9
The universal truth about criminals is that they are stupid. That is why they become outlaws ie outside of the law. But, once there is no law, and everyone then becomes an “outlaw”…
What an odd remark. The biggest crimes are legal. The biggest criminal syndicates establish kingdoms, states, empires, and make up the laws to suit their preferences.
While the initial TT’s may have some hippy dippies craving for leniency & community, traditional “hard men” will re-emerge & show how it’s (always been) done.
We may well live to see a return of proverbial public executions and rotting/decayed bodies displayed on stakes/cages upon entry to towns.
Yes, and then I suggest the hippydippy utopians craving community will not wish to live in such places under such regimes of mediaeval barbarism.
A mediaeval invading army was indeed deterred when they entered a country and came upon the spectacle, on a hillside, of 10,000 bodies impaled upon stakes, thinking, if the ruler does that to his own people, what will he do to us ? Is that the sort of thing that Duncan has in mind regarding ‘strong defences’, I wonder ?
February 23rd, 2013 at 5:04 pm
@ Gail
I learned the hard way that environmental organization – almost all of them – have been completely absorbed and corrupted by corporations.
Me too.
February 23rd, 2013 at 5:28 pm
87 deg today in Daytona Beach Fl and 80s again tommorrow. Hottest ever for the winter – according to a friend who lives there.
February 23rd, 2013 at 6:53 pm
“The universal truth about criminals is that they are stupid.”
Like U. said, the majority of criminals are rather smart: smart enough to find legal or pseudo-legal cover for their crimes. It’s only the lower 10-20% of the Criminal Bell Curve who get ritually sacrificed so that the larger society can sate its sadistic thirsts while piously pretending it has criminality under control. See Bradley Manning. See the three-year-old girl in a wheelchair groped by the TSA.
In the US, if you’re a retard, you risk the death penalty. If you’re a bankster or a high-level gov’t. official you’re virtually untouchable. Cardinal Law has been hiding out in the Vatican State for a good ten years now, if I’m not mistaken. Corzine, who stole $2 billion directly from clients’ accounts? In France at some castle he owns, or… who knows where???
Americans, in reality, love criminals. My sister’s Christian business school gave an honorary degree to Angelo Mozilo. Too bad that the modern Mafias, though, don’t actually police the streets and look after widows and orphans like the old-style Mafia.
February 23rd, 2013 at 7:12 pm
Lidia….yes!
Kathy C, had the same song in my head today.
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:11 pm
@ Lidia
Like U. said..
Whilst I fully agree, I was thinking more historically. What happened was that the biggest nastiest toughest most cruel and cunning ‘criminal’ got to the top, and named his crime gang’s territory ‘the State’.
Not in the USA sense of State, but in the old Kingdom sense, like Russia was established by the Rus, the Eastern branch of the Vikings, or UK was established by the Normans, under William the Bastard. They were no different to mafia gang bosses running extortion rackets. They pass laws saying ‘You will all pay us taxes, or we kill you’. That’s the basis of the deal. Anybody who doesn’t comply with the boss’s demands gets declared a ‘criminal’.
Of course, this is an over-simplification. Over the course of centuries, various groups negotiate deals and more sophisticated and complex arrangements develop.
At various periods attempts have been made by the people to overthrow this arrangement, and have rule ‘by the people, for the people’ which sometimes lasts for a little while, before it gets subverted and another tyrant arises, or a neighbouring tyrant invades. See Anacyclosis.
http://anacyclosis.org/#home
Basically, who gets to define the word ‘crime’ ? That comes down to power. And who has the power to enforce or defy laws.
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:16 pm
Wow, Siberia was only recently the Northern latitude exception to warming..
Caves Point to Thawing of Siberia: Thaw in Siberia’s Permafrost May Accelerate Global Warming
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130221143910.htm
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:24 pm
Kathy C says: …Country Joe sang decades ago “Whoopee we’re all gonna die”
No longer hyperbole.
==
The Sixties seemed such a big deal:
They changed how we think and we feel;
Back then, minds were blown,
But the coming unknown
Will be totally freaking unreal.
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:39 pm
@Gail – environmental organization have been co-opted
IMO this is a very important observation and in general is true for all ‘good’ organizations if they need any funding. Resistance is futile.
February 23rd, 2013 at 8:44 pm
Hot off the press from New Scientist..
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23205-major-methane-release-is-almost-inevitable.html
Major methane release is almost inevitable
19:00 21 February 2013 by Michael Marshall
For similar stories, visit the Climate Change Topic Guide
We are on the cusp of a tipping point in the climate. If the global climate warms another few tenths of a degree, a large expanse of the Siberian permafrost will start to melt uncontrollably. The result: a significant amount of extra greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, and a threat – ironically – to the infrastructure that carries natural gas from Russia to Europe.
The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, and climatologists have long warned that this will cause positive feedbacks that will speed up climate change further. The region is home to enormous stores of organic carbon, mostly in the form of permafrost soils and icy clathrates that trap methane – a powerful greenhouse gas that could escape into the atmosphere.
The Siberian permafrost is a particular danger. A large region called the Yedoma could undergo runaway decomposition once it starts to melt, because microbes in the soil would eat the carbon and produce heat, melting more soil and releasing ever more greenhouse gases. In short, the melting of Yedoma is a tipping point: once it starts, there may be no stopping it.
For the first time, we have an indication of when this could start happening. Anton Vaks of the University of Oxford in the UK and colleagues have reconstructed the history of the Siberian permafrost going back 500,000 years. We already know how global temperatures have risen and fallen as ice sheets have advanced and retreated, so Vaks’s team’s record of changing permafrost gives an indication of how sensitive it is to changing temperatures.
Stalagmite record
But there is no direct record of how the permafrost has changed, so Vaks had to find an indirect method. His team visited six caves that run along a south-north line, with the two southernmost ones being under the Gobi desert. Further north, three caves sit beneath a landscape of sporadic patches of permafrost, and the northernmost cave is right at the edge of Siberia’s continuous permafrost zone.
The team focused on the 500,000-year history of stalagmites and similar rock formations in the caves. “Stalagmites only grow when water flows into caves,” Vaks says. “It cannot happen when the soil is frozen.” The team used radiometric dating to determine how old the stalagmites were. By building up a record of when they grew, Vaks could figure out when the ground above the caves was frozen and when it wasn’t.
As expected, in most of the caves, stalagmites formed during every warm interglacial period as the patchy permafrost melted overhead.
But it took a particularly warm interglacial, from 424,000 and 374,000 years ago, for the stalagmites in the northernmost cave to grow – suggesting the continuous permafrost overhead melted just once in the last 500,000 years.
At the time, global temperatures were 1.5 °C warmer than they have been in the last 10,000 years. In other words, today’s permafrost is likely to become vulnerable when we hit 1.5 °C of global warming, says Vaks.
“Up until this point, we didn’t have direct evidence of how this happened in past warming periods,” says Ted Schuur of the University of Florida in Gainesville.
It will be very hard to stop the permafrost degrading as a warming of 1.5 °C is not far off. Between 1850 and 2005, global temperatures rose 0.8 °C, according to the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, temperatures would rise another 0.2 °C over the next 20 years. That would leave a window of 0.5 °C – but in fact our emissions are increasing. What’s more, new fossil fuel power stations commit us to several decades of emissions.
Soggy permafrost
What are the consequences? The greatest concern, says Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter in the UK, is the regional landscape. Buildings and infrastructure are often built on hard permafrost, and will start subsiding. “Ice roads won’t exist any more.”
The increasingly soggy permafrost will also threaten the pipelines that transport Russian gas to Europe. “The maintenance and upkeep of that infrastructure is going to cost a lot more,” says Schuur.
As for the methane that could be released into the atmosphere, Schuur estimates that emissions will be equivalent to between 160 and 290 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.
That sounds like a lot, but is little compared to the vast amount humans are likely to emit, says Lenton. “The signal’s going to be swamped by fossil fuel [emissions].”
He says the dangers of the permafrost greenhouse gases have been overhyped, particularly as much of the methane will be converted to carbon dioxide by microbes in the soil, leading to a slower warming effect.
Schuur agrees with Lenton that the methane emissions are “not a runaway effect but an additional source that is not accounted in current climate models”.
February 23rd, 2013 at 9:39 pm
I love how at the end of such articles I posted, that they always play it down as though they know it’s no big deal.
February 23rd, 2013 at 10:21 pm
“Tom Says:
February 23rd, 2013 at 12:26 pm
http://truth-out.org/news/item/14655-worse-drought-in-1000-years-could-begin-in-eight-years
Worst Drought in 1,000 Years Could Begin in Eight Years
Beginning in just eight years, we could see permanent climate conditions across the North American Southwest that are comparable to the worst megadrought in 1,000 years. (1)
The latest research from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University published in December 2012 has some truly astounding news. The megadroughts referred to in the paper published in Nature Climate Change happened around about 900 to 1300 AD and are so extreme that they have no modern counterpart for comparison (these megadroughts will be referred to in the following as the “12th century megadrought”). The research was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).”
But doesn’t this depend upon climate models which do NOT account for various positive feedbacks, as we’ve been discussing for weeks?!!! The models assume a replay of climate conditions of 900-1300 AD, which will NOT be the case. We may instead get a permanent El Nino. Emphasis on “may.” In reality, we are in totally unchartered waters.
February 23rd, 2013 at 10:44 pm
Morality and legality are not congruent, nor for that matter are criminality. The Fugitive Slave Laws that made it a federal crime to assist runaway slaves in their northward journey to Canada were a particularly egregious example. Yet the constitution that sustained those laws is still in force.
February 23rd, 2013 at 11:31 pm
“The biggest crimes are legal. The biggest criminal syndicates establish kingdoms, states, empires, and make up the laws to suit their preferences.”
boffo, ulvfugl – will be planning to get this one as a tattoo.
February 24th, 2013 at 12:52 am
http://www.homethemovie.org/
Watched this outstanding film tonight for the first time and was deeply moved. Just thought you might know someone who would find it inspiring, too.
February 24th, 2013 at 1:00 am
English might be preferable to French!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU
February 24th, 2013 at 4:56 am
Bluebird
Just spent the last 90 mins watching the video you posted, ‘Earth’.
WOW!!
Some spectacular cinimatograohy there, enough to make many school kids minds turn to greater thing I think. It is so visually appealing I thing a significant number of adults will want to go to these places as tourists.
What can I write here that is not already plainly in the film?
Nothing.
Earth speaks for itself.
Long live Earth!!!
My only criticism is it is stll put to individuals to do something, a kind of catch 22 there. We need to act individually to make collective action posssible, but collective action only vcomes for many individuals acting.
Enjoy the Earth while it lasts, and it will last, no doubt.
But will we?
February 24th, 2013 at 5:00 am
@ Wester
Thanks for the compliment, but you need to ask the tattooist to use very small writing because it’s only a chapter heading, and needs space for the rest of the book
It’s a very crude generalisation, there’s a sliding scale of tyranny from totally malign to relatively benign. As Lidia mentioned, if there is complete horror and chaos, a ‘good’ mafia with a code of honour that enforces order and cares for casualties, widows and orphans is infinitely preferable.
Following classical anarchist dogma, I used to be ‘against the state’. But no more. First though, the word is treacherous. It’s ridiculous to apply it to California, Queensland, Iceland, ireland, Israel, etc, as if these ‘states’ are all the same things. Autonomous regions with their own languages, currencies, ethnic identities, etc, are different from bureaucratic colonial sub-divisions, etc.
Anyway, why I changed my mind, the state is now the lesser evil. Once the states lost control over banking ( Rothschilds ) which could then be based in several countries and play countries off against one another, and lost control over corporations, which became trans-national, states lost their main source of power.
This means that we, the ordinary people, the citizens, are at the mercy of the banks and corporations. Which means no mercy at all. The only defence that remains is the vestiges of state power to make laws that regulate the conduct of banking and finance and corporations.
For example, what gets put into our food.
As we’ve seen repeatedly, e.g. BP in the Gulf of Mexico, the US Gvt fed agencies collude and cooperate with corporate power, they have no choice, they are locked into a marriage, where they depend upon each other, the DOD/Pentagon is BP’s biggest customer, BP needs the Pentagon to police the sea lanes and keep the oil flowing, UK pensions are mostly invested in BP, Wall St and City of London banking are totally entangled and interdependent, if BP goes down, then a whole chain of dominos follows…
Its all one huge crime syndicate, a network, that’s grown up over centuries, and no ‘state’ can control it, because it can evade all laws, by being international, putting its assets in Hong Kong, Caiman Islands, Luxembourg, all over the place… the biggest banks, HSBC, Barclays, are much more powerful and wealthy than most states and countries, so they can do whatever they want.
We’ve seen what happens to the Greek people when a weak and corrupt state cannot protect them from the international bankers.
Same goes for the biggest criminals. Who is going to arrest them and take them to court and prosecute and imprison them ? They have the power to kill or pay off anyone who tries, so they remain free. Lesser criminals remain free because they are useful to greater criminals, so receive protection.
Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
http://youtu.be/aqIHKWd9rSc
February 24th, 2013 at 5:54 am
BtD: You’re KILLIN’ it, man! Great limericks!
Jeff: i posted that as yet another example of the mainstream media beginning to “inform the public” that we’re heading for some heavy times (though we know it’s far worse than they’re reporting). i too have commented that the IPCC waters down its reports to appease politicians and that most scientists won’t speak up about this (due to concerns regarding their continued employment) even when the data they have indicates we’re heading off a cliff (in fact we’re already hanging out in mid-air like Wily Coyote). So yes, your comment is accurate and i agree.
Bailey: Yeah, i read that – and they too, just like all the others, downplay or leave the reader with a sense that “it’ll all be okay.” This weeks New Scientist has a fascinating cover article about the self – which we’ve delved into in other postings – and how it can be shown that it’s all an illusion of the mind, if you’re interested. The Siberian cave article should wake some people up. i hope that it doesn’t lead to the geo-engineering i’ve been reading and hearing about. (Due to start in March! no tests, no oversight, just a “hail Mary” pass to keep the same pollution/greed/fantasy model of modern civilization going as long as possible. It’s futile.)
ulvfugl: i seem to recall that as a book title a ways back. Is it the same guy in the video?
Bluebird: thanks for the link – i’ll watch it later, it looks really interesting.
February 24th, 2013 at 6:41 am
From U:
Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
http://youtu.be/aqIHKWd9rSc
Yup, everybody should watch it. Also “Inside Job” narrated by Matt Damon, produced by Charles Ferguson(on youtube)
February 24th, 2013 at 7:52 am
@ Tom, Anthony
Is it the same guy..
Yes. It’s old, but nothing much has changed. He’s talking about how US imperialism works, using the CIA and IMF and World Bank, on behalf of corporations.
This started from B9K9′s assertion that ‘criminals’ are stupid. Undoubtedly, stupid people commit crimes and get caught. But then one must think carefully as to who defines what is to be considered a crime.
I think depressive lucidity mentioned, that when terror is used as a tool for social control, everyone is ‘a criminal’, and liable to be arrested, innocence is no protection, ‘law’ and police are intentional forces of oppression to instill fear, people just disappear, you go to the police station and enquire and get arrested for doing that.
You have to pay to get your relatives’ body returned for burial, the police are given quotas to fill, if they don’t arrest enough people, they are in trouble themselves, soceity becomes a Kafka-esque nightmare.
On the other hand, in a healthy happy soceity, where people have a say in how they are governed and what laws are made, yes, robbery is a crime, murder is a crime, paedophila is a crime, and so forth. In Britain, it took centuries, to get Magna Carta, to get Habeus Corpus, jury trials, to get votes for all men, then for women, it’s been an uphill fight against injustice and oppression all the way. In a decade Bush and Obama have destroyed centuries of advance in international law, Geneva Convention, pre-emptive war, torture, etc, etc.
The trouble is, the only structure that we have left that can make and enforce any sort of legislation and take care of people, is the state, for all its faults and failings.
And all states have lost their power, corporations and bankers have the power now, and they are beyond control, nobody votes for them, nobody can close them down, whatever crimes they commit. Even if they go bankrupt and cease to exist, it’s meaningless, it’s just a name and a logo, the same people, the same methods, can start up in the same offices the next day under a different name and a different logo.
A few clicks and a zillion dollars in assets has moved from one jurisdiction to another and nobody can touch it. These people, the people who benefit and control this system, take no responsibility either for their fellow humans or for the environment or for the future. They are like pirates, they pillage anything and everything in any way they can. It’s the politics of the Kochs. They win, everybody else loses. They’ll insist that it is ‘free market capitalism’. But they lie. It’s just the same in Russia and in China and in India and Mexico. Selfish, reckless, ruthless bandits, who grab whatever they want, to enrich themselves, and to hell with everyone who doesn’t like it.
Any sign that the weak, the poor, might try to organise to help themselves is seen as a threat, as socialism, as communism, as subversion, as terrorism, any propaganda term that will smear and denigrate.
The Mexicans had ejido, which was, relatively, good for people and good for ecology, but of course not compliant with the ideology of US imperial corporate capitalism, so under NAFTA it had to go
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ejido
February 24th, 2013 at 8:28 am
I’ve posted a new essay. It’s here.
February 24th, 2013 at 8:57 am
Ozman we won’t necessarily always have the earth
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.
In 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
The Death of the Sun
All things must end. That’s true for us, that’s true for the Earth, and that’s true for the Sun. It’s not going to happen tomorrow, but one day in the far future, the Sun will run out of fuel and end its life as a main sequence star and die.
In about 6 billion years, the Sun’s core will run out of hydrogen. When this happens, the inert helium ash built up in the core will become unstable and collapse under its own weight. This will cause the core to heat up and get denser. The Sun will grow in size and enter the red giant phase of its evolution. The expanding Sun will consume the orbits of Mercury and Venus, and probably gobble up the Earth as well. Even if the Earth survives, the intense heat from the red sun will scorch our planet and make it completely impossible for life to survive.
Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/18847/life-of-the-sun/#ixzz2LozC9711
February 24th, 2013 at 9:12 am
If you read so called conspiracy sites there is a lot of speculation as to who ‘they’ are, some people blame the mafia, communists, nazis, the CIA, the jesuits, the zionists, the freemasons, the Illuminati, satanists, Rothschilds or whoever, which is hard to make sense of you’d assume some or all of these groups would oppose one another, but there’s an interesting nexus where they appear to overlap. I was just talking about states. This is a state, but although it issues its own stamps, passports, has diplomats, etc, and has other properties and privileges normally attached to nation states, this state does not actually have any location or territory, which is sort of convenient. I mean, how can you invade or attack a state that is invisible and isn’t anywhere, hahaha. It’s called the Knights of Malta, some interesting names…
David Rockefeller, Reinhard Gehlen (Nazi), Heinrich Himmler, Franz von Papen (Hitler enabler) Fritz Thyssen (Hitler’s financier), George W. Bush, George Tenet (CIA chief at the time of 9/11) Henry Kissinger, Michael Chertoff, Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair, Precott Bush, Licio Gelli, J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph Kennedy, Ronald E. Reagan, Giscard d’Estaing, Allen Dulles, Oliver North, George H.W Bush and William Casey.
http://aangirfan.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/pope-rent-boys-cia-nazis-mafia.html
February 24th, 2013 at 9:38 am
Haha thanks Tom!
==
If life were a thing you could buy,
The rich would live, poor folk would die;
But we’re all intertwined,
And all dead—never mind:
All my trials soon be gone by.
February 24th, 2013 at 10:31 am
Btd Hat tip I presume to http://youtu.be/UIH1KccVlHk
All My Trials” was a folk song during the social protest movements of the 1950s and 1960s. It is based on a Bahamian lullaby that tells the story of a mother on her death bed, comforting her children, “Hush little baby, don’t you cry./You know your mama’s bound to die,” because, as she explains, “All my trials, Lord,/Soon be over.” The message — that no matter how bleak the situation seemed, the struggle would “soon be over” — propelled the song to the status of an anthem, recorded by many of the leading artists of the era
February 24th, 2013 at 11:11 am
Kathy, yes, a second verse for yesterday’s “All My Trials” response to your limerick above (February 23rd, 2013 at 9:36 am; change “mother” to “mama” duh).
Your linked version is the one I’ve listened to hundreds of times, and possibly heard live too; I was really there, so I don’t remember.
February 24th, 2013 at 5:49 pm
ulvfugl: the state is NOT a “lesser evil.” The modern state emerged at the same time that capital began expanding its domain, via takeover of food production, a process marking the birth of the Enclosures. http://www.monthlyreview.org/798wood.htm State and capital are joined at the hip. You cannot do away with one without the other. Read “Society Against the State” by Pierre Clastres.
February 24th, 2013 at 6:36 pm
@ Jeff S.
Hahaha, you up for an argument ?
Sure, the modern state. Depends how you want to define the damn thing. You want to begin from the Treaty of Westphalia ? But if you’ve been following the admittedly dispersed comments I’ve been making, I’ve been going back much further to whenever the first Big Man got together a gang of thugs to control his patch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity)
Yes, indeed, State and capital are interdependent, and any State that tries to assert independence, e.g. Ecuador, Iran, the international bankers and the US imperialists put the screws on, as they have in Greece, and its the ordinary people who suffer, and the ONLY protection they have remaining is the State, like it or not.
What else is there, other than the State ? The reason why the corporate imperialists are creating chaos, in Libya, Mali, Congo, etc, is because then they can access the country’s resources, with private mercenary forces to protect their mines and oil wells, and no effective State to tax them or to legislate against pollution or environmental destruction or enforce rights for workers.
Sure,the State is an evil, but I say it is a lesser evil, because at least you can see it, you know who it is, where it is, and with luck, you can get some votes for some of the people who work with it, so at least in theory, the State can be held slightly accountable. You can’t do any of that for the banks and corporations.
Obviously, none of this is my preferred option. But looking at it from the very privileged position of living in UK, the State is sensitive to public opinion, and to a degree, still has to provide some protection from the forces of international corporate capitalism. We are not yet in the position of Greece or Spain, although that may soon be coming.
February 24th, 2013 at 6:47 pm
http://www.primitivism.com/society-state.htm
Yes, Soceity against the State. All well and good and I agree, however, looked at pragmatically, 2013, you want to eat Monsanto GMO crap unlabelled in all your food ? The only force which can make Monsanto label its poisonous products is the State. Sure, they won’t do it, because Monsanto corrupts them with dollops of cash. But without the State, there isn’t even the hope, the theoretical possibility, of labelling or control of corporate behaviour. What’s needed is a strongerState that is transparent, responsive to the people, not the corporations, a State that can jail CEOs and bankers.
Who else is going to do it ?
February 24th, 2013 at 7:02 pm
The example is Iceland, small is beautiful, refuse to pay the debt, put the bankers in jail.
February 24th, 2013 at 7:14 pm
Kind of related to what I was saying :
The end of colonial empires in the 1960s and the end of Stalinist (“state socialist,” “state capitalist,” “bureaucratic collectivist”) systems in the 1990s has triggered a process never encountered since the Mongolian invasions in the thirteenth century: a comprehensive and apparently irreversible collapse of established statehood as such. While the bien-pensant Western press daily bemoans perceived threats of dictatorship in far-away places, it usually ignores the reality behind the tough talk of powerless leaders, namely that nobody is prepared to obey them. The old, creaking, and unpopular nation-state–the only institution to date that had been able to grant civil rights, a modicum of social assistance, and some protection from the exactions of privateer gangs and rapacious, irresponsible business elites–ceased to exist or never even emerged in the majority of the poorest areas of the world. In most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and of the former Soviet Union not only the refugees, but the whole population could be considered stateless. The way back, after decades of demented industrialization (see the horrific story of the hydroelectric plants everywhere in the Third World and the former Eastern bloc), to a subsistence economy and “natural” barter exchanges in the midst of environmental devastation, where banditry seems to have become the only efficient method of social organization, leads exactly nowhere. People in Africa and ex-Soviet Eurasia are dying not by a surfeit of the state, but by the absence of it.
On Post-Fascism
http://bostonreview.net/BR25.3/tamas.html
February 25th, 2013 at 12:10 am
U: ” The only force which can make Monsanto label its poisonous products is the State.”
The whole labeling game is played on the corporatist playing field. Once you plead for labeling you have accepted the Frankenfood as normal.
Avoiding GMOs is pretty easy: eat only food you can identify produced by people you can identify. It’s getting easier, actually, as more people turn to home gardening, local CSAs, etc.
GMO Labeling and Movement Strategy and Goals
https://attempter.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/gmo-labeling-and-movement-strategy-and-goals/
February 25th, 2013 at 4:34 am
Okay, Lidia, fair point.
I was trying to think of an example that would make sense to Americans. In UK, we don’t have GMOs and we do have labelling.
Try another example.
I want to avoid the mass extinction event, which means I want to end industrial civilisation. But it would be preferable to end it in an orderly way. That may not be possible. I expect it is impossible. But if the technicians at the nuclear plants just quit and walk off the job, then we still get the mass extinction event, because of all the Fukes and Chernobyls that result.
Who or what can arrange to deal with those facilities ? The only structure there is, is the State, as far as I can see.
February 25th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
U., would that be the same State which unilaterally shoved “private” nuclear plants upon us, touting the beneficial effects of the atom? When civilian energy programs were merely a byproduct of States’ nuclear arms race in the first place, and a way to justify the ongoing production and refinement of fissile material?
You mean THOSE States? The ones who’ve never acted with any seriousness whatsoever—over the course of the last 60 years, SIXTY—in dealing with the virtually-infinite toxic leftovers which continue to pile up?
You mean THOSE States?
February 25th, 2013 at 3:38 pm
I’m looking at world as a whole, not just the USA, and the word ‘State’ as a political entity, as e.g. represented at the UN, not just as a subdivision of USA.
As I said above, the word causes much confusion, to equate Idaho or California with Finland or Iceland makes little sense.
My main point is, what other social structure is there, that could take on the responsibility for making and enforcing legislation, other than the State ?
Green anarchists or permaculture communes are not going to be decommissioning nuclear power stations or dealing with nuclear waste or regulating banks and corporations, are they.
Guy bewails the lack of leadership. Me too. Where’s it going to come from ? Either we keep on going towards and over the edge of the cliff, or somebody acts and does something.
What have we got ? Invent new social instruments ? Or use the existing ? In USA the whole system appears mostly corrupted and terminally dysfunctional, I know. Even the Supreme Court. Either you have revolution, and then who looks after the Fukes while that’s going on ? or force reform…
In Europe and elsewhere, the situation is very, very different. The State is a different animal.