Tags
Chris Martenson, Christina Tey, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Eco-Apocalypse, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Economic Growth, Environmental Collapse, Kevin Moore's 'Burn Baby Burn', Kevin Moore's 'The Easy Way', Mark A. Cochrane, Mass Die Off, Norman Pagett, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Peak Water, Resource Wars, Social Unrest, The End of More, Your Medieval Future
Hello fellow realists. I haven’t spent much time in the last 14 months at Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity site, but I just listened to a podcast he made with climate scientist Dr. Mark A. Cochrane who gives an informative talk on extreme weather, the mangled jet stream, the overly conservative IPCC, the global climate debt, and other interesting topics on climate change. It’s worth your time. Martenson had originally relegated the talk of climate change and even Cochrane’s own climate change thread to the “Controversial Topics” forum at PeakProsperity.com, but Martenson has apparently become more accepting in the last year of the near 100% scientific consensus of climate change. Being a money man, it’s no surprise that Martenson would be nervous and reluctant to speak out on what capitalist industrial civilization is doing to the life support system of every living thing on the planet. To say that human-induced climate change is a “challenging issue” is perhaps the understatement of the millennium. The environmental conditions will continue to change and degenerate for the next 1,000 years even were we to halt all GHG emissions today. I’m sure homo economicus will find ways to profit from the eco-apocalypse just as he has profited from hunger, war, the prison industrial complex, the frantic exploitation of even dirtier and more dangerous fossil fuels, and every other ill that has befallen man. Thanks to Mike at DamnTheMatrix for originally posting this podcast.
[Warning on Dr. Cochrane’s statement that water vapor is the “main culprit” in causing global warming: See the comments section of this post.]
I’m currently reading the book “The End of More“(aka ‘Your Medieval Future’) which, if I remember correctly, had the working title of ScareCities, apparently in reference to what is going to happen to all the megacities of the world as we fall down the cliff of peak net energy and suffer a thousand cuts from a climate thrown out of balance. When I’m done with the book, I’ll post a review of it. It’s turning out to be a real page-turner. You can download the kindle book here for the U.S. and here for the UK. The authors state that the purpose of their book is to explain the evolutionary history of modern man and how he “has used all his ingenuity and his fighting skills to bring energy, food, water, and other natural resources to the brink of exhaustion.”
Here is an excerpt:
Kevin Moore is a frequent visitor here and leaves very erudite and informative comments. He’s written a few books that we may want to look into as well. Here are the links to a couple of them:
Does the lady on the cover come with the book? 🙂
The Easy Way
and
Looks like a great book. Thanks.
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Many of XrayMike’s readers would most likely be well informed about climate change, but if you enjoyed the podcast with Mark Cochrane, you will find loads more info that I gleaned from him over at DTM…. like this:
http://damnthematrix.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/weather-whiplash/
Once you’re here, use the WordPress search engine and enter “mark cochrane”
Mark is a master communicator, and I’ve never known anyone who could explain what’s going on better than him…..
Mike
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Ordering Kevin’s book. I’ve always enjoyed his posts so I’m looking forward to reading his books. Collapse of Industrial Civilization is the best reality blog. Thank-you x-ray Mike
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I have not listened to the entire interview but fairly early in the interview Mark Cochrane says that ‘carbon dioxide is not the main culprit’ in causing warming. He says that water vapour is.
That is not correct.
Carbon dioxide IS the main culprit. Water vapour is a secondary warming component, and is not a prime driver of warming because when temperatures drop water vapour condenses to water droplets or sublimes to ice, and is therefore removed from the system. When temperatures drop carbon dioxide remains in the active gaseous form.
Climate change deniers, or those who do not want the link between fossil fuel use and disruption of the habitability of the planet to be connected, focus on water vapour, as a red herring to divert attention away from the real issue, which is the ever rising carbon dioxide level.
It is a pity that Mark Cochrane has provided ammunition for those who wish to deny the key roles of carbon dioxide in driving humanity towards self-annihilation. .
Of course, that is the name of the game, to prevent people from connecting the burning of fossil fuels with termination of life as we know it on this planet.
Over on NBL there has been discussion about mechanisms for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. I detailed those mechanisms, and pointed out that the rate of liberation of the carbon [that nature sequestered millions of years ago] far exceeds the rate at which the carbon removal systems act. Indeed, not only are carbon dioxide emissions overpowering the carbon dioxide removal systems but humanity has actually been attacking the carbon dioxide removal systems, and intends to continue to do so.
It has been very clear for more than a decade that official responses to the carbon imbalance, such as ‘carbon trading’, are merely scams designed to allow financiers to profit from destruction of the Earth whilst doing nothing whatsoever to address the real issue of outrageously high carbon dioxide emissions.
.
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@Kevin
Thanks for bringing that up. Your are absolutely correct. Skeptical Science lists that issue of water vapor as climate change myth #35 on their list:
Intermediate answer:
for more info, go here.
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I have edited the post to indicate a warning on that statement about water vapor.
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I am going to read “The End OF More,” and I recommend Spencer Well’s book “Pandora”s Seed.”
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“…Planetary-scale climate change murder
Obama is getting away with planetary-scale climate change murder. His actions as the most influential leader on the planet will affect the entire planet forever.
Obama is proud of his record American oil production: “Now, we absolutely need safe, responsible oil production here in America. That’s why under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years.” (February 2012)
With atmospheric carbon at the highest level it’s been in 15 million years and ocean acidification occurring faster than in the past 300 million years, there’s no such thing as safe oil production any more.
Check the Obama climate action plan for any evidence of a decrease in fossil fuel production any time in the future. It is all continued increase, and it is locking America and the world into another 50 years of fossil fuel energy dependency. Only by then, civilization will have collapsed….” – link
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Obama is a criminal so why is that news? As the carbon rises in the atmosphere the weather events will become more and more spectacular creating mega-disasters that will occur with greater and greater frequency. The industrial systems will not surrender their dominance and they can’t be defeated by resistance (at least not yet).
The industrial system, like Charles Foster Kane, will need a quite a few lessons.
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Irish Politician Calls Obama A War Criminal And Hypocrite In Parliament
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Check out this CommonDreams article….the comments especially. They sound like us. We are not alone!
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You mean like these:
We’ve struck an ice berg, the ship is taking on water very fast and we have yet to cut the engines. Well, it’s too early to draw conclusions. Time for a panel review, a report on the damage and maybe some light snacks before the order to man the lifeboats is given.
Grant Schreiber •
Ha, ha!! Well said, Grant. We are at the point of no return. We might as well observe the plummet with some wit about us. As for anything meaningful being done about Global warming, it’s too late and too expensive to implement at this point. As Sting sang, “An Englishman will walk but never run”. Get ready for storm systems the size of the red spot on Saturn, with the red being all the methane leaking from the Arctic on fire in the sky after Bill Gates or some other fool decides to implement a “fix” to the weather system… OK, I’ll stop now.
They’re going to lock the “masses” in steerage and watch them go down with the ship while the few spots on the lifeboats will be for the wealthy and their ilk.
I hope they do. I hope they live. I hope they live through it, and keep on living. I can’t think of anything I wish for them more, other than perhaps that they spontaneously combust.
Dear God, let them live with it all. For a long time.
−
For surely they will turn on each other, for that is all they know how to do. It will be like Lord of the Flies, but it will be among the remaining rich fools. They will tear each others souls apart as them feed them to the devil himself. It would make for an interesting reality tv show, but of course no one will be around to watch it but themselves, assuming such technology would still be up and running, and I’m pretty sure it won’t. I agree, let them wallow in the hell they have orchestrated with their “superior god given intelligence.” God-damned ins
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Thanks Michael. That’s it. Could all have been said right here.
It really,does seem that the elites are conspiring to make the world into a kind of place in which “they” survive, most of the rest of us do not.
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For some reason I cannot get the website to post.
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I’ll try again:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/22-1
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Daniel just posted this comment on NBL:
From Norris’s essay:
“…To effectively resist, I need to operate from a realistic assessment of the situation – how others have resisted and succeeded or failed and why, how those in power have struck back against resistance and how they have succeeded or failed and why…….And [I’m] uncertain because I’m new to resistance and don’t know how best to apply myself”.
No one ever chooses to crawl down the rabbit hole, it’s only much later that we discover where we are, and it’s only later still, that we discover we can never crawl out. And if ever there were a bottom to the abyss, and believe me, I thought I had reached it many times……………….well, nothing really comes after near term extinction, does it?
Before there was Deep Green Resistance, there was The Earth Liberation Front in the 90′s. Before there was ELF, there was Earth First! in the 80′s. Before Earth First! there was Greenpeace in the 70′s. Before them there was the Weather Underground and before them Syndicalism, and before….well, eventually we end up knocking around in Sabots quoting Diogenes.
For me, coming from a small lumber town in the Pacific Northwest, I came of age during the Edward Abbey, Earth First! era. And unlike many of my comrades, I was fortunate enough to have never been caught, unless that was the objective, which often times it was pending on the nature of the protest. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Hello Big Brother.
I have been a radical environmentalist my entire adult life, where in my youth everyone I knew was as well, especially in a liberal college town that just so happens to be the anarchist capital of the U.S. Of course it’s easy to be outraged when you’re in your twenties and the idealism of working to create a better world, has yet to repeatedly crash upon the rocks as it has for every greenhorn that has come before. Hence, the reason for why every “movement” is overwhelmingly youth driven, it’s a generational thing that eventually ends up much like a “Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac”. And it is why Howard Zinn became rather disingenuous in his later years, when he would repeatedly claim he was happy to see so many young faces in the crowd, when in fact, he had never seen anything else. Which also indirectly speaks as to why there are so many grey hairs here at NBL.
Of course there are always your dye-in-the-wool radicals who never move on, and I would most likely be considered someone who never did. But this is not the 60′s or 70′s. It’s not even the horrendous 80′s. It’s not even the slightly resurgent 90′s. This is 2013 where literally every catastrophe we’ve been warned about over the last fifty years of ecological awareness is now coming to fruition. We are no longer in the causation phase, but are now in the catastrophic consequential stage of attrition.
We’re no longer living in the years that allowed our foolishness to believe we still had some remote chance of steering industrial civilization around the notorious iceberg. Wherein, we’re now so far down the road, or up the creek that we’re not just beyond post collision, we’re now even beyond the “collapse preparedness movement” of the last decade.
But sense it seems almost impossible for us to not continue to play intellectual leap frog in jumping back and forth between past paradigms and our new unbearable future, I suppose it’s just as impossible to expect generations of vested interests to go quietly into that equally notorious good night.
The theory of DGR can barely wrap it’s proposition around the very collapse it endorses, now we’re somehow suppose to suspend all critical thinking and coddle the naive notion that DGR is somehow relevant in the face of NTE? And that continuing to put our faith in “resistance” is anything other than just a personal choice in the absence of any viable imperative?
If there was even the slightest chance that DGR could have any impact on our current course, then the probable reality of NTE wouldn’t even exist. But we are here at NBL, right now, because “we” comprehend that NTE is probable, simply because nothing else is.
There are many reasons why we are discussing NTE, but in IMO, it is mainly due to the simple passage of time. For many of us, enough time has now passed under the bridge that “we” fully understand that there is nothing any of us–no matter how many there may be–can do to change a single damn thing, other than continue to fill our heads with nostrums that allow us to believe we have agency where none has probably ever existed.
While my Earth First! days are long past, my radicalism is alive and thriving, which is why I blog at NBL. But that radicalism is no longer married to the notion of resistance, because decades of opposition has left me with one overarching truth that can’t possibly ever be surmounted: Virtually no one cares about anything beyond their immediate self interests, period! I now call it “the tyranny of our immediate needs”.
However, if one is operating under a moral imperative, then such remorseless truth is inconsequential. And this brings us around to what I believe is Guy’s position. In the face of NTE, “resistance” must be framed as a moral imperative, otherwise, it rationally holds no water. But as long as it is framed as such, it can’t be argued against, because no one is in any position to tell another how they should live. So, resistance is as “fertile” as one believes it to be. And it makes absolutely no sense in attempting to dissuade someone of their moral imperative in the light of NTE.
It is obvious to many here that DGR will amount to nothing. And not only that, it will amount to even less than all the “movements” that have come before. And again, if this were not true, then NTE would not exist. NTE exists because the vertical ascension of exponential growth curves carries its own unprecedented truth, which can’t honestly be denied. But, none this has any bearing on how any of us choose to live out what time we have left.
So, for those who choose to resist, do so knowing that this is solely your choice, and abandon all hope that it will ever amount to anything. But as long as one is being driven by a moral imperative, it doesn’t need to amount to anything other than what it is in itself.
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‘Virtually no one cares about anything beyond their immediate self interests, period! I now call it “the tyranny of our immediate needs”.’
There we go again, confusing wants and needs.
Industrial Civilisation specialises in providing for wants while it systematically fails to meet needs. Indeed, Industrial Civilisation degrades everything we need.
What do we humans need?
Clean (unpolluted) air.
Fresh (unpolluted) water.
Nutritious food.
A stable environment.
A sense of purpose within a community.
Industrial civilisation fouls the air, contaminates the water, supplies massive amounts of poor quality food via unsustainable systems, destroys the environment, both locally and globally, and destroys communities, leaving huge sectors of the populace with no purpose (other than to mindlessly consume their own and their progeny’s futures).
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/john-constable-the-hay-wain
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A massive amount of heat is being continually absorbed. Much of it appears to be heating water deep in the oceans and converting ice into water, while having little effect on average surface temperatures (for the moment).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/has-global-warming-stopped-no–its-just-on-pause-insist-scientists-8726893.html
7 billion ‘frogs being slowly brought to the simmer’.
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Well, it appears now that the mangled jet stream has sent an upper level low on a 6,000 mile round trip journey from the Ohio River Valley to California and back again. Hope those of you in AZ are enjoying the flash floods. I suppose it’s better than endless drought?
Excellent Cochrane talk. Will definitely take a look at that book.
RE Kevin’s mention above…
The atmosphere is still slowly warming despite the PDO being strongly negative. This is very bad news (something I’m sure doomers will like to hear ;), when the PDO flips back to positive and the Pacific gyres spin down we’ll see a jump in atmospheric temps. On the upside, Arctic sea ice melt may slow down a little as less heat is transported to Arctic regions. In essence, the Earth’s AC turns off and we stop converting some of the ice into atmospheric cooling (or in this case, less warming) while, at the same time, the ocean stops taking up the excess heat.
The science says we can expect jumps of .4 degrees C per decade when this happens. This may not sound like much, but it will amp up the hydrological cycle by another 3% (causing more droughts and extreme floods) effectively adding a 50% increase to the added extremes we already have now.
So we have a trade-off, the longer the PDO stays negative, the more ice melt and polar amplification we get. Or we trade rapidly ramping global heat and kicking the hydrological cycle into ‘crazy.’ Fun, fun fun.
Feeling a bit doomerish at the moment…
Best to all.
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Kevin’s first You Tube apperance
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…and more here.
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