Tags
Abby Martin, Abrupt Climate Change, Climate Change, Climate Tipping Points, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate Espionage, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Collapse, Guy McPherson, Inverted Totalitarianism, Investigative Journalism, Mass Media Manipulation, Mass Media Propaganda, Media Roots, Near-Term Extinction, Russia Today, Security and Surveillance State
“…when denial threatens society, the Earth’s ecosystems, and a sustainable future, it has become not only a delusion, but a dangerous pathology… Possibly some Romans did the same as Attila the Hun marched into Rome, or some Chinese may have sipped tea as Genghis Khan marched his Mongol hordes into their cities…” ~ Haydn Washington
After discovering the website Media Roots a few years ago, I worked with its owner Abby Martin on a small project connected with my ‘Graffiti Philosophy’ video. If I remember correctly, I believe Abby worked for a short time as a newscaster for mainstream media in southern California, but became disenchanted and quit. From my brief experience, she struck me as nothing but sincere and dedicated to the cause of social change. Besides her TV work with RT, she is no different from you or I. I’m aware that RT serves as a “soft-power tool to improve Russia’s image abroad,” but it has also been extremely effective in providing alternative viewpoints to American corporate hegemony. Some of the more discerning readers of this blog have expressed exasperation at the incompleteness of Guy McPherson’s recent interview with investigative journalist Abby Martin. I thought it was rather short and could have been expounded upon if sufficient time were allowed.
No one in my immediate social circle really believes that humans will be extinct by 2030, but if I say circa 2100, then that seems to be sufficiently far enough off in the future for most to safely agree with me. With amplifying positive feedbacks loops just starting to kick into gear, the climate could spiral completely out of control within a short time span as expressed recently by the concern of a number of scientists over catastrophic and abrupt climate change. After all, we humans are doing things to the planet that have never been done before at such a rapid pace, so the ‘unknown unknowns’ are sure to surprise us.
We all know what our response should be — should have been — in response to climate change, resource depletion, and environmental destruction, but all the evidence points to the system perpetuating itself until it crashes like a speeding train with its conductor sound asleep. I personally think we need an entirely new socio-economic system that is completely counter to the current ecocidal paradigm. We know that corporate espionage against activists is insidiously preventing any sort of large-scale grassroots movement from forming and that the power of mass manipulation by corporate media is unprecedented in the history of civilization, so what are we, the few awake amongst us, to do. Some still feel it is worthwhile to invest time in the current political carnival with the ‘hopes’ of effecting incremental change while others feel that any meaningful decisions should have taken place decades ago. Still others feel our fate could never have been altered to any great degree due to biological imperatives and human psychology, and some humanely ask for mankind to save what biological diversity it can in these last days of the Anthropocene Age. In any event, our descendants will have quite a mess to deal with, that is if they are lucky enough to have been left with a planet that accommodates any sort of human population.
So we get to the purpose of this post. Suspend your jaded cynicism for a moment. Abby Martin, a dedicated activist, artist, and investigative journalist, has agreed to an internet interview for this site concerning the previously described state of the world. Abby has interviewed quite a few intelligent people including many we quote here, so this has the potential to be interesting. I’ve been told Brutus has an essay in the draft format and have asked him to hold off until next week. Help me formulate some intelligent questions for Abby. What questions should she have asked Guy? Does she believe in the possibility of humans going extinct? What does she envision the future to be? Has she ever been censored on RT? Hopefully, Guy McPherson and others will join in once the final interview is published. If you don’t want to post your questions here, send them to me at collapsitarians@gmail.com.
Reblogged this on Damn the Matrix and commented:
Another mighty post from XRayMike……
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I only have one question for Abby: Is she dating someone?…
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Ask her what she thinks of collapsitarians……..what she thinks makes us so different In our views from the rest of society, as we are a very small group compared to those who will not even consider that our civilization could collapse.
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The lag time of climate change – something decades in the future. That’s what people can’t grasp, especially in a society that is so me-oriented and materialistic.
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“What recourse is left if everyone is in denial and no one wants to face the music, the reality of our situation being that we are quickly approaching the final act and the fat lady is starting to warm up her vocal cords?”
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Ask Abby her feelings about the importance of dreams and imagination as a source for something new i.e., a new way of seeing the world. Pretty much everything else has been tried. There is too much money behind the present system for it to change. The old story will not bring us what we need.
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Here we go. Excellent question.
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Some questions emailed to me:
Even though she does an excellent job covering important topics, why the small % on climate change?
Thoughts on how we decommission the nuclear facilities prior to any type of collapse\revolution?
Who are the most important voices out there today?
How does she envision the world 20 years from now?
Any updates on the Nestle water war?
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A question: Does she really think that capitalism can be reformed?
“…A major step in the diagnosis of capitalism as a cancer is that in all cancerous pathologies, a living organism’s immune system fails to recognise the tumor. The media, universities, and governments do not recognise the destructive capitalist system’s malignant growth, but actively collaborate with it.
Governments in democratic systems are supposed to defend the environment from the excesses of capitalism. The problem is that capitalism has infected democracy, such that governments put the interests of profit before the environment. Capitalist democracy inevitably leads to a dictatorship of capital…
…A civilisation can be judged by how it treats its poorest members. Capitalism cuts public services that serve as immune systems to protect the poor, whilst increasing privatisation, which only benefits the rich. Private jets, private health care, private schools, private prisons, and private security. Then we wonder why our elite politicians cut public services?
Profit maximization is the fundamental principle of capitalism. Profit, however, is indifferent to human suffering. In fact, profit is committed at every stage of its growth to the direct multiplication of itself. The similarities with a carcinogen are starkly evident.
With all that said, the poison serves as its antidote: all-devouring capitalism will eventually devour itself. However, capitalism will be the dominant system for years to come because it appeals to Man’s worst qualities. The only question is whether civilisation can survive capitalism?”
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Ask the Derrick Jensen question.
if aliens invaded Earth and started chopping down all the trees would you fight back?
If aliens invaded Earth, killed all the animals and poisoned the air and the water would you fight back?
What would it take for you to fight back?
A couple of years ago I asked a lot of people this question via a noticeboard:
Are you happy to be lied to and robbed every day?
(The lack of response suggested that most people were and still are.)
Maybe I should have asked: Why are you happy to be lied to and robbed every day?
The document I am working on at the moment highlights the fact that people living in industrial societies are engaged in the destruction of their own progeny’s futures, or if they are young, their own futures.
A question focusing on the omnicidal and suicidal nature of industrial society would be worthwhile.
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Just 2 months ago…
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Can a society that is ok with the horrible lifelong torture of billions of sweet animals, farm animals, all to save pennies a pound for their meat, really be counted on to give a crap about people not yet born, or the rest of the biosphere?
From alternet:
6 Crimes Against Nature Perpetrated By the Food Industry
While many procedures on factory farms are cruel, breeding animals into mutants and violating mother/offspring bonds are truly crimes against nature.
http://www.alternet.org/food/6-crimes-against-nature-perpetrated-food-industry?page=0%2C0
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I’d like to hear Abby’s answer to: “It is now evident that governments and corporate leaders are not prepared to halt the catastrophic trajectory of economic growth, resource overconsumption and environmental destruction. Do you think that civil society can take the lead from the demand end of the supply chain, and sufficiently power down our way of life in time to avert catastrophe, and how do you think this can be done?” Or some variant of that.
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Actually I’m quite concerned that Abby doesn’t get it and that too many folks think she does. She’s had Peter Joseph and a bunch of people from the Zeitgeist Movement on the show just way too many times – like she’s looking for some magical thinking to keep it all afloat
I’d be very pleased if I’m proven wrong – and if I am proven wrong then I will lobby the heck out of her to cut the crap and say what needs to be said 😉
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Also I think those shows are shallow and poorly executed
Sorry to not be in the Abby Martin fan club…. as I said, I hope to be proven wrong, as I do on a great many things…
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We’ll see. Interesting answers are what we’re looking for.
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I really don’t know what to ask, because I think the questions are zen koans which defeat all logical analytical approaches. For example, if the root of the catastrophe is industrial civilisation, then we must end industrial civilisation. But if we do that, billions will die prematurely. But if we don’t do that, many more billions will die and very probably all humans become extinct.
How does one reconcile these two options ?
Even as thought experiments they are stressful to contemplate. As policy choices for the real world, to be proposed to the public, they are not very attractive. So the default will be do nothing, and nature will use the 4 Horsemen to sort it out, as per history, and the biological, laws re overshoot of carrying capacity. Albert Bartlett.
The IPCC and the mainstream scientific community appear to be living in cloud cuckoo land. They seem to think that their arguments quoting statistics and ppm and loss of ice, etc actually matter to the billions who watch youtube and tv, and that the corporations and bankers and politicians will be persuaded to leave trillions of dollars worth of assets of coal, gas, oil, methane hydrates, in the ground and unburned.
Seems to me, as economic and competitive pressures increase, what nations will see as the luxury of foregoing extraction and exploitation of whatever resources they have, will make it ever less likely that there will be ANY agreement to cut back on emissions. The forests will be cut, the aquifers will be polluted by fracking, the environmental laws and regulations will be relaxed until they are nonexistent.. because it is a race to the bottom that nobody can win…
This is fun
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/how-the-media-will-report-the-apocalypse
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LOL. 🙂 I especially like this:

How you find this shit I don’t know.
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How do I find that shit ? My contacts inside the NSA and GCHQ, of course.
Why no mention of NBL though ? Very disappointing that they mention Monbiot and no McPherson, I mean we’ve been out-dooming Monbiot by every measure for a decade…
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Indeed, here is the koan, er, I mean question I would ask (to paraphrase Woody Allen):
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Do you believe we have the wisdom to choose correctly?
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Let’s cut the bullshit. Billions WILL die no matter what. Why don’t we try to address THAT issue? Because right now, we simply don’t care enough. And judging by history, we really never will.
There is no reconciling this fact as you asked. The planned destruction of civilization is well-underway. Most think the globalists are losing control. Hardly. They’re trying to bring about depopulation. Which is exactly what is needed. But “we’re supposed to object” to this agenda. Why? Better now then later. Stop objecting and get with the program.
I think all this wrangling over this topic is really quite stupid. Embedded within this entire belief system is a nihilistic fatalism that guarantees total defeat and failure. And need I remind anyone – this means total defeat and failure of EVERY LIVING THING ON THE ENTIRE PLANET. Because we “quit” and refused to clean up our mess.
I cannot accept that. It’s neither real (we do not actually operate that way in real life) nor acceptable. There remains a LOT that can be done that can change the future. Doesn’t frickin’ matter if the score is 100 to 1, the GAME ISN’T OVER.
Wrangling over this again and again is absolutely pointless. Do people REALLY believe this outcome is carved in stone as they claim? Then they are stupid as shit.
Either shut the fuck up and DO SOMETHING or go blow your brains out and do the REST OF US A FAVOR. Or at least SHUT UP and get the fuck out of the way and stop fucking up the planet. Inaction is just a guilty as denial.
Being human, we CAN bend the rules as we have shown throughout history. We can even do our best to devise a new game. We do not require any sort of a guarantee in hand before we make the attempt. But we definitely owe it to all life on EARTH to give it our best TRY.
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Okay, so what do YOU propose as a plan of action ?
Because all over the internet there are voices just like yours, beating others over the head and berating them, but nobody has got any sensible practical way forward to offer, afaik. So unless YOU have one, you’re just another loudmouth with nothing to say, aren’t you ?
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I am an admirer of Abby Martin. She does important work on air that can’t get addressed by the Corporate media. However, there is no reason for her to be as “educated” or “awake” with regard to possible human extinction as some of the writers and observers here. Most of the members of the “environmental community” are not, after all. I myself, even after reading Lovelock, had not considered the matter, in toto, really, until I had read Drumwright’s piece in NBL last April. I’m still digesting it. And yes, I too wish Ms. Martin would devote more time on ecological change. That is her decision as producer of her program.
Having said all that, my question for Ms. Martin is one that can’t be answered in a few minutes on a single show but that I could only hope might lead to a future program when she could spend time on it, perhaps with a panel discussion. Just as Darwinian evolution changed the human conversation about itself forever, the idea of NTE or possible NTE or even merely the demise of a majority of human population changes the philosophical questions that are worthy of asking. I don’t mean some of the silly responses to Drumwright: I’m going to eat steak every day, meditate till the last moment, despair until suicide, etc. Disclaimer: I made one myself, something about the disposition of Dick Cheney’s head.
A discussion could be facilitated and one that needs to be for the larger audience. Is a fragment of civilization worth saving? Are humans worth saving? Is the attempt even valid? And if not, how do we usher ourselves out of this existence? Steak and suicide notwithstanding, isn’t some form of final social kindness in order at least among the ones of us disposed to do so? What would that look like? Most of this has been spoken of on NBL but there is a larger audience for this discussion.
Again, I don’t think this is a topic for your initial interview on Breaking The Set but you may come up with a way to frame something for the future, being more articulate than I and yes, to help to “educate” Abby Martin. I suspect it won’t be hard; she is intelligent and a quick study. Where else can we possibly get a forum?
I’ll leave you a song as is my wont. The recording quality isn’t great but it is Gilberto at her best:
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Hi Stephen,
For those of us who read Daniel’s essay and accepted the conclusion, there’s then the ethical problem as to whether one should wake people up or not, because if you know that the plane is going to fall out of the sky, or the train is going over a cliff, isn’t it just cruelty to wake up sleeping passengers who have no chance of saving themselves, just to tell them that they are shortly going to meet a horrible death ?
Guy takes the view that people should know, and should be given a choice. I used to feel a great urgency to inform people, but that has passed. I just don’t feel that pressure anymore. I think many more will wake up, but not enough to make any difference, so it doesn’t really matter. If they have not noticed by now, and don’t care what’s happening by now, then why should I care what happens to THEM. Exception made for the innocent children of course and the few people who live untouched by this insane culture.
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Dear Ulvfugl,
Your view as well as Guy’s and a couple others on NBL are well thought out. That is one of the problems; they are well thought out but are they carved in stone? I still am not convinced of total human extinction as the absolute future though I tend towards it in my own thinking. In any case what is to be done in the meantime? Exactly what we are doing now, discussing things, arguing and engaging one another (and listening to music). Otherwise I could eat steak every day or despair unto suicide. I don’t feel an urgency anymore but I still do have an agenda. I don’t think that the masses will wake. In my own life I tend to be a mild mannered man and fairly non-aggressive. Deep down, however, there is still a tiny little vicious prick that, if at all possible, in anyway whatsoever, can counter the evil fascist corp-wellian indoctrination behemoth, then the little prick is going to do it.
After that, there are a few young people on the periphery of my life that I care about. If there is some way to forestall the coming storm even for a few moments, I am for it. Demean it as hopium if you will but what I think about is the ability for those young people to have at least a little bit more of a human life as I was so privileged to enjoy. Another good meal, some lovely music, some passionate sex and some warm companionship, another moment to see nature, maybe even a walk through the Barnes Museum to look at the Renoirs and Cezannes (I live near Philly). I want them to have this.
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Dear Stephen,
It’s impossible to encapsulate the last thirty years of growing, changing, learning, into a comment, but I no longer understand why people think that the conclusion should be depression, or despair, or suicide, or as one idiot on RC said of McPherson, if he believed what he said he’d just be drunk all the time. These are superficial responses from shallow people who have not gone into the profound depths of the matter. People still absorbed in self-pity because their story is broken, as if they were children who had been taken to a movie which didn’t have the satisfactory conclusion they desired.
I’ve been through all the stages. I was fighting a war, ever since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, to try and save something. Then I realised that the war was lost. But it is a long time yet, before we reach the finale. Just because the city walls are breached and the enemy has entered, that does not mean I surrender. I am a warrior, I fight until I can fight no more, because they will kill me anyway, or make me a slave in my own city, so I prefer to die with honour and self-respect. And while I fight I am happy and enjoy every minute of my living, with great intensity, and I’m proud of what I have done, because I have never compromised, I never sold MY soul.
Looking at the geological record (Peter Ward and others) it seems perfectly clear to me that we have ticked all the boxes for a mass extinction event. Most people are clueless about this, even most scientists, even most climate scientists. But even if they suddenly all caught up this week, what then ? The task of changing global culture, of shifting the 7+billion and the capitalist machine and geopolitics towards something different that would be sustainable, given the time frame, even five, ten, 15, years, seems completely unachievable. I mean, people have fantasies about it, but people have never done anything comparable and there is no sign that they will now.
Imo, the fundamental problem is biological, overshoot beyond carrying capacity. That cannot be solved by technology, or by social reform. We are out of time.
Yes, we can argue about the possibility of 100% extinction versus the ‘small pockets of survivors’ thesis. But who cares ? None of us will be around to know who turned out to be correct and who the hell would want to be, anyway, because it’s not going to be pretty to watch, is it.
I live as simply as I can, in each moment, and I’m mostly very happy, my life is exquisite, but I fight for the non-humans, there are more than enough humans to fight for their interests and with each other…
Yes, I’d like to see some retribution and justice, because 20 or 30 years ago, all of this could have been avoided and some people KNEW THAT and chose their own self interest above the fate of everyone and everything else… and some people are STILL making that choice and THEY should be held accountable.
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I think I knew, in my heart, in my bones, way, way back, that we would end up with NTE, but I could never believe it or accept it, in my head, because it made no sense, because nobody else ever even thought the thought, and whenever I thought the thought, the world around me made no sense because everything was operating under a totally different paradigm…
So it took a LONG TIME to face the idea.
But, really, it’s simple. If it’s Space Ship Earth, then all the species are passengers. And when WE decided that species were expendable – no individual decided, but collectively, the choice was accepted – so that the top 4 or 5 richest families on the planet, who own most of the wealth, could get even richer by plundering and raping and pillaging the natural resources and polluting and poisoning the commons… then that was it, really.
The insane Officers in the Captain’s Cabin of Space Ship Earth would rather have a drunken orgy than steer the ship safely through the reefs and rocks. That was very hard to believe. It was very hard to accept that ANY human adults with power could be so stupid and reckless and irresponsible.
But this is what we find.
I’m really just paraphrasing what kevin says so often and so eloquently.
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I’m finalizing the questions now, so speak or forever hold your silence.
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There is the puzzle that has arisen from time to time on NBL, re the mega rich elite, who presumably are as well-informed as we are re the science, or not ? so what are they expecting ? Do they really expect that they will survive in bunkers while the rest of us die ? And then emerge into a world that they can enjoy ? When the forecast is that the climate will continue to be chaotic for thousands of years ? Not to mention the nuclear and other pollution. So what’s going through their minds ? Because, supposedly, there are just a few hundred families who own the majority holding in the banks and corporations that control all the rest of the banks and corporations.
It would be interesting to know. I suppose it’s possible that they are surrounded by sycophants who just tell them what they want to hear ? People like Gavin Schmidt, hahaha.
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Democracy was once considered a dangerous new idea and a threat to ruling elites. It brought to mind fearful images of oppressed masses demanding social and political equality. Fast forward to today and democracy is a key method by which the inequality and injustices of capitalism are legitimated and popular consent engineered. Despite the fact that capitalism can tolerate neither equal access to decision-making or truly open dissent, and in fact prioritises profit-making above all social or environmental concerns, we are nonetheless persuaded to believe that capitalism is, or at least can be, democratic. Now a new book – published by Corporate Watch* – uncovers how this contradiction is sustained, and the anti-democratic rule of capitalism protected.
Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent comprises of twenty essays – written by writers, academics and activists and edited by Corporate Watch researcher Rebecca Fisher – which collectively argue that in today’s ‘democracy’ elite interests are served by the limitations placed upon popular participation in decision-making, by the manipulation of public opinion through propaganda, and from the attempts to co-opt, marginalise and/or repress oppositional politics. This ground-breaking book reveals how despite its inherently anti-democratic nature, global capitalism is dependent upon the manipulation of the concept of democracy to survive. It thus exposes a potential weakness at the heart of capitalism, which activists and campaigners can usefully target in their struggle against oppression and environmental destruction.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=4835
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Sent 10 questions off to her. May take a while for her to answer. Included some things not mentioned here.
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Sorry, I couldn’t formulate a coherent question because it would have been the length of a blog post. Maybe one follow-up question could be asked: doesn’t responsible journalism require more than passing familiarity with the theses of an interview subject in order to engage in satisfactory discussion and penetrate the topic better than a seventh-grade book report? In the three interviews I’ve seen her conduct, she has failed on this level.
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Nobody who wants to hold their audience’s attention asks book-length questions. Some of my questions were rather lengthy, but it’s assumed that the audience is already fairly well informed.
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What does she think about the disasters waiting to happen with nuclear plants as our electrical systems break down?
On that vein, here is a bit more personal account of what happened to those sailors and marines who are suing Tepco: http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=DSz1wGc1PcU&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DDSz1wGc1PcU%26feature%3Dyoutu.be
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I asked a question along those lines. Her final response may take a while because she said she’s on her way home for the holidays and she asked me when I need this done. I’m giving her a few weeks to answer due to the depth of the questions.
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I am occasionally asked why I bother to continue to fight ‘the system’ when the vast majority of people around me are not interested.
One answer is that I have the knowledge and skill to do so, something few others have. (There are many people who struggle to read a newspaper, and for the vast majority chemical equations or scientific terminology are completely incomprehensible.)
Another answer is that, following the fall of the Nazi regime, war criminals were hunted down and held to account. (We can leave aside the issue of war criminals on the Allies side.) Those who had caused immense suffering and widespread death and destruction in a premeditated manner were held to account.
Whilst there are ‘untouchable’ global elites who orchestrate everything and benefit immensely from the ravaging of the planet, there are also the minions of the empire, the local politicians and bureaucrats who lie continuously to the local community in order that the wealth transfer system can be maintained. These people are not ‘nameless and faceless’:; they have names and addresses; they walk around the CBD and some even go shopping. They are the weak link in the global system..
The question that can be repeated (and I will): How much longer do you intend to keep destroying your children’s futures?
Since I have grandchildren, I say to politicians and bureaucrats that if they choose to destroy their own children’s futures that is up to them, but if they choose to destroy my grandchildren’s futures that is outrageous.
Raising the matter of the previous mayor, Harry Duynhoven, actively destroying his own children’s future caused him to break into a fit of rage in the council foyer; he broke into another fit of rage when I raised the same matter in the council chamber.
Harry Duynhoven was the first mayor in over 50 years to lose after just one term in office., losing by the biggest margin in local history. (The short term in office as mayor followed on from him losing his position as an MP for the city.) I claim no particular credit for Harry’s Duynhoven’s demise (though I’m sure my efforts helped): he caused his own downfall by constantly lying and bullying, and acting as a shill for corporations..
The chickens are all coming home to roost.
The new mayor, Andrew Judd, has a simple choice: become a professional liar and pay the price, or tell the truth -that we have all been lied to and nothing is sutainable- and pay the price.
We live in ‘interesting’ times..
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Any fool can squander an inheritance.
Squandering an inheritance on self-destructive trinkets and entertainment takes exceptional foolishness.
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“The greatest problem we have is that we can’t imagine any alternative. And that is the challenge: to invent, create and think as if we were living just after the collapse, if there is a collapse of capitalism, and how we will organize.” Ana, Observatorio Metropolitano and 15M, Madrid.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/transformation/marina-sitrin/postcards-from-horizontal-world
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Apocalyptic sea level rise…
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Some good news.
It seems that the Spanish Inquisition was not as awful as we have been led to believe, and that a cultural myth was built up by the English and the Dutch, who were nibbling away at Spanish-held territories and trade systems, and used propaganda to undermine the Spanish.
Much of the Inquisition’s activity in Spain was concerned with accumulation of territory and power and homogenisation of the populace.
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Hahaha, well, that’s a comfort. 🙂
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We might laugh at the burning of exhumed corpse and effigies but I was brought up to construct an effigy of a ‘traitor’ and burn ‘him’ on a fire as an annual ritual. That was just 50 or so years ago!
.
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I see that both wili and DIOGENES persist at RC, with some restraint and delicacy.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/unforced-variations-dec-2013/comment-page-6/#comment-436073
Thing is, GavinSchmidt’s armwave ‘BAU = extinction = nonsense, so take it elsewhere’ collapses, because, as his mentor and erstwhile boss, Hansen, says, and Kevin Anderson says, we ARE on track for 2 deg C, and ALMOST everyone sane agrees that if we get to 2 deg C we are already deep in the shit because we don’t STOP there, we go sailing onward into 3, 4, 5, 6 deg C and there is absolutely fuck all we can do about it, because, magical fantasy miraculous imaginary technofixes aside, the whole world is going to be in hopeless chaos and nobody is going to be able to organise any sort of sensible response to anything.
That’s because of a whole host of things, like increased frequency of extreme weather events, collapse of agricultural production, resource wars, etc, etc.
Btw, the only people who are dismissing the ‘methane bomb’, seems to me, are Archer and Schmidt and Tobis, who still claim it’s a mythical threat and will take centuries or thousands of years, and anyway it’s ‘a very small number’.
Richard Ally says ‘We just don’t know’ but mostly waffles along the lines of the IPCC, which is mostly the Exxon policy I guess. So my inclination would be to ask the experts, for an informed opinion, who would, of course be Wadhams, Shakhova and Semiletov…
And to see what’s actually happening, re Sam Carana’s weekly updates…
although I have to say I do think that Malcolm Light’s Lucy and Alamo projects are crackpot.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/act-now-on-methane.html
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question for Abby:
With Fukushima poisoning the Pacific Ocean while the Gulf of Mexico is still a problem , new and deadly diseases emerging, crop failure and climate change continuing and getting worse, resource depletion, Arctic ice melt and the methane problem, global capitalism destroying civilization via habitat destruction, our political systems unresponsive to the cries of humanity and the plight of the environment, what should we expect and what should we do?
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I asked something along those lines.
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Ask her if she will present this documentary, made for Discovery Channel, then banned.
If she does this one, she has brass in Importent places.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=asvl6kO1Vo8&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dasvl6kO1Vo8
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ulvfugl: I’m with you on Light’s action projects. How the hell are we going to stop civilization when every day it continues unabated? There’s no plan, nothing being considered (aside from unproven, piss-poor ideas regarding geo-engineering that have never been tried, couldn’t be scaled large enough – because it would take too much energy and money, and we’re too stupid to identify all the knock-on effects it would cause) and no political will.
I posted a link to a Huff-Po article on NBL but the new Capcha code is beyond me to get past (any ideas what a solution looks like?)
Here’s the kicker:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/amidst-typhoons-and-clima_b_4330174.html
(which begins)
Despite mounting evidence that global warming is leading to devastating environmental disasters in the Pacific region, the U.S. and its partners are suspicious of climate change advocates. Rather brazenly, Washington and its Pacific allies spy on those who are intent on reining in global warming.
Indeed, according to the Guardian newspaper, which wrote a report based on Edward Snowden’s recent disclosures, the National Security Agency or N.S.A. spied on Ban Ki-moon and obtained the United Nations Secretary General’s “talking points” on climate change. The N.S.A. carried out its espionage prior to a recent meeting between Ban and President Obama at the White House.
_________
So, to finish my thought – even if we wanted to “fix” our problem, the people controlling the resources, who have all the guns and money, don’t want to do that and are working to keep it this way. We’re fucked because we’re working at cross purposes and can’t get anything done – no change (for the better) in Fukushima, no decrease in infectious disease spread, no stopping CO2 pollution every day, no fixing the Gulf of Mexico, no subsidence in the methane and ice melt . . . (and on and on).
Thanks for your continued defense of sanity. (ulv, mike, and everyone who posts here)
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Yes, both Carana’s plans and Light’s, which are even more unrealistic imo, seem to ignore the real socio-political world that we live in, where projects require support and sponsorship from powerful backers who typically want to know what’s in it for them.
They’ll ask the mainstream scientists (Archer and Schmidt and Exxon, etc) who’ll say methane is not a problem, and there’s no money to be made from the plan anyway, so what’s the point ? It’s just some lunatics doom-mongering… But quite apart from that, I think it’s an absurd idea. And anyway, hasn’t HAARP been closed down now ?
If you can’t read the Captcha thing, clock that little circular recycle emblem to the right and it will get you another one, keep doing it until you get one you can read and copy into the text box.
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http://www.upworthy.com/a-smartypants-scientist-makes-an-easy-analogy-about-our-planet-and-now-im-scared
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http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/climate-change-and-the-need.html
Climate change and the need for a revolutionary party
Capitalist industry to blame for global warming
“What is behind climate change?
When we read about climate change, what often comes to mind are images of dirty factories spewing out clouds of black smoke. While blaming industry itself would be simplistic, it strikes at the essence of the problem: economics.
In order to reverse climate change, in other words, there needs to be a dramatic change in the global economy. Capitalism must go.
Capitalism places profit first. Capitalists only take into account climate change or other needs, human or otherwise, if they can see a way to link them to a higher rate of profit. Consequently, capitalism is an inherently conservative system, since change requires risky investment in a competitive economy where a slightly greener but less profitable business risks going out of business. This is especially true given the power of oil lobbies and the relatively high cost of environmentally safer sources of energy.
The only radical economic transformations in modern history—transformations to make economies meet real needs—have been socialist transformations. From the breakneck industrialization of the Soviet Union that allowed it to defeat Nazism in World War Two to the drastic rise in Chinese standards of living from 1949 to1976, socialist economies have shown themselves to be the only way forward out of the callous brutality of capitalism. Socialism offers the possibility of a planned economy, an impossible task under capitalism, a system driven by the logic of pursuit of profits.”
More at site.
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This is a real threat to the corporatists and international financial elites: that socialism is the only answer to global warming. I guess it is why the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and other business journals do all they can to deny AGW and confuse the public about it. If the world’s people actually knew, without doubts, that we face catastrophe within their lifespans, radical alternatives to our world economy, now based on fossil fuel industry profits and constant growth, would have to be considered.
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Socialism isn’t an answer in itself, because it generally offers the same cornucopian-type thinking, like free university education for all, that sort of thing. All the socialist republics have been industrial, that I can tell.
Any large-scale organization, including socialist states, can only be sustained by energy surpluses.
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No snow in Siberia? Locals marvel – and worry – at the ‘snow shortage’
http://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/features/no-snow-in-siberia-locals-marvel-and-worry-at-the-snow-shortage/
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Sorry to be so thick-headed about beating the Capcha code over at NBL, but I did copy the random letters and numbers into the box (being careful to maintain caps when seen) and my comment still hasn’t shown up. What’s the catch?
i’ll just stop posting there if it doesn’t work.
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Um, I don’t know. I havn’t had any problems lately. If you havn’t done the Captcha correctly it should tell you. Just write ‘test’ and try the effing thing.
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Tom, try registering and then you won’t have to do the Captcha for every comment, just when you log in (and you can stay logged in, afaik).
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pfgetty: there isn’t time now to change from the predominant paradigm to a new, as yet unplanned one, just as there probably isn’t enough time to decommission all the nuke plants (some of which are being built as we speak). All the hopium will amount to diddly-squat as the years progress into an ever-more chaotic, extreme weather combined with overheating of the oceans and troposphere situation that will not be tolerable to any of the species of plants and animals we rely on for food, as well as killing off most of us in the process. We aren’t dealing with Fukushima (and cannot, ultimately) which is pumping out vast quantities of radiation that’s now spreading into the Atlantic and beyond to the rest of the planet and will effect plant life and our (and all other species’) ability to reproduce viable off-spring while we’re dying of various cancers and mutations down to the DNA level. The environment will continue to degrade while the planet continues to heat up – to the point that there will be no place for anyone to survive because nothing will be sustaining life at that point and for thousands of years hence.
just my two cents
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NBL is being pulled from where it used to be across onto RE’s agenda of planning survival communities. I don’t particularly object to that, because my position has been that people should do whatever they themselves think is the right thing TO do, because it’s morally impossible for me to TELL any other human being what they should or ought to do, in the face of NTE. We all have to do something. If NTE is unavoidable, it doesn’t make a heck of a lot of difference what anyone does, although I’d still prefer that they help other species survive as long as possible, which gives them a BIT of a a chance.
There is a big storm here at the moment. The BBC weather guy said that what was bringing it was the jet stream across the Atlantic, which was going at 280mph which he said was unheard of… I checked the records, there are a few that seem faster, but this seems to be another example of an extreme weather event.
Keep trying NBL, Tom. If you don’t get through, I’ll ask them why.
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Really appreciate this guest piece. The author captures much of my own feelings and questions I’ve raised for myself. I find myself wanting those who have pushed this agenda down the wrong path in need of punishment; I just can’t find in me to forgive them.I know trusting them would be impossible.
Tom, please don’t stop posting on NBL.
Interesting you tube from Suzuki. It’s almost as if David were channeling Albert Bartlett.
What confuses me is this guy (David) is supposed to be a really smart guy yet some of the choices he’s made put that into question for me. Says that every scientist he talks to agrees with him that we are at 59 1/2 minutes. Where were they about 30 minutes ago?
Is it true that he has 5 offspring? Are any of them adopted? Are all of them freshly breed out of him? Are the rules different for him? Hadn’t he read Limits to Growth when it first came out? Also, is it true that he lives in an 8 million dollar house? Saw a you tube video by this Canadian Fox news like guy who did an expose on David. Was it just a hack job or was he making some interesting points?
His message is great and one I agree with and we should listen to only upon pulling back the layers of the onion isn’t this another case of do as I say not as i do?
Having been on the inside of Pacifica when I ran one of their local elections I came to know more than an average listener would know regarding the secrecy about the Democracy Now contracts and Amy Goodman’s benefits. It seems that while Goodman wants transparency and openness from corporations who are doing damage her organization is not willing to be open about their own finances.
I know we are all human and flawed, yet don’t those of us who are leaders need to owe up their own contribution to the problem.
I had felt that NBL was being pushed away from NTE because RE is into the saving model. I too don’t object; however it feels to me as if RE can’t accept NTE or what is unfolding and can’t allow NBL to be a place where discussion of NTE occurs.
His “gift” of helping out the site may not have been given without a desire on his part to shift NBL away from extinction; however that is still Guy’s message and it is still Guy’s site so it will be interesting to see how this moves along.
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I agree completely, Tom. I put up the article about need to move toward socialism just to show what is being said and told out there in the land of hopefuls.
Right now the people of power are planning how to get more and more coal out of the ground, an foil and gas, and how to find the last of the fish in the oceans, and how to infiltrate environmental activist groups to neutralize them, and plans to consolidate even more of the media, and on and on.
I do like to hear radical ideas about how we could solve our problem of NTE, if just for interest’s sake. And I’ll support some of them. But I know, even while supporting them, that I, or my kids, will see the end of the reign of humanity.
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suddenly it worked ulv! I guess it’s back to working again. It’s frustrating, I mean, why can’t they all be as easy as this site? Thanks for your help as usual man. I’m not proficient with computers (my wife has gotten me out of more jams and solved more problems for me because she spends all day dealing with them at work) so I’m a bit impatient at obstacles being put before ordinary activity. I was responding to an environmental petition with a sign-on which would send it to our elected official recently (that I didn’t vote for), & encountered the same difficulty with this captcha thing and could not get it to get me through. I sent a scathing email to the sender of the petition, completely losing my shit (I was so goddamn mad I wanted to just swear off technology by that point) and asking how the &>@{ anyone was supposed to “solve” their damn puzzles – with no instruction, mind you – it doesn’t say anywhere what to do but asks the sender to “solve the following puzzle” before being allowed entrance to the great Oz. Well, she got back to me in a few days and dug the thing out of the spam folder and sent it on, however not answering the question of a solution to the code. Many times the original, not saved, off-the cuff but cogent response is just lost – poof – gone into cyberspace.
Mike – you run the best blog in my opinion, on ease of use alone, if for no other reason (and there are many more)
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No problem, Tom.
The storm that I’m in, apparently the jet stream that is usually 1-200 miles wide is now 900 miles wide ! You can see the shit that’s hitting me here, it looks quite pretty 🙂
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=0.14,48.06,355
Click on ‘earth’ and adjust the parameters
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The worst is yet to come according to the Guardian.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/23/storm-winds-torrential-rain-britain-weather
And the worst is definitely yet to come as everything that actually matters is MADE worse by the global economic-political system.
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Photos of Fukushimafacts.com
Double Crossed RadioFukushimafacts.com
Here in the Pacific Northwest we are seeing the effects of nuclear contamination in the wildlife from salmon and steelhead with tumors to elk with mutated antlers. Humans are next in the food chain.
This is a Roosevelt elk that was arrowed in Oregon in September. This is not the atypical rack, because that happens due to damage to the base of the antlers when they start to bud. Both antlers are affected and that is DNA damage.
The antler is the fastest growing animal matter on the planet. Those antlers tell a tale we’ll see shadows of for the rest of our lives.–Tawd via DL
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10% of Icelanders genuinely believe it…
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Yes, but you don’t know how to think about such things, mike, and stupid videos like that, which ridicule the subject, just make it even more difficult for people to comprehend. It’s not what you think it is.
That;s the whole problem re the ‘spirit domain’ thing. People think that they know what it is, therefore they feel entitled to dismiss it as nonsense, or superstition, or whatever. But it’s nothing at all like their preconception.
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Have you written anything on what you’re talking about? – sounds interesting. Please do and I’ll post it.
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Hahaha, well, I walked straight into that one, didn’t I. No, I don’t see much point in trying to persuade people, really. But the gist of it is, to do with levels or modes of consciousness. You’ll see these mapped in many different cultures as hierarchies.
There’s a level where one ‘communes with nature spirits’ so to speak. That means, there’s a very refined subtle level of consciousness where one picks up some sort of vibe or mental imagery that appears to emanate from what people have variously interpreted as those kind of thingees, elves, fairies, imps, etc. Rather benign expressions of whatever it is, as opposed to say, demons or vampires or goddesses or angels.
The thing is, to find that very subtle consciousness means having a very quiet peaceful mind that is open to those influences. So you only get that in the old rural cultures where country folk lived in somewhat isolated conditions. It’s just not compatible with busy urban life and tv, etc. But hermits and monks and so forth can know about it. I have a way to connect to it. It used to be widespread, all the way from Ireland to Japan, I don’t think there was any culture that didn’t have names and stories concerning this phenomenon.
I mean, I see it as essentially having an internal origin, from the mind, but that puts it in modern terms, where we conceive of a clear distinction between the inner and the outer. I don’t think pre-modern folks divided their reality that way.
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Well, if you do want to write it, then we’ll take care of that one thing we discussed a few months ago.
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At what point will we require the lawmakers that we elect to State and Federal Offices to read up on the measures and positions that they take…………….Pennsylvania is acutally considering wasting money on a Coyote bounty when even their own State Game Commission has told them that you would have to kill 70% of the Coyote population into perpetuity to reduce their density— A HORRIBLE WASTE OF MONEY…………..JUST SO WRONG AS IT RELATES TO THE HEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA WOODLANDS AS THE COYOTES AND BLACK BEARS IN THIS STATE ARE NOT DENTING THE DEER POPULATION AND ACCOUNT FOR A MINESCULE % OF FARMER LOSSES OF LIVESTOCK.
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The American Chestnut Tree once comprised anywhere from 25 to 30% of our Eastern hardwood forest and along with Oak and Beech, was a significant foodstuff for a wide swath of forest dwellers from Black Bears to Deer to Blue Jays to mice………………..In a 50 year span from 1904-1950 it no longer was a functioning adult tree forest component after spores of Cryphonectria parasitica, a fungus that produces oxalic acid, which poisons and kills the tree, were inadvertently introduced on shipments of Chineese Chestnuts…………..While a 94% Chineese/American hybrid and now an experimental genetically wheat injected tree are being considered for re-introduction into our eastern woodlands, would it not be better to stop fiddling with nature and simply plant those American Chestnuts that have shown some capacity to withstand the fungus????????????
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I have three American Chestnut trees in my yard, doing well. They are Dunston Chestnuts, real American chestnuts, not crosses, but selected over time for resistance. They are about 10 years old, and all of them have gotten run over by cars and mowers but have sprung back and one is a sizable tree and gave us a crop of about fifty chestnuts this year.
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pS: I was excited about my trees a few years ago, and now I dread the agony of watching them, and so much else, suffer in years to come because of changing climate here in coastal NC.
I’m trying to get my mind ready for what is coming, and haven’t a clue if I am accomplishing that.
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Yes it looks as if only the fast moving species have a chance to rush northward.
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From Steve at Scribbler’s:
Three seperate die-offs going on with dolphins in Florida. 1) Indian River 2) Gulf of Mexico 3) Atlantic (Started in summer in NY). I thought the Gulf deaths was due to oil spill but this articles says that the deaths started in Louisiana before the spill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/23/us/focus-on-oceans-health-as-dolphin-deaths-soar.html?_r=0
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http://news.yahoo.com/rifle-designer-mikhail-kalashnikov-dead-94-163848393.html
MOSCOW (AP) — Mikhail Kalashnikov, whose work as a weapons designer for the Soviet Union is immortalized in the name of the world’s most popular firearm, died Monday at the age of 94.
Related Stories
Kalashnikov once aspired to design farm equipment. But even though his most famous invention — the AK-47 assault rifle — sowed havoc instead of crops, he often said he felt personally untroubled by his contribution to bloodshed.
“I sleep well. It’s the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence,” he said in 2007.
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The answer to a question posed a few weeks ago: The local, instantaneous warming factor for methane is more than 1000 times as much as CO2.
‘Historically, methane has caused delayed temperature anomalies of some 20°C, according to ice core analysis data, i.e. much higher than anomalies caused by carbon dioxide. Methane has a very high warming potential compared to carbon dioxide. Over a decade, methane’s global warming potential is more than 100 times as much as carbon dioxide, while methane’s local warming potential can be more than 1000 times as much. As a result, giant zones of circulating warm air in the Arctic have temperature anomalies in excess of 20°C.’
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/
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Interesting comments all. However, the question of extinction might better be answered by a paleobiologists, paleontologists, paleoecologists, geologists, or others who specialize in the disappearance of species, that are, by the way, arbitrarily defined biologically by their bodily characteristics. Species are grouped into genera, also arbitrarily defined, etc.
Indeed the paleontological record contains “levels” in the rock strata above which certain species, and genera, are not represented in younger strata, anywhere, but associated organisms persevered and evolved in the face of apparent adversities. Why? They adapted and evolved.
That these extinctions occurred simultaneously world wide can be seriously questioned. But this is quite another problem.
The relevant questions to Abby are (1) What caused the extinctions? (2) Was the extinction over a time span measured in millions of years? (3) What particular ecological factors combine to eradicate a species and, (4) Is the present acceleration of climate change really like anything in the recorded paleontological record? What is her expertise in these matters?
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I think you are a little late. However, I don’t think your questions are pertinent anyway.
You appear to be questioning the evolutionary paradigm itself which is way off what we are discussing re Abby, and climate etc. If you want to check out the extinction events watch the Peter Ward videos, afaik, Abby has no particular expertise in these matters and there is no reason why she should have.
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Sorry. I thought Abby would be questioned on extinction. Nevertheless, I will look at Peter Ward. Thanks for the lead.
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I think that the only time Abby has heard the word extinction was with Guy McPherson.
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And then Martin heard it twice out of Roseanne’s mouth “extinction” in the piece that ran following Guy. Who would have thunk it?
And on Real News when Jay Paul interviewed Chris Hedges and in each part Hedges mentions the word extinction and Jay doesn’t flinch or do a follow-up to have Chris elaborate on what does he mean.
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Four of the five past Great Extinction Events were due to intense volcanic activity over thousands of years, and one was due to the impact of a large body.
Current rates of change of chemical factors that make life as we know it possible are estimated to lie between 10 times and 100 times the rate of change that occurred in past Great Extinction Events.
The Sixth Great Extinction Event, which is underway now, is almost entirely attributable to the burning of fossil fuels (fossil fuels being the facilitator of human population overshoot and the cause of wide-scale pollution of the biosphere).
The Earth is a massive chemical-physical system, and in its entire history has never experienced the peculiar set of extant factors.
Previous extinction events are irrelevant, except as yardsticks to compare the current rate of annihilation of life by humans, and as a guide to what we humans alive a few decades from now might be faced with.
The physics and chemistry of planetary meltdown have been undisputable for decades; the failure to address the matter of mass extinction and NTHE is almost entirely cultural (though some would argue the present culture is a product of genetic inheritance).
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Well, I think xray should invite you to write a blog post just on that subject, kevin.
I think it needs clarifying. I think Peter Ward is great, but he states very clearly that the climate scientists don’t get the deep time extinction event stuff that he’s into, which I think is exactly correct. But hen HE doesn’t seem to get the climate science stuff that you’ve just described, which, to ME, means we tick all the boxes for the earlier events and then some ! Because Ward still thinks we’ll be saved by some fantasy tech that hasn’t been invented yet and talks about what we’ll be doing in a 100 years time, etc.
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Mike invited me to write several months ago but I am up to my neck in other things and have done nothing about it, other than my informal comments here, which I do make between doing other things.
My personal circumstances continue to deteriorate but I cannot complain, as billions are far worse off..
This is just the start of an extensive document I will be working on over the ‘holiday period’:
December 2013
Synopsis:
Application of elementary laws of mathematics, physics and chemistry to extant global economic-social-political arrangements readily demonstrates that they are totally unsustainable, and that collapse is inevitable.
The current state of numerous crucial factors, particularly EROEI, the net-energy Hubbert’s Curve, and global debt-to-resources ratios etc., clearly indicates that a substantial or a complete collapse of existing economic-social-political arrangements will occur over the coming decade, i.e. in the period 2014 to 2024.
In practice, the collapse of the dominant economic-social-political system has already commenced, though the bulk of the populace remains ignorant and complacent. This state of ignorant complacency is largely a consequence of misinformation promulgated by government departments and the near-complete avoidance of all basic truth by the short-term-profit-driven corporate media.
The collapse of extant living arrangements will accelerate as fundamental factors necessary for industrial society to function continue to deteriorate. Interaction between ever-worsening fundamental factors may result in rapid, cascading collapse. On the other hand, those who are profiting from present arrangements and plan to maximise short-term wealth acquisition throughout the collapse phase will attempt to ensure the collapse is as slow as they can possibly facilitate. It should be noted that, irrespective of deterioration of fundamental factors and political manipulation, one or more global ‘black swan’ events could cause very rapid unravelling of the living arrangements of most people in ‘developed’ nations, i.e. a major unexpected event in a matter of months or even weeks.
Such is the nature of the dominant economic system that short-term attempts to prop-up existing arrangements are counterproductive and ultimately result in a more catastrophic collapse. The later that substantial collapse occurs the greater the overall suffering.
In addition to the collapse of the socio-economic arrangements, humanity faces global environmental collapse. Humanity is witnessing, and is causing, the Sixth Great Extinction Event, and the portion of humanity engaged in industrial living (using fossil fuels) is largely responsible. The worldwide failure of governments to take appropriate action to eliminate industrially-generated carbon dioxide has put global emissions on track to generate a rise in average temperature in excess of 3 degrees Celsius by the middle of this century. Additionally, ocean acidification is already placing stress on the bicarbonate cycle, and continuation on the present path will render the bicarbonate cycle inoperable for organisms at the base of the food chain, and they will die out. With numerous positive feedbacks having been triggered, 3 degrees of warming may well be achieved as early as 2035. Such a temperature rise would render most of the Earth uninhabitable for humans by the middle of this century and would almost certainly lead to NTHE, Near Term Human Extinction. Since few extant life forms are incapable of surviving the rapid rise in average temperature associated with runaway greenhouse and abrupt climate change over a few decades, any humans alive after 2050 will be faced with living in an utterly desolate world, without any of the comforts and conveniences currently experienced in industrial societies.
It is abundantly clear to all who have carried out the necessary research that continuing on the present course of extracting and burning fossil fuels, triggering and exacerbating positive climate feedbacks, and generally promoting acceleration of climate change, will result in a largely uninhabitable planet within the natural lifespan of present-day adolescents. In other words, present-day adults are acting as agents of destruction of their own progeny’s futures (or in the case of adults under the age of sixty, acting as agents of destruction of their own futures).
Far from promoting rapid decoupling from fossil fuels and a rapid transition to truly sustainable systems, central, regional and local government in New Zealand all promote increased dependence on fossil fuels, at the time when fossil net fuel energy has clearly been in decline, at a time when climate catastrophe gets worse by the month. Such policies are not simply irrational, self-defeating and omnicidal, such policies are completely insane. Indeed, examination of district plans over many years reveals that planning consists of constant, and frequently incoherent, repetition of economic mumbo-jumbo, with no regard whatsoever for anything happening in the real world.
Over the past decade, city, district and regional councils have failed to abide by regulations set out in the Local Government Act of 2002, and now fail to abide by the amended Act of 2012. Climate change officers and environment officers have consistently failed to ensure that provisions in the Local Government Acts are abided by, and have failed to protect the communities they supposedly act on behalf of, and have failed to protect the next generation’s future.
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Correction to that draft.
since few life forms are capable of survivng
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Donald, species distinctions are not arbitrary: intra-species members can mate and produce fertile offspring. Inter-species matings may produce offspring (eg., mule) but they will not be fertile.
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I mentioned these guys last year in connection with a post I did.
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A more informative article on this:
http://www.nwherald.com/2013/12/23/to-clean-up-coal-obama-pushes-more-oil-production/aj77w0f/?
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When a group of of people are determined to destroy the habitability a planet and have the power to do so, and when the bulk of the populace is complicit, there can be only one outcome.
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and this…
In general, the forconi are about raging against the machine. They’re angry over the austerity plans of centrist Prime Minister Enrico Letta, they’re mad at Italy’s tax service, they decry the bureaucracy of the European Union, they’re scornful of the business and labor establishments, and pretty much everything else.
From the Pope’s speech :
Francis’ Dec. 22 Sunday Angelus address drew some 50,000 persons to St. Peter’s Square, including roughly 1,500 demonstrators connected to the populist Forconi uprising, an Italian word meaning “pitchfork.”
Seeing a banner that read “The poor can’t wait,” Francis launched into one of his trademark extemporaneous rifts.
“That’s beautiful!” he said, adding, “It reminds me that Jesus was born in a stable, he wasn’t born in a house. I think today, while reading that sign, of so many families that are without a home, either because they never had one or because they’ve lost it for various reasons.”
“A family and a home go together,” Francis said. “It’s very hard to keep a family going without a home to live in. In these days of Christmas, I invite everyone – persons, social institutions, political authorities – to do everything possible so that every family can have a home.”
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/pope-appeal-even-pitchforks
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“Who am I to judge?” With those five words, spoken in late July in reply to a reporter’s question about the status of gay priests in the Church, Pope Francis stepped away from the disapproving tone, the explicit moralizing typical of Popes and bishops. This gesture of openness, which startled the Catholic world, would prove not to be an isolated event. In a series of interviews and speeches in the first few months after his election, in March, the Pope unilaterally declared a kind of truce in the culture wars that have divided the Vatican and much of the world. Repeatedly, he argued that the Church’s purpose was more to proclaim God’s merciful love for all people than to condemn sinners for having fallen short of strictures, especially those having to do with gender and sexual orientation. His break from his immediate predecessors—John Paul II, who died in 2005, and Benedict XVI, the traditionalist German theologian who stepped down from the papacy in February—is less ideological than intuitive, an inclusive vision of the Church centered on an identification with the poor. From this vision, theological and organizational innovations flow. The move from rule by non-negotiable imperatives to leadership by invitation and welcome is as fundamental to the meaning of the faith as any dogma.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_carroll?currentPage=all
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UK ESTABLISHMENT CLOSES RANKS AS ORGANISED CHILD SEX ABUSE NETWORK LEADS BACK TO NO. 10
http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2013/12/18/uk-establishment-closes-ranks-as-organised-paedophile-network-leads-back-to-no-10/
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Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will ‘break economies’
Industry expert warns of grim future of ‘recession’ driven ‘resource wars’ at University College London lecture
BP
A former BP geologist speaks out on the danger of peak oil. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images
A former British Petroleum (BP) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing with it the danger of “continuous recession” and increased risk of conflict and hunger.
At a lecture on ‘Geohazards’ earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008.
Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last 53 years at current rates of consumption, pointing out that “peaking is the result of declining production rates, not declining reserves.” Despite new discoveries and increasing reliance on unconventional oil and gas, 37 countries are already post-peak, and global oil production is declining at about 4.1% per year, or 3.5 million barrels a day (b/d) per year:
“We need new production equal to a new Saudi Arabia every 3 to 4 years to maintain and grow supply… New discoveries have not matched consumption since 1986. We are drawing down on our reserves, even though reserves are apparently climbing every year. Reserves are growing due to better technology in old fields, raising the amount we can recover – but production is still falling at 4.1% p.a. [per annum].”
Dr. Miller, who prepared annual in-house projections of future oil supply for BP from 2000 to 2007, refers to this as the “ATM problem” – “more money, but still limited daily withdrawals.” As a consequence: “Production of conventional liquid oil has been flat since 2008. Growth in liquid supply since then has been largely of natural gas liquids [NGL]- ethane, propane, butane, pentane – and oil-sand bitumen.”
Dr. Miller is co-editor of a special edition of the prestigious journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, published this month on the future of oil supply. In an introductory paper co-authored with Dr. Steve R. Sorrel, co-director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex in Brighton, they argue that among oil industry experts “there is a growing consensus that the era of cheap oil has passed and that we are entering a new and very different phase.” They endorse the conservative conclusions of an extensive earlier study by the government-funded UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC):
“… a sustained decline in global conventional production appears probable before 2030 and there is significant risk of this beginning before 2020… on current evidence the inclusion of tight oil [shale oil] resources appears unlikely to significantly affect this conclusion, partly because the resource base appears relatively modest.”
In fact, increasing dependence on shale could worsen decline rates in the long run:
“Greater reliance upon tight oil resources produced using hydraulic fracturing will exacerbate any rising trend in global average decline rates, since these wells have no plateau and decline extremely fast – for example, by 90% or more in the first 5 years.”
Tar sands will fare similarly, they conclude, noting that “the Canadian oil sands will deliver only 5 mb per day by 2030, which represents less than 6% of the IEA projection of all-liquids production by that date.”
Despite the cautious projection of global peak oil “before 2020”, they also point out that:
“Crude oil production grew at approximately 1.5% per year between 1995 and 2005, but then plateaued with more recent increases in liquids supply largely deriving from NGLs, oil sands and tight oil. These trends are expected to continue… Crude oil production is heavily concentrated in a small number of countries and a small number of giant fields, with approximately 100 fields producing one half of global supply, 25 producing one quarter and a single field (Ghawar in Saudi Arabia) producing approximately 7%. Most of these giant fields are relatively old, many are well past their peak of production, most of the rest seem likely to enter decline within the next decade or so and few new giant fields are expected to be found.”
“The final peak is going to be decided by the price – how much can we afford to pay?”, Dr. Miller told me in an interview about his work. “If we can afford to pay $150 per barrel, we could certainly produce more given a few years of lead time for new developments, but it would break economies again.”
Miller argues that for all intents and purposes, peak oil has arrived as conditions are such that despite volatility, prices can never return to pre-2004 levels:
“The oil price has risen almost continuously since 2004 to date, starting at $30. There was a great spike to $150 and then a collapse in 2008/2009, but it has since climbed to $110 and held there. The price rise brought a lot of new exploration and development, but these new fields have not actually increased production by very much, due to the decline of older fields. This is compatible with the idea that we are pretty much at peak today. This recession is what peak feels like.”
Although he is dismissive of shale oil and gas’ capacity to prevent a peak and subsequent long decline in global oil production, Miller recognises that there is still some leeway that could bring significant, if temporary dividends for US economic growth – though only as “a relatively short-lived phenomenon”:
“We’re like a cage of lab rats that have eaten all the cornflakes and discovered that you can eat the cardboard packets too. Yes, we can, but… Tight oil may reach 5 or even 6 million b/d in the US, which will hugely help the US economy, along with shale gas. Shale resources, though, are inappropriate for more densely populated countries like the UK, because the industrialisation of the countryside affects far more people (with far less access to alternative natural space), and the economic benefits are spread more thinly across more people. Tight oil production in the US is likely to peak before 2020. There absolutely will not be enough tight oil production to replace the US’ current 9 million b/d of imports.”
In turn, by prolonging global economic recession, high oil prices may reduce demand. Peak demand in turn may maintain a longer undulating oil production plateau:
“We are probably in peak oil today, or at least in the foot-hills. Production could rise a little for a few years yet, but not sufficiently to bring the price down; alternatively, continuous recession in much of the world may keep demand essentially flat for years at the $110/bbl price we have today. But we can’t grow the supply at average past rates of about 1.5% per year at today’s prices.”
The fundamental dependence of global economic growth on cheap oil supplies suggests that as we continue into the age of expensive oil and gas, without appropriate efforts to mitigate the impacts and transition to a new energy system, the world faces a future of economic and geopolitical turbulence:
“In the US, high oil prices correlate with recessions, although not all recessions correlate with high oil prices. It does not prove causation, but it is highly likely that when the US pays more than 4% of its GDP for oil, or more than 10% of GDP for primary energy, the economy declines as money is sucked into buying fuel instead of other goods and services… A shortage of oil will affect everything in the economy. I expect more famine, more drought, more resource wars and a steady inflation in the energy cost of all commodities.”
According to another study in the Royal Society journal special edition by professor David J. Murphy of Northern Illinois University, an expert in the role of energy in economic growth, the energy return on investment (EROI) for global oil and gas production – the amount of energy produced compared to the amount of energy invested to get, deliver and use that energy – is roughly 15 and declining. For the US, EROI of oil and gas production is 11 and declining; and for unconventional oil and biofuels is largely less than 10. The problem is that as EROI decreases, energy prices increase. Thus, Murphy concludes:
“… the minimum oil price needed to increase the oil supply in the near term is at levels consistent with levels that have induced past economic recessions. From these points, I conclude that, as the EROI of the average barrel of oil declines, long-term economic growth will become harder to achieve and come at an increasingly higher financial, energetic and environmental cost.”
Current EROI in the US, Miller said, is simply “not enough to support the US infrastructure, even if America was self-sufficient, without raising production even further than current consumption.”
In their introduction to their collection of papers in the Royal Society journal, Miller and Sorrell point out that “most authors” in the special edition “accept that conventional oil resources are at an advanced stage of depletion and that liquid fuels will become more expensive and increasingly scarce.” The shale revolution can provide only “short-term relief”, but is otherwise “unlikely to make a significant difference in the longer term.”
They call for a “coordinated response” to this challenge to mitigate the impact, including “far-reaching changes in global transport systems.” While “climate-friendly solutions to ‘peak oil’ are available” they caution, these will be neither “easy” nor “quick”, and imply a model of economic development that accepts lower levels of consumption and mobility.
In his interview with me, Richard Miller was particularly critical of the UK government’s policies, including abandoning large-scale wind farm projects, the reduction of feed-in tariffs for renewable energy, and support for shale gas. “The government will do anything for the short-term economic bounce,” he said, “but the consequence will be that the UK is tied more tightly to an oil-based future, and we will pay dearly for it.”
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/23/british-petroleum-geologist-peak-oil-break-economy-recession
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Worth your time: 12-22-2013
Hour long talk between Chris Hedges and Derrick Jensen
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You said “I personally think we need an entirely new socio-economic system that is completely counter to the current ecocidal paradigm.”
I’ve finally gotten our proposal rewritten. It’s only 4 pages, if you have a few minutes I’d be curious what you or anyone for that matter might think. Someone posted the 3 hr documentary on socialism and I’ve watched most of it. It’s great and mentions communes a lot. Even if the theme is negative, but hell, it would be just as easy to do a 3 hour documentary on the horrors of capitalism. It comes down to the details, details, details…. simply put, small, voluntary, clearheaded about the need for incentive and individual freedom and autonomy; not just group cooperation…..
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I didn’t realize the word press link was wrong, the correct link http://www.the-communal-solution.us/index.html
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Monster storm headed for UK
Storm headed for
the UK
Via Facebook
“Look at this monster of a storm approaching the UK.
Yes, it is the same beast that swept across the US generating torrential rains and tornadoes and then snow as it moved more northward. Then it raked across southern Ontario and the Maritimes, burying Toronto and many other cities under a layer of ice.
As it crosses the Atlantic it has been gaining strength and the expected 920 mb pressure low is that reached in Category 4 Hurricanes.
I hope that the UK battens down the hatches. I think that this is only very early times for abrupt climate change, and these storms will be much worse moving forward.
Much worse.”
—- Paul Beckwith
Strongest Jet Stream Ever Recorded To Bring Two Super Storms To United Kingdom Region This Week With Possible Tornadoes In Ireland
the Weather Space,
22 December, 2013
A massive storm system is moving out of the United States today, which went through Canada yesterday … carries with it the strongest jet stream now ever recorded that will cause two super storms in the United Kingdom region this week.
As if engineered, this never before seen jet stream of 275 mph in the upper levels is exiting Canada. This jet stream will move across the Northern Atlantic and deepen a surface low that is only 1004mb at this moment. This jet stream will act as a vacuum, sucking the air from the center of the storm and dropping the pressure within it to an impressive 930mb low. This is a pressure fall over over 50mb by Monday evening and Tuesday morning for the United Kingdom region. It will cause problems, with the initial concern will be the amount of rain for Wales, Central and Southern England where over 50mm of rainfall will fall. Double that over the hills. The rain will fall on already saturated ground which will lead to flooding.
Very windy on Monday with the system, about 70 mph gusts likely in the South. On Christmas Eve expect 70-80 mph wind gusts in Northern Ireland and Western Scotland … with heavy snow in the Scottish Mountains. Weakening winds across Northern Scotland on Christmas day with winds relaxing … for the most part it looks nice on Christmas.
But we’re not done yet. This powerful jet will deepen yet another low pressure system on Friday and this warm front will sweep across Ireland with tornadic dynamics. It’s very likely that with this surface low being much further south than the first one that shear and warm air advection through Ireland will cause a tornado scenario there so be exceptionally alert.
http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/
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IMO, questions and raising awareness are obsolete in our effort to curb what is ultimately an issue of denial. People are not prepared to live the simplistic lifestyles required in order to maintain a non-toxic balance of life on this planet.
Again, IMO, the only ‘solution’ is for each person/family/clan to do everything they can to disengage from the current paradigm and live in a way that does not contribute to the problem.
This is much easier said than done and is not a viable option for millions of poor people living in the concrete jungles of our modern suiciety. There will be an unavoidable die off when the energy and conversely, the monoculture food system collapse.
Those who have already powered down ahead of time have a better chance of surviving the changing climate, however, there are still no guarantees, even for those who can sustainably live off the land, either as hunter/gatherers or permaculturists.
This is a truly a problem of globalization and localization is the only solution. However, because it is not profitable for multinational corporations, politicians will never work in favor of power down.
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I very much agree with that line of thought, Timothy. Over on NBL there’s some talk of setting up communities and tribes and so forth, and I’ve been involved in many attempts to establish idealist utopian anarchist communities in my life with varying degrees of failure, haha. I think the best way to look at it is to start with yourself. Then to add another person. Get that to work. If that works, that’s an amazing achievement 😉 Then add another and so on. After that, it’s the snowball effect. But discussing theoretical or hypothetical imaginary ecovillages that exist in dream land is a waste of time. Start with yourself, and find one other person who you share getting through tomorrow with, and working out how you survive through next week with, and get very good at it, and then add a couple more, that make a practical functioning system that takes care of everyone’s survival and needs under whatever circumstances, learning all the time… once that’s operational it’ll be a magnet and the problem becomes keeping people out, because ‘bad’ people can ruin it. Like you said, it’s no guarantee, just better than being helpless.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_group
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When I first started becoming aware of the multifaceted issues we face as an ‘advanced’ civilization, I wanted to tell everyone I could, to convince them of the changes that need to be made. However, most attempts to enlighten people were met with denial. It was a depressing experience, one that could only be overcome by living the example instead of preaching it.
So that is where I am now. I am attempting to be the change. My wife and I have built a small orchard and permaculture farm. We have come a long way, but have a lot further to go. The problem is that we currently live in a semi-large city and will not be able to adequately defend our property if there is a mass exodus of hungry people. I really can’t bear the thought of having to shoot at hungry people.
It is a sad thought to leave this place behind, but that is ultimately our intention. To sell this place to a like-minded buyer who will see the value in what we have created. Then we intend to start over deep in the wilderness where there is relative safety from large populations.
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Oh, I see. Well, I was thinking in the broadest possible terms. I don’t think there’s any fixed format or template because everyone’s circumstances and situation and locality are different.
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I really can’t bear the thought of having to shoot at hungry people.
The ethics and practicality of this are something that nobody is willing to discuss. But sooner or later these issues will have to be faced. A couple of months back a doctor remarked that some handicapped child should be killed rather than kept alive, because the enormous cost was disproportionate, and there was a public outcry and he had to apologise and resign. He did say it in a very insensitive and rather callous way, but he had a point. If it costs £30,000 a year to keep someone alive, who is going to work to provide that extra income to donate to keep that individual alive for the next, say, 80 years ? It costs almost that much to keep someone in prison. If soceity breaks down, people are not going to be willing or able to provide facilities for severely disabled children or convicted serial killers who need to be kept incarcerated, and similar.
If you do have a permaculture community that works, and it feeds 50, or 500, then it’s not going to feed 5000 or 50,000, and somebody has to decide who is in and who is out, or else the whole thing gets overwhelmed and fails, and this is going to be incredibly difficult, when people who are already in plead for admission of relatives or friends or special cases. You know, it’s like telling your wife or daughter that she can’t keep that stray kitten she found… and if she will not shoot it, then you will…
Like something I watched once from the Ethiopian famine. The first starving person who arrives in a village, is welcomed and fed. But the next week, there are five. the next week, twenty. The next week, two hundred… The welcome quickly stops.
Soon the village is submerged and everything is eaten. Unless the villagers force the starving people to move on… This is an insoluble situation.
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I think it comes down to ethics being relative. Democracy, environmental protection, incarceration of deviants, etc. are all ‘privileges’ of a complex society with cheap and abundant resources available to them.
But you certainly correct that these decisions will have to be made in the near future. It is why I am well armed.
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Firearms is not a legal option for most people in UK. And anyway, circumstances and social tensions are vastly different.
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This subthread is the topic I most like reading about for a variety of reasons. I’ve run thought experiments on how I might create or land on a doomstead but found the whole enterprise exchanges one set of problems for another. The need to fortify in advance of the high likelihood of being overrun by refugees is just one of those exchanges, and being forced into the position of choosing who gets to live or die is not something I’d wish on anyone. I couldn’t live with myself if circumstances dropped me into a Sophie’s Choice.
But long before that occurs, other hardships and choices run the experiment off the rails. At this stage of history, very few of us could reconcile ourselves to communal living and fit in. We cling still to notions of identity, autonomy, self-determination, and control that undermine even small communities, which are more typically held together by a forceful, charismatic leader than by agreement and tolerance. This is true even at the level of the family/clan, and how many of us come from families splintered and spread across continents? Leavergirl at Leaving Babylon has written about this topic quite a bit.
Nonetheless, I appreciate reading about others attempting things that I can’t bring myself to try. It seems like a worthwhile focus and direction despite being fraught with obstacles.
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Doomer response fantasies are fun, I have to admit I’ve done my share of planning escapes of some kind. I’ve even been part of several that collapsed as they were about to begin in real life, an incredibly painful experience.
But even before the collapse of these plans with friends, I did have plenty of time to ponder them at 3 am, when I am at my most sober and least romantic. A few key truths were inescapable, despite my daylight hopeful longings and determination that our plans would have a chance.
There will always be far far FAR more people who are unprepared for what comes than there will be ‘preppers’ or ‘doomers’, and even within this group it is a minority with the means to buy and set up little safe enclaves for themselves and their chosen people. Meaning, they will be targets for as long as they exist. Do compounds under siege have time and energy enough to keep growing/preserving food, let alone manufacture ammunition and maintain barriers and weapons and infrastructure? How long can people resist a siege that won’t ever end? Against those with everything to gain by sustaining the siege?
Die-offs won’t happen all that quickly in my view, there are plenty of food-like products on shelves now that are designed to BE on shelves for great lengths of time; plus, with the supply of obese people around to feast on, the hungry hordes will be roaming for a very long time, long enough to outlast any little enclave of preppers. Even with mass death, there will always always always be more people outside the barriers of the homesteads than there will be homesteads. And humans are mobile, even on foot and in the harshest environments; our crumbling infrastructure will be around a long time, so nobody will stay hidden for long. I think the Archdruid has written about this, back when I still paid him some attention, but his arguments are hard to refute.
I suspect the Cheney types will survive with their private armies and weapons appropriated from the governments they already own, and will probably be in charge of the looting hordes soon enough anyway as the sociopaths with survival skills become a bigger percentage of the non dead and eager to link up to any hierarchy that exists along with their tribes. Does a low impact permaculture homestead really stand a chance in hell against this kind of opponent?
Not a future I have any interest in living through whatsoever, even if I was among the rich with the means to build my very briefly useful hideaway. I’d love to spend my last years on one starting tomorrow! But if something apocalyptic seemed immanent, I’d pop my stash of pills and take my final exist before having to shoot any weapons at hungry people. Just as I will here in my urban setting where I’m highly likely to be stuck for the remainder of my life (unless trucked off to a FEMA camp because I’m on a list of some kind…)
What I often find lacking in even the doomiest discussions is a real sober honest acknowledgment that it is extremely likely that WE will not be the survivors, or builders of what comes next, or around for long enough to influence much of what is to come in any way. And that is a good thing. Path dependence, a la Putnam, suggests societies just don’t get to choose path B when they’ve been on path Z all along, unless there is a discontinuity of some type that basically destroys the old society in some fundamental way.
I’m a traveler and a romantic and yet I doubt there is a single culture around today that isn’t fatally tainted by the dominant one. Path Z has paved over all the other paths. Those who truly do have some living connection to those old other pathways are those who are killing themselves in horrifying numbers. I can barely bring myself to read about what ails the First Nations up north, too deeply sad.
If humanity as a social species has any chance, it will be as a society created by those who have never been tied to anything around now, most likely ignorant of the vast majority of it, and will arise in the context of the environment in which they live. Assuming it is even habitable enough for reproduction over several generations. It may be a society that has some similarity to ones we already have known about or can imagine, but it will still have to evolve on its own on its land base to be sustainable over time. Right? I don’t think its impossible. Isn’t the bottleneck that gave rise to every one of us thought to have consisted of a mere several thousand people? It just won’t be us.
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Thanks a lot for your very well-thought-out comment. I’ve said/thought many of the same things over time, especially that those of us now living are quite ill-equipped to make any fundamental shifts and won’t be the ones, if any, who make it through the bottleneck.
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Wow, I can’t deny that the probability of what you say is based in reality, But I would much prefer to die trying than to give up. I am certainly glad they didn’t think this way back in Africa when our ancient ancestors faced the bottleneck.
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The growth of the mean atmospheric temperature using the curves on figure 12 indicate that the mean atmospheric temperature anomaly will exceed 1.5°C in 15 years and 2°C in 20 years, at which time storm systems will be very extreme with droughts, flooding, sea level rise and the loss of Pacific islands. When the mean atmospheric temperature anomaly reaches 8°C some 39 years in the future, there will be total deglaciation and a major extinction event that will culminate in a Permian-type extinction of all life on Earth.
If we do not stop the massive increases of Arctic methane emissions into the atmosphere the oceans will begin to boil off by 2080, when the mean temperature anomaly exceeds 115 to 120°C and the temperatures will be like those on Venus by 2100 (see figure 12).
The present end of the financial crisis and recovery of the U.S. economy will take us down the same fossil fuel driven road to catastrophe that the U.S. has followed before, when they refused to sign the original Kyoto Protocols. Unless the United States and Canada reduce their extreme carbon footprints (per unit population), they will end up being found guilty of ecocide and genocide, as the number of countries destroyed by the catastrophic weather systems continues to increase.
The United States and Canada seek to expand their economies by increasingly frenetic extraction of fossil fuels, using the most environmentally destructive methods possible (fracking and shale oil), while the population’s total addiction to inefficient gas transport is leading our planet into suicide. We are like maniacal lemmings leaping to their deaths over a global warming cliff. What a final and futile legacy it will be for the leader of the free world to be remembered only in the log of some passing alien ship recording the loss of the Earth’s atmosphere and hydrosphere after 2080 due to human greed and absolute energy ineptitude.
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com
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Personally, I think Light is a bit over the top and reduces the credibility of that blog.
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“When the mean atmospheric temperature anomaly reaches 8°C some 39 years in the future…”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an uber doomer, but isn’t this drawing a rather long bow? The only thing I can think of that could get us to 8°C in 39 years is unfettered economic growth. But this is nonsense because we are now in the early stages of peak oil, with the effects already sending shock waves through the system. Increasingly shrill arguments from the mainstream that this is otherwise, that “growth” is resuming won’t make it so. Massive money printing leading to asset bubbles, which is what is causing the latest echo-boom in the economy, does not result in growth. Just since 1999 we have had the examples of the tech-wreck in 2000, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown in 2007 and the GFC in 2008, that prove this point. History is riddled with such financial folly.
The current round of excess will end no less spectacularly and probably a great deal more so since the world has gone “all in” on both sides of the ledger – monetary and resource, plus we are far into overshoot. As the decline in conventional oil increases and can no longer be masked by resorting to either money printing, or the extraction of ruinously expensive and destructive unconventional resources, then it’s game over for the stupendously debt-addled world economy as we’ve known it since the end of WWII. Which means that we and the other species may at least be spared extinction at the hands of human stupidity, although a huge die-off is unavoidable, climate change induced or not.
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I don’t think unfettered economic growth can get us to 8 deg C in 39 years. But the methane could in theory. But there’s a big question mark there.
I’d also call myself an uber doomer, BUT I’m not into bullshitting people or accepting implausible or nonsensical scenarios. I want convincing arguments based on reputable empirical scientific information. It’s already really difficult to make clear judgements about what we can expect, and I find it quite annoying when some people make very exaggerated claims, as, imo, Light is doing, like ‘the oceans boiling away’, because I don’t think that CAN be justified.
As I understand it, as the temperature increases, the runaway effect eventually gets stopped because so much water vapour in the atmosphere will block off incoming sunlight, so the physics says there cannot be that Venusian ‘boiling of oceans’ effect. We still get a mass extinction event, and that’s plenty bad enough.
Personally, I think the methane risk is as Sam Carana depicts it, because he’s backed by Wadhams, who knows what he’s talking about. If Light makes claims which are seriously ridiculous then the whole blog gets downgraded as being a refuge for cranks and crackpots who are beyond the fringe and can be disregarded. There are already an over-abundance of those.
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Hi ulvfugl
A huge amount of water vapour in the atmosphere would not ‘block off incoming sunlight’. Water vapour acts as a greenhouse gas and acts to increase temperature. However, the upper atmosphere will always be exceedingly cold (being surrounded by space at not much above 0oK, -273oC) so water vapour will condense to droplets and form mists or clouds, whatever the temperature in the lower atmosphere.
The effect of clouds has been one of the most difficult aspects to model, and no one can say with any certainty that the latest models will prove reliable than previous ones, particularly since the formation of clouds is affected by numerous unknowables, such as the amount and distribution of nucleic particulate matter derived from volcanoes and industrial activity. Clouds reflect incoming heat and light back into space and reflect radiated heat from the Earth back towards the Earth, of course.
Talk of oceans boiling way in a matter of decades seems unbelievable, simply because the Earth continually radiates heat into space, and because the thermal mass of the oceans is so huge.
None of it will matter anyway, since industrial civilisation will not be able to function for much longer with declining net liquid fuel energy and the ever-greater pounding that is resulting from just 0.85oC of warming..
I listened to the Derrick Jensen-Chris Hedges talk; Chris Hedges said that half of the American population is poor, and the half that isn’t poor will soon join them. Much the same applies to the rest of the developed world. In the meantime the shocking squandering of energy and resources will continue.
‘If Light makes claims which are seriously ridiculous then the whole blog gets downgraded as being a refuge for cranks and crackpots who are beyond the fringe and can be disregarded. There are already an over-abundance of those.’ I agree.
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“None of it will matter anyway, since industrial civilisation will not be able to function for much longer with declining net liquid fuel energy and the ever-greater pounding that is resulting from just 0.85oC of warming..”
My sentiments exactly, scaremongering over imminent death from climate change is just stupid when you understand the link between fossil fuels, carrying capacity and overshoot. Whatever climate has in store for us will be more of a mopping up operation on nature’s part, after peak fossil fuel.
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@ kevin
I know water vapour is a greenhouse gas, obviously. The point is whether it’s possible, as Light claims, for the oceans to boil away. Hansen once made a similar suggestion and as I recall, it was debated and it just can’t happen, according to the physics, theoretically anyway.
Look, you’d have to empty out the deep ocean basins down to thousands of feet below present sea level, all that water becoming cloud. Here, where I live, in midsummer, thick cloud makes a COLD day. I know it’s trapping the infra red heat and all that. But, as I understood the arguments, there can’t be a runaway to boiling point, there’s just too much water for it to happen. But it’s hardly worth arguing about, and I’m not sufficiently qualified in the mathematics to speak with definitive authority.
@ Mercury
Not so sure about that. It’s impossible to know for sure because all estimates of the oil and gas deposits are based on secrets and lies, and there are widely differing views from ‘experts’, but maybe more than enough fossil fuels to keep BAU going for many decades. Certainly there are enormous coal reserves that are easily accessible.
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An interesting way to look at all this. Reverse it. How would you design the system if your intended aim was to destroy the biosphere, etc, by global warming, etc. ?
How would such a system differ from what we actually do have happening ?
http://prosperouswaydown.com/thinking-like-a-system-about-climate-science/
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I thought the same…..I had to read about the boiling of the oceans several times because I thought I was reading it wrong.
But I think these “out there” articles should be presented here to show the whole realm of the thinking about collapse, and discussed as to what is reasonable or not.
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Sad Record: 16 Percent Of Florida’s Manatee Population Died In 2013
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The number of manatee deaths in Florida has topped 800 for the first time since such record-keeping began in the 1970s.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg says 803 manatee deaths have been recorded this year. That’s about 16 percent of the state’s estimated population of 5,000 manatees.
Martine DeWit of the institute’s Marine Mammal Pathology Laboratory tells the Tampa Bay Times that 173 of the dead were breeding-age females. It’s unclear what effect these deaths will have on the endangered species’ population.
The previous record for manatee deaths was 766, set in 2010 after a lengthy cold snap.
Scientists blame a massive bloom of red tide algae in southwest Florida and a mysterious ailment affecting manatees in the Indian River Lagoon for this year’s deaths.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/21/manatee-deaths_n_4486453.html
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Timothy.
Yes, denial has featured as an important factor in preventing any sort of progress towards sustainability. But the biggest factor keeping western societies on track for self-annihilation, and the biggest factor preventing genuine progress on anything that matters has been deliberate misrepresentation. manipulation and outright lying by those in power.
Professional liars have constructed an enormous Web of Deceit which has entangled the general populace almost everywhere. Coupled with an ‘education’ system which is designed to fail the pupils/student, the Web of Deceit has been the elites greatest success (and ultimate failure).
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Eric. I agree.
Several years ago I was interviewed by the local newspaper in connection with the coming crisis. The options I presented were:
1. An informed community
2. A fortress.
3. Run for the hills.
Six years later it is abundantly clear that there is not an informed community, and at this stage I see no prospect of there being one.
As you point out, fortress is unlikely to work.
That leaves run for the hills. .
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It’s not relevant what Guy McPherson thinks, or what Abby thinks. People place far too much trust in those that appear to be spokespersons. All that truly matters is what each individual thinks, and this ‘knowledge’ should be carefully assembled (over a lifetime if possible), discarding the propaganda, misinformation and deception all too often – given out by these very spokespersons.
I don’t give McPherson the ‘credit’ for NTE or much of anything else. He’s just another voice in the mix, and there are several who predated him, including myself with the same message. This is why I do not accept the notion that we ‘turn to the experts’ for our knowledge and awareness exclusively – we must develop this for our own selves.
Moreover, and perhaps far more importantly, what could Guy or Abby possibly have to say that has not already been said elsewhere? Do we really need to read more about his views, or haven’t we heard enough already? How about we hear from other more qualified experts?
Seeking more validation without any real justification is rather pointless. Who we REALLY need to here from are the real world-class experts who are still in the field and doing the science.
This would be far more meaningful and relevant to those who are truly interested in understanding what our chances really are. And we need to hear from them outside of the artificial walls of scientific discipline, i.e., we need their opinions and personal perspectives unbound by any ‘rules’ which would prohibit their honest assessments for fear of losing their jobs or being considered ‘extremists’.
These are who the interviewers should be going after now.
It’s very dangerous for collapse watchers to pin all their futures on the opinions of one man. I’m surprised so many are doing this. It’s absolutely not good enough to justify the despair and hopelessness that is being embraced by the NTE crowd. It’s shameful really.
It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy to elect to “quit” because “it’s pointless”. Give up before you have even run the race? Of course you’re going to lose. Everybody knows that.
Nobody knows the future despite whatever evidence we have collected – it’s still not “the” future, it’s only a possible future, one of many possible outcomes. We could experience global volcanic eruptions which could cause significant atmospheric changes blocking out the sun and reflecting solar energy back into space. Nobody can say that “can’t happen”, or something else.
Fatalist just want to give up and quit. McPherson is a fatalist, but he does not have all the evidence or know the future (and never will). Another interview won’t tell anybody anything that they don’t already know about his position. Let’s hear from others who are even better qualified to answer the question of just how much time do they think we have left.
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JR, you talk the most ridiculous nonsense. Have you ever actually LISTENED to ONE of Guy’s lectures ? He does not say what YOU say he says. And your accusation that ‘collapse watchers’ – whatever the heck they are – only listen to one man is grossly insulting and absurd.
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From what I have gathered, most of Guys conclusions are based on the research of other scientists and thinkers throughout history. He is just making an observation of existing data.
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In all honesty, I’d rather hear from people who are living without fossil fuels. Who are living in harmony with the environment by turning every output into an input. But it seems to me that for every 1000 people talking about these issues there is one actually living differently or planning for a life that is not part of the mainstream, profit driven, exploitation driven model.
Now I am not trying to knock people who are trying to learn. You have to start somewhere. We are all learning and acting in ways that we can to be less of a burden on our life support systems. And yes, there are some people who really don’t care.
All I can say is do what you think is right. No matter what the outcome, a 1000 years of slightly warmer global temperatures, or NTE. Are we going to act as children and continue the party of destruction? Or are we going to recognize our folly and adapt?
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If i am not too late with questions, here are two:
Could it be that quite large number (possibly, millions) of rich people (together with at least “having a solid financial standing” ones) are not just very unhappy about doings and destructive effects of industrial and post-industrial institutions they are a part of, – but are also willing to put substantial amount of their time, energy and funds into demonstrably (obviously) honest projects aimed at creation of new socio-economic systems and technological complexes which can remain functional and fully self-sustainable within a small (geographically) region?
And, if the answer to the previous one is “yes”, then: what kind of a coordination, communication and decentralization systems could possibly work to unite such people in their efforts, assuming high confidentiality and general low-profile would be nesessary to avoid triggering “immune reaction” of existing mainstream governing and security institutions?
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Ask Abby Martin if she would like to buy me a drink. lol
I’m sorry! I don’t know how to behave but I do hope everyone has as much fun as I do when they wake up each day.
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Update on the Abby thing:
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