Tags
6th Mass Extinction, Abrupt Climate Change, Antarctic Ice Melt, Arctic Blue Ocean Event, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Capitalism, Donald Trump, Dr. James Orbinski, Geoengineering, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Hillary Clinton, James Hansen, Mass Coral Bleaching, Overpopulation, Planetary Boundaries, Professor Harold R. Wanless, Sea Level Rise, Techno-Fix, The Great Barrier Reef, The Limits to Growth
“When you cannot feed your children, you will do anything, even if it means going to war. This is the reality of climate change.” ~ Dr. James Orbinski
80% of the world’s productive agricultural land is in river deltas which are vulnerable to flooding from storm and tidal surges as well as salt penetration inland –as much as 20 km in some cases. Just 1 meter(3.28ft) of sea level rise(SLR) would threaten one third of this food-producing land and render nearly all the barrier islands of the world uninhabitable. (Overly-)Conservative estimates from the IPCC in 2013 predicted 1m of SLR rise by 2100, but the last two decades have seen global sea level increase more than twice as fast as it did in the 20th Century and only recently have scientists realized the true rate of SLR has been grossly underestimated(here and here). James Hansen (et al) has argued all along that 5 meters of sea level rise by the end of the century is possible, taking decades to happen rather than centuries. They conclude that glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica will melt 10 times faster than previous consensus estimates. The last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm was during the Pliocene Era when sea level was 5 to 40m higher (16-131ft); unfortunately, Earth is warming 50 times faster than when it comes out of an ice age. Professor Harold R. Wanless who has studied the geologic sedimentary record says that we are in for a nasty surprise within this century:
Most of the models projecting future sea level rise assume a gradual acceleration of sea level rise through this century and beyond as ice melt gradually accelerates. Our knowledge of how sea level rose out of the past ice age paints a very different picture of sea level response to climate change. At the depth of the last ice age, about 18,000 years ago, sea level was some 420 feet below present level as ice was taken up by large continental ice sheets. Subsequent ice melt was not a gradual acceleration and then deceleration process. Rather it was a series of very rapid pulses of sea level rise followed by pauses. These rapid pulses of rise, from three to thirty feet, were fast enough to leave drowned reefs, sandy barrier islands, tidal inlet deltas, and other coastal deposits abandoned across the continental shelf. That is what happens when climate change warms enough to destabilize some ice sheet sector. It rapidly disintegrates, resulting in a rapid rise.
We are already witnessing the demise of the Great Barrier Reef, the oldest and largest living organism on the planet, which continues to suffer the lethal effects of a warming and acidifying ocean. We’ve destroyed the planet’s air conditioner in the Arctic and set the stage for an impending Blue Ocean Event where 24 hours a day of summer sunlight penetrating the uncovered dark Arctic waters will create another tipping point for runaway climate change. The Arctic climate is changing so fast science can barely keep track of what’s happening or predict global consequences. On top of this, nature’s carbon sinks have been severely weakened over the last few centuries, hindering the ability of the planet to absorb ever-increasing greenhouse gases. And these things are happening before a large destructive pulse of SLR hits the planet.
History has proven considerably worse than the Club of Rome’s projections. The original report made only passing reference to some of the most critical environmental problems of today. In response to this, the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified a set of nine ecological processes regulating land/ocean/atmosphere and their accompanying boundaries within which humans must stay to avoid biospheric collapse. In 2015, researchers found that four of these planetary boundaries had already been breached: biodiversity loss, damage to phosphorous and nitrogen cycles, climate change and land use. None of these critical boundaries were picked up by the original Limits to Growth report. We have destroyed the stability of the Holocene Epoch and continue to wreak havoc with every passing day. In other words, there are many other environmental crises too numerous to list that are coming to a head, and catastrophic sea level rise is just the icing on the burned cake. The last time Earth had such a disruptive species, cyanobacteria altered the atmosphere and killed off all the anaerobic life forms including itself. Ironically, oxygen was the byproduct of the cyanobacteria that proved lethal to those ancient lifeforms and paved the way for the rise of photosynthetic organisms. The cyanobacteria had a 500 million year run, but modern man has only been around for 0.01% of that time. Our large brain has made it possible for us to destroy ourselves in record time.
Global warming is happening 5,000 times faster than a major food source can adapt. As the global monoculture food system breaks down and leaves vulnerable Third World countries to fend for themselves, I expect the last remaining vertebrates to be hunted to extinction in short order while wealthy nations carry out land grabs in an effort to keep their citizens fed. Humans are pushing all other life off the planet; the ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’ is not a metaphor.
So you would think that these stark facts laid out before us would be causing panic in the global markets and seats of power around the world because, clearly, no one is safe from this unfolding apocalypse. In what many call the ‘most powerful nation on Earth’, surely a leader must be on the verge of taking the helm of this sinking ship. In any rational world, they would be compelled to battle this planetary emergency with the war-time urgency it demands. In the election year of 2016 there are only two prospects in our corporatocracy, one of whom is so frightening that hundreds of the world’s scientists felt compelled to issue a warning against his possible election. The other candidate seems much more palatable on the surface, but her record and recent emails illustrate just how tortured her positions are on environmental issues. Anyone who has studied the numerous practices that make modern civilization truly unsustainable, the depths of corruption and waste in its global socio-economic system, and how predatory one has to be in order to survive and “succeed’ in it realizes in the end that it wouldn’t matter much who fills that figurehead position. Toeing the line of the dominant culture is a prerequisite for the job. That’s one reason why nations are building walls in response to climate change refugees and putting faith in unproven and unrealistic techno-fixes to save themselves while at the same time drilling for new oil, financing new coal plants, allowing climate goals for corporations to add up to only a quarter of the amount needed to limit warming to 2°C, and giving the shipping industry a pass on curbing its emissions(if shipping was a country it would be the world’s 8th biggest carbon polluter).
Meanwhile, CO2 levels continue to climb at breakneck speed and recent paleoclimate research indicates today’s greenhouse gas levels could produce a ‘game over’ warming of 7°C within our lifetime. We already have no carbon budget left for a 1.5°C warming limit from 2017 onwards. We’re betting our species’ future on vaporware, and no country on Earth is taking the 2°C climate target seriously. Celebrity breakups get more attention than real threats to the continuation of our species. Apocalypse tourism has become a ‘thing’.
The biosphere is collapsing under the weight of 7.5 billion people living off the combustion of a one time endowment of ancient carbon energy, from the factory-farmed produce they eat to the petroleum-based medical supplies that keep them alive. And global population growth may be accelerating at an even greater rate than recent predictions. As Germany has shown, “renewable energies” are nothing more than ‘fossil fuel extenders’ still wedded to fossil-fueled extraction processes for the production and maintenance of those technologies. It’s a shell game of sorts. Industrialized countries will say their carbon footprint has gone down without telling you they’ve moved their dirty industrial operations to Third World countries. Developing countries will make promises of “green growth” while their state-owned banks and companies expand fossil fuel production overseas. We’ve been fooling ourselves for a very long time about what is truly sustainable and will continue to do so as the system falls apart, geoengineering fixes are applied, interstellar space colonization fantasies are dreamed up, and wars are fought for what remains. Humans have constructed a reality incompatible with the well-being of the natural world and the stability of the biosphere, but we won’t be able to escape the rules of physics, chemistry, and biology. We’ve spent generations making the bed we’re going to be lying in, never realizing it’s also our death bed. Time is not on our side.
Most are not listening and our leaders are misleading, so it bears repeating: ‘The Oil Age’ made us all confident idiots with short attention spans. To both candidates: runaway, catastrophic climate change resulting in loss of habitat and mass starvation is our biggest threat.
Update 11-10-2016:
The proles have now elected a man who has put a climate science denier in charge of his EPA team, vowed to kill the Paris climate deal, end all efforts to help other countries deal with climate change, stop domestic climate action, reinvigorate coal, and zero out all climate science research & clean energy, but physics doesn’t really care who was elected.
mike k said:
Welcome back Mike! Isn’t it ironic that I welcome your chanting the dark verses of our of self-inflicted doom? Then again I have to reflect that I have long had this tragic love affair with the truth, however lacerating it may turn out to be sometimes. Thanks for telling it like it is minus any sugar coating. Of course your dark humor has some value towards easing the bitter medicine into my tender consciousness….
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mike k said:
Has it ever entered the minds of those promoting space travel that the reason we have not been contacted by other intelligent species, is that if such cultures have survived the threat that uncontrolled technological power poses to all such advanced species, then the reason for their survival might be that they were wise enough to reject the hubris of developing means to colonize space and other such nonsense. A wise humility is something our current humans seem incapable of envisioning or effecting. The idea that less technology might be a wise course is rarely considered.
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Systemic Disorder said:
Or the vast distances between civilizations (dozens or hundreds of light years) is enough to preclude any contact. But you do make a point well worth considering, as even if other civilizations have advanced beyond Earth in terms of technology, they would have had to learn to control their technologies and decided that the enormous capital cost of flying dozens or hundreds of light years to pay a visit is prohibitive.
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Lenny said:
The reason we have not been contacted by extraterrestrial civilizations is because they are INTELLIGENT.
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mike k said:
Yes, Lenny. Real intelligence is rooted deeply in wisdom, unlike our shallow and sickly version. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing….
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Lenny said:
Exactly. The inherent problem of our species is that we are only partially intelligent and still are ruled by deeply rooted primitive instincts. It may look that we have developed an advanced technological society while in fact our society is based on primitive stone-age instincts, we have just transformed them into different form, adapted them to the technological age. The way our human society is organized does not differ much from stone age, our social system has remained greatly unchanged. In financial and economical system we have recreated the jungle we lived in 50,000 years ago. We are greedy, aggressive animals and we want to tackle modern-age problems using the strategy and methods our ancestors used thousands of years ago, when greed and aggression were true survival mechanisms. Well, the instincts that assured our survival in stone age are exactly what is going to lead us to extinction. The perspectives for mankind are very pessimistic, because we, in general, do not understand that the problem of our survival is the problem of our inability to change ourselves, the way we live, or at least to realize what is wrong with us. We cannot even control our sexual instincts, multiplying beyond any reasonable limits. All this combined leaves us zero chances for survival. Hopefully a couple of million years from now a more intelligent being will appear on our planet. We will not be around to see this though.
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Peter said:
Excellent Mike, great to have a new essay from you!
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Pintada said:
Thanks for this post! As usual, xraymike, you have seen through the overlying tissues, and exposed the bone of reality. That’s why I will wait for your next thoughts until you are ready to share again, no matter how long.
Regarding ET, I’ve said the same thing, mike k. If another civilization is/was out there, they either learned to all be organic/permicultural farmers early in their development (circa 1930 by comparison), or died roughly the same death our society faces. You are brilliant!
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mike k said:
We are brilliant Pintada! But there must be others equally brilliant, or (sigh) even more brilliant….?
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mike k said:
My thinking is that the extinction through increasingly more powerful technology improperly managed (a la the sorcerer’s apprentice) is an existential problem for life anywhere it arises in the Universe. The crucial initiation that demands renunciation of the seductive lure and subsequent addiction to tech power is an inevitable problem facing evolving life, that requires a basically spiritual response – or else! The Universe is so constituted that higher levels of power are possible only to those who have proven themselves capable of dealing with them. We are not looking too good by this standard…..
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xraymike79 said:
I think technology is just an expression of available energy that we can exploit. FF’s would need to be taken away and you can see that is not happening even in the face of an existential threat like anthropogenic climate change. I must harken back to a comment I made last year…
Or perhaps the fate of humans was written in stone once we stood upright and developed tools. From lofty corporate boardrooms to the filthy streets of skid row, the mass of humanity is following the same biological script of overshoot and collapse seen in every organism from bacteria to reindeer herds. Fossil fuels only enabled the destruction to multiply a thousand-fold, culminating in one final and spectacular explosion of human activity which left the planet barren for eons. Nothing could stop the deadly carbon consumption feedback loop once it had been ignited, not even forewarnings of scientific insight.
Open-ended growth appears to be inherent in nature, all the way from the DNA to the arthropods to mammals, including humans. Open-ended growth is the psychology of a cancer cell. I am not sure I know of a species which has learnt how to limit its own growth. Unfortunately species which transcend their environmental resources can hardly survive – the final arbiter of the climate impasse will be nature itself. ~ Andrew Glikson, Earth and paleo-climate scientist, Australian National University
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Froggman said:
So glad to see you back, I’ve been waiting for months!
I agree, it seems impossible to imagine a scenario where humanity could have chosen differently. Perhaps in some alternate reality, where a mass of exploitable hydrocarbons doesn’t accumulate within reach of an emerging tool-using species, things might turn out differently. But the moment you have things like oil and coal barely below the surface, combined with tool-using animals squirming around up above, the outcome we face now seems inevitable.
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xraymike79 said:
Summed up by Ernst Walter Mayr:
“Intelligence is a lethal mutation.”
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Brendon Crook said:
Reblogged this on Industrial Civilization – A Cult of Death.
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jonjost said:
Concur. It is somewhat amazing that the data can pile up and pile up, and our communal response is to stick our heads deeper in the sands of consumerism, idiot entertainment and even more idiotic politics. It is clear that the only wake up call will be once we are far far over the cliff we’ve contrived for ourselves. I am 73 now, and though my father lived to 99, I don’t think I will quite get to the denouement, but I will see enough to be glad to be gone.
BTW you made a common mistake of these days: it is “toeing” the line, not “towing.”
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xraymike79 said:
Thanks for the spelling correction. Yes, we are losing one of the seven natural wonders of the world right before our eyes but all the “authorities” can think to do is minimize and hide the damage for the sake of protecting tourist revenue. How sad is that? Along the way, our species will do its best to normalize the mounting environmental damage in an effort to cope.
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Jerry McManus said:
Good to see this blog active again, welcome back.
Not to nitpick, but if you take the time to read and understand the Limits to Growth report they go to great pains to describe how highly aggregated their model is. Unfortunately, very few people seem to have taken the time to either read or understand the report, so one of the more common and misleading criticisms of the report is “they didn’t include [fill in the blank]”
Yes, they aggregated an enormous amount of detail into a few critical variables because that was the intent. To answer a few very basic questions about the macro behaviors of the world system as a whole.
Specifically to climate change, one of the key variables in the model is “pollution” a proxy of sorts for any number of industrial byproducts that are persistent in the environment, including greenhouse gasses. If you read and understand the report, especially the 30 year update, then it is easy to see that they assume higher levels of “pollution” will eventually lead to reduced food per capita and a higher death rate.
Exactly the outcomes expected for catastrophic climate change, or loss of nuclear containment, or any of several other global industrial pollution related disasters you can think of.
That assumption is built into the model because, based on all available data, there is no reason to believe that higher pollution will not lead to a higher death rate.
Another example, the report is often criticized by economists for not including a price mechanism, and for not including “technology”, especially in the non-renewable resource sector.
Wrong again. The model assumes what is essentially a perfect world for technological advancement, meaning that in the model technologies are assumed to be adopted world wide, at lightning speed, and at little or no cost. The model also assumes perfect worldwide distribution of resources and perfect worldwide distribution of goods and services per capita, which obviously renders “price” totally irrelevant for purposes of the simulation.
Even in a perfect world with unrealistically perfect assumptions about perfect distribution and perfect adoption of new technologies the model still shows classic overshoot and collapse behavior across multiple simulations.
Every limit that is “solved” in the simulation (including industrial pollution) by perfect worldwide adoption of some unrealistically perfect techno-fix only serves to set the world up for a headlong crash into the next limit, because the root cause of all of those global problems, including climate change, is unrestrained growth of population, consumption, and waste well beyond the carrying capacity of our global environment.
That is the core message of the Limits to Growth report, and any complaints about “they didn’t include [blank]” are uninformed distractions at best.
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xraymike79 said:
Of course they did not include the things as I indicated. That’s not so much a criticism as it is a recognition that the study did have its shortcomings because of unknown unknowns 4 decades ago. In 1972, the potential impacts of global climate change were not discussed to any degree. They concentrated mostly on local warming effects. The Stockholm Resilience Centre studies expanded on the original 1972 MIT study.
The 30 year update discusses global climate change in more detail than the original but still does not go anywhere into the areas of the Stockholm Resilience Centre studies.
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hamlet said:
Been waiting months for this post! Welcome back and hope to see more.
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rabiddoomsayer said:
“The cancer will be ripped from the host and that cancer is man” James Herbert. No dominant species has ever survived an extinction event, “but we are different”. Study any theory of civilizational collapse and we are toast, “but we are different”.
Agree absolutely that Sea Level Rise will be well above above IPCC projections, that food production will be adversely affected (drought, drought, flood is not good for cereals) but none of that is a scary as the drop in phyto-planktons and the explosion of mid ocean dead zones.
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xraymike79 said:
…the drop in phyto-planktons and the explosion of mid ocean dead zones.
The melting polar regions will definitely help create that dead anoxic ocean you are talking about by stratifying the ocean with a thin layer of buoyant freshwater on top that prevents the upwelling of deep sea nutrients and the mixing of oxygen-rich surface water with the warmer oxygen-poor waters below. More heat trapped below increases deoxygenation and allows those deep waters to undercut and melt away the glaciers even faster.
Today, we’re releasing carbon into the atmosphere at least 10 times faster than during the end-Permian extinction which wiped out nearly all life on Earth. Changing the chemical composition of the planet at such scale cannot easily be reversed, especially by a species that fixates on short-term gratification while ignoring long-term consequences.
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xraymike79 said:
Another rather large omission…
Threat from oxygen loss in oceans left off table in Paris talks
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theoldspeakjournal said:
Yes, sounds about right. I imagine our intrepid “climate negotiators” and their corprocratic minders can only fit so many scenes in to the latest run of this putrid and fantasy based Kabuki Theater.
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BLCKDGRD said:
Glad to see you writing here again.
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theoldspeakjournal said:
Excellent piece Mike, glad you’re still kickin.Yep, it’s a giant shit sandwich and we’re all gonna have to take a bite. What I said in my last blog post seems fitting here; We have made the arrogant and ignoble mistake of assigning greater importance to our human-created systems & less importance to the natural ecology upon which we depend for survival. That mistake will likely be fatal. Though I suspect 350.org and their greenwashed “non-profit” industrial complex ilk, will continue passionately generating more greenhouse gasses rallying the “protest” troops, raising funds organzing marches and “actions” for “breaking our addiction to fossil-fuels” until we fucking choke on our toxic exhaust. We’re in uncharted terrritory here, no previous extinction even has progressed as swiftly as ours. I get the sense that every scientific attempt to predict the rates at which change is occurring are grossly miscalculated as we have little more than the faintest idea of the whole constellation of processes that have been set in motion and cannot be stopped. Our progress trap will spell game over for most life on earth. Fun times are coming to an end times 1000.
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mike k said:
We need a miracle. I am not kidding. I have spent the majority of my time on Earth pondering and studying and agonizing over the escalating nightmare of human civilization. The time now is very dark, and getting much darker very quickly. Lunatics are in possession of means of incredible power to destroy our future in a matter of minutes. Without some huge miracle, our time on Earth is rapidly drawing to a close.
Sorry to be the bearer of such tragic tidings, but my unflinching dedication to truth has grown in me over a long life. No man can know the hour or the time of our extinction, but the writing is clearly on the wall today. We desperately need a miracle. The scale of inner change demanded of us for survival is not possible by ordinary means. To make such a profound transcendence of all our deeply conditioned dysfunctions requires a miracle sized process, and in a hurry!
Intensive practice of certain methods has been known to make such total alterations in the few who have been up to engaging in them. But as yet there has not been found a way to make this kind of transformation available to a sufficiently large number of us, or enough powerfully stationed individuals capable of initiating large scale phenomena, to effect the global conversion needed. A miracle would necessarily involve a mass movement to a higher level of consciousness. Esalen was an experiment based on Aurobindo’s ideas as well as a liberal dose of acid and other methods. But despite Michael Murphy, Richard Price and other’s efforts, it just didn’t come off. Which still does not prove it is impossible, however. Experiments do not always provide positive results without learning from mistakes, and continuing to try other means…..
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xraymike79 said:
Pingback from Surviving Capitalism:
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xraymike79 said:
Pingback from un-Denial:
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Dredd said:
I echo the sentiments in the comments above that say it is good to see xrayMike back in the saddle.
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mike k said:
Feeling despair with my life, the world, my physical decline. The hopelessness of it all. The doomed effort to be Love in a world that is devolving into Love’s opposite. The loneliness of being unable to share this pain and have it acknowledged by others. Isolation, failure, death.
What’s left? To make a conscious choice to accept all of the above, then resolutely turn my back on it and practice and enjoy such positive feelings, Love, Peace, forgiveness as I can experience, celebrate, and share. I have done my part in realizing and studying the dark side. That phase of my search is full now. I need to turn consciously towards the Light now, disregarding whether it will be a perfect answer for myself, others, or my world. In hospice we appreciate that we are failing, but make a decision to comfort each other in our declining days or years. This is the understanding that choosing to love and be at peace is the right thing whatever the circumstances that are arising.
I have paid my debt to the unvarnished truth now, and earned the right to play a game of as if and no matter what. The reason for an unreasonable commitment to Love and Happiness is the very hopeless nature of our dance with death, ignorance, and dysfunction. Since there is truly no way out for humankind, we may as well help each other be at peace and celebrate what positive times we can. Maybe most people realize at some inner level that we are on a doomed ship of life, and choose to go ahead and have a dance as the wounded vessel goes slowly under….. Dancing on the Titanic? Why not…..
This does not mean that I will not still indulge in my minor acts of activism; send a few bucks to wikileaks and other benign surrogates. I am just going to put my major concern for our self-extinction on the shelf for now. I can’t really solve that one. Apparently none of us can. I’ll cross my fingers, but I won’t hold my breath.
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el mar said:
Common sense?
1. be friendly and in good spirits
2. be peaceful but fortified
3. think small, live small, slowdown
4. increase resilience
don t fight the powers
5. buy local, save resources
6. grow own food
7. learn some skilled manual work
8. cooperate with like-minded people, barter and help each other
9. reject ideology – hang on to your intuition, avoid pied pipers
10. avoid mass consumption and stimulus satiation
Saludos
el mar
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mike k said:
An excellent list. I might add a couple of things:
11. Fight the powers that be – but in an indirect aikido way.
12. Help others to awaken from the cultural trance.
13. Meditate.
14. Self-criticize.
15. Study everything in depth.
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mistah charley, ph.d. said:
During the previous century I encountered the following in a low-brow satirical supermarket tabloid – it was presented entirely straight, with no quotes from non-existing books or whatever – either the cynics putting out the paper thought it was already humorous enough and/or they were taking Pascal’s wager into account and hoped that publishing it might count as a good deed which would affect their fate in the next life, or the one after that, if any.
It blew my mind becauseI didn’t expect an article quoting Billy Graham to contain so many self-evident truths.
from The Weekly World News, 1998
In a review of Reverend Graham’s writings, sermons and interviews, five themes emerge – five principles that he believes every human being should strive to liveby in order to join God in Heaven. They’re based on the Bible and on Reverend Graham’s own experience. Here are the five ideas Billy Graham stresses over and over again in his written and spoken words. Practice them in your daily life and Heaven is definitely in your future.
Pray regularly
Reverend Graham has often said that too many people use prayer as a last resort – praying only when they need God to get them out of a jam. But as long as people think of God as some kind of errand boy or lifeguard, Heaven will always be out of reach. Jesus tells us God wants to be our friend. You wouldn’t treat a friend that way. You want to spend time just talking and listening to your friends, enjoying their company. God wants us to visit Him regularly – for no other reason than that we like Him and He likes us. So it’s important to spend time in prayer every day, even when things are going well.
Love others
This doesn’t mean we have to “feel” loving toward everyone all the time. We are human and sometimes other people are going to upset us. The point is that we should act in loving ways – even to people who aren’t very lovable. Remember Jesus said that if we’re only kind to people who were kind to us, it means nothing. Even people who don’t have God in their lives do that. The thing that sets believers apart is their willingness to try to love even difficult people.
Read the Bible
Reverend Graham says even he has not done as much Bible reading as he feels he should have. “I wish I had studied a great deal more. I wish I knew the Bible better than I do,” he said not long ago. But he says it’s never too late to start. He says that studying and reading the Bible can not only lead us toward Heaven, it can also help us get more enjoyment from our lives on Earth.
Resist temptation
The charismatic evangelist admits that in the past he spent too much time railing about hellfire and damnation. “I was too emotional in my early years,” he says. Nevertheless, yielding to temptations of the flesh can give the Devil a grip on your life and pull you away from Heaven. When asked how he has managed to avoid the indiscretions that have brought down other, weaker evangelists, Reverend Graham says one prayer always works: “Lord, help me RIGHT NOW!” God will help us resist temptation if we ask Him.
Be humble
Always remember, if there’s good in your life it’s God who put it there. Taking credit for God’s kindness will only separate you from Him and His Kingdom. To be humble is to be teachable. We all have a lot to learn. And an openness to learning more about God is consistent with citizenship in Heaven.
Of course, no one can practice these five things perfectly. Reverend Graham freely admits that even he has fallen short of the mark many times. But doing your best to practice these principles will ensure you a place in Heaven.
[end of quote from Weekly World News]
In the interest of greater ecumenicism I would expand Reverend Graham’s advice just a bit – for “pray regularly” I would say “pray or meditate regularly”,and I would be willing to broaden the reading material from the Bible to devotional, spiritual, and philosophical literature from other wisdom traditions of the seeker’s choice. I particularly liked Graham’s admission he had overdone the “hellfire and damnation” stuff in his earlier years.
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el mar said:
Dear Mike,
I improved the list:
el mar`s global “Magic Dozen” for the twilight years:
1. be friendly and in good spirits, study everything in depth
2. Self-criticize, be peaceful but fortified
3. think small, live small, slowdown, meditate
4. increase resilience
5. buy local, save resources,
6. grow own food
7. learn some skilled manual work
8. cooperate with like-minded people, barter and help each other
9. reject ideology – hang on to your intuition, avoid pied pipers
10. avoid mass consumption and stimulus satiation
11. fight the powers that be – but in an indirect aikido way
12. help others to awaken from the cultural trance
Saludos
el mar
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mike k said:
Well done el mar! We have our list, now the hard part: living it….
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egoshards said:
xraymike: I’m so glad to see you write again. I was honored when you followed my short-lived blog, Zebra Turned Tiger, last year. My health took a turn for the worse but I’m gearing up for action again, just in time it seems. Hope to read more from you soon.
Mike K: Wow. We’re on the same page. Lonely for the same reason…but not alone. In my world, as in yours, the microcosm is the macrocosm. My body is as chaotic and dilapidated as our species and its failing systems. My mind was going under, pulled by the dual trauma of sickness within and without. No sentient being should have to bear both of these burdens as we’ve been made to bear, no form of life evolved under these conditions.
I don’t have the strength to turn my back on truth yet, I’m only a madwoman finding her neon sign: some lost intersections where health and truth still meet. I want to explore those roads, not to dream of solutions but to make the increasingly virulent truth survivable, for the sake of knowledge itself.
Some people, I think, were made to be instigators, agents, executioners. I believe *we* –you, and xraymike, and all of us here, are the parts that the universe made so it could perceive itself. And ours are the most exacting roles in this play of sound and fury, so you certainly have earned the right to retire in whatever philosophical style you like. Wishing you the best.
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mike k said:
egoshards: It makes me happy that you are sharing here. It reminds me that I am not truly alone. There are others scattered about in the world who are in touch with the disturbing realities that we are. I only wish more of them would find ways like this site to share their pain and seek ways we could live beyond the futile and destructive patterns we are etching on history. Below is something I wrote yesterday:
Nov 7 I just don’t give a shit anymore
For all the people
Who don’t give a shit anymore.
Why should I care for those
Who don’t care?
I long to be carefree too
Lay down my burdens
And rest on my oars for a while
Maybe even venture a smile.
What is this feeling that comes from below
That won’t let me go
That makes me pick up the oars
And begin to row once more
Into the night, with nowhere to go….
Nov 8 (commentary) This is a mood, a part of myself that I need to acknowledge and give expression. But as the poem unfolds I realize that this too will pass, that I am multiple and always changing. I have no fixed philosophy, and in this there is some hope. In spite of those parts of me that would like to give up hope for good in order to avoid the pain that accompanies it. As in the tale of Pandora’s box, all the evils were unable to destroy Hope.
La speranza e sempre verde….
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egoshards said:
Mike, I love this! So much wisdom and understanding: the unmistakable words of a fellow canary, on this planet we’ve turned into a coal mine. Thanks for sharing it. I feel the same way about philosophy (though I study it). The part about hope especially resonates; my first and last blog post was about the evil of hope. But I’ve lost all hope that hope will ever die (got to laugh a bit, right?)
While we’re on the topic of sharing, I feel everyone going through this sort of trauma should have a supportive space to share. We already have great places (thanks Xraymike) to share our personal perspectives on the unraveling of this world. I wish we also had more places to share how this unraveling is affecting us personally. The pain of being alone with this knowledge, especially if you aren’t so lucky and the collapse is already here for you, is a pain no one should have to endure (at least, that is, while we still have our smartphones). I’ve been through this desperate loneliness for may years, and teetered on the brink of suicide. I’m realizing that at least in this case there *is* a solution: the solution to my problem is to help others.
I’ve decided to dedicate part of my new blog (coming in a month or two) to be a supportive, ideologically neutral space where anyone affected by this in any way may freely and safely share their personal experiences, thoughts, insights, and struggles as they relate to our species’ collapse. A place for the open, democratic life recapitulation of Homo sapiens😉 This is no solution to the predicament of our species, but it is an attempt at hospice. Such a wonderful metaphor, thank you!
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david higham said:
On the mark,xraymike.
Another fairy tale we tell:
https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/using-trees-for-carbon-accounts-looks-good-but-its-a-con,8569
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xraymike79 said:
The proles have elected a man who has put a climate science denier in charge of his EPA team, vowed to kill the Paris climate deal, end all efforts to help other countries deal with climate change, stop domestic climate action, reinvigorate coal, and zero out all climate science research & clean energy, but physics doesn’t really care who was elected.
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mike k said:
At least Trump is not threatening nuclear war with Russia. That could cook our collective goose real quick. Global warming is gradual enough to give us a few more years before us frogs in the sauna are boiled meat.
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xraymike79 said:
Trump is a douchebag with the temperament of a 10 year old. He has a limited vocabulary and is unable to engage in complex thought on real-world problems, consumed instead by conspiratorial thinking. His policies are far right-wing with an emphasis on privatization and deregulation in an effort to expand a dying economy on an over-exploited planet. I’ve come to the conclusion that he is an indicator of a civilization headed towards collapse:
A Trump presidency is collapse-worthy for a few notable reasons that reflect signs of societal collapse discussed in this study:
1.) Trump operates by fostering division and fomenting people’s anger and despair against the perceived detachment of political elites, a marker of societal collapse.
From the NASA study:
2.) Trump partly displaces this popular anger against an apparently detached economic and political elite onto others who “aren’t like us,” and who don’t really belong, a visceral and defensive reaction. Trump’s speeches describe a desire to re-group, close down, and keep others out. Trump promises to re-empower “real” Americans and capture former glory while keeping out those who don’t belong, i.e. Muslims and immigrants.
International migration is at an all-time high. This is due in part to climate change and collapse of Syria and other MENA nations.
Trump fits the bill of a strong man who will fix this sinking ship even though he is part of the elite structure that exploited and gamed the system in his favor. People embrace authoritarianism in the vacuum of trustworthy authority.
3.) Trump will enact policies to accelerate runaway climate change.
4.) These divisions and the fomenting of animosity by Trump, together with growing economic stratification, intensive strain on resources, including the “perfect storm” of global climate change, resemble the conditions identified in the NASA “collapse” study mentioned above.
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david higham said:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/11/first-dog-on-the-moons-guide-to-making-it-through-the-next-four-years
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hikerguy22 said:
It’s great to see another post here, and no I don’t love to hear all of the negative truths here, but it is the truth unless as has been stated, we have a miracle. The only miracle I see at this point would be a limited nuclear exchange.
The author Kurt Vonnegut was a man ahead of his time and shows us our present and future and how our “big brains” have caused the world so much trouble in many of his not so fictional books. Same goes for author Dr. Isaac Asimov who warned us in the sixties about global warming.
But who reads anything today over one page?
Instant gratification is the mind set of our big brains and with it our human ego’s.
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xraymike79 said:
Trump is the perfect personification of that shallowness, incapable of complex thought with a Twitter attention span and the dark conspiratorial mind of a superstitious and illiterate society.
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david higham said:
I had to read this bit twice :
‘Some have dismissed the idea that the world would continue to burn fossil fuels
despite obvious global warming…’
I wonder who those ‘some’ are? The residents of the local psychiatric ward?http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-game-over-global-warming-climate-sensitivity-seven-degrees-a7407881.html
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xraymike79 said:
Let’s see what’s happening…
US gasoline consumption and vehicle miles traveled at all time highs.
The historical record indicates that the supply of fossil fuels has consistently increased over time and that their relative price advantage over low-carbon energy sources has not declined substantially over time. Without robust efforts to correct the market failures around greenhouse gases, relying on supply and/or demand forces to limit greenhouse gas emissions is relying heavily on hope.
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mike k said:
The Trump/Hillary “choice” was between hastened economic and environmental collapse, and quickened chances of Armageddon via nuclear war. A gun to the head or a slower acting poison. These considerations lead me to recall Freud’s ideas about a Death Instinct that he wrote about in Civilization and it’s Discontents. Maybe we should add that volume to our library for those interested in the collapse of the human experiment on Earth. It explores the question of why a species would do everything to destroy itself, without a clue as to what it was doing. The stories about the struggle between the forces of life and death, darkness and light go way back in human history. Are we witnessing the final consummation of this ancient dynamic?
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xraymike79 said:
You would do well to read this:
The Donald Trump dove myth: why he’s actually a bigger hawk than Hillary Clinton
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xraymike79 said:
Some perspectives on Trump from Reddit:
And from google group America2.0:
…In general Trump won for the same reason fascism rose in Europe in the 1920-30 time frame. A disenfranchised labor class, one that is not very well educated, was co-opted by a populist campaign of a hustler and sociopath. If you crack open history books you see this happens in a major way about every 100 years. We are just coming due for the next one. In the end it is a matter of sociobiology or similar reason that animals enter into mass suicide behaviors, such as locust swarming or stampeding off of cliffs. We humans do much the same, but we do it with technology, and with each global upheaval the body count multiplies by a factor of 10.
There are two things that strike me as very probable with a Donald Trump administration. I can’t of course predict the future, but based on prior behavior of Trump, the Republican party and the nature of this campaign two things strike me as very possible. The first is that internal security, surveillance, police power, FBI intelligence gathering etc is going to rocket forwards. The other is that the public trust, in particular Social Security, is going to be scrapped and Trump and other cronies are going to loot billions of $$$ out of it.
Donald Trump has promised to deport 11 million illegal aliens. Not since the wonderful halcyon days of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany has there been that sort of forced movement of populations. To do this it will require massive internal intelligence gathering and police power. Ever wonder why Comey of the FBI kept “leaking” bogus reports of Hillary’s emails? He knows that Trump will greatly expand the FBI, which means more money, power, prestige and so forth for the FBI and its director. Comey can return the FBI to the days of J. E. Hoover, but now as a secret police organization like the Stazi or Gestapo. (The venal little creep!) Trump also has a serious history of using the courts to attack or suppress opponents, and now he has the whole Justice Department to do this on a huge scale! I think Trump may return us to the situation of Joe McCarthy, where now instead of a shabby two bit senator leading the charge it will be a sociopathic baboon in the Oval Office.
Social Security has been something the GOP has wanted to scrap since the days of Reagan. Tip O’Neil called it the third rail; if the GOP touches it they get shocked. Well now it could be that the GOP will get their chance. There is $4trillion in the fund, and Trump and other cronies can feast and gorge on cash in ways unprecedented in US history. One reason Trump likes Vlad Putin is that Putin has done the same looting in Russia. “Hey Vlad, watch this I can do the same and steal a lot more money!” Trump even said he would get richer as President; take his word for it! That is one statement he has made I can believe.
I would tend to think commentaries about Trump on blogs or social media and even email lists like this are not advised. I suspect it might not be too long before having a blog or social media profile that is filled with anti-Trump and anti-GOP stuff could be a source of serious trouble. Trump has a long history of rubbishing up people that disagree with him or that he does not like. This could easily I think extend to the whole nation and political opinion. It goes with the fascist territory. I plan in a few weeks to utterly stop all political writing even on emails. Google holds on to these for a long time.
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mike k said:
“As surprising as it may seem, Clinton is actually the dove in this race.” If this is the case, then we are screwed either way. But Hillary has a frightening actual record of deeds done resulting in thousands dead and wounded. We know what Trump the shoot from the hip blowhard has said, but we have yet to find out what he will do. We just don’t really know what this weird guy will do – I doubt if he knows either. I don’t think there are many silly enough to think this dangerous maniac is God’s gift to us peaceniks however.
“Trump wants to wage war in the name of explicitly ransacking poorer countries for their natural resources — something that’s far more militarily aggressive than anything Clinton has suggested.”
More aggressive than declaring a no-fly zone over Syria where Russian planes are active? Threatening nuclear war trumps Donald’s little oil grabs in my book.
Look, my point is not to defend Trump. He may be more dangerous than Hillary or not, but that point is moot now. We will just have to wait and see how this next chapter in the Collapse of Industrial Civilization unfolds. It ain’t going to be pretty, of that I am sure….
Hey, haven’t we said all along that it is going to get really ugly real fast? Anyone who hasn’t fastened their seat belt yet either just doesn’t give a fuck, or is too stupid to live long anyway. To blame what is going to happen on any one person or group of people is to deeply misunderstand this collapse that started when we came down out of the trees, and is now really rolling!
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Reed said:
Well, for me Deek nails this whole fiasco:
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mike k said:
Shocks are inevitable in the ongoing game of life (like Trump’s election win). And these major shake ups can have varied effects on individuals or cultures often depending on how they are received, interpreted, and processed. Gurdjieff, perhaps echoing Sufi wisdom, noted their importance in the unfolding journey of our lives. The ability to utilize the energies of a major shock to ourselves depends on our level of consciousness, which in turn depends on the conscious work and intentional suffering we have undergone in preparing ourselves to live more consciously.
The unprepared will be destroyed by a major shock, but those able to absorb it and grow from it will only become stronger from it, to echo Nietzsche. How to encourage the practice necessary to be able to change the lead of a shock into the gold of deeper understanding in a population which has by and large done everything they can to avoid this work is the crucial problem upon whose solution the life of humankind depends. Anything short of this major growth in consciousness will be inadequate to transform the massive shocks which are coming as a result of our unconsciousness.
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hikerguy22 said:
I believe humanity just got their last negative feedback for climate with the American election. Do or die soon has become an old calling card as we confirm the acceptance stage. My grief is not for the big brain creatures but the ones with no voice. Vonnegut, Asimov, amongst others foretolded these last days, but few heeded the call to change our ways.
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mike k said:
Egoshards, like you and I and others on this CIC site and elsewhere there are those out there looking for help with their dawning realization of our fatal situation. I am reminded of the beginning of AA – a couple of “hopeless” drunks looking for an answer. As they began to discover some helpful ways to deal with their predicament, they were aware that there were many others looking for answers, and they realized that trying to share their quest with others could be part of the solution they were seeking.
Coming together in small groups is an ideal process for finding our way in this era of possible human extinction. Even to do this online is a hopeful beginning of such an open, leaderless gathering. So I am much encouraged with your plan to start a blog, and hope it becomes a place where we can come together and share ways to deal with this unprecedented emergency. Keep us posted, and sign me up!
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egoshards said:
Thanks Mike, it’s encouraging to see some interest, I’ll let you and others know (and health willing, you’ll be hearing more from me in the future). xraymike, glad to see the new post, I have a canary catastrophe of a life, as I know I’ve repeated too many times–but blogs like yours keep me sane. I reserve my hope for smaller things–like that maybe you will keep up the regular postings–though I’ll understand if you can’t.
I know I’ve been off-topic, so returning to the issue at hand–Trump. I agree with mike k and some other bloggers: though he is certainly deplorable, we lost hope of 2C from the moment we came down from the trees. It’s cathartic and comforting to pin my despair on a face, especially one with a ridiculous haircut and a fake tan. But the real cause of our demise is and always was faceless and nameless.
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mike k said:
Everything you say is correct Larry. But I wonder when you say “Hopefully in a couple of million years from now a more intelligent being will appear on our planet.” What kind of strange beings might appear on a radioactive poisoned planet on it’s way to Venusian temperatures hot enough to melt lead? It’s really an open question now whether intelligence is not a lethal mutation anywhere it arises in the Universe?
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riadelmontana said:
Reblogged this on vegan anarchist primitivist.
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Ben said:
I read this post with great interest because I believe we are headed on a collision course with the earth itself because we, as a species have undermined every single aspect on this planet, all in the name of trying to provide ourselves and our families a comfortable lifestyle.
Donald Trump being elected to office is the last roll of the dice by the corporate elites to try and safegaurd themselves against the impending disaster that looms overhead, at the expense of others, because they know where this planet is headed, but ultimately, I believe that no one will be spared from what is coming and I would be surprised if there is anything left alive by the end of the century. The Earth has been sending us signals for years but those of us with access to the most knowledge, are the ones least prepared to act upon that knowledge because it means abandoning the very notion that we are somehow more deserving of the planets resources than every single other life form.
I grant that not everyone on this once prosperous planet is causing these issues. All those who try to live off the land without any modern comforts are the ones who will be affected the most and for this, I apologise, because I am part of the problem and refuse to do anything about it because I believe there is nothing that can be done to prevent, or even lessen the effect of a global disaster and those of us at the very bottom rungs of society will be the first to feel it’s effects, so the only thing i can say is this: be kind to those around you and spend as much time with family and friends as you can because the planet will eventually rid itself of us and everything in it and no one really wants to die alone…
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