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Abrupt Climate Change, AMOC, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropocene Mass Extinction, Arctic Ice Melt, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, Blue Acceleration, Canfield Ocean, Capitalism, Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, CO2, Cretaceous–Paleogene Extinction Event, Dr. Peter Ward, Fossil Fuel Dependency, Gerald Durrell, Great Acceleration, Gulf Stream, Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S), IPCC, Jet Stream, K-T Extinction, Loss of Biodiversity, Megadrought, Methane, Micro-Plastic Pollution, Nate Hagens, Nicholas P. Money, Ocean Acidification, PETM Extinction Event, Sea Level Rise, Social Media Algorithms, Widespread Ocean Anoxia
Nate Hagens’ recent interview of Professor Peter Ward, entitled “Oceans – What’s the Worst that Can Happen?”, serves as a good overview of mankind’s destruction of the marine biosphere and our road to extinction. The title is a rather rhetorical question because very bad things have happened, are already happening, and even worse things are unavoidable and on the horizon despite hopes that humans will run out of ways to extract the dirtiest and most inaccessible fossil fuel deposits. We have seen how inextricably linked economic growth is to rising fossil fuel consumption, no matter the mounting disasters happening before our eyes and the steady stream of dire warnings issued from the scientific community. The most current of such warnings came from the UN last month, and it states that escalating synergies between disasters, economic vulnerabilities and ecosystem failures are increasing the risk of a “global collapse” scenario. Such a catastrophic scenario appears all but inevitable. Constricting fossil fuel consumption is like squeezing a balloon. If one country stops consumption, another takes up the slack. For example, efforts to cripple Russia’s fossil fuel exports for their unwarranted invasion of Ukraine don’t appear to be very effective since China and India have simply stepped in and increased their purchases. Rising oil prices have also more than offset a decline in Russia’s export volumes. Perhaps an unintended consequence of those higher energy prices will be the ripple effect through the economy, making food unaffordable for large swaths of the globe and destabilizing governments.
Getting back to the Peter Ward interview, the professor states matter of factly, “Every time we get into a car, it’s putting more of those CO2 particles into the atmosphere. And if this isn’t collective suicide by Homo sapiens, I don’t know what is.” Unfortunately for us, humans have created an unsustainable civilization supporting billions of people while at the same time destroying the very foundation upon which that system is dependent. Humans are by far outperforming the carbon-spewing volcanoes of past mass extinctions. Nicholas Money, renowned mycologist and author of many books, recently wrote:
Decades ago, Gerald Durrell, the famous conservationist, recognized that “the human race is in the position of a man sawing off the tree branch he is sitting on.” Thirty years after Durrell’s death, the human population has increased by 2 billion and the damage has intensified. The branch will snap now whether we keep sawing or not.
The timeline for extinctions is not known, but, sooner or later, the disappearing mammals will be joined by the other groups of animals. Almost everything will be leaving the metaphorical ark, creeping down the gangplank into oblivion. Millions of other species, seen and unseen, including plants, seaweeds, and fungi will be leaving, too. The tiniest of organisms will inherit the planet, but great gulps of the microbial world will also disappear in the depths of this planetary holocaust…
Exact dates are not known, but mankind’s final fate can be seen scrawled upon the familiar checklist for mass extinctions which we are quickly ticking off, one by one. As Ward points out, every time there has been a major disruption in Earth’s delicate biogeochemical carbon cycle, there has been a mass extinction. Today that disruption is happening on a timescale much faster than at any time in the past, even faster than the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs. During the K-T extinction, the immediate impact of the asteroid killed only the large animals. It took thousands of years for the consequent climate change to kill off smaller organisms. Current trends are exponentially faster, not only with anthropogenic climate disruption incinerating the biosphere within a lifetime but also by a multi-pronged attack from other human activities such as chemical and plastic pollution, the global spread of invasive species, and humanity’s massive overdraw on the planet’s resources.
If one were to equate Earth’s geologic history to a calendar year, modern humans have been around for a mere 37 minutes while managing to consume 1/3rd of Earth’s natural resources in just the last 0.2 seconds. The biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 83% since prehistory and it is projected that by 2050 humans will have eliminated 38–46% of all biodiversity from the planet. 70% of the planet’s land area has been altered by humans, with 40% considered degraded. By 2050, an area of land the size of South America will be further degraded. Nearly all of the marine biosphere has been degraded. Now Modern man has set his sights on wringing the last dollar of profit from the already dying oceans in what is being heralded as the “Blue Acceleration”, a not-so-clever play of words on the Great Acceleration referring to the period starting around 1950 when measurements of humanity’s impact on the planet’s resources went hyperbolic:
As pressures on Earth’s land grow and terrestrial resources look increasingly exhausted, governments and corporations are seeing the next big wins on, in and under the high seas. Whether it is mineral exploration, shipping, energy, tourism, desalination, cable laying, bioprospecting or more, ocean-based industries are picking up speed fast.
This “blue acceleration” has many people worried…With the power to profit from remote ocean resources growing rapidly, and the laws that govern their exploitation less than clear, we risk a free-for-all in the deep. “Our society has been based on the degradation of nature, destruction of nature,” says marine ecologist Enric Sala…
The new plunge into the ocean has come about in part because technologies – from ocean drilling and offshore wind turbines to desalination plants and factory trawlers – have made it possible. “A lot of offshore industries were unthinkable even just a few decades ago,” says Jouffray.
And so it goes, Homo sapiens onward march of eating the seed corn and leaving a husk of a planet for future generations …if there are to be any.
Back to Peter Ward and that checklist for mass extinction…The second step after a large release of heat trapping gasses is that Earth’s poles will start warming up much faster than the rest of the globe, melting the polar icecaps and reducing the heat differential between the equator and higher latitudes. A recent study found that the Arctic is heating up as much as seven times faster than the global average. The Antarctic is warming four times faster than the global average. This diminishing heat differential between the higher latitudes and the equator leads to the third step which is that ocean currents and atmospheric jet streams slow down and become stagnant and swampish. As professor Ward points out, swamps have a lot of nasty, toxic aspects to them such as hydrogen sulfide. This has happened to the oceans many times in Earth’s history with deadly consequences, the most recent being the PETM extinction which was associated with the largest deep-sea mass extinction event in the last 93 million years. Less than 5% of sea creatures survived. The oceans became a poisonous and miasmic brew of acidification, hypoxia and sulfide gases. Deep ocean upwellings injected hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere, laying waste to plants and animals. This killer gas rose to the upper atmosphere and also attacked the ozone layer, allowing deadly ultraviolet radiation from the sun to amplify the destruction of plant and animal life. Fossil spores contained in strata from the PETM extinction show deformities consistent with damage from UV radiation. Major disruptions in the hydrologic cycle occurred with evidence of increased continental runoff. Land suffered extreme precipitation events. Dinoflagellates, tiny organisms that ooze toxins and create deadly algal blooms called ‘red tides’, flourished in the nearly 100°F surface water of the equator. Less than a third of the large animal species made it. Nearly all trees died. No ice existed on the planet during that time. Sea levels were around 300 feet higher than now.
Today we are pumping heat trapping gases into the atmosphere nine to tens times higher than during the PETM extinction. We are just four generations away from matching the chemical composition of the atmosphere that caused that die-off event. However, we are already seeing major changes in the Earth’s climate system that align with the third step toward a mass extinction. Proxy data (like coral data, ocean sediments, and land-based data) along with modern-day instrumentation show an intense weakening of the AMOC, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, in the past 200 years. And the Gulf Steam, a component of the AMOC, is also showing signs of collapse. We are in the process of turning off the global ocean conveyor belt that keeps the ocean oxygenated and helps regulate the Earth’s climate. Ocean acidity has increased about 30% from preindustrial times to the early 21st century, a pace faster than any known in Earth’s geologic past. The volume of anoxic ocean waters has quadrupled since the 1960s, and evidence suggests that temperature increases explain about 50% of oxygen loss in the upper 1000 meters of the ocean. Ocean stratification due to climate change has increased 18% in the top 150 meters of the oceans since 1960. Stratified ocean layers have a number of negative effects such as preventing the mixing and transport of heat, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nutrients to the lower depths of the oceans. It was only recently, November 2021, that a group of scientists issued a plea to governments for establishing a global monitoring system to track the loss of oxygen in the oceans causing dead zones:
“There is a pressing need to document and predict hypoxic episodes and hotspots of low oxygen in order to take protective actions for aquaculture, put in place precautionary measures for affected fisheries, and monitor the wellbeing of important fish stocks,” Limburg said.
“Without this understanding, we are in the dark about impacts that have large economic-ecological implications.”…
“These problems are getting worse because we are not solving the problems of nutrient run-off and our waters are continuing to warm.
Stalled Rossby waves in the Jet Stream linked to extreme weather events have increased significantly in the last twenty years. U.S. crop losses due to drought and flooding have trippled since 1995. Onward we march into oblivion.
Despite the horrors described thus far, what really scares Professor Ward is sea level rise. Ward believes that the volcano of mankind will sputter out before we reach the levels required for a full-fledged Canfield Ocean, and negative feedback loops in the climate system will pull Earth back from the brink. The “Canfield Ocean”, a sulfidic and partially oxic ocean, existed for more than 40% of Earth history, between the Archean and Ediacaran periods. It would take millennia to reach that state again, but humans are supercharging the process to get there by releasing into the ocean vast quantities of nutrients from agricultural fertilizer, soil erosion, industrial waste and sewage, in addition to the ever-growing release of CO2 and methane emissions. Humans have become a geologic force breaching most if not all of the planetary boundaries that make Earth hospitable for life. The mechanisms required for Earth to return to a dead, toxic planet may have already been irreversibly set into motion.
Getting back to Ward’s fear, the most recent report on sea level rise states that it is accelerating with an increase of one foot expected along U.S. coasts by 2050. And that is only if emissions are curbed now. Otherwise, expect up to 5 feet. The researchers say that one foot of SLR over the next three decades is equal to the total that occurred over the past century. Just one foot of vertical rise in sea level will swallow up 100 feet of shoreline if the slope is just 1% or more, a typical slope for most coastlines. To make matters worse, most coastal cities are sinking at a rate faster than the seas are rising. Thus within the next few decades, we could see several hundred feet of shoreline swallowed up along coasts of America and around the world, creating the largest human migration in history. Ward believes we’ll have six feet of sea level rise by 2080 which will destroy a big percentage of the world’s rice production, primarily through salinization. Rice is the number one food source for a majority of the world population today. Sea level rise alone could devastate global trade, not to mention the inevitable damage to ports from stronger storms. The latest IPCC report made it clear that parts of the planet are fast becoming uninhabitable:
Life in some locations on the planet is rapidly reaching the point where it will be too hot for the species that live there to survive, international climate experts said in a report Monday.
“With climate change, some parts of the planet will become uninhabitable,” said German scientist Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of Working Group II for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produced the report released in Berlin…
…Increased heat waves, droughts and floods are already exceeding plants’ and animals’ tolerance thresholds, driving mass mortalities in species such as trees and corals, according to the report…
…Sherilee Harper, a lead author on the North American chapter and an associate professor at the University of Alberta’s public health school, said she was personally struck by the effect climate change already is having on the “physical and mental health of many Americans.”
Peter Ward then brings up something I don’t remember hearing about global warming. The higher temperatures are disrupting the sperm fertility of organisms. Ward says it’s an existential threat to the amount of food we can produce. Recent studies show this to be true and the damage continues across generations:
…according to new research. New findings reveal that heatwaves damage sperm in insects – with negative impacts for fertility across generations. The research team say that male infertility during heatwaves could help to explain why climate change is having such an impact on species populations, including climate-related extinctions in recent years.
Nate and Peter then get into the societal ignorance preventing humans from addressing any serious problem, let alone the existential threat of anthropogenic climate disruption. Peter says, “How could we, as a species, take something as simple as masks and turn it into a political ploy where the level of ignorance will kill you, will kill you?!?” Nate then explains how social media algorithms are set up to highlight the most polarizing content in order to generate more user activity since their business model is based on user engagement. In order to keep users online, the social media platforms are also designed to be very addictive such as with the infinite scroll feature and the “like” button.
In 2017, Facebook’s former president, Sean Parker, said publicly that the company sought to consume users’ time as much as possible, and that the act was “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology”…”That means that we needed to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever… It’s a social validation feedback loop… You’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology…” – link
There is no fixing this dysfunctional social media ecosystem because it is operating exactly as intended. Our profit-driven economic system is rooted in inequality, exploitation, dispossession, and environmental destruction. And encouraging the public to turn off the horror show of climate chaos and biodiversity annihilation are essential for this system to continue. Exploiting tribal biases is a good way to keep the plebs fighting amongst themselves as the last dollar is extracted from a dying planet. Nate asks, “If we can’t have a discussion on what’s real or not with COVID, how are we going to have one about the ocean’s ecosystems and Earth systems and our collective future?” Indeed.
I’ve lurked around this blog for a long time now, but only recently had a few thoughts and questions that I think could stimulate some fruitful discussions with you.
Not too long ago, I found myself thinking about the fact that 99.99% of all species that have ever lived on Earth have gone extinct, and the related reality that Earth has gone through dozens of mass extinctions and mini-extinctions throughout its 4 billion year history.
Extinction, statistically speaking, is extremely common in a Universe already hostile to life, whereas the emergence of life–even microbial life–seems to be the exception rather than the status quo.
Furthermore, the Medea Hypothesis claims at least some of these extinctions are the byproduct of biological programming, and the result of microbial life purposefully eradicating multicellular life to return to the Earth to its natural state.
The hypothesis ultimately suggests that life as a whole is suicidal and destined for self-annihilation, that life, contrary to having a drive towards survival, has a hidden death wish. A “will to death” in Schopenhaurian terms.
Given the above concepts, and given the intrinsic fragility of life (and therefore suffering), it’s strange (though not surprising) that our species has not already normalized extinction, on both an individual level (death) and on a collective level (extermination), for both ourselves and all life.
Our ultimately instinctual denial of death and destruction becomes more bizarre and irrational when one considers the fact our civilization is actively engineering both its own destruction and the destruction of all life on Earth through climate change, pollution, and environmental collapse. Heck, the Medea Hypothesis asserts we ourselves are the cause and victim of the current “Medean Event”– i.e. the Sixth Mass Extinction.
Yet instead of doing something about the climate crisis, most people are either doubling down on their creature comforts or covering their ears and pretending the problem doesn’t exist, almost as if unconsciously (or consciously) fulfilling the death drive.
Our civilization is unconsciously or perhaps even deliberately designed to fail, never meant to exist for more than a few centuries at its inception. It is a Machine of Death powered by a drive towards extermination and consumption. And like an ouroboros, when it finally runs out of resources to exploit and things to consume, it will cannibalize itself.
But that’s besides the point. Since extinction appears to be the norm across time and space (and perhaps on other worlds), we should embrace both its inevitability and our role in it, rather than reject it or try to stave it off.
That could mean getting rid of our cultural obsession with immortality and eternal heaven in some afterlife, and replacing it with an acceptance or love of death. Or it could mean making euthanasia at any age not only legal but a moral duty. Or encouraging childlessness.
I’d love to read your comments and thoughts below.
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I would say that the ability to create omnicidal technology enabling the wholesale destruction of entire ecosystems is the true reason for why we won’t see highly advanced civilizations for very long. As evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr proposed, higher intelligence is a lethal mutation.
Someone on Reddit the other day asked at what specific point in time did it become too late for us. I said it happened on July 2, 1909 when industrial scale agriculture and the exponential growth in human population were enabled by the invention of the Haber-Bosch process.
Humans are the most contradictory species on the planet. The only thing straightforward about us is that we will act like any other organism by expanding our population and consuming any available resources until restrained by environmental limits.
I think modern man truly accepted a culture of death with the invention of the nuclear bomb. As Robert Oppenheimer stated on July 16, 1945 while witnessing the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. The Nuclear Sword of Democles hangs over our head as the greatest collapse in human history plays out in the 21st century. A quick return to the Stone Age seems a very possible scenario.
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“Someone on Reddit the other day asked at what specific point in time did it become too late for us.”
Everyone knows that it was when Cain & Able were born. 😉
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Humanity was on a path to omnicide and collective suicide long before the invention of the Haber process (1909).
I find it convenient to use the application of coal-powered steam technology to extract water from flooded coal mines (Newcomen, around 1715) as a key step in the destruction of the future. Once coal-powered steam pumps facilitated the extraction of more coal, and facilitated the faster extraction of coal via steam-powered elevators, the die was cast. More coal = more indistrialism = faster extraction of resources and faster movement of resources = faster population growth = faster overshoot and faster pollution of the planet.
Of course, Newcomen could never have invented the beam pump if Savery had not invented a steam pump in 1698 And Savery could not have invented a steam pump without the well-developed capacity to manufacture smooth-bored barrels from brass and iron….which were a product of centuries of development of military technology centred on firing projectiles at real or perceived enemies.
The invasion of most of the rest of the world by Europeans and the enslavement of indigenous populations could never have taken place without firearms. And the current petroleum-based ‘civilisation’ could never have been developed without coal-based manufacture of steel.
Even now, despite all the hoopla about ‘decarbonisation’, the dominant economic-political-social system is totally dependent on coal. And continued use of coal, along with its ‘partners in crime’ -oil and gas- will render the Earth uninhabitable for most extant species by the middle of this century via massive overheating of the Earth and acidification of the oceans.
The good news is, the peak of extraction of oil by conventional means (around 2007) has been accompanied by the peak of extraction by unconventional means (2018-2019). Thus, the prime energy source used to wreck the environment is in terminal decline. Too late to save most life on the planet of course.
The bad news is, the totally corrupt [criminal] governments of most nations are fully committed to extracting the last dregs of oil and gas and coal to prop up the rapidly-failing international bankers’ Ponzi schemes.
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The first phrase is actually an answer to the Fermi Paradox.
Regarding to the date when it was too late for us, the wholesale destruction of ecosystems actually began right after we invented agriculture tens of thousands of years ago. There were huge cedar forests growing in the Middle East at that time. Yet, the calamity we’ve caused was local.
Now that we’ve literally conquered the whole world and started a mass extinction event, the collapse this time around is now global. And even if we stop burning fossil fuels right now, global overheating will continue for a few decades or even centuries due to the amount of greenhouse gases already existing in the atmosphere as well as positive feedback loops. That means sea levels will continue to rise, species will continue to go extinct, wildfires will continue to grow bigger in size, the ice sheets around the globe will continue to melt, etc.
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Oh, and one more thing. The Medea hypothesis was also invented by Dr. Peter Ward, the guest of this episode of “The Great Simplification”.
Here’s a video about collapse from a few years ago. Some information might be outdated, but it still holds to this day:
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Great post, and Nate Hagen’s show is indeed a good salon for collapseniks, but there is always the element of hopium hucksterism to the show.
“What gives you hope?” Hagens always asks towards the end, throwing terms like “sustainable” into his self-advertisements for his “Advance” seminars for world leaders.
What gives you “hope,” XRM? I got nothing – just ridin’ the fossil fuel gravy train until it burns up like everybody else.
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Lol. Exactly!
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Whoa…I first read X- Ray Mike about 10 or twelve years ago at Chris Martinsons site. And that might as well of been the same article in terms of conclusions. I now accept why this has happened and we are continuing with this insanity. But what I can’t understand why he bothers to write about it anymore. In your case I see it differently… that’s because you have come to question, and reject our mainstream belief in “ separation.” To me accepting that what’s “ happening “ is almost certainly only happening in “ mind” changes everything ( as does a mystical experience). Yes it’s happening.. but on the integer hand no it isn’t… because it’s not what it seems.
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Thanks Mike,
It’s good to see you posting again. I have followed you since Chris Martenson days. It is amazing how denial defeats us.
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I lost all respect for Nate Hagens, a born-again stockbroker with a botiquue ecology degree, when he took over as the “golden boy” at the old Oil Drum peak oil site a few years ago. Nothing he has done since then has improved my opinion.
Peter Ward, on the other hand,is a brilliant paleontologist and I will never forget the moment of revelation I felt when I read his book “Under a Green Sky”. Not only did he revolutionize my understanding of mass exctinctions in Earth’s history, but I also saw clearly for the first time just how monumentally stupid the human race really is.
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I second your assessment of Dr. Ward. I actually had the chance to meet him a couple times, though didn’t get to talk much. Fortunately I had read his books, so could share a minute or two of real conversation with him. He could be a worthy successor to Carl Sagan, in many ways superior: he’s a self-effacing, funny, heartfelt person, lacking all of Sagan’s supercilious streak and ego. It’s too bad he hasn’t been, but I’m grateful for his books, which have been as eye-opening for me as they were for you. The universe isn’t teeming with life and advanced civilizations. If there were a dozen like us in the galaxy, I’d be surprised.
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Thanks for another great essay. I look forward to each one coming out, for all the legwork and research that goes into them.
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Just finished a conference with anthroprogenic global warming,climate change & weather weirding. I asked what they thought about the Roe vs Wade decision. They immediately said that the SCOTUS can’t stop them from aborting all the Clever Apes ,including SC Justices & their loved ones & their concealed carry ruling can’t stop them either. High speed, hot lead has no affect on these expert extinction specialists.They asked me; “Why couldn’t all the guns stop Covid from entering one’s home & killing one’s loved ones?”
What happens when a species overpopulates it’s habitat?
We’re are about to find out.
From the book “Ishmael”:
Peter Farb calls it a paradox: ‘ Intensification of production to feed an increased population leads to still greater increase in population.’
Not to worry! All the truly faithful of the world’s delusional religions will simply pray away any disaster. I’m sure that if the deities of all the religions can’t solve our problems the politicians & their delusional believers will handle the situation.
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So let’s see what the world is like by 2026? Will industrial civilization still be around in 2026? Just four years from now, so much can happen in such a short amount of time. I don’t expect the next four years to be good. Most likely catastrophic global famine, global supply chains and electricity grid permanently failing, massive civil unrest, global economic collapse, etc will happen within the following years of this decade. It is obvious that humans are rapidly headed towards extinction (along with most life on Earth).
Like I mentioned before, I suspect the catastrophic and abrupt collapse of industrial civilization to happen sometime between 2025 and 2035. I highly doubt industrial civilization will still be around by 2040.
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Other calls have been made for the imminent, near-term and date-specific demise of industrial civilization which have not panned out. The supersystem owns the means of extraction and production, so the calamities of famine and supply chains and the grid and the global financial system have been either kept to sacrifice zones or papered over.
Most likely that continues with attendant massive amounts of suffering and death countenanced as the “price of progress” or some other bullshit. Of course, human extinction will appear more and more of a possibility, but as Nicholas P. Money argues with a smile, there’s no more suffering when you’re dead.
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Except we know for certain that we are within the final exponential doubling of human population and consumption. I can assure you this…we will NOT reach 16 billion people by 2100 or 2122. Global human population will crash in the not-too-distant future. Potentially from 8 or 9 billion people to zero people in a very short amount of time.
1980 was the beginning of the final doubling of human population, and there was 4.5 billion humans on Earth back then. We are near the end of the final doubling of exponential human population growth. Even if we somehow reach 9 billion people by 2035 or 2040, the collapse of industrial civilization is inevitable and imminent i.e. it will most certainly happen within the lifespan of most young people alive today. You don’t believe me? Read the following link as proof.
https://dieoff.com/page137.htm
The following quote is particularly important: “””While no single energy source is ready to take the place of fossil fuels, their diminishing availability may be offset by a regimen of conservation and a combination of alternative energy sources. This will not solve the problem, however. As long as population continues to grow, conservation is futile; at the present rate of growth (1.6% per year), even a 25% reduction in resource use would be obliterated in just over eighteen years. And the use of any combination of resources that permits continued population growth can only postpone the day of reckoning”””
Yep, you heard me right…delaying the collapse of industrial civilization will only post-pone the day of reckoning. The collapse being 100% unavoidable and inevitable.
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The fine post you referenced is from 1995 – that is, nearly 30 years ago. And it contains this prediction: “A collapse of the earth’s human population cannot be more than a few years away.”
“A few years” cannot be reconciled with nearly 30.
Yes, the collapse is “100% unavoidable and inevitable,” but when? Will it be for us, or only for the young people? Since there is absolutely nothing we can do about this, why not leave the date specificity to the would-be omniscient gurus?
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And what has changed during thepast 27 years since that article was written? The issues addressed in that article are still as relevant today as they were in 1995. We managed to invent and mass-manufacture smartphones during the past 27 years, but has that made a damn difference in delaying the collapse of industrial civilization? Not even in the slightest. Especially since all modern technology is a by-product of cheap and abundant fossil fuels (something that will never change due to the laws of thermodynamics).
In fact, the 2 billion plus extra people added to the planet since 1995 and the profileration of modern technology–like smartphones– has only accelerated the rate we deplete the world’s finite (and especially nonrenewable) resources. Thereby accelerating the rate at which we speed towards the collapse of industrial civilization.
In that article, it states that–in 1995–petroleum would be completely depleted within 35 years at 1995 rates of usage. Even if rates of petroleum consumption reminded the same as they did in 1995, just by doing some simple math we get to the conclusion that global petroleum reserves will be completely depleted by roughly 2030 (35 years after 1995). That’s within 10 years from now. And we all know what will happen when it is no longer possible to extract petroleum out of the ground…the catastrophic and abrupt collapse of industrial civilization will happen.
And there are plenty of of other raw materials/natural resources that also in short supply, and we don’t just have a “peak oil” crisis. We have a “peak everything” crisis. Everything from top soil to other irreplaceable and nonrenewable resources like mineral ores–that are essential to all modern industrial processes like the manufacture of food and computers i.e. copper, tin, aluminium, silver, gold, rare Earth metals and potassium are almost completely depleted at this point. And it really just takes the shortage of just one natural resource to topple our entire industrialized civilization.
And also, look at the complete and unabated destruction of the planet’s ecosystems and biosphere caused by human civilization. Do you really think this civilization can last beyond the year 2040 given how completely unsustainable it is? It won’t. I am almost 100% certain that industrial civilization will catastrophically and abruptly collapse before 2040 especially when petroleum becomes completely depleted by around 2030.
The following quote from the book, After Man: A Zoology of the Future, succintly describes what will inevitably happen within the next two decades: “Ultimately the earth could no longer supply the raw materials needed for man’s agriculture, industry and medicine, and shortage of supply caused the collapse of one structure after another, his whole complex and interlocking social and technological edifice crumbled. Man, unable to adapt, rushed uncontrollably to his inevitable extinction”.
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Another excellent post, XRayMike!
Here’s my AUDIO NARRATION of it: https://soundcloud.com/michael-dowd-grace-limits/xraymike-ticking-off-the-checklist-for-mass-extinction
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“…at what specific point in time did it become too late for us?”
Never because we never had a chance to be otherwise.
IMO, once the humans evolved full behavioral modernity (homo sapiens sapiens) I think that sooner or later some of them would have figured out the energy potential of fossil fuels and how to unlock and harness them/become gods. The timing could have been different – a thousand years ago or a thousand years from now, but I think it was all but inevitable.
Catherine Ingram expressed a similar sentiment in a great essay she wrote a few years ago.
“Give up the fight with evolution. It wins. The story about a human misstep in history, the imaginary point at which we could have taken a different route, is a pointless mental exercise. Our evolution is based on quintillions of earth motions, incremental biological adaptations, survival necessities, and human desires. We are right where we were headed all along.”
https://www.catherineingram.com/facingextinction/
…
I only difference I see between humans and all all other life forms is one of degree, not kind. Nobody, that I’m aware of, dissipates like the rapacious apes of planet earth.
The purpose of life is to disperse energy
“The truly dangerous ideas in science tend to be those that threaten the collective ego of humanity and knock us further off our pedestal of centrality. The Copernican Revolution abruptly dislodged humans from the center of the universe. The Darwinian Revolution yanked Homo sapiens from the pinnacle of life. Today another menacing revolution sits at the horizon of knowledge, patiently awaiting broad realization by the same egotistical species.
The dangerous idea is this: the purpose of life is to disperse energy.
Many of us are at least somewhat familiar with the second law of thermodynamics, the unwavering propensity of energy to disperse and, in doing so, transition from high quality to low quality forms. More generally, as stated by ecologist Eric Schneider, “nature abhors a gradient,” where a gradient is simply a difference over a distance — for example, in temperature or pressure. Open physical systems — including those of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere — all embody this law, being driven by the dispersal of energy, particularly the flow of heat, continually attempting to achieve equilibrium. Phenomena as diverse as lithospheric plate motions, the northward flow of the Gulf Stream, and occurrence of deadly hurricanes are all examples of second law manifestations.
There is growing evidence that life, the biosphere, is no different. It has often been said the life’s complexity contravenes the second law, indicating the work either of a deity or some unknown natural process, depending on one’s bias. Yet the evolution of life and the dynamics of ecosystems obey the second law mandate, functioning in large part to dissipate energy. They do so not by burning brightly and disappearing, like a fire torching a forest, but through stable metabolic cycles that store chemical energy and continually reduce the solar gradient. Photosynthetic plants, bacteria, and algae capture energy from the sun and form the core of all food webs.
Virtually all organisms, including humans, are, in a real sense, sunlight transmogrified, temporary waypoints in the flow of energy. Ecological succession, viewed from a thermodynamic perspective, is a process that maximizes the capture and degradation of energy. Similarly, the tendency for life to become more complex over the past 3.5 billion years (as well as the overall increase in biomass and organismal diversity through time) is not due simply to natural selection, as most evolutionists still argue, but also to nature’s “efforts” to grab more and more of the sun’s flow. The slow burn that characterizes life enables ecological systems to persist over deep time, changing in response to external and internal perturbations.”
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10674
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This 14min video is along the same lines.
The Physics of Life (ft. It’s Okay to be Smart & PBS Eons!)
Our universe is prone to increasing disorder and chaos. So how did it generate the extreme complexity we see in life? Actually, the laws of physics themselves may demand it.
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I see Christopher Clugston’s “Blip”.
My guess is that Blip is a fundamental, fractal property of Nature, scaling from the subatomic to the universal. Everything is a blip, a process.
Universe came from nothing – Everything is Nothing dancing.
Sustainable existence requires regeneration, not dissipation and therefore a foundation of Nothing with a twist in the middle. Just imagine that. Perform the Möbius manoeuvre.
😉
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Sorry to tell you this, but IPCC is downplaying climate change as usual. The >2oC above baseline global average temperatures has already been exceeded in 2020. We reached 1oC above baseline in 2015. In less than five years after 2015, >2oC above baseline was reached. We are definitely headed towards >4oC above baseline within the 2020s with nothing to stop this from happening. The global temperature rise we are experiencing right now is the result of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted at least 10 to 15 years ago because of the lag period between GHG emissions and rise in global average temperatures. We are still operating on GHG levels from 2000 to 2005. The worse effects of abrupt climate change still hasn’t arrived yet. Humans are literally headed towards an inhospitable planet within this decade or next decade at the latest. Not just because of climate change, but a plethora of other factors. The following video made by Guy McPherson gives us a rough idea of the severity of abrupt climate change
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I strongly supported Guy McPherson until 2016, when he suddenly made the bizarre declaration that the Earth would become uninhabitable ‘in a matter of months’, as a consequence of loss of aerosol masking that would accompany reduced industrial activity, as peak oil took effect. He also made the declaration that the last human would die ‘by 2026’ as a consequence of Abrupt Climate Change.
In order to justify his bizarre declarations, McPherson had misused the results of Travis, following the temporary closure of airlines immediately after 9/11. What Travis said was that the clearer air [due to lack of aircraft pollutants and condensed vapour trails in the skies of America] resulted in a greater diurnal range, i.e. more heat reaching the land in the daytime and more heat lost to space at nighttime. McPherson ignored that latter aspect [of increased nighttime heat loss] and declared there would be a substantial increase in absolute temperature.
He lost the international debate, and shut down his website comments section of his website to prevent critical comment (truth).
A crucial point missed by most commentators on overheating is that the average temperature of the Earth is very much dominated by the average temperature of the oceans, and they are huge. The rate of overheating of the Earth is largely determined by the rate at which heat is transferred to the ocean.
We know for certain that the temperature of the oceans (often depicted as heat content) has not been as high as at present in tens of millions of years, and that temperatures are rising pretty much everywhere. This is leading to rapid undercutting of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica and destabilisation of glaciers. Although this super-fast in geological terms, it is relatively slow in human terms.
The destabilisation of the Jet Streams [that is a consequence of warming of waters in the high latitudes] is having profound effects, one of which seems to be the megadrought affecting the western half of the US. I have been following the declining level of Lake Mead for many years, and 2022 is the year it has gone supercritical: not only the lowest since the Hoover Dam was constructed but also falling at the fastest rate ever recorded. If current trends continue there is the distinct possibility of massive water rationing across much of the southwest and inability to generate electricity via the Hoover Dam turbines at all in the very near future.
The laws of mathematics, physics, chemistry and ecology are dealing with the plague of greedy, stupid apes in a fairly predictable manner.
And, of course, the maniacs at the helm are determined to ensure that a large portion of last of the easily extracted oil is squandered making weapons and using those weapons in futile wars to impose their dysfunctional systems on those who reject them.
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McPherson also, “interpreted” a number of studies using the Bull shit method and he is also fond of the same math the Arctic News uses.
Each and every climate phenomena are added together using each one’s worst possible case scenario while assuming no negative feedback will ever kick in.
Worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario & + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario + worst possible case scenario = Humans Extinction @ 12:01 AM January 1st 2026.
In hindsight it’s obvious that McPherson is a self absorbed cunt.
The day and the time are mine, but 2026 is McPherson. I know of a number of scientists who have said human extinction looks likely and some before 2100 or in a hundred years.
Endtimes 2026 is pretty specific. There were/are a bunch of American white men who have been just as specific that the world will end on such & such a day, month or year and they all have a few things in common. 1, they’re all cunts. 2, they are all cult leaders. 3, they all scored better looking and/or more pussy.
If you ask me #3 is the #1 reason they go to such lengths.
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Slightly off topic, but the following link
Is a prime example of the insanity of consumerism and overconsumption.
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“Despite the horrors described thus far, what really scares Professor Ward is sea level rise … the most recent report on sea level rise states that it is accelerating with an increase of one foot expected along U.S. coasts by 2050.”
It has already risen that much, or dropped that much, depending on where one is in relation to Greenland, Antarctica, Glacier Bay, The Third Pole, or Patagonia (Seaports With Sea Level Change – 22).
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While we are waiting on NTHE or things to get get better, (I can’t see any farther into the future than the next few seconds) how do we like unregulated free market capitalism? True believers know that private corporations should be able to charge any price that allow profits to trickle down. Gasoline should never be below $10.00/gal. To those that disagree,why do you hate profit? Surely no one would want govt. interference into private businesses’ bottom line.
To paraphrase: ‘We like capitalism until we have to pay for it.’
I’m bending over while stupidity FMTT. 😉
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Since I can’t do anything to stop the destruction of all Clever Apes on this planet. I’ll just deal with simpler things. Will Rep/Cons stop all aid to Israel since Jews kill Jews in the womb with their Left wing liberal abortion policy? Abortion – self induced genocide?
The truth is not always pleasant but it can pull back the curtain on hypocrisy.
This job is too easy but it would be better if it paid.
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Will any of us “doomers” still be alive when the catastrophic and abrupt collapse of industrial civilization happens? Or will all of the doomsayers be long gone before TEOTAWKI happens? I could care less about whatever drama the politicians and nation states of the world perform during the meanwhile time, because I know that when that day finally happens, none of it would matter. It doesn’t matter if there is a World War 3 or not. The end result is the same…collapse of industrial civilization is inevitable and immienent. WW3 might accelerate the collapse…or it might not.
The simple fact that there is now 8,000,000,000 humans on this planet (and rapidly increasing by 200,000 people everyday, births minus deaths) already gurantees the demise of Homo sapiens via runaway exponential population and consumption growth. The fact that, during the past 30 years alone, we consumed more of the planet’s finite and nonrenewable resources (like fossil fuels, top soils and metallic ores) than all of the prior 5,000 years of human civilization combined, means we are already in the final exponential doubling of human population and consumption. The fact that the final doubling began in the late 1980s/early 1990s means we are not very far away from the collapse of industrial civilization. Collapse will probably happen before 2040. Probably much sooner, I reckon.
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Here is a good example demonstrating that even when they acknowledge and attempt to address the ongoing wildlife Holocaust it’s in a way that works with and around happy motoring.
Look at the dearth of projects world wide costing hundreds of billions. This in itself is a declaration that any challenge to economic growth and thus human/custmor/taxpayer growth is unacceptable.
Inside the experimental world of animal infrastructure
Wildlife crossings cut down on roadkill. But are they really a boon for conservation?
– June 16, 2022
“Around the world, cities are building a huge variety of structures intended to mitigate the impacts of urbanization and roadbuilding on wildlife. The list includes green roofs, tree-lined skyscrapers, living seawalls, artificial wetlands, and all manner of shelters and “hibernacula,” including 3D-printed hempcrete birdboxes for endangered owls in Melbourne and gigantic bat caves constructed like earthen igloos in the Texas hills.
But the data on how effective these approaches are remains patchy and unclear. That is true even for wildlife crossings, the best-studied and most heavily funded example of such animal infrastructure. ”
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/16/1053631/inside-animal-infrastructure/
It’s really nothing but a barrel of feel good, make-work projects that will change neither the outcome nor the timing. In spite of the impressive looking mega dollars they are spending it’ only adds up to a few more expensive Band aids on the shotgun blast wound.
I’d guess many of them mean well and still believe they are making a difference – what are they going to do? I don’t know more than a few people other than me who have changed their lifestyle and consume less. Even with me a big part of it was to get the fuck away from so many normies every day by changing how I make a living/level of societal participation. I prefer it this way. Clearly no amount of science or in their face record smashing climate change Jacked disasters have made a dent in human behaviour. It’s not happening so no sense knocking yourself out trying to educate the masses. There are many factors to explain why they won’t change, but for the sake of the individual Doomer’s sanity it doesn’t matter ‘why’. I know many tried – gave all their spare time to it. It’s just can’t happen so stop hurting yourselves or at the very least dial down your expectation amp to -11.
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‘Look at the dearth……”
You mean large number or abundance, don’t you ?
“dearth ” means ‘scarcity” or ‘shortage ‘.
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Anytime I tipe sumthing inkorrect I simply call it poetic lysence.
Best argument for abortion is, TR. 😉
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Anthroprogenic climate change/global warming will be performing a late stage abortion on TR.
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I feel I need to apologize for the compliments I gave the monkey mind,baboon brain Clever Apes. They were never any of that. They are lizard brained mammals that think they are above the laws of nature that rule the rest of the animal kingdom.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2022/06/29/29th-june-2022-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
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How much excess CO2,above a normal weekend, will be pumped into the atmosphere over this holiday?
Let the lizard brains kill themselves.
‘When man is, gone life will thrive.’, if we don’t destroy the planet before our extinction.
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The planet will still be around. The planet Earth will be still be around for the next couple of billion years. Whether there will be any significant amount of complex, multicellular life on Earth after humans go extinct is another matter. It seems like the overwhelming majority of complex, multicellular life will soon be doomed for extinction. Especially large vertebrates like elephants, tigers, lions, deer and not surprisingly, humans, too. I expect virtually every living wild animal to be hunted to extinction by humans when the collapse of industrial civilization happens…to compensate for the lack of food caused by the global, catastrophic, Malthusian famine that will soon be killing all of humanity. The “good” news is that soon afterwards, humans will go extinct, too.
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If lizard brains destroy all life on this rock,it will still be a planet & the 11 dimensions will be talking about the stupid life forms that used to exist on this lifeless rock & cared nothing about their habitat.
I probably won’t get to see the explosions of all the nuclear power plants when most of the tongue flicking lizard brains are mostly gone.
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Can you please elaborate on what the global nuclear reactor melt downs will be like? Let me guess…the Earth will be basically rendered uninhabitable by it, correct?
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What pisses me off is our society’s constant hopium of technological “progress”. A.I, “smart” cities, “renewable” energy, hydroponics, vertical farming, 3D printing, cryptocurrency mining and etc are the examples of our civilization’s delusional belief that technology will “solve” all of humanity’s problems. This is, of course, all BS…make no mistake, industrial civilization will catastrophically and abruptly collapse within the lifetime of most people alive today i.e. the millenial and younger generations will get to see the day when human civilization permanently ends, and shortly afterwards, humanity goes extinct. And there is NO technological solutions to allow this rapacious and clever ape (called Homo sapiens) to continue overpopulating and wreaking the planet forever. I can assure you that the day of reckoning will come, and most people will probably be surprised when the collapse of industrial civilization happens.
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The extinction of wild or large animals has been preceding apace since humanity descended from the trees, and any cursory examination of the horrifically dwindling percentages of wild animals left testify that their demise is not a prediction, but an observable, “real-time” process under our ultrasocial domain of predatory killing. This cannot be stopped, and it is beyond reproach or justification.
People who have students to “teach,” or religious morons, or biological parents, or hopium addicts may refuse to look at the facts and numbers of worldwide deaths attributable to our species and our species alone, but we here in Collapse Central know the score. We still gonna part tonite, though, amirite?
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Yes, humanity is indeed an “exceptionally rapacious primate”. Of course, the demise of Homo sapiens is not too far away either.
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There is one consolation before we go extinct in the U.S. The right to keep & bear arms shall not be infringed regardless of how many law enforcement officers & school children are wounded & killed. The great thing about assault weapons is that their efficiency gives a shooter the ability to harm more Americans in a shorter period of time. A truly dedicated shooter harms as many as possible & then commits suicide in a message to law enforcement & the other lizard brains; “Fuck you!”
When we enter the public sphere just how safe are we. No problem! It can’t happen to me.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/2-killed-3-cops-wounded-054324687.html
Just heard while writing, Copenhagen just had a mall shooting. Nothing wrong with wanting to be like the greatest nation in the universe. U.S.A.,U.S.A.,U.S.A.
Devolution is real. We are moving from lizard brains to amoeba brains, maintaining the inability to think critically.
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….regardless of how many Illinois 4th of July parade spectators are wounded & killed.
New amendment to the Constitution – All victims of shooters will be identified by their party affiliations/delusions.
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