They’re Laughing at Us…

04 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Capitalism, Climate Change, David Attenborough, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Mass Die Off, Overpopulation

Alien 1: “Lets zip over to Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha where exists that one habitable planet overrun by its egomaniacal, carbon-burning organisms.”

Alien 2: “You mean the ones that call themselves ‘wise’, but which have completely disassociated themselves from their planet’s life-giving qualities. They have a very bad habit of wielding their technology in a half-hazard and suicidal manner.”

Alien 1: “Yeah that’s the one. I’m surprised they’ve made it this far with all those mushrooming obliteration devices they have stockpiled.”

Aliens 1,2, & 3: “HA! HA!” Look at that! They’re cooking themselves with those carbon-burners… all to support a fleeting lifestyle of high energy and resource consumption.”

Alien 2: “Don’t they know it’ll all be gone very soon and they’ll be left with a moonscaped planet that has the temperature of Venus?”

Alien 1: “Some of them do, but most appear to be prisoners of their own self-indulgent delusions. They refuse to listen no matter how much the sentient minority jump up and down to try to get their attention.

It seems that this earthling species spends most of its time attempting to accumulate more and more of these paper and metal tokens by converting all of their planet’s resources into these fictitious symbols of wealth.”

Alien 3: “The situation looks to be rather grim down there. They don’t seem to have any sort of self-constraint. I believe one of their own even called their species a plague on the planet.”

Alien 2: “Did anyone listen to him?”

Alien 1: “No, the few who heard him mostly just got offended and went back to the business of obsessing over economic growth and accumulating evermore of those paper tokens.”

Alien 2: “Really? Well, what if we install some emergency buttons at strategic locations around the planet to limit their activities? I’m sure the self-aware among them would consider activating such devices.”

Alien 1: “Alright then. Let’s see what happens…”

The Illusion of Money and the End of Nature

27 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Pollution

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Austerity for the Poor, Barack Obama, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Consumerism, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Economic Growth, Empire, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Globalization, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Privatization, Regulatory Capture, The Elite 1%, The Illusion of Money, unwashed public, Wall Street Fraud, War for Profit

In order to understand why the world is locked into a blind stampede over a cliff, you have to understand how the world runs, i.e. its socio-economic system. A large percentage of the population doesn’t understand that the world is ruled by multinational corporations or that the citizenry are simply disposable pawns with no voice in their fate.

The capital that flows around the world, betting on essential staples of life and demanding that barbaric austerity measures be imposed upon the masses, is an entity of its own. It’s a massively destructive force that enslaves people and rips apart the environment. In the Banana Republic of America where a once thriving middle class was sold down the river, nearly half of workers will have a budget of $5 per day when they reach retirement age. Maybe McDonald’s will create a 99 cent meal to cash in on that starving demographic. Oh, they already have…

As far as the environment goes, it is a doormat for the creation of money:

To get a better understanding of America’s place in the global corporatocracy which is ushering in the social and environmental apocalypse, we turn to the author of ‘The Elements of the Corporatocracy‘ and his blog where he posted ‘How the U.S. Corporatocracy Fits in the Global Scheme‘, an excerpt of which follows:

When you have such an immovable supersystem of puppet governments and marauding transnational corporations running the show, radical movements questioning and trying to change the status quo are easily co-opted or crushed, a recent example being the Occupy movement. In a world where extinction of the human species is guaranteed by climate chaos and the myriad of other crises created by industrial capitalism, a slow and incremental regimen of change is not what is needed to stave off collapse. Unfortunately, the entrenched interests of the financial elite and the nation-states they control won’t allow for any sort of abrupt and profound transformation. As Professor Julian Cribb has correctly identified, a culture of money worship and the mass delusion of money’s illusory value is at the heart of the global crisis. The high priests of money are protected at the expense of all else:

Show me a democracy that has an impoverished public life and I will show you one dominated by oligarchs and plutocrats driven by profit maximization that will do anything to get over. Gangster activity is what it is. Scandal after scandal and when you get caught, you PAY MONEY, you don’t go to jail. Plutocrats wage class war, getting away with CRIMES (mortgage fraud, market manipulation, insider trading, securities fraud) every day. But get caught with a bag of weed in the hood and you are in the system, for LIFE. ~ Cornell West

For humans living under such a capitalist society, money determines whether you can eat or not, whether you have shelter or not, whether you can clothe yourself or not, or whether you can afford medical treatment or not. Quite literally, if you have no money in a capitalist society, you die. Money in today’s globalized capitalist system is everything.

When President Obama speaks about confronting climate change, he does so with the mindset of keeping the current capitalist power structure in place. Because of this self-defeating approach, everything he says is rendered useless rhetoric.

Putting aside the gross social inequalities and injustices of our current system, you tell me how we can avert disaster with the following realities:

Without changing the socio-economic system under which we live, no real solutions for the multiple civilization-ending crises we face can be properly addressed. There is an expiration date for this unending conversion of the natural world into fake symbols of wealth hoarded and squandered by a greedy few…

The Cognitive Dissonance of the Corporate State on Climate Change

17 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Ai Weiwei, Amazon Deforestation, Arctic Ice Melt, Barack Obama, Capitalism, China's Massive Coal Consumption, Climate Change, Climate Refugees, Climate Tipping Points, CO2 Emissions, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Corporatocracy, Droughts and Fire in Australia, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Economic Growth, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Frankenstorms, Hurricane Sandy, Ian Bremmer - Eurasia Group President, Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Nouriel Roubini, Ocean Acidification, Regulatory Capture, Southwest Wild Fires, The Elite 1%

A video I made today which speaks for itself:

December 21st, 2012 and All is Well…

21 Friday Dec 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Peak Oil, Pollution

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2012 Mayan Prophecy, Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Austerity for the Poor, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Dumpster Diving, Ecological Overshoot, End of the World, Endocrine Disruptors, Environmental Collapse, Financial Elite, Fiscal Cliff, Fossil-Fuel Based Economy, Gross Inequality, Inverted Totalitarianism, Overpopulation, Peak Oil, Poverty, Social Unrest, The Elite 1%, unwashed public, Vladimir Putin, Wall Street Fraud

As I’ve explained in the past, my peculiar work routine really makes this site a sort of biweekly affair. So in keeping with that loose schedule, I’ll be taking the next several days off and will post again in earnest after Christmas. In the meantime, I’ll be partaking in the traditional family yuletide activities such as drinking funky-tasting eggnog and cruising through the neighborhood to take in all the lit up decorations like inflatable Walmart snowmen and Santas. Notwithstanding everything I’ve blogged about here, the world’s not coming to an end, right? Putin apparently had a 4 hour news conference which included this very subject:

So all these observable facts that we’ve been documenting here are just our own personal viewpoint of the world and certainly not the perspective held by the vast majority of the population, including world ~~dictators~~ leaders. We should just take a ‘glass is half full’ point of view, shouldn’t we?:

1.) Peak Oil? Not a problem… We’ve got more fossil fuels to exploit as revealed by the melting Arctic. And of course we can always fall back on our seemingly endless supply of coal:

2.) Overpopulation? Not a problem. Endocrine disrupting chemicals and other stressors of industrial civilization are decimating the sperm count of the global male population:

3.) Climate Change? The top minds of science are right on top of this one. Who said you can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again:

4.) And the most dire threat of all… The Fiscal Cliff. Are you kidding? The bankers and corporate elite already have that one solved. Three for them and none for you:

…Over 20 million Americans live in extreme poverty – with cash incomes as low as $10,000 a year for a family of four. Is it any wonder that the US has the third highest poverty rate out of 30 leading industrial nations?

The problem is exacerbated by decades of economic and political policies that have resulted in a massive shift of national wealth from working people to the corporate boardrooms and the yacht owners. One result: real wage growth for workers has stagnated for 30 years; median household income has steadily fallen since the Wall Street produced economic crash of 2008. Much of the limited job growth since then has been in the lowest wage sectors, primarily food service and retail.

Sadly, the issue remained almost as invisible on the 2012 campaign trail as it was when Harrington shocked the nation in 1962. But it is not a surprise to nurses who, every day, see the faces of poverty and the suffering of families left behind – even as corporate profits once again soar and the parties and good times are back on Wall Street…

Well, we can always take up dumpster diving in the wealthy neighborhoods. I hear they “throw a lot of good shit away.”

Have a merry Christmas and don’t let the bastards wear you down!!!

Obama Axes CIA’s Climate Change & National Security Center

01 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Degradation, Military Industrial Complex

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Barack Obama, Center on Climate Change and Security, CIA, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Empire, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, H. Patricia Hynes, Inverted Totalitarianism, Joe Romm - Senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Mass Die Off, Military Culture and Climate Change, Military Industrial Complex, Science for Peace, The Elite 1%, War for Profit

In a previous post, New C.I.A.-Commissioned Report on Climate Change Stresses to Civilization, we were given a window into dangers created by human-induced climate change. Now we learn that President Obama has axed that program. Why study the ultimate existential threat to industrial civilization when you can just build more weapons to fight the social instability and wars brought on by abrupt, chaotic and extreme weather patterns. This mindset would be in keeping with the American ruling establishment’s practice of treating the symptoms rather than the root cause – ignoring the fact that we, aka industrial ‘civilized’ humans, are the destabilizing force of the biosphere and the primary cause behind climatic disasters to civilization. We’ve pumped so much CO2 into the atmosphere that it has now gained an intractable foothold as a driving force behind possible runaway climate change.

Excerpt…

CURWOOD:…One of the more startling scientific reports presented at Doha — based, so far, on preliminary data – suggests that emissions from the melting Arctic are heading for a tipping point that could lead to runaway warming...

CURWOOD: Now we understand that the CIA has shut down its center for climate change and security – why did they have the center in the first place, do you think?

ROMM: Well, there has been increasing awareness in the intelligence community and the Pentagon that global warming and climate change was going to have an impact on US national security interests. Whether it is military bases that are seeing sea level rise or countries that are subject to worse droughts and famines, so, you know, I think many countries around the world had come to the view that climate change was going to have a big impact on security.

CURWOOD: Why shut this unit down now?

ROMM: Apparently the unit didn’t have much support when Panetta left and General Petraeus took over at the CIA. Petraeus was very focused on terrorism, and there’s a lot of congressional Republicans, who, you know, deny climate science and therefore attack any action by the federal government to study climate change and its impacts.

CURWOOD: Some suggest that the CIA shutting down its Center for Climate Change and Security is a budget matter. What’s your analysis?

ROMM: Well, I think that everyone knows that budgets are under duress. We have this fiscal cliff, in all likelihood, discretionary spending, even for intelligence, is going to be cut. Some were saying that the CIA was trying to make nice with Congressional Republicans and not continue this center that kind of annoyed them.

I hope that’s not the case, because, this is a matter of pretty basic science and it would be a shame if our intelligence organization, whose job is to sift through the facts and be completely separate from ideological spin, it would be a shame if they were getting pressured to not look at science and facts…

ROMM: Closing the center was absolutely a mistake. If the intelligence apparatus in this country with its $75 billion dollar budget can’t have a small center to study one of the gravest threats facing the world, that’s a pretty sad state of affairs…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That’s a pretty sad state of affairs. The weapons of mass destruction have been in plain site all along…

Listen to the real reasons…

…Our national security has been reduced, in large part, to energy security which has led us to militarizing our access to oil through establishing a military presence across the oil-bearing regions of the world and instigating armed conflict in Iraq and sustaining it in Afghanistan…

Burning the Candle at Both Ends

01 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Antarctic Ice Melt, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Evolutionary Dead End, Extinction of Man, Fossil-Fuel Based Economy, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), Inverted Totalitarianism, Mass Die Off, Runaway Climate Change

The claims of near term extinction for mankind are getting stronger and stronger as new scientific evidence is released. Sometime before the end of this century, we’ll all be toast, so any measures we take now at “building resilience” will only be short-lived exercises in self-preservation. That’s how short-sighted we humans are: no consideration for the children and future generations. As long as we can stay comfortably cocooned within the wasteful amenities and faux culture distractions of industrial civilization, we’ll keep sucking on the great ‘carbon energy’ cigar to keep the illusion going, despite the fact that we’re committing species suicide. We are like the domesticated animal that can no longer survive in the natural world. Our addiction to fossil fuels has literally become an ingrained trait, selectively advantageous in the short-term but ultimately leading to our own evolutionary dead end.

If you missed it, the latest news is that, contrary to the propaganda put out by climate change deniers, the Antarctic is not gaining ice, but losing ice:

Global warming is melting Greenland and Antarctic ice and …

This is not good news. A new international study—done by 47 experts using data from multiple satellites and aircraft—shows that the Earth is losing ice at an ever-increasing rate from both poles. We’ve known for years that the Arctic has been suffering massive ice loss, with the record low broken more than once in recent years. What’s devastating about this new report is that it shows unequivocally and quantitatively that the Antarctic is also losing land ice, with the critical West Antarctica ice sheet losing on average 65 billion tons of ice every year.

Measuring ice is difficult to do and uncertainties are generally pretty big. By combining several different methods from several different sources, the scientists were able to get the best, most accurate measurements ever made. These new data show that the ice loss from both poles has increased by a factor of three since the 1990s. Just Greenland—the largest source of fresh water ice in the Northern Hemisphere—is losing ice at a rate five times what it did just in the 1990s: about 142 billion tons per year.

Together, since 1992, this ice melt has added over a centimeter (about a half inch) to sea level rise. That may not sound like much, but it doesn’t take much rise in sea levels to start causing catastrophic changes in erosion, storms, and flooding. Worse, this accounts for only about one-fifth of the total amount of sea level rise. Much of the rise is due to the water in the oceans expanding due to warming and other sources.

There’s a double whammy for you: Global warming is increasing the amount of water in the oceans from melting ice, and also increasing the sea level rise by heating up the water itself…

…This new study wipes out yet another false claim from climate change deniers, too. A common refrain from them is that Antarctic ice is increasing, not decreasing. However, this is not true for two reasons. The first is that they count sea ice in that measure. However, Antarctic sea ice tends to melt away completely every year in the spring and summer, and then it reforms in the winter. It therefore on average does not contribute to sea level rise or to the heat budget of the Earth. Second, this new study shows the claim is wrong anyway. We are losing ice from Antarctica every year, and it’s the critical land ice…

I’m sorry to say this, but all the ghastly visions of runaway climate change may very well come to fruition, wiping any trace of humans off the face of the Earth. In the end, man wasn’t really any different from lowly bacteria overwhelming the confines of a petri dish and extinguishing themselves. I’m sure we’ll have amassed an amazing trove of video, literature and other media documenting the horrors to come so that when some alien race visits the planet in the future, they will be able to watch bemused at how humans killed themselves off in the name of “progress” and a dollar.

World’s Youth Call for Urgent Action at U.N. … – Democracy Now!

Michael Sandmel:
“We make up half the world’s population, and frankly, we’re being screwed. We’re being denied a future by a lack of ambition, a lack of vision, and governments that are far too beholden to the interests of big fossil fuel companies, big coal companies, the banks that fund them.”

News for the Final Coffin Nail of Mankind

29 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Doha Qatar, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Inverted Totalitarianism, John Hofmeister, John Hofmeister - Former President of Shell Oil and Currently the Head of Citizens for Affordable Energy, Mass Die Off, Maya Civilization's Collapse, Ogallala Aquifer, Peak Water, The Elite 1%, UN Climate Talks in Qatar

If you’re not really going to do anything about our omnicidal alteration of the planet, then it would make sense that you would host such a climate talk charade in the most profligate, fossil-fuel dealing, energy-gorging city on the planet – another irony for the ages as this blog below points out. Isn’t that like holding an alcoholics anonymous meeting inside a liquor store?

In Guy McPherson’s talk which was the subject of my last post, he said that those living in the inner part of the American Empire, the Great Plain States, would be in a whole lot of trouble in the coming decades. To elaborate on that statement, read the article below to see how things are literally fading away, soon to give new meaning to the term “dry county” (emphasis in red by the energy skeptic):

And history repeats itself, despite all our fancy techno-gadgetry and state-of-the-art instruments giving us unparalleled warning signs of our impending demise. The ApocoDocs recently quipped something to the effect of, “If we can foresee the collapse, then we can prevent it. Right? RIGHT!”

When you have at your disposal all the tools and knowledge to avert your own death, but collectively choose not to utilize them, that just makes it all the more tragic:

And in a banner year of environmental tipping points, we have this final gem of a story (excerpt):

Now if that story doesn’t illustrate to you the ingrained, institutionalized insanity of the people running the show, I don’t know what will. I told you in a previous post they think the planet is one big ShamWow towelette for man’s endless flow of waste. A commenter on the above story gives a laundry list of examples illustrating how humans are complete failures at managing waste, concluding with the following statement:

…Unfortunately, industrial humans have always “managed” their wastes by throwing it away. This works well in a world with low population, or with a largely poor population that can’t object to living in someone else’s toilet. In the modern world, though, “away” is going away. (It’s worth noting that it does NOT have to be this way. Current conditions pertain because it is convenient/profitable, not because responsible waste management is impossible. But that’s another topic entirely.)

Hofmeister is proposing that we apply the same approach that we use for other industrial wastes – one which is failing, which preferentially exploits the poor, and is damaging our planetary life support system – to CO2. This is not a recipe for success or even survival – this is apologia for continuing business as usual.

I couldn’t end this post without this song:

Industrial Civilization’s Last Frantic Binge on Carbon Energy

27 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, ApocaDocs, Bunker Mentality, Capitalism, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, Eco-Apocalypse, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Fossil-Fuel Based Economy, Imagine Dragons, Inverted Totalitarianism, Jonas De Ro, Mass Die Off, Michael Klare, Ocean Acidification, Optimism Bias, Peak Oil, Post-Apocalyptic Art, Resource Wars, Social Unrest, The Elite 1%, Tokyo Genso, Vladimir Manyuhin

Post-Apocalyptic Illustration by Jonas De Ro

Post-Apocalyptic Illustration by Vladimir Manyuhin

Post-Apocalyptic Illustration by Tokyo Genso

Madison, WI Post Apocalypse

I thought I’d post a few pictures of what the world will look like before the end of this century. Artists have the intuitive imagination to conjure up such visions the general public can only imagine through Hollywood zombie flicks which seem to be all the rage these days. Why do I feel this vision is inevitable? Just look at the daily news to see what I mean:

It used to be that the mentally insane, flailing their arms and talking to invisible people in the streets, were the ones ranting and raving about the end of the world, but now it’s scientists who, in an attempt not to offend the beliefs of the scientific illiterati and free-market faithful, downplay their findings as much as possible. Optimism bias infects even the scientific community.

…we are the most tragic species. We not only destroy all of the world around us, we are aware of doing it but unable to stop ourselves. We have faith and hope that things will get better, that we can turn around at the last second what we’ve screwed up over years and decades. Which of course is nothing but an excuse to keep on screwing up. All courtesy of our optimism bias.

What better exemplifies the delusional optimism of man than the belief that he could hide out in a bunker to survive the ravages of a nuclear war? I’ll tell you what tops that fantasy – the belief that man can continue to do what he has done and expect the planet to unfailingly absorb all the environmental assaults we can throw at it via the endless growth of capitalist production and consumption. The planet is not some massive ShamWow towelette for man’s nonstop flow of excrement.

Excerpt from Michael Klare, A Thermonuclear Energy Bomb in Christmas Wrappings…

No Hope for Averting Catastrophic Climate Change

Of all the findings in the 2012 edition of the World Energy Outlook, the one that merits the greatest international attention is the one that received the least. Even if governments take vigorous steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded, the continuing increase in fossil fuel consumption will result in “a long-term average global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees C.”

This should stop everyone in their tracks. Most scientists believe that an increase of 2 degrees Celsius is about all the planet can accommodate without unimaginably catastrophic consequences: sea-level increases that will wipe out many coastal cities, persistent droughts that will destroy farmland on which hundreds of millions of people depend for their survival, the collapse of vital ecosystems, and far more. An increase of 3.6 degrees C essentially suggests the end of human civilization as we know it.

To put this in context, human activity has already warmed the planet by about 0.8 degrees C — enough to produce severe droughts around the world, trigger or intensify intense storms like Hurricane Sandy, and drastically reduce the Arctic ice cap. “Given those impacts,” writes noted environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, “many scientists have come to think that two degrees is far too lenient a target.” Among those cited by McKibben is Kerry Emanuel of MIT, a leading authority on hurricanes. “Any number much above one degree involves a gamble,” Emanuel writes, “and the odds become less and less favorable as the temperature goes up.” Thomas Lovejoy, once the World Bank’s chief biodiversity adviser, puts it this way: “If we’re seeing what we’re seeing today at 0.8 degrees Celsius, two degrees is simply too much.”

At this point, it’s hard even to imagine what a planet that’s 3.6 degrees C hotter would be like, though some climate-change scholars and prophets — like former Vice President Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth — have tried. In all likelihood, the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets would melt entirely, raising sea levels by several dozen feet and completely inundating coastal cities like New York and Shanghai. Large parts of Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and the American Southwest would be rendered uninhabitable thanks to lack of water and desertification, while wildfires of a sort that we can’t imagine today would consume the parched forests of the temperate latitudes.

In a report that leads with the “good news” of impending U.S. oil supremacy, to calmly suggest that the world is headed for that 3.6 degree C mark is like placing a thermonuclear bomb in a gaudily-wrapped Christmas present. In fact, the “good news” is really the bad news: the energy industry’s ability to boost production of oil, coal, and natural gas in North America is feeding a global surge in demand for these commodities, ensuring ever higher levels of carbon emissions. As long as these trends persist — and the IEA report provides no evidence that they will be reversed in the coming years — we are all in a race to see who gets to the Apocalypse first.

Enjoy industrial civilization’s fossil fuel blow-out sale while it lasts. This is a one-time-only, circus-like ‘liquidation event’. Everything must be commodified regardless of ecological loss or intrinsic value to the web of life. The Human species won’t want to miss these deals! There will be no returns or exchanges available as we are going out of business for good due to bankruptcy proceedings with Mother Earth. All life forms and resources on the planet must go!!!

The Short Story of Carbon Man and Industrial Civilization

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Peak Oil, Pollution

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Capitalism, Climate Change, Climate Feedback Loops, Climate Talks, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Ecological Sacrifice Zones, Environmental Collapse, Geoengineering, Global Warming, Greenwashing, Machine Fetishism, Mass Die Off, Space Junk

Locked within the Earth for millions of years was an energy source that fueled the rise of Humans and gave them dominion over every last inch of the planet. With traces of industrial chemicals and junk even finding its way into orbit around Earth, no corner of the planet escaped the tinkering hand of man.

His large brain gave him the ability to invent and build an army of machines to do his bidding. From their creation and until the last day of their operation, these fossil fuel-powered machines served man tirelessly in every conceivable manner, from personal transportation to food production.

Soon the lifeblood of this automated empire began running short, driving man to evermore extreme measures of securing carbon energy in order to feed his world of machines. Water, air, and land were sacrificed to keep the system going.

But For every force, there is a counter force. For every positive, a negative. The counter weight to man’s unrelenting urge for carbon was the inexorable build-up of atmospheric CO2 as the rest of the world rushed to join industrial civilization. The world’s leaders flew to popular vacation spots and drank cocktails while discussing the growing menace of climate change:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That is precisely what global leaders entrusted with the stewardship of the world are doing. Their lives revolve around glittering banquets and long and dreary conferences, where they listen to each other in endless process-driven negotiations – so far from the reality of the day-to-day hardships of more than half of humanity.

A domino of numerous climate tipping points was set into motion, upsetting a once-benign climate. At first, fire seasons grew longer with more frequent and intense conflagrations. Ocean corals turned white from warming waters. The Arctic melted with astonishing speed, unleashing a host of warming feedback loops. Small, imperceptible temperature changes that took decades to occur were now happening more rapidly.

A warming planet opened the door for exotic tropical diseases to spread northward and around the globe. Talk of adaptation to human-induced climate change became a cruel joke. Torrential floods and crop-withering droughts of biblical proportion occurred more regularly, propelling the hungry masses to riot. The food vaults of impoverished countries were the first to be raided, followed soon after by those of wealthy nations. Weaker nation states fell first as their resource-strapped and overwhelmed governments collapsed under the weight of climate-induced starvation and energy blackouts. Various desperate geoengineering schemes were carried out in a hail Mary attempt to save man and his fossil fuel-addicted way of life, but to no avail. The master had become the slave; servile devotion to an unsustainable mode of living turned around to bite us in the ass. An overdrawn Earth had come calling to collect on humanity’s debt and close the account. Within the blink of a geologic eye, the habitability of the planet for humans as well as most other creatures had disappeared.

Oh, and he was really good at making bombs…

~ THE END ~

Capitalist Carbon Man

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by xraymike79 in Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

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Addiction to Fossil Fuels, Arctic Sea Ice Melt, Fossil-Fuel Based Economy, Greenland Ice Sheet Melt, Greenwashing, Mass Die Off, Resource Exploitation

Sometime next week I’ll post part two of climate tipping elements, but I want to emphasize right now that industrial civilization’s undoing will be its transgression of environmental elements which will cause dramatic and worsening rates of climate change. The delusion that there will be nice, slow and predictable changes from anthropogenic climate change has already been destroyed by the first tipping point of the melting Arctic sea-ice sheet and its multiple, concomitant feedback loops. The Arctic is now irreparably altered, never to recover from the clumsy tinkering and meddling of human hands. Arctic animal species face mass extinction not only from the loss of their habitat but also from hybridization and competition from southern species migrating northward as well as the spread of diseases. Bid adieu to those disappearing glacial Arctic landscapes once designated as World Heritage sites.

Concerning rapid development of climate chaos:

The consequences for the biosphere of accelerating climate change are discussed by Baronsky et al in the following terms:

Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence.

Climates found at present on 10–48% of the planet are projected to disappear within a century, and climates that contemporary organisms have never experienced are likely to cover 12–39% of Earth. The mean global temperature by 2070 (or possibly a few decades earlier) will be higher than it has been since the human species evolved.

At 400ppm CO2, potential climate conditions have reached levels which last existed in the peak Pliocene epoch (5.3-2.6 million years ago). Given an increase in extreme weather events under conditions of +0.8C, an even higher rate of extreme events is expected under conditions of +2.0C currently shielded by industrially emitted sulphur aerosols.

Like 99.999% of the population, I do have to generate a living which means coercive participation in the predominant economy. This forced inclusion in the globalized capitalist model is illustrated quite well in the following article. If you’re in a hole, quit digging. But if you are capitalist carbon man, then you can’t help but keep digging:

KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland – President Lee Myung-bak said Sunday Korea wants to help Greenland pursue economic development in an environmentally friendly way, expressing sadness and concern after seeing the Arctic glaciers that are melting due to global warming…

‘Development’ is the code word for supplanting nature with the money-generating schemes of capitalist carbon man.

Lee arrived in Greenland earlier in the day to take a first-hand look at problems resulting from climate change and to hold talks with Premier Kuupik Kleist of the Danish autonomous territory about green growth, resource development and Arctic shipping routes…

There’s that oxymoron again – “green growth”. Development and growth by industrial civilization is neither green nor sustainable. It’s simply another nail in the coffin for the natural world and all other species that don’t have an opposable thumb, walk upright, and trade shares on Wall Street.

Upon arrival at the airport in the small town of Kangerlussuaq, Lee flew on a light plane to Ilulissat, a Unesco World Heritage site known for its famous icefjord, one of the best locations to observe melting Arctic glaciers, icebergs and ice sheets…

Was that “light plane” another product of “green growth” and “sustainable development”? Perhaps it was buoyed in the air by magical green technology.

Premier Kleist and Danish Crown Prince Frederik traveled together with Lee.

“This is a tragic site,” Lee said aboard an icebreaker while touring the ice-floating sea, apparently meaning that global warming, caused by economic development, is having serious impacts on the environment…

…Increasingly warm weather has led to Arctic ice melting dangerously…

No shit, it’s caused by “economic development”! But these twits think attaching the word ‘green’ to the word ‘development’ will make everything all better. Capitalist carbon man is apparently no smarter than yeast in a petri dish. Yeast in a petri dish never choose degrowth over reproducing and consuming ever more.

Melting occurred on about 40 percent of the surface of Greenland’s ice sheets on July 8, but it expanded to 97 percent only four days later. A massive glacier twice the size of Manhattan broke off from Greenland recently, officials said.

Lee’s entourage also included three special members: prominent Korean climber Um Hong-gil, who is the world’s first to scale the globe’s 16 tallest mountains; famous cartoonist Hur Young-man; and Shin Soo-min, a college student chosen for his enthusiasm about green growth.

Carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are blamed for warming the globe.

In an effort to tackle the issue, Lee has championed what is dubbed the “low carbon, green growth” policy, one of Lee’s trademark policies that calls for seeking economic growth through environmentally friendly technologies and industries without releasing greenhouse gases…

Oh, so now we will also attach the words ‘low carbon‘ to the word ‘development’. Sugar and spice and everything fucking nice!!!

Greenland is also rich in oil, rare earth materials and other resources. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, about 17 billion barrels of oil are estimated to be buried along Greenland’s western coast, with another 31.4 billion barrels along the northwestern coast.

Greenland is also believed to be holding the world’s largest reserves of rare earth materials. At least 10 regions have been confirmed to be holding the increasingly important resources, with the southern region holding enough reserves to meet 25 percent of global demand, officials said.

During the flight to Ilulissat, Prince Frederik told Lee that he hopes countries like Korea will help develop Greenland while preserving its environment. Lee said in response that he came to Greenland with “the spirit of green growth.”

Later in the day, Lee held talks with Kleist about ways to boost cooperation in green growth and resources development, saying Korea is willing to work actively together to transform “environmental crisis” into “economic opportunities.”

The two sides also signed four memoranda of understanding calling for cooperation in resources development, geological survey and Arctic science and technology. The agreements are expected to serve as a foothold for Korea’s participation in Greenland’s development.

“South Korea wants to seek economic development in a way that Greenland remains green,” Lee said during the signing ceremony. “I hope Greenland will be preserved as Greenland forever. In this sense, South Korea can be a good partner.

So now the truth comes out from under the cloak of feel-good greenwashing. We just can’t wait to get our hands on all that newly revealed, CO₂-polluting carbon energy. How else would we be able to run our fossil fuel-based economies? Oh boy, we really do have more than enough fossil fuels to destroy every living thing on Earth, and like a moth’s fatal attraction to a flame, we just can’t stop ourselves. A few types of heat-loving bacteria will be the last remaining survivors in this brave new world of our own creation.