Tag Archives: Canfield Ocean

On the Supersonic Track to Extinction

15 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in Capitalism, Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, Pollution

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Where is the “Misanthropocene” right now in relation to past extinction events? The chart below tells the tale. Notice that our current rise in GHG’s is essentially instantaneous in relation to past warmings which took place over thousands of years. As far as scientists can tell, the current warming from industrial civilization is the most rapid in geologic time. Ice core and marine sediment data in the paleoclimatology archive have revealed brief periods of rapid warming and there is no reason to believe modern man is immune to such catastrophic and abrupt climate events. In fact, we know that the Arctic is already warming twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet. Earth sensitivity to climate change is now thought to be possibly double that of previous estimates. An entirely different planet can result from just a slight change in temperature:

Snap 2015-01-14 at 23.36.48

We’re about halfway towards the same CO2 levels as the Paleocene Thermal Extinction, but our speed of trajectory surpasses even that of the Permian Extinction:

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In 2005, Lee R. Kump and fellow scientists published a paper describing what would become known as the Kump hypothesis, implicating hydrogen sulfide (H2S) as the primary culprit in past mass extinctions. According to OSHA, “a level of H2S gas at or above 100 ppm is immediately dangerous to life and health.” Prior to Kump’s study, the working theory had been that some sort of singular, cataclysmic event such as an asteroid strike was to blame for all mass die-offs, but Kump and colleagues proposed that a global warming-induced asphyxiation via hydrogen sulfide gas(H2S) was to blame for snuffing out life under the sea, on the land, and in the air. In past mass extinctions, volcanic eruptions and thawing methane hydrates created greenhouse-gas warmings that culminated in the release of poisonous gas from oxygen-depleted oceans. Humans with their fossil fuel-eating machines are unwittingly producing the same conditions today. The Kump hypothesis (elevated CO2 with lowering O2 levels) is now regarded as the most plausible explanation for the majority of mass extinctions in earth’s history:

Excerpt from Lights Out: How It All EndsSnap 2015-01-14 at 19.58.23

In the short term as both poles completely melt away and the Equator-to-Pole temperature gradient declines, the hydrologic cycle and storms will intensify, jet streams will be altered, global air circulation and ocean currents will be rearranged (especially in northern latitudes), and sea levels will rise. While some local winds will slow down, other areas may actually increase due to local temperature gradients becoming more influential than global ones. New research has indicated early warning signs of a collapse in ocean circulation. When that happens, the oceans ultimately turn into stagnant, anoxic pools belching deadly hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere.

As others have noted, our energy, transport and building infrastructure was not constructed to withstand a mutated planet blindly molded by over seven billion humans. For example, think of all those massive wind farms rendered useless by alterations in local wind patterns, hydro-power shut down due to devastating droughts, solar farms destroyed by large hail storms, etc.

Many are under the delusion that we’ll be able to turn this process around with “green energy” while ignoring that such technologies are derivatives of fossil fuel or that increased efficiencies will lower our carbon footprint while ignoring Jevons paradox. Countless other self-reinforcing feedbacks loops driving our socioeconomic system come into play as well such as rampant overpopulation (Overpopulation key driver of climate change, mass extinction), chemical pollution (“Every year, up to 400 million tonnes are produced and a thousand new substances concocted“), and capitalism’s inherent growth dynamics:

The monstrous capitalism we see today is the result of capitalism’s inherent growth dynamics. To give one modern-day example, the solar energy industry/movement began with the conception of local, i.e. decentralized, and roof-top solar electricity generation for local consumption. Today we see projects like Desertec (huge solar power plants in the Sahara that would supply 15% of Europe’s total electricity needs) and competition between European and Chinese solar panel producers for larger chunks of the world market. – Link

The destructive trend has been inexorably cumulative:

…the central trend is verifiable: mass die-offs are on the rise, increasing by one event per year for the last 70 years.

“While this might not seem like much, one additional mass mortality event per year over 70 years translates into a considerable increase in the number of these events being reported each year,” explained co-author Adam Siepielski, a biologist at the University of San Diego. “Going from one event to 70 each year is a substantial increase, especially given the increased magnitudes of mass mortality events for some of these organisms.” – Link

If we shed our anthropocentric blinders, the harsh reality is that nothing of substance is being done to prevent our own extinction, and after looking back at humanity’s track record for slowing down this beast of globalized industrial civilization even one iota, any sane and rational person would have to conclude that there are forces at work well beyond the control of any one group of people, any state, or even any one country. Humans have the dubious honor of being the earth’s first sentient beings to have thoroughly documented their own demise while arguing with each other over whose fault it is. And the longer the Keeling Curve stretches skyward, the greater the odds that we will pull the trigger on a geoengineering scheme to slow down the inevitable:

Do these experts—the top scholars and scientists researching the subject in the world—think we will see geoengineering in our lifetime?

“Let’s see it for ten years,” the emcee said. A few scientists cautiously raised their hands. Twenty and 30 years saw some more converts. When he called out “fifty years,” more than half the room had their hands up.

That, according to the experts, is a 50-50  shot that someone is going to try, this century, to engineer the Earth’s climate. To hack the planet. – Link

Techno-capitalist carbon man’s fetish with high-tech gadgetry has already gotten the best of him. Just look at us glued to our iphones, tv’s, internet, and sundry other social media tools. We’re addicted to and dependent on our technology, and the idea of pulling the power plug on this way of life is unthinkable, not to mention fatal, for those raised within its confines.

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“In Earth’s history we see climate changes over time, and we know that some of these climate changes were associated with enormous biological destruction. How could we believe that the same sort of experience moving into the modern-day wouldn’t do the same thing?” ~ Dr. Peter D. Ward

“For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.”

02 Monday Dec 2013

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

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Dystopian-Worlds-1Despite mounting evidence of our grim reality, the world’s psychopathic leadership remains willfully deaf, dumb, and blind to the unfolding global ecocide and humanicide. A persistent sounding of the alarm by a tiny minority of the population only seems to have irritated and offended those in the elite class who are pressing the fossil-fueled industrial machine onward, full steam ahead. However, it’s not a cliff we are headed towards because surely the psychopaths would have hidden their parachutes underneath their business suits. There will be no Bottleneck for humans because we’re headed toward the black hole of extinction from which nobody gets out alive. Yes, they’ll be a few hangers-on for a brief period until there is only one lone straggler… and then darkness for the human species along with 99% of all other life. We’re doomed by a pathocracy:

…from Greek pathos, “feeling, pain, suffering”; and kratos, “rule”

A totalitarian form of government in which absolute political power is held by a psychopathic elite, and their effect on the people is such that the entire society is ruled and motivated by purely pathological values.

A pathocracy can take many forms and can insinuate itself covertly into any seemingly just system or ideology. As such it can masquerade under the guise of a democracy or theocracy as well as more openly oppressive regimes…

Kevin Moore, a frequent commenter on this site, has provided us with an excellent summation of current factors which clearly spell extinction for the “wise” ape. Certainly if a reasonable person in charge studies his list, they would want to turn this ill-fated ship around before it quite literally takes everyone down into a deep, watery grave. On the contrary, Kevin points out that they are “throwing the compass and fishing gear overboard” and “boring holes in the hull while distributing all the rations for immediate consumption.” I’m afraid those who have managed to work their way into political positions are forbidden from making any decisions jeopardizing business-as-usual; but as the memes go, there is no business on a dead planet nor is there a planet B. The least these politicians and corporate heads could do is be honest with their own children by telling them their future is not as important as the short-term profits to be had right now by ripping up the Earth’s last remaining resources and fouling the biosphere. If they cannot be truthful to their own offspring, how could we expect them to be forthright and unbiased with us?

At any rate and for posterity’s sake (however brief that may be), here is Kevin’s detailed and ‘hopium-free’ list:

Yesterday I sent out an email to a long list of people concerning the meeting I had with the local council’s climate change officer, during which I pointed out we are in the early stages of complete meltdown of planetary systems. And ‘nobody’ is at all bothered.

Here is what I sent as a summary of the meeting: .

I raised the following points with Colin Comber, New Plymouth District Council climate change officer, at our meeting on Friday, 29th November, 2013. On most points he had nothing to say.

1. The forcing factor for methane has been raised from 23 times CO2 to 34 times CO2. Even that multiplier understates the warming potential in the short term, and a figure of at least 100 times should be used for methane bursts.

2. Recent methane bursts in the East Siberian Sea have resulted in 2000ppb, which is equivalent to over 200ppm CO2 in the short-term, making the total global CO2 equivalence 600ppm (at least). The extraordinarily high concentration of greenhouse gases has resulted in rapid temperature increases in the Arctic (up around 1C since 2006, despite the huge amount of energy involved in melting ice.).

3. 2012 saw the lowest ever summer ice area.

4. The current Arctic ice area is hovering around two standard deviations below the historic average, but much of the ice is thin and new, making 2013 the lowest stable ice volume ever.

5. Atmospheric CO2 hit 400ppm earlier this year. It troughed at 393ppm (photosynthesis cycle) and is on its way up; it is anticipated to reach 403ppm April-May 2014.

6. The heat forcing of current atmospheric CO2 is equivalent to around 400,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs being exploded every day.

7. The present level of atmospheric CO2 is 40% above the pre-industrial level and corresponds to a sea level 23 meters above current; the reason we don’t have an immediate sea level rise is the thermal lag of warming deep oceans and converting ice into water. Such a level of CO2 has not been experienced any time in the evolution of humans over the past 2 million years. Indeed, for much of our recent history the CO2 level was around 180ppm and there were thick ice sheets as far south as central England.

8. The IEA has announced we are on track for a rise in average temperature of 3.5oC by 2035. Such a temperature rise puts temperatures beyond anything experienced in human history and most of the Earth into an uninhabitable zone. Interestingly, NZ governments quote the IEA as the best source of information when it comes to energy but completely ignore the IEA when it comes to unwelcome information about climate. The IEA is talking about a runaway greenhouse gas situation.

9. Acidification of the oceans [due to absorption of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere] is proceeding at an unprecedented rate, leading to stress of organisms dependent on bicarbonate cycle for shell formation. Industrial activity is altering the chemical and biological composition of the oceans at a rate faster than that of the great Permian Extinction Event which wiped out 95% of life on Earth. Continuation on the current path of burning fossil fuels will render the oceans uninhabitable to most existing marine species, and then wipe out most terrestrial species.

10. I was personally shocked to see millions of jellyfish on a local beach recently. Although my observation has no scientific significance it is indicative of the ‘death of the oceans’ I have been reading about; we are transforming the oceans back to some primeval form, similar to that of 600 million years ago, wiping out the species (turtles, sunfish etc.) that feed on jellyfish and loading the oceans with toxins. I had previously noted the paucity of sea life in rock pools compared to 30 years ago (this is presumably not from over-collection, since the beach has been designated a maritime protection zone).

11. Whereas the previous five mass extinction events (other than the one that wiped out dinosaurs) were due to natural volcanic activity, the present mass extinction event is due to industrial activity and emissions from industrial activity.

12. An unknown amount of radiation is leaking from the crippled Fukushima reactors into the Pacific Ocean. People on the west coast of the US are now extremely concerned, particularly since mass deaths of sea life are now being frequently reported.

13. Australia recently reported the highest ever October temperatures (corresponding with the earliest severe wildfires).

14. Typhoon Haiyan was the biggest storm ever to make landfall and resulted in unprecedented damage. This was due to extraordinarily hot sea water associated with ocean warming. An excellent essay on Nature Bats Last highlighted the fact that prior to the Second World War people in the region lived without the ‘benefits’ of civilization, and when storms smashed things up they just picked up the pieces and rebuilt their huts, got water from lakes and rivers, and went back to fishing from small boats: now they are unable to do any of that because all the natural, sustainable systems have been ruined or covered with concrete and asphalt, and industrial civilization resulted in a population explosion that resulted in far more victims than there would have been if development had not occurred.

15. If we imagine the Earth totally covered with industrial civilization (no land available for food production) it is clearly not sustainable. 90% covered by civilization is not sustainable. Nor is 80%. Not even 50% is sustainable. The current level of civilization utilises about 43% of the primary production of the Earth and has resulted in a 0.85C rise in average temperature. That 0.85C rise is already having catastrophic effects (meltdown of the Arctic, super-storms etc.)

16. The fact that we already have meltdown (lowest Arctic ice, extraordinary storms, death of corals etc.) at 0.85C above the long-term average indicates that we are already in overshoot with respect to population and resource consumption. Despite the fact that we have reached the meltdown stage, governments persist with policies predicated on increased population and increased resource use, which is completely insane. NPDC [New Plymouth District Council] advocates the same kind of insanity on a daily basis.

17. The previously proposed ‘safe’ level of temperature rise of 2C is not safe at all, and was only ever an arbitrary number. But climate specialists now admit that warming cannot be restricted to 2C anyway, and that we are on track for a 4C or 6C rise in average temperature, i.e. a largely uninhabitable planet in a matter of decades, probably by 2060, which would be within the normal lifespan of children living today. If the International Energy Agency is correct, the Earth will be largely uninhabitable by 2040.

18. Nothing whatsoever is being done to curtail emissions. International negotiations are a farce predicated on ‘kicking the can down the road’ for as long as possible. NPDC policy, mirroring that around the world, is geared to increasing CO2 emissions, via increased population, increased use of concrete, increased dependence on internal combustion engines, etc. I quoted the incident I had witnessed of two petrol-powered vehicles being used to deposit and level gravel on a path in Pukekura Park when one person with a wheelbarrow could have done the job (and 50 years ago that was how the job was done); meanwhile, the mulching machine in operation in the park prior to our meeting would have consumed more energy in a few hours than the electric bikes the council promotes would save in a year.

19. Extraction of conventional oil peaked over 2005 to 2008, and the economic system is now being propped up by desperation measures centered around fracking, deep-sea drilling, extraction from tar sands, etc. as well as consuming ever greater amounts of energy, such activities increase the emissions associated with fossil fuel extraction, thereby exacerbating the climate catastrophe.

20. We cannot look to John Key* or Jonathan Young** or Andrew Little*** for leadership on environmental issues: they are simply opportunists acting as agents of global corporations and money-lenders; they implement policies favourable to global corporations and money-lenders which entail trashing the environment, generally as quickly as possible.

21. Currently, NPDC is fully committed to destroying the futures of the young people living in the district and elsewhere via resource depletion and environmental collapse, as indicated by the huge display in the council foyer which announces that NPDC spends 2c of every dollar collected promoting economic growth. (Economic growth equates to increased resource consumption and increased emissions.)

22. The present economy has no future because of energy depletion and because it is increasing the level of pollution, both locally and globally. Continuation on the present path of searching for and burning fossil fuels results in an uninhabitable planet within decades. Drastically reducing fuel consumption leading to total abandonment of fossil fuels is the only sane option. (It may be too late for that, but it is still the only sane option.)

23. This is not a matter of priorities. Surely there can be no priority higher than ensuring the next generation has a habitable planet to live on. The system ignores the most important priority of all, and therefore the system is INSANE.

24. Everyone within the system pretends nothing is wrong and that the system has a future even when a modicum of rational thought indicates it doesn’t (infinite growth on a finite planet is mathematically impossible.)

25. The composition of the new council give us no reason for optimism and many reasons for extreme pessimism.

26. The main reason the general populace of the district continues to ‘behave badly’ -purchase and use oversized vehicles, cover land with concrete and asphalt, consume at unsustainable levels etc.- is because they are encouraged to by NPDC. The only message they get from the council is that everything is rosy (when the reverse is the case and we are mightily close to collapse).

27. The overuse of internal combustion engines is causing severe health problems globally and within the district. Coupled with consumption of junk food, mechanized transport is causing obesity and other diseases. Consumerism is generating a freak society, and each week that passes the ‘freak show’ becomes more bizarre.

28. There is a culture of ‘spend, spend, spend’ amongst council officers, with utterly ridiculous projects being undertaken. Apart from being totally unnecessary, these concrete and steel projects put additional CO2 into the atmosphere and bring forward abrupt climate change and an uninhabitable planet, are financially crippling the district, and pushing those on low fixed incomes ‘off the cliff’.

29. I pointed out that I spoke with Gary Bedford, regional environment officer, prior to returning to NP in 2006, and raised the matters of Peak Oil and Abrupt Climate Change; he ‘did not want to know’ and has done nothing whatsoever to protect the district. Indeed, he is on record as making absurd statements such as: “Climate change will be good for Taranaki.” I wish to have a follow-up session with him.

30. I have been proven right on practically everything I said in 2006 and subsequently to variously composed councils since 2006. Council officers have been proven consistently wrong. But it makes no difference how often council officers are proven wrong, nothing in the system changes and the insanity continues.

31. NPDC has been provided with the most accurate data and analysis available over many years (particularly my submission to the draft plan 2013), and NPDC has ignored it all. Hence, everything that matters has gotten worse and will continue to get worse by the day.

32. As far as I can establish, Colin Comber is the only council officer in a position to challenge the nonsense churned out by the bulk of the administration, in so far as all the policies advocated by senior council officers result in increased emissions and an ever faster meltdown of the global and local environment. I pointed out to him that he has ‘sat on his hands’ since our first meeting (around 6 years ago) and everything has gotten worse as a consequence.

Notes:

*John Key: NZ Prime Minister.

**Jonathan Young: MP for the city

***Andrew Little: List Labour MP for the city (MMP system).

Andre Judd: recently elected (October 2013) mayor of the city.

What is particularly interesting for me is that Jonathan Young, Andrew Little and Andrew Judd all have copies of my most recent book ‘The Easy Way’ (which details most of what is discussed on CoIC and NBL etc.) and that I had several sessions with Andrew Little on the content of TEW, and numerous sessions with Andrew Judd prior to his election.

Old habits die hard, but if you’re a smoker and you’ve got stage 3 cancer staring you in the face, the only two options are to radically change your behavior or die with your bad habits. We’ve already destroyed the Earth’s air conditioner which has altered the Jet Streams, unlocked the methane monster, and set off various other positive feedback loops ushering in a new normal of extreme weather. As a result, humans no longer enjoy a stable climate within which to cultivate food and can no longer depend on feshwater supply from seasonal snow melt. Yes, it’s rather a bit too late, but why keep digging when the hole you are in is already way too deep?

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Alice Friedemann’s Book Review of Lisa-ann Gershwin’s “Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean”

19 Thursday Sep 2013

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

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Alice Friedemann must be on the same wavelength as me. This subject of the proliferation of jellyfish caught my attention as well. Since she has done the legwork on this story, I will repost her essay below the following CBC Radio podcast with scientist Lisa-ann Gershwin:

“If jellyfish could wish for perfect conditions, these would include warming and turbid water, lack of predators and competitors, and any conditions that make it harder for other species to survive, like low oxygen or slightly more acidic water than usual. These are the very conditions we are creating at an alarming and increasing rate. And jellyfish are enjoying a renaissance like never before in history.” ~ Lisa-ann Gershwin

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Alice Friedemann’s review of Stung!…

A book review of Lisa-ann Gershwin’s “Stung! On jellyfish blooms and the future of the ocean”

jellyfish-cyanea-arctica[ Xraymike79’s Note: The image above is purely for hyperbole. There are no jellyfish this size. The largest recorded jellyfish is the Lion’s mane jellyfish which can reach a diameter of 7 to 8 feet with tentacles 120 feet long. As Don Howe states below in the comments section: “The power of jellyfish is not in their size but in their vast numbers…”]

Move aside Steven King, jellyfish are worse than any of your demons, worse than any Grade-B monster that’s graced the silver screen.  Unlike The Blob, which can be stopped by freezing, you can’t kill them.  Not with chemical repellents or biocides or nets or electric shocks or introducing species that eat jellyfish like the striped sea slug.  If you shoot, stab, slash, or chop off part of a jellyfish, it can regenerate lost body parts within two days.  Not even the past 5 major extinction events which killed up to 90% of all life on earth, killed off the jellyfish.

Meanwhile they’re on a rampage, doing millions of dollars in damage clogging intakes of nuclear, coal, and desalination plants, killing millions of farmed fish, and destroying fishing nets with their sticky icky bodies.

The more we overfish, pollute, acidify and warm the ocean, create vast dead zones, and trawl ocean bottoms, the better the jellyfish do.

The oceans make the earth habitable for us.  They generate most of the oxygen we breathe, stabilize temperatures, drive climate and weather, and absorb a third of the CO2 we’re emitting.  Over 3 billion people depend on the oceans for their livelihoods; 2.6 billion depend on seafood as their main source of protein.

Most alarming of all, 40% of phytoplankton has died off globally since the 1950s – they’re not only at the base of the food chain, but they generate most of the oxygen we breathe, as well as absorb half of the carbon dioxide, and their increasing death rate will make the ocean get warmer even faster.

Why Jellyfish are taking over the world

Prolific, hard to kill, breed fast, and more – no wonder they’re so successful:

  • They’ve everywhere, spread around the world in ship ballast or sea currents.
  • Ubiquitous – from top to bottom of the ocean, from pole to pole, year-round.
  • Grow faster than other species to quickly take advantage of any food, and they’ll eat almost anything — copepods, fish eggs, larvae, flagellates. They eat past when they can keep consuming, spit food out, waste a great deal other creatures could have eaten.  Even when they’re full, their tentacles keep capturing prey.
  • If there’s no food, jellyfish can consume their own body mass and get smaller and smaller until they find food again, and rapidly return to normal.  Even when they grow smaller they can still reproduce.
  • Consume many times their body weight in high-value food but are of low-value themselves because they provide little energy, ounce for ounce, compared to the food they ate.  So they have few predators.
  • When 2 weeks old they can lay 10,000 eggs a day that hatch 12-20 hours later
  • They reproduce many ways: massive orgies, fission, fusion, cloning, hermaphroditism, external fertilization, self-fertilization, copulation.
  • If they lose a body part, they can regenerate it within 2 days.
  • They are the “Last Man Standing” in eutrophication zones because they need less oxygen
  • Many species can tolerate any salinity level, from fresh water to salt water
  • They’ve survived ice ages, hothouse climates, all five mass extinctions, predators, competitors, and us.
  • Jellyfish in the oceans have been known to live over 10 years
  • Many of them avoid predators by long vertical migrations from the deep sea to the surface at night and back down again by daylight

They can wait a long time for the right conditions to bloom

Just as plants have seeds which can endure many years waiting for optimum conditions to grow, jellyfish have a seed-like state called a polyp that waits for good conditions, and can clone themselves to create armies of ‘seeds’ waiting to burst into jellyfish blooms seemingly overnight. Polyps don’t “grow up” to become jellyfish.  They spawn what we think of as jellyfish – the medusa — which then mate sexually to produce polyps, which stick to rocks, shells, man-made structures, plastic, etc.  Both the polyps and the medusa could be considered “immortal” – when a polyp dies it’s clones live on, and when the medusa form of jellyfish dies, it’s pieces turn back into polyps (though I wasn’t clear if all species or just some do this).

Jellyfish are at the top of the food chain

That seems so wrong– a primitive brainless blob?  But jellyfish eat much larger clams, crabs, starfish, snails, and fast, smarter fish and squid.

They’re also at the top because not much wants to eat them.

Worse yet, they outcompete other sea life by devouring the eggs and larvae of species that would have grown up to eat jellyfish larvae.  It’s a double whammy since these larvae never grow up, leaving a lot more food for jellyfish to consume. A jellyfish bloom can clear the water of all eggs, larvae, copepods, and small plankton in less than a day.  This makes it almost impossible for some overfished species to make a comeback.

Read the rest…….

The Silence of Extinction

22 Monday Jul 2013

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

≈ 59 Comments

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In a small way the plight of the British in 1940 resembles the state of the civilised world now. At that time we had had nearly a decade of the well-intentioned, but quite wrong belief that peace was all that mattered. The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the green lobbies now, their intentions were more than good, but wholly inappropriate for the war that was about to start.”

~ James Lovelock, The Vanishing face of Gaia
(quoted in ‘the end of more’)

Year 2013

In the early years of the twenty-first century, reports from the global scientific community started to take on a more dire tone as Arctic amplification melted the ice sheets and glaciers of the North Pole, deformed the jet stream, and altered oceanic currents. The Arctic treeline marched northward gaining footholds in land now unlocked from its frozen slumber. Animals, insects, viruses, and pathogens, which were driven by the warming planet to migrate northward, wreaked havoc on native species. Heatwaves also became more common in the lower latitudes where the bulk of humanity lived. Seasonal transitions became less gradual and more abrupt. Extremes of weather, flood and drought, started to occur more frequently and with greater destructive force. Perhaps the only business of Homo economicus to speak candidly about the reality of climate change was the insurance industry only because its business model could not hide or externalize the high costs of climate chaos. Humans had built their entire global civilization and profligate lifestyle upon the burning of rich, energy-dense fossil fuels. To change the course of this behemoth ship was well beyond the scope of any one nation or group of people. Talk of modern civilization running on so-called renewable energy ignored the fact that such alternative sources were only extenders of the faltering fossil fuel age, and such a transition was too late anyway. The seeds of our downfall had been sown over a century ago when man accepted the Faustian bargain of exploiting carbon-based energy whose power came with the price of a wrecked planet. The marketing ploys of “green” and “organic” were no fix for the unstoppable wave of eco-destruction unleashed by disaster capitalism. The leaders of all countries knew there was no politically viable way to stem the human population explosion which was also at the root of the ecological crisis.

We have become Vishnu and Shiva, the ancient Hindu gods of creation and destruction: As we create more of us, far more than we now understand the planet can sustain, we are creating our own destruction, both terrible and beautiful. Our scientists, exploring the frontiers of our knowledge of the world, have gathered enough data for us to understand that our consumption and proliferation have set in motion a planetary change in our relatively comfortable envelope of climate.

~ Mary Ellen Harte

Highway to Hell

Year 2047

In the last few decades the climate of the Earth had defied all the overly conservative, human-centric estimates that were designed to maintain the suicidal path of business-as-usual. Of course most scientists were shocked at the rapidity with which the climate had spiraled out of control. Nations which were the major producers of the world’s food soon halted exports in order to feed their own frightened and hungry populations and stave off revolt. Those countries heavily reliant on imports for their sustenance quickly devolved into anarchy and killing fields. Politicians were the first to be done away with, drawn and quartered with their heads placed on spikes. The thin veneer of civilization dissolved under the brutal reality of power outages, food riots, and climate chaos. Some countries with nuclear plants suffered Fukushima-like meltdowns due to the loss of their power grid while others, who were able to keep a lid on the disaster by maintaining electrical power under a state of marshal law, carried out accelerated decommissioning of their reactors. Nevertheless, with the collapse of the electric grid large swaths of the Earth were rendered uninhabitable by leaking radiation and toxic rain. The sudden downward spiral of civilization was also punctuated by the detonation of a few nuclear bombs in countries like Pakistan where arsenals had fallen into the hands of radical groups. In the eyes of the believers, Armageddon had finally arrived.

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Year 2087

For hundreds of miles north and south of the equator a death zone of searing heat, barren land, dry riverbeds, and lifeless ocean encircled the Earth, but a few places at the poles still held small pockets of human communities who practiced subsistence farming and fishing as well as the art of scavenging technology from the past. Even though the rusted steal hulks of factories, cars, airliners, ships, and other relics of CO2-spewing industrialization now lay motionless in fields of tall grass or at the bottom of the ocean, the effects of the CO2/methane bomb unleashed by modern man would last for millennia. Sea level rise and the chaotic weather of the planet had displaced all the elaborate infrastructure that had been built to take advantage of once predictable growing seasons, fertile soils, and river systems. Gaia had pulled the rug out from under man leaving him scampering for cover like bugs from beneath an overturned rock, and there was nowhere to run. The few humans who presently eked out an existence at the poles were simply the flotsam and jetsam of the great collapse. The coddled elite who had actually planned for this eco-apocalypse committed suicide long ago when their stash of fine wine ran out and their gold had no value to anyone.

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Year 2127

The sound of human voices no longer filled the air. As a matter of fact, the sound of any living thing had vanished. Nearly all the monuments of human achievement and ingenuity had crumbled away like sand castles before a rising tide. Only a few ancient relics still stood like the pyramids in Egypt and long segments of the Great Wall of China. Not much remained of the “disposable society” of modern times except for a few large construction projects such as Hoover Dam. Repossession on the humans was the only option Gaia had for a species that had built up mountains of environmental damage with no intention of ever changing its omnicidal ways. The slate had to be wiped clean before the slow, million year process of remediation could begin…

Vast, flat expanses of viscous ooze, unbroken by waves, covered all of what once were vibrant oceans. Great belches of toxic hydrogen sulfide would occasionally break the calm of these oily, purple-colored plains stretching far into the horizon. The deadness of the these poisonous waters was mirrored by the stillness on the land which now was exposed to the full forces of UV radiation through a destroyed ozone layer. High overhead, thin wisps of clouds slowly moved along a pale green sky. A fetid, noxious smell filled the air and the silence of extinction was everywhere.

Staring Into the Abyss

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Capitalism, Climate Change, Consumerism, Corporate State, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation, Inequality, Neo-Colonialism, Pollution, Wall Street Fraud

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I’ll admit, I don’t really read far into any of the scientific analyses. They all point the same direction: massive discontinuity and unpredictability, what some describe as nonlinear. Armed as I am with only a modest science education, the most basic fact still able to be grokked by the masses is that we live on a water world, where oceans are both the base of the food chain and the creator/regulator of the air we land-based creature breathe. The oceans need not die in their totality before withdrawal of their support functions kills us, yet we behave as if it’s all expendable. We can’t even admit such basic biological mechanisms, so the oceans are simultaneously overharvested and used as dump sites for everything. Real smart, like the rest of collective mistakes.” 

~ Brutus

Hello fellow collapsitarians, train wreck rubberneckers, concerned citizens, and everyone in between. My time for respite from the horrors of capitalist industrial civilization has arrived wherein I let this site sit fallow for a couple of weeks. When I rail against capitalism, this doesn’t by default make me a proponent of communism or any other ‘ism’. Globalized capitalism is what has conquered the world and it happens to be the current ‘ism’ destroying the biosphere with the industrial efficiency and speed of a Nazi gas chamber. The time to have created another ‘ism’ which may have saved humans from omnicide has long since passed. We are hurdling towards the end of the Anthropocene and into a period I call ‘The Great Cleansing’, whereby Mother Nature scrubs the Earth of all the hubristic artifacts and baggage of modern man. Of course there will quite a bit of noxious material that she’ll have to deal with and absorb such as radioactive waste, plastics, and CO2, but what is a few million years of remediation when compared to the Earth’s age of nearly 5 billion years with perhaps another 7.5 billion to go until consumed by the Sun. Despite all the insults and neglect that she has suffered at our hands, she will probably allow a small tribe of humans to survive the bottleneck. It would be a shame for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to have no beneficiaries, would it not?

What was our major downfall? I think we put too much faith in technology. Indeed we have used our big brains to solve many seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but we’ve put our technological cleverness on a pedestal at the expense of everything else. Technology has become the God of the 21st Century, the saviour for all of industrial civilization’s increasingly complex and insoluble problems. Granted, it has allowed man to search the stars and decode the DNA of life, but in the process it has clouded our memory of where we’ve come from, the womb from whence we were born. We’re just temporary visitors here with no preeminent right to rule the world above all other living things, and it looks increasingly like we have overstayed our welcome. While Homo sapiens are busy arguing about who or what is responsible for their current predicament, Mother Nature is slowly ramping up her fury. Geophysical forces on a planetary scale have been unleashed; they can no longer be contained by the scientific computations and laboratory tinkerings of mankind. The die has been cast and our fate sealed. No geo-engineering scheme or whiz-bang techno fix can contain her. As the Arctic melts away, followed by the Greenland ice sheet, and then the West Antarctic, our coastal cities will succumb to the sea. Jet streams and hydrologic cycles will transfigure themselves. Our once hospitable and stable seasons for agriculture will become erratic, the water sparse, and the land barren. The great oceanic currents will stall and break down, creating the anoxic and purple-hued waters of a ‘Canfield Ocean‘. As Paul said, the human race is “living in some kind of fantasy land, a land in which truth is avoided”, but a handful of us have peered into the abyss of the unfolding eco-apocalypse, and the stark reality of mankind’s own extinction has been seared into our brains.

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How do we go on from here? …one day at a time. What once was important has become trivial. This would include all of the trappings and illusions of mainstream culture. Functioning in this “fantasy world” and going through the motions seems otherworldly and fake. We feel like blurting our what we know to those around us, but we can’t. There’s a straitjacket awaiting us at the nearest insane asylum. No one believes what the cold hard facts and trends have told us after we discarded the rose-tinted glasses society demands everyone wear. And why should they? It’s a traumatic experience to the psyche. Everything about the world you have been taught, all the myths of eternal progress and man’s place in the universe, comes crashing down in a thousand pieces.

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So the question remains of how to live in a world of illusions and fakery. Gravitate towards that which is real. Shut off your TV and walk outside to breath in the summer air and run your fingers along the bark of an ancient tree, hike into the wilderness and watch the stars at night, spend one-on-one time with those close to you. They don’t need to know what you know; most will refuse to believe the facts even when meticulously laid out before their eyes. Leave them in their comfort zone, at least for a little while longer or until they become curious. A citizen of modern industrial civilization who confronts the horrific future awaiting their unsustainable way-of-living is like a drug abuser trying to deal with his self-destructive addiction. Both are under the spell of a very powerful force that does not let go until death. They are prisoners, mentally and physically. To talk about this dark subject, the collapse of industrial civilization and mankind’s impending extinction, join a group of like-minded people. Such clubs seem to be growing these days.

It’s a bit odd talking into the ether of the internet to people I will never meet or hear the voices of, but such a venue is really the only place a dissident voice can be heard in today’s atomized and one-dimensional society. For the reasons discussed above, I cannot speak of these disturbing topics to anyone else. This is my only outlet.

No Bailout for Mass Extinction and the Collapse of Industrial Civilization

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

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

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“There’s No Economy on a Dead Planet”: Reflections on a Missing Election Issue

excerpt…

“A Powerful Symbol of the Age of Man”

Climate change is indisputably anthropogenic – human-made. The long deep-pocketed propaganda, public relations, and lobbying arms of the corporate carbon industrial complex have long insisted that global warming is a reflection of unalterable natural forces that operate independently of human control. But the preponderant majority of the climate-sentient world agrees with the overwhelming consensus finding of contemporary earth scientists that global warming is anthropogenic (“human made”) – that it reflects the visible hand of human practice, politics, and policy. It knows that the story of the world’s broken ecology is about the human release of greenhouse gases resulting from the uncontrolled extraction and use of carbon-based fossil fuels.[8]

The harsh reality has to be acknowledged in elite capitalist media. Reflecting its duty to provide its privileged readers with reasonably accurate information, even the neoliberal, arch-capitalist Anglo-American Economist magazine acknowledges the dominant role of human agency in a recent special supplemental report on “The Vanishing North.”  According to The Economist last June, “The shrinkage of the sea ice is no less a result of human hands than the ploughing of the prairies. The cause is global pollution, and the risks it carries are likewise global. The Arctic, no longer distant or inviolable, has emerged, almost overnight, as a powerful symbol of the age of man.”[9] 

“Accelerating the Catastrophe”

What do the two dominant U.S. business parties offer towards the goal of saving the planet – well, its living species – from the crisis of anthropogenic global warming? Less than nothing. An escalation of the assault, in fact, making the problem worse.

Writing about the drastic melting of “the earth’s air-conditioner,” Gillis notes a chilling lack of urgency in reacting to the problem the part of rich nation governments, whose “main response has been to plan for exploitation of newly accessible minerals in the Arctic, including more oil.”[10]

Instead of acting to limit greenhouse emissions, those governments see the retreat of the great northern ice cover as an opportunity “to accelerate the catastrophe…The reaction,” Noam Chomsky notes, “demonstrates an extraordinary willingness to sacrifice the lives of our children and grandchildren for short-term gain. Or, perhaps, an equally remarkable willingness to shut our eyes so as not to see the impending peril.”[11] …

…The Republicans and the Democrats both decline to take the great time bomb of climate change[18] with anything remotely like the seriousness it deserves since doing so would disrupt “the economy.” They both worship at the altar of growth and the notion that “a rising tide lifts all boats” – capitalism’s longstanding fake, eco-cidal answer to popular pressure for jobs, and end to poverty, and the downward redistribution of income and wealth.[19] They both refuse to let long-term considerations of livable ecology and human survival interfere with the short-term pursuit of material expansion and the bottom line, not to mention the short-term logic of the election cycle.

I often wonder why people, who know that climate change is real, refuse to discuss it. They refuse to discuss it because it will upset their regimen of making money and carrying along with business-as-usual.

Bill Mckibben was on some late night TV show and he mentioned that the executive of some oil company said that if we need to move our food production north, then we will. Here is why that won’t work. Climate change means widespread famine, wars for dwindling resources, the fall of States, and the final extinction of man. There’s no more pretending that economic growth is possible or even a sane path for us to follow. Yet the system continues on through coerced participation.

I wonder if our forebears from 100 years ago would alter their actions if they knew from scientific and observable evidence that their way of life would cause the extinction of their progeny. Do you think they were more sensible back then? At that time, Edward Bernays and the tools of mass media manipulation had not yet entered society. Are not climate change deniers and free market ideologues the flat-earthers or Salem witch hunters of the 21st century? Feel free to give me an answer if you have one.

If you destroy the oceans, the cradle of life, then they will overtake you, returning you from whence you came…