The Devil Is Laughing His Ass Off

 Collapse, Environment, Peak Oil, Uncategorized
Nov 302013
 
Post Views: 0

I had a Black Friday sale, but was afraid to announce it for fear of being trampled to death.

I need not to have worried.  A new television is a lot more valuable and important then having any storable food.

The holiday season is upon us, but it would be nicer if it weren’t. This is when the real crazies come out. Either H.A.A.R.P. is pumping out more electromagnetic crazy or it’s just something Americants “do”.

This season will be like last season. But it’s not open season, not yet. Too bad.

ISON didn’t deliver any aliens either, at least, not yet. Nor has California slid off into the acidic oceans either, at least not yet.

There are plenty of earthquakes and volcanoes going off right now (35), maybe this helps account for the crazy season. Maybe the clouds of ash are belching a chemical causing mass stupidity, iradium stupidest, now encircling the globe.

Oh, in case anybody missed it, the “October Surprise” embaced by the other fringe crazies didn’t happen either. Some of you are in for a loooong wait…

Fall is a very wierd time, every year. This is the time when all the prophets and profits come out, or their failed predictions fall through the widening cracks, but nobody really ever seems to notice. There’s never any accounting.

It’s strange.  Really strange.  All of it. Nobody seems to be able to count anything anymore. Basic math. Add, subtract, sum.  Total. What does it mean? Continue reading »

Losing Habitability of Planet Earth

 Collapse
Nov 222013
 
Post Views: 0

Big news. Many of you have already read about this topic right here over the past several years.  We’re going to lose the planet, ie., it is becoming “inhabitable” for humans and other living things.

Warsaw – Day 12: Too little too late to save the planet

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 By Paul Brown in Warsaw

 The Climate News Network’s Paul Brown has been in Warsaw for two weeks at the UN climate talks – the 19th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. With the talks in their final hours, he reports on the probable outcome, a  depressingly familiar one.

 While every country has agreed it is vital to keep the planet from overheating by more than 2°C, there is no sign in Warsaw that the political action needed to achieve that is possible.

 As the negotiations dragged on through the final day and into the night, countries were still wrangling over details of draft agreements that will take another two years to negotiate.

 A bleak assessment by the 44 countries that make up the Alliance of Small Island States is that politicians have not faced the reality of what is about to happen.

 Even though they feel desperate about the lack of progress, delegates still avoid naming names to avoid diplomatic embarrassment. But one tired negotiator said: “We know that it is probably too late to prevent whole countries disappearing beneath the waves, but that is only a small part of it.

 “There will be an intense escalation of global instability caused by trans-boundary migration of displaced people, massive hikes in the price of food causing civil unrest, and many more climate-related disasters. That is the situation we are walking into.”

Refusing liability

There have been several strands to the negotiations here. The developing countries want access to new funds from rich nations to prepare for the ravages of climate change. At these talks $100 million was pledged by developed countries, but it was unclear how much of it was new money, or existing aid money diverted to the climate from other sources.

Since at previous conferences countries have pledged to provide $100 billion a year of new aid by 2020, the Warsaw pledges are seen by developing countries as hopelessly inadequate.

But the most contentious issue was “loss and damage”. There is already a fund for adaptation to climate change, but the developing countries say that this does not cover irreversible losses, for example whole areas, even countries, disappearing into the sea. Other examples are loss of coral reefs and fisheries and the destruction of agriculture through climate change.

What developing countries want is a separate fund to cover these losses. But the richer countries fear this is an open-ended commitment they cannot afford, and they will never agree to it. They want to shift this issue into the adaptation fund and avoid the notion of being liable for compensation for climate damage.

Anyone for fudge?

The United States, China and the European Union are much keener to talk about the new international agreement due to be signed in Paris in 2015, in which all 194 countries that are parties to the Climate Change Convention will take on responsibilities to reduce or at least limit emissions.

A fourth draft of a proposed agreement to limit emissions, and a timetable for achieving them, are now being talked about. The optimists hope that countries will begin to offer new pledges to cut emissions beyond 2020 on 23 September 2014, when the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has called a climate summit of world leaders in New York.

If this happens, then all the pledges can be examined over the following months to see whether countries have done enough to keep the temperature rise below 2°C. If scientists tell politicians that their pledges do not limit the rise enough, then there will be time for more to be done before aiming for final agreement in Paris in December 2015.

Perhaps the only bright part of the talks in Warsaw has been the attitude of China, now the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Partly because of domestic pressure to reduce pollution, the Chinese are making huge efforts at home to become more energy-efficient. There were even hints here from the Chinese delegation that their country would accept an emissions reduction target. This would be a remarkable transformation in attitude.

 The final result in Warsaw will be a political fudge.  It will be denounced by green activists and developing countries as too little progress, and probably too late to save the planet from unacceptable climate change. Increasingly, that looks like the correct assessment. – Climate News Network

The intense escalation of global instability can only mean one thing. I usually spell it out as “C.O.L.L.A.P.S.E” and have also come to start calling it “extinction”.

Got your food supply yet? Expect a massive global food shortage to arise, this is already a predetermined outcome. Expect GIGANTIC refugee migration to impact everyone.  All foretold right here for the past decade.

Expect future total failures from political leadership to “save” us. The writing is already on the wall everywhere you look. Everything from lying about the alleged 2°C “target” which we WILL blow right past (absolutely, positively guaranteed) to “how much time we have left”.

I can only shake my head at the utter stupidity of this species. Even in the face of self-extermination, they will continue to deceive their own selves.

 

The Uninhabitable Earth

 Collapse, Food, Practical Preparations, Uncategorized
Nov 172013
 
Post Views: 0

I have been without a functioning ISP for the past 24 hours due to a snowstorm. Not much snow, but it wiped out a lot of power in the area for some reason. So I got a ton of email all at once (doom news).

So here’s a quick update and assessment of what this means.

Scanning through all of this, I read:

Prepare Now For a 4°C Rise In Temperature (Climate News Network) – A “bleak future” is now guaranteeed for the human race because little progress has been made to slow global warming. We must “prepare for a world temperature rise of 4°C because scientists no longer believe that politicians are capable of holding the temperature rise below the internationally agreed limit,  2°C above pre-industrial levels.” Some parts of the world were already in danger of becoming too hot for humans to inhabit.

“Professor Maslin said: “We are already planning for a 4°C world because that is where we are heading. I do not know of any scientists who do not believe that. We are just not tackling the enormity of the task we face to keep it below the agreed 2°C danger threshold.”

The “most likely scenario now “is a 4°C rise in temperature. If we do not prepare to adapt we simply won’t be able to.”

A 4°C rise in temperature is not survivable.  I’ve covered this before.

“The Australian Government was ignoring climate change and still expecting places like Darwin to expand. But that was unlikely because they would soon become untenable.  “If employers ask people to continue to work in temperatures above 37°C, they will be killing them in increasing numbers,” she said.

Parts of Arizona, Australia and India temperatures were reaching – and for days staying above – the thermal maximum of endurance, which was around 37°C, the core heat of the human body.  Above that temperature, and sometimes below, depending on the combination of heat, humidity and air speed, keeping cool put too much strain on the heart and people began to die.

 She said that she was studying how human societies could survive such daytime temperatures and continue to work. “There could be some night working, or people could work, rest in cool rooms, and then work again, but their productivity would drop and it would be economically unviable to have factories or farms in such conditions.”

Her researches were focusing on how to keep essential services like farming, police, ambulance, district nurses, construction and mining going in a warming world. “Obviously these people will be risking their lives if they continue to try and work outside when the ambient temperature is above 37°C,” she said.

There would be no food production. No ability to sustain the world’s billions, even if they could move someplace cooler.

With the UN climate talks in Warsaw at their mid-point, a fringe meeting is debating the future of agriculture in a warming world. A senior scientist tells the Climate News Network of her deep misgivings for the future.

There’s more:

World ‘neglects’ climate impact on food – LONDON, 17 November – Global leaders are failing to respond to the threat posed by climate change to the growing challenge of feeding the world, a leading agricultural researcher says.  They do not treat the problem seriously, and they are ignoring the warnings of science about what is liable to happen.

Yet, she says, there is much more evidence available than there was a few years ago, and the future it describes is cause for great concern.

The criticism comes from Dr Sonja Vermeulen, who heads the CGIAR research programme on climate change, agriculture and food security (CCAFS).

“They’re not sitting up and taking notice of Working Group II of the IPCC. I know that what we’ll get from that this time is a much larger body of evidence than in 2007 on food production – and the picture is not rosy.”

China AND Japan have opted NOT to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, with most countries of the world, including the United States, continuing to pretend that it’s not that urgent. Australia is even worse, despite epic floods, fires, heatwaves and droughts.

Do not expect ANY political leadership to “solve” the unfolding disaster, it’s very clear they are quite incapable of doing so.

More climate events:

Saudi Capital Plagued by Biblical Floods

Super Typhoon HAIYAN affects 13% of Philippine population, leaves 4%. homeless

Perfect Storms like Haiyan and Sandy will become ‘normal’

Allegedly, we are expect to ‘adapt’ – but this presumes quite a lot – such as available land locations, food production, migration, energy supplies and even the overall “survivability” of wet-bulb temperatures that will kill off all animal and plant life.  The notion is quite ludicrous and “adaption”, once thought as being perfectly possible for the world’s billions – becomes factually false.

Preparing for Hell and High Water only admits that “adaption will be global“, but hasn’t actually reached the stage of whether “adpation is effective“.  That is a euphanism for “survival”.

We now know enough that there is simply no possible way billions can survive the next 50 years. Unbelievably, the science is slowly catching up with the larger assessment of the current state of the world. This may seem puzzling or even counter-intuitive, after all, doesn’t science lead the way as the “best evidence we have” for the state of the world? Yes it does – if ALL the facts and data are correlated and combined and presented with complete honesty.

This is where “extinction” and the now vogue term, “near-term extinction” steps in. There is simply not enough factual evidence that humans can really survive what is now known now to be an absolute certainty. No food and either no water or too much water.  Extreme drought, floods and violent storms. Billions having to relocate – using and consuming precious resources in an attempt at ‘adapation’.

The reality is we stand little to zero chance of long-term survival even by adaption. Only short-term survival becomes possible (less then a single generation). The reason is we will consume all food production faster than it can be replenished.  Famine and starvation, sickness and disease will result – while more violent storms impact all other fields of production. Die-off is the result, with the world getting hotter and hotter each passing year, with less and less food. It is a vicious, unforgiving cycle that will reduce humanity quickly.

Adaption presumes we can go on feeding ourselves, but how? With air-conditioned greenhouses on the surface, while we live below? How long could that be continued? And what about breakdowns, energy shortages and failures?

The startling truth is if we lose the surface of the Earth to habitability – we’ve LOST the game, completely and forever, as far as humans (and all present life forms) are concerned.

And THAT in a nutshell – is what is unfolding right now. An uninhabitable Earth.

———

I could give you a ‘what to do’ list of things humanity could do. And especially what YOU could do, right now. Believe it or not, that’s already been done, right here on this blog and on many other sites. But it wouldn’t change the outcome any, because we’re all in this together. And what needs to be done, RIGHT NOW is so drastic, so all-encompassing, and so disruptive to life as we know it today, that it will simply be rejected out of hand and ignored despite being the only possible “chance” humanity might have. We are not going to take this opportunity to ‘save ourselves’. I’m going to simply go on ignoring all such claims, becasue they are completely without any merit or evidence.

This is exactly what is happening if you’re paying attention to the glacial progress of the world’s climate negotiations despite increasingly dire warnings from the world’s top scientists – as we inch close and closer to absolute disaster, the politicians and industry just go right on ignoring this global catastrophe.

All YOU can do now is prepare yourself for massive food shortages, water shortages and extreme weather events (including droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes) and the resulting SOCIAL CHAOS that will come with this. It’s not a “fix”, let’s all admit that. It’s only going to help when it’s needed, but it is not going to avoid anything for anybody anywhere.

And you can prepare yourselves to die. But I caution everyone first and foremost, learn to live first, so that in dying as we all must, you will have actually lived. Don’t be a useless, brain-dead connedsumer for example, stupidly supporting more wars, oppression, slavery and deceit. Live conscientiously and with purpose and reason beyond self. Make a contribution to the other life around you – whether animal, plant or human. The miracle of life is far above and beyond our passing attention spans. We’re all badly distracted from the truth here.  Our existence, our life, the opportunity to even be alive, is an absolutely incredible event. But this is not limited to humans only, this truth extends to all living things throughout the entire biosphere. All things that live are amazing in reality.

We’re much too quick to extinguish life for the sheer pleasure or the arrogance or the hatred that we possess. It’s why the planet and the biosphere is in peril. We take, take, take, never deeply considering that the life we are taking for our use and pleasure, is just as amazing as our own life really is. It’s incredible that any of us are even here to experience this, but it’s also just as incredible that anything else that lives is even here. The Universe is a hostile place full of deadly radiation, airless vaccum and is utterly, utterly hostile to life.  And so is MUCH of the surface of this planet. We live at the bare minimums of the habitable zone, but we’re here.  We’re still alive, despite our incessant and constant abuse of the biosphere year after year, and our gleeful willingness to tread down and extinguish everything else that gets in our ‘way’.

It’s not the way to live and cherish life – and never, ever was.

So make the most of it, using the time that you DO have left with meaningful purpose and reason. The life that you STILL HAVE needs to be ‘spent’ wisely. It is after all, all that anybody on the entire planet has really got, and all that you ever had anyway. The tomorrows that come are not a guarantee that we will still be here, that you will still be here. So make the most of what you have, right now – at this very moment, and do that every moment of every day that you have left.

You can do no better than this, not in any philosophy or any religion or by any measure of how you should live.

The life you have is the reason to embrace this life despite whatever comes.

Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half

 Environment, Uncategorized
Nov 142013
 
Post Views: 0

Much has been written in the denialsphere about the so-called “warming pause” that I’ve not bothered to cover here, simply because it’s all bullshit.

Real Climate has a new article out, “Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half”, on satellite and land-based measurements that goes beyond the widely used HadCRUT4 data set.

This is what they found:

The deep ocean has also continued to absorb excess heat, but that’s not expected to continue much longer. It will show up “here” (where we live) – and soon.

Increased ocean temperatures over 80 degrees were greatly responsible for the “Super Storm” that just destroyed the Philippines.

If you look carefully and pay attention to the published literature, you will find many reports of temperatures far in excess of the alleged .85C increase that we’re supposedly at right now.

Australia is “on track” for its warmest ever calendar year, temperatures in October 1.43C above the long-term average and more than 100 heat-related records broken in the past 12 months, according to a new report.  Australia is on track for its warmest ever year

There are now dozens of major places that have consistently reported higher temperatures than .85C increase.

This means we are far, far closer to the catastrophic “tipping point of 2C” than we’re being told.  I’ve already well-documented the 2C figure is a false “safety limit” – chosen as politically expedient and nothing more.

Anyway, I thought that this was interesting. No cooling shown. Nothing but faster warming and more “updated figures” to that previous estimates were WAY off.

And there is this: Methane Levels going through the Roof

Huge amounts of methane are now escaping from the seabed of the Arctic Ocean, penetrating the sea ice, and entering the atmosphere, in a process that appears to be accelerating, resulting in huge amounts of methane in the atmosphere over the Arctic Ocean.

I told you so. Repeatedly. The “time” that everyone has assumed to be “theirs” simply “isn’t”.

Spend it wisely.

 

Future Prep – Part III revisited

 Collapse, Uncategorized
Nov 132013
 
Post Views: 0

Contemplating how much time we all have left before life gets extremely difficult – and then impossible – makes you wonder about the life you have lived up to this point.

There is a saying that says (without looking it up) – “a life not examined is a life not worth living“. Examining life – especially your own – is a very useful exercise.

What have you done? What do you still want to do? The collection of experiences we have is the timeline of our personal history. There are some things I’d still like to do.

I recently came across a travel blog while exploring some of these thoughts. The author say’s he’s traveled to 193 countries.  That’s pretty interesting.

However, there wasn’t much on the site. It sort of sounded like the guy flew from airport to airport, chalking up countries one by one, scoring stamps on his passport.  Not very interesting. Continue reading »

Understanding Truth

 Collapse, Uncategorized
Nov 032013
 
Post Views: 0

I’ve been quiet lately, pondering many thoughts, stories, articles, books and sources of information. Which means I’ve been pretty busy, just not busy writing here.

I’ve picked up a number of good books by Richard Carrier which has me totally engrossed in their contents. At any given time, there must be five books or so that I’m reading, picking them up between other tasks and chores, reading until I stop, and then perhaps returning to them the same day or even a month later.  I find that this works pretty good for me, I still manage to get a lot done while keeping up on the material that interests me.

I note that the online world of entertainment, distraction, deception and phony news is the same, so I didn’t miss anything there.  I’ve kept the television off too, our one station (ABC) not worth watching (at all) and not even watching any movies or DVD’s. Why bother?

Of worthwhile interest is my decision to write less / do more.  The reasons are many, most notably that despite a whole lot of hoopla, announcements and arm-waving, I’m quite convinced we are all pretty well screwed.  Specifically, none of us have as much time left as all the news, reports, analysis and pundits think we do. Television or movies ranks very, very low, almost non-existent on my bucket list of things I’d still like to do.

I am personally persuaded that there is nothing more to really be done to extend our remaining time on Planet Earth.  All talk of mitigation, adaption, or even survival for what lies ahead is really a deceptive distraction to a terrible truth. If the discussion of these topics does not include extinction, it’s not a real, authentic discussion, and is most definitely not based upon (all) the facts, evidence or events now occurring.

There is now a growing body of evidence that the time left to each of us is indeed shorter than we think.  Far, far shorter than what we are being told. This blog for many years has been focused on collapse. The indicators, events, reasons and cause. Why (devastating) collapse will likely happen. Eventually, this became vogue and was picked up elsewhere too.  Collapse preceeds extinction. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the environment and range of species or a entire civilization, collapse still comes first.

Some are leap-frogging ahead to extinction. Not that this matters much, but this can tend to blur the human response that will occur.  Efforts at mitigation, adaption preceding collapse or following collapse are being overlooked. Even surviving the collapse is being passed over.  Ignoring these isn’t practically realistic (what we will actually “do”), as it will encompass many years and millions, even billions of lives and untold human effort at survival and suffering.

It’s worth discussing. It’s worth being aware of, because it will happen. It’s worth everything we can give it – because despite any claims to the contrary, we will struggle to survive – even if we know it is hopeless.

Continue reading »

Meeples

 Collapse
Nov 032013
 
Post Views: 0

Climate News Network reported a day or so back that by 2025, humans will produce enough garbage and waste to fill a line of garbage trucks 5,000 kilometres long every single day. Over six million tons.

Imagine (if you dare) what that means for the world’s resources. All that “garbage” is coming from somewhere, harvested, mined, milled, molded, fabricated, produced – from raw materials.

All for our temporary use, leaving behind a virtual wasteland of shit.

Which nobody cares about.

Which make this short video accurate as hell (sent in by Lonewolf):

There can be absolutely no doubt whatsoever what fate lies in store for us. By our own hand.

Too many people believe in fantasy fairy-tales and don’t believe we “really” live here, so trashing the place for short-term pleasure and gain is “ok”.

However, the “evidence” more then suggests that this is all there is.

It’s going to be a hell on earth world for our kids to “inherit” (should they survive that long).

“Thanks Dad, I appreciate all that you did for me.”

“No problems Son, it’s the least I could do”.

Lazy fuckers, fantasy-filled fools united in global destruction.

A good summary here: 2210 The Collapse (should have been titled The Collapse 2030).

An informative video.  However, you can safely ignore the hoopla / propaganda feel-good b.s. at the end of the movie, because it’s complete and utter bullshit.

At 1:28 – “Our two basic natures: the animal nature that got us here, and two, the logical nature that could possibly help us survive.”

The guy has it exactly backwards. Our logical nature devised technology and civilization, which is what is causing our destruction, now on a global scale (versus historically regional – repeatedly) – heretofore unheard of, but now, literally in our laps, accelerating and worsenging daily at a breakneck pace.

Our animal nature helped us to survive for over 40,000 years. But we never built a global, interconnected, highly dependent civilization before…

I always find it interesting in a sad, pathetic way, how they can point to our short-sightedness with technology and how it leads to our destruction, then turn right around and claim that’s exactly what will “save us”.  It’s a total contradiction and makes absolutely no sense at all from supposedly intelligent, informed people.

Like most media propaganda pieces these daze, this video does the same thing at the end. The evidence against our “surviving” this, is growing daily. And there is simply no evidence whatsoever that we will avoid this.