Paradise Destroyed

 Collapse, General
Mar 312017
 
Post Views: 62

I used to follow some sailing blogs, which eventually led me to some blogs about island life. This is a sad story about how one beautiful island is being ruined.

But like I’ve said so many times before, nobody cares. The cruise ships, tourist industry and even the locals are all busy at work – all a part of the ongoing destruction.

If you want to know what the future is going to be like, just put this picture in your mind: a big, gigantic garbage heap, piled as high as the heavens. Underneath it all, glued to an endless array of screens will be some very pale, fat humans surrounded by even more garbage. Nothing else will be alive other then cockroaches and rats, even the very air will be toxic to breathe, so the air-filtration systems and air conditioners will be working overtime.

Eventually, even these few surviving humans will die, their bodies then eaten by the cockroaches and rats. The televisions screens will blare on and on, to an absent and now rotting audience until the power finally runs out from disrepair or some extreme weather even destroys the turbines. And then silence, finally – and end to the noise of “civilization” and the endless layers of destruction wrought by humans, punctuated only occasionally by the scurrying sounds of rats and cockroaches.

Finally, it is is the end. The species is now finally gone, forever, “remembered” only by the gigantic mountains of stinking trash and toxic garbage and abandoned structures slowly decaying, crumbling and still polluting the world for tens of thousands of years. Our only real, lasting legacy.

It’s a hell of a world we’re planning on leaving for the future generations.

India under intense heat wave: Temperatures soaring to abnormal levels well ahead of the summer season: Maharashtra records record 46.5C (114F)

 Climate, General
Mar 312017
 
Post Views: 7

This is a dangerous development, months ahead of the normal summer heat: India under intense heat wave: Temperatures soaring to abnormal levels well ahead of the summer season: Maharashtra records record 46.5C (114F).

I doubt if a bunch of dead people will gain the attention of the idiotic world leaders who have chosen to play “Trumpy See, Trumpy Do”, but a heat wave of this magnitude this early is revealing that things are changing rapidly.

And to make matters worse, it’s not just humans experience severe changes, the black bears of Siberia are in really bad shape throughout 2015 and 2016.

Could it be related to this? The loss of Arctic ice is going to have severe global repercussions, but that’s a topic everyone here should be well versed in by now. Keep in mind it’s only April. It’s supposed to be spring.

Flirting With Disaster

 Climate, Collapse, General
Mar 312017
 
Post Views: 6

Oh boy.

The Heartland Institute plans on contacting EVERY science teacher in the country. To do what, might you ask? To encouraging these teachers to consider and teach explanations for global warming that reject humans’ role in a changing climate.

This boils my blood, because the Heartland Institute has a long, long history of despicable practices and deceit. Their lies about the scientific consensus has long been taken to task, and yet they’re still regurgitation this crap and insisting this is taught to every child in the country. They’re siezing the political opportunity generated by the Trumpanzees and Trumpatollah and the miserable failure of the whore media which sold out America long ago.

It is my opinion that this organization should be immediately outlawed, have all of its assets burned to ground, with the ashes scattered to the four winds of the earth, and then salt the ground wherever any of these stupid fools once lived.

Either that are we just kill all their members, because that’s what they’re going to do to all of us. It’s idiots and morons like this that are going to ensure that nothing is done in the years ahead about the greatest threat of all facing humanity. Greed and profits are much more important that a survivable, livable habitat.

It’s hard to believe that at a time like this, when climate change is having a serious impact upon millions of people already, that we’re still having these asinine “debates” which are really just  efforts attempting to disguise and deflect human responsibility, specifically for the most polluting industries of all, energy and oil, which the Heartland Institute is very much a part of.

They’re not interested in honesty or discussion, having for years and years irrationally rejected all the facts, evidence, science and observations regarding climate change and what’s causing it. They’re only interested in further their own vested interests in polluting the planet even further for profit. Of course this should be illegal, but barring that, we might need to step in ourselves and take matters into our own hands.

But we won’t. It’s not just Americans that don’t give a damn about their own future, it’s most Europeans too. And now Vladimir Putin has chosen to jump on the bandwagon of stupid fools. None of these morons are climate scientists. None have the qualifications, credentials or experience or the expertise of climate scientists. None are listening to the climate scientists, who are exasperated and befuddled by the sheer level of utter stupidity now being expressed by world leaders.

This comes as no surprise to this author, because it’s always been plainly evident that little to nothing would be done and the business-as-usual model would be maintained as long as possible, and all these leading fools are seizing the chance to do so. The reality is humans are going to sail right into an Apocalypse of their own making, eyes wide shut, screaming with glee. It won’t be out of ignorance either, it will be because of apathy and greed. Too lazy and indifferent to truly care, too greedy to give any of it up.

Now pay attention here – there is a shift in the vernacular (speeches, statements and language) being published and more then likely, spoken in the back rooms out of sight. The change you should notice is this, they’re admitting (already, without even trying) climate change cannot be stopped. To even say that (which Putin just did, as have many other figures) is an admission that climate change is real. Several non-experts, non-scientists are claiming it’s “natural” and unstoppable which when compared to the extreme rate of change being measured and experience is simply not true (there is such a thing as natural climate change, but it does not fit the actual current record at all). The rate of change we are experiencing has been directly tied to human activity, which these deniers are pissing all over themselves about.

But the important things is this – they’re starting to admit it’s all true, and adaption is the answer to something humans have no control over. In other words, they are denying any human responsibility, and thus ensuring the business-as-usual paradigm continues (polluting the atmosphere and planet with greenhouse gasses), and looking ahead to how they can profit from adaption efforts. None of them are bright enough or care enough to realize that there will be no adaption to climate change like they assume, especially if they keep pumping gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere like Trump wants to.

There is a very narrow band of survivability for plants and animals and surface and water temperatures. Once the wet-bulb temperature exceed plant survival in food producing regions for a long enough time (ruining crops and harvests, impacting pollination) – it’s all over. And there are dozens of other knock-on effects to consider, like sea level rise, extreme weather events, ocean acidification, effects on the ocean currents, species extinctions and many more. I covered this years ago in This Means Extinction and elsewhere on this blog.

I’ve dared to publish the words that won’t be spoken. Climate change is going to wipe out humanity. There is absolutely no doubt about this at all. And it will happen far sooner then most people will think possible because apathy and indifference will accelerate the effects of climate change which will rapidly worsen as we continue to deny our responsibility and fail to make any sincere efforts to change our ways.

We’re flirting with disaster in ways which may not be obvious to millions and millions of people, but that does not make it any less of a threat. The morons that are contributing to this crisis are a clear and present danger to us all and they need to be removed, stopped and jailed for crimes against humanity. It won’t be enough, but it will be a start.

Mad Scientist

 General
Mar 312017
 
Post Views: 37

It was Romm himself (not a scientist) and many climate scientist that kept spewing the 2C nonsense for years and years.  Their own blinders now (finally) being removed, NOW they claim that this is dangerous – and yet they STILL pretend that we can limit warming under 2C!

I have always found Romm refusing to admit to the horrible truth. He gets plenty of press coverage and has plenty of opportunity to tell us like it really is – and yet he still weakly pretends that we are still going to be ok.

Hansen is incorrect. We will NOT limit warming under 2C, there is absolutely ZERO possibility of this now, ocean heating / albedo and carbon loading are definitely way beyond our ability to ‘fix’ this under 2C now. Nor will we replace the missing ice or solve the jet stream problems!

We have NOTHING in our ‘arsenal’ to do any of this. No ability to draw down the atmospheric and oceanic carbon load on a sufficient time / quantity level to make any meaningful impact at all. Our trajectory / certainty is now a given.

Moreover, a carbon fund returned to individual won’t do anything either. The modern world, and especially Americants simply could care less about saving the planet or the environment. They’re far too disconnected from reality to even bother.

The very fabric of our culture and civilization teaches every modern human to get what they can, while they can, as fast as they can and as much as possible. This is now deeply ingrained into all of us. Every institutions, enterprise, business, government and educational system is a part of this self-deception. It’s not just Big Oil and Big Energy we’re fighting, but the very fabric and knowledge of civilization (which IS the real problem, but it is also being as widely ignored as climate change once was).

And you almost never read about overpopulation from these same people. You cannot ‘solve’ the carbon connedsumption problem without also addressing the too many people problem. They go hand in hand because too many people will always consume too much carbon in order to feed and house themselves and to engage in wage slavery (jobs) so they can buy more of the crap they don’t really need. Greed rules the species and our culture endorses this.

Any honest and real examination will identify civilization as the real problem. Our carbon consumption is only a small part of what we’ve been doing wrong all along. And you will almost never see any discussion on any of this.

The funny thing is, you can’t get the world to even AGREE that carbon is a problem. Therefore, they’ll absolutely reject the notion that there are too many people, or that civilization itself might be deeply flawed or that greed must be addressed. We’re barely scratching the real issues here.

The trajectory of humanity has always been to act like lemmings, over-consuming their environment and leading themselves to collapse, again and again. This needs to be recognized and dealt with as part of the real issues at stake here.

It’s sad, but scientists are simply unable to address social issues adequately. I’m sure their doing the best that they can within their fields, speaking up as allowed (another documented problem) and that mainstream climate writers are also doing what they can, but this is simply never going to be enough due to their imposed and self-imposed limitations.

Outside of these circles is where you will find far more information that clearly indicates we’re rapidly headed to total collapse. It’s irreversible now because we won’t stop any of the things we are doing and because it’s now too late anyways.

Humans remain on a path of self-destruction BY CHOICE and by circumstance now. We are simply not allowed to ‘quit’ due to our dependency upon massive inputs keeping each and every one of us alive, all which are highly carbon intensive. It is that choice and those circumstances that MUST be changed for there to ever be any chance of humanity or planetary survival. THAT is what must be discussed, addressed and resolved.

Sea-level rise may displace 13 million people in the US by 2100

 Climate, Environment
Mar 302017
 
Post Views: 1

This is a story that will “hit home” – but will Trump just try to build another wall?

Sea-level rise may displace 13 million people in the US by 2100.

Sea-level rise could force three times as many people in the US from their homes by the end of this century as previously thought, according to an analysis of population trends.

Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia in Athens, says that until recently most studies that predicted the risks associated with sea-level rise used current population numbers combined with projections of future sea levels.

The problem with that, he says, is that the predictions have become “outdated almost immediately”.

“Coastal communities are some of the most rapidly growing communities in the world, so you have to account for the fact that these areas are growing,” says Hauer. “Using current data, we’re underestimating what the future growth in coastal communities is likely to do in terms of placing people at risk of sea-level rise.”

Hauer and his colleagues therefore combined projected population growth with the scenarios of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on predicted sea-level rise.

They found that a 1.8-metre rise by 2100, near the top end of NOAA’s predictions, could lead to 13.1 million people being displaced – more than three times as many as indicated by current populations. A more modest 0.9-metre rise would still displace 4.3 million, also a three-fold increase on previous estimates.

I am aware that that 1.8 metre claim is incorrect. If you are not aware of the real number, it will be much, much higher then this with a corresponding number of American climate refugees (as high as 50 million). If any of us are still here in 2100 that is, but even if we’re not, the seas will have risen at least 9 feet by then and some science sources say as much as 30 feet (2.7 – 9.1 meters).

Pretty much “everyone” seems to be under order to under-report the real expected sea level rise. I’m sure it helps keep prime real estate values high as long as possible.

Oh, this is going to be a major problem – no more drinking water in these areas. Ground water inundation. Imagine that! Rising seas and fresh water don’t mix! Maybe the Trumpatolla could build a wall that would circle the entire island of Hawaii! But wait – that won’t work either:

In a statement announcing release of the study, Habel said, “This flooding will threaten $5 billion of taxable real estate; flood nearly 30 miles of roadway; and impact pedestrians, commercial and recreation activities, tourism, transportation, and infrastructure. The flooding will occur regardless of seawall construction, and thus will require innovative planning and intensive engineering efforts to accommodate standing water in the streets.”

The researchers also found that about 85 percent of the active cesspools in the study area are probably swamped with groundwater, which means that cesspool effluent, including remnant human waste, is  entering coastal groundwater and coastal environments.

Sea level rise of approximately three feet would fully inundate 39 cesspools, introducing effluent at the ground surface where people work and live. This presents a serious health concern that will become progressively more serious as contaminated waters begin breaching the ground surface.

“Our findings suggest that coastal communities in Hawai’i and globally are exposed to complex groundwater flooding hazards associated with sea level rise in addition to the typical concerns of coastal erosion and wave overtopping,” said Chip Fletcher, professor of Geology and Geophysics and associate dean in SOEST and principal investigator on the study.

Sea level rise is HUGE threat to humans. And like most everything else with this Administration, it’s not worth paying attention to.

Am I the only one who detects a major political problem here?

World faces four famines as Trump administration plans to slash foreign aid budget

 Collapse, Politics
Mar 302017
 
Post Views: 3

World faces four famines as Trump administration plans to slash foreign aid budget

‘Biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II’ about to engulf 20 million people, UN says, as governments only donate 10 per cent of funds needed for essential aid’.

YAWN. Go back to sleep. The people dying of acute malnutrition aren’t Americans, so what does it matter? Or that this is the largest humanitarian crisis in history?

Twenty million people are at risk of starvation and facing water shortages in Somalia, Nigeria and Yemen, while parts of South Sudan are already officially suffering from famine.

Well, they don’t live here, right? And isn’t Trump “Making American Great Again?”. You’d be hell pressed to find ANY evidence of this claim, but denying foreign aid when needed the most isn’t one of the great “improvements” unless you are heartless bastard. The amount of food waste this country alone generates could feed all 20,000,000 people if we but tried.

But we won’t. Not under the Great and Mighty Trumpatolla. His decrees are the law of the land, even if they’re dead wrong.

To be fair, it’s not all Trump’s fault, but for a man who made endless promises to get things fixed and get them done right, I’m going to go ahead and hold him accountable for his many lies. He did inherit a mess like every President does, but he also stuck his foot in his mouth and made promises that there was no way in hell he could keep. But this post isn’t about Trump, it’s about us humans and how we fail to do the right thing, every fucking time.

As the world’s dominoes topple over faster and faster, we’re all going to start wondering about this strange and suicidal behavior by our fellow humans. It’s as if stupid-diseases has infected the species, eating away like voracious microbes on our frontal lobes, dissolving into mush our ability to think, act and behave responsibly. I’ll call it Trumpencephalopathy. How we all got stupider.

There is a cure by the way. Rebellion. Refusal to go along with the insanity and deranged “decisions” by the delusional decider. The more I read about this madman’s “decisions”, the more I am convinced he is mentally ill and needs to be removed from any position of power, asap. Lacking that, we could all just grow a goddamn spine and just say no. No more to the madness and the commitment to more human suffering, especially when we know it is morally wrong.

Isn’t that what the Nuremberg Trials were really all about?

Oh, if you somehow think that the hunger games will manage somehow to stay off-shore in darkest Africa and not come to America, wake up. From what I hear, it’s really hitting home across the country. This country.

Blog Repaired

 General, Uncategorized
Mar 302017
 
Post Views: 17

I’m thinking the blog issues have been repaired. This took many attempts and hours to resolve, and did result in the irrecoverable loss of blog comments on several posts.

Logins should work okay, I tested my wife’s account and that worked. If you don’t succeed or have issues contact me through the foodassets contact form.

I am not at all sure that this exercise was worth it. Perhaps the Universe was trying to tell me it was time to walk away and do something else.

Puppeteers and Pulling Strings

 Climate, Environment
Mar 292017
 
Post Views: 10

The Trump agenda is not about putting America first. It’s about putting the privileged (monied) first. The Washington Post has a decent perspective on this, but it doesn’t go quite far enough.

Really, though, Trump’s policy reflects a deeper truth. Climate change denial is not incidental to a nationalist, populist agenda. It’s central to it. And that’s not a coincidence.

Combating global warming requires international cooperation, multinational agreements and rules. Done right, no country is exceptional, and some might have to sacrifice for others. In other words, it strengthens the international order that Trump and his team are so assiduously trying to dismantle in the name of “America First.”

As Andrew Norton, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, explains:

“Climate change is a highly inconvenient truth for nationalism, as it is unsolvable at the national level and requires collective action between states and between different national and local communities. Populist nationalism therefore tends to reject the science of climate change however strong the evidence.”

Although I write about climate change most often, it is not the only issue of concern (by a long shot). It is however, THE issue that will affect all humans and all other species of life on this planet because it transcends borders, Presidents, races, religions, regions and even our imagination. It is the Extinction Level Event that spells the end of our species.

I have come to accept that Americans will never give a damn about their environment in a measure that will be meaningful to true conservation. I have also come to realize that conservatives have no concept of conservation at all. There is nothing conservative about them. American history is not about preservation, protection, liberty or respect, it’s really about domination, destruction, total dominion and extraction. These are the principles that built America  and destroyed the country as each successive generation of dominionists trampled upon everything they possibly could.

It is an untold story that only comes to your awareness upon deep reflection of history and current events. It is not going to change either, no matter how much “evidence” there is, or how many people, species or life suffers. The real story of modern humans is one of conquest and domination and the final chapter has not been written. The Trump Administration is hell-bent on ensuring that their mark upon the historical record imprinted upon the Earth will never be forgotten. Some people are convinced that this will be good for the country, I’m convinced of just the opposite.

But in the end, it is not going to matter what I think or what anyone else thinks. The reigns of power have passed to a madman and like the stupid puppets we really are, we will respond to the pull on the string. There is no courage in this country to refuse the President and his many asinine decrees just as there was no courage before with other Presidents and their many decrees. Every governmental employee is just “doing their job” which is really just another way of saying their job always comes first and to hell with principles. It is the same with military contractors and assembly line workers and every other employee who is building, buying or engaging in any aspects of destroying the lives of other humans. The job always comes first.

We are all playing lip-service to what we claim to believe and what we actually do. It’s all quickly forgotten when our monetary survival is threatened and then we simply do what we are told. Once they controlled how we survived, they had us – forever, and they know it. Everything else is now just vented steam. Our anger is meaningless, our disgust misdirected, our activism nearly useless. They’re quite adept at shifting the goal posts and keeping the dissenters distracted, divided and ineffective. The rest can’t be bothered to care enough anyway.

So this is what life has become. Puppeteers and pulling strings. The next go-around will be another agenda, another President, another war, another event. And the goal posts will change ever so slightly once again, but it will always be business as usual. Those of us that are few and concerned about a habitable future are not going to achieve the success that is needed because the status-quo will never, ever allow it. We lack the courage to kill them and take the reigns ourselves and even if we did it would not change anything. The human trajectory is a Juggernaut of immense enormity and weight, the essential course correction that many champion for will never happen.

I think I should start another business in the field of death and destruction, that would put me on semi-equal terms with the rest of America. Your suggestions on how I might do this would be appreciated.

Methane and Meat

 Environment
Mar 292017
 
Post Views: 3

In a warming world, cows are going to produce less meat and milk and more methane. That is the results found in a study from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt.

“… plants growing in warmer conditions are tougher and have lower nutritional value to grazing livestock, potentially inhibiting milk and meat yields and raising the amount of methane released by the animals. Higher amounts of methane are produced when plants are tougher to digest – an effect of a warmer environment. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, around 25 times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. More than 95% of the methane produced by cows comes from their breath through eructation (belching) as they “chew the cud”.  Making Cows More Environmentally Friendly

There is a widespread misconception that a warming world will improve plant yields too. It’s not true. Both yields and nutrition decline.

Less meat however, is actually a good thing overall, but that’s assuming humans would want to eat less meat, which they don’t. Just the opposite is true, meat consumption continues to rise taking up more and more of the world’s grain production.

Methane production is generally expected to increase all around the world, with hotspots identified in North America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Asia, where the effects of climate change may be the most severe. Many of these regions are where livestock farming is growing most rapidly. For example, meat production has increased annually by around 3.4% across Asia, compared with a more modest 1% increase across Europe.

Global meat production has increased rapidly in recent years to meet demand, from 71 million tonnes in 1961 to 318 million tonnes in 2014, a 78% increase in 53 years (FAOSTAT, 2016). Grazing lands have expanded to support this production, particularly across Asia and South America, and now cover 35 million km2; 30% of the Earth’s ice-free surface.

Cows are producing 15% of the global methane contribution, which is a very large figure (76 – 92 Tg per year. 1 Tg = 1 million metric tonnes).

These are ridiculous figures, but then again, so is the incredible sprawl of human civilization (destruction) across the Earth. And still we want more.

Expect 350 Million More People To Suffer Heat Stress by 2050

 Collapse, Environment
Mar 292017
 
Post Views: 3

2050 isn’t that far off. I might even live that long myself. But I’d be among the old, young and infirm that are certain to suffer from heat stress, potentially killing millions.

An analysis of 44 of the 101 most populous “megacities” showed that the number of cities experiencing heat stress doubled with 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) of warming, researchers reported.

That trend would potentially expose more than 350 million additional people to heat stress by 2050, if population continues to grow as expected, the study authors said.

Expect more deadly heat from climate change, study says

It’s been raining all month here (when it didn’t snow) with just a couple of days of decent sunshine. The increased atmospheric vapor falling as rain and snow is caused by a warming planet. The ground around here is extremely saturated. There was a massive mudslide that nearly killed a father and son, and the river is at flood stage already.

It’s not just heat stress that the world needs to be concerned about, but what all the extra water does when it comes down. And how this extra heat, flooding, and cycles of drought will affect global food production and economic activity.

Think I’m kidding? It’s being studied right now and it does not look good: Farming becoming riskier under climate change. The models studied suggest that the typical planting window for corn will no longer be workable; April and May will be far too wet to work the fields. That’s a huge loss of a global staple crop. And this is just one of the factors being considered elsewhere. Under study is drought, aquifer depletion, pests, disease vectors, temperature variations, pollination and soil depletion, every one in worsening conditions world-wide.

I’ve been accused of being too negative, but honestly, I don’t think I’m wrong about the future at all. So far, I’m on track with what the future will be.

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