Take Heed
Working hard here, preparing for the total collapse of civilization. As large areas of the western United States burn up, other regions have experienced record flooding. None of this was unexpected. Repeated warnings went ignored and now Big Oil is floating more empty stupid promises about going “zero-carbon” (factual IMPOSSIBILITY).
For those that do not know, energy production (all forms, hydro, wind, solar, wave, geothermal and baby squirrels running in a roll cage) are not, and never will be “zero-carbon”. The illiberal use of this term and many more just like it are grossly misleading and dishonest. Big Oil knows this and will take advantage of the poor vernacular to perpetuate the biggest extinction even in human history (ours).
I’ve been busy digging hundreds of feet of water lines, laying pipe, grading ground and maintaining equipment. This activity burns more oil and spews more carbon into the atmosphere, just like all our trips to the supermarket. Nothing we do is going to avoid the consumption of fossil fuel or increase the planetary load of dangerous greenhouse gasses.
I just finished watching “Long Way Up” with Ewan McGreggor and Charley Boorman riding a pair of electric Harley-Davidson prototype motorcycles from the tip of Argentina to Los Angeles, a trip of about 12,500 miles. They proved that yes, it could be done on electric motorcycles, but not without enormous levels of support from diesel generators, support trucks (burning diesel), per-positioned electric power stations, and hundreds of people all flying back and forth (jet fuel).
I enjoy documentaries like this, but the carbon-free claims are 100% bullshit. They took two electric Rivian prototype trucks with them also as part of the support crew. The goal here isn’t to prove the possible, but to make a movie about trying this route (done tens of thousands of times before by others) with electric vehicles. They got it done, but not without breakdowns, failures and everything else you would expect. What they proved is that the technology does exist – but it’s still not carbon-free (and never ever will be).
I knew this going into the series, but I’m not brainwashed into believing all the bogus claims about zer0-carbon or electric vehicles are going to replace all of our petroleum powered machinery. Even the grease I used to lubricate the heavy machinery I’ve been operating comes from oil. Synthetics are available, but synthetics don’t produce themselves, they’re all manufactured from oil powered machinery. The list is literally endless, encompassing millions of technologies and inventions that we all take for granted. We live in an oil-soaked world.
So now when Big Oil promises us a hydrogen economy – know that they are lying through their teeth. We might eventually see some hydrogen powered machinery, but behind the scenes it’s all still being powered by petroleum energy, everything from mining the ore to building the factories to shipping out the parts.
That guy in Vermont that chose to live off the grid is now sitting in jail, having been evicted for being a squatter. The State didn’t like the fact that someone could live without the entrapment’s of civilization for so many years and set about making his life miserable, eventually culminating in his arrest. This is a repeat of our treatment of the indigenous throughout the world, they HAVE to become a component of industrialized civilization. Everyone is literally forced to participate. Nobody is “free” to just walk away and do without, not if they can find you, not if they can figure out a way to suck you back in.
This is the dilemma facing the collapse of our planet. We’re forced to “belong”, “consume”, and “contribute” to the destruction of the biosphere by virtue of simply being alive and wanting to have a place to sleep, food to eat and a means to live. They’ve made it illegal to own nothing, need nothing, want nothing. It’s more then just vagrancy and squatting or the so-called “destruction of public property” (building a cabin in the woods). They want to levy control over every thought, action and deed, literally governing you according to their standards and presumed “authority” to make you as compliant and cooperative as possible. Individuals that refuse represent a threat to the State, inspectors get pissed off, compliance officers intervene and soon enough you’re facing the barrel of a gun to force your cooperation.
That’s serious fucked up, and always has been. The only successful persons that have managed to go “off-grid” and stay left alone are those that have found that narrow path of compliance. They pay the property taxes, they don’t violate any local codes or ordinances, they don’t piss off their neighbors and steal their stuff, and they stay out of site. But they’re still in the system, which if it was benign and beneficial would be fine, but it is anything but. The system as I call it, is designed to gain the most cooperation from the most people. It ultimately serves and protects itself from outside interests (yours).
I visited my dying dad in the hospital and noticed that even there there was a fair number of non-masked people running around. The Delta variant is the latest deadly virus variant, but there is another called Lambda. I’m going to predict that COVID isn’t going to go away – EVER. Certainly not with so many ignorant and stupid people willing to be hosts and carriers for new virulent strains.
There is no doubt that we are globally infected with the plague of stupid. You only have to be slightly situationally aware to realize this fact. Too many stupid people doing too many stupid things, the end result is a civilization in collapse. Greedy billionaires and corrupt politicians and ignorant Trump cultists pretty much guarantee that we’re not going to “recover”. Too much damage has been done, and now it’s our turn for extinction.
I absolutely do not agree that we are going to “solve our problems” (any of them) and save ourselves from this insanity of self-extinction. We’ve lost the plot, we’ve forgotten what it means to be alive, to take care of what we have been allowed to use, and to limit ourselves in any way. The world is now overflowing with greedy, stupid, careless and indifferent people which will prevent us from addressing the root causes of our predicament. It’s not just deadly climate change which is absolutely certain to wipe us out, it’s deadly stupidity which will precede the mass deaths I fully expect from climate change.
You had damned well better get ready or you will find yourselves just like those fleeing the raging infernos. Deadly drought and water shortages will be a fact of life, as will devastating fires, floods and food shortages. Ignorant, stupid and careless people will get worse and worse resorting to violence and unrest. Incompetent and hamstrung governments will miserably fail to resolve anything. Major corporations will continue to trash the world faster and faster making endless demands upon the environment. Political theater will dominate the news “programming”, distracting billions from the terrifying unfolding reality.
It’s time to pull away and take interest in your own well-being and survival. Nobody else is going to do this for you. Nobody else can.
You told it exactly as it is except for one aspect: the bankers (more properly called bansksters -as per gangsters) global Ponzi scheme; the creation of money out of thin air and the charging of interest on that money.
Where does the interest come from? It comes from devaluation of the money already in the system and from further ravaging of the planet we live on via conversion of fossil fuels into waste and conversion of natural resources such as trees and minerals into waste.
Also, it is worth noting that the banksters stranglehold on society is so tight around the neck that they have been able to install idiots in places of high office to promote the further destruction of the habitability of the Earth and to promote faster Planetary Meltdown: these idiots are called economists, and they promote completely idiotic theories predicated on ignoring all the real-world factors that are determining the trajectory of human societies, in particular energy inputs and the generation of pollutants.
According to these idiots-in-high-places infinite economic growth on a finite planet is both possible and desirable!
And despite the utter absurdity of the bizarre theories these ‘economists’ (a complete travesty of the original Greek root of the word), the bulk of the uninformed and don’t-want-to-know masses STILL believe the lies!
It was reported today that the NZ winter of 2021 has been the warmest on record, 1.53oC above the long=term average (the average not being defined in the report I heard.
NZ continues to import low-grade Indonesian coal (with both its disastrous iherent carbon content and the added disastrous emissions associated with transport) to generate electricity, a portion of which goes towards powering electric cars that have a monstrous CO2 debt in manufacture.
I am engaged in the promotion of Permaculture -fossil-fuel-free production of food at the local level.
I know it is far too late but am doing it anyway, under the theme ‘Permaculture -everybody’s future’.
Most people still do not realise, and undoubtedly the majority will reject the message, even as the entire industrial system collapses.
The Matrix still has the bulk of the populace trapped and still taking the blue pill that keeps them trapped. That red pill, the one that allows the recipient to see the truth about their predicament, is just too scary for most people. And petroleum-based fuels and beautifully package food are still available at the local service stations and local supermarket -even if the prices keep going up as the banksters’ Ponzi scheme begins to unravel, portending the biggest financial crash in all of history.
I liken what’s coming to The Second World War plus The Great Depression plus The Day The Earth Caught Fire multiplied by ten.
Of course, if Permaculture had been widely adopted when Bill Mollison began promoting the concept in the late 1970s we would not be suffering environmental and economic collapse now.
However, anyone who has done a modicum of research realises the entire system is rotten to the core (has been for decades) and has no future, and that governments are simply agents of the Looters and-Polluters Club.
I think you meant Anthroextinction, everybody’s future. The only thing that can be done now is to navigate ways to stay as comfortable for as long as possible, but we’re not going to fix any of these trigger events now. They’ll keep lying about this for as long as it serves their interests, which is right up to the very end. Anyone falling for their lies is a fool. Meanwhile in COVID-HELL (America, land of the rabid idiots and stupid stumpfucks), much of the country is embracing the insane lies of the rabid right, utterly ignorant and clueless to the unfolding extinction-level event now well underway.
Fires all around me here. Air quality “hazardous to your health”. Saw the doc recently, their billing DOUBLED in just six months. We now have some of the worst health care in the first world nations. Having ANYTHING to do with the Death Machine this country has become is “hazardous to your health” and livelihood. They’re busy extracting as much $$ as possible from anyone that they can.
I’m going to use salvaged wood (mine, can’t even buy the used lumber here anymore, it’s unbelievably expensive now), used roofing metal and other parts and materials to build a new pump house shortly. You don’t want to buy anything now if you can help it, even basic plumbing fittings have quadripled in price (I think, it’s been a while since I had to buy any, but my recent purchases were shocking in costs). Despite Delta sweeping over the country, almost nobody bothers taking any precautions, another “hazardous to your health” reality unfolding daily here.
NZ was “voted” safest place to “be” for the Apocalypse. I wonder. No, not really. Anywhere in an industrialized country is very likely never going to be a safe place to be. Too many idiots and stupid fools to watch out for. These people are KILLING other people now with impunity and total indifference – staying away from the walking dead like this is now the first order of business for your own survival.
Everyone else has their heads in the clouds, either awaiting the imaginary Rapture or the Return of Donald J. Trump to an American dictatorship. It’s fucking unbelievable.
I know the adoption of Permaculture won’t make much (any) difference to the rate of meltdown. But it will provided more pleasant living conditions during the meltdown.
As noted many times here and elsewhere, the time to deal with all this crucial stuff was the 1970s and 1980s -when rampant consumerism was just getting going and the population explosion may have been controllable. And when the atmospheric CO2 concentration was below 350 ppm.
I’d like to remain alive long enough to see the treason trials and/or public lynching of the arseholes who got us into this mess and still refuse to do anything, other than make it worse faster.
‘Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse
A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say’
…’Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.
The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.’…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-crisis-scientists-spot-warning-signs-of-gulf-stream-collapse
Don’t you just LOVE the language they use: ‘must never be allowed to happen’! Ha!
Meanwhile, the same lying scoundrels (or their descendants) that sabotaged ‘Limits to Growth’ 5 decades ago, and sabotaged Jim Hansen’s efforts of the 1980s nd 1990s, and sabotaged the efforts of EVERYONE who pointed out the dire consequences of continued dependence on fossil fuels over the past 20 years, those same arseholes (or their descendents ) still continue to promote destruction of the biosphere and still promote conversion of fossil fuels into CO2.
‘It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. “So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”.
How about 350 ppm CO2? That was probably the safe upper limit to prevent accelerating Planetary Meltdown, bearing in mind that the 800,000-year average was 230 ppm and it never rose above 260 ppm until humans started ravaging the planet via ‘civilisation’.
It’s not like there is anything anybody can do about any of it. They just lying, over and over and over again. So the “catastrophic consequences around the world” are already a foregone conclusion. But they will not admit to this FACT.
The world is being run by a bunch of dumbass idiots.
‘Record 2021 heatwave cooked Walla Walla sweet onions to mush – “It’s unprecedented. It’s just never that hot at the beginning of June.”
https://desdemonadespair.net/2021/08/record-2021-heatwave-cooked-walla-walla-sweet-onions-to-mush-its-unprecedented-its-just-never-that-hot-at-the-beginning-of-june.html
Food shortage coming, of that I have no doubts at all.