20 comments

1. Kay SchierenAugust 15, 2017 at 9:05 am

   At any time in our individual lives, we can make a choice – roll towards death along the line of least resistance, or start the climb towards life, and even though physical death is the only absolute certainty, the journey there will be far more fulfilling, and the end will be so much easier to accept if you know you have done your best. The most tragic souls are those who die unfulfilled, and have a long death of counting their regrets in age care or wherever. In our time, whatever we do for our own sake will not profit us – the life we give is renewed as a gift every time we sleep. The life we withhold rots and dies inside us along with our capacity for love.

   We are walking a tightrope woven of all the ancient and fragile beauty of this land – we walk it it hope, and our capacity for love is the sense of balance which keeps us up there. When we fall, it is only the grace of God which offers renewal – through suffering.

2. Carol TaylorAugust 15, 2017 at 9:18 am

   I believe that the world is rapidly changing, hence the reason we see the wealthy and privileged grimly clinging onto what they perceive is theirs by right. They erect barracades to try to keep “the others” out, they deny that climate change is real, they denigrate anyone who wants to create a safer and more egalitarian world with all the might that their wealth and influence can muster. Change must happen, it usually takes social upheaval which often arrives in the form of a war..let’s hope that we can do it better this time around.

3. wamAugust 15, 2017 at 9:21 am

   Why no giggles today, Lord?

   When talking about primates did you think of the logistics of re-settling those 100s of millions of primates currently living on islands, deltas and mountains?

   Wow, 2200??? When facebook already uses AI for anti-terror and has suspended further experiments when machines became independent by communicating in a new language or is that fake news as my conservative schoolmate believes?
   Hawkins has been warning us about AI for years.

   Remember ‘HAL’ or Dwar Ev ‘!!!

4. wamAugust 15, 2017 at 11:10 am

   ps my rabbottian mate reminded me of ‘the improved conditions and longer growing seasons for agriculture.’

   This is a positive outcome that should allow GM crops to feed the world’s hungry primates and other life?

5. VikingdukAugust 15, 2017 at 11:41 am

   In Tai Chi we might say/believe/live that the breath that is gone is the past, the breath to come is the future, all that we know is this breath now.
   This moment now.

   I have also found the Eckhart Tolle books a very good read and certainly believe his suggestions on how to achieve a more positive future, I found his books to well complement Tai Chi.

   Yes, Michael, it is certainly within our power to find our way to peace, contentment and love, to strive for those positives that are important to each individual, whatever they may be.

   Eckhart Tolle suggests that with sufficient individual changes, i.e., rejecting hate and fear, that collectively we, the us that choose love over hate, can change the world.

   And, perhaps, forums such as this will assist. To move beyond despair and hopelessness, to fight using love and peace as your weapons.

   I refuse to accept that we are well on course to destroy this beautiful planet, to accept that we can’t change this hate filled destruction and when despair strikes it is ultimately my belief in the power of the universe and Mother Nature that eventually restores my strength to go on attempting to change the aspects of my nature that I see as nagative, to be at peace and love.

6. John LordAugust 15, 2017 at 12:20 pm

   ‘If we’re not raising new generations to be better stewards of the environment, what’s the point?”

7. HarquebusAugust 15, 2017 at 12:48 pm

   Perhaps skipping a generation might help.

   One thing that I think is certain; the future ain’t gonna be anything like our recent past. If you have long term plans, best think about changing them to suit an unknown environment.

   For the natural world, the collapse of industrial civilization can’t come soon enough.

8. FreetasmanAugust 15, 2017 at 1:53 pm

   The best plan to reverse it is eliminateing greed, as simple as that.

9. Michael TaylorAugust 15, 2017 at 3:53 pm

   Harquebus, I heard an interesting – but ominous – comment from a scientist a few years ago that went something like this:

   The next generation will either be the last generation of human beings, or the first who could live forever.

   Frightening, in one respect, but promising on the other.

   Personally I’m not too worried about the next generation. It’s the current ones that concern me.

10. Craig JonAugust 15, 2017 at 8:41 pm

    You may find we have an ice free Arctic by this year the way it is shaping up

11. JohnoAugust 23, 2017 at 6:54 am

    I suppose the jury will be out for a while about how exactly cc will effect rainfall patterns. The recent very dry june in southern australia may be some sign of things to come. I just read an article from the scientific american about rainfall. The article is basically saying wet areas could become wetter and dry areas could become dryer.
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-warming-could-push-earths-rains-northward/

12. JohnoAugust 30, 2017 at 5:25 am

    The recent hurricane that hit Texas is dumping a shitload of rain. They are calling it a one in 800 year event. The issue will be is cc the cause of this extra rainfall. Would not be surprised if it was.

13. HarquebusSeptember 3, 2017 at 12:07 pm

    “The anti-whaling organisation Sea Shepherd will not contest the Southern Ocean against Japanese whalers this season, Captain Paul Watson has announced, accusing “hostile governments” in the US, Australia and New Zealand of acting “in league with Japan” against the protest vessel.”
    “We’re just a group of volunteers trying to do the impossible, trying to do the job Australia and New Zealand and the United States and all these others countries should be doing but they’re too busy appeasing Japan.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/29/sea-shepherd-says-it-will-abandon-pursuit-of-japanese-whalers

    “In 2016, the United States elected a president who believes that human-driven global warming is a hoax. It was the hottest year on record, in which the US was hammered by a series of climate-related disasters. Yet the total combined coverage for the entire year on the evening and Sunday news programmes on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News amounted to 50 minutes. Our greatest predicament, the issue that will define our lives, has been blotted from our minds.
    This is not an accident.”
    “In Houston, as everywhere else, it is generally the poorer communities, that are least responsible for the problem, who are hit first and hit worst.”
    “The problem is not confined to the United States. Across the world, the issue that hangs over every aspect of our lives is marginalised, except on the rare occasions on which world leaders gather to discuss it in sombre tones (then sombrely agree to do almost nothing), whereupon the instinct to follow the machinations of power overrides the instinct to avoid a troubling subject.”
    http://www.monbiot.com/2017/09/02/dont-look-now/

    “For more than two years now, it’s been obvious that Donald Trump is a disaster on almost every level except one – he’s great for the media business.”
    “Who did we think would rise to prominence in our rage-filled, hyper-stimulated media environment? Sensitive geniuses?
    We spent years selling the lowest common denominator. Now the lowest common denominator is president. How can it be anything but self-deception to pretend this is an innocent coincidence?”
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-blame-media-for-creating-world-dumb-enough-for-trump-w499649

    “The Rio Olympics were only a year ago, but the venues look like they’ve been deserted for decades”
    

14. HarquebusSeptember 4, 2017 at 12:29 pm

    It is impossible to predict our exact future but, with modern communications allowing a holistic view, it isn’t too difficult to determine if it will be good or bad and it ‘don’t look good’.

    My apologies for the extended length of this comment but, it’s all happening and it’s all related.

    “HOUSTON—Appearing shellshocked as they took in the scenes of devastation around them, Houston residents reportedly emerged from their homes Monday to survey the damage caused by 200 years of rampant, worldwide industrialization.”
    http://www.theonion.com/article/houston-residents-begin-surveying-damage-200-years-56784

    The following article uses $ to count the cost of catastrophe but, in reality, it is energy that is the cost. Both in the waste that is embedded in destroyed infrastructure and assetts and in the energy along with the associated pollution and depletion needed in order to replace that which will be destroyed. It has to come from somewhere and will be taken from other non critical sectors. Contrary to what the economic deadheads will tell us, this is not adding to growth. It is symptomatic of the destruction that growth is causing.
    It also explains the author’s belief in the benefits of solar and wind energy which, is another delusion. EROEI was not mentioned once. People just don’t get it. We can not substite fiat currency for energy infinitely as the author and so many others believe.
    The destruction of the natural world has already overtaken us. Our economy has outgrown our planet’s ability to sustain it.

    “In the near term, perhaps starting in the 2020s or 2030s, the foremost problem will probably be a new climate-driven urban crisis of disinvestment, abandonment, and depopulation caused by rising sea levels and large inundating storms that will leave rotting urban infrastructure. As the water rises and the floods increase in severity and regularity, the once posh shoreline will be the new ghetto.”
    “A few inundations in quick succession could start a process of combined physical and socioeconomic decline. As the time and tremendous expense needed to repair water-damaged underground electric and telecoms lines, subways and rail lines, drinking water and wastewater treatment systems, and power stations becomes apparent, property owners will start panic selling.”
    “The world got a glimpse of how local flooding can impact global supply chains in 2011 when flooding in Thailand inundated much of Bangkok, including more than 1,000 industrial facilities that made everything from cars and cameras to hard drives.”
    “after almost fifty years of federally subsidized law-and-order, most cities and counties have a surplus of repressive capacity, yet almost nothing in the way of disaster-oriented civil defense.”
    “Thus the rising waters of climate change threaten to erode not only beaches but also civil liberties.”
    “Now, scientists in Iceland have recently created a process that strips CO2 from the atmosphere and turns it into rock. The process is called “enhanced weathering””
    “Clearly the private sector and the profit motive cannot deploy enhanced weathering technology at the scale needed, nor push a rapid energy transition, nor build coastal protections at the scale and speed necessary.”
    “But energy, in the form of solar energy, is the one economic input that is truly infinite.”
    https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/if-we-fail

    “DENNIS MEADOWS, full interview about the State of our Planet, 45 years after ‘The Limits to Growth’ – arguably the most influential book about sustainability ever written.” 11.5 min.
    

    This hasn’t been getting a lot of attention lately but, it is a big deal with consequences for the U.S. petrodollar.

    “To make the yuan-denominated contract more attractive, China plans the yuan to be fully convertible in gold on the Shanghai and Hong Kong exchanges.”
    http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/China-Readies-Yuan-Priced-Crude-Oil-Benchmark-Backed-By-Gold.html

    Donald Trump has to be blind. How long can he continue to deny the increased severity of events like these. Asia also is being inundated in places.

    “Overall, “this is the greatest statewide heat wave ever recorded in California,” proclaimed WU weather historian Christopher Burt on Saturday night.”
    https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/heat-smoke-and-fire-assault-western-states-all-time-record-heat-california

    “State officials also issued a Flex Alert until 10 p.m., which means people with electricity are asked to keep their thermostats at 78 degrees or higher and use large appliances in the morning instead of the evening hours.”
    http://abc7.com/weather/la-county-energy-demand-breaks-records-amid-heat-wave/2367355/

    Russia is an energy exporting country and Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves.

    “”Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief,” Maxim Ryabov, a trader with Russian brokerage BCS, told the Irish Times. “The panicky mood has been dampened down.””
    “A bank bailout – privatizing profits and socializing losses – solves all problems.”

    Fearing Contagion, Russia Bails Out Bondholders in its Biggest Bank Collapse Yet

    “While printing more cash shores up the oil company in the short-term, it lowers the value of the currency for Venezuelans.”
    

    And some other stuff.

    “In Northeast Minnesota, moose numbered about 8,000 a decade ago. Today, that number is roughly 3,500. As new evidence unspools, one clear thread has emerged: in years of warmer, shorter winters, the moose are plagued by health problems.”
    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vvb8xx/moose-are-dying-in-horrible-ways-due-to-climate-change

    “After 458 days, the Horse River fire that destroyed thousands of homes and scattered tens of thousands of people across Canada is finally dead.”
    http://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-finally-extinguished-after-15-months

15. HarquebusSeptember 6, 2017 at 8:44 am

    There appears to be a disturbing trend away from climate change denial to climate change cover up.

    “Hurricane Harvey has provided a genuinely terrifying glimpse of a global Ballardian dystopia that may actually be humanity’s fate. And yet, even now, corporate media are suppressing the truth.”
    “Meteorologist Eric Holthaus surveyed the deaths and devastation caused by Harvey and said bluntly: ‘this is what climate change looks like’.”
    “Reuters observed that ‘the worst monsoon floods in a decade’ have killed over 1,400 people across India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Around 41 million people have been displaced.”
    “So there’s consequences for young people that are already built into the system.”
    “night after night, BBC News simply avoided any mention of climate change.”
    “In effect, the BBC is firmly on the side of the state and corporate forces that have been fighting a decades-long, heavily-funded campaign to prevent the radical measures needed to avoid climate chaos.”
    “To put everything in perspective, Earth is entering its sixth mass extinction event in geological history, posing a ‘frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization'”
    “Corporate media are an intrinsic component of these same state-corporate interests: they are the PR wing of a vast world-encircling system that is burning the planet.”
    “A principal function of the corporate media is to keep uncomfortable truths about elite power, not least its role in driving humanity towards climate chaos and mass extinctions, ‘silenced and repressed’. We must resist this with every fibre of our being.”
    http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/2017/853-the-bbc-s-climate-denialism-coverage-of-hurricane-harvey-and-the-south-asian-floods.html

    “Perhaps now that the threat has ballooned into a region-wide crisis, those in charge of preventing these disasters will start to pay attention.”
    https://newrepublic.com/article/144635/harvey-morphed-multi-pronged-environmental-disaster

    “The advantage of the Arctic passage is a shorter route allowing Chinese cargo ships to provide faster delivery without having to worry about monsoons in the Indian Ocean, armed pirates or paying fees to pass through the Suez or Panama canals. In early July, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev agreed to explore co-operation on the northern sea route to build a “Silk Road on Ice.””
    https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/chinese-ship-making-first-voyage-through-canadas-northwest-passage/article36142513/

    From the beginning when Keating first blurted his ‘Asian century’, I have always stated that it will never happen. Asia will become a bloody mess. There are just too many people and not enough to go around. Anyone who bothers to do the arithmetic knows this.

    “In the end, China will have to break the yuan’s peg to the dollar in order to stop capital outflows without killing the economy with high rates. The Impossible Trinity really is impossible in the long run. China will find this out the hard way.”

    China Battles “Impossible Trinity”

    For those who are interested in an example:
    Search criteria: global sand consumption

16. HarquebusSeptember 11, 2017 at 7:18 pm

    A few alternative media things some might be interested in.

    “What Harvey and Irma are making clear is that the infrastructure we have built was built for a different climate and is surprisingly fragile in the face of climate change. When some scientists say that our civilization is at risk, this is what they mean. The things we expect to work and work reliably won’t. This will include agriculture as climate change turns increasingly negative for food production worldwide.”
    http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/the-storms-are-only-going-to-get-worse.html

    “In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex.”
    “Is Google a mere business who data mines oodles of information for profit or is it a mere quasi front for the CIA and NSA to benignly manage the extraction of the patterns and preferences from the public?”
    http://www.batr.org/terror/090517.html

    “Why try to prise wealth from us, the wealthy, they whispered, when instead we wealthy people will be delighted to give the poor debt instead? Instead of being at war with the wealthy and the managers of our wealth, why not work with us? Leave wealth with those who ‘have earned it’ they would say. Leave it with those who know how to manage it, how to make it grow and give a healthy return. Instead, give the poor debt. Or to paraphrase the obvious, “Let them eat debt.””
    http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2017/09/narrative-fear-insecurity/

    “In Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was punished for a similar proposal to create a unified African currency backed by gold, which would be used to buy and sell African oil. Though it sounds like a ludicrous reason to overthrow a sovereign government and plunge the country into a humanitarian crisis, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails confirmed this was the main reason Gaddafi was overthrown.”
    http://theantimedia.org/venezuela-to-ditch-us-dollar/

    “The devastation of Hurricane Harvey marks a turning point and raises the terrible possibility that we’ve entered the age of climate chaos”
    “Let there be no doubt: the horrific damage wrought by Hurricane Harvey was an almost entirely man-made catastrophe, one fingerprinted by all-too-human neglect, corruption and denial.”
    “First, thanks to increasing carbon pollution, the waters in the Gulf of Mexico, over which Harvey formed, were about five degrees higher than average.”
    “We’ve spent 40 years denying the risks of climate change, thinking that if we can just get everyone to buy a Prius and recycle their plastic, everything will be OK. The message of Hurricane Harvey is that it will not be OK. We’re living in a new world now, and we better get ready. Mother Nature is coming for us.”
    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/hurricane-harvey-houston-flood-is-climate-change-warning-w500596

    “The environmental impact aside, if we accept the reality that sand is a finite resource, the industries which rely heavily upon the resource will also soon be affected.”
    “Sand mining, like climate change, is an issue which will require the public educating itself and an all-out effort to take action.”
    https://interestingengineering.com/earth-is-starting-to-run-out-of-sand

    “However, one positive finding from the Micronesia study and others is that not all low-lying islands are destroyed by rising seas, says Albert. Islands that are sheltered, or have mangrove forests or lagoons for trapping sediment, appear to have good resilience, he says.”
    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2146594-eight-low-lying-pacific-islands-swallowed-whole-by-rising-seas/

    “Sand and gravel are the largest portion of these primary material inputs (79% or 28.6 gigatons per year in 2010) and are the most extracted group of materials worldwide, exceeding fossil fuels and biomass”
    “sand scarcity is an emerging issue with major sociopolitical, economic, and environmental implications.”
    “Such environmental impacts have cascading effects on the provisioning of ecosystem services and human well-being.”
    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6355/970.full

    “New studies find microplastics in salt from the US, Europe and China, adding to evidence that plastic pollution is pervasive in the environment”
    “Plastics are “ubiquitous, in the air, water, the seafood we eat, the beer we drink, the salt we use – plastics are just everywhere”.”
    “The health impact of ingesting plastic is not known. Scientists have struggled to research the impact of plastic on the human body, because they cannot find a control group of humans who have not been exposed.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/08/sea-salt-around-world-contaminated-by-plastic-studies

    “Sand is infinite, surely. And yet the world is running out.”
    “Huge projects quickly exhausted Dubai’s marine sand supply, so, despite being a city built on sand, it now imports the material from Australia.”
    “He was killed to send a message to the community from the sand harvesters: do not try to stop us”
    http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-41123284

    “Towns, cities, states, they’re all maxed out as things are, with hugely underfunded pension obligations and crumbling infrastructure of their own. They’re going to come calling on the feds, but Washington is hitting its debt ceiling. All the numbers are stacked against any serious efforts at rebuilding whatever Harvey and Irma have blown to pieces or drowned.”
    “We can go on listing all the reasons why, but fact is America is in no position to rebuild.”

    America Can’t Afford to Rebuild

17. HarquebusSeptember 14, 2017 at 11:56 am

    Would it be better to build infrastructure to withstand climate catastrophe or cheaply so that, if it is destroyed, it doesn’t matter much? My thinking is to do it on the cheap. Nature’s forces are formidable.

    “Evidence for a changing climate abounds from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans”
    “This climate chaos affects agriculture, energy use, human health, infrastructure and ecosystems.”
    http://jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2017-09-08/wednesday-editorial-climate-chaos-happening-all-over

    “”The exploding population bomb has put the entire country’s future in jeopardy,” columnist Zahid Hussain wrote in the Dawn newspaper recently. With 60 percent of the population under age 30, nearly a third of Pakistanis living in poverty and only 58 percent literate, he added, “this is a disaster in the making.””
    http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/pakistan-population-boom-a-disaster-in-the-making/article_9345de74-35e6-5e3b-9b07-57dcd5b26b5a.html

    “”All the food is gone now,” Jacques Charbonnier, a 63-year-old resident of St. Martin, said in an interview on Sunday. “People are fighting in the streets for what is left.”
    “Both the French and Dutch governments said they were sending in extra troops to restore order, along with the aid that was being airlifted into the region.”
    

    “He gathered his cabinet at Camp David and said there was no time to waste. With Hurricane Irma set to potentially devastate huge swaths of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, now was the time, he said, to rush through massive … tax cuts.”
    “It’s not a rejection of the science, but a rejection of the consequences of the science. Put simply, if the science is true, then the whole economic project that has dominated American power structures since Ronald Reagan was president is out the window, and the deniers know it.”
    “And, of course, this is not just about Trump — it’s about all the climate-denying Republican governors whose states are currently being pounded. All of them would have to junk an entire twisted worldview holding that the market is always right, regulation is always wrong, private is good and public is bad, and taxes that support public services are the worst of all.”
    “In short, climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. To admit that the climate crisis is real is to admit the end of their political and economic project.”
    “To avert climate chaos, we need to challenge the free-market fundamentalism that has conquered the world since the 1980s.”
    “Trump and his fellow climate change-deniers (and climate change-minimizers) see this challenge to their worldview as a crisis so existential, they are unwilling to let the possibility enter their brains.”
    “the rest of us should be wide awake to the reality that stopping him, and the worldview he represents, is a matter of humanity’s collective survival.”

    Irma Won’t “Wake Up” Climate Change-Denying Republicans. Their Whole Ideology Is on the Line.

    “China has announced, via a United Nations report, that it will be covering nearly a quarter of the country with forests by 2020. The plan is to turn China into an “ecological civilization” and function as a model for future building projects.”
    http://www.ecosnippets.com/environmental/china-will-cover-a-quarter-of-country-in-forest/

    “Now generals Mattis, McMaster, Kelly et al. are seen internationally as the last ditch guarantors of common sense. They have their work cut out for them as King Goofus the Tweet launches adolescent taunts at potential enemies from the Oval Office and calls real national security threats like climate change a “hoax.””
    “In the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review they call the dramatic climate change “an accelerant of instability” and a “threat multiplier.””
    “The population of already overcrowded Africa is likely to double by 2050 leading to explosive conditions already in evidence.
    It is precisely from the chaos of this toxic mix that radical groups like Boko Haram have sprouted. The military know this.”
    “We have had 378 months of above average temperatures. That’s no hoax.”
    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/09/10/climate-change-when-military-makes-more-sense-politicians

    “For decades scientists have been updating the software and plugging in new and better data, but ever-more-powerful computers keep spitting out the same base-case scenario.”
    “No nations have bothered to make sensible efforts to minimize the storm’s impact by reducing fossil fuel consumption, stabilizing population at 1970s levels, or reconfiguring their economy so it doesn’t require continuous growth in resource and energy usage. Why didn’t we do those sensible things, even though we had plenty of warning?”
    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/09/09/watching-hurricanes-path

    “The ballooning global demand for chocolate means that if nothing is done, by 2030 there will be no forest left, according to the environmental group Mighty Earth which today publishes an investigation into deforestation caused by chocolate. The final, insulting irony is that locals are so poor they could never afford to eat a Mars bar.”
    “It’s white people who eat chocolate, not us”
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/13/chocolate-industry-drives-rainforest-disaster-in-ivory-coast

18. HarquebusSeptember 15, 2017 at 10:04 am

    Economic and population growth are cancers that, are killing our one and only host, planet Earth.

    “In July, scientists reported that a “biological annihilation” of wildlife in recent decades means a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is under way and is more severe than previously feared. Half of all animals on the planet have been lost in the past 40 years, due to the destruction of wild areas, hunting and pollution as the human population grows.”
    “But the pipistrelle bat found only on Australia’s Christmas Island has been declared extinct. Just one was left in August 2009, and it disappeared later that month, with no trace since despite extensive searches.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/14/red-list-ash-trees-and-antelopes-on-the-brink-of-extinction

    I actually watched this. Monckton’s logical argument is full of holes. I look forward to his soon to be released report discrediting global warming.

    “Infowars reporter Millie Weaver interviews Lord Christopher Monckton about lies the mainstream media and sellout scientists have been spouting to brainwash the public that hurricanes Harvey and Irma are evidence for climate change.”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6XrvhP2AK0

    “Doomer knows his food comes from the soil. He is terrified about how our current industrial agricultural practices deplete the soil, and sees a world where petroleum is drawing down and oil-made fertilizers flush once through the soil as the death sentence for billions of people. We need radical change. And Doomer is a Doomer because he doesn’t think humanity can get their act together in time.”
    http://keithhuddleston.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/doomer-and-dumas.html

    I am wondering if this is the cause of declining sperm counts. Guys, how’s yours?

    “Microplastic contamination has been found in tap water in countries around the world, leading to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health.”
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals

    “First, we could count on a backup infrastructure of dispatchable fossil fuel power plants to supply electricity when there’s not enough renewable energy available. Second, we could oversize the renewable generation capacity, adjusting it to the worst case scenario. Third, we could connect geographically dispersed renewable energy sources to smooth out variations in power production. Fourth, we could store surplus electricity for use in times when solar and/or wind resources are low or absent.
    As we shall see, all of these strategies are self-defeating on a large enough scale, even when they’re combined. If the energy used for building and maintaining the extra infrastructure is accounted for in a life cycle analysis of a renewable power grid, it would be just as CO2-intensive as the present-day power grid.”
    “In conclusion, calculating only the energy payback times of individual solar panels or wind turbines greatly overestimates the sustainability of a renewable power grid.”
    http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/09/how-to-run-modern-society-on-solar-and-wind-powe.html

    “President Maduro revealed the idea on state television, saying that “for animal protein, which is such an important issue, a ‘rabbit plan’ has been approved because rabbits also breed like rabbits”.”
    “When he came back, to his surprise he found people had put little bows on their rabbits and were keeping them as pets, it was an early setback to Plan Rabbit.”
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-41265474

    “For generations, soil has been treated almost as a backdrop — not much more than a medium for holding plants while fertilizer and herbicides help them grow. The result, over the years, has been poorer and drier topsoil that doesn’t hold on to nutrients or water.”
    “Now, some farmers and soil scientists are realizing that for the health of both people and farms, the most important thing you can do is look at soil differently—seeing topsoil as a living thing itself, which can be tended and even improved.”
    http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/soil-health-agriculture-trend-usda-000513

    “We are killing, starving, raping women and kids worldwide for the pursuit of profit, which we think is happiness. Money doesn’t buy happiness, it makes pain easier. For you and everyone around you.
    We are going to collapse because deep down you don’t want to believe it. This stops us from rationalizing progress moving forward.”
    https://lokisrevengeblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/14/smash-the-fasch/

19. HarquebusSeptember 18, 2017 at 12:31 pm

    Believe or not but, to double our consumption in 30 years only takes an average annual increase of %2.33. Barely perceptible on an annual basis. If it doubles again in 30 years which, it won’t then, the world would be consuming 4 times the amount that we were 30 years ago. Impossible.

    “Pressures on global land resources are now greater than ever, as a rapidly increasing population coupled with rising levels of consumption is placing ever-larger demands on the world’s land-based natural capital, warns a new United Nations report.
    Consumption of the earth’s natural reserves has doubled in the last 30 years”
    “Can Mother Nature recover? The answer is a clear yes. Perhaps it would suffice that politicians pay more attention to real human real needs than promoting weapons deals — and that the big business helps replenish the world’s natural capital.”

    Alert: Nature, on the Verge of Bankruptcy

    “Global hunger is on the rise for the first time in over a decade, thanks to a toxic combination of localised wars aggravated by climate extremes.”
    “There’s no doubt that there’s a clear interaction between climate change and conflict”
    https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147570-world-hunger-is-on-the-rise-again-due-to-climate-change-and-war/

    “The killer is world population explosion. From the time the first humans walked on Earth, it took two and a half million years for the world’s population to reach 2 billion. But in just the next 40 years, it doubled to four billion. And in the next 40 years, that four billion has doubled to nearly eight billion.”
    “the UN states that we must double world food production by 2050. For every bite of food produced in the entire world today, there must be two — in just 30 years.”
    “Growing more food takes more ground water. But growing food for just the current population has already decimated world aquifers.”
    “Water is not the only problem. Desertification, caused by climate change, overuse of land and cutting forests, is a growing problem. One-third of the global land surface is now desert.”

    Major Food Crisis Coming For Hawaii By Mid-Century

    “Now, ironically, two of the foreign economies that allowed the dollar an artificial life extension beyond 1989—Russia and China—are carefully unveiling that most feared alternative, a viable, gold-backed international currency and potentially, several similar currencies that can displace the unjust hegemonic role of the dollar today.”
    “The dollar imperium is in its painful death agony and its patriarchs are in reality denial otherwise known as the Trump presidency. Meanwhile the saner elements of this world are about building constructive, peaceful alternatives. They are even open to admit Washington, under honest rules, to join them.”

    Gold, Oil and De-Dollarization? Russia and China’s Extensive Gold Reserves, China Yuan Oil Market

    “The world is on track to add 700 million new ACs by 2030, and 1.6 billion by 2050, largely in hot, developing countries like India and Indonesia. But the AC boom threatens to worsen the crisis it’s responding to, and widen the divide between those who can afford to stay cool and those left out in the heat.”
    “”We survived so many decades, my father, and the people of his age, they would have hardly used AC,” Vora said. “But mine, and I imagine the next generation, they can’t live without it.””
    “What were uncomfortably hot days are becoming dangerously hot, dangerously hot days are becoming deadly ones.”
    “If emissions continue on their current trajectory, three-quarters of humanity will face deadly heat.”
    “The house, an old mansion owned by diamond dealers, had 29 ACs in total. Most people, of course, have none at all. “The poorer people,” he said, “they are suffering the most.””
    “Developers, eager to capitalize on cheap designs and interior floor space that would’ve been stiflingly hot previously, turned to solid office blocks, glass towers, and boxy, mass-produced tract homes, relying on air conditioning to make them habitable.”
    “Piece by mundane piece, through new appliances and public works, the city will have to reconfigure itself to survive in the changing climate.
    “It’s going to be hotter,” Shah said. “It’s not getting cooler anymore.””
    https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16290934/india-air-conditioner-cooler-design-climate-change-cept-symphony

    “Houston officials said this week it will cost at least $200 million to dispose of 8 million cubic yards of storm debris.”
    “Wood, plaster, drywall, metal, oil, electronics—all of it waterlogged. Put it into unlined landfills and it can contaminate groundwater.”
    https://www.wired.com/story/where-do-they-put-all-that-toxic-hurricane-debris/

    Millions of tiny cuts daily are now creating deep wounds.

20. HarquebusSeptember 25, 2017 at 9:08 am

    “In a series of papers published since 2010 (e.g., a 2016 paper in Energy Policy), Patrick Moriarty and Damon Honnery of Monash University in Australia have identified several crucial factors that will limit the total global output of renewable electricity.”
    “With society having zeroed in single mindedly on acquiring enough energy to keep driving, flying, and overproducing as much as we want, there’s no reason to expect that other problems, including enormous distortions in economic and political power and quality of life, along with racial and ethnic oppression, would have been solved.”

    The green energy cornucopia is 100 percent wishful thinking

    “The profit maximization equation can no longer be satisfied: The recipient of wages (and social benefits) is expected to perform an impossible task of supporting increasing consumption, which accounts for an ever growing fraction of GDP, while being paid less in an environment of rising living costs.”
    “Work has become the biggest bubble which is about to burst. This is the limit where economic and social rationalities collide. Disappearance of work in work based societies is no longer only an economic issue, but a wider social and political problem and a crisis of the entire system of values.”
    “In order to overcome workers’ unwillingness to work long hours, factory owners had to pay them meager wages, which forced the former to put in long hours every day of the week in order to earn enough to survive. Labor became part of reality distinct form everyday life.”
    “Contrary to the economic dogma and cults of free market ideology, competition has led to suboptimal outcome for labor. Despite all technological advances, there has not been a commensurate decrease in working hours.”
    “Work is gradually emerging as the biggest hoax in the history of humankind.”

    The divided subject of labor market

    “But let’s be real — there isn’t going to be and never has been a “major shift in thinking” of the type needed to avoid the global collapse of our industrial economic system, runaway climate change, or any of the other dangerous trajectories we are now on. Our thinking is biologically and culturally conditioned; it is beyond our control.”
    http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2017/09/15/we-have-no-choice/

    “Can environmental catastrophe be averted under capitalism? Not likely.”
    “The future will be eco-socialist, because without eco-socialism there will be no future.”
    https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/09/21/capitalism-nightmare