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Climate Change and Human Extinction – A Personal Perspective | Peak Oil News and Message Boards
Climate Change and Human Extinction – A Personal Perspective | Peak Oil News and Message Boards.
“Just one source, methane from the arctic…leads us [by 2030] to…a temperature beyond which humans have never existed on the planet.” Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of University of Arizona in Environmental Studies, shares highlights from his compilation of recent reports on climate change effects. Their number and extent have grown exponentially since he began five years ago. In this interview, he shares his personal journey through despair and deep grief to recent acceptance. “I suspect we get to see the end of this movie… Nobody else in human history [has]… We get to see how humans act in the face of their own demise.” Episode 262. [guymcpherson.com] Watch Guy’s Climate Change presentation February 2014
Climate Change and Human Extinction – A Personal Perspective | Peak Oil News and Message Boards
Climate Change and Human Extinction – A Personal Perspective | Peak Oil News and Message Boards.
“Just one source, methane from the arctic…leads us [by 2030] to…a temperature beyond which humans have never existed on the planet.” Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of University of Arizona in Environmental Studies, shares highlights from his compilation of recent reports on climate change effects. Their number and extent have grown exponentially since he began five years ago. In this interview, he shares his personal journey through despair and deep grief to recent acceptance. “I suspect we get to see the end of this movie… Nobody else in human history [has]… We get to see how humans act in the face of their own demise.” Episode 262. [guymcpherson.com] Watch Guy’s Climate Change presentation February 2014
Will Future Food Shortage, Swine Flu Pandemic Or War Stem World Population Growth? « Swine Flu
Will Future Food Shortage, Swine Flu Pandemic Or War Stem World Population Growth? « Swine Flu.
Will Future Food Shortage, Swine Flu Pandemic Or War Stem World Population Growth?
This is a particularly unpleasant subject to write about and I thought long and hard before deciding to write about my findings in the hope it will prompt others to take note and raise the issues within their families, communities and with those whom you have elected to power, so we can do something constructive about it before it is too late.
By way of coincidence the Government has just announced its response to findings that as a nation we ‘must quickly’ find ways of growing more of our own food and to waste much less as the world’s population grows and acknowledging we will not be able to rely upon imported food to meet our needs.
Yet it concerns me deeply when, in the face of overwhelming evidence, the world’s Governments, Major Charities, Health Organizations and News Media all appear to be silent or very timid in dealing with the impending worldwide catastrophe that will almost certainly occur within the next two generations, unless bold and difficult decisions are made and adhered to.
Upon examining objectively the wealth of evidence, (summarized below), I believe it is reasonable to assume, without such intervention, only a natural disaster such as the global spread of a virus, like a more aggressive mutated strain of Swine Flu to deplete the world population by at least 1 Billion people if we are to avoid otherwise inevitable global wars. (Please bear in mind in 1919 the Spanish Flu was conservatively estimated to have killed somewhere between 20 to 50 Million people at a time when the world population was just 2 Billion and far less mobile).
This is a chilling and rather unpleasant prediction, which you may feel to be far fetched but it is a rational one, made after careful study of the available evidence.
Whilst I am unable to provide the evidential links within this article,
Here are a few basic statistics from respected sources:
1. The World population is set to grow from circa 6 Billion to 10 billion by 2050.
2. Almost all of that growth is expected in the developing nations.
3. In the UK the ‘natural’ population is growing by circa 187,000 per year, largely due to an ageing population, (that is population growth excluding immigration)
4. To put that into perspective the population of Milton Keynes is circa 185,000. Thus our natural population growth in the UK is a town the size of Milton Keynes every year.
5. By 2050 the UK is expected to have a population increase of 17,000,000, (it is already have one of the most densely populated countries in the world).
6. In the developed world we are experiencing a rapidly aging population. In the US the average age is expected to increase from 34 to 43 by 2025.
7. In 2008, those over age 65 numbered 506,Million. By 2040 that is forecast to increase to 1.3 Billion. Going from 7% to 14% of the world’s population. Most of that growth will be in the developing world.
8. New entrants into the labour force in the developed world are set to fall by circa 33% by 2025.
9. It has been predicted that by 2030, we will need ‘two earths’ to live on and provide the necessary food to feed the expected population
10. 1 in 5 of the world’s population has no access to fresh water.
11. The UN expects the major conflicts in Africa over the next generation will be over water supplies.
12. The growing population will place an ever increasing demand upon the available water supplies, expected to be a 40% increase in demand over the next 20 years
13. Only 2.5% of the world’s water is not salty.Of that 70% is frozen, leaving only 1% of the world’s water as accessible for consumption
14. By 2020 the world’s fresh water supplies are only expected to meet 17% of the demand for consumption, industry and farming.
15. In China the ground water table is shrinking by 1.5 Metres per year.
16. Changing weather patterns are resulting in dry regions becoming arid, forcing migration of the population.
17. Over consumption of the ground water supplies in many countries is causing salinization of the ground as salt water pushes in to take over the space, leaving it no longer able to support the growing of traditional crops, live stock and wildlife.
18. With current technology, we have circa 50 years worth of economically accessible fossil fuels.
We see on a daily basis the desperate attempts by those eager to come to Britain and other developed countries, as their lives in their home countries becomes ever more hopeless.Based on the evidence I have seen, this is set to increase on an exponential scale and it is this I believe will lead to major conflict.
I do not purport to have all of the right answers but I do know we are going to have to take decisions that, as caring and compassionate people do not sit well with our consciences. As developed nations we will also have ever increasing pressure on our financial resources to provide improved medical and social care. This is already barely sustainable and in the near future, as the balance shifts between those younger people in employment paying most of the taxes and those in retirement using most of the social care budget, it will simply not be sustainable.
I suspect we will have to say no to medical help that extends the life of the elderly still further. As we will have to limit other life saving medical help to others who need it. I have no doubt this is not acceptable to most of us who are seeing a loved one suffer. We are also likely to have to reduce aide to developing countries, yet we will be reliant upon immigrants to staff many of our service sector posts, including the care sector, if we are to have enough staff to look after our ageing population. This will place even more strain upon farming land, housing supply, water supplies, transport infrastructure, etc.
If not carefully addressed, it may to lead to age related prejudices and conflicts as the young come to begrudge being excessively taxed to provide for those who want to live longer and be provided for at the expense of the working tax payer.
Green, fruitful countries with good harvests, good water supplies and a benign climate, may well may become the focus of aggression to secure the new world wealth, ‘Fresh Water and Food’.
In short, I believe we are left with three unpalatable options:
1. Make the tough decisions, which I doubt we will do, as it is too upsetting and there will be a lack of political and social will. In short, the population of the developed world will continue to bury their heads and hope the problem will go away.
2. We can hope for nature to step in with one or two enormous natural disasters, such as viral pandemics. Very tragic for so many of us who will lose loved ones but at least we did not have to make the uncomfortable decisions.
3. We can wait for various nations to start attacking those countries on their borders and further afield to secure their food and water supplies, for these will be the new oil. Then we will have the ultimate catastrophe!
I would like to think I am wrong in what I have stated and would dearly like someone to prove me wrong but following extensive research, all of the information I have gathered has simply compounded my initial concerns.
Validation of all of the above statements, can be found on my website, where the article is reproduced with all of the links to the background research.
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Welcome to the Grand Delusion, come on in and see what’s happening…
Welcome to the Grand Delusion[i], come on in and see what’s happening…
We live in a state of delusion, not merely illusion. As Wikipedia[ii] points out, “A delusion is a belief held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, or other effects of perception.” The fact that a belief persists despite ‘superior evidence to the contrary’ is what makes the difference. This is why the majority live in a delusional state, not just one of illusion.
Sure, this delusion is aided and abetted by various ‘agents’ (i.e. corporate/mainstream media; government; bureaucrats; academics; corporations; etc.), including our own thought processes[iii]; however, despite growing, incontrovertible evidence to the contrary the majority persists in clinging to specific, unfounded beliefs.
Another aspect of our Grand Delusion is that the majority of us don’t want our fantasy to end. We are ‘benefiting’ from the lies and deceptions being perpetrated upon the world. The benefit may come in the form of unsustainable social services, a global economic Ponzi scheme, power and privilege, or something as simple as a ‘safe and secure’ position in society. We know deep down inside, however, that something is wrong with the world: that it is inequitable and violent; that the people in charge are corrupt and psychopathic; and, that greed and money rule the day.
We avoid reality. We tell ourselves that problems exist somewhere else. We persuade ourselves to continue living in the delusion. Don’t make waves. It’s safer to be wrong with the majority than stand out from the crowd and yell the sky is falling, especially if the-powers-that-be are doing all they can to keep the Grand Delusion alive just a bit longer.
Here are just a couple of the delusions that we hold:
1) The banking/financial/economic system is sound.
The foundation of the banking system is built on a fraud, there is no other way around the scheme that is fractional reserve banking. When an institution can create money from air by hypothecation and rehypothecation ad infinitum, we have what is essentially a pyramid scheme. When these very institutions grow to the point where they are too big to fail, or the perpetrators of the scam too big to jail, then it is time to recognise that the system is not sound, despite it being legalised and legitimised by our politicians.
2) Governments serve their citizens.
Edward Snowden joins a list of ‘whistleblowers’ who have shed light on the shadowy world of politics, and the power that is wielded in the name of ‘security’ and ‘nation building’. How many more lies and deceptions do we need to catch politicians in to realise that we are being fed a load of horseshit almost every time one of them makes any statement about anything. I quote economist Murray Rothbard in his essay, Anatomy of the State, when he summarises what the State is: “…the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of force and violence in a given territorial area…[it] provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively ‘peaceful’ the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society…[and] the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise, and, at least, inevitable…ideological support being vital to the State, it must unceasingly try to impress the public with ‘legitimacy,’ to distinguish its activities from those of mere brigands.” The State, mere brigands of a parasitic caste who get their revenue through force and depend upon support through the manufacturing of consent. It’s difficult not to view the government in this light given daily events.
3) Economic growth can continue forever.
Our current economic system is built upon growth and not just any kind of growth but exponential growth. Such growth, however, is impossible on a finite planet. Economists defer to the belief of substitutability and market forces to assume it can. This is perhaps the most disturbing delusion because the mathematics to show it cannot is irrefutable. Yet, the consequences of this are ‘assumed away’.
4) Civliisation is not threatened by energy issues.
Energy is the foundation of everything. Without it there can be no banking system, no governments, and no economic growth. Here is the biggest delusion, that our civilisation will continue unabated even as we come to the end of a one-time windfall of cheap, easy-to-retrieve, and easily-transportable energy. Ignoring the devastating consequences of mining, producing, and using vast amounts of energy (coal to nuclear), we must face the very real wall that is quickly approaching. Peak Oil is a geologic certainty, it is not a theory and it is not going away. Finite resources are finite and there must come a time when we confront this reality.
The world appears to be crumbling in various ways as we attempt to squeeze the last remnants of long-stored energy from the planet in order to sustain what is unsustainable. In what is likely to be a classic example of ecological overshoot and collapse, we race towards the cliff, hearts pumping knowing that the end is close but afraid to try and change directions. But that is what is needed. We need to change direction, as of yesterday, to avoid the continuing trap of the Grand Delusion.
SB
Styx: The Grand Illusion
Welcome to the Grand illusion
Come on in and see what’s happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show
The stage is set, the band starts playing
Suddenly your heart is pounding
Wishing secretly you were a star.
But don’t be fooled by the radio
The TV or the magazines
They show you photographs of how your life should be
But they’re just someone else’s fantasy
So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because you never win the game
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same.
We’re all the same…
So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because your neighbors got it made
Just remember that it’s a Grand illusion
And deep inside we’re all the same.
We’re all the same…
America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we’ll stop to ponder what on Earth’s this spell we’re under
We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are
The Grand Illusion lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
[i] Apologies to Dennis DeYoung and Styx
[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusion
[iii] Reduction of cognitive dissonance having one of the strongest impacts. As social psychologist Leon Festinger has stated: “Humans are not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one.”
The Archdruid Report: The Steampunk Future
The Archdruid Report: The Steampunk Future.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2014
The Steampunk Future
That is to say, it’s time to talk about the role of fascism in the deindustrial future. We’ll begin that discussion next week.
Chris Martenson: “Endless Growth” Is the Plan & There Is No Plan B | Peak Prosperity
Chris Martenson: “Endless Growth” Is the Plan & There Is No Plan B | Peak Prosperity.
After five years of aggressive Federal Reserve and government intervention in our monetary and financial systems, it’s time to ask: Where are we?
The “plan,” such as it has been, is to let future growth sweep everything under the rug. To print some money, close their eyes, cross their fingers, and hope for the best.
On that, I give them an “A” for wishful thinking – and an “F” for actual results.
For the big banks, the plan has involved giving them free money so that they can be “healthy.” This has been conducted via direct (TARP, etc.) and semi-direct bailouts (such as offering them money at zero percent and then paying them 0.25% for stashing that same money back at the Fed), and indirectly via telegraphing future market interventions so that the big banks could ‘front run’ those moves to make virtually risk-free money.
This has been fabulously lucrative for the big banks that are in the inner circle. As we’ve noted somewhat monotonously, the big banks enjoy “win ratios” on their trading activities that are, well, implausible at best.
Here’s a chart of J.P. Morgan’s trading revenues for the first three quarters of 2013, showing how many days the bank made or lost money:
(Source)
Do you see the number of days the bank lost money? No? Oh, that’s right. There weren’t any.
Now, for you or me, trading involves losses, or risk. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. There appears to be zero risk at all to JP Morgan’s trading activities. They won virtually all of the time over this 9-month period.
That’s like living at a casino poker table for months and never losing.
Of course, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and a few other U.S.-based banks were able to turn in roughly similar results. Pretty sweet deal being a bank these days, huh?
So one might think, Well, that’s just how banks are now. Bernanke’s flood of liquidity is allowing them to simply ‘win’ at trading. If true (which it appears to be), we can’t call this trading. The act of “trading” implies risk. And it’s clear that what the big banks are doing carries no risk; otherwise they would be posting at least some degree of losses. We should call it sanctioned theft, corporate welfare, cronyism – the list goes on. And it is most grossly unfair, as well as corrosive to the long-term health of our markets.
Therefore, sadly, I have to give Bernanke an A++ on his objective of handing the banks a truly massive amount of risk-free money. He’s done fabulously well there.
But will this be sufficient to carry the day? Will this be enough to set us back on the path of high growth?
And even if we do magically return to the sort of high-octane growth that we used to enjoy back in the day, will that really solve anything?
Endless Growth Is Plan A Through Plan Z
The problem I see with the current rescue plans is that they are piling on massive amounts of new debts.
These debts represent obligations taken on today that will have to be repaid in the future. And the only way repayment can possibly happen is if the future consists of a LOT of uninterrupted growth upwards from here.
It’s always easiest to make a case when you go to silly extremes, so let’s examine Japan. It’s no secret that Japan is piling on sovereign debt and just going nuts in an attempt to get its economy working again. At least that’s the publicly stated reason. The real reason is to keep its banking system from imploding.
After all, exponential debt-based financial systems function especially poorly in reverse. So Japan keeps piling on the debt in rather stunning amounts:
(Source)
That’s up nearly 40% in three years (!).
It’s the people of Japan who are on the hook for all that borrowing, now standing well over 200% of GDP. So here’s the kicker: In 2010, Japan had a population of 128 million. In 2100, the ‘best case’ projected outcome for Japan is that its population will stand at 65 million. The worst case? 38 million.
So…who, exactly, is going to be paying all of that debt back?
The answer: Japan’s steadily shrinking pool of citizens.
This is simple math, and the trends are very, very clear. Japan has a swiftly rising debt load and a falling population. Whoever it is that is buying 30-year Japanese debt at 1.69% today either cannot perform simple math, or, more likely, is merely playing along for the moment but plans on getting out ahead of everybody else.
But the fact remains that Japan’s long-term economic prospects are pretty terrible. And they will remain so as long as the Japanese government, slave to the concept of debt-based money, cannot think of any other response to the current economic condition besides trying to shock the patient back to vigorous life by borrowing and spending like crazy.
If, instead, Japan had used its glory days of manufacturing export surpluses to build up real stores of actual wealth that would persist into the future, then the prognosis could be entirely different. But it didn’t.
The U.S. Is No Different
Except for some timing differences, the U.S. is largely in the same place as Japan twenty years ago and following a nearly identical trajectory. Currently, it’s an economic powerhouse, folks are generally optimistic on the domestic economic front (relatively speaking), and its politicians are making exceptionally short-sighted decisions. But the long-term math is the same.
There’s too much debt representing too many promises. The only possible way those can be met is if rapid and persistent economic growth returns.
However, even under the very best of circumstances, where the economy rises from here without a hitch – say, at historically usual rates of around 3.5% in real terms (6% or more, nominally) – we know that various pension and entitlement programs will still be in big trouble.
Worse, we know that the environment is screaming for attention based on our poor stewardship. Addressing issues such as over-farming, water wastage, and oceanic fishery depletion – to say nothing of carbon levels in the atmosphere – will be hugely expensive.
Likewise, a complete focus on consumer borrowing and spending at the exclusion of everything else (except bailing out big banks, of course), along with a dab of excessive state security spending, has left the U.S. with an enormous infrastructure bill that also must be paid, one way or the other. That is, short-term decisions have left us with long-term challenges.
But what happens if that expected (required?) high rate of growth does not appear?
What if there are hitches and glitches along the way in the form of recessions, as is certain to be the case? There always have been moments of economic retreat, despite the Fed’s heroic recent attempts to end them. Then what happens?
Well, that’s when an already implausible story of ‘recovery’ becomes ludicrous.
If we take a closer look at the projections, the idea that we’re going to grow – even remotely – into a gigantic future that will consume all entitlement shortfalls within its cornucopian maw becomes all but laughable.
Of course, the purpose of this exercise is not to make fun of anyone, nor to mock any particular beliefs, but to create an actionable understanding of the true nature of where we really are and what you should be doing about it.
In Part II: Why Your Own Plan Better Be Different, we examine more deeply the unsustainability of our current economic system and why it is folly to assume “things will get better from here.”
Given the unforgiving math at the macro altitudes, the need for adopting a saner, more prudent plan at the individual level is the best option available to us now.
Click here to access Part II of this report (free executive summary; enrollment required for full access).
Growth is good for kids but not always for society — Transition Voice
Growth is good for kids but not always for society — Transition Voice.
Photo: Lending Memo.
In the Western World, growth is our mantra. Our schools, our religions, our governments, our businesses, all our institutions bombard us with the same message that to be all that we are meant to be means we have to grow.
Growth in and of itself can be a good thing, but unfortunately the growth that can be our doom is material growth, which has limits.
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr, Jossey-Bass, 240 pp, hardcover, $19.95.
So instead of thinking for ourselves – we take these messages literally and we over feed our bodies and become obese; we fill our cities with ever expanding populations, we produce more and more babies filling our planet with people; and to try and meet our never ending demand for more and more stuff, our economies drive us to consume more and more resources. As a result, there is little space left for anything else but the material expansion of the human race.
This pure focus on material growth however leaves most of us feeling empty, lonely, hurt, angry, and numbed. So how did we get this way, why have we forgotten how to think for ourselves?
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, provides a good explanation of why we are stuck in a meaningless pattern of growth. The book points out how healthy cultures value two halves of life, but in our postmodern culture we discourage people from growing up.
So immature
In the first half of life, our external laws, traditions, customs, boundaries, and morality form a container that helps to shape who we will become. They also provide us with the friction we need to move on and develop our own inner guidance systems that lead us beyond these simple, limited guidelines appropriate to the first half of life but that fall apart when applied to our complex world later on.
As we move through life and experience the struggles that life throws at us – our brushes with the law, our failed relationships, and our other failures – we begin to realize that simple rules and regulations, or escapes, do not isolate us from the struggles in life, or the pain they bring us.
It is by embracing these falls – these failures – that we begin to see the limits of first-half-of-life thinking. We learn to live in tension, instead of searching for ways to avoid it. We learn to transition from conditional love based on compliance, into an unconditional love based on connection. Instead of repeating mistakes over and over again, we embrace our mistakes and learn to try new ways.
That is how real growth occurs – not by clinging to old ways, old rules, or old moralities. That is how we move beyond the limits of our egocentric first half of life.
Yet, by now, it might just be that the friction that all this control produces is reaching a point where the resulting heat can melt down these immature structures of hierarchy. And from the ashes we can rise up to reclaim our second half of life – to really grow up.
As Rohr reminds us,
No one can keep you from the second half of your own life except yourself. Nothing can inhibit your second journey except your own lack of courage, patience, and imagination. Your second journey is all yours to walk or to avoid…some falling apart of the first journey is necessary for this to happen, so do not waste a moment of time lamenting poor parenting, lost job, failed relationship, physical handicap, gender identity, economic poverty , or even the tragedy of any kind of abuse. Pain is part of the deal. If you don’t walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it.
This piece originally appeared on Ecological Leadership.
– Tom Jablonski, Transition Voice
Oxford Professors: Robots And Computers Could Take Half Our Jobs Within The Next 20 Years
Oxford Professors: Robots And Computers Could Take Half Our Jobs Within The Next 20 Years.
What are human workers going to do when super-intelligent robots and computers are better than us at doingeverything? That is one of the questions that anew study by Dr. Carl Frey and Dr. Michael Osborne of Oxford University sought to address, and what they concluded was that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs could be automated within the next 20 years. Considering the fact that the percentage of the U.S. population that is employed is already far lower than it was a decade ago, it is frightening to think that tens of millions more jobs could disappear due to technological advances over the next couple of decades. I have written extensively about how we are already losing millions of jobs to super cheap labor on the other side of the globe. What are middle class families going to do as technology also takes away huge numbers of our jobs at an ever increasing pace? We live during a period of history when knowledge is increasing an an exponential rate. In the past, when human workers were displaced by technology it also created new kinds of jobs that the world had never seen before. But what happens when the day arrives when computers and robots can do almost everything more cheaply and more efficiently than humans can?
Related articles
- Best of the week: Almost half the jobs Americans thought were safe will soon be done by robots http://t.co/C7mBpfxude (qz.com)
- 47 percent of U.S. jobs are “at risk” of being automated in the next 20 years (blacklistednews.com)
- Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Could Be Done by Computers, Study Says | Singularity Hub (mbcalyn.com)