' The truth - We will go extinct, very soon.'
POSTED BY: reaverfan
UPDATED: Sunday, May 18, 2025 05:23
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Pyro storms: a new danger in the era of wildfires
With tornado-like winds that can cast flaming embers across a five-kilometre radius and volcanic levels of energy, fire-induced thunderstorms are an emerging part of our new wildfire reality that scientists are scrambling to understand
https://thenarwhal.ca/pyro-storms-a-new-danger-era-wildfires/
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Sigh.....
Come on Marcos. Cheer up buddy. There's got to be something more constructive you could be doing with your time to take your mind off of it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:This will take your mind off it, but you need to pay attention to the lesson that a world-wide disaster was avoided by a conscience effort to avoid disaster. Un-conscience and tiny-effort better describes today, at least with Trump voters.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Sigh.....
Come on Marcos. Cheer up buddy. There's got to be something more constructive you could be doing with your time to take your mind off of it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/how-to-predict-the-future
/588040/
The bet was on, and it was over the fate of humanity. On one side was the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. In his 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich insisted that it was too late to prevent a doomsday apocalypse resulting from overpopulation. Resource shortages would cause hundreds of millions of starvation deaths within a decade. It was cold, hard math: The human population was growing exponentially; the food supply was not. Ehrlich was an accomplished butterfly specialist. He knew that nature did not regulate animal populations delicately. Populations exploded, blowing past the available resources, and then crashed.
In his book, Ehrlich played out hypothetical scenarios that represented “the kinds of disasters that will occur.” In the worst-case scenario, famine rages across the planet. Russia, China, and the United States are dragged into nuclear war, and the resulting environmental degradation soon extinguishes the human race. In the “cheerful” scenario, population controls begin. Famine spreads, and countries teeter, but the major death wave ends in the mid-1980s. Only half a billion or so people die of starvation. “I challenge you to create one more optimistic,” Ehrlich wrote, adding that he would not count scenarios involving benevolent aliens bearing care packages.
The economist Julian Simon took up Ehrlich’s challenge. Technology — water-control techniques, hybridized seeds, management strategies — had revolutionized agriculture, and global crop yields were increasing. To Simon, more people meant more good ideas about how to achieve a sustainable future. So he proposed a wager. Ehrlich could choose five metals that he expected to become more expensive as resources were depleted and chaos ensued over the next decade. Both men agreed that commodity prices were a fine proxy for the effects of population growth, and they set the stakes at $1,000 worth of Ehrlich’s five metals. If, 10 years hence, prices had gone down, Ehrlich would have to pay the difference in value to Simon. If prices went up, Simon would be on the hook for the difference. The bet was made official in 1980.
In October 1990, Simon found a check for $576.07 in his mailbox. Ehrlich got smoked. The price of every one of the metals had declined. In the 1960s, 50 out of every 100,000 global citizens died annually from famine; by the 1990s, that number was 2.6.
More at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/how-to-predict-the-future
/588040/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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My mind is never on it, bud.
Ain't a goddamned thing I can do about it besides recycle what little I consume, and nobody gives a shit about my opinion about it even enough to have ever pretended via even a meaningless phone call survey.
If these are our final days, I'm not going to live the rest of them dwelling in misery about them.
Between my house, my job situation, and figuring out just what the hell I'm going to do about my teeth, I've got plenty to keep my mind occupied. And I'm not even 1/10th as depressed as Marcos is.
I'll let him save the world. Ya know... the one it's already too late to save.
Maybe you can help out too. You certainly have a lot more resources and clout at your disposal to make a change.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Not too late. It’s less than 50/50 chance of a collapse in the whole world’s civilizations. But in one particular civilization I am familiar with, the likelihood is much higher because of local conditions:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'll let him save the world. Ya know... the one it's already too late to save.
Maybe you can help out too. You certainly have a lot more resources and clout at your disposal to make a change.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Jared Diamond: There’s a 49 Percent Chance the World As We Know It Will End by 2050
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/jared-diamond-on-his-new-book-u
pheaval.html
Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: I think the story that I saw in 2005, it’s still true today. It still is the case that there are many past societies that destroyed themselves by environmental damage. Since I wrote the book, more cases have come out. There have been studies of the environmental collapse of Cahokia, outside St. Louis. Cahokia was the most populous Native American society in North America. And I when I wrote Collapse it wasn’t known why Cahokia had collapsed, but subsequently we’ve learned that there was a very good study about the role of climate changes and flooding on the Mississippi River in ruining Cahokia. So that book, yes, it was related to what was going on. But the story today, nothing has changed. Past societies have destroyed themselves. In the past 14 years it has not been undone that past societies destroyed themselves.
Today, the risk that we’re facing is not of societies collapsing one by one, but because of globalization, the risk we are facing is of the collapse of the whole world.
Q: How likely do you think that is? That the whole network of civilization would collapse?
Diamond: I would estimate the chances are about 49 percent that the world as we know it will collapse by about 2050. I’ll be dead by then but my kids will be, what? Sixty-three years old in 2050. So this is a subject of much practical interest to me. At the rate we’re going now, resources that are essential for complex societies are being managed unsustainably. Fisheries around the world, most fisheries are being managed unsustainably, and they’re getting depleted. Farms around the world, most farms are being managed unsustainably. Soil, topsoil around the world. Fresh water around the world is being managed unsustainably. With all these things, at the rate we’re going now, we can carry on with our present unsustainable use for a few decades, and by around 2050 we won’t be able to continue it any longer. Which means that by 2050 either we’ve figured out a sustainable course, or it’ll be too late.
Q: So let’s talk about that sustainable course. What are the lessons in the new book that might help us adjust our course in that way?
Diamond: As far as national crises are concerned, the first step is acknowledge — the country has to acknowledge that it’s in a crisis. If the country denies that it’s in a crisis, of course if you deny you’re in a crisis, you’re not going to solve the crisis, number one. In the United States today, lots of Americans don’t acknowledge that we’re in a crisis.
Number two, once you acknowledge that you’re in a crisis, you have to acknowledge that there’s something you can do about it. You have responsibility. If instead you say that the crisis is the fault of somebody else, then you’re not going to make any progress towards solving it. An example today are those, including our political leaders, who say that the problems of the United States are not caused by the United States, but they’re caused by China and Canada and Mexico. But if we say that our problems are caused by other countries, that implies that it’s not up to us to solve our problems. We’re not causing them. So, that’s an obvious second step.
More at http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/jared-diamond-on-his-new-book-u
pheaval.html
The book "Upheaval" by Jared Diamond is here:
https://pirateproxy.lat/search/Jared%20Diamond/0/99/0
The Jo
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I've already been doing step 1 for a few decades now, bud.
We are absolutely in a crisis. It's not just fisheries and farms. EVERYTHING is managed poorly by those at the top of the food chain. Food. Energy. Taxes. Insurance. Money in general. I'm 50/50 that we're destroying the atmosphere, but even not taking that into consideration, there is zero way that we can keep going on like this much longer, let alone forever.
Personally, I don't really think it's a bad thing if life as we know it ends by 2050. You and I both know that is the only way things will ever change.
I'm not rooting for a mass extinction event or anything. Just something that would curb the population of the human race to about 10% of what it is today.
Collectively, we are the only problem.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Only 10% ? I was born back when the population was 1/3 of today's. In theory, that additional 2/3rds should have been an advantage: more brains and hands to solve problems. In fact, about half that additional 2/3rds haven't lived up to even 10% of their potential, especially in the United States.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'm not rooting for a mass extinction event or anything. Just something that would curb the population of the human race to about 10% of what it is today.
Collectively, we are the only problem.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Have you seen the TV show "My 600-lb Life"? Even Americans who aren't fat are like those patients. You tell them something important and they still ignore it to watch more TV until they are almost dead. Then some of them pay attention and live. In every episode of My 600-lb Life, the doctor tells the obese patient to lose weight before he can operate on their stomach. It's psychological -- the doctor needs to know before operating if the patient will make an effort or is operating pointless. About half of the patients lose weight after being told more than once that if they don't they will die. Those patients get surgery and than they really start to lose weight and get back to normal. As for the other half? They get offended. They would rather die than listen to the doctor. At that point, the doctor cannot stop their fatal choice and the TV episode ends. The entire country of America is facing a choice much like that. It sure ain't entertaining to watch half of them die, one by one, for their stupid choices. But that TV doctor can only tell them. He can't make 'em do what needs to be done.
www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/total-population-world-
decade-1950-2050
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I'm probably the only one here who's ever read both "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse". I have referenced both of them from time to time, and I urge you all to read his chapter on what happened to Easter Island. It is horific enough to put our whole civilizational model in a new light.
He also points to civilizations that have somehow saved themselves ecologically, and in both cases (I believe there were ony two) it required a strongman-type leader to "save the forests" (our earliest source of fuel) once in Japan and once on the Dominican Republic side of Hispaniola (which it shares with Haiti).
How Japan Saved its Forests
http://ecotippingpoints.org/our-stories/indepth/japan-community-forest
-management-silviculture.html
You will note in the above article that the main drivers of deforestation were population growth and especially the need for large old growth timber for WAR and CASTLES and RELIGIOUS MONUMENTS.
People forget that the Dominican Republic shares an island with Haiti. In fact, people forget about the Dominican Republic almost entirely because it is not a scene of unending horrific human misery, corruption, and disaster even tho it shares the same island and has the same natural resources and population. Policy makes a difference in how natural resources are managed. The Dominican Republic is on the right. 
According to Diamond, the Easter Islanders despoiled their island to erect the moai ... those giant stone heads that various tribes used to compete against each other. He makes the point that Easter Island is SMALL, that it is possible to walk from one end to the other in less than a day. And it's far away from any place else. It is impossible NOT to know the state of the island's environment, there is no fiction that one can get resources from some further frontier or neighboring island, and yet these islanders chopped down their palm trees one by one... palm trees which fed them, palm trees which sheltered their topsoil and kept it from being blown away, palm trees which provided wood for their canoes and gave them access to deeper-water fish... or even a desperate last-ditch means of escape.
Once the trees were gone the topsoild blew away, society devolved into a cannabalistic mass. "Your mothers flesh is stuck between my teeth" was a common insult.
"What was that man thinking when he chopped down the last tree?"
Unlike other societies which failed to successfully adapt to long-term environmental changes, the Easter Island disaster, according to Diamond, was entirely self-generated.
What does this tell me? It shows for me the power of BELIEF OVER REALITY. Catastrophe can be literally right before peoples' eyes, but they fail to see. BELIEF can be about a lot of things ... God(s). The superiority of one's tribe over another. Dems versus repubs. War. Money. Ownership. Profit. RUSSIA!! Trump. Obama.
Beliefs cloud perception of what is. The societally-fatal beliefs seem to be mostly about war and about (short term) technological fixes solving long-term problems (Anasazi).
what would we see if we removed the beliefs which cloud our perception? Would we be horrified?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Only 10% ? I was born back when the population was 1/3 of today's. In theory, that additional 2/3rds should have been an advantage: more brains and hands to solve problems. In fact, about half that additional 2/3rds haven't lived up to even 10% of their potential, especially in the United States.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'm not rooting for a mass extinction event or anything. Just something that would curb the population of the human race to about 10% of what it is today.
Collectively, we are the only problem.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Have you seen the TV show "My 600-lb Life"? Even Americans who aren't fat are like those patients. You tell them something important and they still ignore it to watch more TV until they are almost dead. Then some of them pay attention and live. In every episode of My 600-lb Life, the doctor tells the obese patient to lose weight before he can operate on their stomach. It's psychological -- the doctor needs to know before operating if the patient will make an effort or is operating pointless. About half of the patients lose weight after being told more than once that if they don't they will die. Those patients get surgery and than they really start to lose weight and get back to normal. As for the other half? They get offended. They would rather die than listen to the doctor. At that point, the doctor cannot stop their fatal choice and the TV episode ends. The entire country of America is facing a choice much like that. It sure ain't entertaining to watch half of them die, one by one, for their stupid choices. But that TV doctor can only tell them. He can't make 'em do what needs to be done.
www.infoplease.com/world/population-statistics/total-population-world-
decade-1950-2050
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Maybe I wrote that wrong...
I didn't mean only curb the human population by 10%. I meant those surviving at the end would be far better off if there were only 10% of the human population left.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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I'm so worried about this extinction thing that I won't even buy un-ripened fruit. Not gonna take THAT kind of chance, no siree bob!
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