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Greenie Techno-Cornucopianism

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Discuss this article at the Seasteading Table inside the Diner

http://www.thefarm.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/51rH5hmexjL._SY344_BO1204203200_.jpg I regularly cross-post the work of Albert Bates here on the Diner.  He’s a true Hero of the Revolution, going back to the 1970s when The Farm was founded as part of the Back to the Land Movement of the era.  The Farm has gone through its ups and downs over the intervening decades, but unlike many other experiments from the era it does still exist, and AB is still there.  Well, at least he is when he’s not Jet Setting around the world to attend Climate Conferences or give Permaculture courses.  Albert takes a decent amount of criticism for this, since flying around in Jet Planes is one of the most unsustainable aspects of our industrial civilization, and on a per capita basis is arguably the MOST unsustainable.

AB defends his Global Jet Setting by planting trees, with the assumption that over the lifetime of the tree, it will soak up more carbon than he is burning in a trip to London on British Airways.  Of course, this calculation doesn’t work if the tree burns down or dies from some sort of infestation or plain old drought.  However, I don’t find travelling around by jet to be hypocritical at all in the context of trying to bring the message of climate change and sustainable living to more people.  For the time being, these planes will fly whether AB is on board or not, or being dragged off said planes kicking and screaming due to overbooking.  Boycotting flying wouldn’t do a damn thing to Save the Planet, but going out there with missionary zeal to wake up more people might have some effect.  So on balance this is a positive thing to be doing in his declining years using the reputation he developed as an international expert on many of these topics.

However, as I continue to read and cross post ABs work, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the form of techno-cornucopianism he has been pitching lately, similar in many ways to what another cross poster I feature regularly, Ugo Bardi of the University of Florence, The Club of Rome and Cassandra’s Legacy pitches.  In the case of UB, he pitches Renewable Energy, specifically Photovoltaics as a means to salvage at least part of our high tech lifestyle.  In AB’s case, he pitches Permaculture and Carbon Sequestration through Bio-Char as means to sustainably feed ourselves and to if not stop, at least slow down climate change.

Besides that, AB has now latched onto another Greeny Dreamy idea, going back to Sailboats to replace all the airplanes burning tons of jet fuel every day to ship around Homo Sap Meat Packages.  Here is the recent high tech sail dream from AB to replace our current fleet of planes and container ships with more Earth-Friendly sailboats:

Atlantic Dreams

Will Nodvik, who studied Computer Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, writes on Quora:
The foiling AC-72s sailed [in 2013] during the America’s Cup top out at around 40 knots in super heavy conditions. Average container ships move at around 20 knots. The mast on an AC-72 is 40m high. Keep in mind that this mast is a rigid wing. The AC-72 is the lightest, fastest, most highly advanced boat. These masts are the strongest material possible since no expense was spared in their construction.
Forty knots (46 mph) is still only 8 percent of the cruising speed of a Boeing 747. Figure three and one half days, if top speed could be held the whole way.

 

The America’s Cup Challenge resumes this June in Bermuda’s Great Sound. The AC-72 (72-foot)yacht that Oracle Team USA sailed to a historic come-from-behind 9-8 victory over Emirates Team New Zealand on San Francisco Bay in September 2013 is gone. Obsolete.

 

Replacing it is a smaller, lighter AC-50 (50-foot) catamaran with 79-foot carbon fiber wing sail and new alloy hydrofoils to give it near zero drag. All the competitors in this year’s trials are expected to fly above water for 100% of the race time.

 

The sail’s drag is one-third to one-half that of four years ago, while producing about twice as much power. The control system comes from the Airbus A350 XWB airliner, compiling a terabyte per race collected from as many as 1,000 sensors fed into the Oracle Exadata supercomputer for instant analysis. Oracle will predict wind patterns (within half a knot accuracy) all the way down to 100-meter or even 50-meter grids on the racecourse. The sailors — a six man crew (down from 11 in 2013), need only glance at smart watches connected to a small onboard Linux server, to know what they need to do.

 

Speeds approaching 60 mph are possible in the Bermuda races—about 20% faster than in 2013. That would get us down to a two day Atlantic crossing.
More importantly, the days spent on crossing by sail put nothing into the atmosphere except the breath of the sailors. Today’s commercial passenger fleet is responsible for 3 to 5 percent of climate forcing, on its way to 15 percent according to some IPCC projections. Clearly it is going in the wrong direction.

While it is really cool to think about all this high tech stuff, it’s also thoroughly unrealistic for many reasons, on the physics and mechanics end as well as on the economic end.  I wrote this response to his article in his commentariat:

Another artifact of climate change is bigger seas and more rogue waves.  In even mildly rough seas, you can’t hydroplane a sailboat.  You need pretty flat water for this.  So it’s pretty unlikely you could maintain a constant hydroplane speed all the way across the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.

Then you have the fact these high tech boats are built from the lightest weight polymers and carbon fiber material, which all have tons of embedded energy in their manufacture.  The computer systems and servos controlling sail trim are extremely complex, requiring the usual kit bag of rare earth minerals and complex manufacturing facilities.

Even if you do build them, they can’t carry much payload.  The whole reason they will hydroplane is because there is so little weight being carried aboard.  You absolutely could not build any facsimile of a modern container ship and have it hydroplane.

Not to say of course sail will not make a comeback, it probably will but not the sort of high tech sail you are featuring in this post.  Much smaller boats, and floating in the water not skimming along the surface.  Such boats will not be able to move around the vast amount of cargo container ships do, and thus will not be able to support such a large population moving food around the globe.

There is no techno-cornucopian solution to this problem, the only thing that can bring Homo Sap back into balance with nature and maintain the habitability of the planet is a massive die off of the current population.  If you knock off 90-99% of the human population, some of the solutions you write about could work.  They do NOT scale to a population of 7.5B meat packages.

RE

https://sausalitowaterfront.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/screen-shot-2010-10-27-at-3-42-07-pm.png AB is not the only Doomer out there with the Sailboat Dream, you also have Dmitry Orlov of Club Orlov living on his sailboat and Ray Jason of The Sea Gypsy Philosopher living on his, plus innumerable other Yachties cruising the Bahamas, the Greek Islands and the South Pacific and enjoying their sense of “independence”.  The lifestyle gives the illusion of being FREE, able to move where you want as necessary to avoid the worst aspects of collapse if they happen to arrive in your neighborhood.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/Gk0L1_1NlSZ5badPn7A-nnlkmYkMWbbJiI-tuZALjvoZDv397d_NcfFHN9HhBUtp6_sfvGlXLIZO0ZI=w282-h220 By NO MEANS however is such a life either sustainable or self-sufficient.  Everybody who lives this way has some form of external income, generally retirees with a pension although a smattering of others such as writers and IT programmers who have portable professions.  Dmitry for example makes his living these days bloviating his opinions about Collapse, promoting Mother Russia and insulting various feminist groups. This job can be done anywhere on earth, and Dmitry does these things well enough to make a living at it. lol.  A few of the younger mostly male ones will also take gig jobs on making port somewhere and use the money to resupply with another couple of months of food and then sail to some remote cove and pretend to be Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss Family Robinson.

I sincerely doubt there is ANYONE out there who lives aboard a 30-40′ sailboat who gains all his sustenance from fishing and harvesting coconuts on South Pacific beaches.  On board a sailboat of this size, if you are a solo sailor and stick to compact dried foods, you might be able to stuff it with 6 months of supplies.  If there are 2 of you, reduce by half.  In a good fishing and gathering neighborhood, you might be able to double the amount of time you could spend doing the Swiss Family Robinson before needing to head back to civilization for a resupply.

Beyond the Food Problem of course is the Security Problem.  Most of the places the Yachties currently frequent are Tourist Traps which use the tourist economy as their driver.  Most of the nicer ones sporting Marinas in the Bahamas or Panama are pretty safe at the moment, the customs officials are fairly polite (although always looking for a bribe) and the Marina Convenience Store has bags of rice you can buy if you have Dollars or Euros to spend.  Free Wi-Fi too in many cases.

https://i0.wp.com/hiiraanxog.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/201744636268700637727177Burcad-Badeed-Soomaali-weerar.jpg?fit=660%2C439&resize=350%2C200 This pleasant safety and convenience begins to disappear rapidly though if you sail outside of these enclaves of retired yachties and are cruising off the coast of say Somalia.  There are already locals in this neighborhood who smell a good possibility for a Ransom Demand if they spy your sails on the horizon, and send out a fishing boat to greet you, complete with automatic weapons.  Say bye bye to your sea mobile home and hope there is somebody back home who will cough up the ransom demand.  This situation is not going to improve as the general economics further spin down.  Finding a place to safely moor your vessel with any kind of local population size will be extremely difficult, so now you are back to trying to do Robinson Crusoe, which just about nobody from industrial culture can really do.

Beyond the Food & Safety issues is the maintenance issue.  Anyone who has ever owned a boat of even moderate size knows they are a total money sink and stuff breaks all the time.  Standing & Running rigging wears out, Winches break, the auxiliary engine quits, sails get ripped in a storm…etc etc etc.  You have to have ports around to get parts and do some repairs you can’t do yourself, even if you are a mechanical genius.  You need a haul out and bottom job every so often with anti-fouling paint (an oil product).  If you could keep your sailboat in good working order for 3 years without access to replacement equipment and a well stocked marine supply store I would be shocked.

http://sunstarshipping.com/images/portfolios/nvop.png The paradigm for shifting back to sail on the commercial shipping level is in many respects even worse than trying to make the small sailboat Seasteading paradigm work. Modern container ships move enormous amounts of cargo, which in order to load and unload requires enormous ports with oil powered cranes to move the containers on and off the ships.  The days of longshoremen unloading ships by hand are long gone.  This is how we are able to move the massive amount of goods we do around the world to keep 7.5B people fed and clothed.  The last time we were regularly transporting around goods by sail the global population was around 1.5B people, and most of them were not even on this network.  The world was largely populated by subsistence farmers.

Today, many areas of the world can’t grow enough food to feed their own populations (see Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen etc, etc,etc), so unless you have the means to ship around enormous quantities of food sufficient to feed entire countries, you’re going to have a lot of starving people.  Sailboats aren’t going to do the trick here even if you could build enough of them fast enough and train a whole new generation of people to be able to sail them.  This is just not going to happen, not on the scale necessary for keeping 7.5B Homo Saps walking the earth.  So once again you need to reconcile yourself to the fact a large culling of the human population is coming down the pipe, and sailboats and permaculture aren’t going to stop it.  This is just techno-cornucopian hopium, dressed up in Green outfit.

http://www.rresolar.com/images/solar_farm1.jpg The Solar PV solutions Ugo Bardi promotes are very similar.  They simply don’t scale up to apply to such a large population.  Forgetting all the embedded energy and mining necessary to produce enough Solar Panels is the huge scale up of the current decaying electrical grids to handle the loads necessary for running all the carz, trucks and trains on electricity.  Current wiring isn’t near thick enough to handle the load even if you cut the fleet of vehicles by half.  Where is all the copper going to come from to run wiring from your Solar or Windfarm to electric charging stations all over the country?  The best you might do here is have intermittently available electricity at the local level, but this again does not maintain current population levels or anywhere near the current standard of living in 1st World nations.  I highly doubt also any 3rd World nations are going to get wired up with massive Wind & Solar farms either.  If they didn’t get electricity yet, they’re not going to get it.  Which of course might be good for them, since they won’t miss it too much when it’s gone.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54e5ee5de4b0c694a3dc63e2/557ef912e4b0452ec6a2526f/557ef913e4b06b6897c313e8/1434384659946/Biochar+%28for+Soil%29.png Finally on the scale of techno-cornucopian solutions for today of stuff that just ain’t gonna happen is ABs ongoing mission for Bio-Char as a solution to sequestering carbon and keeping Planet Earth from turning into a facsimile of Venus.  What this generally amounts to as I understand it to is planting a shit load of trees, turning them into charcoal briquets and then burying the briquets for soil ammendation.  The amount of area that needs to be reforested this way is enormous, and then how with the remaining arable land mass you will feed 7.5B people without the use of fertilizers, pesticides, tractors & combines is somewhat unclear.  Also unclear is whether the climate in many areas will even support reforesting at all?  I think you would have a pretty tough time these days reforesting Syria and turning it into the lush Garden of Eden it once was 5000 years ago.

All of this speaks to the problem of Irreversibility, which theoretical physicist David Korowicz covered quite extensively in his seminal paper Trade Off: Financial System Supply-chain Cross Contagion – a study in global systemic collapse.  In particular many of the earlier systems we used are simply no longer practical or even available to shift back to now.  New “high tech” solutions don’t scale up as necessary, and certainly not inside the time frame we have to work with, which most certainly is less than 30 years before we see extreme dislocations to the current system.  Many are occurring now as we speak, but are for the most part at the moment confined to 3rd World nations and not too much of a bother to the 1st World ones.  Any unbiased and clear headed analysis of all these variables and the difficulties that exist in implementing any of the solutions should inform you that we are in the midst of a clusterfuck of Biblical proportions, and Greeny Cornucopianism isn’t going to solve the problems any more than Cold Fusion will.

Given this information then, WHY do clearly very intelligent and wel educated people like Ugo Bardi and Albert Bates continue to promote ideas which just aren’t very likely to work, and in fact are counter productive because they are a waste of time, money and energy?  That is pretty simple to understand, it’s the “Reverse Guy McPherson” effect.  Whereas in Dr. McStinksion’s case he has given up ALL HOPE and considers Homo Saps and the Planet all DOOMED to Near Term Human Extinction by his latest prognostication of 2026, AB and UB maintain a tenacious grasp on SOME hope that we can yank ourselves out of this mess.  I hold out that hope myself, but I do so in what I consider a more realistic manner, which is to acknowledge the inevitability of a MASSIVE DIEOFF of the human population, probably greater than 99%.  This is something neither UB or AB wishes to acknowledge.  In fact, I would agree with them on some of their solutions if they would acknowledge a massive dieoff is inevitable now, I think they could work with a vastly reduced population size.  I definitely think the Reverse Guy McPherson POV they pitch is the superior mindset to the Guy McPherson one, even if it is utterly unrealistic.  Professor McStinksion’s philosophy is just utterly defeatist.

So, if we can’t reforest the earth, we can’t replace the fleet of container ships with green and friendly sailboats, we can’t wire the world with Solar PV Panels, we can’t stop the climate from warming up and we can’t keep most the Homo Sap meat packages currently walking the Earth alive, just WTF CAN we do here beside join Guy McPherson in his nihilistic & misanthropic Death Cult?  What we can do is to start building Lifeboats to SAVE AS MANY AS WE CAN.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/06/e8/66/06e86644228baedbdfe701d79a0caa83.jpg What building lifeboats in this context means is to consider locations on the earth that will likely IMPROVE in their ability to support human life as the overall temperature regime increase.  Alaska where I live is one such location.  A 10C average increase in temperatures around here on the Last Great Frontier would make the place positively balmy and pleasant.  As the Permafrost melts, that could provide thousands of hectares of fertile land upon which to grow crops.  We can also begin to breed new crops resistant to extreme weather, and we can build grow domes to do food production in a controlled environment.  We can change our building techniques and excavate to live partially underground, where the average temperature of the land mass runs around 66F.  Building such survival communities at high latitudes and high elevations, we can save a portion of the human population.  It might only be .1%, but that is still 7.5M people, which is a lot more than the ZERO that Dr. McStinksion Guy McPherson predicts for 2026!

Over time, with far fewer people infesting the earth and no more burning of fossil fuels, the global climate will begin its long road to recovery, which might take thousands or even millions of years.  In the interim, the great experiment with Sapience will continue, and those who make it through the Zero Point will have the opportunity to evolve into a new and better species, one with more true wisdom.

We have to own up to what is REALISTIC here, not pie in the sky, rainbow shitting unicorn, greenie dreamie fantasies of a world of 7.5B people running in peace and harmony on permaculture and renewable energy.  This is just NOT in the cards at this point.  We can’t save everybody.  We can only SAVE AS MANY AS WE CAN.  That’s where the efforts of our best and brightest need to go, not into wasting time, energy, money and brain power on faulty solutions that will not succeed.  No more Skittle Shitting Unicorns!

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c9/cd/52/c9cd5232feee65a5e8c6d7cf699827b5.jpg

Doomstead Diner by RE



23 Comments on "Greenie Techno-Cornucopianism"

  1. Apneaman on Wed, 14th Jun 2017 11:50 pm 

    Yep, me thinks biologist Guy McPherson’s NTE 2026 will not come to pass. I’m more in line with microbiologist Frank Fenner – one more human life span.

    Humans will be extinct in 100 years says eminent scientist

    “(PhysOrg.com) — Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.

    https://phys.org/news/2010-06-humans-extinct-years-eminent-scientist.html

    And wildlife biologist Neil Dawes

    Web of life unravelling, wildlife biologist says

    “Wildlife biologist Neil Dawe says he wouldn’t be surprised if the generation after him witnesses the extinction of humanity.”

    https://web.archive.org/web/20150425132240/http://www.oceansidestar.com/news/web-of-life-unravelling-wildlife-biologist-says-1.605499

    And this group of scientists say if the humans do not change they will be going bye bye.

    Humans could be among the victims of sixth ‘mass extinction’, scientists warn

    “And the study, which was published in the journal Science Advances on Friday and described by its authors as “conservative”, said humans were likely to be among the species lost.

    “If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover and our species itself would likely disappear early on,” lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico said.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-20/sixth-mass-extinction-impact-humans-study-says/6560700

    There are plenty of other scientist with extremely doomy warnings as well. They share something else with Guy McPherson in that they are all biology people. If one pays attention it’s obvious that their warnings and predictions are much worse than media darling climate modelers who are not qualified as experts on the web of life. For the most part they are listing all the same reasons as McPherson, but their dates are further out or unspecified. The warning are pointless since the humans have not and will not slow down let alone stop.

    BTW, the average recovery time after a mass extinction is 10 million years.

    I get how you need to cling to a bottleneck and then survivors redemption story. It’s actually very common, kinda like the flood myths in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the old testament. And your warnings and efforts make you just like Utnapishtim and Noah who also felt they were called to “SAVE AS MANY AS WE CAN.”.

    RE from Alaska, the 21st century Noah.

  2. onlooker on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 12:10 am 

    One of the best articles, I have read yet here. Oh and nice AP, the biology is pretty chilling as is the many nuclear reactors we have on this planet melting down. But hey we are keeping it real aren’t we. Maybe, we should build some cryogenic capsules and put the chosen inside and wake them up in a few hundred years ummm. But wait climate change effects last for thousands of years as does radiation. But still, maybe they can include me, so I can miss the fireworks of mass die off end of civilization. Not something to look forward too , hey just keeping it real

  3. makati1 on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 12:10 am 

    Ask the dinosaurs how many survived that extinction event? If you can find one. LOL

    I second the prediction that humans will be totally extinct by 2100. By 2026? Maybe, IF we have a nuclear war. But cancers take time to form so many may survive even that for a decade or so after. I would not want to bring a child into this world today.

  4. Apneaman on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 12:27 am 

    Rain Bombs keep falling.

    Honduras – Deadly Floods in Choluteca After 190 mm Rain in 24 Hours

    Flood summary
    Last updated: June 14, 2017

    Event
    Choluteca, Honduras, June 2017

    Date
    June 9 to June 14, 2017

    Type
    River flood

    Cause
    Extreme rainfall

    National Permanent Commission of Emergencies (COPECO) in Honduras reported that ravines flooded and rivers overflowed in the city of Choluteca on Saturday 10 June, 2017.

    http://floodlist.com/america/honduras-floods-choluteca-june-2017

  5. onlooker on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 12:42 am 

    http://bigthink.com/dangerous-ideas/5-stephen-hawkings-warning-abandon-earth-or-face-extinction
    Stephen Hawking’s Warning: Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction
    “It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. Let’s hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.”

  6. Apneaman on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 1:07 am 

    onlooker, I don’t think any humans have been beyond low earth orbit since 1973, so they better get a move on.

  7. onlooker on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 1:14 am 

    Yeah and wherever our “nature” follows us. The real problem is US

  8. Cloggie on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 1:48 am 

    The usual doomer suspects Apneaman, makati and onlooker can’t believe their luck: finally some oldschool die-off story. Told ya so! We are all going to die, perhaps even as early as 2026, yeah!

    Where to begin.?

    First of all the author spends most of his space to write about non-issues. Like profesional doomer-tards like Orlov and their sailing boats. Or trans-Atlantic sailing. The author is right: the doomer-tards made good money and are now living the good life. Has nothing to do with sustainability. Kunstler and Bates jetting over the planet is just out of sheer fun. These actions are completely incompatible with their theories and recommendations. I will never meet Kunstler, but I have read him anyway, heard his podcasts and watched him on youtube many times, thanks to the internet. It doesn’t make a difference if I would see him live or on the computer screen. Which btw has enormous implications for the economy. Most of the transactions, including stupid 9-5 work for insurance, IT, administration, engineering, etc., etc companies can be done online. But we still jump in our cars every day to travel to a stupid office, without real necessity. With broadband internet, servers, cloud, etc. almost all desk work could be done from home and IS done increasingly so. If push comes to shove, all these jobs would indeed be carried out from home, without energy intensive commuting. The Netherlands for instance has 10 million jobs of which 1 million are working from home (2014):

    https://www.metronieuws.nl/binnenland/2014/07/aantal-thuiswerkers-groeit-en-neemt-toe-tot-bijna-een-miljoen

    You can completely replace business meetings with group software and a distributed work force.

    The author deplores that “very intelligent people” like Bardi & Bates have abandoned the doomer ship, but fortunately has found the proper diagnosis to explain it al: they are suffering from a ” “Reverse Guy McPherson”” effect.

    Hookay, thanks for pointing that out, “RE” (who?)
    Now who is McPherson again?

    The author predictably spends very little time on the topic of where the solution could come from: renewable energy, the strategy Europe and China have embarked upon. There is not a shadow of a doubt that NW-Europe will be able to replace current fossil based electricity consumption with renewable capacity in the coming 30 years with up to 180%:

    https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/report-upbeat-assessment-european-offshore-wind/

    And this process can be sped up is necessary. Dutch parliament for instance doesn’t want to wait until the EU fossil-free date of 2050 but wants to see the job done in 2030. There is enough fossil fuel left for a global transition that will last 30 years. China alone can carry on if necessary for 50 years with the recently explored methane hydrates reserves (I know, hazardous, but still).

    “RE” is spending some time on his fantasy that the world needs to get rid of 95% of its useless eaters, which probably doesn’t include “RE” himself. There are quite a few here who likewise opine that “we should plan for a huge reduction of human population”. The article does the same, without indicating how this should happen. It won’t.

    The Italian Bardi has underwent the same development as I did: moving away from 2005-ASPO doomerism towards the insight that it is very well possible to have a sustainable economy and culture, while moving away 100% from fossil fuel in the coming 10-30 years. Naked survival isn’t very difficult. Put a few seeds in the ground and eat the results a few months later. But we will not get at that level, unless we will have a global war. But that war can only be instigated by the US and that entity is sinking away in an inner conflict between the globalists and nationalists, where the rest of the world just shruggs. Eurasian century is next.

    By 2020 the price of solar will yet again be halved. The price of offshore wind is already lower than fossil and will further decrease, see previous link. The world of the future will see all sorts of drama, like civil war in the white world, but this grand die-off scheme due to peak-oil is not going to happen.

  9. onlooker on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 2:04 am 

    but this grand die-off scheme due to peak-oil is not going to happen.—
    Who is saying PO induced dieoff Clog? Not us. We are saying environmental disaster. As the links from above attests “the web of life is unraveling” And that is WITHOUT the more drastic effects of climate change yet emerging. We also have that little problem with a plethora of nuclear reactors set for meltdown post PO. So you can tout Renewable all you want but 7.5 billion of us continue to ravage the planet and deplete resources and spew CO2. If you are right that just allows us to continue doing all this a bit longer to the detriment of the planet and thus ultimately us. It sucks but it is all there to see

  10. makati1 on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 3:28 am 

    Onlooker, Cloggie is in deep denial, or so stupid he doesn’t understand what is happening. His long rants and EU flag waving patriotism gets boring after a while and I don’t read them, just as I don’t read Davy’s long rants. Pure bullshit pretending to be intelligence.

    You and I know what is coming and we can only wait for the end. It has nothing to do with peak oil or even the economy. It has to do with greedy humans shitting in their nest for centuries and now the shit is going to drown them. There will be no humans left to celebrate New Years 2100.

  11. Cloggie on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 3:42 am 

    Onlooker, Cloggie is in deep denial, or so stupid he doesn’t understand what is happening. His long rants and EU flag waving patriotism gets boring after a while and I don’t read them, just as I don’t read Davy’s long rants. Pure bullshit pretending to be intelligence.

    makati only wants to discuss with those he agrees with, because engaging in a real discussion with “opponents”, that is too confronting, especially if you are not too sure of the strength of your own arguments.

    Makati is a true believer of his own doomer extremism, he adopted 10 years ago, like so many here and have dug himself so deep in a hole that there is no way out again without massive lose of face for his surrounding (family and friends).

    If party A wants to discuss, but party B doesn’t, that’s usually because party B is not too confident he will prevail. This is a Darwinian universe after all.

    Makati is party B and has put party A on his famous “ignore list” again. ROFL.

    There will be no humans left to celebrate New Years 2100.

    You can safely make these predictions because nobody will ever confront you with them by 2100.

    You and I know what is coming and we can only wait for the end. It has nothing to do with peak oil or even the economy. It has to do with greedy humans shitting in their nest for centuries and now the shit is going to drown them.

    How was your air-lifted shopping spree in Hong Kong lately? Managed to buy a new Chinese salad shooter? The latest purple colored Nike jogging shoes, so you can lose a few kilo while running between the sky-scrapers of downtown Manila late at night?

  12. Apneaman on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 3:58 am 

    It’s all that Muslim cum clog swallows on his clandestine trips to Amsterdam’s fag alley whats fogging up his brain.

  13. Cloggie on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 4:13 am 

    It’s all that Muslim…

    https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevolking_van_Nederland

    Autochtoon 13.234.545
    Totaal niet-westerse allochtoon 1.997.584
    Totaal westerse allochtoon 1.597.160
    Totaal Afrika 612.627
    Totaal Amerika 643.290
    Totaal Azië 775.520
    Totaal Europa (exclusief autochtoon) 1.542.277

    Summary:

    Whites: 15 million
    Non-whites: 2 million, of which a few hundred thousand harmless East-Asians and South-Americans and less than 1 million dangerous Muslims (400K Moroccans and 400k Turks).

    And these numbers are already enough to get populists working themselves in a rage, mostly because the fake multicult “elite” of US c* sucker vassals (with Merkel being the worst) give no sign that they are willing to protect Dutch/European identity.

    That will prove to be bad for their personal health. Just ask their Eastern European Soviet c* sucker vassals what happens to you if you continue to work for foreign interests rather than for the interest of your own population, like Putin does and Trump tries to do.

    http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/10/21/article-2051552-0E7655C800000578-750_634x381.jpg

    Oh wait… not possible to ask.

  14. Davy on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 4:35 am 

    Makati, I don’t read your long anything because you don’t have anything to say that is long. You are incapable of saying anything beyond a few sentences. If you have anything long it is a intellectually lame copy and paste lists without reference. You are redundant and extreme without balanced support.

    Clog and I have things to say and to say something balanced with substance requires a few paragraphs. Your buddy ape knows this. You would rather regurgitate your usual biased blame and complain with praising Asian and hazing the West in short snippet. Makati you can’t have it both ways. You can’t claim the west is collapsing and Asia is not part of that. It makes you look like a ridiculous old man stuck in a rut. This is where you are and that is an intellectual rut going into your twilight. Clog is right about this:

    “makati only wants to discuss with those he agrees with, because engaging in a real discussion with “opponents”, that is too confronting, especially if you are not too sure of the strength of your own arguments.”

  15. Davy on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 5:35 am 

    Clog, your problem is taking it to the other extreme and failing to connect dots and fill in the spaces. You jump immediately to we have solutions and say “look here, see”. “Your lookie here and see” is not complete and it is open to all kinds of failure.

    My doom has evolved and adapted and thank god for this. I have always said I am an unwilling doomer. I have now evolved to a doomer lite but doom nonetheless. We are in a time of great changes and many are very destructive and decisive. Extinction and climate disruption do not correct in human time frames. Population does not quietly and nicely rebalance. Resources do not form for extraction in human timeframes once they have been exploited. Substitution, innovation, and efficiency hit diminishing returns. Systematic dysfunction and decay at the macro level is self-organizing and adaptive and are beyond management. This is a finite planet but man’s imagination is open ended. This is where delusions and irrationality creep in.

    Our late term civilization has negative condition that have momentum and this momentum is inertial to vital growth. Where I have evolved as a doomer is time frame and scale. This doom evolution is also location based. I do believe collapse will set in locally and regionally. The development process likewise will follow this location based evolution. I am excited about the renewable revolution and its transformative effects but this is just “possibility” in the here and now. I don’t want to hear stories because society has fed me stories since I was a kid and many if not most have been complete failures. I do not trust social narratives anymore. The techno green optimism is another story unrealized.

    We are heading in a good direction with renewables but it is not enough at the moment. Renewables are just part of what is needed and still in its beginnings. Human wisdom is woefully lacking to harness renewables properly. Late term civilization attitudes and lifestyles are pathetic. Much of your message clog is hype on this point. The “there” is not “here” yet. It is still a theory that needs to get legs and happen. Yes, some of your hype is great and happening. Your hype has possibility and potential and realization. The transformational process of our foundational energy needs is wonderful. I am part of it. I am investing in it. I do not want to see all I have worked for and love destroyed in a crazy nasty collapse. Yet, I am not going to be unrealistically optimistic.

    I could care less about smart people preaching techno optimism. Society is techno optimistic. You expect this to come out from academia and the science world. It is what sells and what people like you crave. What I want to hear is the truth. There is plenty of techno optimism being preached but little of it is tempered with reality of a broad based collapse process. This process is multidimensional. It is human and natural and encompasses all aspects of human civilization. It is clearly evident and undeniable.

    This phenomenon of decline is at the moment married to a human process of growth that also has momentum. Man has constructed an ecosystem that has significant potency. Humans and their systems have power and adaptability. Knowledge and technology is a potent force but it is a two edge sword that is also killing us. This is now in a scale and time frame that is being expressed over decades not months. These forces will battle over years but it is likely “Guy McPherson effect” will eventually win just not on his time frame. McPherson is on to the collapse process it is just his expression is also hype fighting techno optimistic hype. Knowledge is always battling creating extreme positions. Late term civilization may ride a plateau for a time where the battle of decline and growth undulate and evolve.

    This points to location. There are places where the effects of environment, population, and systematic decline will be a collapse dynamic. It is also true we will have Byzantium’s within this process of growth and development. Some of this development may be fantastic but surely all will be dated. Maybe you yourself are in one clog because northern Europe has much to brag about in regards to energy transition and systematic strength. Yet, you also have plenty of dangers. Humans have a finger on suicide so any success can be destroyed in seconds. That is always there and will not go away. Techno militancy is increasing in a dangerous and ugly fashion quicker than green techno optimism. There is no optimism in techno militancy.

    This then becomes a multifaceted story the kind extremist hate because it is not clean cut and straight forward. It is fuzzy and hazy. Extremist need actions and tempo to support a strong and dramatic message. I have always welcomed life over death. I am preaching doom as insurance and I believe my form of doom and prep is a wonderful life for some. It is also a great long term strategy for humans to negotiate late term civilization and planetary collapse. It embraces nature and our traditional skills pre-modern but it also embraces the best of the modern. You, clog, are preaching more of the same with a techno green tint. Affluence is vital to your message. Affluence cannot continue to grow and without continued growth our growth based civilization cannot last.

  16. makati1 on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 5:38 am 

    What is the sound I hear? Hot air blowing out of Missouri, the mule state? Yep! I can tell by the smell. LMAO.

  17. Cloggie on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 6:01 am 

    Davy, we both know how we think. You from your American, me from my European perspective, obviously both trying to advance the interests of our respective clubs. And not being real enemies/opponents at that.

    I’m not sure why promoting green tech is bad. It is all we have and it is far less harmless than the fossil/nuke energy system we have now. What else is there to do? Wait in our forest cabin until doomsday arrives? That maybe an option for folks raised “with a silver spoon in their mouths”, like you and Greg, but for ordinary deplorables that’s not an option.

    I’m not promoting green tech to realize BAU (although it could be very well possible to reach a very agreeable life style after all), but simply because we have no choice.

    But the real doomers, like in the article, perhaps prefer a Very Hard Planetary Reset, and wipe the planet clean from most of its “cancer monkeys”.

    Not even I am hard-right enough for that option… if we don’t have to.

    I’m still not convinced that scenario is inevitable.

    My right-wing-enough attitude: keep parasitic invaders out, let the Europeans develop a solar energy base and after that let it trickle down to the planetary deplorables, if necessary via a renewed Eurasian colonization of Sub-Saharan Africa. Which btw is already in full swing by the Chinese.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/magazine/is-china-the-worlds-new-colonial-power.html

    http://www.ibtimes.com/china-africas-new-colonial-overlord-says-famed-primate-researcher-jane-goodall-1556312

  18. Cloggie on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 6:01 am 

    What is the sound I hear? Hot air blowing out of Missouri, the mule state? Yep! I can tell by the smell. LMAO.

    100% sneer, 0% substance.

  19. Davy on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 6:07 am 

    This is what you would expect to hear from extremist. Say something guys. You are both empty and gut shot so all you old guys can do is stomp your feet and spit. What a joke and both of you. LMFAO. The sad thing is I am getting old and will likely start to suffer the same. “C’est la vie”

    “What is the sound I hear? Hot air blowing out of Missouri, the mule state? Yep! I can tell by the smell. LMAO.”

    What is the sound I hear? Hot air blowing out of Missouri, the mule state? Yep! I can tell by the smell. LMAO. 100% sneer, 0% substance.”

  20. Davy on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 6:16 am 

    “I’m not sure why promoting green tech is bad. It is all we have and it is far less harmless than the fossil/nuke energy system we have now. What else is there to do? Wait in our forest cabin until doomsday arrives? That maybe an option for folks raised “with a silver spoon in their mouths”, like you and Greg, but for ordinary deplorables that’s not an option.”

    When is promoting propaganda on not? Maybe you should get that figured out then you will understand what I am talking about. You can call me raised with a “silver spoon” but isn’t that what you are talking about with your great and wonderful Dutch Empire and now the Fatherland of Paris Berlin Moscow BS? You guys are so wonderful over there in norther Europe. One just needs to review real 20th history to see that line of BS. So what is it are you an “ordinary deplorable” or exceptional? All I hear out of you and makati is exceptional talk with hazing and praising. You have guns a blazing and fancy uniforms but the guns are shooting blanks. You guys are ridiculous with your grand stories. Old men have little left but to talk embellishments and exaggerations.

  21. Sissyfuss on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 9:51 am 

    That’s me, Cloggedlips. Sitting in my forest cabin watching the growing doom approach from all sides. And why should we try to save as many as we can when we are already proving to be the most disastrous evolutionary blip ever created. The survivors will just start down the same road we stumbled down. If Dr Bronowski were alive today he would follow up his brilliant ” The Ascent of Man” with its update ” The Ass Scent of Man.”

  22. Cloggie on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 10:02 am 

    That’s me, Cloggedlips. Sitting in my forest cabin watching the growing doom approach from all sides. And why should we try to save as many as we can when we are already proving to be the most disastrous evolutionary blip ever created. The survivors will just start down the same road we stumbled down. If Dr Bronowski were alive today he would follow up his brilliant ” The Ascent of Man” with its update ” The Ass Scent of Man.”

    It’s all wonderful to be an environmentalist and stuff, but you shouldn’t do it on your lungs.

  23. dave thompson on Thu, 15th Jun 2017 1:09 pm 

    I have to point out McPherson’s work on his web site Nature Bats Last. Read it and you will get it, we have 3-9 years left, maybe.

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