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climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 17:26:50

Newfie wrote:Not worry long about it does not make “it all good.”

Remember the song “Don’t worry, be happy”?

Remember the Nuremberg defense?

Yes, we should remember what indigenous people say " We do not inherit this planet from previous generations, we borrow it from future ones"
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 17:35:06

Newfie wrote:Not worry long about it does not make “it all good.”

Remember the song “Don’t worry, be happy”?

Remember the Nuremberg defense?


It is an interesting question regarding the Nuremberg defense as applied to climate change and human overshoot in general.

The Overshoot Predator is not a tangible superior or threat like the Gestapo ready and willing to kill for not following orders.

What are the exact orders anyway. Even this is not so well defined is it.

Too much that is gray and unpredictable to catalyze action.

That is the difference with actual consequences if indeed they one day manifest with brutal certainty. Then we may very well act.

We cannot do otherwise beyond symbolic gestures...

Remember the most important point though for me which is that mitigation that keeps the BAU model resilient is NOT good for the environment. This would only increase the resiliency of the forces that are a lot more damaging than climate change itself which is the Great BIotic Exchange happening under our very noses..... the replacing of natural ecosystems with artificial man made habitat and that of our slave species.

This last point is the most important reason I have never been an advocate to fight climate change. IT is a veiled attempt to keep the rape and plunder going.

A planet free of climate change hiccups will enable our chinese friends to more easily complete their grand imperial dreams of rows and rows of mono culture crops, factory workers, megalopigus cities, all connected, one giant big human landscape....... you really want that?
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 18:12:24

Yes, they're is a silver lining to PO and climate change after all.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby jedrider » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 18:19:31

onlooker wrote:
Newfie wrote:Not worry long about it does not make “it all good.”

Remember the song “Don’t worry, be happy”?

Remember the Nuremberg defense?

Yes, we should remember what indigenous people say " We do not inherit this planet from previous generations, we borrow it from future ones"


I see a DEBT crisis ahead!
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 19:17:19

Ibon, thanks for making it clear that you have a direct financial interest connected to and influencing your world view on cc and other matters. It explains a lot. :)
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 19 Nov 2017, 19:36:30

dohboi wrote:Ibon, thanks for making it clear that you have a direct financial interest connected to and influencing your world view on cc and other matters. It explains a lot. :)


It is absolutely and unequivocally true! It explains me and explains 7.4999,99999 other kudzu apes. Everyone except you Dohboi who have risen above all the other ignorant Kudzu Apes to stand as a warrior of singular objectivity. :)
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby dohboi » Mon 20 Nov 2017, 10:55:00

And now, grasshopper, your lessons may begin! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 20 Nov 2017, 22:12:31

I’ve been toying with this idea of “object constancy” for a couple of days. I may be torturing the definition a bit but here goes.

ob·ject con·stan·cy
1. the tendency for objects to be perceived as unchanging despite variations in the positions in and conditions under which the objects are observed; for example, a book's shape is always perceived as a rectangle regardless of the visual angle from which it is viewed.
2. in psychoanalysis, the relatively enduring emotional investment in another person.


For a long time we said the difference between men and animals is the ability to make tools. But we now know several species can make tools; chimps and even some corvids (crows). But none of them keep the tool, they make it and throw it away. For them it exists only in the moment.

Humans have some (very limited) ability to form “object constancy” to know that if the tool is useful now it may well be useful again later. They form a more lasting relationship with the tool. Object constancy.

Now that you have a tool you keep and reuse you may discover a modification that works better. Or a mod that works better if different circumstances. So you develop a tool box. If you are good at making tools you can trade tools for food or sex or.... well what else is there really? Tools give you status. And your kids watch you make tools and may grow up to be tool makers. And so it goes.

Just a simple modification in how we view the world, being able to extrapolate into the future, even just a day, can make a significant impact. Opposable thumbs and some other stuff helps as well but let’s not muck up a good story with extraneous facts.

So here is the question. How much have we evolved over our chimp breathen? Sure we have SOME object constancy, but how much? Surely we individually can look into the future for SOME issues. But do we really understand a 6 year car loan or 30 year mortgage or is it just something we agree to because it makes the monthly cash flow work?

I propose that for vast quantity of normal events our object constancy lasts minutes. At best. Think about most movies or TV shows or even the news, 15 second sound bites because it’s what we are comfortable with.

One would think and hope that our leaders have a more measured approach. I don’t see much evidence if it. Business seems to work to a quarterly return at best.

Sure there are exceptions; we build damns and power plants and the electrical grid, but those are really phenomenal exceptions and how many are really involved with that thinking and planning? How many Americans have adequately planned for retirement? Damn few.

So I’m considering that humanities failure, in addition to failing exponentials, is a failure of object constantancy, a failure to hear something today and accurately project it into the future. We hear the Earth is warming but fail to project that into actual future physical events. Even if we are told of 6’ SLR and it’s consequences we are, statistically, unable to process that information. That future occurs in a distant galexy far away.

The threat to humanity is not climate change, it is our inability to accurately project the truth sufficiently into the future, our object constancy is statistically very, very limited.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 21 Nov 2017, 01:04:09

Nice reflection, though I'm not sure that oc is the only or most important factor preventing some from grasping the dangers of cc.

I saw a nice description of denial recently, something like: the human need to be innocent of disturbing revelations.

I think this 'need' in humans may be more powerful than many other, seemingly more basic urges.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby ozcad » Tue 21 Nov 2017, 05:17:43

...the human need to be innocent of disturbing revelations.

<irony>
This desirable optimistic state is hard to maintain in the presence "bearers of bad tidings", so the said bearers have just gotta go.
Related - because the optimists are already correct, they obviously don't need to learn any more as this would infer that their understanding was not complete.
</irony>
(Edited to fix braino.)
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 21 Nov 2017, 09:06:13

When you consider the cultural and psychological hurdles you are not only getting even half way to first base. There remains the nagging physical reality of 7.5 billions all bent on consumption. And the fact that well over 98% of those consumers don't give two shits about moving from the psychological impediments to then sacrificing their way of life.

Here is an irony. Here we are talking about these cultural and psychological impediments when we are not able to recognize a more glaring impediment that we ourselves are displaying in this dialogue. You have 7.5 billion which is the problem. You can't fix it. Period. And here we are still trying to figure this stuff out.

The adaptation and equilibrium happens when our species declines to about 10% of our current population probably by default of consequences. In the meantime you can make reams of threads and hash over 1000 more times this dilemma but it doesn't do squat.

A more fundamental question for those of us who spend their daily cup of tea hashing over this stuff is why we persist to try to do mental surgery on a functionally dead horse.

This is why embracing the consequences of overshoot including climate change IS the solution. I am slowly getting tired of having to state the obvious.

There is a real solid and compelling argument to recognize the futility in engaging your mind in this topic and move on to enjoying the moment just like all those Kudzu Apes who we constantly claim are in denial.

Maybe they are right!!!!!

Sorry have to go. I need to send an e-mail to a European birding tour company and work out the logistics of 10 birdwatchers who are getting on an airplane next March to watch birds here at Mount Totumas :) I have to prioritize my financial interests every once in a while.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 21 Nov 2017, 09:29:10

baha wrote:Hi Ibon, Don't let it get you down...I guess you live in Nature all the time so camping doesn't help :)

You're right about our predicament. We won't be able to manage the downhill slide as a species. But each person can manage their own lives.

8 years ago I got tired of people looking at me funny and quit talking about it. And started doing something about it. I can't change the world, but I can change my lifestyle. The question is what do you do? What changes will help you endure the slide?

That's where Peakoil.com comes in. :) There are so many scenarios put forward and so many solutions offered that I just take my pick and keep moving. I get insight and alternative viewpoints every day.

And I can share the fun I'm having surviving the collapse with the people that matter. :)


this is why I am also here, these exchanges are enlightening. My last post is an attempt to pull back the veil to a place many of us, including myself, are hard pressed to accept and confront.

I have deep respect for many folks here. I think many of us would benefit from focusing exactly where you are Baha, on the ground where you can still have an effect. And not do this in a way where you actually are pretending to be the change. Because let's face it, we are all in the matrix and whether you are installing solar or protecting 400 acres of cloud forest we are in the game.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 21 Nov 2017, 09:40:10

7.5 billion. Yeah!

I would like it if every person on earth gave me a penny.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Tanada » Tue 21 Nov 2017, 12:01:24

Newfie wrote:7.5 billion. Yeah!

I would like it if every person on earth gave me a penny.


Gee $75,000,000.00? Could you really get by with so little?
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Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 21 Nov 2017, 13:02:28

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

On the other points, yes, it may be a dead, or at least very likely terminal horse.

But to the extent that we are the ones that helped kill it, I feel we have some obligation to stand vigil, and that means to be vigilant.

I remember hearing a story about Golda Meir, the former Prime Minister of Israel. The interviewer came into her office to find her looking through pictures of children from both sides maimed and killed in whatever war they were engaged in at the time. I think she said something like that there was no way right now to stop the war, but that this fact did not excuse her from the moral obligation to look directly into the faces of those most affected.

Yeah, it was probably a publicity stunt. But I think the basic moral lesson holds. Even if we can't 'do' anything about the predicaments we face (though many here could actually do many things, or more like stop doing many harmful things), we still have an obligation to look into the face of the dying 'horse' as it coughs out its last breaths.

(But maybe I'm just particularly sympathetic with images of sick things right now since I'm coughing and wheezing from the flu!? :lol: )
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby sjn » Wed 22 Nov 2017, 02:08:47

dissident wrote:The optimal order from disorder notion is a childish one. For every optimal configuration there are an infinite number of suboptimal and downright negative configurations. The very existence of laws and regulations points to this fact. If the system really was self-organizing in an optimal mode, then the path of least resistance would have meant the lack of any attempt to regulate the system.

To believe that laws and regulations are some nefarious ploy is also pure tin foil hat nonsense. The real problem is that laws and regulations are suboptimal for the same reason that the system will never evolve into an optimal state by itself. It does not help when both sides of the political spectrum are trying to change them to suit their own preferences. Optimal laws and regulations do not have a political shade.

This isn't entirely true though, as I understand it, and have written about before, systems self-organize according to the Maximum Power Principle (MPP), optimising for the steepest entropic gradient. The purpose of regulation is to have policy to achieve different outcomes. I've long held that Neoliberalism is best understood as a political ideology expressing a direct manifestation of MPP.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby onlooker » Wed 22 Nov 2017, 09:46:18

Yes, despite the tendency for disorder entropy important work has been done recently demonstrating a self organizing pattern in the Universe. So, beyond human-centric notions we should be cognizant of how Nature on a wider scale works
Cosmic Evolution: The Self-Organizing Universe

http://palaeos.com/cosmic_evolution/selforg.html
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Wed 22 Nov 2017, 14:12:55

I have said this before, and I'll say it again. You are either an advocate for the planet, or for the human race.

It is in fact a binary choice, one of the few in an analog world. I don't need the multiple choice lecture again, anybody who accepts that argument is in fact avoiding an unpleasant facet of reality in the world we live in.

It is the fundamental nature of mankind, acting on the primate instincts that nature hardwired into us via millions of years of evolution, to act in the ways we act. We consume more than we need, we reproduce beyond replacement rates, we lust after domination of the world around us, and even (among the sickest of us) for domination and control of other humans. We are the way we are and fundamentally incapable of change.

Cultural evolution is BS when discussing this concept. I will freely admit that individual humans, via a broad education (self-taught or academic) and lots of mentating on the topic, are capable of making the right choices for the planet. However, those who ever in their lives reach that point are a small minority, well under 1%. They don't stand the proverbial snowball's chance against the remaining 99+% who will never acquire the education, never indulge in introspective thought, and never replace their own personal consumption and domination goals with those that favor the planet or even the human race as a whole.

Some of you are finally seeing the reality of this. There is no stopping the human destruction of this planetary ecosystem, at least to the point where it will not support the 7.5+ billions that already live here and are in fact destroying it as fast as they can. This process is in fact the natural correction that will reboot the planet's ecology without the troublesome humans. So STFU about all this existential angst, it is the culmination of all the green dreams of all of you, the planet will florish again in a few million more years, scarred by a virulent human species, but still viable.

That would be, unless me and my like, those who have chosen to favor our own species above all others, succeed in leaving the planet and colonizing space before the widespread ecological collapse on the planetary surface. In that case, we will continue to dominate the planet and when it florishes again, it will be under our human domination and control.

If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it is a variation of a concept that Stanley Kubrick communicated to you in a movie in your youth. His version (2001: A Space Odyssey) included the concept of an outside force that amounted to a diety, something that humans seem predisposed to believe in, but ultimately is niether necessary nor desirable, other than as a source of introspective thought.

Unfortunately, the only non-viable choice in this matter is the one that most of you seem to have made, which is to consciously deny the very nature of the central issue. One either favors humanity, the Kudzu Apes, the destroyers of the myriad other species of the ecology we live in, or you favor the ecology, everything else except the species Homo sapiens sapiens, the sole surviving member of the Hominina, and the destroyer of the ecology of planet Earth.

In this case, human BAU involves "raping the planet", plundering it of all resources, everything needed to produce more humans. That is what Nature (the mythical diety that most of you actually worship) intended for us. Is that not what the 99+% of the humans are doing, in response to our "natural instincts"? We are the penultimate achievement of that diety, if you still choose to believe. The flip side of the coin: human genocide for the sake of the planet, aka Mother Nature, aka the Living Planet, aka ...

Nobody ever said these concepts were easy or simple or comforting. In fact it is a fundamental requirement that these ideas be difficult and disturbing to contemplate. Fundamentally, the lack of turmoil and struggle is fatal, if you manage to be at a state of Peace, you are dying or already dead.
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Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0
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