[onlooker]

"There won't be an EPA to blame because our kleptocratic overlords will fully defund it and everything else, or reality will.' Yep reality is making that nothing can be done to benefit people and what little can be done, the authorities do not seem inclined to do. Thanks ghung for posting

[AdamB]

My hometown of Santa Rosa, California, and surrounding communities were decimated by wildfires during the week of October 9, with entire neighborhoods completely erased. If you want a sense of how bad the fires were, watch this 11-minute video clip put together by three Berkeley firefighters. For a more personal view of the consequences of the fires, check out this webcomic account by the husband of the Sonoma County Director of Human Services (the couple lost their home). My wife Janet and I voluntarily evacuated our house at 4am on October 10 (we were just outside a mandatory evacuation zone), after bundling our four sleepy chickens into the back of our car. We were among the fortunate ones: we were able to return home late that same day. Meanwhile 19 residents of Santa Rosa had lost their lives (the death

Heinberg: Puerto Rico is our Future

[Plantagenet]

It wont take much more warming to turn central California into a northern extension of the Mohave Desert.

Napa and Sonoma are probably doomed to become hotter, more arid, and have more fires until the forests are gone

Cheers!

[Outcast_Searcher]

Climate change is our future.

How we deal with it (or not) is not yet written in stone.

Mindlessly defaulting on massive debt built on decades of corruption and tax cheating and voting against statehood in the entity we are demanding help from (so we don't have to pay federal income taxes to that entity, so we DESERVE the help demanded when needed), and then bleating about help and rights when something goes wrong (like Puerto Rico) isn't necessarily how "we" will deal with everything.

Puerto Rico is only one possible (very bad and very stupid) version of how we might handle our future.

[KaiserJeep]

Thanks to the rainfall returning to the average values (and then some) California produced a bumper crop of food this year. It also has a solidly growing economy, and is on the road to powering itself entirely without FF's in the near future.

So the rest of you, match this state's achievements before predicting it's demise. For the record, much of the Central Valley of California was semi-arid chaparral and grasslands before it was developed for irrigated agriculture with a system of reservoirs and canals.

Yes, I will admit that the Snail Darter minnow and other species sufferred so that we might feed the humans in about 1/4 of the USA. But that after all, was Gaia's plan when she created humans. Although some of you favor other species over humans, fortunately there are enough normal people to relegate those few to the status of oddballs and cranks.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Thanks to the rainfall returning to the average values (and then some) California produced a bumper crop of food this year. It also has a solidly growing economy, and is on the road to powering itself entirely without FF's in the near future.

Do you mean aside from vehicles? Because if you don't, I can't agree with that. Not even close.

[KaiserJeep]

Yes, you are right. My remark was entirely about the electric grid. But also note that California has more EVs and Hybrids than other states, by a considerable margin. But you are correct, much remains to be done to eliminate gasoline and diesel consumption in personal transportation.

[AdamB]

I think Richard is wrong. Most US citizens don't live on an island in hurricane alley. And if they did, they would have spent their share of the $70 billion borrowed on armoring up their houses a wee bit better...no different than folks in Oklahoma with tornadoes.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Yes, you are right. My remark was entirely about the electric grid. But also note that California has more EVs and Hybrids than other states, by a considerable margin. But you are correct, much remains to be done to eliminate gasoline and diesel consumption in personal transportation.

Oh, absolutely. California is the US leader overall in green energy generally and in BEV's in particular. Southern CA has a significant lead in BEV's over nearly every place on the globe (Denmark being an obvious exception, despite stumbling recently).

I just wanted to ensure I understood the scope of what you are talking about since you have repeatedly pointed out (correctly) how until EV's are a very significant percentage of GLOBAL car sales, that the overall dependence of the globe on FF's is likely to be rising, given how many global vehicles, dominated by ICE's for now, are being added annually (and projected in the coming decades) to the auto fleet.

[Plantagenet]

I think Richard is wrong. Most US citizens don't live on an island in hurricane alley. And if they did, they would have .....armoring up their houses

You missed the whole point. Climate change is going wipe you out whether you live on an island or not. PR faces stronger and larger hurricanes and central California faces heat, aridification, forest fires, and biome change. Napa and Sonoma counties will turn into arid desert.

Climate change will disrupt everything for everyone everywhere.

Cheers!

[AdamB]

Climate change is our future.

How we deal with it (or not) is not yet written in stone.

Climate change was also our past. As is how we have dealt with it all along the way.

Puerto Rico is only one possible (very bad and very stupid) version of how we might handle our future.

If we lived on an island in hurricane alley, and were silly and pretended that we only needed God to protect us from hurricanes, and therefore could just spend the money to give the people bread and circuses.

[AdamB]

I think Richard is wrong. Most US citizens don't live on an island in hurricane alley. And if they did, they would have .....armoring up their houses

You missed the whole point. Climate change is going wipe you out whether you live on an island or not. PR faces stronger and larger hurricanes and central California faces heat, aridification, forest fires, and biome change. Napa and Sonoma counties will turn into arid desert.

Climate change will disrupt everything for everyone everywhere.

Cheers!

As it has in the past. Can you just IMAGINE all those folks staring at the ice sheets as they retreated off beyond the horizon, the world warming, the water supply changing, and suffering through all that disruption for their entire culture? Some of those cultures didn't make it!

Good thing we have the genes within us of the ones that did!

[KaiserJeep]

The PBS Weekend News yesterday had articles on both Puerto Rico and New Jersey on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy.

Puerto Rico has as of today 30% of the households with electric service and 80% with running water.

New Jersey kind looks like before Sandy. The barrier Islands of NJ are mostly rebuilt - houses that have been flooded more than once are now occupied again. Yet these same houses will be submerged again by sea level rise by 2050, and there is no relief from that. They mentioned that plans are being put in place for a storm defense wall around lower Manhattan Island, so that it can remain occupied during the next Sandy-sized storm, even at increased sea levels.

Now you know why Trump is POTUS. One of those places the rising sea would claim is Wall St. But on whatever is his last month in office, he'll order the walls that save NYC.

[Ibon]

he'll order the walls that save NYC.

The building of walls against tides of humans and water.

[KaiserJeep]

he'll order the walls that save NYC.

The building of walls against tides of humans and water.

The building of walls around NYC is quite practical, as long as you can get the Feds to pick up most of the tab.

NYC is a little over 300 square miles. The Netherlands has 2500+ square miles below current mean sea levels, and uses some fairly impressive design specs - they build occupied areas to resist the once-every-10,000-year storm, and even agricultural land sea defenses are built to resist once-every-4,000-year storms.

The really bad news: the Dutch have another whole branch of government that they call "Water Boards" that manage sea defenses.

Most presidents build a library so that people won't forget their self-perceived glory. Donald Trump will build a wall around NYC and save it. That scale of project appeals to his ego, just one of his hotels dwarfs all the presidential libraries already.

Remember, all of Wall Street in S Manhattan Island will be submerged by 2050 unless he does this. Everybody get ready to feel the sting in your Federal taxes.

[AdamB]

On November 30, 2017 at the New England Conservatory of Music, Richard performed Paganini’s “Sonata Concertata For Guitar And Violin” and spoke about what the future might mean for today’s young musicians and artists, and the important role they have to play in the societal transformation ahead. Full transcript: Over the next few minutes I hope to share with you a little of what I’ve learned about the likely trajectory of industrial society for the remainder of this century, and some speculations about the possible role of music and related arts within that trajectory. Perhaps the best way to introduce the ideas and information I want to share is to tell you some of my personal story. I grew up in the Midwestern states in the 1950s and ’60s, where my interests swung between the sciences (my father was an industrial chemist) and the arts:

Richard Heinberg: Post Carbon Music

[AdamB]

People grow old and die. Civilizations eventually fail. For centuries amateur philosophers have used the former as a metaphor for the latter, leading to a few useful insights and just as many misleading generalizations. The comparison becomes more immediately interesting as our own civilization stumbles blindly toward collapse. While not the cheeriest of subjects, it’s worth exploring. A metaphor is not an explanation. First, it’s important to point out that serious contemporary researchers studying the phenomenon of societal collapse generally find little or no explanatory value in the metaphorical link with individual human mortality. The reasons for individual decline and death have to do with genetics, disease, nutrition, and personal history (including accidents and habits such as smoking). We are all genetically programmed to age and die, though lifespans differ greatly. Reasons for societal decline appear to have little or nothing to do with

Richard Heinberg: Old Age and Societal Decline

[AdamB]

People grow old and die. Civilizations eventually fail. For centuries amateur philosophers have used the former as a metaphor for the latter, leading to a few useful insights and just as many misleading generalizations. The comparison becomes more immediately interesting as our own civilization stumbles blindly toward collapse. While not the cheeriest of subjects, it’s worth exploring. A metaphor is not an explanation. First, it’s important to point out that serious contemporary researchers studying the phenomenon of societal collapse generally find little or no explanatory value in the metaphorical link with individual human mortality. The reasons for individual decline and death have to do with genetics, disease, nutrition, and personal history (including accidents and habits such as smoking). We are all genetically programmed to age and die, though lifespans differ greatly. Reasons for societal decline appear to have little or nothing to do with

Richard Heinberg: Old Age and Societal Decline

Interesting that Richard turns the article to anti-EIA screed by the end. I wonder what his beef is with them? It is almost as though he blames them for how well industry has buried his oil-amateur ideas?

[AdamB]

Heinberg: New U.S. Record-Level Oil Production! Peak Oil Theory Disproven! Not.

Well, I’m amazed and impressed. Tight oil production has pushed total United States petroleum output to more than 10 million barrels a day, a rate last seen almost a half-century ago. It’s a new U.S. record. Fifteen years ago I was traveling the world with a Powerpoint presentation featuring a graph of U.S. oil production history. That graph showed a clear peak in 1970 and a long bumpy decline thereafter. My message: as went the U.S., so would go the world at some point in the fairly near future. Peak oil—the inevitable moment when global oil supplies started drying up—would be a watershed for industrial societies, leading to economic contraction, geopolitical crisis, and social upheaval. So is it time for a retraction? The optics are certainly unfavorable for peak oil theorists like me. Our forecasts obviously failed, in that none of us

Heinberg says newest peak oil proves peak oil theory! Again!

[AdamB]

Shoulda studied a little more science in general or resource economics specifically in college RIchard, mighta helped out in the heady days when you were claiming that continuous type resources weren't worth much. Or economics. Might have learned a little about confirmation bias, cherry picking from available data, why resources matter just as much as reserves, all that stuff you seemed to have missed while smoking dope.