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The Catastrophe is coming

The Catastrophe is coming thumbnail

Dear 22nd century,

Do you still use that quaint phrase ‘the elephant in the room?’ Does the family Elephantidae, currently at risk, still exist, or is its extinction such a horrific elephant in the room that no one dares speak that name?

Either way, you’ve probably noticed the metaphorical elephant in my letters so far. This is one large and increasingly sweaty pachyderm. It’s the one aspect of your world our current U.S. president, Donald Trump, has affected the most; the one that the rise of fake meat could mitigate; the planetary project you’ll likely be focusing on instead of interstellar travel; the thing I keep apologizing for on behalf of several billion friends, many of whom have barely begun to realize they’re staring it in the face.

In my era, we usually call the elephant “climate change.” Millions still use the outmoded term “global warming.” My preferred coinage is “global weirding,” which is more precise: Earth’s climate is now weird, it’s getting weirder, and that process has no known end.

I don’t need to tell you that. For you, climate change is decades-old history and an ever-present headache, even if we stop burning fossil fuels now. I expect you’ll use a more somber term to convey its historic magnitude. It will become a capital-T word in the style of The Bomb and The Holocaust. Let us simply call it The Catastrophe.

Many of my contemporaries found such comparisons overblown. In which case, I advised they read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, a round-up of the latest climate science currently giving a lot of readers nightmares. Often, scientists of our era mince their words and make conservative projections. Wallace-Wells, in stitching their research together, is unafraid to describe the interconnecting calamities of a relentlessly warming world. And it’s hard to gainsay any of it. More droughts, more storms, rising seas, rising disease: all are coming, all will make each other worse.

To take one minor aspect of The Catastrophe: air pollution, which climate change is already making worse, will kill an estimated 150 million more people worldwide for every single degree celsius of warming, researchers estimate. This, the author points out, is the death toll of 25 Holocausts or two World War IIs. Human activity has already locked in one degree of warming compared to pre-industrial levels. Two, three, or four more may come along before you do.

If anything, a name like “The Catastrophe” undersells what may be about to happen — just as “four degrees of warming” sounds like a fight over the thermostat instead of the end of our entire way of life.

Who to blame for this murderous mess? Not the 19th century with its Industrial Revolution smokestacks. Not the 20th century with its gas guzzlers. Not the latter 21st century, by which time we will have likely sobered up from our oil binge and passed peak population growth. The numbers finger an obvious culprit: the early 21st century. A time when, despite the decline of coal, carbon emissions are still rising.

Climate change is making wildfires worse. Here, a man stands on a rooftop as a 2013 wildfire takes hold in Camarillo, California.

David McNew / Getty

“The majority of the burning [of fossil fuels] has come since the premiere of Seinfeld,” Wallace-Wells writes. “The story of the industrial world’s kamikaze mission is the story of a single lifetime.”

Still, an optimistic version of your world still exists. Not quite as optimistic as the headline of a recent NPR story, “It’s 2050 and here’s how we stopped climate change” — even if we stopped all emissions tomorrow, 2050 will still see a lot of grim weather effects thanks to that degree or two of warming. Still, we have the opportunity to be heroes as well as villains. Thanks to organizations like Project Drawdown, which lists which action will reduce CO2 emissions by how much (reduce food waste 50 percent by 2050, for example, and we effectively take 70 gigatons of carbon out of the atmosphere), we know precisely what we have to do.

If we stay focused on The Catastrophe already unfolding all around us, we will have the impetus to get it done. Wallace-Wells himself remains an optimist — and indeed had a baby while writing the book, a daughter who may live into the 22nd century herself — on the principle of “if we broke it, we can fix it.”

The truly nasty 22nd century comes into being only if we keep procrastinating — which is more of a danger than we think.

It’s easy to keep scary thoughts at bay by looking out the window — “eh, it’s basically fine, right?” and, over the years, adapt to slowly worsening weather like the proverbial frog in boiling water. That’s another animal metaphor you may no longer use, this time because it’s not true (a frog would hop out of a slowly boiling pot).

Still, the point stands: In our case, there’s nowhere to hop to. And we’ve already shown our capacity to adjust to worse news over time.

The full nightmare scenario is one in which we don’t even have the mental capacity to see how bad it’s getting. Warmer temperatures and more carbon in the atmosphere both have negative effects on the brain, which may make the denial problem worse — smart drugs and headbands notwithstanding. “With CO2 at 930 parts per million (more than double where we are today), cognitive ability declines by 21 percent,” Wallace-Wells writes.

That in turn raises the specter of even more climate-denying leaders trying to rewrite their past and present in ever more outrageous ways, even into your century, even in the midst of The Catastrophe. Americans live exclusively in enclaves in Alaska and have always done so, right? What do you mean, there weren’t always Mad Max-style resource wars in the disease-ravaged wastes further south? Fake news!

Catastrophe Now

If you were able to revive every adult alive on the planet right now and made them stand trial for The Catastrophe, how would we plead? Could any of us claim ignorance? Not really. The man-made greenhouse effect was known scientific fact before I was born. President Johnson described it in a 1965 address to Congress, even if some subsequent presidents denied it. I’m old enough to remember the panic years around 1989, when even hard-right leaders like Margaret Thatcher called for a “vast international co-operative effort” to fight warming. We knew.

What we can claim, weakly, is that we were confused and distracted. Never before in history had humans faced an enemy like this: carbon dioxide is odorless, colorless, ubiquitous, necessary for life, and it takes a fair amount of scientific literacy to understand why too much of it is bad news. Heck, even when our poisons were odorful and yellow-stained, as in the case of cigarettes, it took us decades of denial — from the first lung cancer links published in the early 1950s — before the numbers of U.S. smokers began to decline.

The news business wasn’t built to handle an invisible, slow-building multi-decade threat either. The Catastrophe should be the top story in every publication and on every nightly TV report, but it isn’t. We already know the details. News, by definition, is that which is new. Reporters on the scene get excited about weather. They are mute on climate.

In the early years of climate change stories, there was a fair amount of crying wolf. (Do you still have wolves?) Estimates of effects were all over the map, especially in the years before the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and supercomputer-enabled climate modeling. Climate denialists loved to point to articles from the 1990s that predicted doom. Since it hadn’t materialized yet, they reasoned, it never would, and thus the instinct inside us all — “everything is fine and if it isn’t we can adapt” — was basically correct.

By 2019, it was getting harder to cling to that concept. Individually, each weather event could be written off as not conclusively a result of climate change. But the ever-faster pile-up of events (the latest, as I write this: historic flooding in Iowa and Nebraska) became harder to ignore. Americans are, I hope, finally waking up to the fact that we’re not just talking about monsoons in Bangladesh and crop failures in Syria and the disappearance of Pacific islands.

Tornadoes in the midwest, hurricanes in the gulf states, flooding in Florida, summer heatwaves and winter polar vortexes on the East Coast: All of this is accelerating now and is not going to stop for decades, if at all.

Here in California, where we try to be woke eco-citizens but think nothing of hopping on planes and into SUVs, most imagined ourselves immune from the horrors out there. A 7-year-long drought didn’t do much to change that blithe state of mind, especially since the 2019 rains replenished all our reservoirs. (Most barely noticed the mudslides and topsoil damage that came with the deluge.)

But the state’s largest wildfires, all happening within a few years of each other, changed that. A choking haze from California’s worst ever fire so far sat atop San Francisco for several weeks last November, making our Pacific-conditioned air quality suddenly worse than Delhi’s. That got our attention.

Already, The Catastrophe has overshot our worst predictions. The Arctic permafrost, with its locked stores of carbon, methane, and ancient viruses, wasn’t supposed to melt as fast as it currently is. (It could release a hundred billion tons of carbon by your century, or as much as we’ve released in the last 25 years, all on its own.) The eastern Antarctic ice shelf didn’t get the memo that it was supposed to be stable and has started jumping into the sea to join the iceberg party.

How bad could it get by your century? The Uninhabitable Earth is a litany of how bad, depending on how many more degrees we add to the thermostat. Four degrees — which, thanks to the melting permafrost, we may hit even if we stop all emissions — leads to an estimated $550 trillion in damages, twice the value of our entire global economy.

High-tide flooding will batter the East Coast of the U.S. literally every other day. Florida will probably have to be abandoned altogether. I’d smirk and say you’re not missing much, but of course that’s not true. As Joni Mitchell sang in words that will still hold true for the 22nd century, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

A constant state of global famine is a real possibility. As topsoil gets washed away, dried out or otherwise damaged, we will have less space to grow crops, and the crops we can grow will provide more sugars and fewer vitamins — all while population trends give us three billion more mouths to feed. The UN says we may see as many as a billion climate refugees just by 2050, or a thousand times the number of people who fled Syria’s civil war. It has no estimate for 2100.

It won’t be that much better for those of us who retain our homes. A third of the world’s population now lives with deadly heatwaves for at least 20 days of the year; by 2100, that could be true for three-quarters of us. We’re not just talking about more days inside with the AC cranked up, we’re talking temperatures so hot that they cause organ failure. Like an immune system shaking off a virus, the planet may literally cook us to death.

Even Wallace-Wells barely bothers considering warming of six degrees or more, though some scientists give it an 11 percent chance of happening by your century. But as someone with a professional interest in all possible futures, I see that one, too. I see it mostly at night when sleep fails to come: a world where we cannot grow crops and cling to the margins of a mass extinction, where the cooler heads are fewer and cannot pull us out of the tailspin, where the survivors cannot stop their tears.

Another recent book, Light of the Stars by astrophysicist Alan Frank, suggests that climate change is the real answer to the famous Fermi paradox, which asks why we haven’t received any messages from other worlds given how many trillions of star systems are out there. Every civilization would likely build itself atop combustible fuel, meaning every civilization would go through its own Catastrophe — if not to the point of annihilation, then to the point where it is so hobbled that it cannot expand into space, ever.

A better place

Despite the bleakness of the outlook, I am still at root an optimist. For years I’ve been writing about, and collecting stories about, technology that could mitigate The Catastrophe in unusual ways.

Take fake beef, which I’ve written about in the form of the Impossible Burger. Having tasted the more delicious Impossible Burger 2.0, the first of many upgrades, I predict this stuff will soon be indistinguishable from the real thing, even for regular meat eaters like me. Since it is way more economical to grow food than to keep cattle, fake meat will be cheaper, sooner than we think. One of the planet’s most destructive industries may die a deserved death at the hands of market forces — no Green New Deal required.

Speaking of which, I predict we’ll eventually get some form of Green New Deal in the U.S. and beyond. (As I wrote this, Britain’s Labour party announced its version of the plan, which calls for complete decarbonization of the UK economy in 10 years). It will probably take a decade or two more of calamity to convince a majority of the U.S. Congress — the 2020s and 2030s are likely to be very grim decades — and like the original New Deal, it will probably work more within the capitalist system than without.

Much of the good news on climate change is frustratingly small beer compared to the scale of the problem. Costa Rica just committed to banning fossil fuels by 2050. California is now powered by one-third renewable energy. That’s great; now where’s everyone else? A Brazilian photographer plants 3 million trees; what does that matter if Brazil’s new president wants to tear down the Amazon rainforest?

I believe big, bold change is coming. The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes of the world will have their day. The 21st century may be a kind of mirror image of the 20th in this regard. If the 2030s unleash economic and ecological nightmares on the scale of the Dust Bowl and Depression a hundred years prior, then AOC may be the FDR that rises to meet the challenge. (She’ll be 44 in 2033, on the 100th anniversary of FDR’s inauguration.)

Wind power and the bright, but uncertain future.

Florian Gaertner / Photothek via Getty Images

The 2040s may see a global mobilization on the scale of World War II a century earlier. With the pro-environment millennial generation now firmly in control of governments around the world, it could be a decade of decisive moves that will finally, definitively decarbonize the global economy — perhaps with international systems of subsidies and fines to help fossil fuel-dependent countries switch to cleaner sources of energy. Meanwhile, liability lawsuits will nip at the heels of energy giants foolish enough to delay the inevitable switch.

By this point, even a conservative rate of technology advancement should have gifted us everything we need to survive in a post-carbon world. Autonomous electric vehicles should be ubiquitous. Solar panels will be cheap and light and transparent enough to place on every window. Green roofs will be all the rage. High-altitude blimps, tethered with giant power cables, will pick up enough wind energy from the jet stream to make our turbines look like pinwheels. Vertical farms will grow food for cities, allowing regular farmland to go wild — which in turn will soak up CO2 by creating billions of new plants.

Will this all arrive too late to prevent some form of Catastrophe? If it has to wait until the 2030s or 40s, probably. But given the broken political system the millennials and Generation Z will inherit when they step into the corridors of power, and the fact that fossil fuel companies are still spreading disinformation, I don’t see it happening much sooner. Earth may give us something of a reprieve on one hand — scientists are currently pleased by how much CO2 the oceans continue to absorb — even as it takes away with the other (that pesky permafrost).

But the constant flooding, wildfires and other out-of-control weather patterns will accelerate regardless. There is no Hollywood ending to climate change. Life will feel like a slow-motion disaster movie even if we meet our Paris Agreement goals and limit warming to 2 degrees. (Do you remember the Paris Agreement that the entire world joined and the U.S. left?) We are going to have to get very good at building affordable housing in the wake of natural disasters.

There is no Hollywood ending to climate change.

Which is why the most important debates of your century could revolve around geo-engineering — that is, trying to reverse the process of climate change by tweaking the planet’s systems. This is where we could get ourselves into an even bigger mess if we’re not careful, because every kind of geo-engineering proposed has its drawbacks.

Seeding the sky with sulfur dioxide particles at high altitude may reflect enough sunlight to bring temperatures down safely, but it could also cause droughts and air pollution. As Wallace-Wells says, this approach would “turn our sunsets very red, bleach the sky, and make more acid rain.” If we do it too much, we could even tip the Earth into the opposite kind of Catastrophe, a new Ice Age. This is literally the plot of the movie Snowpiercer, and I refuse to believe that you are the remnants of humanity criss-crossing the globe on a train that must keep moving or freeze.

I was excited when science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson told me of a proposal by German scientists to pump sea water onto the east Antarctic ice shelf, where it would freeze — thereby averting sea level rise. It sounded too good to be true, and it in fact was. The problem is not that it would require massive amounts of energy to operate the pumps at any meaningful scale — it’s only as much as the energy required to store the world’s Bitcoin, as Robinson pointed out, and surely the survival of the human race is more important than cryptocurrency.

The problem is that the German scientists went back, did the math on where the water would go, and found that the weight of that extra ice would actually accelerate Antarctica’s melting. Whoops.

Finally, there’s carbon capture technology, which promises to suck CO2 out of the air using giant scrubbing machines. But the gas is so thinly dispersed that you’d need to build them everywhere around the planet — as many as 100 million machines just to match our current carbon output. Currently we have less than 20. Maybe we’ll figure out how to do it more effectively and cheaply, or maybe this is a problem that has no solution in our physics.

This is why the two Catastrophe scenarios are so wildly divergent. If climate change is an out-of-control problem that defeats all human ingenuity, or if we fail to find the political will to fight it in time, our civilization will not only be disastrously diminished, we as a species will be permanantly scarred. We fought nature, and nature won. Why bother expanding again?

But if we manage to head off the worst of it, or if you’re the beneficiary of some new technology that has perfectly reversed climate change, we’ll feel like superheroes. No challenge to the human race will ever be too mighty for us.

Either way, I hope you can forgive us for the century-long nightmare brought about by that big, sweaty elephant we allowed in the room. Here’s hoping it’s not the only elephant still around.

mashable



65 Comments on "The Catastrophe is coming"

  1. makati1 on Thu, 28th Mar 2019 6:35 pm 

    First, it ain’t agonna happen. Saving ourselves, that is. A long article with a lot of “ifs” and “maybe” and unicorn dreams.

    You can have all the “renewables” you want, but a grid can go down anytime. How much is being spent on the grid systems? Most in the US are antique. $$$$ is going to determine our future. Lack of it, I mean.

  2. Cloggie on Thu, 28th Mar 2019 9:49 pm 

    The US begins to develop a taste for the UK, now that no-deal Brexit seems inevitable:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6862545/Trump-says-likes-Boris-Johnson-hopes-friend-does-Brexit-vote.html

    “Trump backs Boris Johnson for British prime minister amid Brexit turmoil but says of Theresa May: ‘She’s tough. She’s in there fighting.’”

  3. Theedrich on Thu, 28th Mar 2019 10:37 pm 

    Like the Dems, Mexico hates the White gringo.  It remembers that pre-Civil-War America stole half of their country in the nineteenth century, something most Whites are hardly aware of.  So caravans from Spicland will continue to invade the U.S.  The Democrats will continue to welcome their parasitic masses of undocumented Democrats.  The media Jew will continue to talk about how Whitey needs more (Christian) compassion and not be so “racist.”  The Marxist judges hired by the previous — Negroid — president will continue to block any presidential attempt to save the country from the paranthropoid onslaught.  And the corrupted voter roles, increasingly stuffed with alien, anti-White “voters,” are now overwhelming the Yankee so-called “democracy.”

    China remembers the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and, while claiming to be fighting narcocriminality, is replying with clandestine Fentanyl Wars of its own against Whiteland.  In Mexico the Chinks have found the perfect partners to help transship their brain poisons into America.  The Mexican overlords, in league with the corrupt American Democrats and their own criminal cartels, talk much about their efforts to stop the Central-American invasion of the U.S., but are in fact providing busses and other transportation, along with food, to help transport the primitives, including Allahist Sand Negroes and mucho narcotics, to the U.S. border so they can cross it and infest us.

    The Democrats know that by killing democracy they can gain supreme power.  The stupefied American Whites, who vote for anything and everything free, concur with them in transmogrifying Yankeeland into a semi-cadaverous state.  Meanwhile, the military-industrial complex vacuums up countless billions of dollars under the pretext that it is “protecting” America.  All kinds of diversionary tactics are used to distract Whitey from his impending death:  climate change, attempts to impeach the president, ridicule of the president on late-night talk shows (complete with canned laughter, so the low-IQs will know when to laugh), sob stories about non-Whites, and on and on.

    The sinister, billionaire-driven strategy to destroy White civilization is well advanced.  How long before the permanent night falls?

  4. makati1 on Thu, 28th Mar 2019 11:13 pm 

    Theedrich, the American sheeple have been dumbed down and fed empty calories until they are incapable of thought or even fast movement. Few even know the propaganda version of their own country’s history. Fewer still have any idea where the countries they are “at war” with are located. The slaughter is beginning. Mutton anyone? lol

  5. Cloggie on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 2:01 am 

    Today is the really, really, last day of the Brexit drama. Honest.lol

    The (Remain) Speaker has caved in, after the 8 “indicative votes” have shown that there isn’t a majority for anything (thank God, revoking article 50 was rejected by a large majority).

    It remains to be seen if a watered-down version of May’s deal will make it through the Commons. Labour will vote against it as a block and the geniuses of the Northern Irish DUP are against it, so it is probably going to be yet another fail, after which crashing out seems to be inevitable, which is a pity because it means that the US and UK will be fighting side by side against Eurasia in the upcoming WW3, rather than the US alone.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6863065/EU-demands-Britain-pay-39bn-divorce-bill-wants-thrash-trade-deal-No-Deal.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ico=taboola_feed

    “Brussels steps up ‘war games’ to get ready for No Deal: EU demands Britain still pay £39bn divorce bill if it wants to thrash out a trade deal”

    These 39B, which no-deal Britain will refuse to pay, are the acceptable price, Europe will have to pay to initiate anti-Anglo hostilities and install a total blockade and next wait to see what happens next. Shell and other companies coming home to Holland and the rest of the continent? Scotland departing from the UK in a unilateral no-deal Scexit, without a referendum? Flaring up again of the civil war in Northern Ireland? IRA bomb attacks in central London? Spanish occupying Gibraltar? Lifting anti-Russian sanctions after strong Italian pressure? The possibilities are endless.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6862761/Brexit-delay-FIVE-YEARS-Mays-deal-not-passed.html

    “Brexit delay could last FIVE YEARS if May’s deal is not passed, MPs are warned as PM prepares to hold vote TODAY after Bercow caved in – but DUP threaten to scupper her chances of winning”

    Just go lads, so we can turn back the clock before 1945 and cancel the West and start all over again with Russia and China. At least they won’t require us to commit racial suicide, unlike the Anglo-Zionists.

    Bye-bye und auf niemals Wiedersehen!

    And remember folks, the holocaust happened!

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6862547/Three-Labour-activists-arrested-police-anti-Semitism.html

    “Three Labour activists held for hate crimes against Jews: Police probe vile anti-Semitic dossier which party failed to hand over to officers”

  6. Cloggie on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 2:11 am 

    Defiant and angry Trump speech in Grand-Rapids:

    http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/donald-trump-auf-wahlkampf-in-michigan-der-sound-von-2020-a-1260223.html

    Zero “green elements”. The Dems are now the enemies who can expect revenge for the Mueller debacle. A Trump victory in 2020 seems almost guaranteed. Fine. Gives the EU and China extra time to prepare for the inevitable.

  7. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 2:29 am 

    “The fact that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [AOC] – an ambitious, terminally ignorant, morally crippled 29-year-old Puerto Rican bartender – is setting the tone for this whole discussion tells you how degraded the U.S. has become. It’s well on its way to turning into a giant welfare and police state. (Already is!)

    But, as you know, I always look on the bright side. Which is that – if you give yourself a little psychological distance – this is all a comedy.

    AOC, The Donald, Bolton, Bernie Sanders, Pocahontas, Hillary, Kamala, etc., etc. They’re all dangerous megalomaniacs. But the chimpanzees listen to them, choose teams, hang on to their every word, support them, and are easily incited to hoot and pant at each other.

    The American public is going to get exactly what it deserves. I have no sympathy for them. Or about as much as I would have had for the Romans in the fifth century, when the empire was collapsing.”

    https://internationalman.com/articles/why-modern-monetary-theory-will-destroy-money/

    Couldn’t have said it better myself. I have a lot of ACTUAL distance from the freak show and can enjoy the events. GO TRUMP!

  8. Lucifer calling on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 2:36 am 

    Just how pathetic is the human race and why will the earth breathe a huge sigh of relief once the human cancer is expunged…

    Cloggie and his sidekick Theedrich point the way nicely, and both will have eons to reflect as they burn away in an eternal pain amplification chamber.

    Born in sin, come on in.

  9. Chrome Mags on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 4:09 am 

    “The Democrats know that by killing democracy they can gain supreme power.”

    That’s one of the stupidest statements I’ve ever read. The dems recently put forth a laundry list of items they felt were important to voters (voting in a democratic system), to make election day a holiday, to have paper ballots so no one could wonder if electronic voting machines had been hacked. There were many other provisions in the bill, but turtle neck said, “Its a greed grab.”

    How is wanting voter rights increased a greed grab is still a mystery. I wish someone would explain it. But I also have to wonder how this writer came to the conclusion Democrats want to end democracy, especially with this bill that was nixed by the REPUBLICANS. Maybe it’s the Republicans that want to end democracy. Chew on that!

  10. Lucifer calling on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 4:53 am 

    Chrome Mags Friend-

    You speak logically and you have evidence to support your statements.

    Just remember two things— 1. Consider the source and, 2. Haters are going to hate.

    Case closed.

  11. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 5:36 am 

    “Missouri River Flooding Didn’t Just Damage Farms, It Impacted The Global Supply Chain”
    https://tinyurl.com/y6fth275

    “But beyond the farms in parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas, there’s visible evidence that the impacts are far-reaching and long-lasting — closed interstates and rerouted trains — key cogs in a global agriculture economy…The month of April is the busiest time of year, traditionally, for fertilizer shipments coming up the river and then it gets unloaded at various locations adjacent to the river and then delivered to the retail locations,” Steenhoek said. Those deliveries may be a bit behind schedule, potentially affecting the planting of farmers far from the areas that flooded. “It certainly is having a seismic impact on the entire industry…Iowa State University livestock economist Lee Schulz said it’s too early to know what the flooding’s impact is on livestock producers, many of whom are still taking stock of what they’ve lost. Looking at ag overall, Iowa officials estimated it might be a loss of $214 million; Nebraska officials said up to $1 billion.”

  12. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 5:40 am 

    “23 dead as Iran battles heavy rain and floods”
    https://tinyurl.com/yyrezsst digital jounal

    “As the weather front moves to the east of Iran, more and more regions of the country that had been facing chronic water shortages a few months ago have been inundated with water. The downpour has triggered scores of landslides that have blocked roads, especially in mountainous regions. One buried an entire village in Kogiluyeh-Va-Boyerahmad province shortly after residents were evacuated, the semi-official Fars News agency quoted its governor as saying. Hundreds of villages in western Iran have been cut off with many also losing electricity and normal water supplies, forcing authorities to deploy military helicopters to try to save and supply those left stranded.”

  13. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:55 am 

    “This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and the National Weather Service is telling us that there will be more catastrophic flooding throughout the middle portion of the nation for the next two months….

    America’s farmers have been utterly devastated. America’s cattle producers have been utterly devastated. Food production is going to be way, way below expectations, and food prices are going to escalate dramatically in the coming months….

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-28/many-million-calves-lost-nebraska-beef-prices-escalate-dramatically-coming-months

    Those who brag about “food independence” are going to get a lesson in humility, I think. Well deserved.

  14. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 7:09 am 

    “Those who brag about “food independence” are going to get a lesson in humility, I think. Well deserved.”

    Makato, those who are not food independent like the P’s are going to be impacted the most by this because food supply will be lowered which means food exports. The US can easily feed itself. Please stop the 20% import BS too. You do not take into account that figure is based upon dollar amounts. Luxury and non-seasonal foods are high price. Much of those imports are from Mexico our neighbor. Take you rabid anti-American agenda to another place where people will welcome your facts packaged as lies.

  15. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 7:30 am 

    Daddy is home and I am feeling like a man.

    Humper pumper number nine.

  16. JuanP on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 7:40 am 

    What kind of perverted Miami Beach sexual fantasy is
    “Humper pumper number nine.” , JuanP. You are one weird fuck.

  17. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 7:42 am 

    Oops, sorry for losing my shit again everyone.

  18. JuanP on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 7:43 am 

    JuanP, does your wife know you are bisexual?

  19. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 7:58 am 

    In case y’all havn’t Been able to figger out the obvious, all posts made under JuanP’s handle are me.

  20. JuanP on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 8:00 am 

    Humper pumper number nine.

  21. Sissyfuss on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 9:07 am 

    Another Cassadrian article that those in the know, know and the masses ignore on their way to Walmart.

  22. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:02 pm 

    Davy, the Ps is far more “food independent” than the US as you all are going to find out this year. And in the years to come.

    The Philippines still import some rice, but the only other food imports are luxuries. Mostly for the tourists and foreign students (millions). When the SHTF most of them will go back to their home country. Then there will be no need for food imports of any kind.

    The luxuries will not be missed by the majority of Filipinos because they cannot afford them now. They have what they need in their neighborhoods. The climate here is the same year round. Year after year. No “vortex” problems. Multiple growing seasons, etc.

    The US is in for a rough year. This may be the tipping point for YOUR economy. Crash! Depression ahead! Buckle up! LOL

  23. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:27 pm 

    makato, 100MIL people live in a space the size of AZ pretty much says it all but here is somemore:

    ON FOOD:
    “The Philippines remains a net food importer, with imports of food and drink forecast to expand up to A$ 8 billion in 2018.”
    https://www.austrade.gov.au/…/philippines/…/food-and-beverage-to-the-philippines

    ON CLIMATE:
    https://www.idrc.ca/sites/default/files/sp/Documents%20EN/climate-change-vulnerability-mapping-sa.pdf
    “As can be seen from Figure 7, we identified the most vulnerable areas using the Southeast Asian standard of those falling within the top/fourth quartile. These areas include: all the regions of the Philippines, the Mekong River Delta region of Vietnam; almost all the regions of Cambodia; North and East Lao PDR; the Bangkok region of Thailand; and the west and south of Sumatra, and western and eastern Java in Indonesia. The Philippines, unlike other countries in Southeast Asia, is not only exposed to tropical cyclones, especially in the northern and eastern parts of the country, but also to many other climaterelated hazards especially floods (such as in central Luzon and Southern Mindanao), landslides (due to the terrain of the country), and droughts.”

  24. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:31 pm 

    BTW, makato how is the drought situation in the p’s? OOPs here so info

    https://www.mindanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/12climate11.jpg

    some people don’t throw rocks in glass houses but not makato

  25. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:40 pm 

    Davy, when you use terms like “space” are you talking deserts or fertile farmland? YUGE difference! Most of the Ps is fertile land, just unused at the present. When times get tough, it will be.

    Your weather report means nothing. The Ps is no more vulnerable than Florida or California for weather problems (or the Midwest). You are always trying to point the finger at others, hypocrite. Look around. You are the one with the problems. You rely on mega farms and trucking food across the country.

    Do you drink coffee? Where does that come from? Not the US. I have coffee trees on the farm. Also Cacao, papaya, etc. Food from California is trucked over 1,000 miles to your farm. When the trucks stop….?

  26. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:45 pm 

    “Most of the Ps is fertile land, just unused at the present. When times get tough, it will be.”

    makato, what about the mountains and the cities and towns where all those people live? You have not thought that far through. The unused land you refer to is unused for a reason don’t ya think?

    You picked the wrong country to brag about as far as food and climate security. You are screwed makato

  27. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:46 pm 

    Drought? Hmmm. I hadn’t noticed. I guess there is some but nothing important. No mention of food prices going up. In fact, rice prices are going down.

    The ref you posted is an “outlook” not climate. And, the time frame indicated is over. A few dryer areas, but no drought. I live in the brown area and there is no drought here. It IS the dry season. LOL

  28. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:51 pm 

    Davy, you have no personal experience here or in any tropical location. The unused land is unused because it is not needed, not that it is not usable. The farm was just part of that unused land until we started to use it. There are hundreds of thousands of hectares unused that will be, if necessary.

    Again, you are talking thru your ass, trying to defend the indefensible US. Yes, there are cities here, and they will die if the electric goes off permanently, but so will all the US cities where 60% of Americans live. THEY have nowhere to go. Most Filipinos do.

  29. Davy on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:56 pm 

    check out this link makato and all those people just a few hours away from your little place:

    http://popdensitymap.ucoz.ru/news/47_population_density_administrative_boundaries_map_of_luzon_philippines/2014-08-13-59

  30. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 6:58 pm 

    “The True Size Of The U.S. National Debt, Including Unfunded Liabilities, Is 222 Trillion Dollars”

    http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-true-size-of-the-u-s-national-debt-including-unfunded-liabilities-is-222-trillion-dollars

    “Of course we are never going to pay back all of this debt. The truth is that we are just going to keep accumulating more debt until the system completely and utterly collapses.”

    The US is doomed to be crushed by its debt. Cannot happen soon enough. When it cannot afford to bully the world, billions will cheer. GO TRUMP! LMAO!

  31. makati1 on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 7:06 pm 

    Davy, and you point is? Those “hours” are mountain ranges and no vehicles. Foot traffic will never get to our location, even if there was a reason they would try. Even young, in shape, people would find it very difficult after the buses stop running.

    Again, you have no idea of reality here. Zero. The city people will leave as the situation worsens, not after. Those who stay in the cities will die, just like in the US. “Glass houses”, Davy. Obesity, the US fad, does not make for long hikes. Death will come to a higher percentage of Americans than Filipinos.

  32. Anonymouse on Fri, 29th Mar 2019 9:50 pm 

    Mak, the only ‘point’ the exceptionalturd is trying to make is this:

    amerika = good (no, the best)
    Philippines* = no good (no, the worst).

    *Due to slide into anarchy and or the Ocean at any time. Hopefully.

    It does not matter what the facts are, any combination of words he can string together to dump on the Philipines will do.

    It is the only thing he really has left anymore. His sanity left him long ago, so….this is what he does to get by.

  33. makati1 on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 12:02 am 

    Anon, I try to educate him, but it is impossible. He is so hyped on that US Koolaid that he cannot accept that there may be better and nicer places to live.

    He just spews bullshit and expects it to look and smell like roses. Such insanity should be under psychiatric care. I’m glad I am not his neighbor or relative. LOL

  34. Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 3:50 am 

    “amerika = good (no, the best)
    Philippines* = no good (no, the worst).”

    Show me where I say this anon?? The US is a mess and I acknowledge this. Your Canada is doing pretty shitty now too. The debate makato and I have happens every few months when he wants to say how good things are in the P’s and how bad they are in the US in relation to food. Food and climate is a very bad arguing point for the makato but he does it anyway. Makato lives in a fantasy world of a late 70’s man experiencing the onset of dementia and delusions.

  35. Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 6:37 am 

    Oops, sorry everyone. I’m a bit mixed up this morning.

    Makati1 said he is 74. So that would be early 70’s, not late 70’s.

    More delusions on my part? Or early onset dementia? I just don’t know what to think anymore.

  36. Not Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 6:56 am 

    juanP woke up

    Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 6:37 am

  37. JuanP on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:05 am 

    Prove it liar. I have the documentation dumbass

    “Oops, sorry everyone. I’m a bit mixed up this morning. Makati1 said he is 74. So that would be early 70’s, not late 70’s.”

  38. Not me above on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:05 am 

    I know JuanP is on a sailing trip somewhere in the Caribbean.

  39. JuanP on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:07 am 

    Who the fuck is “Not me above”

  40. Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:11 am 

    Who the fuck is “JuanP” Does anybody know?

  41. JuanP on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:16 am 

    JuanP is a mentally ill illegal alien living a playboy life in Miami Beach. He pretends to be an urban gardener but we know better.
    He pulls weeds with a propane torch. LOL That tells you something right there. Currently he is on a sailing adventure with his lover Boney joe.

  42. Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:17 am 

    “Prove it liar. I have the documentation dumbass”

    You sound real confused Juan.

  43. Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:23 am 

    Davy is mentally ill.

  44. JuanP on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:28 am 

    Davy is mentally ill.

    If Davy is mentally ill wow that makes me a chimpanzee.

  45. JuanP on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:35 am 

    I’m a chimpanzee. I love bananas.

  46. JuanP on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:42 am 

    OOps, I forgot to say I like to JO in front of crowds like a chimp. This is why I have been in trouble with Miami PD.

  47. Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:46 am 

    Your delusional Juan.

  48. JuanP on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 7:56 am 

    well, one thing is for sure my stupid behavior has ruined this forum but I can’t help it. I only care about Juan and I have an obsessive compulsive disorder.

  49. Davy on Sat, 30th Mar 2019 8:00 am 

    We all appreciate your honesty Juan.

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