ennui2 wrote:Trees require decades to mature. Annuals don't. Trees also have many uses outside of food, like producing heat and material for construction. On the downslope, expect any trees people may have planted for the sake of long-term sustainability to be chopped down for these other purposes. Once they're chopped down, all the years spent nurturing them will have been wasted and we're back to making do with annual crops on ever-increasingly marginal land and unstable growing seasons. There just won't be enough stability to allow for food forests to work their magic. We're screwed.
DesuMaiden wrote:What are these food forests you speak of? Please explain what they are, because I'm interested in learning more about them. I think you are referring to permaculture right? Permaculture might be the only shot we have at survival in the long-term future.
The Christian right takes doom its stride, however. In the US and across the world, believers in End Times prophecy are dug-in to the idea that the end of all things really is upon us – and they can point to verses in the Jewish and Christian Bibles in support of this view.
So are they right?
One paragraph is not enough to summarise Christian thought on the end of the world or – to give it its technical name – eschatology. But typically, Christian apocalyptic views today hinge in part on the Book of Daniel chapter 2 (which identifies a succession of dominant world empires), and then broadens out to include at least some of the following:
Greedy pastors taking money from the faithful (2 Peter 2:1-3); earthquakes (Matthew 24:7); “wars and rumours of wars” (Matthew 24:6); a falling away from faith (Matthew 24:12); hypocritical religiosity (2 Timothy 3:5); deadly diseases (Matthew 24:7); deniers of a final judgment (2 Peter 3:5-6); an increase in famines (Matthew 24:7); an increase in knowledge and travel (Daniel 12:4); the “gospel of the kingdom” to be preached as a warning to all nations (Matthew 24:14); and the mark of the Beast (Revelation 13:16).
On first blush there seems to be a strong case.
To take Christian preachers first: men such as Creflo Dollar, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen fleece the flock to the tune of many millions of dollars each year. Copeland openly boasts about being a billionaire. And unlike Jesus – who went before them to prepare mansions in heaven – TV preachers such as these have multiple mansions right here on earth.
However, this is nothing new. In Ezekiel 34 the prophet of that name bewailed a similar phenomenon over 2,500 years ago. The shepherds have always scammed the sheep.
Christian apologists often point to earthquakes as a sign of the End. Johnston’s Archive records 320,120 deaths from earthquakes for 2010 – a huge number indeed.
Yet when seen on a broader timeline, the number of deaths from earthquakes over the last century peaked around the mid-1970s and is now somewhere around the average of what it has been over the last 100 years. So on this metric, we cannot be at the End right now.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
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.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
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.
onlooker wrote:The world as we know it is an illusion, everything is always in flux within a range---This is true. However, a big caveat is in order. Within a range. I think what we are discussing on this site points to conditions that will soon take us beyond a reasonably acceptable range. If you combine, the ongoing environmental degradation in general, the peak oil and climate change along with our huge population, we are uniquely set up to Collapse. In happens in Nature. An old poster Montequest, stressed this that the sequel to Overshot is always Collapse. Yes collapse of civilizations have occurred throughout time, but this time we are talking about the entire Earth and the collapse of the Biosphere as a system which can support life. We are not paying attention if we casually dismiss the dismal condition of the planet. The Oceans are dying. Soil everywhere is thin and in poor condition if not dead. The huge reservoirs of Fresh Water are being tapped dry. The Amazon, the Great Barrier Reef and other important ecosystems are dying. So, I am sorry but this is not NORMAL change.
baha wrote:We are in a FF'ed overshoot, as soon as the fuel runs out, so will the overshoot.
Subjectivist wrote:You are making an unwarrented assumption that the agriculture sector that consumes just 15 percent of petroleum will be left without resources to provide food and capacity to move that food to consumers.
Those are pretty silly assumptions because peaking means less oil, not no oil at all. If fuel gets too expensive for most farmers you can expect rationing, subsidies, or both. Throughout history the elites who failed to feed the masses did not do well, just ask Louis XVI of France.
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