[coyote]

Humans already lived through an evolutionary bottleneck in Toba before we even came close to our current population size, not to mention next to no technology..

Let's hope we're able to muster the same level of resourcefulness as our ancestors.

[bodigami]

Ludi, I like your emphasis on stopping. I see this more of an non-action (drawing on Taoism, here) than an action, but it is certainly what is needed now.
(...)

Taoism is more about "efortless and harmonious action" than "non-action".

[bodigami]

The way things are headed, it looks like I'm going to STOP, DROP DEAD and ROLL into the grave.

...actually in death/emptyness I find comfort, liberation and peace.

[mos6507]

If this was already posted, my apologies, but the video interviews off of this article are very good at presenting a contrast in outlook between Lovelock and other prominent figures.

The guy with the LED light bulb in particular is a perfect example of a YesPlease style technofixer, and the Google guy wasn't much better. Nevertheless, Lovelock backed him into a corner to the point where he admitted that a "die back" was a plausible future scenario. Lovelock was the only one invoking the name of Malthus or talking about the challenge of feeding 7+ billion people in a degraded ecosystem. He himself says that his prediction is a slightly more pessimistic version of the IPCC report. It didn't sound to me like that meant 11 years to insta-doom the way Cid implied, but certainly major catastrophe within 20.

[bluekachina]

In hindsight, it's already been happening in Australia for years now. Rivers have dried up. Topsoil has blown away, and that that hasn't, has dried and become dead.

Everything is so dry now, it's catching fire. We have experienced crop failures for several years now.

Maybe elsewhere it's not as evident, but here it's obvious we are already in it.

[Cid_Yama]

In the US, because of our media, the extremes of weather have been written off as one offs. It will only be when they can no longer carry on as normal that the people will ..., no I take that back. Even then they will just gripe and expect everything soon to be returned to normal.

Do not expect the American people to wake up to this. The indoctrination has just been too strong.

[mos6507]

In the US, because of our media, the extremes of weather have been written off as one offs

Not just that, when it's warmer than usual during the winter people snicker and talk about how global warming is a good thing. People are very self centered.

[DefiledEngine]

Humans already lived through an evolutionary bottleneck in Toba before we even came close to our current population size, not to mention next to no technology. There is really no benefit in survivability in being this huge.

of course there is. you think all evolutionary bottlenecks/environmental changes are the same or of the same scale? The hard times during the previous ice age/the toba volcano wouldn't pose nearly the threat to the genes it did back then. Now it would take something many times more climate altering to pose a serious threat to humankind, something that I guess we will see soon enough.

[mos6507]

Humans already lived through an evolutionary bottleneck in Toba before we even came close to our current population size, not to mention next to no technology. There is really no benefit in survivability in being this huge.

of course there is. you think all evolutionary bottlenecks/environmental changes are the same or of the same scale? The hard times during the previous ice age/the toba volcano wouldn't pose nearly the threat to the genes it did back then. Now it would take something many times more climate altering to pose a serious threat to humankind, something that I guess we will see soon enough.

This is kind of an absurd discussion considering that it's (in large part) our own size that is causing the mass extinction event. So there is no sense in patting ourselves on the back for inflicting a die-off on ourselves. If we had levelled off at a billion we'd have more than enough people on this planet to make it through a non-manmade disaster and we wouldn't have had to overcome overshoot doom.

[bluekachina]

people snicker and talk about how global warming is a good thing.

Just tell that to the people who have lost their homes, their loved ones, their lives in Australia. It is not an intellectual exercise down here. This is really happening, it is real, and I would like to see them come down here and try to say it's a good thing. Preferably in a crowded pub.

[DefiledEngine]

This is kind of an absurd discussion considering that it's (in large part) our own size that is causing the mass extinction event. So there is no sense in patting ourselves on the back for inflicting a die-off on ourselves. If we had levelled off at a billion we'd have more than enough people on this planet to make it through a non-manmade disaster and we wouldn't have had to overcome overshoot doom.

Ah, but it isn't all about the species gene pool, but also about the individuals and sub gene pools. This is a world of competition and resource-limitations after all, the genes must be selfish. That's why a billion people steady state wouldn't be sustainable, because genes breaking the sustainability and surging to greater numbers will gain more in the long run.

[mos6507]

That's why a billion people steady state wouldn't be sustainable, because genes breaking the sustainability and surging to greater numbers will gain more in the long run.

I think if we get a severe enough gaia smackdown then humanity will carry a guilt-burden for the duration of its tenure that will apply a very heavy cultural lever against tragedy of the commons.

[Cid_Yama]

From Plato's Timaeus:

And the priest replied, "You are young in soul, every one of you. For therein you possess not a single belief that is ancient and derived from old tradition, nor yet one science that is hoary with age.

[22c] And this is the cause thereof: There have been and there will be many and divers destructions of mankind, of which the greatest are by fire and water, and lesser ones by countless other means. For in truth the story that is told in your country as well as ours, how once upon a time Phaethon, son of Helios, yoked his father's chariot, and, because he was unable to drive it along the course taken by his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth and himself perished by a thunderbolt,--that story, as it is told, has the fashion of a legend, but the truth of it lies in

[23a] And if any event has occurred that is noble or great or in any way conspicuous, whether it be in your country or in ours or in some other place of which we know by report, all such events are recorded from of old and preserved here in our temples; whereas your people and the others are but newly equipped, every time, with letters and all such arts as civilized States require and when, after the usual interval of years, like a plague, the flood from heaven comes sweeping down afresh upon your people,

[23b] it leaves none of you but the unlettered and uncultured, so that you become young as ever, with no knowledge of all that happened in old times in this land or in your own. Certainly the genealogies which you related just now, Solon, concerning the people of your country, are little better than children's tales; for, in the first place, you remember but one deluge, though many had occurred previously; ...

The loss of the Library at Alexandria was surely the greatest loss to mankind in all of history.

[Mesuge]

people snicker and talk about how global warming is a good thing.

Just tell that to the people who have lost their homes, their loved ones, their lives in Australia. It is not an intellectual exercise down here. This is really happening, it is real, and I would like to see them come down here and try to say it's a good thing. Preferably in a crowded pub.

Well, wasn't it around 9 Feb, after ~173 dead from fires, that your gov. called the fires a massmurdering incident? Well, obviously it's a tragedy, I've got several friends from that wider region, so this is not overplaying the cynicism card on my part. But people get real please, only traffic accidents in Australia account for almost 2000 deaths per annum!

Quick google: ~1736 deaths from road traffic accidents (2001):
http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/[email protected] ... AE0016268F

If there is a real Gaia smackdown in the script for us, it will be much heavier ammo than "few" fires from climate change and eroded topsoil.. Also, the news report that the fast spreading fires were often times helped by arsonists, be it for psycho-sexual, insurance fraudster, or just "fun" reasons..

[Cid_Yama]

Why Global Warming May Be Fueling Australia's Fires

Millions of animals dead in Australia fires

[bluekachina]

UK should prepare for rising seas, heat waves and resource wars

Every day could seem like Friday 13th over the coming decades if the UK does not act now to prepare for rising seas, higher temperatures and the increased likelihood of resource wars between nations, leading scientists and engineers have warned this week.

Issuing arguably his starkest warning yet about the threat to international security presented by climate change, Sir David King, former chief scientific advisor to the government, said that a series of "resource wars " would dominate the 21st century - and that the first of these wars had already occured, in Iraq.

"Future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind - the first of the resource wars," he said at a lecture to the British Humanist Association. "Unless we get to grips with this problem globally, we potentially are going to lead ourselves into a situation where large, powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others."

His comments follow those of climate scientist James Lovelock earlier this week who warned that the UK may have to impose ever tighter immigration policies to manage an influx of people seeking to escape climate change-related resource shortages and conflicts elsewhere in the world.

Both scientists' warnings echo the findings of a major report from defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute last year, which warned that predictions climate change droughts in regions such as China, India, Pakistan, Mexico and Africa could spark "hundred-year wars" between resource-strapped superpowers.

In related news, a report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) released yesterday urged the government to begin upgrading buildings, transport networks and energy infrastructure now to cope with changing climatic conditions.

Time to find out if the commonwealth really is.

[Cid_Yama]

The painful truth

Victoria is being compared to Hiroshima and Dresden. Death tolls are expected to be far far higher as it is now being discovered entire towns were wiped out. The personal stories of the experiences of some of those that survived are told in detail here.

link

[Serial_Worrier]

In hindsight, it's already been happening in Australia for years now. Rivers have dried up. Topsoil has blown away, and that that hasn't, has dried and become dead.

Everything is so dry now, it's catching fire. We have experienced crop failures for several years now.

Maybe elsewhere it's not as evident, but here it's obvious we are already in it.

Yet the stores are filled with vegetables and food right? Nobody is worried about starvation in AU right?

[bluekachina]

Now that you mention it,

As Australia dries, a global shortage of rice

Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. "It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety," he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, "and now it has stopped."

The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to satisfy the daily needs of 20 million people. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia's rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.

Drought affects every agricultural industry based here, not just rice — from sheepherding, the other mainstay in this dusty land, to the cultivation of wine grapes, the fastest-growing crop here, with that expansion often coming at the expense of rice.

The drought's effect on rice has produced the greatest impact on the rest of the world, so far. It is one factor contributing to skyrocketing prices, and many scientists believe it is among the earliest signs that a warming planet is starting to affect food production.

link

[KevO]

so says James Lovelock in a bombshell that is reverberating around the renewable energy and peak oil worlds. The first article is from a year ago but further down the posts, the latest article from a few days ago re-iterates the message of party on dudes. Full article is worth more than a read but here are some quotes (Article link at bottom)

He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn't dream of it. It's just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you're offsetting the carbon? You're probably making matters worse.

He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all - renewable energy."You're never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."

Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more.

But he fears we won't invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects "about 80%" of the world's population to be wiped out by 2100.

so it's all downhill from now and forever

Interviewers often remark upon the discrepancy between Lovelock's predictions of doom, and his good humour. "Well I'm cheerful!" he says, smiling. "I'm an optimist. It's going to happen."

What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan."

Best to read the whole doom here: Climate Change
Oh, and thanks for all the fish