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Page added on June 4, 2015
The Era of Breakdown
The fourth of the stages in the sequence of collapse we’ve been discussing is the era of breakdown. (For those who haven’t been keeping track, the first three phases are the eras of pretense, impact, and response; the final phase, which we’ll be discussing next week, is the era of dissolution.) The era of breakdown is the phase that gets most of the press, and thus inevitably no other stage has attracted anything like the crop of misperceptions, misunderstandings, and flat-out hokum as this one.
The era of breakdown is the point along the curve of collapse at which business as usual finally comes to an end. That’s where the confusion comes in. It’s one of the central articles of faith in pretty much every human society that business as usual functions as a bulwark against chaos, a defense against whatever problems the society might face. That’s exactly where the difficulty slips in, because in pretty much every human society, what counts as business as usual—the established institutions and familiar activities on which everyone relies day by day—is the most important cause of the problems the society faces, and the primary cause of collapse is thus quite simply that societies inevitably attempt to solve their problems by doing all the things that make their problems worse.
The phase of breakdown is the point at which this exercise in futility finally grinds to a halt. The three previous phases are all attempts to avoid breakdown: in the phase of pretense, by making believe that the problems don’t exist; in the phase of impact, by making believe that the problems will go away if only everyone doubles down on whatever’s causing them; and in the phase of response, by making believe that changing something other than the things that are causing the problems will fix the problems. Finally, after everything else has been tried, the institutions and activities that define business as usual either fall apart or are forcibly torn down, and then—and only then—it becomes possible for a society to do something about its problems.
It’s important not to mistake the possibility of constructive action for the inevitability of a solution. The collapse of business as usual in the breakdown phase doesn’t solve a society’s problems; it doesn’t even prevent those problems from being made worse by bad choices. It merely removes the primary obstacle to a solution, which is the wholly fictitious aura of inevitability that surrounds the core institutions and activities that are responsible for the problems. Once people in a society realize that no law of God or nature requires them to maintain a failed status quo, they can then choose to dismantle whatever fragments of business as usual haven’t yet fallen down of their own weight.
That’s a more important action than it might seem at first glance. It doesn’t just put an end to the principal cause of the society’s problems. It also frees up resources that have been locked up in the struggle to keep business as usual going at all costs, and those newly freed resources very often make it possible for a society in crisis to transform itself drastically in a remarkably short period of time. Whether those transformations are for good or ill, or as usually happens, a mixture of the two, is another matter, and one I’ll address a little further on.
Stories in the media, some recent, some recently reprinted, happen to have brought up a couple of first-rate examples of the way that resources get locked up in unproductive activities during the twilight years of a failing society. A California newspaper, for example, recently mentioned that Elon Musk’s large and much-ballyhooed fortune is almost entirely a product of government subsidies. Musk is a smart guy; he obviously realized a good long time ago that federal and state subsidies for technology was where the money was at, and he’s constructed an industrial empire funded by US taxpayers to the tune of many billions of dollars. None of his publicly traded firms has ever made a profit, and as long as the subsidies keep flowing, none of them ever has to; between an overflowing feed trough of government largesse and the longstanding eagerness of fools to be parted from their money by way of the stock market, he’s pretty much set for life.
This is business as usual in today’s America. An article from 2013 pointed out, along the same lines, that the profits made by the five largest US banks were almost exactly equal to the amount of taxpayer money those same five banks got from the government. Like Elon Musk, the banks in question have figured out where the money is, and have gone after it with their usual verve; the revolving door that allows men in suits to shuttle back and forth between those same banks and the financial end of the US government doesn’t exactly hinder that process. It’s lucrative, it’s legal, and the mere fact that it’s bankrupting the real economy of goods and services in order to further enrich an already glutted minority of kleptocrats is nothing anyone in the citadels of power worries about.
A useful light on a different side of the same process comes from an editorial (in PDF) which claims that something like half of all current scientific papers are unreliable junk. Is this the utterance of an archdruid, or some other wild-eyed critic of science? No, it comes from the editor of Lancet, one of the two or three most reputable medical journals on the planet. The managing editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, which has a comparable ranking to Lancet, expressed much the same opinion of the shoddy experimental design, dubious analysis, and blatant conflicts of interest that pervade contemporary scientific research.
Notice that what’s happening here affects the flow of information in the same way that misplaced government subsidies affect the flow of investment. The functioning of the scientific process, like that of the market, depends on the presupposition that everyone who takes part abides by certain rules. When those rules are flouted, individual actors profit, but they do so at the expense of the whole system: the results of scientific research are distorted so that (for example) pharmaceutical firms can profit from drugs that don’t actually have the benefits claimed for them, just as the behavior of the market is distorted so that (for example) banks that would otherwise struggle for survival, and would certainly not be able to pay their CEOs gargantuan bonuses, can continue on their merry way.
The costs imposed by these actions are real, and they fall on all other participants in science and the economy respectively. Scientists these days, especially but not only in such blatantly corrupt fields as pharmaceutical research, face a lose-lose choice between basing their own investigations on invalid studies, on the one hand, or having to distrust any experimental results they don’t replicate themselves, on the other. Meanwhile the consumers of the products of scientific research—yes, that would be all of us—have to contend with the fact that we have no way of knowing whether any given claim about the result of research is the product of valid science or not. Similarly, the federal subsidies that direct investment toward politically savvy entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, and politically well-connected banks such as Goldman Sachs, and away from less parasitic and more productive options distort the entire economic system by preventing the normal workings of the market from weeding out nonviable projects and firms, and rewarding the more viable ones.
Turn to the historical examples we’ve been following for the last three weeks, and distortions of the same kind are impossible to miss. In the US economy before and during the stock market crash of 1929 and its long and brutal aftermath, a legal and financial system dominated by a handful of very rich men saw to it that the bulk of the nation’s wealth flowed uphill, out of productive economic activities and into speculative ventures increasingly detached from the productive economy. When the markets imploded, in turn, the same people did their level best to see to it that their lifestyles weren’t affected even though everyone else’s was. The resulting collapse in consumer expenditures played a huge role in driving the cascading collapse of the US economy that, by the spring of 1933, had shuttered every consumer bank in the nation and driven joblessness and impoverishment to record highs.
That’s what Franklin Roosevelt fixed. It’s always amused me that the people who criticize FDR—and of course there’s plenty to criticize in a figure who, aside from his far greater success as a wartime head of state, can best be characterized as America’s answer to Mussolini—always talk about the very mixed record of the economic policies of his second term. They rarely bother to mention the Hundred Days, in which FDR stopped a massive credit collapse in its tracks. The Hundred Days and their aftermath are the part of FDR’s presidency that mattered most; it was in that brief period that he slapped shock paddles on an economy in cardiac arrest and got a pulse going, by violating most of the rules that had guided the economy up to that time. That casual attitude toward economic dogma is one of the two things his critics have never been able to forgive; the other is that it worked.
In the same way, France before, during, and immediately after the Revolution was for all practical purposes a medieval state that had somehow staggered its way to the brink of the nineteenth century. The various revolutionary governments that succeeded one another in quick succession after 1789 made some badly needed changes, but it was left to Napoléon Bonaparte to drag France by the scruff of its collective neck out of the late Middle Ages. Napoléon has plenty of critics—and of course there’s plenty to criticize in a figure who was basically what Mussolini wanted to be when he grew up—but the man’s domestic policies were by and large inspired. To name only two of his most important changes, he replaced the sprawling provinces of medieval France with a system of smaller and geographically meaningful départements, and abolished the entire body of existing French law in favor of a newly created legal system, the Code Napoléon. When he was overthrown, those stayed; in fact, a great many other countries in Europe and elsewhere proceeded to adopt the Code Napoléon in place of their existing legal systems. There were several reasons for this, but one of the most important was that the new Code simply made that much more sense.
Both men were able to accomplish what they did, in turn, because abolishing the political, economic, and cultural distortions imposed on their respective countries by a fossilized status quo freed up all the resources that had bene locked up in maintaining those distortions. Slapping a range of legal barriers and taxes on the more egregious forms of speculative excess—another of the major achievements of the Roosevelt era—drove enough wealth back into the productive economy to lay the foundations of America’s postwar boom; in the same way, tipping a galaxy of feudal customs into history’s compost bin transformed France from the economic basket case it was in 1789 to the conqueror of Europe twenty years later, and the succesful and innovative economic and cultural powerhouse it became during most of the nineteenth century thereafter.
That’s one of the advantages of revolutionary change. By breaking down existing institutions and the encrusted layers of economic parasitism that inevitably build up around them over time, it reliably breaks loose an abundance of resources that were not available in the prerevolutionary period. Here again, it’s crucial to remember that the availability of resources doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be used wisely; they may be thrown away on absurdities of one kind or another. Nor, even more critically, does it mean that the same abundance of resources will be available indefinitely. The surge of additional resources made available by catabolizing old and corrupt systems is a temporary jackpot, not a permanent state of affairs. That said, when you combine the collapse of fossilized institutions that stand in the way of change, and a sudden rush of previously unavailable resources of various kinds, quite a range of possibilities previously closed to a society suddenly come open.
Applying this same pattern to the crisis of modern industrial civilization, though, requires attention to certain inescapable but highly unwelcome realities. In 1789, the problem faced by France was the need to get rid of a thousand years of fossilized political, economic, and social institutions at a time when the coming of the industrial age had made them hopelessly dysfunctional. In 1929, the problem faced by the United States was the need to pry the dead hand of an equally dysfunctional economic orthodoxy off the throat of the nation so that its economy would actually function again. In both cases, the era of breakdown was catalyzed by a talented despot, and was followed, after an interval of chaos and war, by a period of relative prosperity.
We may well get the despot this time around, too, not to mention the chaos and war, but the period of prosperity is probably quite another matter. The problem we face today, in the United States and more broadly throughout the world’s industrial societies, is that all the institutions of industrial civilization presuppose limitless economic growth, but the conditions that provided the basis for continued economic growth simply aren’t there any more. The 300-year joyride of industrialism was made possible by vast and cheaply extractable reserves of highly concentrated fossil fuels and other natural resources, on the one hand, and a biosphere sufficiently undamaged that it could soak up the wastes of human industry without imposing burdens on the economy, on the other. We no longer have either of those requirements.
With every passing year, more and more of the world’s total economic output has to be diverted from other activities to keep fossil fuels and other resources flowing into the industrial world’s power plants, factories, and fuel tanks; with every passing year, in turn, more and more of the world’s total economic output has to be diverted from other activities to deal with the rising costs of climate change and other ecological disruptions. These are the two jaws of the trap sketched out more than forty years ago in the pages of The Limits to Growth, still the most accurate (and thus inevitably the most savagely denounced) map of the predicament we face. The consequences of that trap can be summed up neatly: on a finite planet, after a certain point—the point of diminishing returns, which we’ve already passed—the costs of growth rise faster than the benefits, and finally force the global economy to its knees.
The task ahead of us is thus in some ways the opposite of the one that France faced in the aftermath of 1789. Instead of replacing a sclerotic and failing medieval economy with one better suited to a new era of industrial expansion, we need to replace a sclerotic and failing industrial economy with one better suited to a new era of deindustrial contraction. That’s a tall order, no question, and it’s not something that can be achieved easily, or in a single leap. In all probability, the industrial world will have to pass through the whole sequence of phases we’ve been discussing several times before things finally bottom out in the deindustrial dark ages to come.
Still, I’m going to shock my fans and critics alike here by pointing out that there’s actually some reason to think that positive change on more than an individual level will be possible as the industrial world slams facefirst into the limits to growth. Two things give me that measured sense of hope. The first is the sheer scale of the resources locked up in today’s spectacularly dysfunctional political, economic, and social institutions, which will become available for other uses when those institutions come apart. The $83 billion a year currently being poured down the oversized rathole of the five biggest US banks, just for starters, could pay for a lot of solar water heaters, training programs for organic farmers, and other things that could actually do some good.
Throw in the resources currently being chucked into all of the other attempts currently under way to prop up a failing system, and you’ve got quite the jackpot that could, in an era of breakdown, be put to work doing things worth while. It’s by no means certain, as already noted, that these resources will go to the best possible use, but it’s all but certain that they’ll go to something less stunningly pointless than, say, handing Elon Musk his next billion dollars.
The second thing that gives me a measured sense of hope is at once subtler and far more profound. These days, despite a practically endless barrage of rhetoric to the contrary, the great majority of Americans are getting fewer and fewer benefits from the industrial system, and are being forced to pay more and more of its costs, so that a relatively small fraction of the population can monopolize an ever-increasing fraction of the national wealth and contribute less and less in exchange. What’s more, a growing number of Americans are aware of this fact. The traditional schism of a collapsing society into a dominant minority and an internal proletariat, to use Arnold Toynbee’s terms, is a massive and accelerating social reality in the United States today.
As that schism widens, and more and more Americans are forced into the Third World poverty that’s among the unmentionable realities of public life in today’s United States, several changes of great importance are taking place. The first, of course, is precisely that a great many Americans are perforce learning to live with less—not in the playacting style popular just now on the faux-green end of the privileged classes, but really, seriously living with much less, because that’s all there is. That’s a huge shift and a necessary one, since the absurd extravagance many Americans consider to be a normal lifestyle is among the most important things that will be landing in history’s compost heap in the not too distant future.At the same time, the collective consensus that keeps the hopelessly dysfunctional institutions of today’s status quo glued in place is already coming apart, and can be expected to dissolve completely in the years ahead. What sort of consensus will replace it, after the inevitable interval of chaos and struggle, is anybody’s guess at this point—though it’s vanishingly unlikely to have anything to do with the current political fantasies of left and right. It’s just possible, given luck and a great deal of hard work, that whatever new system gets cobbled together during the breakdown phase of our present crisis will embody at least some of the values that will be needed to get our species back into some kind of balance with the biosphere on which our lives depend. A future post will discuss how that might be accomplished—after, that is, we explore the last phase of the collapse process: the era of dissolution, which will be the theme of next week’s post.
The Archdruid Report by John Michael Greer
61 Comments on "The Era of Breakdown"
Plantagenet on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 7:07 pm
One of Greer’s better posts. I recommend it.
Nony on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 8:08 pm
TLDR
Davy on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 8:25 pm
NOo, you didn’t read it because it did no fit through your hopium filter. Try setting the dial to the reality setting. That usually works well. If that is still too difficult try paced denial reductions IOW the 12 steps of doom.
Nony on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 8:31 pm
admit it…you didn’t read it either. You like fucking with me more than reading longwinded crap.
Davy on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 8:55 pm
JMG, showing doomer hopium. There will be nothing positive for a reformed global system coming from its crisis. There will just be a collapsed global system.
This system cannot be reformed. It cannot be degrowth’d. It cannot be changed to something similar. All our delocalized locals depends on a healthy global system. The global system must have a status quo of a global average growth of 3% or entropic decay takes over.
Currently the core system is getting that growth through wealth transfer and economic bubbles. Debt and extend and pretend are its underlying tools. This can’t last very long. How long I have no idea but I imagine shorts EPT is the glass ceiling. The current situation of a possible demand and supply destruction scenario could allow a hidden descent for a few years.
JMG is trying to be optimistic but this is not the time for optimism it is the time for adjustment actions and mitigation policies. JMG is just trying to appeal to a wider audience. How many people want to hear Davy doom salad rants? Not many. We humans just are not interested in bad news. That’s human nature.
Makati1 on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 8:58 pm
This seems to sum up his article…
“The first, of course, is precisely that a great many Americans are perforce learning to live with less—not in the playacting style popular just now on the faux-green end of the privileged classes, but really, seriously living with much less, because that’s all there is. That’s a huge shift and a necessary one, since the absurd extravagance many Americans consider to be a normal lifestyle is among the most important things that will be landing in history’s compost heap in the not too distant future.At the same time, the collective consensus that keeps the hopelessly dysfunctional institutions of today’s status quo glued in place is already coming apart, and can be expected to dissolve completely in the years ahead. What sort of consensus will replace it, after the inevitable interval of chaos and struggle, is anybody’s guess at this point—though it’s vanishingly unlikely to have anything to do with the current political fantasies of left and right.”
Anybody’s guess. Yes, that is correct, and we are getting, will get, a lot of those as the ‘Wylie Coyote’ moment of realization approaches. I would prefer a total crash now while there is still a bit of resources available to allow a reset, but…
HARM on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 9:01 pm
Wow, I finally agree with Planter on something!
HARM on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 9:08 pm
“the absurd extravagance many Americans consider to be a normal lifestyle”
While an elite slice of Americans do indeed live lives that are absurdly –even grotesquely– extravagant, the reality for the underclass majority is very different –unless you consider “The Real Wives of xxxxx” TV shows to represent “normal”. Read Linda Tirado’s “Hand to Mouth” or Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” for a more accurate portrait.
HARM on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 9:12 pm
This nicely sums up “normal” in the US:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rMhvYeQPOcE/maxresdefault.jpg
Davy on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 9:37 pm
The U.S. Is in bad shape for a collapse because of the nations dependence on overconsumption for economic stability. Imagine China who has serious over population, over consumption, and destroyed ecosystem. Talk about a tragedy in the making.
GregT on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 9:55 pm
The U.S. Is in bad shape for a collapse because of the nations dependence on overconsumption.
There, fixed it for you Davy. Most people in the US are going to be psychologically unprepared, and they won’t have a clue how to take care of themselves.
Most people in China will simply go back to the family farms, and will continue to eat insects, cats, dogs, mice, and rats.
GregT on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 9:59 pm
And Davy,
Just so you don’t take it the wrong way, I consider Canada to be a satellite of the US in this case.
Davy on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:02 pm
Yes, Greg on first correction. I disagree on the China correction. They are in overpopulation with a destroyed ecosystem. You just don’t leave a mega-Chinese city into am already crowded rural area. Both the cities and the rural areas have been destroyed by polution and destructive development. There Greg I fixed yours. Nice to have friends that care.
Davy on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:06 pm
Greg, Canada will be lebensraum for a desperate mass of US citizens when climate change hits with a vengeance.
I am planning to look you up so we can fish for salmon and hunt moose together. Can I bring my dog? Again it is nice to have friends that care.
GregT on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:08 pm
They have plenty of room for expansion to the North Davy…..
GregT on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:09 pm
What kind of a dog do you have? Looking to get one as soon as we have relocated.
ghung on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:13 pm
“The 300-year joyride of industrialism was made possible by vast and cheaply extractable reserves of highly concentrated fossil fuels and other natural resources, on the one hand, and a biosphere sufficiently undamaged that it could soak up the wastes of human industry without imposing burdens on the economy, on the other. We no longer have either of those requirements.”
That’s how it’s different this time. Humanity is running out of planet to exploit. Societies have been in overshoot before, but this time it’s global; too limiting for low-hanging-fruit growth monkeys like nony to contemplate. It must suck when one realizes one has all the wrong skills…
GregT on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:15 pm
Guys are fishing off the coast here now for mackerel and tuna. The ocean temps have risen so much. The way things have been going, I’m not so sure how long the salmon will be around.
GregT on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:17 pm
I don’t think that Nony has actually come to grips with reality yet Ghung. Chip on his shoulder perhaps, or simply not intelligent enough.
GregT on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:25 pm
Davy,
If current trends continue, us Canadians will be flocking to MO. Temperatures are rising faster in the North, then they are in the South. Like I said before, CC is going to be a game changer.
Apneaman on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 10:57 pm
breakdown
Test of ruptured oil pipe failed to detect major corrosion
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/a1c50079635b44549fabbd5f1c1df54f/test-ruptured-oil-pipe-failed-detect-major-corrosion
Apneaman on Thu, 4th Jun 2015 11:50 pm
Way Too Many Americans Can’t Afford to Take Care of Their Teeth
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/06/03/u_s_dental_crisis_a_quarter_of_americans_couldn_t_afford_to_fix_their_teeth.html
Apneaman on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 12:58 am
Land of the Unfree – Police and Prosecutors Fight Aggressively to Retain Barbaric Right of “Civil Asset Forfeiture”
“The fact that civil asset forfeiture continues to exist across the American landscape despite outrage and considerable media attention, is as good an example as any as to how far fallen and uncivilized our so-called “society” has become. It also proves the point demonstrated in a Princeton University study that the U.S. is not a democracy, and the desires of the people have no impact on how the country is governed.”
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/06/04/land-of-the-unfree-police-and-prosecutors-fight-aggressively-to-retain-barbaric-right-of-civil-asset-forfeiture/
Apneaman on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 1:01 am
The working few and the inverted pyramid of labor: 1 out of 3 Americans financially carry the other two-thirds.
“If things were so great, why is the battle cry for the 2016 election all about the working and middle class? The stock market is near a peak. Too bad most Americans own no stocks. Housing values are rising. Too bad more home purchases are going to investors versus single families. Debt is more accessible. Too bad it is for items like cars that depreciate immediately once the vehicle is driven off the lot. The employment situation in the US is largely looking like an inverted pyramid.”
http://www.mybudget360.com/not-in-the-labor-force-1-out-of-3-private-sector-workers-support-everyone/
Davy on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 2:47 am
Greg I have an Australian Shepherd. He is actually the wife’s dog now. He is pretty tight with her and a great watch dog. I am getting two Anatolian Shepherds for the goats once I finish my intensive grazing project. We have a problem around here with Coyotes. They will not kill the big goats but the kill the kid goats. I will have goats follow the cows in 9 X 6 acre paddocks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatolian_Shepherd
Makati1 on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 2:49 am
GregT & Davy, better plan for that hunting trip the first year of the collapse. There may not be anything left to hunt the second year. At least nothing you can get to on foot.
As for China’s pollution, take a sample of any water in the US and see if it is potable. Or if the soil actually can grow anything without Big Ag chemicals. You might be surprised. If they grow they will not have the minerals needed for good health. Those have been leeched away long ago. I doubt that there is an unpolluted square mile anywhere on earth today.
And China is just the US 50 years ago. In WW2, they moved whole cities by hand a thousand miles, built a long highway in less then a year, by hand, where Western companies claimed it would take years and large machines to accomplish. Americans cannot even get off the couch.
Besides, if the oceans go, so we go also. As for temps … only time will tell, but not in my lifetime, I think. Who alive today gives a rats ass about world climate conditions in 2100? If they were honest, about zero. They will care even less when they have to spend their days finding food and keeping warm and dry.
Davy on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 2:51 am
Greg, we have had an unusually wet and cool spring. I have noticed winters are colder near the end last two years. I waiting for the light switch to turn a hot ass summer on. You know all of a sudden 100 degree days. Definitely climate change going on here. I will say this has been the most pleasant spring in my memory. The garden and pastures are in phenomenal shape.
Davy on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 3:06 am
Poor Mak, you just are up the creek trying to bash my home and defend your Asia when it comes to overpopulation and overconsumption. The numbers speak for themselves Mak. There is no need to put a bunch of references. Asia is in overpopulation, overconsumption, and destroyed ecologically. What could be worse?
Makster, you are right in the cross hairs of climate change on multiple fronts in the Philippines. Mega typhoons are in your future. Your collapsed fisheries that your country depends on for a significant amount of protein are facing a warming and acidifying ocean. Temps will not be so balmy Makster for you at the pool bellow the 10th story apartment in the heart of 12MIL people Manila. You truly made a poor discussion deserting the US for a hell hole
Makster, you want to believe the hunting and fishing will be bad here but you just don’t know. Lots of people could die off quickly and actually benefit wildlife. If it is a long emergency and people are hungry we have lots of game now to get people through for a time. That’s called backup food reserves. Asia has little in a destroyed ecosystem.
In Asia you already have a collapsing ecosystem and forests so you don’t even have the natural ecosystem to support you. You Asians are shit out of luck Mak when the global system seizes up. No fuel imports, no food imports, too many people, too many large cities, a country side full of people, massive development destruction, and pollution on a historic scale.
Apneaman on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 4:39 am
China’s Pollution Crisis: Nearly Two-Thirds Of Underground Water Is Graded Unfit For Human Contact, Report Says
“In China, nearly two-thirds of groundwater — the worst offender — and one-third of surface water were graded as unfit for direct human contact in 2014, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a report Thursday. What’s more, less than 4 percent of the nearly 1,000 surface water sites monitored by the ministry met the highest standard in 2014, Reuters reported.”
http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-pollution-crisis-nearly-two-thirds-underground-water-graded-unfit-human-1953442
Rodster on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 9:43 am
“In China, nearly two-thirds of groundwater — the worst offender — and one-third of surface water were graded as unfit for direct human contact in 2014, the Chinese Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a report Thursday. What’s more, less than 4 percent of the nearly 1,000 surface water sites monitored by the ministry met the highest standard in 2014, Reuters reported.”
The situation has gotten far worse for them because not too long ago their water supply was labeled as undrinkable.
It’s been downgraded to “unfit for direct human contact. Big difference !
welch on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 4:32 pm
“better plan for that hunting trip the first year of the collapse.”
We are not going to see a sudden collapse of this nature, imnsho.This is something that is going to be drawn out over a number of generations. As much as some people may wishto see things go completely to hell, it’s bpnot goingvto happen, Fossil fuel production will gradually decline, oceans will gradually acidify, etc. This is going to be a drawn-ot process. My guess is that those of us in Canada and the US will remaincquite well off for a couple more generations.
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 5:28 pm
“By the 20th century, scientists had rejected old tales of world catastrophe, and were convinced that global climate could change only gradually over many tens of thousands of years.”
“The 1980s and 1990s brought proof (chiefly from studies of ancient ice) that the global climate could indeed shift, radically and catastrophically, within a century — perhaps even within a decade.”
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/rapid.htm
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 5:38 pm
***Rapid climate change: an overview for economists***
Paul D. Williams
Walker Institute for Climate System Research Department of Meteorology
University of Reading
The climate might change so slowly (i.e., over many decades or centuries) that there is ample time for future generations to adapt to their new climatic regimes. Such adaptation would likely be painful and expensive, but not impossible, at least for the richest nations. However, the possibility of very rapid climatic changes is a current and pressing concern amongst climate scientists. ‘Rapid’ in this context refers to changes occurring so quickly (e.g., within a decade or two) that adaptation is impossible, even for the richest nations. Rapid climate change could occur if the climate system reaches a tipping point, i.e., a threshold beyond which (due to non-linear climate feedbacks, e.g., Williams et al., 2007) a small further increase in greenhouse gas concentrations triggers a disproportionately large response.
http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~williams/publications/IJGE.pdf
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 5:49 pm
We generally consider climate changes as taking place on the scale of hundreds or even thousands of years. However, since the early 1990s, a radical shift in the scientific understanding of Earth’s climate history has occurred. We now know that that major regional and global climate shifts have occurred in just a few decades or even a single year.
The National Academy of Sciences–the board of scientists established by Congress in 1863 to advise the federal government on scientific matters–compiled a comprehensive report in 2002 entitled, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. The 244-page report, which contains over 500 references, was written by a team of 59 of the top researchers in climate, and represents the most authoritative source of information about abrupt climate change available.
http://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/abruptclimate.asp
Apneaman on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 6:14 pm
Renewable Energy Will Not Support Economic Growth
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-06-05/renewable-energy-will-not-support-economic-growth
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 7:13 pm
Maybe Utopia wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all. Back around 1970.
Makati1 on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 7:27 pm
Ah, the China bashers are out in full today…lol. I bet you don’t know what you are drinking, America. If you did, you would know that it is dumbing you down and slowly killing you.
Even farmland wells have high nitrogen content that is not good for you. Not to mention the stuff they deliberately put in the commercial water like fluorides and chlorides, both poisons. But, keep bashing if it makes you feel superior. Time will tell who survives the coming bottleneck.
Davy on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 8:14 pm
Mak, give it a rest. You are the king of bashing so in that case you are laughing at yourself.
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 8:43 pm
Davy,
Would you recommend the Aussie Shepherds? It’s one of the breeds we’re interested in. Pros and cons?
Davy on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 9:11 pm
Greg, mine is extremely smart, loyal, and good with my wife and boys. He is very difficult with anyone that is not immediate family which makes him a great watch dog but problematic when people are over. I have a mini which is a good size for the car, canoe, and my small cabin. It’s too late in the game to use him as a work dog but I am happy with him as a watch dog and family companion. They need stimulation, space, and attention or they get neurotic. I guess that is because of their intelligence. I am happy with mine. His name is Bolt. When he was young he used to bolt on me if I didn’t keep an eye on him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_Australian_Shepherd
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 9:15 pm
What color is he Davy? Sounds like just what we’re looking for.
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 9:21 pm
And what do you mean by problematic?
Davy on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 9:27 pm
He is a blue merle. He barks at any strangers that come around so I need to tie him up if I know someone is coming around. If they come into the cabin he growls and barks. Like I said he is a great watchdog and companion but bad with strangers. He doesn’t bite but he acts like he could.
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 9:36 pm
We’ve been looking for a black tri-colored. There’s a breeder in Washington State that has a litter born May 6th. Haven’t entirely figured out whether we prefer a male or a female yet.
Makati1 on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 10:56 pm
Davy, you need a mirror…
Apneaman on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 11:30 pm
California is sinking, and it’s getting worse
“The sinking is starting to destroy bridges, crack irrigation canals and twist highways across the state, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Two bridges in Fresno County – an area that produces about 15 percent of the world’s almonds – have sunk so much that they are nearly underwater and will cost millions to rebuild. Nearby, an elementary school is slowly descending into a miles-long sinkhole that will make it susceptible to future flooding.
Private businesses are on the hook, too. One canal system is facing more than $60 million in repairs because one of its dams is sinking. And public and private water wells are being bent and disfigured like crumpled drinking straws as the earth collapses around them – costing $500,000 or more to replace.”
https://www.revealnews.org/article/california-is-sinking-and-its-getting-worse/
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 11:43 pm
Trillions of dollars worth of failing infrastructure in the US. The answer? Spend trillions of dollars of US tax payers dollars bombing other countries back into the Stone Age.
When will US Americans finally wake up? Not until their ‘government’ starts murdering them. By then, it will be far too late.
GregT on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 11:47 pm
Wake up America!
Apneaman on Fri, 5th Jun 2015 11:56 pm
High Temperatures in the Arctic
http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.nz/2015/06/high-temperatures-in-the-arctic.html
GregT on Sat, 6th Jun 2015 12:33 am
Who cares Apnea? The Marcellus is mighty, and we are in an oil glut.