[papa moose]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'T')he time between slipping on a banana peel and hitting the floor is a "bananasecond."

[Asterisk]

Nefarious...read the "Global Warming Has Arrived" thread starting a few pages back.

Ludi, I'm curious...you have been reading this board for awhile but it seems like just this week you came to the conclusion that Cid is right. I'm curious what exactly convinced you after all this time?

I am less obsessed with the topic than I used to be. When I first read about it last summer, I was just FREAKING. Then slowly over time I just sort of accepted it. Now, I guess I feel like it just is something that we are going to have to deal with, but right now it's not affecting me so I'm going on with my life.

Course I'm still trying to figure out how to access my $40,000 retirement fund. Ain't no WAY things will be BAU for the next 20 years (which is how long I have to wait to get the money).

[Livewire713]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'I') don't know whether any of you folks have seen the video linked below ... Sad really. A species choked by its own greed and filth.
http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/A_REALLY_Inco ... Dan_Miller

[Koyaanisqatsi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')Sounds like an awful scenario, the whole planet going out via suffocation.. elites hoarding oxygen and preps. Insane chaos once people become aware what's happening.

[americandream]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Livewire713', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'I') don't know whether any of you folks have seen the video linked below ... Sad really. A species choked by its own greed and filth.
http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/A_REALLY_Inco ... Dan_Miller

[SpringCreekFarm]

Everyone's doom is their own and personal. We all have to die at some point. How can we rationally care about the rest of humanity? If that bus of doom has left the station 20 years ago then why not ride it to the destination? Also, why not keep living with hope? What harm does it cause? I don't think any rational person expects the effects of peak oil / global warming to happen everywhere simultaneously. If you happen to live in an area of imminent doom then perhaps it's time to bug out. If you don't then ride the wave.

Ludi. Keep building awesome rabbit hutches and burying wood and and planting your garden because it makes you happy, not because it might save you. You could die from an accident while waiting for the world to end. Most of all, keep telling us about it and keep the conversation going because a lot of us on here have that in common and we admire and respect each other for it. At least I admire and respect you folks anyway.

I happen to enjoy the concept of self-sufficiency and was working that way before I came here in 2006. I used to think it would one day save me but now I'm not so sure. Oh well! I'll still build in my barn, make fences, cut firewood, boil down maple sap, plant my gardens, raise a few animals, play with my son, argue with my wife, read too far into subject matter and play my guitar and sing.

[timmac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'L')ets just say that I found his presentation pretty convincing although the fact that we may have to resort to geo-engineering in a bid to deal with the issue was shocking. Personally, I simply can't see how we are ever going to reconcile obsolence driven capitalism with any long term prospects as a species, singularity devices notwithstanding. Carlhole's remedies contemplate BAU, not the mitigation of BAU's toxic effects. Our problem is that we have taken modernity and turned it into a round the clock source of all manner of chemical and physical wastes which must, at some point, overwhelm us, especially when scaled up to 6 billion.

[americandream]

@Timmac. This is much bigger than an individual. Either way, whatever you do is irrelevant as there are another 6 billion hungry to emulate excess and none the wiser of the risks involved.

[timmac]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '@')Timmac. This is much bigger than an individual. Either way, whatever you do is irrelevant as there are another 6 billion hungry to emulate excess and none the wiser of the risks involved.

[Shar_Lamagne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('papamoose', 'H')ow long is the time between being shot in the head and hitting the floor?
That's the way Cid has described it. What that means in days/weeks/months?

[Homesteader]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nefarious', 'K')now anyone else who has also made this bold prediction ?

Excluding anyone who post at godlikeproductions.

[Novus]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')hy are we talking about anything but our imminent death from Global Warming?

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('timmac', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('americandream', 'L')ets just say that I found his presentation pretty convincing although the fact that we may have to resort to geo-engineering in a bid to deal with the issue was shocking. Personally, I simply can't see how we are ever going to reconcile obsolence driven capitalism with any long term prospects as a species, singularity devices notwithstanding. Carlhole's remedies contemplate BAU, not the mitigation of BAU's toxic effects. Our problem is that we have taken modernity and turned it into a round the clock source of all manner of chemical and physical wastes which must, at some point, overwhelm us, especially when scaled up to 6 billion.

[Pops]

What is there to talk about?

All I hear is "We're all gonna die!" and "No we aren't! CO2 is a blessing from God!" Aside from moving above sea level I don't hear anyone talking about what kind of mitigation to take on a personal level because we know "society" isn't going to do anything.

Maybe that's the allure, it's doom you can't mitigate by yourself, so you don't have that little nagging feeling of "what if this really happens and I haven't prepared?" None of that, "Well, I do a bunch of stuff except my wife/husband won't let me." or ""When ts hits tf I'll do so and so."

That's it, Guilt Free Doom.

[vision-master]

Gas went to $3.55 gal yesterday, ppl @ station said it will be $4 gal by the end of the Month here in Minnesota.

[scas]

There's a few reasons people aren't talking about this - first is that people simply don't understand climate change, they've never taken the time to read any of the scientists books, they don't consider methane a threat, and most just don't care - death by warming and methane is just too abstract to see coming.

Of course many scientists have seen this a while back. This is happening, and most of us will be suffering hunger within the next two decades.

The single and only possible remedy to runaway methane is sulfate aerosols. For those of you worrying about dieing, put your hope in technology, or get over your fear of death. Assuming a non-ozone depleting particle isn't manufactured, then sulfates will cool things down for a while. After a decade of spraying maybe someone will figure something out.

If you think geoengineering is a joke, then you have your alternative. It's a bit like a person with kidney failure turning down dialysis imo.

[mos6507]

I see a lot of people running around in rhetorical circles with this topic, year after year. I do it myself and frankly, all it does is make me more and more confused.

That's because doom is inherently paradoxical. The questions reside in the philosophical realm. They are unsolvable. That's why so many doomers throw the baby out with the bathwater and go nihilist. At least they can find some closure, as unsatisfying as nihilism is. Maybe existentialist would be better, although I kind of lump that as a more benign branch of nihilism.

For instance, the subtext of Ludi's thread that I detect (qualification here) is that it is a personal failing or bias to characterize the future as game-over. In other words, we WANT to see things as game-over because then we can let go of the conceit that we can do anything about it. So we can ride BAU (whether we like it or not) into the grave.

Now, I've come across fatalistic statements about doom that fall within those lines, and yes, it bothers me greatly to see people give up so easily, often casually and uncaringly, to not even leave the door open to the possibility of more optimistic future scenarios that we could engineer if we were willing to pick up the proverbial shovel and get busy.

But let's also consider the possibility that Cid is right, that we are f*cked after all. If that's the case, then like Ludi mocks, there truly is nothing more to talk about in terms of the trivia of 24-hour political news cycle that dominates this board. Make your peace, go through your bucket list, and deal with our collective guilt over the impending ecocide.

As I've written about elsewhere, there is this intellectual friction in the doomerverse right now over the activist approach, the mitigation and adaptation approach, vs. the "sacred demise" approach of acceptance. You know, Obi-Wan dropping his lightsaber. Letting go of attachment, even to life itself.

I think we entered into this phase of internal dialogue following Climategate/Nopenhagen and the rise of the tea-party in conjunction with the accelerated news of climate doom (peak oil not withstanding) further makes the case that, if we don't completely go extinct, a very sizeable chunk of human population is gonna have to go, sooner or later, and it won't be pleasant, zombie hordes or no zombie hordes.

Yet some of the brightest and otherwise doomiest doomer activists don't really accept this scenario whole hog. They are still clinging to hopeful scenarios that they fashioned a few years ago when things seemed more hopeful, which seems to fly in the face of any and all current trend-lines. So what is more or less healthy? To cling to an idealistic vision that seems to be in more and more contrast to the world we see unfolding before our very eyes, or to see the abyss that's opening up underneath us, which is very real, and is almost scientifically baked into the future by virtue of "the numbers" (carrying capacity drawdown, climate feedbacks, etc...)?

The facts are the facts regardless of what we want or don't want to see. If certain scenarios "let us off the hook" for one reason, it doesn't mean a belief in that scenario is necessarily driven by bias or that the scenario HAS to be false. Our goose may really be cooked, permaculture or no permaculture, powerdown or no powerdown, praying to the earth mother or no praying to the earth mother.

As time goes on, I think the fog of uncertainty that has provided us with what passes for hope in doom-land will continue to burn off and it will be harder and harder to rationalize anything but the stark path that is being revealed to us, and the things we're able to cling to in order to give our lives some sense of purpose or dignity will continue to shrink in scope and grandiosity. So maybe in 2006, someone like Lester Brown was jonesing on writing Plan B books and how we're going to get this problem licked, and in 2008 Rob Hopkins was talking about how we'd all relocalize bit by bit to build resilience, maybe now or certainly in the future the dominant meme will shift to day to day hand-to-mouth challenges. Where will I get my next meal? How will I deal with an untreated illness? How will I avoid getting in a firefight with street thugs? You know, the kind of thing the 3rd world deals with every day, and often fails in the process.

I think mentally we hate having to continually revise our "basal paradigms" about the way the world works and our place amidst it all. But things are moving rapidly and if any of us really wants to get a handle on reality (and by extension, meet its challenges) we have to be willing to constantly reassess.

That's kind of the way I see doom. It's moving through a continuum and I think you have to try to stay in the present rather than lock your frame of reference at some prior time when certain windows of opportunity may have still been open. At some point, some things will just clearly be too little, too late.

[vision-master]

moss, are you addicted to doom?

[Roy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SpringCreekFarm', 'E')veryone's doom is their own and personal. We all have to die at some point. How can we rationally care about the rest of humanity? If that bus of doom has left the station 20 years ago then why not ride it to the destination? Also, why not keep living with hope? What harm does it cause? I don't think any rational person expects the effects of peak oil / global warming to happen everywhere simultaneously. If you happen to live in an area of imminent doom then perhaps it's time to bug out. If you don't then ride the wave.

Ludi. Keep building awesome rabbit hutches and burying wood and and planting your garden because it makes you happy, not because it might save you. You could die from an accident while waiting for the world to end. Most of all, keep telling us about it and keep the conversation going because a lot of us on here have that in common and we admire and respect each other for it. At least I admire and respect you folks anyway.

I happen to enjoy the concept of self-sufficiency and was working that way before I came here in 2006. I used to think it would one day save me but now I'm not so sure. Oh well! I'll still build in my barn, make fences, cut firewood, boil down maple sap, plant my gardens, raise a few animals, play with my son, argue with my wife, read too far into subject matter and play my guitar and sing.

[Timo]

I've spent a lot of time lately thinking about people's perceptual context of the world around them. Everyone developes their own unique perceptions based on what they see and experience. We cal also "learn" about things we've never experienced before, but we won't have the real perception of those things until we can put it into a personal context. Ask a person who's been blind from birth what he/she sees, and that person will not have any relevant context from which to provide an answer. Apply this realization to global warming. No one alive has ever experienced an event the magnitude of what we're being warned about will happen. Hence, we have no contextual basis to react. We learn about possible consequences, but those consequences, in personal terms that we can relate to, cound normal, like a three degree increase in temperature. Yeah? So what. I've lived through plenty of 100 degree days before. That's not unusual at all. Now, expand this blissful/inherent/perfectly normal ignorance on a global scale. How many people have been to the arctic and have see live wild polar bears? Very few of us, so when we hear about threats to polar bears, we have no personal basis for experiencing what we're being warned about. We lack the perception of these threats, and therefore the context in which we should react to warnings of these threats. I've heard the same analogy applied to wars. Those locales where war has been recently waged are far less likely to ever want to do it again. Those places that have never seen a war or been subject to its degredation have no fear of it because they've never experienced it. Global warming. War. Its essentially the same thing to people who have no experience with either.