[PeterEV]

One thing about planning, if you want to leave something viable for the next generations going into this mess, what do you do now? I've got some great kids that I'd like to see "make it through" the transition. They will be alive then.

I read that electric motors will be useless and electronic will be gone (although Greer thinks vacuum tubes will make a come back). I shake my head over what will be and what won't.

I'm enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee while I write this. The PV array has or will churn out enough juice to cover that part of the tab.

But what about heating a place in winter when gas and power station electricity is very expensive? I don't want to burn wood and I don't want my pipes to freeze. I've been looking into solar thermal and think it can be done. My solar guy says it is "impractical"; costs too much for the ROI. Installs have not worked out. etc. Screw that noise. I've got a south facing front that almost begs for solar thermal. But solar thermal involves at least two pumps. Somehow, I don't see electric motors going away.

I could put in a wood burning stove but I saw what happens the last time we had an energy crunch during the 80's. The air filled with smoke, our eyes watered, and there were a lot of beater pickups broken down with pile of wood in their beds and bald flat tires. Firewood sellers were on several of the busiest the corners. The trees on my property would not have lasted a season or two.

To some it may sound like BAU, but it isn't. How are my neighbors going to do the same if they don't have the funds? Freeze??? If I do something, maybe it will work out for them.

I humbly submit:

The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want (but sure doesn't sound like it).
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me besides still waters which are hopefully still potable.
He restoreth my soul even with all this angst. He leadeth me in the paths of doing right for his name sake.
Yea, that I walk through the valley of the shadow of death 'cause my car's out of gas (or electricity), I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me 'cause I'm now on foot.
Thou preparest a table before me in the present of my doomers. They annointest my head with used motor oil, my angst runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me for the rest of my life and I will dwell in a sustainable House of the Lord forever, if I get it right.

[ennui2]

The fact of the matter is not everyone will ever view the world the same way. What drives doomerism is an eternal frustration that the world is separated into two groups, the red pillers and the blue pillers. And if you strip back that frustration, it could be that the fact there are blue pillers is a big part of the appeal of being a red piller. Because if everyone were red pillers, then you wouldn't feel special anymore. It's the same thing that fuels conspiracy theory nuts, which is why there's so much overlap into CT. I find that doomer have just as much of a blind spot as blue pillers because they spend most of their time trying to understand why blue pillers don't come around and not enough time trying to understand why they're so passionate about doom. It's just taken as a given that once you become a doomer, you're supposed to make it the centerpiece of your existence. You know, the Cassandra complex. And if you're not screaming about doom from the rooftops, you're just finding a silo like this place to rant and rave that you don't have a willing audience.

This has been mentioned several times before, but I think the reason this site and most other doomer hangouts lost its audience wasn't necessarily that the people who were coming her stopped feeling as though the world is screwed. I think most still do, although maybe with a longer play-out. I think they don't come here because they are coping with doom in a way that doesn't require that they take time out of their schedule to keep struggling over the issues.

I think doomer community is in large part a half-way house for people on the doomer grief cycle, and when you come out the other end, you'll learn how to just get on with it without having all this constant drama.

It's this drama that destroys doomers' lives (like it did Mike Ruppert). That drama comes from feeling like you have some sort of personal responsibility to save the world. You ask any long-term activist and they'll tell you how draining it is to do the work they do. You burn out. And that's when pushing for causes that are a lot more mainstream than limits to growth. If you find yourself pushing (or wishing you could push) people towards a knowledge of limits to growth you've found yourself an itch that simply can't be scratched. For some, that offers some masochistic pleasure. But for most, it just can't be maintained, and you find yourself needing to retreat back to center, which is to focus on immediate concerns of the individual an your core friends and family, which, ironically, is how the blue pillers live! So everything comes around full circle.

I would argue that the number of doomers who have made radical lifestyle detours due to taking the red pill are small, and those who do this have the luxury of bugging out of the rat race by virtue of a limited amount of family entanglements due to retirement, being a loner, or whatever. Most of us do not feel it would be worth the collateral damage in our social life to follow the doomer prep handbook chapter and verse. Remember that we're social creatures. Conformity may seem bad, but feeling socially ostracized feels bad to most as well. And in my experience, the subculture of doomers are not generally the friendliest bunch in the world. There's plenty of points of difference with doomers. So it's not all tea and crackers to hang out with doomers all day.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he only way to disprove this is to present technofixes that will readily increase resource availability, decrease pollution, and keep population steady.

[onlooker]

Interesting take on doomerism Ennui. I can speak for myself though I think this can be applicable to others. First believe it or not I like and have fun interchanging ideas with others about the world both past, present and future. Second, this drama you speak of is curiously absent for me. I have found in my experience that looking at things for what they truly are is always the best option. This then applies to the state of the world. If you ascribe to the fact that fear is one of if not the most powerful emotional reaction then this all becomes quite simple to comprehend. Some can deal with grim matters and possibilities, others rather not and do what they can to distance themselves from acknowledging the existence of unfavorable possibilities. Others can get consumed by pessimism and foreboding. I feel that confronting the uncomfortable and unpleasant is critical to having a healthy mind frame. That does not mean you dwell on it or are obsessed with it. You conquer your fears by confronting them. I have a life outside of this website and I have noticed others do as well. We are here to flesh out the nature of this time and place that we happen to occupy beyond that I am not invested in the outcome as I know full well that as sure as I am breathing today one day I will not.

[GHung]

Good insights, onlooker.

ennui said: "Most of us do not feel it would be worth the collateral damage in our social life to follow the doomer prep handbook chapter and verse."

Assumes that our change in lifestyle involves these things. We still have friends and a social life; we still see our families regularly; families who agree that the future of BAU is iffy at best, and support our efforts to seek an alternative to said BAU, at least on some level. You guys that assert that so-called doomers have faded into the wilderness while breaking all social ties and becoming "loners" are certainly guilty of stereotyping. You clearly don't understand what you're talking about, which is one reason I started this thread. And there is no single master "doomer prep handbook" that I know of. For many, that could be the Bible as far as that goes.

Our social life is, and has been, fine, but thanks for your concern. Whatever social ties may have been broken over the last 20 years or so generally weren't worth maintaining in the first place. Those that were have been maintained. When TSHTF, who and where will your so-called 'friends' be? I'm betting the list will shrink dramatically for many of you. Collateral damage?

[PeterEV]

Sometimes I think that the MSM will tell us when to really start worrying. For instance, when the GM EV1 and the Toyota RAV4E (electric) were created, the TPTB were all up in arms and you couldn't find a kind word in any of the MSM outlets. GM wanted to sell spark plugs and we had not reached Peak conventional Oil production.

Fast forward to the past few years. The Nisaan Leaf has less range than either the EV1 or the RAV4E. Yet the Leaf is treated more kindy in the press. The Tesla Model S walks on water with Road & Track ( a reknown EV hater) and gets close to a perfect score of 100 with Consumer Reports.

I think there is a heighten awareness that we are past one peak and are heading toward a final peak. With industry saying: "If we are going to be viable in the future and sell [fill in the blank product category] we may have to acquiesce and sell those once dreaded [fill in the blank product]." GM may have to forego selling spark plugs for battery packs and BP may really have to embrace "Beyond Petroleum".

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the MSM is going to tell "Joe Six Pack" what to do.

[Pops]

Doom is a big tent, there are all kinds of Doomers, all sorts of doom. I pigeonhole doomers into 2 basic groups:
Preppers, whose motto we all know: Plan for the worst ... Hope for the best
And Talkers, not sure what their motto is, but I slot them with cornies since both rely on someone else to do the doing.

--
Thing is, all the Doomers, all the Cornies and all the people who would rather go fishing than concern themselves with any of it, believe themselves to be realists. If you don't believe that ask the corny sitting in the next pew if he believes himself deluded. I'm pretty sure he doesn't, any more than you.

The red pill merely makes one imagine they are smarter than the average sheeple.
The blue pill simply makes one believe they are smarter than the average Doomer.
In other words, they are placebos at best, hallucinogens at worst.

[Apneaman]

That's awesome peter, but how is it related to why many fear doomers? Why many fear doomers is one of the better questions ever posed on this forum and yet half the people just go wandering off on completely unrelated tangents. I guess electronic intoxication has reduced our attention spans to less than that of goldfish. Quickly jotting down an opinion and throwing up a few relevant links is not the hardest thing in the world to do nor takes much time if it is just once, but collectively it does. I think we may have reached peak doomer and any efforts now are just preaching to the choir. Anyone who does not get it by now won't - unable or unwilling. It's not really a fora if half the comments have nothing to do with the topic.


Our attention span is now less than that of a goldfish, Microsoft study finds


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 47553.html

[Hawkcreek]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PeterEV', 'O')ne thing about planning, if you want to leave something viable for the next generations going into this mess, what do you do now? I've got some great kids that I'd like to see "make it through" the transition. They will be alive then.

I read that electric motors will be useless and electronic will be gone (although Greer thinks vacuum tubes will make a come back). I shake my head over what will be and what won't.

I'm enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee while I write this. The PV array has or will churn out enough juice to cover that part of the tab.

But what about heating a place in winter when gas and power station electricity is very expensive? I don't want to burn wood and I don't want my pipes to freeze. I've been looking into solar thermal and think it can be done. My solar guy says it is "impractical"; costs too much for the ROI. Installs have not worked out. etc. Screw that noise. I've got a south facing front that almost begs for solar thermal. But solar thermal involves at least two pumps. Somehow, I don't see electric motors going away.

I could put in a wood burning stove but I saw what happens the last time we had an energy crunch during the 80's. The air filled with smoke, our eyes watered, and there were a lot of beater pickups broken down with pile of wood in their beds and bald flat tires. Firewood sellers were on several of the busiest the corners. The trees on my property would not have lasted a season or two.

To some it may sound like BAU, but it isn't. How are my neighbors going to do the same if they don't have the funds? Freeze??? If I do something, maybe it will work out for them.

I humbly submit:

The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want (but sure doesn't sound like it).
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me besides still waters which are hopefully still potable.
He restoreth my soul even with all this angst. He leadeth me in the paths of doing right for his name sake.
Yea, that I walk through the valley of the shadow of death 'cause my car's out of gas (or electricity), I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me 'cause I'm now on foot.
Thou preparest a table before me in the present of my doomers. They annointest my head with used motor oil, my angst runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me for the rest of my life and I will dwell in a sustainable House of the Lord forever, if I get it right.

[PeterEV]

Hi Hawk,

There are a lot of things awaiting a stroke of genius or a lot of sweat equity. It's starting to get into gear when the big autos are getting into EVs and PV is allowed to tie into the grid at what utilities consider to be a drain on their profits as opposed to figuring out what happens when FF prices spike and people have a hard time paying the piper.

When I was kid, polio was the big fear of fears of parents for their kids. I knew three who contracted the disease. Now at Duke Med, they are injecting a modified version of it into the brain to kill brain tumors.

Hope you have many more rides ahead of you.

[Apneaman]

pstar then why don't you start a fucking forum thread on your prefered topics? And then I'll come along with 6 comments about why I prefer Tony stewart over Dale Earnhardt Jr and how I really think this might be the year that the Canucks go all the way and the 12 reasons why I prefer moose tracks over maple walnut.

[Apneaman]

I know this is way off topic, but who cares - this is what I feel is more important and what I prefer to discuss. I know others have come here in good faith and are interested in discussing the topic question posed by the OP, but it's 2015 and it's all about me. Sure I could start a forum thread of my own, but that might take upwards of 3 minutes of my own time - why bother when someone else has already gone to the trouble of peaking the interest of others and attracting the audience I need and deserve?



'She loves all my desserts!' Kris Jenner reveals Kim Kardashian's pregnancy cravings... as she tries to flog her cookbook

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ar ... kbook.html

[Lore]

All about me is so last century.

[copious.abundance]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GHung', 'Q')uestion to the "anti-doomers": Why even bother? If we [broad range of folks being labeled "doomers", "preppers", etc.] are so wrong about our conclusions, why do you consider us a threat? Why is it important enough to take the time to explain why our strategies won't work? I'm sure some of you have good reasons....

[ralfy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he only way to disprove this is to present technofixes that will readily increase resource availability, decrease pollution, and keep population steady.

[Apneaman]

I figured it out. When you are unlearned and poorly read, of course one will always revert to the couple of topics they are deeply emotionally attached to. It's understandable considering the state of public schooling in the last 50 years. Nothing but emotional coddling and rampant positivism passed down from one generation to the next with each one becoming more isolated from critical thinking skills and the ability to ponder new ideas or contemplate anything at depth. It's not everyone here, but there is a core group safely hiding out here, reinforcing it just like the system they were indoctrinated in. Of course you're trapped for life. It's not like you live in wealthy country with public libraries that give you free accesses to millions of dollars of books or have some kind of electronic portal to the collective knowledge and ideas of the entirety of recorded civilization (including translations) at your finger tips. Golly, if we had access to that much knowledge and ideas we would no longer have the excuse to instantly revert to the same 5 ideas that have nothing to do with the question posed.

[onlooker]

Again great analysis AP, anti-doomers cannot handle adversity and thus have to cast every problem in a positive light. Also, correct critical thinking skills have been eroding over time along with attention spans due to TV and poor schooling. All in all, the pathetic ones seem to me the anti-doomers as they are going to witness the slow yet accelerating pace of catastrophe and will not be equipped mentally to deal with it. Sad.