[SeaGypsy]

Pecans are a superfood, along with a good source of chlorophyll, sufficient to sustain our bodies virtually for life.

[ennui2]

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]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ennui2', 'T')rees 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.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('DesuMaiden', '
')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.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he 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.

[GregT]

Sam appears to have missed one end time prophesy, for what it's worth.

"This message came to me concerning Damascus: 'Look, Damascus will disappear! It will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer will be deserted. Sheep will graze in the streets and lie down unafraid. There will be no one to chase them away. The fortified cities of Israel will also be destroyed, and the power of Damascus will end. The few left in Aram will share the fate of Israel's departed glory,' says the Lord Almighty" (Isaiah 17:1-3, NLT)

[AgentR11]

Damascus is dinged up a bit, but it is still a functioning, well inhabited city. Lights and power and cars zipping about in their daily routine.
With the current progression in Syria, I think Damascus has dodged the bullet this time around. Thanks to Russia.

[Tanada]

If there is one lesson that has been pounded home to me in the 12 years I have been here it is this.

Here to STAY is never the case.

This is especially true of predictions that we are at peak, that prices will be higher, that price will be lower, that the end of the world is here to stay. This is profoundly the case in the USA.

The world as we know it is an illusion, everything is always in flux within a range. If you are just 21 years old then you were born into a world that was incredibly different than the world today. If you are 42 or 63 the differences between your birth and today are even more shocking than they are for the 21 year old. The vast changes are because while things cycle around the range I mentioned disruptive events come along that reset where that range is.

1954
If you are 63 then when you were born many homes had a single TV set that was a black and white CRT picture tube design. Those homes without a TV mostly wanted one but were getting by with a radio until they could afford to upgrade. That TV was highly likely to be circuited with vacuum tube electronics, but a modern table top radio was often transistors with no vacuum tubes.

1975
If you are 42 then when you were born most homes had a black and white TV and the better off folks also had a color TV as well. The poor folks who couldn't afford a TV before and wanted one now had used black and white TV's that they had gotten from neighbors or better off relatives when those people traded them in or gave them away after getting their color TV. The first microchip computer was an inventors prototype that only a tiny number of people had heard anything about. Your phone was a landline connected by wires to the wall with an attached handset receiver. A brand new piece of electronics had solid state transistors instead of vacuum tubes.

1996
If you are 21 then when you were born most homes had two or more color TV sets, often with an old Black and White as a spare stuck in the attic or in the garage and rarely used. None of the sets had vacuum tubes unless they were kept for nostalgic reasons because getting new tubes was difficult and expensive. The new rage was for average folks to carry a beeper/pager that was about the size of a deck of cards that would beep and read out a phone number or short text message telling you who needed you to call. If you were a show off you might have a cellular 'bag phone' but everyone still had landline phones. Almost everyone has a home Personal Computer that is supposed to be for business or homework but mostly gets used for playing games or chatting online with people through services like America Online.

2017
Look around and compare now to any of the brief synopses above. Admit to yourself that 'The End Of the World As We Know It' has happened repeatedly over the last 70 years, and if I felt like making the effort I could easily extent that to the 84 year old members who may be reading this that were born in 1933 at the depths of the Great Depression. Ask them if the world is the same as they remember from childhood. After they finish laughing they will tell you as much as you care to listen.

[onlooker]

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.

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'T')he 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.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('baha', 'W')e are in a FF'ed overshoot, as soon as the fuel runs out, so will the overshoot.

[Subjectivist]

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.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', 'Y')ou 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.