While I type these words, an old Supertramp CD is playing in the next room. Those of my readers who belong to the same slice of an American generation I do will likely remember the words Roger Hodgson is singing just now, the opening line from “Fool’s Overture”:

“History recalls how great the fall can be…”

It’s an apposite quote for a troubled time.

Over the last year or so, in and among the other issues I’ve tried to discuss in this blog, the US presidential campaign has gotten a certain amount of air time. Some of the conversations that resulted generated a good deal more heat than light, but then that’s been true across the board since Donald Trump overturned the established certainties of American political life and launched himself and the nation on an improbable trajectory toward our current situation. Though the diatribes I fielded from various sides were more than occasionally tiresome, I don’t regret making the election a theme for discussion here, as it offered a close-up view of issues I’ve been covering for years now.

A while back on this blog, for example, I spent more than a year sketching out the process by which civilizations fall and dark ages begin, with an eye toward the next five centuries of North American history—a conversation that turned into my book Dark Age America. Among the historical constants I discussed in the posts and the book was the way that governing elites and their affluent supporters stop adapting their policies to changing political and economic conditions, and demand instead that political and economic conditions should conform to their preferred policies. That’s all over today’s headlines, as the governing elites of the industrial world cower before the furious backlash sparked by their rigid commitment to the failed neoliberal nostrums of global trade and open borders.

Another theme I discussed in the same posts and book was the way that science and culture in a civilization in decline become so closely identified with the interests of the governing elite that the backlash against the failed policies of the elite inevitably becomes a backlash against science and culture as well. We’ve got plenty of that in the headlines as well. According to recent news stories, for example, the Trump administration plans to scrap the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and get rid of all the federal offices that study anthropogenic climate change.

Their termination with extreme prejudice isn’t simply a matter of pruning the federal bureaucracy, though that’s a factor. All these organizations display various forms of the identification of science and culture with elite values just discussed, and their dismantling will be greeted by cheers from a great many people outside the circles of the affluent, who have had more than their fill of patronizing lectures from their self-proclaimed betters in recent years. Will many worthwhile programs be lost, along with a great deal that’s less than worthwhile?  Of course.  That’s a normal feature of the twilight years of a civilization.

A couple of years before the sequence of posts on dark age America, for that matter, I did another series on the end of US global hegemony and the rough road down from empire. That sequence also turned into a book, Decline and Fall. In the posts and the book, I pointed out that one of the constants of the history of democratic societies—actual democracies, warts and all, as distinct from the imaginary “real democracy” that exists solely in rhetoric—is a regular cycle of concentration and diffusion of power. The ancient Greek historian Polybius, who worked it out in detail, called it anacyclosis.

A lot can be said about anacyclosis, but the detail that’s relevant just now is the crisis phase, when power has become so gridlocked among competing power centers that it becomes impossible for the system to break out of even the most hopelessly counterproductive policies. That ends, according to Polybius, when a charismatic demagogue gets into power, overturns the existing political order, and sets in motion a general free-for-all in which old alliances shatter and improbable new ones take shape. Does that sound familiar? In a week when union leaders emerged beaming from a meeting with the new president, while Democrats are still stoutly defending the integrity of the CIA, it should.

For that matter, one of the central themes of the sequence of posts and the book was the necessity of stepping back from global commitments that the United States can no longer afford to maintain. That’s happening, too, though it’s being covered up just now by a great deal of Trumped-up bluster about a massive naval expansion. (If we do get a 350-ship navy in the next decade, I’d be willing to bet that a lot of those ships will turn out to be inexpensive corvettes, like the ones the Russians have been using so efficiently as cruise missile platforms on the Caspian Sea.)  European politicians are squawking at top volume about the importance of NATO, which means in practice the continuation of a scheme that allows most European countries to push most of the costs of their own defense onto the United States, but the new administration doesn’t seem to be buying it.

Mind you, I’m far from enthusiastic about the remilitarization of Europe. Outside the brief interval of enforced peace following the Second World War, Europe has been a boiling cauldron of warfare since its modern cultures began to emerge out of the chaos of the post-Roman dark ages. Most of the world’s most devastating wars have been European in origin, and of course it escapes no one’s attention in the rest of the world that it was from Europe that hordes of invaders and colonizers swept over the entire planet from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, as often as not leaving total devastation in their wake. In histories written a thousand years from now, Europeans will have the same sort of reputation that Huns and Mongols have today—and it’s only in the fond fantasies of those who think history has a direction that those days are definitely over.

It can’t be helped, though, for the fact of the matter is that the United States can no longer afford to foot the bill for the defense of other countries. Behind a facade of hallucinatory paper wealth, our nation is effectively bankrupt. The only thing that enables us to pay our debts now is the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency—this allows the Treasury to issue debt at a breakneck pace and never have to worry about the cost—and that status is trickling away as one country after another signs bilateral deals to facilitate trading in other currencies. Sooner or later, probably in the next two decades, the United States will be forced to default on its national debt, the way Russia did in 1998.  Before that happens, a great many currently overvalued corporations that support themselves by way of frantic borrowing will have done the same thing by way of the bankruptcy courts, and of course the vast majority of America’s immense consumer debt will have to be discharged the same way.

That means, among other things, that the extravagant lifestyles available to affluent Americans in recent decades will be going away forever in the not too distant future. That’s another point I made in Decline and Fall and the series of posts that became raw material for it. During the era of US global hegemony, the five per cent of our species who lived in the United States disposed of a third of the world’s raw materials and manufactured products and a quarter of its total energy production. That disproportionate share came to us via unbalanced patterns of exchange hardwired into the global economy, and enforced at gunpoint by the military garrisons we keep in more than a hundred countries worldwide. The ballooning US government, corporate, and consumer debt load of recent years was an attempt to keep those imbalances in place even as their basis in geopolitics trickled away. Now the dance is ending and the piper has to be paid.

There’s a certain bleak amusement to be had from the fact that one of the central themes of this blog not that many years back—“Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush”—has already passed its pull date. The rush, in case you haven’t noticed, is already under way. The fraction of US adults of working age who are permanently outside the work force is at an all-time high; so is the fraction of young adults who are living with their parents because they can’t afford to start households of their own. There’s good reason to think that the new administration’s trade and immigration policies may succeed in driving both those figures down, at least for a while, but of course there’ll a price to be paid for that—and those industries and social classes that have profited most from the policies of the last thirty years, and threw their political and financial weight behind the Clinton campaign, will be first in line to pay it. Vae victis!*

More generally, the broader landscape of ideas this blog has tried to explore since its early days remains what it is. The Earth’s economically accessible reserves of fossil carbon dwindle day by day; with each year that passes, on average, the amount of coal, oil, and natural gas burnt exceeds the amount that’s discovered by a wider margin; the current temporary glut in the oil markets is waning so fast that analysts are predicting the next price spike as soon as 2018. Talk of transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, on the one hand, or nuclear power on the other, remains talk—I encourage anyone who doubts this to look up the amount of fossil fuels burnt each year over the last two decades and see if they can find a noticeable decrease in global fossil fuel consumption to match the much-ballyhooed buildout of solar and wind power.

The industrial world remains shackled to fossil fuels for most of its energy and all of its transportation fuel, for the simple reason that no other energy source in this end of the known universe provides the abundant, concentrated, and fungible energy supply that’s needed to keep our current lifestyles going. There was always an alternative—deliberately downshifting out of the embarrassing extravagance that counts for normal lifestyles in the industrial world these days, accepting more restricted ways of living in order to leave a better world for our descendants—but not enough people were willing to accept that alternative to make a difference while there was still a chance.

Meanwhile the other jaw of the vise that’s tightening around the future is becoming increasingly visible just now. In the Arctic, freak weather systems has sucked warm air up from lower latitudes and brought the normal process of winter ice formation to a standstill. In the Antarctic, the Larsen C ice shelf, until a few years ago considered immovable by most glaciologists, is in the process of loosing an ice sheet the size of Delaware into the Antarctic Ocean. I look out my window and see warm rain falling; here in the north central Appalachians, in January, it’s been most of a month since the thermometer last dipped below freezing. The new administration has committed itself to do nothing about anthropogenic climate change, but then, despite plenty of talk, the Obama administration didn’t do anything about it either.

There’s good reason for that, too. The only way to stop anthropogenic climate change in its tracks is to stop putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and doing that would require the world to ground its airlines, turn its highways over to bicycles and oxcarts, and shut down every other technology that won’t be economically viable if it has to depend on the diffuse intermittent energy available from renewable sources. Does the political will to embrace such changes exist? Since I know of precisely three climate change scientists, out of thousands, who take their own data seriously enough to cut their carbon footprint by giving up air travel, it’s safe to say that the answer is “no.”

So, basically, we’re in for it.

The thing that fascinates me is that this is something I’ve been saying for the whole time this blog has been appearing. The window of opportunity for making a smooth transition to a renewable future slammed shut in the early 1980s, when majorities across the industrial world turned their backs on the previous decade’s promising initiatives toward sustainability, and bought into the triumphalist rhetoric of the Reagan-Thatcher counterrevolution instead. Since then, year after weary year, most of the green movement—with noble exceptions—has been long on talk and short on action.  Excuses for doing nothing and justifications for clinging to lifestyles the planet cannot support have proliferated like rabbits on Viagra, and most of the people who talked about sustainability at all took it for granted that the time to change course was still somewhere conveniently off in the future. That guaranteed that the chance to change course would slide steadily further back into the past.

There was another detail of the post-Seventies sustainability scene that deserves discussion, though, because it’s been displayed with an almost pornographic degree of nakedness in the weeks just past. From the early days of the peak oil movement in the late 1990s on, a remarkably large number of the people who talked eagerly about the looming crisis of our age seemed to think that its consequences would leave them and the people and things they cared about more or less intact. That wasn’t universal by any means; there were always some people who grappled with the hard realities that the end of the fossil fuel age was going to impose on their own lives; but all things considered, there weren’t that many, in comparison to all those who chattered amiably about how comfortable they’d be in their rural doomsteads, lifeboat communities, Transition Towns, et al.

Now, as discussed earlier in this post, we’ve gotten a very modest helping of decline and fall, and people who were enthusiastically discussing the end of the industrial age not that long ago are freaking out six ways from Sunday. If a relatively tame event like the election of an unpopular president can send people into this kind of tailspin, what are they going to do the day their paychecks suddenly turn out to be worth only half as much in terms of goods and services as before—a kind of event that’s already become tolerably common elsewhere, and could quite easily happen in this country as the dollar loses its reserve currency status?

What kinds of meltdowns are we going to get when internet service or modern health care get priced out of reach, or become unavailable at any price?  How are they going to cope if the accelerating crisis of legitimacy in this country causes the federal government to implode, the way the government of the Soviet Union did, and suddenly they’re living under cobbled-together regional governments that don’t have the money to pay for basic services? What sort of reaction are we going to see if the US blunders into a sustained domestic insurgency—suicide bombs going off in public places, firefights between insurgent forces and government troops, death squads from both sides rounding up potential opponents and leaving them in unmarked mass graves—or, heaven help us, all-out civil war?

This is what the decline and fall of a civilization looks like. It’s not about sitting in a cozy earth-sheltered home under a roof loaded with solar panels, living some close approximation of a modern industrial lifestyle, while the rest of the world slides meekly down the chute toward history’s compost bin, leaving you and yours untouched. It’s about political chaos—meaning that you won’t get the leaders you want, and you may not be able to count on the rule of law or even the most basic civil liberties. It’s about economic implosion—meaning that your salary will probably go away, your savings almost certainly won’t keep its value, and if you have gold bars hidden in your home, you’d better hope to Hannah that nobody ever finds out, or it’ll be a race between the local government and the local bandits to see which one gets to tie your family up and torture them to death, starting with the children, until somebody breaks and tells them where your stash is located.

It’s about environmental chaos—meaning that you and the people you care about may have many hungry days ahead as crazy weather messes with the harvests, and it’s by no means certain you won’t die early from some tropical microbe that’s been jarred loose from its native habitat to find a new and tasty home in you. It’s about rapid demographic contraction—meaning that you get to have the experience a lot of people in the Rust Belt have already, of walking past one abandoned house after another and remembering the people who used to live there, until they didn’t any more.

More than anything else, it’s about loss. Things that you value—things you think of as important, meaningful, even necessary—are going to go away forever in the years immediately ahead of us, and there will be nothing you can do about it.  It really is as simple as that. People who live in an age of decline and fall can’t afford to cultivate a sense of entitlement. Unfortunately, for reasons discussed at some length in one of last month’s posts, the notion that the universe is somehow obliged to give people what they think they deserve is very deeply engrained in American popular culture these days. That’s a very unwise notion to believe right now, and as we slide further down the slope, it could very readily become fatal—and no, by the way, I don’t mean that last adjective in a metaphorical sense.

History recalls how great the fall can be, Roger Hodgson sang. In our case, it’s shaping up to be one for the record books—and those of my readers who have worked themselves up to the screaming point about the comparatively mild events we’ve seen so far may want to save some of their breath for the times ahead when it’s going to get much, much worse.

_________________

67 Comments on "How Great the Fall Can Be"

Ghung on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 10:54 am 



Another little Supertramp gem –

“Now they’re planning the crime of the century
Well what will it be?
Read all about their schemes and adventuring
It’s well worth a fee
So roll up and see
And they rape the universe
How they’ve gone from bad to worse
Who are these men of lust, greed, and glory?
Rip off the masks and let see.
But that’s not right – oh no, what’s the story?
There’s you and there’s me
Thank you for that”

Sissyfuss on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 11:16 am 



Greer is at his best when discussing the predicament and unraveling of the 21st century. There is enough Schadenfreude in his descriptives that we all can enjoy a heaping helping. The limits to growth are wrapping it’s emaciated fingers around our collective throats to never let go. The Dark Ages are making a comeback and you can hear it in President Nero’s voice.

Ghung on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 11:20 am 



Meanwhile:

“The Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the “Doomsday Clock,” a symbolic countdown to the end of the world, to two and a half minutes to midnight.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/world/doomsday-clock-2017/index.html

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 11:22 am 



Limericks of Doom

by BenjaminTheDonkey

Slogans

Worried about how we’ll cope,
We still thought we’d make it—but nope:
Paradoxically strange,
We had hope without change,
And now we have change without hope.

Don’t Be Depressed!

Don’t be depressed and in doubt:
Keep your head held up high and don’t pout;
Soldier on! Do it now!
I’ll let you know how—
Just as soon as I figure it out.

Strange Days

We’re surprised every time we detect
Something new in our lives getting wrecked;
We’re dismayed, bit by bit,
As our world turns to shit—
But what else then did we expect?

Politics Anymore

The world’s in the midst of rebranding,
Including re who is commanding:
The changes in clime
Bring a new paradigm—
The one that’s called “last person standing.”

EROEI #2

How much we still try might be tested
With an acronym doomers suggested;
It’s thusly discerned:
“Enjoyment Returned
On Energy Invested.”

WASF

We used to complain that things sucked—
Then came doom, which we cannot obstruct;
Words can’t really express
Just how bad is this mess,
And so we say, “We are so fucked!”

more

http://benjaminthedonkey-limericksofdoom.blogspot.ca/

penury on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 11:35 am 



The facts show that Humans will be human.Tribes will continue to act as tribes, and its “I am all right Jack, so screw you all” mentality will last until collapse becomes too obvious to hide. U.S. residents will take a long time to understand what the rest of the world is going thru but we will learn.

Davy on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 11:51 am 



“The Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the “Doomsday Clock,” a symbolic countdown to the end of the world, to two and a half minutes to midnight.”

That’s strange I would have thought with the warring Hillary/Obama regime in retirement that would get us 10min.

BobInget on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 12:01 pm 



“the Trump administration plans to scrap the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and get rid of all the federal offices that study anthropogenic climate change”.

Slow moving coup news:
As of yesterday VOA, (Voice of America), now permitted to broadcast within the US, has been
taken over by a pair of right wing bloggers.

20th Century revolutionaries, coup leaders, always went after radio stations first thing.

As a former SWL (shortwave listener) I now
listen to radio stations around the world on clear satellite web broadcasts. If VOA uses fake news model set forth by Trump, America loses every bit of credibility.

Ghung on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 12:06 pm 



You were wrong, Davy.

“And THEN the lawless one will be revealed,

The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders”….”

The Beast is risen.

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 12:19 pm 



BP just told as that for 50 years we will have twice the amount of oil we actually need. There is such a thing as talking yourself in the abyss. Greer is very good at that.

A disinterested observer of Earth's destruction on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 12:26 pm 



“BP just told as that for 50 years we will have twice the amount of oil we actually need. There is such a thing as talking yourself in the abyss. Greer is very good at that.”

How much are they paying you to sit on this site and troll? I hope it’s good money.

You have no credibility here, I don’t know why anyone bothers to respond to you and spewing of BP talking points is the “tell” that you’re just a paid troller.

Enjoy the dough while you can putz.

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 12:41 pm 



How much are they paying you to sit on this site and troll? I hope it’s good money.

Who are “they”? BP?

Are you asking the mods how much they get paid for posting the BP article?

Even the only one here who knows what he is talking about, as far as oil is concerned (I mean Rockman), admits that BP can’t just make these things up (unlike the likes of Heinberg).

But perhaps the obvious despair in you has a different origin, unrelated to non-acute oil depletion.

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 12:53 pm 



Davy, your rationalization is based on what you assumed would happen (Nuke war) if the witch won, but don’t forget it was just an assumption, not a fact. I had no doubt the neo cons, who haven’t gone away btw, would keep pushing, but not certain about nuke war, since it has always been there and almost happened by mistake a few times. That reality has not gone away just because Cheeto has won. Methinks a bunch of you have group-thinked each other into an alternate reality. What is not an assumption, but a fact is AGW and the well underway 6th mass extinction and overshoot predicaments – all things king Cheeto denies. So how the fuck can you support someone that deep in denial about predicament that are existential threats to your family and the entire species? You defend him like a teenage girl defends her boyband favorite. The Cheeto can’t do anything to make things better, but he can make things worse and bring on the pain much faster. Make America great again? We both know that Cheeto’s consumer paradise version, including increased military spending, is a fantasy. It’s impossible due to declining net energy. I guess it could be made possible by dropping the gloves and just taking others resources by force, but then isn’t that what the neocons want? I noticed someone complimented on your “balanced” viewpoints on overshoot. Funny that Cheeto disagrees with everything you say. Overshoot (including AGW) does not exist for him and his cancer crew even while they are preparing to gut and rape America’s last un touched lands. I have no idea how you square that circle in your own head, but isn’t it a big fucking contradiction to do all the research and writing on everything pertaining to overshoot while simultaneously supporting one of it’s biggest deniers? One comment is about AGW then the next defending Trump then the next about EROEI the the next one defending Trump the next one on overpopulation then one defending Trump and on and on. Whatever works for you I guess.

Davy on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:03 pm 



Ghung, I am pretty sure the tick tock crowd playing concerned scientist have been deceived by their neoliberal leanings into feeling Trump is a greater danger than Hillary would have been. Trump has not been on the job for enough time to determine NUK war possibilities. A concerned scientist with credentials would wait to see real policy not words or gut feelings.

You mistake the lawless one. Who was in the news with all the dirty laundry? What about the human trafficking fiends of Hillary trying to remove Hatian kids to who knows where? I think Saten was let down by this election Ghung. He was licking his chops for the chance to enlist the Clinton Crime Family in more Arkancide but this time globally. I am sure he has not figured Donald out yet.lol.

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:07 pm 



and of course it escapes no one’s attention in the rest of the world that it was from Europe that hordes of invaders and colonizers swept over the entire planet from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, as often as not leaving total devastation in their wake. In histories written a thousand years from now, Europeans will have the same sort of reputation that Huns and Mongols have today

If you let this sink in, the good Greer is essentially talking about himself, but somehow manages to remain unaffected and blame it all on the “Europeans”, as if he personally has nothing to do with it, where according to his own definition his own ancestors were in fact these hordes.

For the rest mr Greer, where is the Hun & Mongol science? Technology? Great music? Moon-landing? Great architecture? Paying trillions to the third world, rather than raping everybody they meet, like the Huns and Mongols did? Elevating a lot of the rest of the world from stone age status.

Nada.

Mr Greer, you are an nihilistic, hypocrite asshole. Please don’t take it personally.

But one thing is abundantly clear: that terrifying black cloud of doom hanging over America that has almost every poster in an iron grip. Something is about to happen and it ain’t running out of oil.

Davy on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:11 pm 



Group think yea Ape you are leading the charge there. I am loving all the shit Trump is stirring up especially with the anti-Americans. It is great to see “you alls” true colors now days. You fucks don’t know what to think. You hate the guy but secretely love him. Kind of like a gay baptist preacher. How’s that for some cancer talk?

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:15 pm 



Davy, Cheeto and his cancer crew are neoliberals. About as harsh and ruthless neoliberals as anyone can get. You need to study up on your definitions. Just look at the track record of Cheeto and the rats he refilled the swamp with. Hard core Neoliberals to a man.

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:17 pm 



Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality over the millennia

“Surveying long stretches of human history, Scheidel said that “the big equalizing moments in history may not have always had the same cause, but they shared one common root: massive and violent disruptions of the established order.”

http://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/24/stanford-historian-uncovers-grim-correlation-violence-inequality-millennia/

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:18 pm 



Na Davy, Canada is free of group-think, that would be racist and we are all glad we are not like that:

http://www.eurocanadian.ca/2016/04/justin-trudeau-and-dismantling-of-canadian-identity.html

http://www.eurocanadian.ca/2016/02/singular-political-stylings-of-justin-trudeau.html

http://www.eurocanadian.ca/2017/01/words-of-wisdom-from-justin-trudeau.html

Most of them are like Friday. Canada is to North-America what Sweden is to Europe.

George Soros is going to lead the charge against Trump from Canadian soil. This is going to be big.lol

#Beer&Popcorn

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:27 pm 



Changing climate inflicts drought on Tamil Nadu

“Farmer distress

According to the Tamil Nadu Government, instead of the total quantum of 179 thousand million cubic feet (Tmcft) of water, which was to be released by Karnataka from June 1 to December 31, it released only 66.5 Tmcft of water, which left grossly insufficient water in the river. Farmers in the Cauvery delta were unable to raise even a single crop of paddy. The tanks and reservoirs in the state, on the other hand, are holding only 13% of their capacity. The state has officially confirmed the suicide of 17 farmers due to drought.”

http://indiaclimatedialogue.net/2017/01/23/changing-climate-inflicts-drought-tamil-nadu/

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:30 pm 



Stanford historian uncovers a grim correlation between violence and inequality over the millennia

More leftist fake news from Marxist hell hole Stanford, as promoted by our resident Cultural Marxist from Vanhooker.

The truth is that in egalitarian hell holes where communism prevailed, people were killed by the tens of millions. In this they are the absolute champion murderers.

But communism is the only acceptable world view at places like Stanford these days.

Here is Harvard where the genocide of he white race is being prepared, for decades on end, by the Soros types:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC-Cqkq6zWc

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:33 pm 



How A Deadly Heat Wave Led To Disastrous Floods 2,000 Miles Away

“The deaths, while tragic, may seem less striking when viewed alongside the thousands of lives lost in Russia. But the Russian heat wave, while unusual, was not wholly unexpected. In 2003, for example, heat waves swept across Europe, killing an estimated 70,000 people. Fifteen of the 17 hottest years on record have come after 2000. As the globe gets hotter, we expect more heat waves. But what happened in India in 2010 was unexpected and is less well understood, raising the question of what other unforeseen catastrophes may lay ahead.”

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-a-deadly-heat-wave-led-to-disastrous-floods-2000-miles-away/

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:36 pm 



https://adruidway.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/john-michael-and-john-beckett.jpg

The arch-druid (left)

A disinterested observer of Earth's destruction on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:40 pm 



“Who are “they”? BP?”

Deliberately obtuse as well…

Again, spew all you want. I presume BP is paying you by the word.

Have a nice day and enjoy the dough putz.

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:44 pm 



You are presuming a lot, probably about everything. I wouldn’t object a shekel or two from BP, but so far not much is coming in my direction. Perhaps they have trouble identifying the bank account of an anonymous poster.

Davy on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:50 pm 



Ape, you guys have no clue what Trump is that’s your problem. You are reaching around in the dark. Just sit back and relax we will have a better understanding of him once he has his pow wows with his Republican tribal members. He is on the war path now high on a big scalping party that ended a few weeks ago. Reality will set in before long and he runs out of rocks to kick over.

I thought it pretty lame how you Canadians folded your wings and decided to lay low and watch Trump go after Mexico. I expected more backbone out of the big talking Canadians. Where is the solidarity with your friends to the south?

A disinterested observer of Earth's destruction on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:50 pm 



“You are presuming a lot, probably about everything. I wouldn’t object a shekel or two from BP, but so far not much is coming in my direction. Perhaps they have trouble identifying the bank account of an anonymous poster.”

Sure, whatever you say.

I’ve never responded to your nonsense before and I won’t ever again. You’re not worth the trouble.

Have a nice day and enjoy the blood money.

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:51 pm 



The dutch senior citizen strikes again with his random labels. Colgfag, do you have a bucket full of labels and just draw one out for every comment or link that doesn’t fit your old man brain’s worldview? Maybe you are tech savvy and have a random label generator app on your computer? That little explainer article is just promoting his book. A book you could not possibly have read because you did not know about it until I showed you. BUT, you don’t need the book or any of the citations in it because you have already decided it is disqualified because the man works at Stanford. No counter facts needed because EVERY SINGLE PERSON who works at Stanford is a rabid Marxists (randomly generated label of the day). Your primitive rhetoric is as boring an it is irritating. King clog preaching and condemning from his safe&cozy technological bubble in welfare state (socialist) Holland.

If you’re so fucking smart, then demonstrate that his thesis is wrong.

His thesis being:

“Surveying long stretches of human history, Scheidel said that “the big equalizing moments in history may not have always had the same cause, but they shared one common root: massive and violent disruptions of the established order.”

All you need to do is demonstrate that the big equalizing moments happened peacefully. But you should probably read the book first, right? I mean the book is where all his evidence is and it’s kinda hard to argue against it when you have not yet read it. Ahh fergetabouit, it’s much easier to just pull another random label out of your bucket and scream your face off as is your mo.

paulo1 on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 1:56 pm 



Boy, Cloggie sure is a Trump troll for a European. He needs to listen to Canadian Hockey legend Don Cherry, more, I guess.

On Cherry’s real thoughts about immigrants to Canada:

“When I come into an airport at 2am, guess who takes my ticket? They work hard, and they’re alright in my book.”

Trump just sees people he can trash and screw over in the name of power. That includes, immigrants…and the US closest neighbours, Canada and Mexico.

Trump and his supporters are really hurting Americans for short term political gain. He keeps saying about how great the Reagan era was, and continually drops his name. My wife spent a few years in Australia during that time. Some of her Aussie buds had a nickname for Americans…the rhyming kind. Instead of Yanks, they always referred to them as ‘Tanks’. The male ‘tanks’ always thought it was a compliment and you could see them puffing out their shoulders. What they didn’t understand is that ‘tanks’ was really short for septic tanks.

That is the direction now being traveled. It has been less than one week since the inauguration. In 6 months it won’t be safe to be a US tourist anywhere in the world if things don’t change, PDQ.

I just remember 9/11. The skys were shut down to all aircraft and every Canadian airport received US flights. The planes would have been shot down. People opened their homes:

“Nowhere was that challenge greater than in Gander, Newfoundland, where 37 flights were diverted to the town’s airport. The community of less than 10,000 people suddenly had to find shelter and food for 6,700 people. School bus drivers who were on strike left their picket lines in order to provide transportation to area schools and halls. Medical prescriptions were filled by pharmacies at no cost, and people opened their homes to passengers in need of a coffee or a shower.

Alan Flood, of Bristol, England, who was stranded with his wife, Barbara, summed up the feelings of hundreds of passengers when he said, “We were strangers. They didn’t know what we were like. They took us to their homes, made sure we wanted for nothing, treated us as part of the family.”

Shirley Brook-Jones and the passengers from her flight were cared for in the nearby community of Lewisporte, Newfoundland. On their flight home six days later, Brook-Jones suggested to passengers that they should start a scholarship for local students as a way to thank the community. By the time the plane landed in Atlanta, passengers had pledged $15,000. Word spread and the fund grew. By 2014, the fund had committed $1.5 million and awarded more than 130 scholarships to students in Newfoundland.

On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, in 2011, US President Barack Obama said Americans “remember with gratitude and affection how the people of Canada offered us the comfort and friendship and extraordinary assistance that day and in the following days, by opening their airports, homes and hearts to us.”

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canada-and-911/

To quote the old cancer-stick commercial:
“You’ve come a long way, baby”

Plantagenet on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 2:03 pm 



Can you specify what a “big equalizing moment” in history is, with an example please.

I’m having a hard time visualizing this. Is it like when the black plague kills 1/3 of the population and the survivors are suddenly rich in property? Is it when the Roman Empire fell and everything was destroyed? Is it the Dark Ages? Is it the Colonial era when Spain and England got very wealthy?

Please give a real historical example? THX.

Cheers!

Plantagenet on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 2:07 pm 



OK—nevermind. I went to the Stanford website and go the story. The idea is that when plague or war or catastrophe destroy civilization then everything is equal—every one is equally wretched in the destroyed cities and ravaged countryside.

No thanks. I’d rather avoid equality if thats what it means.

Cheers!

Davy on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 2:31 pm 



Paulo, all I hear from Canadians on this board is how much they despise Americans. Your a great guy but Canadian. You can’t help it. I don’t want to hear about the angloshpere love for the Yanks becuase they don’t love us. The Russians like us better than Canadians. I hope to hell we make friends with the Russians. You talk about a great people!

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 2:49 pm 



Davy, Trump and most everything he has done has been in the spotlight since he was at least 30 years old (lifestyles of the rich & famous in the 1980’s). The guy could never get enough attention. He is a business criminal and has multiple business failures and bankruptcies and it’s all on the record, so don’t pretend you have some secret insider knowledge when you don’t. Sounds just like religious delusions. You are starting to sound like all the other paranoid delusional alt right retards. Sounding like clog. Like so many others you have let your fear get the better of you. Not at all unusual in times like these, in fact it’s what most men fall prey to in collapsing societies. It always seems to end with the authoritarians in charge and a big group of the fearful clinging to him as a savior. Almost defying the man. I can easily see one of the fervent believers like clog getting ahold of one of Cheeto’s dirty socks and installing in his Cheeto shrine he built in his living room and praying to it every night – it carries the great one’s essence and thus it is my precious(take another big sniff clogslave.)

BTW, you still have not addressed the contradictions in your overshoot views and Cheetos denial of them.

And the immigration thing? The US has plenty of immigration laws and chose, for whatever reasons, not to enforce them. Canada has immigration laws as well, but the difference is they are enforced to a much greater degree. What exactly is it you want Canadians to do about it? Come down to DC and force the US to enforce their own immigration laws?

Oh and your savior Trump has hired illegal immigrants and profited nicely from it. Same as many other rich fucks Americans. That is the core reason that your immigration laws are not enforced. So the already super wealthy do not have to pay native born Americans even minimum wage with minor benefits and work place safety.

Donald Trump Hired Illegal Workers As Models

http://www.ibtimes.com/donald-trump-hired-illegal-workers-models-2409360

A Few Times Donald Trump Has Allegedly Profited From Illegal Immigration

“Sometime between 1979 and 1980, Trump hired a contractor to demolish an old building in midtown Manhattan to make way for Trump Tower. The contractor signed on workers from a local union and, to meet Trump’s tight deadline, also brought on 200 undocumented laborers from Poland dubbed the “Polish Brigade.” The Polish employees were off-the-books, working 12-hour shifts seven days a week for $4 to $5 an hour, with no overtime. Some workers were never paid what they were owed.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/08/30/donald_trump_s_history_of_using_undocumented_immigrant_labors.html

Cheeto is playing the oldest game in the book – pandering to your baser emotions and more specifically FEAR. Fear is the most powerful emotion. You and clog and millions of other are lost and scared and full of fear and uncertainty, which is perfectly natural btw, but have giving in to the strong man. This has played out hundreds of times throughout history. There is nothing unique about this situation at all, cept the nukes. Go ahead and turn all that fear and anger onto the minorities Cheeto points to. It what always happens. Don’t forget to get the kids involved too. Any day now I can see them announcing from the White House a new “Cheeto Youth” movement (sorry white kids only). Your boys will be goose stepping up and down the local football field with armbands that have a Cheeto symbol on them. It will be fucking glorious!

/Heil Cheeto! /Heil Cheeto! /Heil Cheeto! /Heil Cheeto!

Davy on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 3:00 pm 



Ape he is not my savior. I am just delighted he upsets people like you that bitch on and on about him. He is serving a purpose for me and that is shit disturbing. If he can’t mend fences with Russia then he will be a failure. If he does then he is my man. I could give a shit about the rest. You whine, wail, and point fingers for shit that is not going to change. We are screwed on so many issues you hold dear. The type of leadership is not going to make a difference at this point. You know that but you love to point a finger in blame. You just need a scapegoat and now it is Trump and the bonus is he is American. Hot damn!

Cloggie on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 3:08 pm 



To all those people without an identity worth mentioning (or so they think) after decades of an unhealthy diet of MSM, maybe spend 3 minutes listening to Mohamed Ali, trashing an Englishman. It is unlikely he is going to be accused of being a (Hollywood) Natzi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ME0RJaAXY

Ignoring his advise means losing your country.

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 3:11 pm 



First Mammal Extinction by Climate Change | National Geographic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5-Q3eu4myk

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 3:14 pm 



Chilean Wildfires are Worst to Ever Strike the Country

Drought in Chile has now lasted for more than a ten years.

Over recent days, the forests of Central Chile appear to have finally succumbed to the unprecedented and unrelenting punishment. One by one, massive wildfires ignited through Chile’s bone-dry woods — scorching hillsides, decimating more than 100 vineyards, and resulting in the tragic loss of four firefighters. As of today, more than 85 wildfires have burned approximately 190,000 hectares of land — or about 733 square miles.

This charred chunk of Chile more than half the size of Rhode Island represents the worst fire disaster in the state’s history. Now, nations are scrambling to help Chile respond to the crippling disaster as more than 35 large fires continue to rage out of control.

https://robertscribbler.com/2017/01/25/chilean-wildfires-are-worst-to-ever-strike-the-country/

New abnormal

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 3:24 pm 



President Cheeto elected in the year 2016. Took office in 1984.

Currently on Amazon.com’s list of best selling books…

#1 1984 by George Orwell

#4 1984 by George Orwell (paperback)

#7 It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

#10 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

#19 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books/ref=zg_bs_nav_0

LMAO

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 3:44 pm 



Predicting where seas are rising fastest


” Of the 17 hottest years in history, 16 have been since 2000.”

“For Americans living near the coasts and wondering how long before their homes are inundated, a new NOAA report — released on the last day of Barack Obama’s administration — offers region-specific predictions to help them prepare.

A report worth reading: “Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States,” published by NOAA on January 19, 2017.

Ocean currents can influence how much the sea is rising in different places. The shifting weight of the seas as polar ice melts can reshape the earth’s crust, change the planet’s gravitational field and rotation, and the shape of the ocean basin. All this affects how we measure what scientists call “gridded relative sea level,” or RSL, and explains why some regions are more vulnerable to rising seas than others.

“The ocean is not rising like water would in a bathtub,” lead author William Sweet of NOAA said in a press release announcing the 75-page report. “For example, in some scenarios sea levels in the Pacific Northwest are expected to rise slower than the global average, but in the Northeast they are expected to rise faster.”

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/climate-change/seas-rising-predictions-climate-change-noaa

GLOBAL AND REGIONAL SEA
LEVEL RISE SCENARIOS FOR THE
UNITED STATES

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt83_Global_and_Regional_SLR_Scenarios_for_the_US_final.pdf

Dredd on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 4:39 pm 



“young adults who are living with their parents because they can’t afford to start households of their own” … “see if they can find a noticeable decrease in global fossil fuel consumption” … “its consequences would leave them and the people and things they cared about more or less intact” … “in comparison to all those who chattered amiably about how comfortable they’d be in their rural doomstead” … “what are they going to do the day their paychecks suddenly turn out to be worth only half as much” … “How are they going to cope” … “give people what they think they deserve” … “the people who used to live there, until they didn’t any more” … “and suddenly they’re living under cobbled-together regional governments that don’t have the money to pay for basic services”

Whole lotta they in there, not much we.

“Isn’t that special …” – SNL Church Lady

Are the Archdruids going to the comet Hale–Bopp through Heaven’s Gate so as to miss all they can?

Or, something even more special?

Nah, we are all in this together are we not?

Notice Peak Oil blog’s take on the issue just to the left of the Archdruid declaration: “Peak Oil is You” (not they)

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 4:47 pm 



Trump Wants to Downplay Global Warming. Louisiana Won’t Let Him
“Mother Nature is threatening to kick our people out.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/trump-wants-to-downplay-global-warming-louisiana-won-t-let-him

Downplay? He has publicly called it a Chinese concocted hoax. The twit twittered it. Plenty of groups of all sorts wanting a fight. Pretty naive if you ask me. Almost all of these big enviro groups are being played by their leadership. They all get big corporate money and their job is to be “Gate Keepers”. Make the sheeple think there is still time to “fix the climate” and keep their hopes alive. As long as they still have hope they can be passivized and stick to their little loud marches with the odd minor, yet blown all out of proportion, victories like a pipe line here and a stand of forest there. This is just considered the cost of doing business by big cancer. They have no problem paying the gatekeepers because as long as the sheeple believe these social justice tactics work they will keep marching and not sabotage the infrastructure. The idea that what worked for women’s lib and gays and other minorities will work going up against the all important interests of the cancer empire is totally naive. Civil liberties did not cost BAU one dime. The power structure in the 1950’s and on wards were simply clinging o their old inherited ideas about race and sex. When it came down to it they realized it was much easier to let society change since it was not going to cost their bottom line. It was no barrier to growth and they even profited off some of those social changes through consumerism (blue jeans). This time though it is truly different. Trying to stop the oil is a direct and existential threat to those in power. The American military machine is a thirsty beast and needs to be feed. Cut off it’s fuel and the barbarians might storm the gate. I don’t think the hopey liberals see this. They are under a masterly woven magical thinking spell that tells them they can protest the oil to stay in the ground. It will never happen and, if need be, the gloves will come off. Arrests, convictions maybe even shootings at protests (Trump can hire the same shooters Vicky Nuland did. A couple more uprisings and the deep state will be getting the wholesale discount). 8 years under Obama were the best 8 year run for US oil extraction and either none of these people heard/read that or they ran it thru their cognitive dissonance brain filters and it came out the other end as not counting. The same strategy is used with the retard conservative mob. Every year they become more alarmist and shrill, when all the data clearly shows that fossil fuel extraction has increased every year – the thing they wanted to happen yet for some reason (think tank propaganda) they scream and shout and propagate all sorts of conspiracy theories about how environmentalists is stealing their freedums and such when the exact opposite happened. I guess it’s frustration at the growth going to the .1% ers like the guy they voted in. Fucking retards left&right duped by simple propaganda, again and again. Not a big surprise since the corporate state started y’alls indoctrination at a very early age. Protesting the oil is not like the other social justice issues. Protesting oil is going up against the life blood of the empire and they will kill before they ever give it up. It trumps everything. Oh well, at least I am entertained mightily here is these end times…….watching a large and ever growing segment of the humans go bat shit crazy one way or another. Humans simply never evolved the psychological tool kit to deal with problems of this scale.

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 5:18 pm 



Seems strange reading about wildfires all over the place with it being the fucking middle of winter and all.

Oil rig starts massive wildfire in Osage County

http://www.fox23.com/news/oil-rig-starts-massive-wildfire-in-osage-county/487671551

2 Homes Destroyed in Central Oklahoma Wildfire; No One Hurt

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/homes-destroyed-central-oklahoma-wildfire-hurt-45033011

Major Fire in Brooks County

http://www.krgv.com/story/34317650/major-fire-in-brooks-county

makati1 on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 6:39 pm 



“Things that you value—things you think of as important, meaningful, even necessary—are going to go away forever in the years immediately ahead of us, and there will be nothing you can do about it.”

“The window of opportunity for making a smooth transition to a renewable future slammed shut in the early 1980s, when majorities across the industrial world turned their backs on the previous decade’s promising initiatives toward sustainability, and bought into the triumphalist rhetoric of the Reagan-Thatcher counterrevolution instead.”

That sums it up nicely. We are too far down the road to change anything meaningful. The years ahead are going to be different than anything in history, and not in a good way.

Apneaman on Thu, 26th Jan 2017 7:09 pm 



Looks like there is going to be a new trend in sister cities, but instead of longitude and latitude the commonality will be they were all burnt to the fucking ground by AGW jacked mega wildfires. Fort McMurray, Gatlinburg and now, Santa Olga Chile, all within a 9 month period.

Deadly wildfire razes entire town in Chile: ‘Literally like Dante’s Inferno’


“An entire town has been consumed by flames in Chile as unusually hot, dry weather undermined efforts to combat the worst forest fires in the country’s recent history.

More than 1,000 buildings, including schools, nurseries, shops and a post office were destroyed in Santa Olga, the biggest of several communities to be reduced to ashes in the Maule region.”

“Drone images showed entire neighbourhoods reduced to ashes. The roads are still neatly symmetrical, but the buildings in block after block lie in smouldering ruins under a hazy sky.”

“Residents expressed dismay and fury as they returned to charred livestock, collapsed buildings and blackened farm fields. Some felt abandoned by the authorities.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/26/chile-wildfires-destroy-town-santa-olga

penury on Fri, 27th Jan 2017 10:58 am 



I have no idea what a “Trump” presidency will bring, but neither do any of you. The one recommendation I would make to the POTUS is as the hatred in the EU is so great immediately leve NATO stop all monies to Europe, withdraw troops from Eastern Europe and let the EU handle their own affairs, These countries are not the U.S. orphans to support. Germany you want Trump killed in the WH? That my friends is an act of war. Tell Merkel to go to hell, and leave the rest of these to themselves, lets deal with the U.S. first.

Cloggie on Fri, 27th Jan 2017 11:05 am 



Germany you want Trump killed in the WH? That my friends is an act of war.

It was a German Jew who said that (Joseph Joffe). Go nuke Israel.

Cloggie on Fri, 27th Jan 2017 11:10 am 



Deadly wildfire razes entire town in Chile: ‘Literally like Dante’s Inferno’

Ok, wooden houses in Chile burn down, that happens regularly too all things wooden.

And it is all a sign of “climate change”, I reckon?

Cloggie on Fri, 27th Jan 2017 11:12 am 



Seems strange reading about wildfires all over the place with it being the fucking middle of winter and all.

No you genius, in the Southern Hemisphere it is currently Summer.

penury on Fri, 27th Jan 2017 11:14 am 



Cloggie I do not separate Germans, or Dutch citizens by religion. If you are a shiess kauf it does not matter which invisable sky pilot you prefer.

GregT on Fri, 27th Jan 2017 11:28 am 



“No you genius, in the Southern Hemisphere it is currently Summer.”

All three of those wildfires that Apnea linked to in that post are in the US cloggie. The US happens to be in the Northern Hemisphere.

You’re losing it man.

Cloggie on Fri, 27th Jan 2017 11:28 am 



Cloggie I do not separate Germans, or Dutch citizens by religion.

I know, a fatal mistake, most Americans make, who are generally more interested in making money than studying history. It is always important to know who want you dead or at least want to ram you into submission. And it ain’t the German or Dutch Protestants or Catholics.

If you are a shiess kauf it does not matter which invisable sky pilot you prefer.

Excellent, Joffe lives in Hamburg:

http://tinyurl.com/jrqv9ep

Markers: “Die Zeit”

Go for it!