Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumSay Goodbye to the Holocene Epoch
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Mankinds exothermic machine of industrial civilization recently blew past the 400ppm CO2 mile post, causing a few passengers to exclaim, Homo sapiens have never existed at these levels of heat-trapping gases! Hundreds and even thousands of years will pass before the full aftermath from our fossil fuel orgy plays out, but well see plenty of nasty surprises in feedback loops and tipping points this century, perhaps most notably sea level rise. Another area of glaciers once thought to be stable has fallen to the human CO2 spike which is occurring 14,000 faster than natural processes and 10-200 times faster than the PETM extinction event. Every so often I feel the need to try to wrap my mind around these horrific statistics and re-examine our place in time as we continue whistling past the graveyard.
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Billions will perish without the technological exoskeleton that houses, feeds, and nurtures them. Nearly all are under the spell that our money system, economy, and energy resources are somehow more vital to us than the environment upon which those manmade structures were built. What they dont realize, or appreciate, is that natures ecosystems are what provide the foundation for any civilization if we want breathable air, potable water, arable land, and a planet hospitable to humans. We have gone a long way in undermining this foundation and now hold the dubious honor of being this planets first sentient beings to predict, document, and witness their own self-inflicted demise.
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More at Collapse of Industrial Civilization
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)Another snip:
We have a 10% chance that the earth will warm 6°C by 2100 according to scientists, but the fossil fuel industry is betting its a sure thing by planning its future business around magical, nonexistent technologies that would remove CO2 emissions. Notwithstanding the armchair technotopian dreams of a future world that includes driverless cars, zero-point energy, and asteroid mining, we are living at the peak of capitalist industrial civilization which produces a continual flood of products promising to improve and enhance our lives but which, in the end, only complicate them. We are trapped between mindless consumerism and the thoughtless destruction of the environment. Tim Garrett calls our dilemma a double bind. The only thing that will save us from a deadly warming of the planet is the very thing that will destroy most of us if it happens the complete crash of the global economy and its CO2 emitting process of building wealth. Homo economicus is too busy converting his rich environment into monetary tokens to think about the consequences of what he is doing or perceive the impending crash of the earths biosphere that will take care of the human overshoot problem and all the transient material wealth that has been covetously accumulated and guarded. Rising oceans, floods, fire, drought, and various superstorms from a damaged biosphere will take it all back and destroy it. For a species that has created a throw-away society, such an end is fitting. With every loss we inflict upon biodiversity, extinction creeps ever closer toward us. The consequences of ignoring the hard laws of physics, chemistry, and biology will be dire:
Six degrees Celsius! Six degrees Celsius by the end of this century.
Binkie The Clown
(7,911 posts)hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)The temperature projection is terrifying. Billions will die ...and that's only counting the loss of human life, not the animal and plant life that will die.in even greater numbers.
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)I recommend the work of Guy McPherson
(blog, facebook- search and you will find)
He (+ a lot of others of us) has concluded that abrupt climate change is inevitable, and what we should do is learn to love.
How do we find meaning in living... once we know that the trajectory does not go on indefinitely.
How not to slip into fatalism and despair?
and youtube:
It's too early & I haven't had enough coffee to post much more than to say this is a very informative interview that truly puts things in their proper perspective. Most informative on many levels. Thanks for posting. It should be an OP.
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)10C by 2040?
Yikes!!!!
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)but I do feel we (ie all of human civilization) have missed the window, wherein we might have made a difference.
What I like about Guy McPherson is he (and others in his 'circle') talks about how do we live in the face of such a grim future.
How do we live as a good human in the end times.
And he does NOT advocate doing nothing, or fatalism, he advocates doing whatever we can for a right purpose, esp for the animals and for the earth.