Earth Extinction 2030

[Tyger]

Text: "Guy McPherson discusses his latest book Going Dark.

"We are the last individuals of our species on Earth. How shall we respond? How shall we act? If industrial civilization is maintained, climate change will cause human extinction in the near term. If industrial civilization falls, sufficient ionizing radiation will be released from the world's nuclear power plants to cause human extinction in the near term. In the wake of this horrific conclusion, conservation biologist McPherson proposes we act with compassion, courage, and creativity. He suggests we act with the kind of empathy for which humans are renowned. In other words, he suggests we act with decency toward the humans and other organisms with which we share this beautiful planet. Going Dark is the story of one scientist's response to the horrors we face. It is a deeply personal narrative infused with abundant evidence to support its terrifying claims.

"Going Dark peels the shadow from the cosy dreams we've all bought into -- that technology will save us from climate change; that the products we consume are endless and untainted; that our modern idea of happiness and convenience doesn't crush others; that the heartbeat of the industrial economy that pulses within us is sustainable and ethical. McPherson's latest work will make you think twice."

 

[Tyger]

Going Dark by Guy McPherson

Text: "We are the last individuals of our species on Earth. How shall we respond? How shall we act? If industrial civilization is maintained, climate change will cause human extinction in the near term. If industrial civilization falls, sufficient ionizing radiation will be released from the world's nuclear power plants to cause human extinction in the near term.

"In the wake of this horrific conclusion, conservation biologist Guy McPherson proposes we act with compassion, courage, and creativity. He suggests we act with the kind of empathy for which humans are renowned. In other words, he suggests we act with decency toward the humans and other organisms with which we share this beautiful planet.

"Going Dark is the story of one scientist's response to the horrors we face. It is a deeply personal narrative infused with abundant evidence to support its terrifying claims. In the words of syndicated cartoonist David Fitzsimmons, McPherson's ""approach is disarming and his message is both life-changing and convincingly alarming. A blend of Paul Revere with Rachel Carson, Guy McPherson is a significant voice of rational conscience nudging in the wilderness.

"Fierce as Ed Abbey, and equally prophetic, Professor McPherson is a modern-day John Muir with a global perspective. Beyond the warnings is a body of thoughtful and pragmatic real world ideas."" "Going Dark peels the shadow from the cozy dreams we've all bought into. You know the ones: technology will save us from climate change; the products we consume are endless and untainted; our modern idea of happiness and convenience doesn't crush others; the heartbeat of the industrial economy that pulses within us all is sustainable and ethical. McPherson's latest work will make you think twice, twice. If you feel discomfort as you read you are reading it correctly."

- Cameron Conaway, author of Caged: Memoirs of a Cage-Fighting Poet

 

[Tyger]

Text: "Back in 2003, a few years before he died, Studs Terkel was on my show and made this comment about “hope dying last”:

" “Without hope – what’s the alternative to it? It’s despair. And despair means your head in the oven. Hope is what made this country be what it is. It was hope that made the abolitionists fight slavery, you see, against terrible odds…. I picked up that title [of my book] from a Mexican farmworker, her name was Jesse De La Cruz…She said when times are bleak and bewildering we have saying in Spanish…it means ‘hope dies last.’”

"As Terkel later pointed out, it’s useful to face reality, and then go from there without despair. In some ways it’s like a cancer diagnoses: most people handle tough news better than they think they will, and everybody should have the right to know what reality truly is.

"This brings us to the discussion around the realities of climate change.

"Last week on my radio show, I had Guy McPherson on as a guest, and he had some terrifying things to say about the future of the planet. He said we are experiencing such a rapidly warming planet that it was difficult for him to imagine a habitat for human beings in the not too distant future.

"McPherson went on to say that it’s over, that humanity as a species will largely die out, probably within our lifetimes. His message is that it’s too late to do anything about it, so we should do everything we can now to make life better before it all ends.

"On the other hand, Michael Mann, the famous climate scientist who came up with the “hockey stick” graph to show how carbon dioxide has been exploding as the result of industrial activity, says there’s still time to do something to stop the climate freight train heading toward us. During an appearance on my TV show earlier this week, he said that we have about two decades before things really start to hit the fan.

"This debate – how long do we have before it’s too late to really do anything? – is raging in the background of the scientific community right now. It needs more public discussion. We need to prepare ourselves for the worst.

"Think of it this way. An old and very dear friend of mine died a few months ago of cancer, and made the mistake of never believing seriously that his end was coming, and thus went out basically screaming, “No!!” It wasn’t pretty; he was so angry his wife had to have him taken out to hospice. On the other hand, my dad, who died of the same type of cancer, was ready for it, embraced it, and died at home surrounded by family. While the very end was rough, he had a pretty good last year experiencing life, family, and love while waiting for the cancer to take him down.

"I don’t think that all the tipping points Guy brings up are yet irreversible, and I believe there’s still a lot we can do to save the planet. I agree more with Michael Mann that we still have some time to fix things. But it’s still, as Mann points out, going to be damn hard to get the political will going worldwide or even here in the United States. And even using Mann’s conservative numbers, we’ll be at Guy’s point of no return in three decades or less.

"Motivation strategies must contain two parts: “moving away from pain” and “moving towards pleasure.” The former (touching a stove and jerking back) provokes a quick response, but isn’t long lasting. The latter is very long lasting (setting goals and working toward them through your life is a good example), but provokes a much slower and gentler response. The most effective motivation strategies start with pain and then move to pleasure.

"It’s time for us to acknowledge the painful reality that we’ve already severely damaged our planet in ways that could, just possibly, and almost certainly if we do nothing, mean the end of humanity or, at the very least, human civilization.

"From that starting point, as something that we want to work as hard as we can to avoid, we must then envision a new and better world that’s not based on carbon as an energy source, and put into place real-world ways to get there quickly, ways that will also improve the quality of life on our planet.

"As Studs Terkel said, “hope dies last.” We’re all working on it in our own ways; if we all toss in our efforts and push our politicians hard, we’ll get there."

 

[Tyger]

Text: "Published on Mar 25, 2014 - Michael Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, joins Thom Hartmann. One of the world's top climate scientists says we have until 2036 - 22 years - to prevent environmental catastrophe - 22 years to save the earth. So what sort of policies do we need to put in place right now to save the one planet we call home?"

 

[Bob Watson]

 

[manxman]

it used to be people with sandwich boards, standing by the road everyday, with the message that the world will end next day, now the 'net' is the new roadway, and the end is 10/20 years away.

still they all want paying for their books, radio and tv appearance's, maybe theyve also discovered a way of taking their money with them.

4.7 billion years old is the planet, yet these numb-nutz can SELL you the info on exactly when it all ends.

 

[Tyger]

I like the idea of cars that drive themselves.

Interesting. It's the way I think it will go - a compelling mix of advances and significant social, cultural and economic changes.

Puzzling that it is prognosticated that the European Union will collapse. What would replace it?


Urban Organic Farming......

Text: "Sustainable Urban Farming & Organic Gardening In Detroit.

"The Economic Collapse and resulting local responses that has occurred in Detroit, offers many important lessons on how re-localization can help communities survive and thrive in our current economic situation.

"Most of the corporate giants have left Detroit, banks won't lend to local businesses, and common businesses like chain grocery stores are not found in many parts of Detroit. In fact the local government is considering not to provide common government services to many parts of Detroit.

"Instead of complete decay and anarchy, small communities are coming together and finding a way to survive and thrive. One of the most notable ways they are doing this is with local food production since 85% of the population does not have access to large scale grocery stores. The people are filling the void with their own local food production."

Text: "Over 6,000 pounds of food per year, on 1/10 acre located just 15 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. The Dervaes family grows over 400 species of plants, 4,300 pounds of vegetable food, 900 chicken and 1,000 duck eggs, 25 lbs of honey, plus seasonal fruits throughout the year.

"From 1/10th of an acre, four people manage to get over 90% of their daily food and the family reports earnings of $20,000 per year (AFTER they eat from what is produced). This is done without the use of the expensive & destructive synthetic chemicals associated with industrial mono-cropping, while simultaneously improving the fertility and overall condition of the land being used to grow this food on. Scaled up to an acre, that would equal $200,000 per year!

"To follow the Dervaes and their Urban Homesteading activites, you can find them at http://urbanhomestead.org

"Urban and near-urban farming can be highly productive, causing whatever size of land you have to work with to produce with more abundance. It is time to solve hunger worldwide, through creating local food abundance.... Anyone can do it, once you learn how."

NOTE: At 6:30 the comment is made about 'climate weirding' - they are dealing with the changes climate alternation is bringing.

NOTE AGAIN: I am aware that the Dervaes family is controversial because of their attempt to copyright certain phrases - but the basic idea I am trying to convey is that if everyone with a front lawn/back lawn/side lawn made those lawns into gardens, there would be plenty of food - and then some.

 

[Tyger]

it used to be people with sandwich boards, standing by the road everyday, with the message that the world will end next day, now the 'net' is the new roadway, and the end is 10/20 years away.

still they all want paying for their books, radio and tv appearance's, maybe theyve also discovered a way of taking their money with them.

4.7 billion years old is the planet, yet these numb-nutz can SELL you the info on exactly when it all ends.

Nobody is 'selling' anything - the information is there free to anyone. If you listen carefully the scientist is using qualifiers. The methane is the real concern. It's actually bubbling up now - just a few years ago that possibility was just an outlier (and hooted down btw - if you're interested) - now it's actually happening. I recall when the first evidence was found for it - just a handful of years ago.

These are scientists and they are interesting to listen to. Very far from being 'numb-nutz'. The scientific argument is as compelling as ufo's imo. Personally, I maintain a clear boundary between my lived life and such suppositions. It makes no sense to go into fight-or-flight mode - which I suspect some people do. A well-lived considered and considerate life is the best antidote to all eventualities imo. Intellectual curiosity is part of all that. I am interested in where intellectual curiosity takes us as a whole and individually. Aren't you?

 

[Tyger]

2047 is the zero hour in one Nature study.......

Text: "Scientists have now found a way to predict when we've reached the global warming point-of-no-return. So - isn't time we started talking about the "E" word - extinction?"

Poster: "Arctic-News on Blogspot. There you will find that the release of methane over the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Arctic Continental Shelf has gone exponential. This essentially confirms a scenario (of exponential methane release) presented in an article by Sam Caranas, February 12, 2013 predicting Human Extinction before 2050."

I have a great respect for Thom Hartmann.....'erring on the side of least drama'.......

 

[Tyger]

Poster: "I don't have the patience to watch most of these videos all the way through. Do they eventually get to the looming problem known as Methane Ice. Methane Ice resides off the coast lines of the continents. Methane is a better greenhouse gas than CO2 so the Global Warming creates a double whammy. When the water temp reaches the right level the methane ice will release on the order of billions of cubic feet. It is short lived in the atmosphere but should kick Global warming up a notch suddenly causing devastation like you can't imagine.

"Many of the Global Extinctions happened this way. Not single events like the so called K/T Event (which I don't believe) but still serves its purpose here. Events like the Cambrian extinction took 10,000 and was a succession of events in a chain. The sudden release of such vast underwater fields of this methane ice are now suspected to be what caused the rapid end of the last Ice Age combine that with all the co2 that will be released from a warming ocean and methane from the arctic tundra we can easily expect a climate like the dinosaurs enjoyed 100s of millions of years ago."

Poster: "Edward, patience is a virtue The second half of the video covers methane extensively."

Poster: "LOL. It was like 42 minutes or something. That's like 2 days in ADHD time."

 

[Tyger]

This is my special favorite - I am keen on being present on earth when it happens - call me crazy - I just think it would be cool - the Magnetic Pole Shift.....

Text: "Facts about Magnetic North Pole

"Since the 70s, the pole has moved more than 1500 km at a rate of 10 kilometres a year. In the 1980s, this increased to 30 km a year. Today, the Pole travels 50, even 60 km - close to 150 metres a day.

"Scientists don't quite know why its speed has increased these past 20 years. The magnetic pole is moving northwest of the geographic pole and may soon be across the Arctic Ocean in Siberia.

"To find their bearings, sailors the world over must know the exact angle of difference between the two geographic and the magnetic north poles: the 'magnetic declination.'

"The magnetic pole moves from the North to the South and vice versa every 250,000 years on average and does it very suddenly. Over 180 reversals have been recorded already.

"As the intensity of the magnetic field tends to diminish, our planet becomes more susceptible to solar storms. In 100 years, the intensity has decreased by 15%."

 

[Constance]

Excellent assemblage of significant information, Tyger. Your research skills and sharing are much appreciated and, as usual, impressive.

 

[Tyger]

'Geo-Engineering of the earth's chemistry' is what the UN report is suggesting - human ingenuity will get us out of this.

At 8:25, Hartmann asks McPherson: "If you knew the world would be over in 20-25+ years when the earth would become uninhabitable, what would you do tomorrow?"

McPhereson: "Live as if we are in hospice."

What is being predicted is not just the end of civilization, but the end of humanity - we are losing our habitat.

It will be 10 million years before earth is a vibrant verdant planet once again - and that's pretty quick. Hartmann is suggesting that our human adaptability will allow us to manage past this current bottleneck - as it did 80,000 years ago - the time of our last bottleneck.

My view? We will survive - because I factor in the spirit, which has a serious interest/need for the physical realm to continue. Even though it looks like we are in a 'monkey-trap' - there remain unknowns. [The spiritual realm influences/governs far more of what takes place in the physical realm than the materialist understands or would ever allow as possible/probable, of course.]

I found the below, and it caught my eye (and ear) because I have been thinking that WWIII will not happen from out of the West, but from out of China and the countries in Asia (there is a serious military build-up taking place in Asia and many of the Asian countries are bickering over stuff). The West is ancillary imo, similar to Japan's activities prior to WWII.

I present this here only to show that there are unknowns - and the political is one arena that is hard to predict. We think we're dealing with Islamist extremists - while the world goes forward in Asia.

But Hartmann has some interesting ideas - such as at 10:00 Hartmann suggests that with every economic crash - which he predicts for 2016 - there is always a war. Hartmann has done an historical analysis (in his book'The Crash of 2016') and found the pattern that every 60 years there is an economic crash followed by war.

Interesting - food for thought - 'signs of the times'.

Text: "Published on Mar 10, 2014 - Thom Hartmann talks with Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus-New York University and Princeton University / Contributing Editor-The Nation Magazine & Author, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War."

"Putin reacted because he saw NATO coming at him again."

Text: "NYU Russian Studies Professor Stephen Cohen explains the reaction of Russia's President regarding the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych."

 

[Tyger]

Excellent assemblage of significant information, Tyger. Your research skills and sharing are much appreciated and, as usual, impressive.

High praise coming from you, Constance. Thank you.

As the Chinese curse says: "May you live in interesting times." I fear we are doing so in spades. But in my corner life is still good, for the time being. I enjoy the extrapolations, for real or pretend.

But wait - I do not fear - it is what it is. In the end, one really never knows. Its all surmise. What anyone has is the moment - and our choices.

 

[stonehart]

3...2...1 Que Pixel Smith lol

In all seriousness I will watch the video posted tonight and see what it has to say

 

[stonehart]

That is one hell of a red pill

 

[manxman]

have you got children tyger, the answer will determine how seriously you take all this 30 year nonsense.
because no-one who truly believed mankind would be extinct in 20/30/40 year time would have kid's.

 

[smcder]

have you got children tyger, the answer will determine how seriously you take all this 30 year nonsense.
because no-one who truly believed mankind would be extinct in 20/30/40 year time would have kid's.

Some do take it rather seriously:

The Archdruid Report

Greer writes on peak oil and takes the position of a slow decline, as other civilizations have experienced.

"There are, of course, plenty of other options. The best choice for most of us, as I’ve noted here in previous posts, follows a strategy I’ve described wryly as “collapse first and avoid the rush:”getting ahead of the curve of decline, in other words, and downshifting to a much less extravagant lifestyle while there’s still time to pick up the skills and tools needed to do it competently. Despite the strident insistence from defenders of the status quo that anything less than business as usual amounts to heading straight back to the caves, it’s entirely possible to have a decent and tolerably comfortable life on a tiny fraction of the energy and resource base that middle class Americans think they can’t possibly do without. Mind you, you have to know how to do it, and that’s not the sort of knowledge you can pick up from a manual, which is why it’s crucial to start now and get through the learning curve while you still have the income and the resources to cushion the impact of the inevitable mistakes."

 

[Tyger]

have you got children, tyger, the answer will determine how seriously you take all this 30 year nonsense. because no-one who truly believed mankind would be extinct in 20/30/40 year time would have kid's.

I don't 'truly believe' anything science comes up with - it's an intellectual dance - and fascinating however one slices it. 'Science' does the best it can with the tools and paradigm any individual scientist has at his/her disposal - and McPherson upfront states that he no longer has the academic structure around him that would support independent research. He is extrapolating from the given and published data at this point - as well as considerable knowledge of his own.

What's interesting is that here we have someone who is willing to go public with an extreme view - that is well thought out in a scientific sense yet you can call his summation 'nonsense'. Guess you're not keen on science? Fact is, McPhereson is merely one among a few scientists I have known who have been seeing this trajectory for some time but would never have dared mention the outcome so baldly, and certainly not in public. (I say this based on personal conversations - I recall one such conversation with a scientist working with computer based climate change models in the 1990's - his personal sense of foreboding was obvious. He was also concerned the way people just assumed that science would come up with an answer out of the dilemma/wall we were running into - being a scientist he knew the house-of-cards such 'faith in science' was).

Why not have children? Should my whole life be altered because of one man's dire warning? I think not. I still take McPhereson's summation seriously because I think he is a serious thinker and what he has to say has merit - but that does not mean he is correct in how he sees it playing out. No one human being - let alone computer model programmed by a human - can factor in all the elements that come into play in this dynamic living system that is the earth. We figured out enough to know that we were changing the earth - that we would have started the ball rolling as fast as we have we have only just begun to understand. It follows that the solving of this dilemma may have unexpected avenues. It's likely more honest to recognize - and say it in these terms - that the living being that the earth is the physical body for will heal itself of the worst of humanity's insults. It will mean humanity has to change. I'm intrigued - I am interested in being part of that change. As I am for my children.

 

[Tyger]

Some do take it rather seriously: The Archdruid Report

I am 'only just' coming upon all this literature. Thank you for the link, Steve.

Thing is, I have friends slightly older than me, making the trek into 'intentional community' as oldsters (quaint term) with the intention of working the land in complex situations - in places unexpected but where their intuitions seem to be calling them. There among a sprinkling of like-minded individuals they are growing healthy food, making music, writing books, making culture alive and deep - working with the young. There is no despair - the break down of society (in the US) has been happening for decades. One does the work of recovery wherever one finds oneself - in medicine, in schools, even in prison.