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End of the World News (Dose me Up)

Started by Twit 2, February 27, 2019, 06:21:01 PM

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Twit 2

In the spirit of starting new threads, can we have some general discussion around the approaching end of the world? We've touched on it in the recent weather thread and in the Extinction Rebellion one.

*Share book reviews and articles!
*Speculate wildly!
*Look down on the sheeple who don't have the BALLS to stare into the abyss!
*Ruin the thread by saying it'll all be fine mate.
*Win valuable prizes!

I'm probably going to read this book or at least pretend I have to win arguments with climate sceptics:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/27/the-uninhabitable-earth-review-david-wallace-wells


ToneLa

I don't think the world will end

Maybe humanity. But earth? Nah, earth will remain for a wee bit!

Uncle TechTip

Bits of northern England caught fire yesterday, I am assuming this is unprecedented at this time of year. I'm kind of hoping that it was started deliberately and it was merely the result of low rainfall over winter.

Twit 2


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on February 27, 2019, 07:04:11 PM
Bits of northern England caught fire yesterday, I am assuming this is unprecedented at this time of year. I'm kind of hoping that it was started deliberately and it was merely the result of low rainfall over winter.

I was up there last week. setting fire to the undergrowth is normal agricultural maintenance. it's just that the drama-queens in the news dept. have got an agenda-of-distraction going on, & don't want us to notice etcetera etcetera...

ads82

This author of the book you refer to (David Wallace Wells) wrote an article for NYMag that frightened the crap out of me. It outlines some of the consequences of continuing down this path of current carbon emissions.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

Here's the audible version for those who don't have the time to read the article.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HunlJesQuak




Twit 2

Great article, thanks for linking it. I'll be passing it on to people I know.

garbed_attic

I'm half-way through The Uninhabitable Earth and will post my thoughts here when I'm finished!

garbed_attic

To speak bluntly and potentially irritatingly, anyone who reads this book and doesn't immediately stop taking holidays by aeroplane and eating meat/drinking milk, is capable of a level of cognitive dissonance and denial that my brain isn't capable of achieving (perhaps due to having OCD and likely being on the spectrum, which the wonderful Greta Thunberg attributes, in part, to her trailblazing climate activism). I'm not even a particularly good person! I just don't think, having read this book, I can turn that awareness off, even if I wanted to.

What I appreciated most about Wallace-Walls's work here, apart from the shear breadth of study research, is the fact that he repeatedly establishes that climate change isn't a binary 'YES/ NO' crisis happening somewhere off in there future. It is a matter of humanity choosing between a very tough future with lots of suffering, yet survivable through deep adaptation, massive structural changes to agriculture, travel, energy and the economy, including fast-paced technological advances... and the utter collapse of civilisation and extinction of the human race. AND IT IS HAPPENING NOW. The choices we collectively make today help alleviate this suffering (not future suffering; suffering that is occurring already *right now* through much of the globe) and the potential for future life to continue.

I don't and am not planning on having children and don't even like humans all that very much... so I can't even imagine how I'd feel if I had kids, let alone grandchildren. I don't think I'd be able to sti still for a moment.

Basically, indigenous peoples, vegans and even damn hippies have long been right - we are not magically *outside of* nature and the animal kingdom and the world's elements, minerals and metals aren't just resources for our exploitation. You don't even need to anthropomorphise Earth as Gaia or God to understand this to be true. Aptly or ironically, we desperately need to shed ourselves of our anthropocentrism in order to save human life!

Because, make no mistake about it, the planet itself will survive, even as a husk. We won't if we don't take fast substantive action. Venus still exists, burning away. Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years. Many, many, many more animal species are going to be effectively exterminated by ourselves over the coming few decades. But even if we manage to kill ourselves off, cockroaches and tardigrades will likely continue and flourish.

However, cockroaches and tardigrades cannot produce 'Ode to Joy', pyramids, the Sistene Chapel, Sanshō Dayū etc. etc. etc.

If you think any of these things are worth preserving, then I warmly encourage and advice you to get involved in local environmental activism **sooner** rather than later. Like, when you've finished reading this review, literally go and look up where your local 'Extinction Rebellion' (https://rebellion.earth/get-active/) chapter is. Encourage your children to go on the Friday school strikes. Quickly phase meat out of your diets and go on holiday somewhere local instead of abroad.

I won't lie - reading 'The Uninhabitable Earth' made me feel more convinced that it's over for us. That we aren't going to pull ourselves our of this one. Conversely, it has also made me MORE determined to fight.

Because, //even if it is all hopeless//, to quote Mary Heglar: "You don't fight something like that because you think you will win. You fight it because you have to. Because surrendering dooms so much more than yourself, but everything that comes after you."

alan nagsworth

I think it would be fucking amazing if we reached a point of global wokeness and finally figured out everything we were doing wrong and then went extinct immediately after. Just like what happened with the dinosaurs.

garbed_attic

Quote from: alan nagsworth on March 03, 2019, 01:44:43 PM
I think it would be fucking amazing if we reached a point of global wokeness and finally figured out everything we were doing wrong and then went extinct immediately after. Just like what happened with the dinosaurs.

I think I'd be alright with that.

#wokedinosaurs

alan nagsworth

Notice how there's no records of dinosaurs being racist or sexually predatory? No fossils being unearthed of a male stegosaurus slapping his female colleague's arse or telling her to "smile, it might never happen"? They'd just got past all that and then god got pissed off with the lack of a challenge and got the old dry eraser out and fucked it all off. It's going to happen again. Mark my words.

McFlymo

It feels utterly dull and cliched to chime in with this, but: Is it enough for a relatively tiny minority of people to become vegan and such, when ultimately the people who have all the power, (McDs, Nike, Starbucks, Apple etc.) don't give a flying fuck, provided they're maintaining their global empires?

Furthermore, I suspect these global elites are already ten steps ahead of the rest of us and have already made their metaphorical nuclear bunkers for the impending apocalypse. Climate change? The ravishing of the planet's resources? These are concerns for the little people, we already have our fully functional underground mega-cities, ready to accommodate the chosen people and technologically equipped to sustain vegetation and life for many decades after the rest of the planet becomes a radiated crispy pancake.

We're all fucked.




alan nagsworth

Personally I choose not to eat meat not because I want to make a global change, but because I don't want it on my conscience. Obviously I think it would be great if everyone followed suit but I'm not trying to actively implement that change.

garbed_attic

Quote from: McFlymo on March 03, 2019, 02:23:16 PM
It feels utterly dull and cliched to chime in with this, but: Is it enough for a relatively tiny minority of people to become vegan and such, when ultimately the people who have all the power, (McDs, Nike, Starbucks, Apple etc.) don't give a flying fuck, provided they're maintaining their global empires?

Furthermore, I suspect these global elites are already ten steps ahead of the rest of us and have already made their metaphorical nuclear bunkers for the impending apocalypse. Climate change? The ravishing of the planet's resources? These are concerns for the little people, we already have our fully functional underground mega-cities, ready to accommodate the chosen people and technologically equipped to sustain vegetation and life for many decades after the rest of the planet becomes a radiated crispy pancake.

We're all fucked.

Well, as per the quote I put above:

QuoteYou don't fight something like that because you think you will win. You fight it because you have to. Because surrendering dooms so much more than yourself, but everything that comes after you.

Look, frankly, it seems clear that the amount of suffering due to come over the next century is going to dwarf all previous suffering. It's a matter of mitigation of degrees, not a binary 'fucked/ not fucked'. People still had some fun in Mad Max: Fury Road - we can reach the future at the end of the film, for instance, instead of all life on earth 100% dead.

Dex Sawash

Quote from: gout_pony on March 03, 2019, 02:33:10 PM
Mad Max: Fury Road

Not sitting through that load of shite again <pours out foam cup of coffee>

Twit 2

Quote from: gout_pony on March 03, 2019, 01:38:55 PM
To speak bluntly and potentially irritatingly, anyone who reads this book and doesn't immediately stop taking holidays by aeroplane and eating meat/drinking milk, is capable of a level of cognitive dissonance and denial that my brain isn't capable of achieving (perhaps due to having OCD and likely being on the spectrum, which the wonderful Greta Thunberg attributes, in part, to her trailblazing climate activism). I'm not even a particularly good person! I just don't think, having read this book, I can turn that awareness off, even if I wanted to.

What I appreciated most about Wallace-Walls's work here, apart from the shear breadth of study research, is the fact that he repeatedly establishes that climate change isn't a binary 'YES/ NO' crisis happening somewhere off in there future. It is a matter of humanity choosing between a very tough future with lots of suffering, yet survivable through deep adaptation, massive structural changes to agriculture, travel, energy and the economy, including fast-paced technological advances... and the utter collapse of civilisation and extinction of the human race. AND IT IS HAPPENING NOW. The choices we collectively make today help alleviate this suffering (not future suffering; suffering that is occurring already *right now* through much of the globe) and the potential for future life to continue.

I don't and am not planning on having children and don't even like humans all that very much... so I can't even imagine how I'd feel if I had kids, let alone grandchildren. I don't think I'd be able to sti still for a moment.

Basically, indigenous peoples, vegans and even damn hippies have long been right - we are not magically *outside of* nature and the animal kingdom and the world's elements, minerals and metals aren't just resources for our exploitation. You don't even need to anthropomorphise Earth as Gaia or God to understand this to be true. Aptly or ironically, we desperately need to shed ourselves of our anthropocentrism in order to save human life!

Because, make no mistake about it, the planet itself will survive, even as a husk. We won't if we don't take fast substantive action. Venus still exists, burning away. Earth has lost half of its wildlife in the past 40 years. Many, many, many more animal species are going to be effectively exterminated by ourselves over the coming few decades. But even if we manage to kill ourselves off, cockroaches and tardigrades will likely continue and flourish.

However, cockroaches and tardigrades cannot produce 'Ode to Joy', pyramids, the Sistene Chapel, Sanshō Dayū etc. etc. etc.

If you think any of these things are worth preserving, then I warmly encourage and advice you to get involved in local environmental activism **sooner** rather than later. Like, when you've finished reading this review, literally go and look up where your local 'Extinction Rebellion' (https://rebellion.earth/get-active/) chapter is. Encourage your children to go on the Friday school strikes. Quickly phase meat out of your diets and go on holiday somewhere local instead of abroad.

I won't lie - reading 'The Uninhabitable Earth' made me feel more convinced that it's over for us. That we aren't going to pull ourselves our of this one. Conversely, it has also made me MORE determined to fight.

Because, //even if it is all hopeless//, to quote Mary Heglar: "You don't fight something like that because you think you will win. You fight it because you have to. Because surrendering dooms so much more than yourself, but everything that comes after you."

I dunno, I reckon a cockroach could manage a diatonic melody like Ode to Joy if it ran along a little insect-sized toy piano, like an arthropod Tom Hanks. Wait - no electricity! ARGH!!!

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: McFlymo on March 03, 2019, 02:23:16 PM
It feels utterly dull and cliched to chime in with this, but: Is it enough for a relatively tiny minority of people to become vegan and such, when ultimately the people who have all the power, (McDs, Nike, Starbucks, Apple etc.) don't give a flying fuck, provided they're maintaining their global empires?

Furthermore, I suspect these global elites are already ten steps ahead of the rest of us and have already made their metaphorical nuclear bunkers for the impending apocalypse. Climate change? The ravishing of the planet's resources? These are concerns for the little people, we already have our fully functional underground mega-cities, ready to accommodate the chosen people and technologically equipped to sustain vegetation and life for many decades after the rest of the planet becomes a radiated crispy pancake.

We're all fucked.

It isn't enough just to become vegan, no. What gains that are made are mixed into the wider pot, and unfortunately too much carbon is being released for even a dramatic dietary change globally to correct.

Does that mean don't bother? No of course not, but I think there are better reasons than environmental ones to do so (potential health benefits - though not necessarily - and less animal suffering)

In terms of securing our existence on the planet then yes, governments and corporations must quake and be brought to their knees by a united front of humans demanding action on environmental improvements and backing this up with threats governments and corporations listen to. That is the only thing that can save us.

Petey Pate

While using air travel to go on is holiday is clearly not great for the environment, what barely gets mentioned in the conversation on climate change is the military's role in carbon emissions. Someone who flies out to Goa on their gap year does not bear the same responsibility as a USAF pilot who's not only clocking up air miles, but blowing shit up while doing so.

Interestingly I just found out, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, that the US government demanded that the US military be exempt from any emission targets in the Kyoto Protocol. Perversely, a lot of internal reports in the US military identify climate change as a one of the biggest security threats worldwide.

To sound like a massive hippie, global disarmament would go a long way to help save us all.

chveik

Quote from: McFlymo on March 03, 2019, 02:23:16 PM
Furthermore, I suspect these global elites are already ten steps ahead of the rest of us and have already made their metaphorical nuclear bunkers for the impending apocalypse.

billionaires are currently buying property in New Zealand (it's supposed to be the least affected place by climate change):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

garbed_attic

Brexit is just piffling irrelevance next to this:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/13/arctic-temperature-rises-must-be-urgently-tackled-warns-un?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR3N-ZxbTCnW9d34THohjcYsBfX3Z_ZGAmIErrAVYAd9Habap6668svVZ44

Basically, it is *inevitable* that things are going to get catastrophic within the next decade or even few years - if drastic action isn't taken now, human survival seems like a nigh-on impossibility as far as I can see. This is inevitably bring back up old suicidal feelings... but, then, it seems likely like a lot of us will start checking out once things get really bad. fuck fuck fuck we are a stupid selfish species.

Thomas

To be fair, I think any species that developed mega-sentience and global culture would eventually have gone the same way. We might bang on about saving golden tamarins, but in another universe they're up to their eyebrows in shell companies and CFCs.

bgmnts

Quote from: Thomas on March 14, 2019, 05:21:27 PM
To be fair, I think any species that developed mega-sentience and global culture would eventually have gone the same way. We might bang on about saving golden tamarins, but in another universe they're up to their eyebrows in shell companies and CFCs.

So in these other universes, which species gets it right? Sloths?

Thomas

Whales and dolphins, since water restricts their usage of fire, electricity, and paper money.

GMTV

Look at the state of the brexit negotiations and how pathetically laboured it is. And that's what would seem the relatively simple task of the UK extracting itself from the EU.

What hope for a global campaign of no more/limited reproduction, no more development of third world countries, massive reductions in standards of living in developed countries, and huge curtailing of corporate and governmental machinations.

All to reduce predicted degradation of the environment in many years to come, and all on the basis of theories of a few groups of scientists based on various indirect current measurements and some historically recorded data?

BlodwynPig

Quote from: GMTV on March 14, 2019, 06:13:05 PM
Look at the state of the brexit negotiations and how pathetically laboured it is. And that's what would seem the relatively simple task of the UK extracting itself from the EU.

What hope for a global campaign of no more/limited reproduction, no more development of third world countries, massive reductions in standards of living in developed countries, and huge curtailing of corporate and governmental machinations.

All to reduce predicted degradation of the environment in many years to come, and all on the basis of theories of a few groups of scientists based on various indirect current measurements and some historically recorded data?

We need a couple of mega-catastrophes to kick us into acting to stop a mega-catastrophe.

GMTV

Quote from: BlodwynPig on March 14, 2019, 06:56:28 PM
We need a couple of mega-catastrophes to kick us into acting to stop a mega-catastrophe.

If you're one of the hundreds of millions who perish, you can die knowing you were doing your bit.

If you survive you can enjoy your penury.

Twit 2

Quote from: GMTV on March 14, 2019, 06:13:05 PM
Look at the state of the brexit negotiations and how pathetically laboured it is. And that's what would seem the relatively simple task of the UK extracting itself from the EU.

What hope for a global campaign of no more/limited reproduction, no more development of third world countries, massive reductions in standards of living in developed countries, and huge curtailing of corporate and governmental machinations.

All to reduce predicted degradation of the environment in many years to come, and all on the basis of theories of a few groups of scientists based on various indirect current measurements and some historically recorded data?

Oh definitely. Human nature + overpopulation = extinction. It's just a matter of how soon.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: GMTV on March 14, 2019, 07:03:00 PM
If you're one of the hundreds of millions who perish, you can die knowing you were doing your bit.

If you survive you can enjoy your penury.

I've recently become paralysed with existential fear. I liken death to being trapped in a tight box for time eternal. I guess oblivion is better than that scenario. But how can you enjoy oblivion when you will NEVER HAVE CONSCIOUSNESS AGAIN.

Twit 2

Read Cioran's "The Trouble with Being Born". It's beautifully written, sardonically humourous and paradoxically uplifting. Literally changed my life.