World is still fucked

[bgmnts]

https://theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/gaya-herrington-mit-study-the-limits-to-growth

Cant wait til I'm in my late 40's, if I ever reach that. Going to be a lovely time innit??

[Butchers Blind]

Enjoy the collapse of civilization, kids.

[Kankurette]

I hope I'll be dead by then.

[Barry Admin]

I can't remember the details of it, but there are quite a few people on the move at the minute because their water sources have all dried up.

Not really surprising to see the uber-rich making plans to get the fuck into space. Many years ago, Christopher Hitchens repeatedly said that a large contingent of experts reckoned we'd already passed the point of no return with the environment, and I'd be stunned if there wasn't a lot of truth to that.

Hottest day on record in Northern Ireland over the last week... Twice. Fucking weird shit happening too, like dolphins and bask sharks turning up, and that herd of elephants travelling across China.

[Kankurette]

And the floods in London, Germany and Benelux.

[Thomas]

Read that article the other day. Tried to escape the despair by clicking into something else - this:

Insects have declined by 75% in the past 50 years

There's a nice confluence of apocalyptic factors narrowing the corridor, isn't there?

I wonder what the 'collapse of civilisation' will actually look like. In the decades following, will it be like living in a war-torn nation? Some depleted services still going, money still just about useful, but rubble everywhere? Or will it be quick? If civilisation collapses in 2040, what will January 1st 2041 look like? Threads?

[TrenterPercenter]

Earlier this year, in a paper titled Beyond Growth, the analyst wrote plainly: "Amidst global slowdown and risks of depressed future growth potential from climate change, social unrest, and geopolitical instability, to name a few, responsible leaders face the possibility that growth will be limited in the future. And only a fool keeps chasing an impossibility."

This doesn't make sense; it is either impossible or possible.

Under one, termed business as usual, or BAU2, growth would stall and combine with population collapse. The other, termed comprehensive technology (CT), modeled stalled economic growth without social collapse. Both scenarios "show a halt in growth within a decade or so from now," the study says, adding, that "pursuing continuous growth, is not possible."

I think this is where she is going a bit wrong; continuous growth of what?; I know what she means, I think, she is applying it to finite material resources.  There is "growth" in its material sense but there is also growth in its social structural sense which as long as not tied to finite materials can exist (they could be related though - think digital solutions and numbers).

Also

She says there is nothing inevitable about its predictions – even now.

not a single mention of socialism or planned economy in there.

[Buelligan]

Read that article the other day. Tried to escape the despair by clicking into something else - this:

There's a nice confluence of apocalyptic factors narrowing the corridor, isn't there?

I wonder what the 'collapse of civilisation' will actually look like. In the decades following, will it be like living in a war-torn nation? Some depleted services still going, money still just about useful, but rubble everywhere? Or will it be quick? If civilisation collapses in 2040, what will January 1st 2041 look like? Threads?

Another great reason to consider whether you think the police are a gbol.  If you have doubts, might it be wise to toy with the idea of stopping funding their supply of weapons of warfare?  But, of course, when did us humans ever think about a thing rationally in advance and then draw up a plan to ensure we evaded a massive fucking nightmare?

Where oh, where, would be the fun in that?  Let us continue laughing with our feet pressed hard on the accelerator.

[phes]

re. the flooding in London. Interesting that every single BBC report on extreme weather abroad now includes 'Climate scientists have repeatedly warned that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events...' but apparently that doesn't apply to the UK

[Petey Pate]

Not really surprising to see the uber-rich making plans to get the fuck into space.

Well if it helps, they're very unlikely to be successful at 'escaping' earth, if that is the end goal.  Here's an interesting Twitter thread which details the current impracticalities of keeping astronauts alive on board the ISS.

https://twitter.com/sim_kern/status/1411304471934685184?s=19

I'm coming round to the view that we will be witnessing dramatic changes sooner than predicted.  The number of extreme weather events this year alone attests to that.  I'm also not optimistic that the warnings will finally be heeded at COP26 or wherever, there should have been multiple turning points for humanity to change direction yet none have been taken so far.

[Kankurette]

I don't get the space thing. It's not like going to live in the country. There's no air, no water to the extent we have here, no power, and travelling is incredibly risky even now. As Steve Lowe once said, there's no replacement bus service if a spaceship is kaput. It's fucking stupid.

[phes]

No selfish cunt is going to live in space when they can just live here in relatively unaffected communities of selfish cunts

[Buelligan]

There could be another way of looking at it - not one I particularly believe but - they might be thinking (or they might be privy to some definitive new shit) that we are all completely fucked by, say, 2040.  For them, most of them, they'll be dead anyway so no shit's given by them there.  Still, they want their private carriage in the Gravy Train to keep on rolling, so giving the proles panem et circenses, keeping them little aphids drowsy for milking and using their enormous and growing fortunes to explore escape pods for their own spawn, seems pretty rational.

If Bezos turned round and screamed our only hope is to stop consuming now, it might rather fuck his business model.

[Kankurette]

Bezos has enough money. It's not going to kill him if Amazon change their ways. But then I guess that's why he's a billionaire. It's never enough for him.

[Sonny_Jim]

And the floods in London, Germany and Benelux.

Fuck me.  That shitty Rutger Haur movie 'Split Second' wasn't a movie, it was a documentary.

[greenman]

The 2017 election could well have been a tipping point for the human race, when Alien archolgies pore over out ruined boneyard cities they'll work out the nexus event that ended our species was...

[Buelligan]

Just watched this great short film from DoubleDown on Why Jeff Bezos' Space Dream is Humanity's Nightmare.

[jamiefairlie]

Read that article the other day. Tried to escape the despair by clicking into something else - this:

There's a nice confluence of apocalyptic factors narrowing the corridor, isn't there?

I wonder what the 'collapse of civilisation' will actually look like. In the decades following, will it be like living in a war-torn nation? Some depleted services still going, money still just about useful, but rubble everywhere? Or will it be quick? If civilisation collapses in 2040, what will January 1st 2041 look like? Threads?

Piss, everywhere.

[Chedney Honks]

The world will be absolutely fine.

Human race maybe not. 😂😂😂

[jamiefairlie]

The world will be absolutely fine.

Human race maybe not. 😂😂😂

Quite, we do tend to conflate the two don't we.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Well, sounds like insects are fucked so unless you mean the actual ball of rock called Earth the general environment for life itself is being changed.

However, I also read that fertility rates for humans are in permanent irreversible decline so get your skates on.

[Better Midlands]

Just watched this great short film from DoubleDown on Why Jeff Bezos' Space Dream is Humanity's Nightmare.

Good video Buelligan.

[TrenterPercenter]

Well, sounds like insects are fucked so unless you mean the actual ball of rock called Earth the general environment for life itself is being changed.

However, I also read that fertility rates for humans are in permanent irreversible decline so get your skates on.

But surely if we are all going to have to eat bugs for tea then we can farm them back into the environment (maybe even genetically engineer the wasps to be less of a c*nt)

[vanilla.coffee]

Dr Michael Burry predicted the housing mortgage crisis 2 years prior to the housing mortgage crisis in 2008
He has since invested in very few commodities - one of them being water.

[Zetetic]

One of the reasons for the English death squads in the years to come.

[Fambo Number Mive]

With Starmer's Labour unlikely to do much on climate change, maybe we should be backing parties that do care about the environment. I know change at Westminster level is glacial and very difficult, but maybe getting some more Greens on councils at local level might inspire a more environmentally focused local government. 

Maybe the date of 2040 will focus people's minds into supporting a Britain that isn't polluting the environment and concreting over the countryside. Most people under 70 now would expect to still be alive in 2040 and would probably prefer to spend that year in a climate similar.to now.

[Sebastian Cobb]

[Sebastian Cobb]

But the flipside to that is that the EU 'wood pellet' stuff is worse and causes loads of problems for poor communities in the US

How marginalized communities in the South are paying the price for 'green energy' in Europe:
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/07/us/american-south-biomass-energy-invs/

Burning wood is less efficient than burning coal and releases far more carbon into the atmosphere, according to almost 800 scientists who wrote a 2018 letter to the European parliament, pushing members to amend the current directive "to avoid expansive harm to the world's forests and the acceleration of climate change."

In 1996, scientists at the United Nations devised a method to measure global carbon emissions. To simplify the process and avoid double counting, they suggested emissions from burning biomass should be calculated where the trees are cut down, not where the wood pellets are burned.           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
The EU adopted this methodology in its Renewable Energy Directive, allowing energy companies to burn biomass produced in the US without having to report the emissions.
         
The accounting method — which was never intended to assign national responsibility for carbon emissions, according to climate experts — has created a lot of discussion and disagreement among advocates, scientists and policymakers. But ultimately it is not the accounting of carbon that is the problem, it's the emissions.

[mothman]

I wonder what the 'collapse of civilisation' will actually look like. In the decades following, will it be like living in a war-torn nation? Some depleted services still going, money still just about useful, but rubble everywhere? Or will it be quick? If civilisation collapses in 2040, what will January 1st 2041 look like? Threads?

The Road.

[Shit Good Nose]

But the flipside to that is that the EU 'wood pellet' stuff is worse and causes loads of problems for poor communities in the US

How marginalized communities in the South are paying the price for 'green energy' in Europe:
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/07/us/american-south-biomass-energy-invs/

China are ploughing ahead with building several new coal plants (nine at the last count I believe).  And we're still pinning most of our hopes on nuclear of course, which is renewable-ish but hardly green.  And can also kill everyone if it goes a bit wrong.

The UK renewables industry has all-but walked away from wood - quality has always been an issue (I've lost count of the number of nails and screws we pulled out of our "premium" pellets at work - we ripped out two pellet boilers in schools because of the number of breakdowns and returned loads, and put gas boilers back in with air and ground source heat pumps where we could), and as that article says, it's not quite as green as a lot of people think due to the particulates pumped out.  And that's before you look into the realities of growing and harvesting the wood.