Climate Change

[wadaye]

Although very long at 2.5 hours this appeared in my play list automatically as a next play after the Bendell audiobook chapter. It is practically liberating from the PARIS IPCC etc pantomimes which only hide the truth of present climate genocide. Its not every day I consider a two and a half hour podcast to be too important at 12 midnight to leave till the next day

I haven't read it as yet but I did listen to the reading of it and was impressed, so here is the pdf link

[wadaye]

But the west believes it has the ultimate defence against climate change impacts

Nuclear Weapons Justice
Nuclear weapons are the most inhumane and devastating tools of war ever created. They're also tools of white supremacy.

In the words of author and activist Arundhati Roy, “the nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made

https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/justice

Hence France was happy to abandon Mali and Burkina Faso, but draws the line at Niger ... which appears to be obviously related to the callous extraction of uranium imposed on the locals to the their deaths and detriment.

Such open hypocrisy is hard to stomach and though Putin is every bit as full of Chutzpah that doesn't change the fact that his narrative will be accepted. For France to extract its energy needs from Niger, and the US and France to base serious armed forces there, and yet the country is reported to be half in starvation, is an unforgivable evil. And it has not been forgiven. The west will ask for forgiveness with the usual messages of bombs and bullets, but it will not be received well. Hence Putin, cannot be categorically termed as more evil in Niger than France or the US, as yet. But judging from the death camps elsewhere it will not be any better and possibly worse.

Edit: I had to look for the word for comprador. Really who is the elite will not make that much difference/

[stylofone]

Skimming over Sam Hall long article, I think he makes a bit of a leap in predicting human extinction. It's an extraordinary claim, and as we know, these require extraordinary evidence. I've heard credible projections that climate-triggered famine and reduced food production mean the planet could only feed two billion people. He says one billion, same ball park really. But he doesn't say how the other one billion will die by 2100. There are lots of known unknowns. For example how does he know that there won't be habitable zones in the Arctic and Antarctic regions?

My other big question is about the collapse itself easing the effects. This is also an unknown. Supposing we get a series of climate disasters which wreck the world economy and destroy industries and global trade which otherwise would have emitted more CO2. It all depends on the way the disasters unfold. If we're "lucky", the early stages of the climate crisis will reduce the capacity of humans to continue destroying the planet and thus the later stages us the disaster might be eased. Maybe.

Another thing to consider is the human behaviour tipping point. So far we haven't seen a meaningful change. In fact people have responded to the warnings about the looming crisis by doing exactly the opposite of what is called for, i.e. we've increased emissions. But there could come a time when the disasters are so bad that a real response might begin. People are actually capable of doing the right thing, in fact it is a compulsion which exists alongside the very bad things we do.

[pipbarber]

Well i read the Sam Hall article, cheers Wadaye, and i have to say i'm surprised. I thought i had the worst case scenario quite toward the front of my brain but it seems i was underestimating matters.

I learned a lot, i didn't really understand aerosol shields but recently someone i know mentioned it in rl, with great enthusiasm, as a type of life saving bio-engineering salvation. So, that was wrong, if Same Hall is right and i lean toward thinking he is. And that puts me in mind of your point, Stylo.

My other big question is about the collapse itself easing the effects. This is also an unknown. Supposing we get a series of climate disasters which wreck the world economy and destroy industries and global trade which otherwise would have emitted more CO2. It all depends on the way the disasters unfold. If we're "lucky", the early stages of the climate crisis will reduce the capacity of humans to continue destroying the planet and thus the later stages us the disaster might be eased. Maybe.

Quoting from the article:

those suspended air pollution particles (aerosols) make cloud tops brighter, creating a reflective shield in the atmosphere that bounces incoming solar radiation back out into space. This shielding effect protects us from as much as half of global warming.

But aerosols are not long lasting and can be wiped way in months, which is what would happen if we drastically reduced GHG emissions.

As soon as we stop creating air pollution the normal cycles of cloud formation and precipitation will wash the aerosols out of the atmosphere within months....The danger of this cannot be overstated. As soon as economic activity collapses, global warming will increase by as much as a full 1.0°C

I almost laughed at this, though from where the laughter came i couldn't say, except that it was somewhere between irony and fear. We're fucked, even if we do reduce GHGs!

At least that is the view of the article.

[stylofone]

But aerosols are not long lasting and can be wiped way in months, which is what would happen if we drastically reduced GHG emissions.

So... he's saying the position we are in is that reducing greenhouse gas emissions actually causes global warming, AND increasing greenhouse gas emissions ALSO causes global warming. Well that IS a bind! Yes, we can consider ourselves out-doomed!

[wadaye]

I think the greatest liberation is to get past the Chutzpah of the IPCC with its fuckery. Let us really consider a representative carbon pathway of 6.0 or 8.5. Its like talking about self immolation as some kind of nevessary act. It is said without any hint of a scream. Dr Strangelove is mere kindy compared to it.

[wadaye]

My opinion is that humans will not become extinct but break the global foodchain even for a month and it will be very tragic. In biological terms the West is happy for famines in Africa and so will not hesitate also to insulate the upper classes from the masses when food stops.
It only has to stop food for one month, it only has to get too hot for survival for one day. Etc.
If human populations suffered a 99.999% to dieoff it would not be a significant risk to human survival though it would no doubt be very brutal. The only other large mammals with such exorbitant numbers as 80,000 left are domesticated livestock species.

[wadaye]

I guess my point is that any future prediction couched misleadingly as assessment which fails to also estimate the predicted percentage dieoff of humans and place that predicted dieoff in specif locales cannot be taken seriously. We expect as a result of the figures bandied about to see massive extinctions yet presume humans to only be affected by the economy. Its a very bad joke in poor taste and the joke is on us.

[pipbarber]

The Hall article is openly American based and America, perhaps of all developed countries, is the least likely to manifest a shred of resilience to catastrophic scenarios. A post fact population in possession of 500 million firearms, swamped in toxic individualism and eschatological delusion both religious and conspiracy based is hardly going to pull together in a crisis. They'll just start shooting each other, they already are!

Not that we'll do that much better, although we do have a significant advantage over much of the developed world - we have a first nations people with land rights and a connection to country. If anyone will survive the scenario described by Hall, it will be them.

[stylofone]

A post fact population in possession of 500 million firearms, swamped in toxic individualism and eschatological delusion both religious and conspiracy based is hardly going to pull together in a crisis.

Yes, look at Covid, one million dead and still going, and they've learned nothing.

American post-apocalypse science fiction is booming at the moment. "The Last of Us" is one of the best and worst. The survivors mostly have a kill-or-be-killed approach. Lots of guns and knives. The main characters who have some sort of bond mostly do so on a personal level. They are proficient killers. Where a community succeeds there is still this question about whether it's "communist".

Compared to the first great American post-apocalypse work, "Earth Abides" by George Stewart, 1949. There's no violence or conflict, it's a story of the decline of technology and pre-collapse culture, until it finds a floor and begins to recover. In the very British "The Day of the Triffids", there is a threat from moralists and militarists, but they very quickly fail due to their hubris or blinkered moralism. It's the progressive thinkers who survive and have hope of ensuring long-term human survival.

These aren't predictions of the future, they are reflections of the attitudes in the present when they are written.