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Climate Change and Societal Collapse


Sotha

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There are some well-informed people on the forums, so I was thinking of presenting some thoughts for your critical analysis. This is a bit uncommon internet post for our era because I hope your input can change my line of reasoning instead of echo-chambering the same message back, tenfold.

 

To save your time, I present the thing briefly:

 

1) Humans are exceeding the global resource limits.

 

2) The economic system incentives or requires infinite growth and increased consumption, while issue 1) is still in play.

 

3) The society and welfare is built based on the premise of infinite growth and increasing productivity, both of which increases 1) and 2).

 

4) One might argue that new technology might change things, but thus far it looks like technology only increases 1), 2) and 3). Even if you invent the miracle of zero-cost-energy-from-nowhere, you still need to consume material resources. Better technology in general means more and faster consumption, not less. Sometimes tech improves efficiency and decreases waste, but the desired net effect is increased production and consumption, always.

 

5) Global warming (among other things) is caused by all 1, 2, 3 and 4. All the stuff mentioned above seems to be an eternal no-way-out feedback loop that accelerates the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. After some level, the feedback loop doesn't even need human activity to accelerate.

 

6) Global warming is expected to cause political, economical, etc crises, wars and famine.

 

---above this line is mostly facts, below this line things get sketchy---

 

7) Things mentioned in 6) causes societal collapse. Loss of food stocks and mass migrations should be very destabilizing to modern societies. Revolution/unrest is only N missed meals away. Whatever N is, is irrelevant. N will be reached, and the question is only when?

 

8) Large enough simultaneous societal collapse in several countries means the end of civilization as we know it.

 

9) After the collapse, there will be millions dead, and the remaining people are probably living in the woods or polluted ruins with simple technology. Continuing our current lifestyle would only bring about another collapse later.

 

I've got to live a nice life being part of this consumption era, so in the end, I'm probably getting what I deserve, but I'm wondering about the future of my kids. As a parent, my main reason of existence now is to maximize the chances of my offspring.

 

Record temperatures and wildfires every year. Extreme weather and crop failure years are the norm now rather than exception. To me, it looks like it is starting to escalate now. The fan is already on and the shit is being loaded onto the release mechanism above it. Since it is large scale human influence on the environment, all the individual can do to watch and wait it to happen.

 

So the end questions are:

Q1: am I crazy when I think about these things? Every time I do, I follow the same line of thoughts to the same inevitable conclusion.

Q2: should we be teaching survival skills to our children, instead of AI programming? Should one invest in guns and ammo instead of stocks and funds? Should we be stocking some MRE to a hidden bunker somewhere?

Q3: what does your get-out-of-dodge -bag contain? Where do you go when shit hits the fan? Does it even help?

 

It could be after our natural life spans (do we even care, then?), or it could be within the next 20 years.

 

Not once do I find a comforting result in this line of thinking without deliberately overlooking something. It is worrisome. Thank you for pointing me my error.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Q1: am I crazy when I think about these things? Every time I do, I follow the same line of thoughts to the same inevitable conclusion.

No, you're not, but you should be very careful about believing the hysterical, alarmist line promoted by the media.

 

Global warming is something we should take seriously, not least because of its possible effect on nature and wildlife, and reducing our impact on the environment is something we should always aim for. But an increase in average temperatures of a couple of degrees over 50 years is not going to cause the world to end the way the media like to pretend it will.

 

The climate is actually a highly complex, chaotic system that is almost impossible to predict with accuracy. We can't even predict what the weather is going to be like more than a few days in advance, but somehow when people tell us that the world is going to resemble the surface of Venus in 2050, we're supposed to treat this as a "fact"? I don't think so.

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Yes, it is true that the media presents news items with some extra "impact" because it must do so in order to sell (Nowadays synonymous with evoking deep feelings and negative feelings are more easily evoked than positive ones.) I am aware of these and often try to lean to summaries of scientific literature when dealing with news (I do not have access to the actual papers anymore.

 

Earth-Venus greenhouse effect is one possibility, but as you said, nobody knows the probability of this outcome.

 

A more probable result, I believe (no probabilities here), is loss of farmland globally, famine, fending off waves and waves of refugees, civil unrest, some kind of collapse with lots of loss of life and ultimately adaptation. Knowing humanity, the same thing continues and occurs again later, but that is way outside my life span.

 

Have people on the forums taken actual actions in order to improve their and their loved ones' chances of NOT ending among those who die?

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I don't agree with point 4). New technologies can help to reduce exhausts and have a positive impact on the environment. The bigger problem (in my opinion) are countries ignoring their impact on the environment (especially, USA and China, which have a massive population and a seemingly complete disregard to the environment) and not using newer technologies, because it is cheaper to not do so. It is kind of frustrating, living in a country that at least seems to try to decrease envronmental impact, but at the same time knowing that it is just a drop in the ocean (compare 82 million in Germany versus 1.3 billion people in China).

 

I think, the main problem is the fact you mentioned, that our economy is based on growth, not on preservation. But again, this is a problem that small countries like most European ones cannot solve. They can set an example, but if the bigger countries do not act, this will not help much. The most effective way would be to decimate human population (I am NOT saying genocide, but rather by reducing reproduction) to a more reasonable number. This, however, would definitely collapse most social systems and lead to the unrest you described. Still, I fear that some apocalyptic scenario may not be too far away.

 

As to actions one could take: I am a scientist myself and am quite sure that my knowledge would be largely useless in a post-apocalyptic world (the most useful being able to distill alcohol and that is not really something special). Still, I like to think about, what I may be able to do. Apocalypse or not, it is never wrong to have some basic survival skills. Better would be knowledge about growing crops and such, but I am not sure how much these would actually help, because you still need equipment. If you want to teach your kids some basic survival skills I would suggest to let them join the boyscouts (or whatever they are called in your country). There they learn stuff like building fires, building tents and generally living without (or at least with less) technology, but doing so in a fun way. Another option would be live action roleplaying. The most important thing, in my opion, is to be able to live independent from most modern technology. Hunting/gathering food comes next, so knowing some edible plants would help. Hunting is more difficult and harder to train due to regulations. As long as you have shelter, food and water, you will at least be able to survive. Rebuilding some kind of society comes after that. If the scenario includes that the environment is poisoned or in other ways uninhabitalbe, we are lost anyway.

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Q1: am I crazy when I think about these things? Every time I do, I follow the same line of thoughts to the same inevitable conclusion.

It is not crazy to think about it. But thinking about it again and again always coming to the same conclusions - that might make you crazy in the long run...

 

Q2: should we be teaching survival skills to our children, instead of AI programming? Should one invest in guns and ammo instead of stocks and funds? Should we be stocking some MRE to a hidden bunker somewhere?

It depends.

 

As it comes all down to the quantity of human individuals (wich only is possible to be that high because we got all the tech), the real problem ist a social one:

We as a global society need to make less babies. That is all what really is needed. Total consumption and with it, emission of greenhouse gases depends on the size of the population.

So making less babies leads to less population and therefore less consumption and less greenhouse gases.

 

But our hightech society is not fully automated yet. Most industries currently depend on a huge slave-like human workforce. Also humans are genetically programmed to want kids. Both problems are solvable with advanced AI (wich sadly does not yet exist):

Bots as workforce and replacement for the second+ child.

So if you have kids, try to get them into programming and AI stuff - and hope that they will not waste it on bullshit jobs like behavioural marketing or some three-letter agency's cyber war...

 

Well, as society seems to always be twenty years behind tech, you probably better teach them survival skills just in case that the twenty years are enough to start the third world war.

But don't tell the other parents - someone's kids have to make the automation happen or society will never grow up.

 

Q3: what does your get-out-of-dodge -bag contain? Where do you go when shit hits the fan? Does it even help?

My bag is empty and i will go nowhere. When the shit hits the fan, i will probably just get killed by some crazy looters (but i am no hoarder so they will not find anything of value) or starve to death as most of the population will.

 

Otherwise i do the same stuff, other people do to be green: Consuming sustainably generated electricity, having no car, using stuff until it breaks, using shopping bags made from plant fibers...

And having no kids, wich is the most green thing any individual could do, as it makes your footprint stop growing after your death.

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there's a scientist who has found out that decaying plastics produce a lot of gasses that damage the atmosphere, then there's all that plastic in the sea.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45043989

Lovely......

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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I am currently working at an institute for environmental and sustainable chemistry. The stuff I hear everyday is just horryfying. I always thought that our drinking water is well checked and protected. It actually is, but only against the stuff we know we should look for. Thus, there are tons of substances that go unnoticed, just because we don't know we should look for them. One example (just recently studied here) was pesticides from facades of buildings. They are basically in every paint used for facades (to protect from mold, algae, etc). The problem is that they reach the ground water more or less unhindered (especially in city areas). Wastewater treatment plants can only partially get rid of them (if at all) and as a consequence they get into the environment and finally the ground water. And this is true not only for these, but various biocides of day to day use (in more products than I would have thought: disinfectants, mosquitoe repellents, regular cleaning agents, detergents, you name it) that reach the sewers and cannot be filtered out. It can be quite depressing working in this area and knowing that a great deal of substances that are carried into the environment are not regulated in any way and that we even cannot detect them as this would overwhelm our analytics. At least, I am working in an institute that tries to work against this trend. Still, mostly I feel like it is a drop in the ocean :(

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The concept of "climate change" has become politicized because monied interests either can not adapt to reality or are unwilling to adapt to reality.

 

The society that best adapts itself to reality will, ultimately, be the society that prospers the most.

 

However, lest anyone think that the above statements are overtly "progressive," let us remember that there are significant vulnerabilities in the most progressive proposals to combat climate change.

 

Renewable energy is ultimately powered by an 'outside motor' (sunshine, wind, etc.) and storage of that energy is a significant vulnerability within the strategy to switch over to a chiefly renewable energy power supply. Research & implementation of nuclear energy, as detestable as it may seem, must continue until the science of energy storage is more fully understood.

 

A reduction of, but not the elimination of, meat consumption would also be very positive for the environment. Humans are omnivores, not herbivores; A strictly vegetarian diet has surprisingly limited benefits for human physiology. The majority of physiological benefits of a vegetarian diet occurs only within the first few weeks because of the absence of harmful foods in a diet and not the increase of beneficial foods. There is only so much available land to grow food; It would be impossible for the Earth to have enough usable land to have everyone convert to a strictly vegetarian diet.

 

Simply because the most progressive ideas do not have solid scientific backing does not mean that conservative agendas, by default, have merit.

 

The conservative tactic of "The Earth is very complex and we don't know the full truth"-style of arguments against climate change strategy is false. Simply because we, society, do not know the "full truth" about any topic does not mean that we can not apply what we do know in order to better shape our surroundings. I do not know the "full truth" of how a telephone works but I know enough to place the handset onto the receiver to allow the telephone to receive telephone calls. I know enough that if the telephone is unplugged from the wall then the telephone will never receive any telephone calls. Merely because some parts of the telephone can not be explained does not invalidate those parts of the telephone that have solid evidential explanations.

 

The conservative tactic of "If we adopt X environmental measure, we shall be at a fiscal disadvantage and be somehow penalized" is another falsehood. The adoption and application of reality-based rules is always the best practice for any organization. Suppose I always bought a cup of coffee in the morning before heading off to work for $2 dollars. Over the course of a typical year, that expenditure would result in around $500 dollars per year for one cup of coffee. How much do I need that cup of coffee? If I discontinue that practice, I not only save $500 dollars but I also reduce landfill by 300 paper cups. My health might be marginally better because of the lack of caffeine and other liquids that I add to the coffee. Those resources now have a better chance of being diverted to areas that better need them. There would be short-term financial pain for the store that no longer has my business but the business would adapt accordingly; They might raise the price of coffee or divert some of their store to merchandise that produces a greater benefit (celery sticks, perhaps?). Overall, every society needs to adopt best practices as thoroughly and as quickly as they can if they want their society to prosper in the long term.

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I think it is a tendency of ours to get distracted by "pragmatic" thinking, like the stuff you pointed out (im sure, in jest) - should we train to live in a post apocaliptic era, buy lots of guns, should we stash food somewhere, it all reminds me of The Road. Sure, we could do that, but you wanna survive to do what? You wanna live in a bunker untill when? To then go where? If its all destroyed, what is the point? To keep on living, I guess one would argue. Hope for a new sort of evolution. But even the universe itself is going to cease eventualy, taking everything with it. So surely, its not about the ending, its not about getting somewhere, because any point we get to will eventually fall apart and disappear. So, obviously this is about the present. Its not about the destination, its about the trip. Thats what we experience, thats what we can influence.

 

The fact that we destroy the environment we live in and that we cant, no matter how hard we try, care enough to change our behaviour is nothing new, has happened repeatedly in smaller scales throughout history (see ancient civilizations and how they fell, historic cities that were abandoned, etc). Its just a genetic thing. We see that in fast foward mode with viruses and bacteria. Our "leaders", our politicians, our noblemen, we as consumers, its beyond our forces to stop pursuing that which we were taught to pursue, and we cant physically change that. Whatever progress we have seen in this area as well as others, have come, against all odds and contrary to the whole of the community, from crazy, resilient minorities that were born with something "broken" inside, and decided to care.

 

Im joking of course but its true that even though we all have our concerns and fears for the future of the planet, we feel impotent and, often time, turn a blind eye, let ourselves sink into the business as usual lifestyle, because the thought is unbearable. But I think its clear that the solution for this problem is not the survival thing, the everyone for themselves mentality. The civilization can only get better through cooperation and solidarity. We just need to let our fears be heard. Instead of judging others for not taking the actions needed, we should get together and take the actions we can, with however small means we have. Its not about each doing their part, thats not gonna change it. Its about actually getting together, talking about it, building a common dream and working to go in that direction. Change the perception, change the cultural environment. We should teach our kids what is nature, how to be kind to animals, what is our own nature as beings and how to help others and achieve cool things together. That we dont need all the crap they want us to have. And sure, why not, teach them how to build houses with natural materials, to find joy running around the trees and sitting around a campfire singing songs (sure it sounds like a hippie thing to do, but try it, its pretty fun). Or we can teach them how to best their school mates through discipline and private classes, give them all the advantages they need to surprass others and get into those limited university openings. Slave away in that corporate job, climbing the social ladder, rising above others. Stuff like that. I mean, the demented people in power today are all true believers in this sort of world view, living and breathing it. And its no wonder we are going in the direction we are going.

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We live in societies that encourage us to respect delusions; to value feelings over facts and to sacrifice long term planning for short term victories. As long as those things are true, it's hard to be optimistic about our chances.

 

Global warming isn't the top of my concerns...it's the fact that the number of crazy people on the planet is not decreasing, but the amount of damage a single crazy person can do continues to go up.

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1) Humans are exceeding the global resource limits.

We are not. Even with current tech level, all relevant resources will last at least for 1000s of years into the future (metals, coal, oil, energy etc.).

Even if actual shortages were to develop, we could kickstart recycling, which still is at minimum levels.

On top of that, we could "mine" garbage landfills, which contain about everything we ever produced and wasn't recycled.

Energy, perhaps a topic deserving special mention, will also not become scarce, probably the opposite; coal reserves will last at least for another few 1000 years; oil and gas hundreds of years (if not longer, due to fracking);

solar, wind and wave energy are in their infancy, but exponentially growing; nuclear energy will last for 1000s of years as well, especially with thorium or uranium extraction from sea water;

and if nuclear fusion becomes available eventually, energy prices could practically become zero, causing a shock of growth throughout the economy, because just about every resource is limited by mining, which is, if automated,

practically only a function of energy input - with really cheap energy, everything else (but human work) becomes really dirt-cheap,too! Even, for example gold, because there are huge reserves of gold, it only is expensive to mine and chemically extract it, and those costs are ultimately all energy costs (for the moving of soil and the chemicals for extraction like cyanide).

Garbage disposal is also no problem anymore, if energy becomes really cheap - because we already have all the technology to remove/process all garbage and toxic materials, it is currently just not economically feasible because of high energy costs.

With almost zero energy cost, we could "mass-spectrometer" all garbage, heat it into a plasma and cleanly separate all elements in it by deflection in a magnetic field.

Zero-cost energy also means very cheap rocketry, and we could begin space/asteroid mining - those things up there are limitless resources of all elements we ever could want.

Therefore do not worry: There is no limit to real growth.

 

Possible exception: Parts of the ecosystem, for example overfishing of the oceans. But this is a political issue, mostly an Asian problem. But if we were to reduce fishing substantially for a few years, most biologists looking at the problem are sure that fish stocks would quickly and for some time exponentially restore themselves (there is no limit of food at the base of the sea's food chain - plankton - and without industrial fishing, fish stocks would restore themselves quickly.

2) The economic system incentives or requires infinite growth and increased consumption, while issue 1) is still in play.

That is not quite correct: The economy needs indeed growth, but only in money, and money can be and is made at will.

​Economically, real growth is no requirement - we can perfectly well exchange a static amount of goods and services indefinitely, while still getting paid interests, dividends, rents and profits - the "growth" will be purely financially, as new money is put into existence to pay for the profits and interest every year (which act as incentive to save and incest in capitalism) - consummation can remain constant, while only money supply grows exponentially, and money is just a symbol for making economic

transactions and controlling incentives - every other dozens of years we will have to remove the old money by cutting a few zeroes from the money, but real economic activity can without any theoretical or practical problem stay constant, while still having exponential financial "growth". This is achieved through inflation, which for reasons I have here not the time and space to explain, is anyway, at low levels, a very good thing for the economy (hint at one of the reasons for this: Inflation eats up debts, lowering the debt burden and stimulating the economy).

 

3) The society and welfare is built based on the premise of infinite growth and increasing productivity, both of which increases 1) and 2).

They are not. Given enough energy we can sustain society and "welfare" at current levels indefinitely.

To be less confused by money (which is a most confusing complex topic, even Mr. Alan Greenspan himself mentioned that he not really understands what money is, despite his almost 200-IQ and a life time of studying it) imagine the economy in an utopic way by considering money to not have been invented yet - so we all barter somehow. This removes many confusions. You will learn that neither real growth in money nor productivity is necessary, it's merely highly convenient.

And while not necessary at all, everything appear right now to look like infinite growth in productivity and production - because we seem technologically and energetically just getting started.

With the advent of widespread solar energy extraction (radiation, wind, wave energy) or even nuclear fusion, we have all we need to get REALLY kick-started: Base metals will become extremely cheap and plentiful, and if we enter space, even just our own solar system... we are on track for exponential growth for the next millennia to come.

 

4) One might argue that new technology might change things, but thus far it looks like technology only increases 1), 2) and 3). Even if you invent the miracle of zero-cost-energy-from-nowhere, you still need to consume material resources. Better technology in general means more and faster consumption, not less. Sometimes tech improves efficiency and decreases waste, but the desired net effect is increased production and consumption, always.

Economic growth does not equal resource use growth.

Examples:

New cars weigh LESS than earlier cars and are almost 100% recycled. New cars, better cars, need only more ideas - and energy.

Smartphones drove and drive a huge productivity increase; yet, they are tiny devices,, using less metal than the school-lunch bread box of a single pupil 100 years ago.

The "growth" is all in the science/technology/software, our greater ability to manipulate matter and data.

All resources on earth are more enough to give every human 1000s of smartphones; in reality, nobody wants that many, and the old ones get recycled, the new products are materially the old ones, but in new form and shape and a higher

grade of sophistication in using the same old matter.

Currently it looks a lot like that we are indeed growing absolute resource utilization (due to a growing number of humans globally rising from poverty), but due to tech level and therefore productivity increases the resource use per capita

is falling. But this is not even important - with the advent of fusion or at least global solar extraction, we have so much energy, that we can easily grow exponentially for a long time.

5) Global warming (among other things) is caused by all 1, 2, 3 and 4. All the stuff mentioned above seems to be an eternal no-way-out feedback loop that accelerates the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. After some level, the feedback loop doesn't even need human activity to accelerate.

The causes of global warming are not really clear, it is not even clear if the current warming is extraordinary - earth's climate oscillated wildly in the past millions of years, and any climate stability is merely an illusion we humans have because of our short life times and short history (=written reports of the past).

CO2 sure has been and is rising, but it is not clear that this simply causes "global warming" - climate is chaotic (chaos theory) and hugely difficult to understand/predict, even the best weather/climate models today run on supercomputers are almost worthless in predicting just a few days of climate correctly.

CO2 is a powerful fertilizer for plants that stimulates their growth powerfully (also true for algae in sea water that absorb most CO2 and yield the larger part of photosynthesis on earth, dry land plants only contribute a small amount) - the CO2 is probably going to be soon enough converted into biomatter, neutralizing it.

 

 

6) Global warming is expected to cause political, economical, etc crises, wars and famine.

---above this line is mostly facts, below this line things get sketchy---

As I wrote above, your "facts" seem mostly incorrect. There is no crisis.

 

But there is the public propaganda of a crisis. This, in my opinion, is a result of political and economic interests.

What is happening is that many groups, with supply of money and ideas from elites and some Western governments, try to conjure up a feeling of immediate danger, for example from global warming.

They say we need to emit less CO2 to down-regulate the "green house effect".

What would this mean?

Currently, the vast majority of global primary energy consumption is from burning fossil fuels (C, oil, gas).

The lives of billions of people - especially the poorer ones - depend on that energy - for heating, transport and for food (fertilizer is mostly produced from nitrogen out of thin air, which uses mostly fossil fuels as energy source; farming machinery and pesticides, indispensable for farming output, are all based on this energy).

Therefore, cutting fossil fuel consumption currently would mean concretely:

Starving to death most of Africa and Asia; stopping and reversing the economic development of China (which currently uses most fossil fuels, and most energy per country, with a steady growth).

Western fossil fuel use is not negligible, but minor.

Th Chinese coal fires alone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire

put out a GIGATON of uselessly burned coal every few years just like that!

One way or another, humanity will not stop burning fossil fuel, it's too cheaply available and currently necessary for survival of billions of people.

Measures to somehow conserve energy use in the West makes no sense - even if the whole West would suddenly vanish completely, fossil fuel use would be hardly impacted.

 

But the public production of fear from global warming ("We are all gonna burn to death in the heat!) is politically and economically useful: It serves as a powerful pretext to rise taxes for "fighting global warming".

This, to my knowledge, is possible (see below), but not the real reason for the propaganda and fear mongering.

 

We are capable of ending global warming right now, right here. Perhaps the Western governments already do. By terraforming.

On 9/11 all commercial aircraft were grounded for a few days. This caused an underreported climate effect: A sudden heat wave. Average temperatures went up significantly. Why?

Air craft traffic is highly significant. There are, at all times, 10s of thousands of aircraft flying around. They emit dust particles and water from their engines burning fuel, which causes contrails (the white lines often seen behind high-flying jets).

These persist, even long after vanishing to the human sense of sight, and cause solar radiation to be reflected back to space before being absorbed by atmosphere and soil.

With the sudden stop of air traffic this shielding effect was lost for some time, yielding a rise in local and global temperatures which was recorded by measuring stations world wide.

Already air traffic counter-acts global warming effects from irradiation of the planet.

Contrails are liquid or solid water and disperse soon and turn into water vapor. Any reflective effect is rather quickly lost.

The "father of the hydrogen bomb", Mr. Teller, already made a plan for the US government how to cheaply terraform a potential global warming crisis away:

By putting a few percent of additives into aviation fuel, that results in sulfate particles being released from the engine exhausts of the planes, which, due to their small particle size and optical properties, would accumulate in the upper atmosphere (µm-sized particles settle very slowly, in the range of about a few meters a day) and reflect back more than enough of solar radiation to cool the planet significantly, if necessary.

http://prospect.org/article/ultimate-sunblock-0

https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/244671.pdf

https://physicsworld.com/a/engineering-the-climate/

 

Whatever can be done or already is I do not know, but we are not helpless. Global warming can be averted without reducing fossil fuel usage, however.

 

Now to why this propaganda for global warming happens in my opinion:

It is about introducing huge "climate" taxes. But not for the climate, but because we are literally are getting too rich!

Counterintuitive for most people, this is a serious economic problem.

Due to ever-rising productivity growth, the average incomes grow ever larger. THIS IS VERY BAD ACTUALLY!

See here:

1533504040361.jpg

You see that real incomes stagnated. This is done one purpose. Why? Paradoxically, the economy is destroyed if real incomes grow to large:

People work hard and reliably, and want to get rich only because they need money. This seems obvious, but the implications are not.

Productivity growth produces a growth in income and wealth. In the past, this abolished poverty.

But if mass incomes rise over a certain level, as they invariably will and must because of exponential real growth due to productivity growth, most people will stop working, or at least get sloppy at working, pretend to be sick more often etc.

Imagine an economy where even a low-income worker can earn 1000$ in current monetary value in a day.

Most people would become very lazy, and opt to work only a few days per month. This obviously sounds great for the individual workers, but spells doom for the economy on the whole:

Almost all real people only get up tiredly in the morning and go to a work they do not love reliably because they need money. If the need for that money is too easily satisfied, they will just work less, feel less driven to work,

and stop to try to work efficiently and to grow their productivity through discipline and education. The driver in most real people's lives that makes them go, makes them attend school, make them achieve, makes them ponder ways to make money or get rich - which is effectively about trying to get ideas about productivity increases or new products which improve other people's lives - is the lack of money. If a person has "enough" money we usually call this person "rich" - because he can then afford to stop working. Fine for the individual, fine for a small class of humans - but economically impossible for the majority!

If everybody were rich - say, if we printed up one billion dollars for everybody, which we easily could do - nobody would want and need to work anymore, and we have the paradox - if everybody is financially rich, everybody is suddenly poor again,

because nobody is working, nothing is produced, no services are rendered anymore.

This is an extreme example. But this effects starts sooner, and subtler.

Therefore, real incomes for the mass of the people must be capped at a certain level, either by not paying them, or by taxing them.

In the past decades, the upper class absorbed most of the extra wealth from the workers and therefore kept the economy going. (Most rich people like Buffett or Bezos or Jobs are different from most people - they will still work hard when they are already billionaires.)

This hit a limit, as the rich got richer, but could not do anything useful with their increasing wealth.

We now need to redistribute the vast productivity growth, the vast incomes, away from the workers, and spread them out to other people - whatever we do, pay for aircraft carriers and other hugely expensive tools of war,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Report_from_Iron_Mountain

or if we put the production into landfills - we need to get the real income away from the vast majority of workers, or the workers will reduce their work volume and then growth ends, productivity and the whole economy is cut at it's root.

The means to that end is - the global poor. Negroes in Africa, poor in South America, Asia, wherever. We just need a means to redistribute the fruits of the hyperproductive Western workers away from them and give them to other people for

consummation. Western workers need to be tricked for they would otherwise protest and politically sabotage this measure.

The first solution is mass immigration of consumers into Western economies - and, importantly, in their social welfare nets - to absorb all the production from the hyper-productive Western workers. So, Africans, Syrians, whoever,

will arrive in the West, and eat up all the food and get social welfare monies and live in nice flats and use up all the things Western workers produce by having the fruit of their work transferred by the tax system to the immigrants.

It is no mere coincidence that those immigrants are low-IQ Africans and Arabs - and not high-IQ Asians - because those immigrants need to remain unemployed, in life-long need of the welfare system, so they can eat up all the production and therefore keep Western workers' real incomes low (because their taxes remove most of their incomes for the social welfare of the low-IQ immigrant consumers).

This keeps Western workers' real incomes low, therefore their need for income stays high, therefore they will keep working long and hard and skilledly, and therefore the economy remains stable, despite ever-rising productivity and real growth.

Foreign aid can have the same effect on keeping the workers in need of money, for it drains real income away from them.

Western workers generally only accept their huge welfare-taxes for the fear that they could need welfare themselves some day due to injury or unemployment. Therefore, excess income can be taken away from them in rising amounts if the welfare-consuming underclass is grown proportionally to real growth (if dumbing down

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_down

is not effective enough intra-socially to grow unproductive (welfare) consumers , mass immigration will be needed - and is happening right now).

But everything else that takes the real income away from Western workers will be useful: And a "climate tax" will, in some form or another, be exactly this wasteful destruction or at least re-routing of real incomes - as long as Western workers will

produce it, but cannot have it, all is well. And they will only keep producing really hard if they feel they need the money, that is, if they feel it is not enough and they fear unemployment or loss of income; and if the amount of money after taxes that is effectively available to them is always just barely enough. That will keep them in the treadmill treading energetically.

Western workers, and perhaps later East Asians, are the only effective workers, because they are the only ones with high IQs that can be educated highly enough to be highly productive and even inventive to grow productivity further.

You cannot do this with most Negroes and Arabs, for they are too low-IQ and lazy. Low-skilled workers are increasingly useless. The latter can only serve as consumers of the only possible producers, the Western workers.

 

 

7) Things mentioned in 6) causes societal collapse. Loss of food stocks and mass migrations should be very destabilizing to modern societies. Revolution/unrest is only N missed meals away. Whatever N is, is irrelevant. N will be reached, and the question is only when?

Also not true.

The industrial countries are militarily unbeatable. In the event of a real crisis (and not of the above qualifies), we can and will take all resources we need for our own survival by force away from the non-nuclear armed countries.

The Western countries with their powerful militaries are the last to starve to death, even in a major crisis.

Perhaps it is not known to you, but Western states are so overwhelmingly powerful militarily, conventionally and in ABC-weapons, that we could easily kill off all non-Western country's populations without losing a single of our own soldiers in actual fighting.

Social unrest in the West is also unlikely, because in the EU populations are too old; seniors do not revolt and do not pose a threat. At most youth does, for they alone have the energy and defiant spirit and health;

but I can assure you that Western populations are psychologically and technologically most tightly controlled.

The tiny social conflicts between "alt right" and leftists are harmless and even stirred by the elites to distract them into useless activities to neutralize youthful energies, which exist only in the first place because we grew too rich.

For example, in the US it was necessary to trick the mass of idiots into large student debts, which cannot be get rid of legally, and which effectively is what I explained above - an additional tax to keep the masses working in an economy of

unparalleled growth, to keep them in dire need of money, and therefore keep them working disciplinedly.

Student%2Bloans.jpg

 

Note that only the most stupid students suffer from these debts - mostly the kind of idiots that spend tens or 100s of thousands to study dance therapy, gender studies and other garbage that will never afford them a job that let them

earn enough to ever repay their debts, keeping them so in debt for all their lives, and so keeping them as motivated workers all their lives.

It's deception, it's a trick, but it's a good and useful trick.

 

8) Large enough simultaneous societal collapse in several countries means the end of civilization as we know it.

9) After the collapse, there will be millions dead, and the remaining people are probably living in the woods or polluted ruins with simple technology. Continuing our current lifestyle would only bring about another collapse later.

I've got to live a nice life being part of this consumption era, so in the end, I'm probably getting what I deserve, but I'm wondering about the future of my kids. As a parent, my main reason of existence now is to maximize the chances of my offspring.

If you are not stupid and your kids not as well, you will have a fine life.

Nuclear weapons kept us safe from war and will probably keep doing so.

You see, the upper class cares not to kill us in war, as history proves very well.

But the upper class fears for their own lives. And with nukes, the upper class cannot be safe far behind front lines, because nukes can reach them there. Therefore, we had no major wars for decades, and hopefully and probably

will not have in the foreseeable future.

Social unrest can be most effectively dealt with by police, secret police and propaganda.

I cannot explain here, but be assured that internal Western security is firmer than ever, for the technologies of control are vastly more developed (and keep accelerating) better than publicly known.

 

Record temperatures and wildfires every year. Extreme weather and crop failure years are the norm now rather than exception. To me, it looks like it is starting to escalate now. The fan is already on and the shit is being loaded onto the release mechanism above it. Since it is large scale human influence on the environment, all the individual can do to watch and wait it to happen.

So the end questions are:

Q1: am I crazy when I think about these things? Every time I do, I follow the same line of thoughts to the same inevitable conclusion.

Q2: should we be teaching survival skills to our children, instead of AI programming? Should one invest in guns and ammo instead of stocks and funds? Should we be stocking some MRE to a hidden bunker somewhere?

Q3: what does your get-out-of-dodge -bag contain? Where do you go when shit hits the fan? Does it even help?

 

It could be after our natural life spans (do we even care, then?), or it could be within the next 20 years.

 

Not once do I find a comforting result in this line of thinking without deliberately overlooking something. It is worrisome. Thank you for pointing me my error.

 

Reality and personal perception of reality are not necessarily the same, yet it is personal perception that governs ones feelings and actions.

If I would just "feel" and believe the propaganda instead of applying my thinking, I would feel that there is a constant crisis and everything gets worse. The opposite is the truth.

truth___kissinger_by_keldbach-d8a58p9.jp

 

Try not to fall victim to the propaganda. Do not feel, think. Above all, know the difference, for this is where most people fail, and therefore can be controlled and manipulated.

 

 

There are real dangers, for example a big asteroid impact. This could even wipe out humanity suddenly and at once. Many do not actively fear that, but it is one of the very few realistic threats.

 

(Sorry if you found this text too long, and I apologize if I used weird English or remained unclear - English is not my 1st languange, I am German, and I just wanted to write up some of my thoughts for I have not often opportunity for this.)

Edited by Outlooker
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"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

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Thanks to Outlooker for the informative post; I didn't have time to read absolutely everything but I think you covered everything I wanted to say, which is mainly that the "OMG we're all going to die of heatstroke!" theory of global warming is junk, as is the idea that the world is somehow "running out of resources" and we need to reduce the human population to "make room".

 

One thing you mentioned briefly that I think needs more emphasis, is that we don't actually need developments like nuclear fusion in order to have almost limitless cheap energy. The technology has existed since the mid twentieth century in the form of nuclear fission, which is low maintenance, almost carbon-free, and will last for millenia. We just need to get past the silly scientifically-illiterate paranoia about nuclear power stations somehow being dangerous, which they are not.

 

It is effectively impossible for a nuclear power station to somehow turn into a bomb (the worst nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl, was not a nuclear explosion but a steam explosion, and even that only killed around 66 people, most of whom were firefighters who weren't told they were dealing with radioactive debris). Nor do they emit any significant emount of radiation into the environment; the average coal-fired power station actually releases more radioactive substances than nuclear.

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@Outlooker: You make some good points and some I can and will not agree with. But I don't want to comment on all of them as this takes too much time right now. However, there are two things that I want to point out: There is a vast number of scientific papers that agree that the climate change that is currently happening is man made. It may be true that we can not know, where this change will lead, but I think the general direction described by meteorologists all around the world can be trusted. As to how easy it is to avert it: You said yourself that climate is an extremely complex system, so I doubt that putting a couple of substances into aircraft fuel tanks will solve this. Despite that you cannot predict how this will affect ecosystems around the world. Maybe these substances (or transformation products in the environment) are toxic and you suddenly you kill all the bees in the world and we still starve to death, just in a milder climate. This is exaggerated, of course, but I hope you get my point.

The second point I want to comment on is: you make it sound as if we recycle almost everything right now. This is also not true. I am sure as an exemplary German you separate your waste, so all plastics in the yellow bags and all paper can be recycled. The truth is, only a small percentage of plastics can be reused. The most common "recycling" (with 63%) is thermal processing plastics for energy; i.e. burning it. Cars and smartphones use a vast number of composite materials that are impossible to separate with current technology. Maybe turning them into plasma and regenerating them will be viable as soon as energy is no longer an issue, but up until then the materials used for these products are lost for further use.

Finally, because OrbWeaver chimed in on this: the problem with nuclear energy is not the safety of the power plants (which could still be much safer if they would use Thorium instead of Uranium, but nuclear research was furthered with the latter, because it can be weaponised, while the first cannot). The problem is the nuclear waste and what to do with it. You have waste that will continue to radiate for a couple of thousand years, you need to store it somewhere, where the radiation cannot get out, where you can store multiple tons of that material and where you can guarantee that it will not get into the environment (and more importantly ground water). I am no friend of how Germany shut down all its nuclear power plants in a short time even though they could still have been used for another couple of years; especially, without having an alternative (so we just buy nucelar energy from France), but in the long run nuclear energy is not viable until we know how we can safely dispose of the nuclear waste.

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Wow! Nice!

 

Like I expected, the folks in this forum never fail in generating interesting points of views.

 

Outlooker really put an interesting piece here. Thank you for that! Some of the topics, I am familiar with, and the arguments sound convicing or at least match with my perceptions.

 

But! I may be cutting some corners here but the main argument seems a little far fetched:

 

"Climate change is a conspiracy by the elites. Its purpose is to prevent the worker class from getting too rich and start slacking off, which would result in the economy to grind to a halt."

(Sorry if I misunderstood, this is what I truly got when I connected the dots.)

 

I always get very sceptical when consipiracy theories come up. They often assume god-like skill from the ones running them: no info get spilled out to the public, the conspiracy runs like a train without issues, everything unfolds as intended, etc, etc. In the real world, nothing ever works like that. Doing even a basic thing gets sidetracked by unexpected hurdles. Trying to keep a secret with 3 people, never stays a secret unless 2 of the people are dead. It seems a lot to swallow that an international conspiracy is running without it getting exposed somehow. Remember, the climate change was first put forth by the researchers, and the elites did not listen to the message. Or course conspiracy theory allows the explanation that it was intentional.

 

Also, I don't think the economy works the way you present: if we would make everyone a millionaire by printing more money, the value of money would be obliterated by inflation and a single piece of pizza would cost millions of euros.

 

I like your optimism and you have an interesting theory there, but it isn't well supported by peer reviewed scientific literature. (Not that I claim to be 100% informed by all the publications, I've just read stuff here and there.)

 

On the comment of nuclear power: yes, it is nice as long as it works. Then if the power plant is damaged (Chernobyl, Fukushima), you get areas where people cannot (or do not want to) go anymore. The radiation in the Chernobyl area is real and it is changing the organisms that live there. And the effects last for a very long time. So it is not exactly the safest way to power things either. It is great as long as no accidents happen. And I guess we all know how well we humans can avoid accidents. They happen eventually.

Clipper

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We just need to get past the silly scientifically-illiterate paranoia about nuclear power stations somehow being dangerous, which they are not.

They are not necessarily dangerous, but they can be if they are built or maintained in a way that is irresponsible or too "cheap" by trying to save costs by the operators of those plants.

With current technology they can be built and operated in a way that makes them highly secure; and even a catastrophic failure would very probably keep than safe, for example by use of core catchers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_catcher

But there are two threats that can make them a problem: Terrorism and war.

Terrorists could fly a big plane into the reactor.

Or, in the event of an all-out war just like in WW1 or WW2, nuclear power plants could be blown up. But this would perhaps almost be regarded to be on the level of nuclear war and therefore prevented by nuclear deterrence.

Nuclear waste is also a problem, but at least a limited one. All together nuclear energy is not ideal, but feasibly enough, and so it's no wonder so many plants exist and are currently built - China alone will built around 50 new plants in the next two decades:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China

 

Germany has ended fission plant construction and will end operating plants. This is not due to worries about the plants' safety, but for political and economic reasons:

1. Merkel competently knows how to stay in power, and after Fukushima Germans feared greatly, and by announcing the end of fission plants Merkel easily gained much voter support.

2. Actual reasons: To keep unemployment low - Germany has the world's highest energy prices (~30cents per kWh) - and this works as a tax to reduce unemployment, because the money is rerouted into renewables (wind, solar) which produce many more jobs per energy unit produced compared to fission plants.

---> But actually Germans are not significantly safer from possible reactor accidents, because Germany is surrounded by countries operating reactors (for example France which operates about 60 reactors, most of them just behind the German border) - in other words, Germany is surrounded by nuclear reactors, and wherever an accident with radioactivity release happens, chances are very high the wind blows the fallout into Germany. This proves that the end of the German nuclear industry is not actually associated with attempts to make Germany safer from fallout.

 

 

 

It is effectively impossible for a nuclear power station to somehow turn into a bomb

Yes, that cannot happen. The only real danger is the release of radioactive material from the reactor core.

(the worst nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl, was not a nuclear explosion but a steam explosion,

Yes, because the Russians lacked resources for (more expensive) safer reactor design and there also was human error. The reactor design was inherently flawed - the reactor was built in a way exponential energy release was fundamentally possible.

In Fukushima reactors heated up so strongly due to lack of cooling that water reacted forming hydrogen, which exploded the outer hull of the buildings. Still, that is vast incompetence by the Japanese, and would have been easily preventable by more and better protected emergency generators to drive the cooling pumps - which was not done to save costs. Again, the same old cause of accidents...

Still, Fukushima is a mess - they have molten cores, and this will take decades to clean up and produce vast costs.

 

and even that only killed around 66 people, most of whom were firefighters who weren't told they were dealing with radioactive debris).

You are talking about the Liquidators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_liquidators

Very tragic. Soviets sent thousands of young men into a radioactive hell. Surely many more than the 66 you mentioned died soon afterwards. Real data are still secret or wrong, because the Russians want to "safe face".

Nor do they emit any significant emount of radiation into the environment; the average coal-fired power station actually releases more radioactive substances than nuclear.

Very true. Most people think that radioactive emissions stem from nuclear plants. Wrong.

Most emissions come from burning coal, seconded by volcano eruptions, because the earth's insides are highly radioactive.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97_old.pdf

Coal is actually containing much radioactivity, in the form of Uranium and Thorium, which is converted into ash by burning the coal and released in the air and spread around the planet as fallout on everything and everybody.

 

Sidenote:

Most people think that any amount of radioactivity is dangerous. Not so!

 

1.

The human body itself is quite radioactive, because the potassium it contains is - 40K is a significant radiation source everybody is literally made out of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40

https://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/faqs/faqradbods.html

 

2.

Actual experiments prove that humans as well as animals show minimum cancer incidence not at zero, but somewhat higher radiation levels, due to hormesis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477686/

Which is not surprising if you think about the fact that our environment and we ourselves always were and are slightly radioactive; therefore, radiation-induced genetic errors were always existing in our evolutionary past and we, and most other organisms, have evolved mechanisms to correct genetic damage caused by this; it seems those mechanisms are not always in full gear, and are stimulated by low levels of radiation, resulting in lower cancer incidence and therefore higher life expectancy in populations exposed to somewhat higher radiation levels over a long time (pilots, radiologists, nuclear workers etc.).

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There is a vast number of scientific papers that agree that the climate change that is currently happening is man made. It may be true that we can not know, where this change will lead, but I think the general direction described by meteorologists all around the world can be trusted.

I do not think it can be trusted, because scientific studies were messed with in the past, for example in medicine to sell drugs, or in nutrition, to sell sugar or cigarettes, and all this on such a grand scale that those lies became "scientific consensus".

But I do not know. But this is not worrying me, because I don't think the question if it exists, if it is a threat, or if it is man-made is actually important - if it is so or not, the outcome will be identical.

We can avert it, not by stopping to burn fossil fuel, but by geoengineering. If we cannot stop it, it makes no difference as well, for we have to suffer it one way or another.

The only actual reason this whole topic is controversial is not due to it's positive or negative existence, but only for the political and economic consequences the acceptance or rejection of it and the scale of its threat - whole economies, whole countries, whole business empires depend on if it is seen as true or false - coal industry, oil industry, renewable industries, geopolitical power distribution (China, oil producing countries,...) and much more depends on what becomes official consensus on the matter. Financial and global power outcomes will probably prove to be either way have much more impact than a few grades Kelvin of change in global average temperature.

 

 

so I doubt that putting a couple of substances into aircraft fuel tanks will solve this.

Top scientists think it will, because the effects of a lower amount of solar radiation reaching earth's surface can be quite accurately modeled and predicted; at least much easier than the more complex results of a few more per mille in CO2 in the atmosphere.

Despite that you cannot predict how this will affect ecosystems around the world.

Yes. But those are actually in constant change anyway. Constancy is a human illusion due to our short life times and history. The ecosystem as a whole is extremely robust, at least much more so than humanity is.

And if we cannot predict climate terraforming, we cannot predict the effects of lowering our fossil fuel use any better.

We only have probabilities, and we can even be wrong about those. The future is an unexplored land, and all of our models of reality are necessarily simplifications.

Maybe these substances (or transformation products in the environment) are toxic and you suddenly you kill all the bees in the world and we still starve to death, just in a milder climate.

The proposed substances are toxicologically harmless - sodium and calcium sulfate, for example, are practically consumed by all humans and most other organisms, because they are blown about with wind taken up from soil, or released in volcano eruptions etc. Their release from aviation fuel into the higher atmosphere seems very harmless, and will be monitored closely for its effects.

Ideas to dope the oceans with iron to cause a sudden plankton/algae growth explosion to absorb CO2 for terraforming, seems, for example, more difficult to predict.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization

The second point I want to comment on is: you make it sound as if we recycle almost everything right now.

You misread. I wrote that recycling currently is very underutilized. Mostly it happens with iron/steel, which is cheaply recyclable.

I am sure as an exemplary German you separate your waste, so all plastics in the yellow bags and all paper can be recycled.

Not really, but I collect waste paper and put it into an extra garbage bin. At least this will make fine toilet paper, or so I hope. Everything else in household garbage recycling seems less useful right now to me. Oh, and batteries. I dutifully carry those to the recycling bins in the supermarket, for they are little treasures of valuable metal, mostly manganese. Usually I am selfish, but these things make sense to me and are easily done, so I comply out of conviction.

The truth is, only a small percentage of plastics can be reused. The most common "recycling" (with 63%) is thermal processing plastics for energy; i.e. burning it. Cars and smartphones use a vast number of composite materials that are impossible to separate with current technology. Maybe turning them into plasma and regenerating them will be viable as soon as energy is no longer an issue, but up until then the materials used for these products are lost for further use.

Yes. But if we really at last get cheap energy, we can afford to close the cycle: Plastics are burned for energy made into water and CO2; and with enough energy, we already today have the technology to make any plastic (as long as it is made only out of C,N,O, H) out of thin air.

The problem is the nuclear waste and what to do with it.

Yes. But: We already have really much of that damn currently useless and dangerous stuff. Getting more of it, like doubling the amount ten or hundreds of times, is not changing much anymore, because only the scale of the problem changes, not the fact that the problem is there in the first place. If we produce 1000 times more radioactive waste, the problem of the waste will be much less larger than 1000 times economically, because the facilities for storing it are there already or have to be built and maintained anyway. So it makes sense to expand the production of this waste, as least until better options come along.

But you are right: It would be much better we would not have the problem in the first place. But know: Most of the radioactive waste is not the result of civil energy production, but of the fact that governments wanted nukes to get more power and security from those; radioactive waste is therefore primarily caused by geopolitical motives, with electrical energy production only being a useful afterthought.

Without the possibility to build bombs, I doubt that civil nuclear industries would have been developed to the scale seen today.

You have waste that will continue to radiate for a couple of thousand years, you need to store it somewhere, where the radiation cannot get out, where you can store multiple tons of that material and where you can guarantee that it will not get into the environment (and more importantly ground water).

It will be necessary to guard and check it all the time. This seems possible, costly, but possible. It is already possible to construct vessels that remain stable for thousands of years. Planning so far into the future seems questionable, judging by the advances in science and technology of just the last 100 years. Perhaps we will have a tech sooner or later to process it into harmless material, or will be able to shoot it into the sun safely.

Currently, however, science and technology appears to develop exponentially, ever more quickly; it seems unwise to plan for such long periods of time in nuclear waste safety.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"When outmatched... cheat."— Batman

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I'm a conspiracy nut, but my conspiracy is on the other side of things...

 

I believe as Stumpy alluded to, that we've already gone past some critical deciding point and all the bluster about

saving the environment is for naught. The Clathrate gun has already begun emitting Methane from Siberia and

the environment will soon tell the tale of what Exxon and the Military Industrial Complex have hidden from the general

populace since before the 1970's.

 

Look how scared Natalia Shakhova is:

 

 

To me, it's quite clear that the following will happen:

 

1) Mass depopulation measures (instigate strife, start wars, etc)

2) Remaining population moves into enclosed cities (aka space stations on Earth)

 

Evidence of my theory:

 

1) Exxon scientists letters leaked

2) Biosphere 2 experiment

3) Swine Flu 2009

4) Bill Gates TED talks about depopulation

5) Bee population collapse

6) Redbull "xtreme" culture. Youth doing risky things for Youtube glory and killing themselves

7) Tide Pod eating trend

8) School Shooter epidemic

9) Terrorism Epidemic (stadium attacks, van attacks)

10) Western Infertility Epidemic

11) FUD \ conspiracy theories about Vaccines ( less vaccinated folks == more death )

12) Prevalence of Autism

13) Evangelized waiting to late 30's or older to have kids (see 10)

14) Evangelized Homosexuality in the mainstream media (CIS = Lame, LGBTQ = New Coolness)

15) Increased animosity between Genders ( Men's Rights \ MGTOW vs SJW Feminists)

16) Increased animosity between Religions

17) Increased animosity between Political extremes

18) Increased Racial strife

19) Increased Middle Eastern conflicts (Saudi proxy wars)

20) Opioid epidemic

 

I could go on an on.

 

It's all pretty much in line with what you would expect to see in a coordinated effort to depopulate the world in preparation to live Bio-Domes.

 

Should you prepare to live in an apocalyptic wasteland?

 

Only if you think you won't be valuable enough to be allowed into the Bio-Dome \ Enclosed City.

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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"Climate change is a conspiracy by the elites. Its purpose is to prevent the worker class from getting too rich and start slacking off, which would result in the economy to grind to a halt."

Not a conspiracy. Or yes, indeed one. But nothing extraordinary. Just regular politics. You see, you cannot successfully do politics without tricking most of the people, most of the time. If you call that conspiracy, you may, but it is business as usual.

This gentleman put it into finer, more concise words:

quotes-you-can-fool-all-the-people-some-

 

I sometimes wonder if it is really true, because it seems to me the last part of his statement seems to be possible today: More and more people become relatively dumber, because the ratio of their actual knowledge and understanding to the growing volume of existing as well as necessary knowledge to understand the world/nature/tech/science/politics/economics leans more and more towards their disadvantage.

Additionally, the absolute amount of knowledge and understanding on average in Western populations is actually falling, while that of the elites (rulers, scientists, top management, actively governing elements of the upper class etc.) is growing and greater than ever; in other words, the gulf between under class, middle class and elites in cognitive ability becomes ever wider.

At least in the lower classes, this seems to be due to something called "digital dementia" (you may google it for your own benefit).

 

I always get very sceptical when consipiracy theories come up.

Conspiracy THEORIES are a means to suppress certain critical thinking and connecting of facts, by classifying it as ideas of mentally unstable people. As such, already the term itself is a propaganda tool, to quickly sabotage certain lines of thought some see as dangerous to their interests.

Conspiracies exist - I am most certain. For example, recently my kids conspired against me, one luring me away from my guard post at the kitchen under a pretext, the other using this moment to plannedly access the cookie jar. Now, if two kids can develop a conspiracy theory and act it out, I am certain the cognitive, political and financial elites of the world are also capable of doing this, and much to the same end, the cookies just being very much larger.

 

They often assume god-like skill from the ones running them: no info get spilled out to the public, the conspiracy runs like a train without issues, everything unfolds as intended, etc, etc. In the real world, nothing ever works like that. Doing even a basic thing gets sidetracked by unexpected hurdles. Trying to keep a secret with 3 people, never stays a secret unless 2 of the people are dead. It seems a lot to swallow that an international conspiracy is running without it getting exposed somehow.

The public is spectacularly misinformed about the real causes and goals of politics. Otherwise effective policing and upholding the appearance of democracy would seem impossible.

And many people in critical functions and positions of power know what is really happening.

Consider that even today many documents from WW2 and even WW1 are still secret.

Consider that governments invest heavily in intelligence agencies; why do they keep up those extremely costly organisations, if everything can be known from the press?

I think the real situation is even more dire; I am certain most people are kept under an umbrella of a fake reality on purpose. But let's hear it from the experts:

C7Ksn8nVsAAHAir.jpg

 

 

cvejrhbjt.jpg

 

 

william-casey-on-disinformation.jpg

 

 

 

Remember, the climate change was first put forth by the researchers, and the elites did not listen to the message.

Governments and other powerful organisations can "frame" real developments dependent on their needs in one direction or their opposite. There is a whole profession of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(propaganda)

 

Also, I don't think the economy works the way you present: if we would make everyone a millionaire by printing more money, the value of money would be obliterated by inflation and a single piece of pizza would cost millions of euros.

You perhaps misread; this is what I wrote - and I argued that the effects would arrive much sooner than with such large sums, therefore real incomes need to be capped.

 

I like your optimism and you have an interesting theory there, but it isn't well supported by peer reviewed scientific literature. (Not that I claim to be 100% informed by all the publications, I've just read stuff here and there.)

I think YOU are bit overoptimistic - if you wait for real political developments exactly and truthfully to be explained in detail in consensus in scientific literature (like history) then you will ALWAYS be rather late to read it - 200 years or so...

The trick to get rich, as well as the trick to save one's hide, is always to quite correctly get what is really happening and then to rather correctly predict at least a little what will happening or could happen - this is how you make money, this is how you save your fortune, this is how some have saved themselves from concentration camp and gulag or killing fields ...

 

 

 

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"When outmatched... cheat."— Batman

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It is effectively impossible for a nuclear power station to somehow turn into a bomb (the worst nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl, was not a nuclear explosion but a steam explosion, and even that only killed around 66 people, most of whom were firefighters who weren't told they were dealing with radioactive debris). Nor do they emit any significant emount of radiation into the environment; the average coal-fired power station actually releases more radioactive substances than nuclear.

 

Sorry, but no. The casualties were much, much higher. The brave dudes who went in laughable parodies of HAZMAT suits got cancer over the months after Chernobyl or some chronic oncological illnesses of different kind to endure a slow, painful death through boureaucracy in hospitals. Euthanasia is a felony.

Look up how asbestos is still not looked up seriously in Russia and the industry is still growing, contributing to more lung cancer cases basically. 70% of houses on land have roofs made from asbestos to this day in many post soviet countries.

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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I'm a conspiracy nut, but my conspiracy is on the other side of things...

Perhaps you should stop being a conspiracy nut and instead become a reality nut - try to figure out how things really are. A part of reality are conspiracies, so you will not have to give those up altogether.

 

To me, it's quite clear that the following will happen:

 

1) Mass depopulation measures (instigate strife, start wars, etc)

2) Remaining population moves into enclosed cities (aka space stations on Earth)

If that is really what you think, shouldn't you then prepare yourself? I don't know, hoarding canned food, weapons, antibiotics, soap?

 

Evidence of my theory:

 

1) Exxon scientists letters leaked

A leak can be real, or made deliberately towards a cause. Any document can be faked or genuine, but often it is impossible to know with certainty.

2) Biosphere 2 experiment

Just science. Such housings will not protect anyone from systemic breakdown you hint at, only delay his end and extend his suffering. Elites should know this.

3) Swine Flu 2009

Due to many Asians living practically with their animals under one roof and in one room, it is to be expected that new epidemics again and again develop from there.

4) Bill Gates TED talks about depopulation

If elites would want to just kill us off they would hardly announce it publicly.

The rich have money, but money itself is worthless, it can only be used to trade things from other people and make other people do things for them. The rich need people, they must improve the lives of people,

because it's other people who invent, produce, built and maintain what rich people want. Depopulation makes no sense.

5) Bee population collapse

Happened before, happens now, will happen again. This is a complex ecosystem, and species go through a bottleneck again and again, for example when most members of a species die due to an infection, and only the survivors

make up the ancestors of the species of the future. For example, human ancestors could produce their own vitamin C once; but for some reason we are all descendants of the animal that lost that ability.

6) Redbull "xtreme" culture. Youth doing risky things for Youtube glory and killing themselves

7) Tide Pod eating trend

Regular human stupidity. We are all very stupid, this is the human condition, just to a somewhat different degree.

And showing off and signalling mate value, for example, makes humans behave even dumber.

The world will probably not end because of this.

8) School Shooter epidemic

Runs since the early 90s or so, and here in Germany we even had somebody doing a school flamethrowing, killing 11:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_school_massacre

I have a personal hypothesis:

Sexual selection is a deadly endeavor. Mating and love is actually about killing other people, because those not being loved, not finding love, are exterminated in sexual selection.

Some kids may soon get the idea that they will never mate successfully.

So, an evolutionary program may activate, for example inducing rape.

But, mating is selecting people of the other sex which are genetically similar and then reproducing with them; this spreads one's own version of genes.

If that cannot be attained, it could make sense to find carriers of sets of genes that are much more different than the genes in oneself - we usually instinctively dislike these people.

So, if such a school shooter would selectively kill people he dislikes, that is people that carry on average more different genes than his own, he kind of would benefit versions of his own

genes in other people who successfully mate in the future, by removing their socio-sexual competition, and therefore effectively helping spreading the school-shooter's genes.

9) Terrorism Epidemic (stadium attacks, van attacks)

More or less constantly at low level for centuries.

10) Western Infertility Epidemic

Seed oils and obesity demonstratively hurt fertility in mammals. When 75+% of Americans are overweight or obese, this comes as no surprise.

11) FUD \ conspiracy theories about Vaccines ( less vaccinated folks == more death )

Vaccines actually cause injury, disease and even death.

But according to the same logic ambulance cars do: Those, too, cause injury and death (from traffic accidents) that would not exist if we had no ambulance cars.

But while ambulances clearly kill and maim, their overall net effect is positive for health and life span.

The same seems true for vaccines.

12) Prevalence of Autism

I don't know much about this, but it seems highly irrelevant for a depopulation crisis in the making.

13) Evangelized waiting to late 30's or older to have kids (see 10)

It seems economic reasons are the strongest cause for this.

14) Evangelized Homosexuality in the mainstream media (CIS = Lame, LGBTQ = New Coolness)

Actually a tiny real-world phenomenon, but greatly exaggerated in the media to sell ads because those things fascinate people, mostly by disgust.

Media must somehow attract viewers/clicks, even when nothing much happens to be reported.

Sex sells, weird sexual happenings sell better.

15) Increased animosity between Genders ( Men's Rights \ MGTOW vs SJW Feminists)

16) Increased animosity between Religions

17) Increased animosity between Political extremes

18) Increased Racial strife

19) Increased Middle Eastern conflicts (Saudi proxy wars)

Seems to me all just all the old conflicts and hysteria with fresh colors.

20) Opioid epidemic

So, many people take drugs and die from it. Nothing new, no existential threat for most.

 

 

It's all pretty much in line with what you would expect to see in a coordinated effort to depopulate the world in preparation to live Bio-Domes.

Should you prepare to live in an apocalyptic wasteland?

Only if you think you won't be valuable enough to be allowed into the Bio-Dome \ Enclosed City.

 

Real elites, I am certain, know how the world works, and that they need people for everything.

They cannot know who will invent the cure for their specific future cancer or that of their family member,

or the safety device saving them from plane or traffic accident.

They do not know which human will invent the technology, scientific discovery or art piece they will love to have;

therefore, real elites must logically seek to work towards that all other humans can develop their potential optimally;

then, those elites can benefit most themselves.

This approach is called

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_self-interest

Special exceptions excluded, this seems to be the logical optimum for elite goals to develop the world.

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws." - Plato

"When outmatched... cheat."— Batman

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I think that overall but it all boils down to is the following.

 

It is scientifically proved that humans can simultaneously only keep in their mind and be on track of about 2-3-4 things at a time throughout the day. Conclusion - don't litter your head with useless informational garbage. Take a run, do exercises, I feel better after that. It's okay to be lazy because the world is too aggressive. Our head shouldn't hurt for problems we are not personally responsible for.

 

Politically speaking, it's the fault of most post colonial countries that didn't renounce their imperial instincts - Russia, England, Germany, Austria and others. They divided the world in the messed up way it is now. To make Kashmir possible, to make Palestine a ghetto, to make Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa into Papuan people with Banana Republics.

I don't want to believe that China has imperial ambitions because they've been pragmatic up to now and the USA helped them survive WW2 and Japanese occupation. So I guess they won't do anything mad.

 

But guess what, if the end of the world happens, it's the dictatorships that will endure best of all. Their propaganda is twisted perfect for wars and crisis. North Korea and Cuba are awaiting the moment to proclaim that their poverty endurance has not been in vain. Let's not give them reasons to think they are right. I hope that common sense will prevail one day for all.

 

From a human rights standpoint, ecology and a healthy environment is one of the latest generation of legally binding areas. But again, dictatorships don't give a damn about these things. Try to make North Korea, Russia, India, China to reduce air pollution. Alas, there's no easy solution to none of this.

 

Personally I like to simplify things. If Holland could build their cities on water, you bet that Papuan people over the world will suffer the most from floods and various cataclysms. Developed countries are prepared the best. As far as we're concerned hurricanes only every happened in the Americas. Whether climate change directly causes the frequency of these things we don't know for sure.

 

On the other hand, many Europeans want all gypsy tribes to die (who have nothing in common with American Roma in a way), so they won't mind people getting deported and whatnot. Life goes on. Tomorrow's going to be a new day. Idiots like Orban keep dancing on people's bones and his own emigration of huns to the west. But everything that has a beginning has an end fortunately.

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Evidence of my theory:

 

 

3) Swine Flu 2009

 

10) Western Infertility Epidemic

11) FUD \ conspiracy theories about Vaccines ( less vaccinated folks == more death )

12) Prevalence of Autism

13) Evangelized waiting to late 30's or older to have kids (see 10)

14) Evangelized Homosexuality in the mainstream media (CIS = Lame, LGBTQ = New Coolness)

15) Increased animosity between Genders ( Men's Rights \ MGTOW vs SJW Feminists)

20) Opioid epidemic

 

 

20) Drugs were used by Ancient Greeks/Romans, Native American tribes too. That's how priests and Oracles made up they infamously inaccurate predictions and how many myths probably appeared.

15),14),13) I think it is human evolution and more understanding of themselves. For example in Ancient times/ Medieval Ages it was ok to marry your daughter at 12 years. Muslims and people in India to this day practice giving away their children for another wealthy family to increase social status.

It is biologically safe to have children until 40 years. After 35 it's more risky for the woman with increased miscarriage risk and higher risk of intellectual disability risk. But it skyrockets after 40 for both men and women (if at least one of them goes after that age during copulation).

Homosexuality was normal with Ancient times, famously within Sparta. Allegedly they also were the first to have pederasty. Romans also had that. Romans also sold their children to pay credits. Pater familias decided.

But in Ancient times they had no word for homosexuality. Nobody had a concept of that being part of one's identity. It was just an activity.

 

The famous theory of evolution in sexuality is that the moment when man understood that women become pregnant after sex - that was when patriarchy has dawned over most human societies to this day. That way men understood they have control over women.

Today, menstruation cycle for women is 9 months, but if you look at developing countries, women seldom menstruate in African countries especially in secluded tribes. They have children one after the other. So they have no time to think about women's rights and all that jazz.

 

12) My brother is autistic so maybe you would excuse my snobbishness to have a few words on this.

Autism is not caused by vaccines. It is just an unknown condition, caused by unknown things, that was even possible to diagnose because we have better medicine and we have less children and we pay more attention to out children since there's less of them. We don't leave the weak children dropped in the pit like Spartans did (and like Russia and ex-soviet countries still experience when hospitals doctors and nurses want a bribe for work). Autism can't be treated but we can make societies more inclusive for them as well as for people with "low functioning" varieties of autism/intellectual disabilities because if we keep having abortions based on knowing if you child has one of these conditions, than you may as well have an abortion if we find the "gay genes" or some other stupidity. Let's not do genocide like that. Abortion is a personal thing, but still.

 

11) Again, vaccines is a conspiracy thing. We had them in communism so this has nothing to do with financial interests of the West/Soros/Rockfellers/Rotschilds because the soviet state was too busy to feed it's own aristocracy.

 

10) Less children is a normal thing for developed countries from Japan to Western countries, to USSR. Cuba, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Somalia and countries caught in similar large problems caused by prolonged poverty, war - not. Medicine is too shitty to rely on it to have few children ( who might not survive to 12-16 years).

Also, maybe having less biological children is a good thing because Charles Dickens type of orphans will be less frequent?

One good thing is that process of deinstitutionalization and destroying that stupid thing of orphanages where abuse was frequent. Boarding schools suck for orphans in the West and in post soviet Internats all the same.

 

 

 

 

3) My dad had that, it's also called AH1N1. At least so the doctors said. Looked to me like flu alright.

I don't know about bird flu that was around before that 1 or 2 years before. But AH1N1 was pretty real it seems to me.

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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there is a way to fix the climate change, dump vast quantities of volcanic dust into the upper atmosphere world wide this will cool the planet probably causing a iceage, the side effect of this is that about 90% of the human population of the world would die, the ones to survive would be the ones still living off the land and seas as they did in the past before machines made it easy. Animals might survive depending where they are if the plastic doesn't kill them first.

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