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UK Government Study Finds: If Nothing Is Done, Expect Civilizations' Collapse By 2040
Authored by Nafeez Ahmed via Medium.com,
New scientific models supported by the British government’s Foreign Office show that if we don’t change course, in less than three decades industrial civilisation will essentially collapse due to catastrophic food shortages, triggered by a combination of climate change, water scarcity, energy crisis, and political instability.
Before you panic, the good news is that the scientists behind the model don’t believe it’s predictive. The model does not account for the reality that people will react to escalating crises by changing behavior and policies.
But even so, it’s a sobering wake-up call, which shows that business-as-usual guarantees the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it: our current way of life is not sustainable.
The new models are being developed at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute (GSI), through a project called the ‘Global Resource Observatory’ (GRO).
The GRO is chiefly funded by the Dawe Charitable Trust, but its partners include the British government’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO); British bank, Lloyds of London; the Aldersgate Group, the environment coalition of leaders from business, politics and civil society; the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries; Africa Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the University of Wisconsin.
Disruption risk
This week, Lloyds released a report for the insurance industry assessing the risk of a near-term “acute disruption to the global food supply.” Research for the project was led by Anglia Ruskin University’s GSI, and based on its GRO modelling initiative.
The report explores the scenario of a near-term global food supply disruption, considered plausible on the basis of past events, especially in relation to future climate trends. The global food system, the authors find, is “under chronic pressure to meet an ever-rising demand, and its vulnerability to acute disruptions is compounded by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalisation and heightening political instability.”
Three steps from crisis
Lloyd’s scenario analysis shows that food production across the planet could be significantly undermined due to a combination of just three catastrophic weather events, leading to shortfalls in the production of staple crops, and ensuing price spikes.
In the scenario, which is “set in the near future,” wheat, maize and soybean prices “increase to quadruple the levels seen around 2000,” while rice prices increase by 500%. This leads to rocketing stock prices for agricultural commodities, agricultural chemicals and agriculture engineering supply chains:
“Food riots break out in urban areas across the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America. The euro weakens and the main European stock markets lose 10% of their value; US stock markets follow and lose 5% of their value.”
The scenario analysis demonstrates that a key outcome of any such systemic shock to the global food supply?—?apart from “negative humanitarian consequences and major financial losses worldwide”?—?would be geopolitical mayhem as well as escalating terrorism and civil unrest.
The purpose of exploring such scenarios is to prepare insurers for possibilities that are now more likely than previously assumed. The Lloyd’s report points out:
“What is striking about the scenario is that the probability of occurrence is estimated as significantly higher than the benchmark return period of 1:200 years applied for assessing insurers’ ability to pay claims against extreme events.”
That leading insurance companies are now attempting to factor in potential losses from such crises is a major step forward in pushing the financial sector to recognise the dark-side of the current system of fossil fuel dependence.
The report concludes:
“A global production shock of the kind set out in this scenario would be expected to generate major economic and political impacts that could affect clients across a very wide spectrum of insurance classes.”
It would have “major consequences for companies’ investment income,” with the potential to “generate losses that span many years.” It would also result in political instabilities that take “decades to resolve” while imposing “greater restrictions on international business.”
Governments want answers
The scenario was developed for Lloyds by the Anglia Ruskin University team with the British Foreign Office’s UK/US Task Force on Resilience of the Global Food Supply Chain to Extreme Events.
The Foreign Office’s food resilience Task Force began to come together late last year. An FCO document from February 2015 for a Task Force workshop throws light on its rationale, direction, and participants.
“The taskforce is looking at plausible worst case scenarios of disruption to the global agri-food system, caused by extreme weather events,” the document explains. Taskforce projects aim to “improve understanding of how changing extreme weather events (severity, type, frequency, geographical impact) may impact on global food security” and to “identify how market and policy responses may exacerbate or ameliorate these effects.”
Of particular concern to the FCO’s taskforce is to determine “how large shocks in agricultural production could occur (e.g. floods, droughts, wind storms),” how these would translate into “crop reductions,” and “how society responds to high food prices or limited local availability.”
Although coordinated by the FCO, other British government-backed programmes are involved, chiefly, the Global Food Security Programme and UK Science & Innovation Network, together representing the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA); the Department of Health; the Department for International Development (DFID); the Government Office for Science; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; and the Scottish and Welsh governments.
On the US side, government involvement was limited to the Center for Integrated Modeling of Sustainable Agriculture and Nutrition Security (CIMSANS), which is supported by the US State Department, and USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
Another participant was the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), whose membership includes the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, the European Commission, the Asian Development Bank, and the African Development Bank, among many others.
Collapse
I had been in touch with the Anglia Ruskin GSI team for a while, having previously reported on some of their work?—?and this month joined GSI as a visiting research fellow.
Earlier this year, I attended an invite-only GRO steering committee meeting of scientists, technologists, financiers, economists, and academics, where GSI’s Director, Dr. Aled Jones, delivered a detailed presentation on the modelling work done so far, what it implied, and where it was leading.
Dr. Jones was previously Deputy Director of the Programme for Sustainability Leadership at the University Cambridge, where he was Director of the British government’s flagship Chevening Fellowships Economics of Climate Change Programme, supported by the UK Foreign Office to deliver the FCO’s Strategic Framework. Jones also chairs a working group of the UK government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change’s Capital Markets Climate Initiative (CMCI).
Jones’ GRO initiative has received direct funding from the Foreign Office to develop its modelling capacity, and he is a co-leader of the FCO Task Force’s working group on ‘Impacts’, where he and his team apply the GRO models to assess the way crop reductions would affect global food security.
GRO is developing two types of model: an Agent-Based Model to explore short-term scenarios of policy decisions by simulating social-economical-environmental systems; and a System Dynamics Model capable of providing projections for the next 5 years based on modelling the complex interconnections between finite resources, planetary carrying capacity, and the human economy.
“The financial and economic system is exposed to catastrophic short-term risks that the system cannot address in its current form,” Dr. Jones told us.
He described GRO’s use of the Agent-Based Model to capture and simulate the multiple factors that led to the 2011 Arab Spring events.
By successfully modeling the “impact of climate-induced drought on crop failures and the ensuing impact on food prices,” he said, the model can then be recalibrated to “experiment with different scenarios.”
“We ran the model forward to the year 2040, along a business-as-usual trajectory based on ‘do-nothing’ trends?—?that is, without any feedback loops that would change the underlying trend. The results show that based on plausible climate trends, and a total failure to change course, the global food supply system would face catastrophic losses, and an unprecedented epidemic of food riots. In this scenario, global society essentially collapses as food production falls permanently short of consumption.”
Another steering committee member raised their hand: “So is this going to happen? Is this a forecast?”
“No,” said Jones. “This scenario is based on simply running the model forward. The model is a short-term model. It’s not designed to run this long, as in the real world, trends are always likely to change, whether for better or worse.”
“Okay, but what you’re saying is that if there is no change in current trends, then this is the outcome?” continued the questioner.
Jones nodded with a half-smile. “Yes,” he said quietly.
In other words, simply running the Agent-Based Model forward cannot generate a reliable forecast of the future. For instance, no one anticipated the pace at which solar and wind energy would become cost-competitive with fossil fuels. And the fact that governments and insurers are now beginning to scope such risks, and explore ways of responding, shows how growing awareness of the risks has the potential to trigger change.
Whether that change is big enough to avoid or mitigate the worst is another question. Either way, the model does prove in no uncertain terms that present-day policies are utterly bankrupt.
Limits to growth
GRO’s System Dynamics Model takes a different approach, building on the ‘World3’ model developed by scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which famously forecast that humankind faced impending “limits to growth” due to environmental and resource constraints.
In popular consciousness, the ‘limits to growth’ forecasts were wrong. But recent studies, including one by the Australian government’s scientific research agency CSIRO, confirm that most of its predictions were startlingly prescient.
Dr. Jones and his team at Anglia Ruskin University have taken this confirmation several steps further, not only by testing the model against the real world, but by recalibrating it internally using new and updated data.
“World3 was a very good, robust system,” he told us. “Some assumptions were incorrect and misparameterised?—?for instance, life expectancy is smaller than assumed, and industrial and service outputs are larger than assumed. And the model was missing some shock dynamics and feedback loops.”
The same questioner put his hand up and asked, “Does this mean the original model and its predictions are flawed?”
“I would say the model was largely correct,” said Jones. “It was right enough to give a fairly accurate picture of future limits to growth. But there are some incorrect parameters and gaps.”
The System Dynamics Model, Jones explained, is designed to overcome the limitations of World3 by recalibrating the incorrect parameters, adding new parameters where necessary, and inputting fresh data. There are now roughly 2,000 parameters in the model, drawing on a database of key indicators on resources and social measures for 212 countries, from 1995 until today.
Jones’ affirmation of the general accuracy of the limits to growth model was an obvious surprise to some in the room.
The original model forecasted global ecological and economic collapse by around the middle of the 21st century, due to the convergence of climate change, food and water scarcity, and the depletion of cheap fossil fuels?—?which chimes with both the GRO’s models.
Last year, Dr. Graham Turner updated his CSIRO research at the University of Melbourne, concluding that:
“… the general onset of collapse first appears at about 2015 when per capita industrial output begins a sharp decline. Given this imminent timing, a further issue this paper raises is whether the current economic difficulties of the global financial crisis are potentially related to mechanisms of breakdown in the Limits to Growth BAU [business-as-usual] scenario.”
For the first time, then, we know that in private, British and US government agencies are taking seriously longstanding scientific data showing that a business-as-usual trajectory will likely lead to civilisational collapse within a few decades?—?generating multiple near-term global disruptions along the way.
The question that remains is: what we are going to do about it?
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And Al Gore said 'No ice at the poles by 2010' and New York under water. Glug! glug! bloody glug!. What ever happened to him anyway?
I think someone gave him a share in a news agency that was sold to Al Jazeera or something for $200M. He is probably sitting in his 10,000 sf house in his undies surfing porn.
Lol. The propaganda is hilarious.
They prolly want a world institution to head the planet so it can "tackle its environment issues in a meaningful way".
An institution led by banks, of course.
This is pure Hegelian dialectic. Problem - Reaction - Solution. The solution, already on the table, is Agenda 21. TPTB just need to make the problem big enough, and bad enough, that we will accept it. I wish I were on their side!
Hi!
I just made 1,000,000 dollars for my charity after race hustling on the msm!
You can race hustle in such splendid cities as Baltimore, and St Louis too.
Work for george soros and get paid!
Can you dig it?
You can also be an FBI informant and snitch on your friends!
I tell you, the joys of race hustling never end.
As does the numbers in my "non profits" bank account, bitchez!
Just pay more taxes, keep decimating private small and mid sized businesses and by Gawd....write another 10 thousand laws a year, that should fix things.
Oh, and vote, keep voting.
"The model does not account for the reality that people will react to escalating crises by changing behavior and policies"
Changing behaviors and policies only ever happens when crises hit. Most people will continue to believe, right up to the point where they can't deny it anymore, that everything is just A-OK. We're fucked.
In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.
I suppose it is a little refreshing to see that someone can still do arithmetic. This isn't politicw. It's resources. We run out of affordable energy positive hydrocarbons, affordable potash for fertilizer, and affordable cheap water.
The global, just-in-time supply chain isn't sustainable without cheap energy. Global food production isn't sustainable without cheap mined fertilizer and abundant cheap water.
Did I mention, "cheap?"
It's not that we run out of any of these things ever. There just won't be enough to do us any good.
your being killed nice and slow
by a few corporations
did you know
no
oh
well
a must watch if you care about children and the planet
Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. Huber about Glyphosate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENmc9kHnvbo
stealth slow death
Samsel on Glyphosate safety tests - Part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPBPfWrFwuI
The State is not responsible for the rise of civilization. If the State collapses we will all be much happier and more people are starting to realize that every day. All the scaremongering in the world is not going to convince new generations that they need to be enslaved to be happy.
www.endofworld.net
Half a billion African Negros making their way to Italy and the rest of the EU - certainly a collaspe of the West as European is inthe cards- but not Russia or China.
by design you dumb bitch..
Barbara Lerner Spectre calls for destruction of Christian European ethnic societies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ
dumb fucks, fucked dumb.
More than ten years ago I read a demographic projection that said the White race would be extinct by 2200. Frankly at the present rate of dispossession and replacement 2100 doesn't look all that unlikely.
well at least the future humans won't have to wonder how cave men lived; they will experience it.
More like 20-40 weeks maximum
And thus spake the high priests of climatology.
A government report based on the effect of "climate change?" I doubt a more inaccurate document could be written...
"based on plausible climate trends"
OK...define plausible
because the only trend I know is no trend
Yawn, we have still 25 years for many new ATHs.
Not a single mention of population growth in the article. Start educating people to have less kids, hand out free condoms to everyone in the world, offer free "snips" to every male. Slow down or reverse the rate of population growth and all those problems - perceived or real - go away.
IMHO,
The Five Eyed Commonwealth may collapse by 2040. Not the rest of the World. RUS, CHN, IND, JPN, CHF, and at a least NOR, ISL, FIN should weather it.
GBR looks like they're about to crash. No Mfg, troubled Financials Industry, only a Real Estate Bubble sustaining them.
CAN, AUS, and NZL have fighting chances, w/ NZL having the best of the Five.
Animals like deer and rabbits engage in R type breeding behavior. They expect a certain amount of their progeny to be eaten or killed. The more they breed, the more likely their genetic material will be successfully passed on.
K type behavior is high investment. This involves lots of parenting and teaching to insure the progeny becomes successful. This investment parenting is typified amongst ice age humans. In short, the last ice age formed people who could create civiiization. Civilization is formed by K type behaviors, and high trust.
R type breeders in a high trust K society, are like Cow Birds. R's use up social costs in order so that the "other" K mother can raise their children.
Simply shifting a populations IQ by 10 points leftward on Bell Curve, reduces the amount of 160-180 genius by a factor of 500. For example, a small population of WW2 Americans would produce more genius that a much larger teeming mass of low IQ humans. A teaming mass of low IQ humans who cannot control their impulses is dystopian. They may not even have the smarts to maintain existing society, as evidenced today by South Africa.
In other words, influx of lower IQ R type populations will permanently damage civilization. Humanity will enter into its twilight unless it engages in Eugenics.
The races are not the same, the sexes are not the same. Egalitariansim is a mind fuck promulgated by Jewish propaganda emanating from Frankfurt School, and amplified by their owned press. Gullible whites and to lesser extent north Asians, lap up the nonsense. Meanwhile, K selected Jews breed as an in group, laughing at the dumb Goyim.
The jewish money system uses financial capitalism to drive humanity. This type of money system is fundamentally at odds with higher civilization. The gene expression of the people are what creates society. Those that don't have the genes do not have the ability.
A sovereign money system can direct spend into population control. In this way population control is voluntary, and easily duped whites will go along because it seems fair. The R types have to receive norplant or get snipped to receive direct spend; they can only have one baby.
Stop screwing the future.
Food. Where isn't food being grown now? Cities, suburbs, and along highways...so basically everywhere that people live and commute. All of those lawns in the cities and suburbs will be converted to farming. Rats? People will eat grilled rat, fried rat, etc. Central park will be a farm. People will also farm in their apartments and houses too. The sun provides.
Water. There is so much water locked away in the polar ice, so no big deal there. Drones with buzz saws. Ice tankers. Pipes.
All grains will be diverted away from Twinkies and Chex Mix and Combos and Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Puffs. No more corn gas.
Algoil. Oil made from algae. Bioplastics.
Life finds a way.
I would really like to agree with you. From a logical perspective, an intelligent perspective, a scientific perspective, I know you are right. I feel it. But: (there's always a butt)
I just read that California is going back to being a dry desert. More importantly all the articles and all the wise folk tell me that 99999999.99999% of everything ever grown, everything the US and most of the rest of the world eat every day is grown in CA. Now we will all starve because all food comes from the California desert and now it's dry. boo hoo.
This isn't the same Dr Jones of climate warming fame, Shirley?
(oh its OK, we just change the data until it fits our predictions)
A non-feedback model, hfarr, hfarr, hfarr ... you've got to be kidding.
e.g. "if we just take the DJIA for the last 5 years and project it forwards, it goes to the moon". Well of course it does sonny, and is that prediction any use to us whatsoever? Just ask Cramer in 3 months time.
Who paid for that stupidity?
Blah blah blah. The second we have more people than we have food to feed them, we'll have less people. Will it suck to be Asia, Africa, and South America? Probably. But it won't suck to be me. So...
Power politics is just another name for Eugenics.
What I find amazing is that there seems to be a certain sect of the American public, well represented here on ZH, that believes EVERY scientist is corrupt, with whom the mere mention of Climate Change starts them frothing at the mouth with uncontrollable rage, thinks the Pope is a communist (which is sorta difficult to reconcile since, if I remember my high school classes, Marx and the communists were kinda about the whole atheism thing - you know "religion is the opiate of the masses"), yet these same folks seemingly believe that Austrian Economics - economics, mind you, is just sociology with a bit of math and hypotheses about how people spend money - as if it were a universal truth. Yet not ONE of these people could prove to me that a time EVER existed where some type of intervention in markets did not exist. These same people say if only we got back to true, unfettered capitalism everything would be great again and yet cannot name a time throughout all of history that the true, unfettered and completely idealized capitalism they believe exists WITHOUT QUESTION.
So the cats that think all science is crap, the same people who regularly use the fruits of scientists' labor by typing into them (computer or a smart phone) their completely backwards and retarded ideas about how the world works, scorn anyone who tries to have an adult conversation about what impact humans have on the world, the same folks that will speak about the evils of GMOs or colony collapse disorder, Chem trails and quote the "science" proving them, are the same folks that believe in the fairy tale of one "sect" of economics with a religious fervor equal to that of all the religious fanatics they take joy in lampooning.
This is the reason that the human species is doomed. And as far as I'm concerned - good fucking riddance to what either mostly morons or people that are filled with hate.
Allow me to answer, succinctly:
All "LEADING" (read: bought-off) $cientists are corrupt. (these are the "consensus" builders).
The "POPE" is a figurehead. It doesn't matter whether he is an atheist (he might actually be a naive patsy, a mark)- his handlers are.
I think you understand the markets, and are spot on. Mammon worship, no matter how it is practiced, leads to being conned.
I am quite "educated", and have worked as an engineer, manager, director, president, ceo, in many different disciplines, including utilities, telecom, datacom, internet, and dabbled in many other areas as a consultant (and continue to do so).
If you believe in $cience- you either are lower-level, are naive, or just plain gullible.
I pray for people like you, no matter your age.
PS- Put your faith in Jesus Christ- He is returning, soon.
I sure hope that you will not be disappointed when He doesn't show.
What makes you think He won't?
He is dead mate:has been so for quite a while.
Spare us the superstition, why don't you?
I'm not knocking superstition: it may turn out to be a potent population regulating mechanism.
Apparently, you didn't get the news:
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bible-Verses-About-Resurrection-of-C...
I'm not sure what your being educated has to do with anything but so am I and have dabbled in a number of things myself. While I'm not so naive to believe that there is no corruption in the world of science, regardless the field, I have a very difficult time believe that nearly ALL hundreds of thousands of scientists who study one of the many THOUSANDS of disciplines of science that have to do with geology, climatology, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, etc...are all corrupt.
I don't have much of an opinion on the pope either way other than to say, being raised catholic, I'm not big fan of the catholic religion and like nearly all sects of Christianity, and most Christians for that matter, doesn't do a great job of following Jesus' teachings.
What I was trying to say, albeit not very well, is that I find the religious like belief here in the pseudo science of capitalism - especially the Austrian brand - by those who regularly bash science extremely curious.
I find calling the figurehead of a religion a communist as though the two go hand in hand, not well thought through, and more especially poorly discussed.
Lastly I find it interesting how people who love to bash the "science" of climate change will also believe, often without question, other so called "science" which is either fringe at best, and borders on quacksterism at the worst.
Here's an example: GMOs - are they really bad? Most here seem to be willing to accept that GMOs must be bad - that they are an abomination of science. Yet - I can apply one of the same arguments used against climate change: The length of time these things have been studied is too short make definitive conclusions whether GMOs are truly bad. And to use a favorite quote here at ZH "correlation is not "causation". Maybe high fructose corn syrup isn't so bad after all. I mean, heck, if polluting the earth isn't so bad, what problem is there with polluting one's body a little bit? We should all just drink soda, eat artificially flavored foods, fruits and veggies treated with pesticides and relax right? How is that any different than burning coal, oil, shitting up our rivers, etc??? People need to chill.
I don't "believe" in science. I believe science, if done correctly and like anything, with good motives, helps us to understand the world around us better and hopefully make it a better place.
I do know one thing, even if I am "lower level" condescension isn't a trait Jesus admires, so I will pray for you too :)
"THOUSANDS of disciplines of science that have to do with geology, climatology, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, etc...are all corrupt."
Like I said- it doesn't matter if the "lower levels" are 100% honest.
What matters is whether those writing the "consensus" are.
And, by jove- they're not.
Same goes for "christianity", or any business.
Yet there still exists TRUE CHRISTIANITY- which is not a business.
"I believe science, if done correctly"
That's a big "IF", my friend.
I don't want GMOs, or HFCS in my body- all I ask for is HONEST labelling. If you, or anyone else, wants to be a guinea pig- go ahead, as long as you know that's what you are.
Not being condescending- just pointing out the facts.
Don't get your feathers ruffled ;-)
"That's a big "IF", my friend."
Ok - so you would rather believe that thousands of scientists are corrupt - because they would have to be speaking out against these so-called consensus builders, if they were not. So do a friend a favor - tell us who are these consensus builders? Better yet, point us to some articles, or links, that show they are somehow corrupt. Or show us how these consensus builders have co-opted literally tens or hundreds of thousands of scientists around the globe to ignore the primary tenent of their jobs as scientists and LIE.
Once again, understand that I don't necessarily buy all the arguments about climate change. I likewise agree there are probably many 'scientific' research grants and other 'green' activities and business ventures that are being afforded money at taxpayers' expense via the mechanism of crony capitalism that are nothing more than ways to make some folks money.
I also believe that there are forces at work that current science probably cannot explain as regards the way our planet works and how the climate changes over time. Lastly as someone pointed out above, science is only as good as the facts that are being used and the talent and integrity of the scientist who is trying to prove or disprove something. Nothing is perfect. But for me, I BELIEVE it's a stretch to say that ALL the science around climate change is completely wrong, and worse yet, completely corrupt. That's me. You believe whatever you want to believe. I don't have facts to back that up - nor am I presenting anything here as fact really - just what I think based on the logic (or lack thereof) of my thinking.
That said, my logic tells me (or my belief system tells me) you have to take the good with the bad. If I am not to trust these scientists, then why should I instead trust the scientists in the employ of large corporations who say climate change is a myth?
My feathers aren't ruffled. Quite the contrary - I'm amused because your tone mirrors that of many so called "Christians" towards their fellow man - pompous, conceited, self-righteous, and condescending. All traits that most religions, and especially Jesus, teaches against. You hide behind false modesty and so-called 'facts' - yet you haven't presented a fact. They're your BELIEFS based on what you've read about climate change and other subjects. And there's nothing wrong with having beliefs. And there is certainly nothing wrong about debating our beliefs. But you present your beliefs as FACT and back it up with nothing really other than more beliefs and the idea I should take your word for it because you feel that you have some bona-fides. Once you enter the word 'fact' into your argument you should back it up with actual, er ah, facts.
It's pretty apparent you pick & choose the science you like and discard that which bothers your world view. If someone told you three or four hundred years ago that you would be able to communicate nearly instantaneously to people across the globe, wirelessly no less, I am fairly certain (although not 100%) you would have thought that person insane.
I BELIEVE it's common sense that polluting one's body with a lot of unnatural chemicals is probably not the best thing to do (regardless of what science tells me for or against it) - I merely presented it as an argument to prove my point that you pick and choose the science you want. That said, I also think that it's common sense to think that we could do a better job of how we treat the planet we live on and and funding and developing alternative methods of energy generation. Do you believe that bee colony collapse disorder is a man-made phenomena? IF you do THEN you believe that man does have the ability to impact the environment around him...at least on a micro scale. Is it such a stretch to believe that we can also have an impact (good or bad) on a macro scale?
Again - I would greatly appreciate if you could back up your assertions and beliefs with real information...I'm always open to learning new things. Really - I'm not being sarcastic. Who are these consensus builders of whom I should be wary and why?
I just love conversations like this, and can't resist. Like science, or any other educated guess; if its based on faultiy information. How can you reach a best guess solution? Example! You base your prayer on faulty infomraton with the use of the name Jesus. Did you know that his name isn't Jesus? Hmmm! Then it is my guess with reasonably assestment; that he may never ever hear you. Because prayer to Yeshua is what would be called for.
We are going to do FUCK ALL. Becuase there is nothing we can do
THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59 onwards)
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/files/2013/01/Perfect-Storm-LR.pdf
Best Sentence of any of the threads here. Most are head in the Sand, "She protests too much" etc.
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output
THAT is the Bottom line.
We are entering the No Surplus region.
What do you think will happen when the Kilimanjaro Glacier is gone and the Nile runs dry for 3 months of the year? How about the Gangeze and the Indus. and the Yellow. All of these rivers have fast disapearing glaciers at their headwaters.
The timing of their study is a little off, that shit's happening now!