The perfect storm.

I have been barking at the moon for years now with the same message.  I don't hear voices in my head...my tinfoil cap protects me...but I can see these things as clearly as the green flash at sunset. I am one of the very few people who refer to the current epoch as identifiably Anthropocene or, if you like, Holocene-Anthropocene.

I hold these truths to be self-evident.  I believe anyone can see them if they look.  And think.

(1) The biosphere:  We are in the beginning of a major rapid-onset climate transition.  It can be felt everywhere on earth in some form. Personally, I believe we are artificially enhancing it anthropogenically, but it doesn't matter.  The fact is that it is happening and we cannot stop it or mitigate it.  And we are not going to stop burning cheap fossil fuels, ever, so that point is moot. >

(2) Water:  The hydrological cycle is fixed, to the best of our knowledge. I suspect that will change when the oceans become net exporters of CO2 and Methane in a few years instead of the CO2 sinks they are now.  But it won't change in a good way for us.  Even if nothing changes at all, fresh water shortages are acute in much of the world and will become acute in thirty of the United States by 2013.  By 2020, forty-six states won't have enough water.  >

(3) Oxygen: Oxygen is produced in the oceans and on land by photosynthesis.  We are losing (net) 50 million square MILES of arable land annually to topsoil erosion, desertification (lack of water) and clearcutting forests and rainforests.  At that rate, if nothing changes, we will simply run out of arable land in less than 300 years. >

(4) Food:  We grow it. we need arable land to grow food and water to irrigate it. We have already eaten all the fish...or will have in five years. We need forestation to provide photosynthesis to make oxygen. >

(5) The general state of the health of the world today:   http://www.worldometers.info/  >

(6) The biosphere:  Weather is created by oceanic and atmospheric forces seeking a balance.  The rotation of earth affects weather, our orbit, the sun, the moon, the components of the atmosphere and many other things.  Weather is dynamic.  Weather change and climate change are two completely different things.  The weather in Chicago can be colder this winter than it has ever been, but the climate may be warming all the same.  It may snow more in the high sierras than it ever has, but the snowpack won't last. No matter what lame excuse someone tries o use to prove the climate isn't warming and the temperatures aren't increasing is just nonsense.  And my favorite. "Yes, the planet is warming...it's a natural cycle...it has happened before...in fact, more CO2 is GOOD for plants."  Yes. It HAS happened before. And almost everything died each time it did.

We can see what is happening to our earth and we can tell that we have 600 years of fossil fuel left but only about 20 years of water.  And if this temperature transition is like the previous ones in history, it will cause an major extinction event and kill 95% of all species now alive on earth....including us. Whether we are helping it doesn't matter.  What matters is we cannot stop it.

If we are already over the edge, and I believe that is the case, there is not much we can do to delay the reckoning; but there is plenty we can do to push us toward it faster...the Gulf oil spill will release more than enough Methane into the atmosphere to equal a year of CO2...and methane is 72 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 for the first 8 years.  So even assuming that our main greenhouse gas, water vapor, remains steady, we just got a hell of a push.

IF some other abstract but 100% certain event happens...if a 30 meter earth-crossing body came out of nowhere and hit anywhere on earth...if a weather anomaly happened to ruin a major food crop...and although it sounds contrary, if a super volcano went off we would get another huge push we don't need.  A nuclear winter might mitigate the temperature for a dozen years but an extinction event would still occur.

The entire world is bankrupt. The stock market is bouncing erratically.  Any sane person who has their retirement tied up in ANY equity....which means you gave your money to someone and they are gambling with it...would get out of it immediately.  But most people...and I repeat 'MOST' people cannot believe the bottom may fall out. If you tell them the FDIC has ZERO money to back the insurance of their bank deposits, they will still believe that the government has a plan and their money is safe.

The government spends a lot of time making plans.  But when something actually happens, the government cannot deal with it because it's the ONE thing the didn't plan for.  The plan for Iraq was a bad plan.  The plan for Afghanistan is a bad plan.  The plan for Katrina didn't exist. The plan for the BP spill didn't exist.  The plan for the temperature change and extinction event doesn't exist...no one believes these things are possible. But they are happening.

Look at it logically.  The ONLY thing the government can do in any disaster is throw people and money at it.  That's all.  That's the only plan.  It's a bad plan because it doesn't work.  So if the government cannot even function, why does anyone believe it can solve any problems at all?  And why, despite the the economy failing, do people believe the government when they say it's not?

Why do people believe we should stay in Afghanistan when we are spending a BIllion dollars a year for EACH of the fifty or a hundred al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and STILL LOSING?   President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address resonates with me and I memorized it in school.  I'll bet no one you ask will even know what you are talking about.  But here it is, in commemoration of the valiant dead who fought and are buried at Gettyburg:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Our government no longer represents We the People.  It's a sham, like the little man behind the curtain in the Emerald City of Oz.  There is no plan; there is no agreement, there is no way forward.  It's a disaster. An everyone knows it...just as everyone understands that the climate is changing but many live in denial because they can't face reality. If we are to endure, we must return to our roots of liberty. We must have balance and commitment of our government to our interests...after all, it is OUR government. They just forgot the First Amendment...which is the reason the Second Amendment exists.

There are many other forces driving the biosphere, and we know nothing of them or, if we do, the various scientific disciplines cannot connect the dots.  As people become less and less trusting of their government, they begin to elect more and more radicals.  Most people aren't radical, but they want the government to act responsibly and if it fails year after year, people no longer believe mainstream politicians can do the job.  They are correct.  Electing radicals is merely the swing of the pendulum and that happens when the government and the will of the people are out of balance.

 

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