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| Zalas |
Thanks to my internet friend Julie Generic, who is the relentless powerhouse behind the behemoth Facebook chronicle of Weird Weather (and a damn good poet too), I share with you a hilarious message for HOPE in 2015 - may we prolong this abomination for just one other annual cycle, before collapse drags us all, shrieking in terror, towards purgatory. Also don't miss the annual, essential list from Desdemona Despair, of the 50 Doomiest Graphs accumulated in the past twelve months. Oh, and that picture up there is just because I can scarcely imagine a more evocative portrait of our pathetically alienated, perverse, deluded condition - and plus, I can acknowledge with gratitude the source, my favorite new blog from 2014 for art, philosophy, and literature, Synthetic_Zero.
Happy New Year!!
Happy New Year!!
yer too kind if only I had your gift for writing I could offer a bit more than my cutting and pasting but hopefully the growing motley crew on the S_Z masthead will generate somethings in the way of original work in the new year, thanks again for all you do here.
ReplyDelete-dmf
All right lady, I hearz ya!
ReplyDeleteNow is a cocktail of snow, ice and wind. The trees are already so weak. 200 000 without power now due to fallen branches. And it will continue through the night. The poles and all the wires and the whole grid are very old. I doubt the system's capacity to respond to even minor disruptions because of the vetusty of the grid and the unsustainability of our arrangments. OMD
ReplyDeleteif I die soon, I will not have experienced war, chronic desease, (rape I don't know), "poverty", obesity, etc., and I will have had plenty of time to see it coming.
I had a good life and I will pay the same price that those who had a difficult life. There is no justice, only luck. see you.
Yikes Michele - stay safe!!! I am waiting for the polar vortex with high winds, ugh.
DeleteThat was fucking funny, reminds me of my mom at the Legion Hall.
ReplyDeleteRant update posted, use anything you want. Be sure to watch extinction video.
http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableEnergy/comments/2qg5s9/mass_extinction_vs_green_energy/
I like your site, Robert, thank you for the link. Do you mean the Call of Life? I posted it here http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2013/03/grasping-at-straws.html along with Ulansey's lecture of 2004 in which he predicted that "to avoid certain, irreversible catastrophic mass extinction" only five to ten years remained for humanity to reverse course. LOL now in hindsight we can see how well that has worked out and thus the obligatory hopium at the end of the film is rendered meaningless. This is another newer video about the 6th mass extinction, not as colorful but reasonably bleak and perhaps worthy of admission to your list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9gHuAwxwAs&feature=youtu.be
DeleteHappy New Years Gail! Took a look at your favorite new site and found something I like right away. Perhaps it will make you feel a little better about your resent polar weather to know -- its cold here in Honolulu too. Mondays morning temperature reading -- 57 -- broke a previous record set the month of the overthrow: http://www.northwesthawaiitimes.com/onipaa.htm. All the locals are complaining loudly about the temperature -- a lesson in remembering change is always a deviation from a norm.
ReplyDeleteWell that will put a damper on the beach-going tourist trade, ouch! It's horribly cold here, but MuMu likes the snow! (He says Hi!)
Deletehi Gail,
ReplyDeleteit is very cold these days, but nothing compared to what is going on in UK who seem to be in the direct path of the wrath leaving north america almost every time there is a big storm. It is so strange to be able to SEE this jet stream, and currents, and all those charts and think that for the whole history of humanity, people were not even sure the sun would rise the next day.
about the noble savage: to be noble or not to be noble. I am rereading Henri Laborit, a very great French scientist of the past century, who strived to be the more holistic possible, including as many disciplines as his brain could afford. He states (I cannot repeat here the whole intricate and convincing process by which he arrived at this conclusion) that human beings can conceive themselves as part of a group, but not as a part of a species. Their mental capacities do not allow the majority to go over belonging to a "group", be it a tribe, the college of surgeons, a football team and ist support system, etc. And he adds that groups are inherently designed to be in competition with one another. We cannot percieve ourselves as a species. Of course I do not give a fuke of the many who will contest this affirmation. Time over for blahblah.
p.s. I listened to videos of reese interviewing guy on NBL and don't understand how he puts the death of trees on the back of climate change (all this north slopes/south slopes arguments) without a word about pollution! really incredible. When the trees are all going to fall (within the next 10 years) will be the saddest spectacle we have EVER seen.
I love you
Thanks Michele I will look up Henri, I had not heard of him before. There is of course Dunbar's number which says much the same, and also I have been reading Jared Diamond's "Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee" which also goes into the competition between groups. (it is online here: http://api.ning.com/files/-YfYmyOcyZeEEJxjibM5GOx5*hC3CRFtXVvvdO-J8AHTILDjyUY-vSlZNVf01Ie1jRICu3xwpeIHVuVIuqrOHlaAQZ1-XkJ6/JaredDiamondTheRiseandFalloftheThirdChimpanzee.pdf)
DeleteGuy has some resistance to the fact that pollution is killing trees - he never refers to it, anywhere, even though it is a powerful amplifier of climate change. I don't know why because he endorses much more sketchy stuff than that, unless he has a case of "not invented here" syndrome or else he's just enthralled with climate change as the main driver of extinction as are many others, I think because it fits comfortably within the ideology that industrial civilization is to blame for global collapse and not some innate human penchant for overshoot as is evident in all the toxic pollution and habitat destruction. For instance the headline of this article is entirely misleading - http://truth-out.org/news/item/28372-as-climate-disruption-advances-26-percent-of-mammals-face-extinction because the primary reason the 6th mass extinction is underway is direct killing of animals by humans, followed by habitat destruction and pollution. Climate change has yet to become a major problem (although it most certainly will be).
But as you say, it's time over for blahblah although the number of articles I come across of people bleating about how to avert the worst of climate change seems to be growing as exponentially as our plague numbers.
I am so lucky to know a few astute people like you who don't subscribe to the woo-woo. Clarity and honesty is just about all there is left.
love to you, stay warm.
Gail
Hi Gail, Robert and michele and Happy New Year to you all.
ReplyDeleteGail: i didn't know Guy was in denial regarding tree death and pollution (especially from fossil fuels but also nitrogen run-off, predatory insects, diseases, freezing or excessively high temps, drought, flooding, etc.) and i don't know where you got this impression - have you talked to him and found this to be the case? i can't see him disregarding all your research.
i was recently in CA between LA and San Fran (not quite dead center) and got a good look at the trees along 4 hours of travel from and to LAX and, compared to last year at this time they're in far worse shape. It's so sad - the colors used to be vibrant, lovely and energetic, where now they're washed out, depressing, and weak. The prolonged drought has produced so many completely dead trees and large parts of trees that it's no wonder the whole state is a fire waiting to happen.
Thanks again for posting - keep up the great work!
Tom
Tom
The coastal cypress trees are all dying from sort of fungus. But the entire state looked horribly brown to me 4 years ago when I visited. I remember from when I was there in the 70's it was like living in technicolor Land of Oz. So sad. I wouldn't say Guy is in denial - just that he ignores it which is odd, because the loss of forests is a huge amplifier for heating.
DeleteHockey Stick Games
ReplyDelete-------------------------------
slideshow -- click right side of screen to advance next slide
http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/IGBPSecretariat/great-acceleration-2015/1