oneswellfoop:The World Bank sees problems. American Entrepreneurs see ways to make money from those who'd like to survive!
How to Survive Societal Collapse in Suburbia, Keith O'Brien, The New York Times Magazine, 16 November, 2012
But the goal isn’t just to sell to the same old preparedness crowd. Red Shed wants to attract liberals and political moderates to a marketplace historically populated by conservatives and right-wing extremists. “It’s not the end of the world,” Douglas told me last spring, making a bold statement for someone in his industry. “It’s not doomsday.” It’s about showing the gun-toting mountain man in his camouflage and the suburban soccer mom in her minivan that they want the same thing: peace of mind. “We don’t say, ‘Hurry up and buy your stuff because Obama is going to ruin the country,’ ” Douglas said. “We don’t get into the political crap. We just want to teach people the lifestyle.”posted by ob1quixote at 3:46 PM on November 20, 2012
"Agriculture is a fairly recent human invention, and in many ways it was one of the great stupid moves of all time. Hunter-gatherers have thousands of wild sources of food to subsist on. Agriculture changed all that, generating an overwhelming reliance on a few dozen domesticated food sources, making you extremely vulnerable to the next famine, the next locust infestation, the next potato blight. Agriculture allowed for the stockpiling of surplus resources and thus, inevitably, the unequal stockpiling of them - stratification of society and the invention of classes. Thus, it allowed for the invention of poverty. I think that the punch line of the primate-human difference is that when humans invented poverty, they came up with a way of subjugating the low-ranking like nothing ever before seen in the primate world."posted by Evernix at 3:56 PM on November 20, 2012 [19 favorites]
Abandon your cars. Pack your things. Come back to the dirty, smelly, dangerous city that your grandparents worked their asses of to leave behind, and squeeze in. Get your ass on a bicycle, fatty. Start sorting the recyclables. You know how they do it in Japan? There's twenty different bins and if you put your shit in the wrong one the neighbors watch you and rat you out. You'll be doing that, too, from now on. Forget the freedom to go where you want when you want. Forget having your own little castle, with a great room and a 60 inch TV for a fireplace and a couple of big mutts and a rolling green lawn. That little piece of paradise is lost to you forever, now. Because We Say.That's why. That's the version of the American Dream we've had since the frontier closed --- instead of a homestead on 40 acres, a little Levittown lawn of your own, and a big Suburban to roam the MiracleGrow savannah. And that's what would have to die. We can produce electricity other ways. But liquid fuel means hydrocarbons. It requires a rejection of optimism and an acceptance of collective control --- so many committees! So many targets! So many protocols! ----- that many would argue is foreign to the American character. The oil companies have their hand in too, of course. But to truly adress climate change would require fundamental changes in society that many people don't want because they don't accord with their vision of the good life, with their aspirations for themselves and their children.
Taking all new developments and policies into account, the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path.previously: Extreme climate predictions the most accurate
Energy demand and CO2 emissions rise ever higher in the New Policies Scenario. Global energy demand increases by over one‐third in the period to 2035. Energy‐related CO2 emissions rise from an estimated 31.2 Gt in 2011 to 37.0 Gt in 2035, pointing to a long‐term average temperature increase of 3.6 °C.
Electricity demand will continue to grow: in the New Policies Scenario, our central scenario, global demand for electricity grows over 70% to almost 32 000 TWh by 2035.
Energy subsidies are essential to the growth in renewable energy, especially in the power sector, as many renewables are still more expensive than conventional sources.
In the Efficient World Scenario, energy‐related CO2 emissions peak before 2020 and decline to 30.5 Gt in 2035, pointing to a long‐term average temperature increase of 3°C....We propose six categories of policy action, which, if widely implemented, can turn the Efficient World Scenario into reality.
The deniers did not decide that climate change is a left-wing conspiracy by uncovering some covert socialist plot. They arrived at this analysis by taking a hard look at what it would take to lower global emissions as drastically and as rapidly as climate science demands. They have concluded that this can be done only by radically reordering our economic and political systems in ways antithetical to their “free market” belief system. As British blogger and Heartland regular James Delingpole has pointed out, “Modern environmentalism successfully advances many of the causes dear to the left: redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, greater government intervention, regulation.” Heartland’s Bast puts it even more bluntly: For the left, “Climate change is the perfect thing…. It’s the reason why we should do everything [the left] wanted to do anyway.”posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:10 AM on November 21, 2012 [3 favorites]
Here’s my inconvenient truth: they aren’t wrong.
I don't understand why we have to be so completely hostile to the idea of possibly having to exercise some self-restraint or moderation, though.First of all, you have to do the math - structural infrastructure changes like installing tons of solar energy, retrofitting insulation, switching to electric vehicles, etc would obviously do far more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions then people continuing to use fossil fuels "moderately".
Now even the mere suggestion that we might consider rationing our own personal energy consumptionBut why would we need to ration energy when we get far more from the sun then we could ever use?
Temperatures are lower over the oceans (70% of global area), which absorb heat and carbon dioxide. Over land they are higher. So a 4 degrees C-extra world would actually imply the following:Also, they note that global emissions were increasing 2.7% per year during the 90s, but increased by 3.5% per year from 2000 to 2007, and by 5.6% per year from 2009 to 2010, so our emissions are actually accelerating.
- Up to 6 degrees C (10.8 degrees F) average increase over land;
- Up to 8 degrees C (14.4 degrees F) increase over China;
- Up to 10 degrees C (18 degrees F) increase over central Europe;
- Up to 12 degrees C (21.6 degrees F) increase over New York City
Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility - In One Pie Chart, James Lawrence Powell, DeSmogBlog, 15 November 2012
I searched the Web of Science for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 that have the keyword phrases "global warming" or "global climate change." The search produced 13,950 articles. See methodology.posted by ob1quixote at 11:50 AM on December 11, 2012 [2 favorites]
[…]
By my definition, 24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17% or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming.
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Even most skeptical should pause to wonder.
posted by spock at 3:13 PM on November 20, 2012 [10 favorites]