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Hollywood movies gave me the idea that if the apocalypse were imminent, people would spring into action. The reality is much more grim.

“What looks like apocalypse in prospect often feels more like grim normality when it arrives in the present.” – David Wallace Wells

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of movies about the end of the world—Mad Max, The Terminator, Day of the Dead, Deep Impact, Independence Day, stuff like that.

Watching these movies, I internalized the Hollywood view of the apocalypse: People running to the stores, stripping the shelves, and trampling one another as they flee for their lives. Oftentimes, there’s a scene where a child drops a teddy bear or something, reminding us that the end of the world is sad.

Meanwhile, the people in charge meet in dimly-lit rooms full of blinking lights and monitors. Scientists in white lab coats explain the situation while military generals smoke cigarettes and scowl. The President listens carefully as advisors tell him his options. The goal is always to minimize the loss of life or at least save the human race from extinction.

Of course, now I understand that these are just movies and nothing like real life. Even so, I’m still shocked at how different the apocalypse is from what I imagined.

I didn’t realize the world is ending until 2020. I had spent months reading up on climate change in order to find out how bad it was and whether humanity could avoid the worst-case scenario.

For years, I had assumed that renewables would replace fossil fuels, but by the summer of 2020, I realized that was impossible. Humans were hopelessly addicted to oil. Without it, we would return to pre-industrial lifestyles, only on a planet with way more people and much worse weather.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

December 31, 2022

Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions

Photo Credit: Getty

Thanks go to Tony Heller, who first collected many of these news clips and posted them on RealClimateScience.

SUMMARY

Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.

None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.

What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.

More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.

While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.

1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975.’

Source: Salt Lake Tribune, November 17, 1967

1969: ‘Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989.’

Source: New York Times, August 10 1969

1970: Ice age by 2000

Source: Boston Globe, April 16, 1970

1970: ‘America subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.’

Source: Redlands Daily Facts, October 6, 1970

1971: ‘New Ice Age Coming’

Source: Washington Post, July 9, 1971

1972: New ice age by 2070

Source: NOAA, October 2015

1974: ‘New Ice Age Coming Fast’

Source: The Guardian, January 29, 1974

1974: ‘Another Ice Age?’

Source: TIME, June 24, 1974

1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’

But no such ‘great peril to life’ has been observed as the so-called ‘ozone hole’ remains:

Sources: Headline

NASA Data | Graph

1976: ‘The Cooling’

Source: New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1976

1980: ‘Acid Rain Kills Life in Lakes’

Noblesville Ledger (Noblesville, IN) April 9, 1980

But 10 years later, the US government program formed to study acid rain concluded:

Associated Press, September 6, 1990

1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend

Source: New York Times, January 5, 1978

But according to NASA satellite data there is a slight warming trend since 1979.

Source: DrRoySpencer.com

1988: James Hansen forecasts increase regional drought in 1990s

These billionaire preppers are planning for the apocalypse. Here’s why

November 29, 2022

These billionaire preppers are planning for the apocalypse. Here’s why

Some tech billionaires are convinced that the end of the world is just around the corner.(Getty Images: FPG)

When Douglas Rushkoff was invited to speak to a group of mega-rich tech elite at a private desert resort, he thought he’d come fully prepared.

He was wrong.

Rushkoff, an author, theorist and professor at the City University of New York, had been asked to present an address on “the future of technology”.

For his services, Rushkoff was offered an exorbitant fee — about a third of his annual professor’s salary — along with flights and a three-hour limo ride to the mystery location

“[When I arrived], instead of bringing me out onto a stage, they brought these five guys into this green room where I was getting ready. And they said, ‘this is it’,” he tells ABC RN’s The Drawing Room.

The small group was from the “upper echelon of the tech investing and hedge fund world” and at least two were billionaires.

Initially, Rushkoff was peppered with a few innocuous questions.

“They asked me all the typical questions that tech investors ask, like, ‘what’s better, Bitcoin or Ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality?'” he says.

But then the real conversation started. It became clear why Rushkoff had been summoned to the desert.

“How do I maintain authority over my security force after ‘the event’?” one of the men asked.

New Zealand or Alaska?

Rushkoff says ‘the event’ is a euphemism for the end of society — which could be “environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down”.

These five men were mega-rich preppers convinced that society could collapse at any moment, and were keen to get Rushkoff’s opinions on how to survive and thrive.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Imperialism Of The Apocalypse

November 14, 2022

Imperialism Of The Apocalypse

Rich people are depriving poor people of cheap energy in the name of climate change. Why?

Clockwise from upper-left: Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex; Jennifer Lawrence; Prince Harry; Leonardo DiCaprio. Center: Pakistani boy with woodfuel for cooking (Getty Images)

Few appear to care about climate change more than global celebrities. In 2019, Leonardo DiCaprio told the U.N., “Climate Change is our single greatest security threat.” Late last year, DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence starred in the Hollywood climate disaster movie, “Don’t Look Up.” Said Lawrence, “You’re watching these hurricanes now and it’s hard, especially while promoting this movie, not to feel Mother Nature’s rage or wrath.” In a United Nations speech earlier this year, Prince Harry said “Climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all.” All have urged individuals and nations to radically reduce their carbon emissions.

And yet global celebrities are, along with global political leaders, the planet’s biggest climate hypocrites. DiCaprio, Lawrence, Harry, and Meghan have been flying on private jets, partying on gas-guzzling yachts, and riding jet skis for years. Already 400 private jets, which are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial flights, have arrived in Egypt for United Nations annual climate talks. Last year, 40,000 people flew to Scotland, many on private jets, for climate talks, generating an estimated 102,000 tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of burning 237,000 barrels of oil. After they arrived, they were treated to a video of a talking CGI dinosaur, voiced over by Jack Black, urging African nations to not use fossil fuels.

It’s true that celebrities have promised to do better. DiCaprio flew commercial to climate talks last year. Meghan and Harry flew commercial back to London last year. Lawrence flew commercial after her private plane nearly crashed. And most of the 30,000 participants in this year’s climate talks will arrive in commercial airplanes.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

German Energy Apocalypse Update VII

October 25, 2022

German Energy Apocalypse Update VII

The only published footage of the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines, featured on my Nord Stream Conspiracy Thread, turns out to come from Expressen, a Swedish newspaper. Their reporters hired undersea drone operators and took a boat out to the site of the explosions off the island of Bornholm. There, they found a sizeable crater and 50 metres of missing pipeline. That this is how the images should have made their way to us, rather than through any official path, speaks volumes about the eagerness of Swedish authorities to suppress this story.

Protests against the insane energy policy of the German government are gathering momentum, particularly in the East; sporadic reports are even appearing in major media outlets now. This is surely one reason that the Minister President of Saxony, Michael Kretschmer, continues to stray from official CDU talking points, calling for negotiated peace in Ukraine and likening EU sanctions to a “tsunami” threatening the German economy.

Feared gas shortages are causing chaos as customers rush to change suppliers in search of better prices, or because their current contracts have been cancelled. Several municipal utilities have flatly stopped accepting new customers, but this option is not available to the so-called Grundversorger or “basic suppliers”—the utilities that supply the majority of gas in their region. These are legally bound to take all comers, and many of them are already having difficulty meeting sudden surges in demand.

Their day-to-day solvency may also soon be a problem:

[I]t is not only the procurement prices that have risen sharply, but also the interim financing costs—that is, the sum with which the municipal utilities must bridge the time from the purchase of gas to the onward sale to the customer, and to the increase in customers’ instalment payments, [an Association of Municipal Enterprises] spokesman explained…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Dawn of the Apocalypse

July 24, 2022

The Dawn of the Apocalypse

We were warned for decades about the death march we are on because of global warming. And yet, the global ruling class continues to frog-march us towards extinction.

The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In China, more than a dozen cities issued the “highest possible heat warning” this weekend with over 900 million people in China enduring a scorching heat wave along with severe flooding and landslides across large swathes of southern China. Dozens of people have died. Millions of Chinese have been displaced. Economic losses run into the billions of yuan. Droughts, which have destroyed crops, killed livestock and forced many to flee their homes, are creating a potential famine in the Horn of Africa. More than 100 million people in the United States are under heat alerts in more than two dozen states from temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s and low 100s. Wildfires have destroyed thousands of acres in California. More than 73 percent of New Mexico is suffering from an “extreme” or “severe” drought. Thousands of people had to flee from a fast-moving brush fire near Yosemite National Park on Saturday and 2,000 homes and businesses lost power.

It is not as if we were not warned. It is not as if we lacked scientific evidence. It is not as if we could not see the steady ecological degeneration and species extinction. And yet, we did not act. The result will be mass death with victims dwarfing the murderous rampages of fascism, Stalinism and Mao Zedong’s China combined…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

After the crisis, what kind of world do we want? Post-apocalyptic novels hold lessons — and warnings

April 3, 2020

After the crisis, what kind of world do we want? Post-apocalyptic novels hold lessons — and warnings

‘Art gives me hope. Will we take those values, that hope, and use them to imagine a better collective future?’

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road.(Dimension Films)

I had planned to write a totally different column this month. I had the idea, the books. I’d started doing the research. Due to COVID-19 forcing me and so many others to stay at home and inside, I had the time.

But, also due to COVID-19, I didn’t have the inclination to continue doing any of it. For over a week now I’ve felt paralyzed, as though I’ve been watching my friends and family members move through a slow motion horror movie. I imagine a lot of people have felt that way over the past few days, weeks and/or months, depending on how deep into this global pandemic they are. With each passing day it has become clearer that life as we’d once known it is ending before our very eyes. Each day I’ve scrolled mindlessly through social media, waiting for the latest news story that might give some sort of discernible shape to our increasingly uncertain collective future.

There have been daily news conferences and updates. There has been emergency legislation introduced and passed. There have been restrictions on how many people can gather in one place, which businesses are allowed to remain open, and how they must operate if they do. It’s suggested that everyone stay in their homes, provided they have homes; that if you do have to go outside, you remain a certain distance away from others.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are We Living Through “12 Monkeys”?

March 26, 2020

Are We Living Through “12 Monkeys”?

A brand new mini-documentary “We’re Living in 12 Monkeys” was released today by Truthstream Media that outlines the agenda that is unfolding from the coronavirus hysteria.

The full New World Order agenda of complete control over humanity is in play. Watch below:

As we watched we were reminded of an article written in 2018 by Abraham Riesman who noted (at the time) that ’12 Monkeys’ was the apocalypse movie we need right now.

Critically, Riseman had just completed an addendum to his essay (excerpted below), tying it perfectly back to what the world is currently experiencing…

…the world has not yet collapsed.
I just went to pick up some supplies from my local chain pharmacy outlet and people seemed to be going about their daily business much as they always do.
The ambience stood in stark contrast to the reports I’d been reading all night about what the situation is likely to become in the near future.
I felt like 12 Monkeys’ protagonist, James Cole – someone who has been in the future, after it all hit the fan, and is granted a brief, bittersweet opportunity to visit the world as it was before the fall.
Given what’s happening, we thought we should republish this essay, which I wrote a year and a half before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 12 Monkeys, a film that is less about surviving a plague than it is about making a meaningful life on the eve of a crisis – and stubbornly believing that there’s something on the other side worth preparing for.

* * *

“How can I save you?” says the protagonist, Bruce Willis’s James Cole, early on in the 1995 Terry Gilliam film.
“This already happened. I can’t save you. Nobody can.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong

December 4, 2019

Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong

Bill McKibben, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Greta Thunberg, and Zion Lights of Extinction Rebellion — Climate scientists are speaking out against grossly exaggerated claims about global warming.GETTY

Environmental journalists and advocates have in recent weeks made a number of apocalyptic predictions about the impact of climate change. Bill McKibben suggested climate-driven fires in Australia had made koalas “functionally extinct.” Extinction Rebellion said “Billions will die” and “Life on Earth is dying.” Vice claimed the “collapse of civilization may have already begun.”

Few have underscored the threat more than student climate activist Greta Thunberg and Green New Deal sponsor Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The latter said, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.” Says Thunberg in her new book, “Around 2030 we will be in a position to set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control that will lead to the end of our civilization as we know it.”

Sometimes, scientists themselves make apocalyptic claims. “It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that,” if Earth warms four degrees, said one earlier this year. “The potential for multi-breadbasket failure is increasing,” saidanother. If sea levels rise as much as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts, another scientist said, “It will be an unmanageable problem.” Today In: Business

Apocalyptic statements like these have real-world impacts. In September, a group of British psychologists said children are increasingly suffering from anxiety from the frightening discourse around climate change. In October, an activist with Extinction Rebellion (”XR”) — an environmental group founded in 2018 to commit civil disobedience to draw awareness to the threat its founders and supporters say climate change poses to human existence — and a videographer, were kicked and beaten in a London Tube station by angry commuters. And last week, an XR co-founder said a genocide like the Holocaust was “happening again, on a far greater scale, and in plain sight” from climate change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Preparing For A Financial Apocalypse: Insiders Are Selling “$600 Million Of Stock Per Day In August”

August 27, 2019

Preparing For A Financial Apocalypse: Insiders Are Selling “$600 Million Of Stock Per Day In August”

In the U.S., corporate insiders have been selling stocks at an average rate of 600 million dollars per day during the month of August. This kind of wild selling indicates that there is a tremendous amount of fear among corporate insiders right now, and such selling would only make sense if a stock market crash is imminent. And without a doubt, we have already seen volatility return to Wall Street in a major way as our trade war with China has dramatically escalated. Many Americans are hoping that things will start to calm down and that our trade conflict with China can be resolved calmly, because if things take a bad turn many analysts are warning that we could soon be facing the worst financial crisis since 2008. Here is one example…

Remember the brutal sell-off last year when stocks suffered their worst December since the Great Depression? Something worse than that could happen in days, a Nomura analyst said.
Macro and quant strategist Masanari Takada turned heads earlier this month with his bold call for a “Lehman-like” plunge. He’s sticking with this prediction as market sentiment shows no signs of improving, leading him to believe a monster sell-off could arrive this week.

With chilling forecasts like that being thrown around on a regular basis these days, it is understandable that corporate insiders would be tempted to get out of the market, and right now they are racing for the exits at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking. The following comes from CNN…

Corporate insiders have sold an average of $600 million of stock per day in August, according to TrimTabs Investment Research, which tracks stock market liquidity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

State of Apocalyptic Nature: A Contract with Gaia

April 15, 2019

State of Apocalyptic Nature: A Contract with Gaia

As for the individual, every one is a son of his time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over Rhodes.

The very fact that something is determined as a limitation implies that the limitation is already transcended. – Hegel

Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and most recently Rawls have all been exemplary practitioners of contract theory.

As is well known, all four of these political theorists began with a particular conception of the state of nature or put into other words man’s original existential situation prior to all forms of government or social contract.

In each case, the state of nature is pre-historical because pre-political.

How each thinker viewed man’s primary condition dictated the course of their further arguments concerning humanity’s fundamental political decisions and actions.

This profound intellectual tradition led most famously to the political beliefs and institutions that founded the United States (at least in theory if not in future practice) and later supplied the world, in part through the consequences of the French Revolution, with today’s democratic principles and ideals especially as they relate to Universal Human Rights.

Although, practically speaking, the fruits of contract theory have by no means been fully applied they nonetheless have provided and arguably still provide the intellectual and spiritual resources for critical projects of reform and even revolution.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Project Fear Goes To ’11’: Brexit Could Lead To Thousands Of Deaths, Mass Hunger

January 30, 2019

Project Fear Goes To ’11’: Brexit Could Lead To Thousands Of Deaths, Mass Hunger

If you listen to the government tell it, a post-“hard” Brexit Britain will inevitably resemble the post-apocalyptic Australia from “Mad Max”: A post-apocalyptic hellscape where Britons will be forced to battle it out “Thunderdome”-style for access to scare essentials like food, medicine and “guzzoline”.

Sound outlandish? Well, that’s because it probably is. The notion that reverting to WTO rules on trade would cause anything beyond a transient disruption to supply chains is ridiculous on its face. Most of this blatant fearmongering can be attributed to a very effective propaganda campaign we’ve dubbed “Project Fear”. In recent weeks, May’s government has staged traffic jams near would-be border checkpoints and warned that the hit to economic growth will linger for years, if not decades.

Yet, out of naivety or shrewdness, Brexiteer MPs have largely ignored these warnings and continued to oppose May’s deal, despite her insistence that it is Britain’s “best and only” option. So far, the EU has refused to reopen negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement, prompting May’s latest attempt to transform a wave of resistance into a surmountable obstacle by winning support for an amendment that she could then pitch to the EU27 as the only workable arrangement. But like her other plans, this too appears to be mired in conflict.

Fearful of the shortages that could lie just around the corner, both warehouses and UK citizens have begun hoarding food, medicine and other supplies. Perhaps realizing that they have pushed the country to the brink of hysteria, PM May’s government on Monday tried to walk back some of the more outrageous claims, assuring citizens that there will be enough to eat in the event of a hard Brexit, though prices on fresh foods could see a temporary spike. The walk back followed another warning from supermarket chains about possible supply shortages if ‘no deal’ goes through.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Regulating Apocalypse

October 31, 2018

Regulating Apocalypse

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!”
“Don’t be such a purist!”
“Be strategic!”
“Do what’s possible!”
“You can’t deny reality / human nature / religious text.”

The phrases used to oppose proposals for major change haven’t changed much for centuries, in both meanings of that phrase. No doubt these sayings sound better in certain circumstances than others, depending on the details. But in general, I find that they sound worse since the status quo locked in the climate collapse, and since the risk of nuclear catastrophe reached it’s current record high and rapidly climbing position.

I’ve just read a new book called War, Law, and Humanity by James Crossland that looks at efforts to regulate or end war from the 1850s up through the beginning of the 1900s. One strain of thought was that war needed to be eliminated and replaced with nonviolent arbitration. Another was that war needed to be regulated, doctors and nurses admitted onto battlefields, standards upheld for the treatment of prisoners, particular weapons banned, etc. The peace advocates were mocked as dreamers. The humanizers were the “realists.”

One must now write history from a nonexistent future. History cannot actually judge anything or anyone because it will not exist any longer in the brains of any living homo sapiens. But we can, pre-extinction, imagine our way forward and look back. If we end in nuclear holocaust, will those who tried to end war still have been silly dreamers? Or will world government or mandatory arbitration or disarmament sound slightly less goofy if the alternative that peace advocates identified for many decades as apocalypse turns out to be apocalypse?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Durable Goods

October 26, 2018

Durable Goods

Ed. note: The post below is a transcription of Post Carbon Fellow Stephanie Mills’ remarks at the 50 year anniversary of the publication of the Whole Earth Catalog.

Gratitude to Mother Earth, ground of being. Gratitude to Stewart and Ryan and their colleagues for realizing this event. Gratitude to Stephanie Feldstein for her partnership tonight.

The image was taken this summer in a stand of old growth White Pine saved in 1973 from the chainsaws by a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens. The flowers are Bunchberry and Canada Mayflower. Gratitude to all those beings.

Stewart, master of compressed utterance, asked for five minutes on the last and next half-centuries: More than a tweet, less than a tome.

Fifty years is an eyeblink. Yet despite many good faith efforts at every level to prevent waste and ruin, the growth of industrial civilization has ravaged the Earth, depleting soil, water, and biodiversity, contaminating oceans and the atmosphere.

In 1968 Paul and Anne Ehrlich dropped The Population Bomb. There were about 3.5 billion of us then, over seven billion now. Contraceptive means improved, while political calculation, cultural conservatism and patriarchy hampered their widespread adoption.

Sixties temblors of revolutionary change cracked a few foundations. In 1972 from the Club of Rome we got a world systems model forecasting industrial civilization’s inescapable limits to growth. In 1974, Congress heard of M. King Hubbert’s curve mapping the limits to oil production, the end times for a petroleum-driven global infrastructure. Big business as usual has continued. Critical thresholds have been crossed. A late-breaking discussion of degrowth is underway but yet to reach a wide audience.

A half-century ago we thought about living more responsibly. “Access to tools” enlivened possibilities of household, homestead, village, and neighborhood self-reliance. There was hope of stalling the Apocalypse Juggernaut. There still may be.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Keep Going by Knowing the Apocalypse is Now: a Lesson From the Pig Farm

September 14, 2018

How to Keep Going by Knowing the Apocalypse is Now: a Lesson From the Pig Farm

“Yet one thing I fight for, tooth and nail, all the time. And that is my bit of inward peace, where I am at one with myself.”

– D.H. Lawrence, “What Would You Fight For?”

“We’ve been hearing from shamanic healers for decades about “connecting to spirit,” but their message sidesteps industrial capitalism… and open, public, radical changes flowing from spiritual work.”

– Dave Hanson, Shamanism, Anarchy & the End of the World, Fifth Estate (2008)

…the real reason why a European of bourgeois upbringing, even when he calls himself a Communist, cannot without a hard effort think of a working man as his equal. It is summed up in…The lower classes smell.

– George Orwell, Wigan Pier

What D.H. Lawrence fought for, we should all fight for. Nothing is more wanting today, a time when strength is equated with “manly” might and militarism, than individuals who fiercely protect the inner flame of their genius, who by their example can imply to the rest of us that we should all be so unmanly as to have each his own deeply experienced truth deemed worth fighting for. D.H., unlike so many contemporary bourgeois practitioners of eastern and indigenous spiritual practices, knew that the equanimity necessary to develop character, integrity, individuality, vision and strength is not an entitlement, but a fight. Though many are the calls since the 60’s to achieve inner serenity and clarity of mind – which sound pretty attractive to the average stressed and fearful man or woman today, few and strange to the ear are calls to be here now in the catastrophic human reality – with its necessary political struggle – an act of human presencewe should be fighting for, not fleeing from.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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