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What Are GeoDestinies?

What Are GeoDestinies?

 

Lover’s Leap Overlook, Virginia

How are you doing? Are you feeling alright? If you answered in a positive fashion, then great! If not, then I’m sorry to hear that things aren’t going so well for you and that you aren’t feeling good right now. Why do I ask? Well, because I’ve been working on reading a greatly detailed book about our predicaments and combined with the general realities I outline in this blog, I’m feeling a bit down about how these trajectories are proceeding. So, if you are also not feeling great about these predicaments, I can safely bet that like me, you are just a tad bit too clear-eyed and you are seeing beyond all the hype and distraction currently filling mainstream media right now. I’ve never had any doubts about exponential change and that it will (and is doing so already) outpace any ability we might have to adjust, adapt, or mitigate the circumstances we find ourselves in the midst of. This book I mention is GeoDestinies by Walter Youngquist, and it is an experience in humility, literally.

New studies continue amassing the evidence I routinely post here regarding these predicaments, but when one looks at the actual historical evidence of where we’ve been and what we’ve done and how even when countless warnings have been issued, society has paid little, if any, attention to any of them. How many final warnings must be issued? I’m pretty sure I posted the study this article discusses already, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, there it is. I could look up more recent studies, but the one by James Hansen I published many months ago has now been peer-reviewed and represents a distinctive view of where we’re headed…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

GeoDestinies 2022

GeoDestinies 2022

Walter Youngquist (1921-2018) was a petroleum geologist, a University of Oregon professor, and my friend.  His life’s masterpiece is a 600 page book that’s now available to everyone as a free PDF download [HERE].

Geologists study Earth resources, many of which are being degraded and depleted — aquifers, topsoil, hydrocarbons, minerals, etc.  These resources have limits.  Every drinker learns that the glass starts full, ends empty, and the faster you drink it, the quicker it’s gone.  Consumers pay little attention to resource limits, but they’re beginning to comprehend the impact of carbon emissions on the climate.  Mainstream experts repeatedly tell us not to worry.  They preach a fervent blind faith in miracles — a smooth and easy transition to a clean, green, renewable utopia.  Geologists wince.

Youngquist didn’t believe in miracles or techno utopias.  Today, we’re living dangerously fast by destroying astonishing amounts of nonrenewable resources — a onetime binge that can never again be repeated.  Nonrenewable energy is finite.  We have been soaring in a beautiful dream world, where the air is perfumed with the intoxicating aroma of a nonrenewable prosperity.  The era of cheap energy is fading away in the rear view mirror.

In 1973, the Eugene newspaper wrote a story about one of his lectures, “Dark Picture Painted by Youngquist.”  He gave many talks to Chamber of Commerce groups, trying to introduce them to the concept of limits.  He was almost never invited back.  America worships perpetual growth at any cost.  Growth is our god word.

In the mid-1990s, a number of the world’s petroleum geologists became alarmed that the volume of new oil discovered was declining, while the volume of consumption continued soaring.  This inspired the dawn of the Peak Oil movement, a wakeup call.  In 1997, Youngquist published GeoDestinies, which quickly sold out…

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

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