End of Civilization/ Apocalypse/ Long Emergency etc

Global warming means the earth becomes a desert. We have no arable land and no water. We are in the middle of the 6th great extinction. Humans will not survive, the world wide rise of fascism is predictable. As people move to live, political systems are weakened. The rhetoric "whites only" is a sad attempt to hoard diminishing resources.

If we really did put our focus on global warming, we could at least lengthen humanity's time on the planet.

Does anyone here read/listen to Derrick Jensen? What he says is depressing, but I think he is right.

Never heard of him r2. What does he say?

here

The sooner we accept that humanity is doomed, the better. We're all gonna die anyways. Nobody seems interested in longevity.

Too many people demanding/requiring too few resources.

I'm an optimist -- I think it's all salvageable and still worth fighting for.

The other option to global warming is the next World War which will probably see the U.S. trying to react to nukes coming at us from six different directions.

the sun will...

I not only think it is already happening, but is accelerating. As Stephen Hawking said: "It's inevitable, because humans are too greedy and selfish to do anything about it." And it's true.

A majority of Americans "say" they are concerned about climate change. But look around you every day: Streets and roads filled to the brim with huge, oversized, gas-guzzling monster trucks and SUV's and, of course, the ever-present vans. Very few people actually "need" these polluting monsters, yet they keep buying them.

Yeah, it's them, but the whole world economic power system is this ultra wasteful, exploitative, destructive global capitalism. They will not give it up. They do not want us to imagine anything else, even though the planet's survival means we must.

Shut off your computers and stop your power consumption. Scrap your car and ride your bike or get a horse. etc etc etc mmmm hmmmm that's what I thought.

I heard that 75% of the planet's pollution is corporate industrial, not personal use. The system wants you to worry about recycling as a tactic to shut down what it is really about - the wasteful system of destruction of profit.

of destruction FOR profit

Everything is going to change in about ten years. At that time, the baby boom, the generation whose every whim has been catered to since they were created in the 40s and 50s will start entering their die off. 80% of boomers will die between 2030 and 2050. They currently hold almost all political and socioeconomic power and they are used to getting what they want and making society bend to their whims. This is one battle they will lose spectacularly.

Yes, but what will be left at that point, R15? What will be the state of the world?

The AI will kill us all off way sooner than climate change ever could.

Why blame it on baby boomers. Everyone buys all this junk all the time. If people would stop spending money on junk then the corporations wouldn't make money. Baby Boomers don't traditionally buy a lot of shit. They do not advertise to old people. Most people don't run corporations. They just go along like sheep. I am a Baby Boomer and refuse to own a car because of the destruction of the climate. Younger people are just as into status as everybody else. It is all of us. People's lifestyle would have to be severely curtailed to change anything and nobody is willing to do it. One of the biggest problems is overpopulation and baby boomers are not having babies anymore. The POP is going up all the time. The best thing that could happen for the planet would be a virus that wiped out the majority of the population.

[quote] I heard that 75% of the planet's pollution is corporate industrial, not personal use.

I'd believe it. People who fly in for their TED Talk telling families who cut down from two cars to one hybrid or electric vehicle and a bicycle they have to go vegan or die, and then after the TED Talk the speaker goes to a steakhouse...

As if the planet and people's health are going to miraculously improve because no one is eating eggs and clams. As long as everyone else has to preserve and treat their own water while the asshole yokels elect men who fly every weekend to play golf on green courses... the US has no interest in meeting global climate change agreements, why should they when a hefty percent of the population think God's going to vaporize/carry them up before or at the dawn of the Apocalypse.

By all objective measures, the world's population has never been more healthy and prosperous.

The endless hand-wringing is ludicrous and tiresome.

Sure, the community of scientists have it all wrong, sweetie

And the US department of defense got it all wrong

"Climate change" and "global warming" are caused by overpopulation. If it continues to be ignored due to cultural and political considerations, then the Earth will continue to degenerate.

The U.S. try Asia. The building they are doing all over Asia is obscene. All Corps are global, they are not US corps anymore. R21 if you believe that, you are a fool. Just the giant AG trying to feed almost 8 billion is causing all kinds of havoc.

Bio diverscy collapse and or water scarcity meets reiance on AI and automation.

Global warming doesn't mean that the entire earth will become a desert. It means that wet places will get WETTER and dry places drier (generally speaking). Weather will become more unpredictable. A lot of crops will fail because farmers will not know the ideal times to plant. Seacoast cities will become very prone to flooding - many will become uninhabitable and will have be abandoned. People will try to migrate to cooler climates, higher latitudes, and higher elevations, but of course there will be a lot of resistance to such migrations. There will be a lot of suffering. Diets will be much more restricted than currently because of crop failures, ecosystem collapses (such as fisheries), and failures of transportation from farm to table. Most of this will take place in the next 20-25 years, I think. I hope to be dead when the worst of it comes to pass. But I have a little 1/3 of an acre which is already growing food (fruit trees, bushes, vines, and shrubs), raised beds, etc. I could keep myself alive by trading food for other necessities for a while, until someone decides to kill me to get at my crops, but raising food for oneself at 80+ doesn't seem like a lot of fun.anyway. I have a lot of younger relatives. I'll let them put me out on an ice-floe and try to fend for themselves.

screaming bump

The problem with 'recycling' is, it takes more resources to recycle just about everything besides aluminum than to just make more of {whatever}.

Aluminum requires a staggering amount of energy to extract from bauxite. So much, in fact, that aluminum-smelting plants are inevitably located literally next door to power plants.

Paper? Total waste of energy to recycle... at least, into virgin-quality paper. Environmentalists make it sound like old-growth forests get cut down to make toilet paper, regular paper, and napkins... the reality is, trees used to make paper are a cash crop, just like corn and wheat. It just has a longer growth cycle, so a farm has multiple fields of trees, moving from field to field every year to cut them down & plant new ones to start the next cycle.

Even recycling bottles is a questionable practice. Water bottles take so little plastic, the resources & energy needed to collect & sanitize reusable bottles is almost obscene by comparison.

If certain resources someday become genuinely scarce & valuable, the government won't have to mandate recycling, because landfill owners will be selling mining rights to companies to sift through a century+ of trash & do it anyway.

Think about it. How the HOLY FUCK does it make rational sense to separately collect & transport used paper to China, then PAY companies in China to "recycle" something like 12% of it into new paper? It literally makes MORE economic and environmental sense to just encourage more people to buy low-quality land & transform it into millions of acres of tree farms (using fertilizer, reverse-osmosis water, and robotic labor), because at least THEN you're adding more CO2-consuming plants to the biosphere.

Likewise, if you want to lock up CO2 & make a difference, find a new, low-energy process for producing Silane... when you burn Silane in CO2, it produces sand, graphite, water, and a lot of heat.

When I was in college I worked for a recycling company. I did the dispatching for the trucks. About 85% of what the trucks pick up goes right to the landfill. In recycling it's not the material that's profitable it's the routes. All recycle places really want is the good cardboard like Amazon boxes and the plastic from soda bottles. It was fine and making a profit until governments, as usual, fucked it up. They wanted everything recycled and there just isn't any demand for everything. So now pulling and sorting the stuff people wanted has become more environmentally unsound than throwing it away.

The Paris accords? It will take a couple of hundred years of those accords to be in effect to offset the "carbon footprint" it took to get all the leaders there for the negotiations and then the signing.

Aside from the environmental damage and coming social damage, do you find on a personal level that it is depressing? It isn't something earlier generations had to think about.

R29, didn't they want the aluminum?

I read online that this practice of mixing recyclables together is counter-productive. People feel good about recycling more stuff. However, when mixed together, more of the recycled mix is rejected by Chinese companies due to contamination. They don't want metal in the paper, etc.

Anyone here familiar with James Howard Kunstler and his book The Long EMergency?

It is VERY depressing. Knowing we are part of our own eventual destruction just to survive in the now.... because the people in charge that have the power to change these things are raging sociopaths who care about their own glory and hedonism.

I have had many crushing moments of existential anguish over it. So have many of my millenial peers. Theres a continent of garbage in the ocean. Nobody even brings it up and no politician will touch the matter with a ten foot pole. Morons, mindless bad children with no proper idea of long term consequence as long as short term greed is fulfilled. None of these politicians can make any difference, the illusion is we can vote for change.

So why is almost everyone depressed and on medication? Because deep deep down the futility and corruption of our society hits us and theres a spiralling situation beyond repair and we all know in us somewhere that we are truly FUCKED. It is simply very sad.

Its made me realize that humanity as it stands, is a despicable destructive parasite and by being alive we participate in the parasitism.

There’s a rapid escalation in what in Ye Olden Dayes was called “pestilence” and disease, at least in North America. Ticks are spreading like wildfire, and they are spreading Lyme disease, Babeia (a malaria-like parasite), Bartonella (cat-scratch fever, which can cause schizophrenia), relapsing fever and a potentially deadly allergy to red meat. Climate forecasters and epidemiologists say that ancient diseases that have been preserved for millennia are likely to be reintroduced as the ice caps melt. Many diseases, including fungal infections, are becoming immune to all known antimicrobials. And the drug companies are not researching new ones because they aren’t profitable and they lead to cures for ailments, which is a self-limiting market, rather than lifelong treatments for disabling chronic illness, which is the gift that keeps giving to the pharmaceutical and medical sectors.

Capitalism is killing us.

I believe humanity will probably die out within a couple of hundred years, and it’s for the best. The planet will recover once we are gone.

The plants have made interesting use of us, but we need to go now that we are fucking with their DNA.

Yes, R32.

If anyone is interested in the topics of this thread or Derrick Jensen, you can see clips of him on youtube talking (by himself) or interviewing a range of people.

I meant to say yes, R32. That is why I put Long Emergency in the topic title. I think it was a good book and I agree we are in it right now (it will only get worse).

I imagine this was how people felt during the great plagues of the Middle Ages. What's harder is to be here, in the moment, and enjoy it fully no matter what else is happening.

I wish great joy and happiness for all living things, even people.

Some black swans:

Comet or asteroid collision. Recently, there was a huge asteroid that was so close that it passed inside the Moon orbit. It even passed inside the orbital path of some of our manmade satellites. And they didn’t even know it was coming. They only saw it after the fact. If a large one hits in the ocean, it’ll cause a great tsunami. There is some evidence that an asteroid Atlantic strike once caused a tsunami so big it ran as far as the Appalachian mountains, hundreds of miles inland.

Another one is a major eruption of the Yellowstone caldera. It could make the planes uninhabitable with ash deposits, and lower global temps. Imagine an enemy detonating an a-bomb there to get it started.

There’s a mountain in the Azores where much of the mountainside is susceptible to falling into the sea, abruptly. It will create a huge tsunami that could destroy the major American east coast cities. An a-bomb there to get things started would likewise be a disaster.

Finally, a depletion or contamination of the Ogilala Aquifer could make Plains-farming subject to rainfall again, except now we have double the population to feed.

A solar flare and coronal mass ejection fries the electronic of electrical systems including cars, computers, and energy plants. Electrical transformers are fried around the world and there aren’t enough spares to keep people warm and get food to them, for years.

If something like an EMP hits if you aren't within 10 miles of your food source you're going to die.

I think water wars will cause problems.

The relatively peaceful end of the Cold War with the USSR is still a wonder to me. The same with the mostly peaceful transition of China from adversary to partner. But I cannot see how the Korean situation gets resolved peacefully. I’m not so much worried about a Korean nuke strike on us, but maybe on Japan or on South Korea.

And even worse will be dealing with Iran, since Trump has all the wrong instincts. I can envision Trump staging a provocation with Iran right before the election. Iran is not a small country like Iraq. And even if it’s peoole don't like their government, they don’t want American interference. And Bebe will fight Iran to the last drop of American blood.

Likewise with Cuber. There is no reason we can’t have the same kind of relationship with them, as we had with the USSR.

Apparently everyone before Trump had bad instincts too. They're the ones that got us here. Not two years of Trump.

Here’s one that I think about.

I’d heard that North Korea was the only country that counterfeited American currency, excluding countries at war with the US.

But aside from that, I would expect Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea are all able to hack into our financial system. What a mess that could be.

[quote] R44: Apparently everyone before Trump had bad instincts too. They're the ones that got us here. Not two years of Trump.

That’s lazy thinking. Just for example, Obama got Iran to the negotiation table for the first time with the US in 35 years. He hammered out a nuclear freeze agreement with Iran and also with the UK, France, Germany, China, and Russia. Over ten years, the goal was to increase trust and work towards a permanent nuke ban. But Trump fucked that all up by withdrawing from the agreement. In return, he got...nothing, and proved to the Iranians that we were an unreliable adversary. So, no, they all didn’t have bad instincts. This is all on Trump. One of the worst decisions of his decisionless Administration.

Besides, different times calls for different measures. Maybe an Iranian embargo was right in 1980, but it has proven to not be useful today. Context matters.

Successful and developed nation states rely on a completely unsustainable life. The pressure of it will break us sooner or later. I say thirty good years.

I have read that it would have been cheaper for the Union to buy every slave in America than it was to wage war.

Obviously, the Great empires of Europe found in retrospect that WWI was a disaster for everybody.

Finally, had Germany stopped its land grabs before invading Poland, the Germans would have been running Europe by 1960.

War is just not profitable for anyone, except for the non-combatants.

I never used to fear attack on our land. Now I do. Manny more countries are nuclear and have a well trained, ruthless military. The US has been paying more and more money to military contractors, who are mercenaries. Not only are 75% of personnel in Afghanistan contractors, many aren’t American. Once countries start outsourcing their military, it’s a matter of time.

I sense a coup or a de facto break up of the US in about 50 years. The divisions we have, which aren't going to go anywhere, can't stand. A truer republic will return. If it's nonviolent we'll be better off. All Germany had to do was not invade the USSR and strengthen their alliance and they would have won the war. Hitler just had a foolish bug up his ass over communism. It cost him everything. They would have had the bomb long before the United States and London would have been Londoshima.

This guy has recently released a book on the climate. A lot of scary stuff.

Let’s build cities in deserts and divert water to them so they can have swimming pools. Let’s build homes out of wood that burns easily and gets torn apart in hurricanes and tornadoes. Let’s buiild houses on artificial canals and on sea shores and spend billions rebuilding them after storms and floods. And let’s ignore dams, bridges and the health of the population.

With the kind of surveillance we have nowadays, it would be easy to put authoritarians in charge. And one third of the population would go along with it. They’d turn in their neighbors and coworkers and relatives they dont like. They’d shut down websites and other media outlets they don’t like. They’ll commit atrocities cand lie about it. There is at least one person on your block who would love to pull out his gun and round up dissidents on behalf of a leader perceived to be strong and on his side. The US Border Patrol is allowiing militias to round up immigrants, destroy caches of food and water in the desert and intimidate people leaving those caches.

The decline of the U.S. as the world's only superpower was inevitable once the Bush II administration put the country in hock to China and Japan to finance its failed conquest of the Middle East. The world financial crash and Obama's reassuring presence seemed to even things out, but now that we have a literally demented reality show star in the White House and China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are openly playing him, there's nowhere to go but down. That's not the end of the world, but it does underline the utter cluelessness of those assholes running around in their made in China MAGA hats.

For the sun will rise and the moon will set,

And you'll learn how to settle for what you get,

It'll all go on if we're here or not,

So, who cares, so what?

So, who cares, so what?

I'm not as strong as you think I am.

Meanwhile, the media and corporations carry on like nothing is happening

Musk, Bezos and Branson: Who Will Dominate Space Tourism?

There’s a theory that a large melt-off of Greenland or arctic ice will flood the North Atlantic with cold freshwater. This could shut-down the underwater currents including the Gulf Stream, which serves to warm New England and on over to warm Western Europe. This would result a sharply colder east coast, and colder Western Europe.

It also will mess with migrating sea creatures and birds. They also speculated that the Atlantic will develop large dead zones until streams restore themselves, if ever.

When would this happen, R57?

We're gonna be fine. Humans are an interplanetary fungus. We won't even inhabit the Earth but we'll still visit from time to time.

R57, you mean no stifling humidity in July & August either?

R58, when and if a large melt of freshwater enters the North Atlantic.

I suspect that climate change will develop slowly, until. Point when things start happening in quic season. For example, we might get a large permafrost melt over a Summer, releasing a large volume of methane, which then immediately increases climate change.

Real estate is cheap in Northern Canada and Alaska.

Did we already discuss a mutant influenza or something like encephalitis lethargica, both of which swept the world at the beginning of the 20th century? Or a drug resistant TB virus? It doesn't have to be and an exotic Ebola or Zika virus. My grandpa got encephalitis lethargica an it destroyed the family, financially.

Humanity is fucked.

The very rich don't give a toss, and the world's poorest, which is 80% of the planet are so struggling just to exist that they don't care. Then 90% of the developed world are too busy watching Dancing on Ice or some fucking soap or hanging on to every word the Kardashian's utter to do anything meaningful.

Condolences to R64

In the podcast above, David Wallace Wells discusses the release of various disease causing organisms from melting ice.

That’s what I’m afraid off. That somewhere under the permafrost is some disease that hasn’t existed or been widespread for years, like smallpox or the Black Death, and it gets carried out on some guy’s clothes and gets passed around at an airport.

The 1917 flu was carried by soldiers going home on trains for the holidays. They gave it to the people on the train, gave it to their families in all their small towns, then went back to camp and gave it to each other.

Diseases we have no immunity for act very fast. My dad told me during the1917 flu epidemic, a family that lived on the remote outskirts of grandma’s small town wasn’t heard from for too long. Some neighbors went to the house and found every family member dead. Some were still sitting at the kitchen table with food on their plates. From the looks of things, they all died the same day.

He said people avoided each other and didn’t go to town unless they really had to, because they were afraid to catch it.

Should I watch the Andromeda Strain tonight? Or Contagion? Matt Damon really overacts in Contagion.

I love that Goop gets her head buzz sawed in Contagion

Andromeda Strain is free for STARS subscribers. I’m starting now. Watching it with my Moose. Already scared. Had to put a snuggle around him and the opening credits are still running.

1971

Thanks for mentioning that R70, I’ll watch it.

[quote] Watching it with my Moose.

Yet again you seemibgly represent yourself in an ownership capacity relative to the Moose. How speciest.

[quote] Watching it with my Moose.

Yet again you seemingly represent yourself in an ownership capacity relative to the Moose. How speciest.

I had to pause the movie last night because it was got past the bedtime for [italic] my [/italic] Moose, But we’re going to finish it tonight. He says he’s not scared but I can tell he is. He's wearing that snuggle-wrap like a burka.

Italicization doesn’t make it any less cruel.

You know there really is a plague that’s killing moose.

We’ll, I guess I’ll have to confiscate my moose’s iPad again for a while.

[quote] You know there really is a plague that’s killing moose.

And that plague is those who would keep them bound and in chains while posing as their friends.

R79, my moose is really mad at you now. He’s chugging Milanta right now and is going to squat over your chimney later.

Milanta and her sister Atlanta.

it all boils down to global warming. People usually think.......I dont live on the coasts so sea level rise wont effect me. People dont grasp the gravity/ It isnt just sea level rise. Its much hotter temps. Its the drying up and desertification of the western united states. Its crop failure in the heartland. Its hotter and hotter temps everywhere.......leading to power grid failures. Its resource wars with other countries over dwindling resources. Its so little water that we cant maintain the cooling required of the hundreds and thousands of nuclear reators.............eventually we will no doubt just burn up planet earth..........and its all going to happen this century.

The 21st century is when everything changes.

Yes R30 it has been depressing me for years. I am on a lot of climate change websites that chronicle all the damage every year. I think we will be gone by 2050 or a few years after. The ocean will be completely dead by 2049 and we cannot live without the ocean. It is what happened during the Permian extinction event

R32 yes I read it and used to follow him but now he is a trump supporter and all the comments are really right wing. Sometimes reminds me of Breitbart.

How is he a Trump supporter? He talks about the environment and Trump has been very bad for the environment

He doesn't talk about the environment anymore. He rails against immigration, the Democrats, Mueller and all kinds of political crap. Not sure what happened to him. Check it out yourself. His sight is called Clusterfuck nation and he writes a new blog every Friday and Monday. Check out the comments sections.

Eventually, Iran/Russia/North Korea/China/Israel will eventually hack our financial systems and it’ll make the 2008 crash look like the roaring 1990s.

“War is just not profitable for anyone, except for the non-combatants.”

Amen.

The military congressional industrial complex has hollowed out the middle class of America.

The super rich and working poor are now the largest segment, and the latter are far more numerous than the former.

When the government can print unlimited amounts of money and funnel it to the top 0.05% with impunity, destruction of real wealth and living standards is inevitable.

Printing money doesn’t create wealth, it destroys it.

R88

That’s a bizarre and unrealistic fantasy, because the federal reserve is doing a fantastic job of destroying the dollar.

Other countries don’t need to step in and subvert our financial system, since our government has authorized the federal reserve to do the damage!

“...dont live on the coasts so sea level rise wont effect me...”

Effect and affect mean different things, moron.

People that still believe in man-made global warming are usually not intelligent enough to understand the science behind the scam.

We've just got to let a lot of people die. No more aid and no more refugees there are too many damn people and when shit gets bad do we really want to be sharing our resources? We are fortunate in some countries we need to make things better for our citizens, work on cleaning up our environments and let the world sort itself out.

Climate Chan Means:

Rising sea levels. Most of Dlorida will be underwater by 2100. Most major coastal cities will be under watervor just barely (NYC, Boston, DC, London, LA, Houston, Savanah, Baltimore, London, the Netherlands, Rome, Istanbul, Bangladesh, etc)

The great Himalayan rivers will not be able to support it’s dependent populations in China, Pakistan, and India, causing war between the nuclear powers. They are already breaking treaties and diverting water in 2018/2019.

Australia and California will suffer greater drought. The Colorado will not be able to serve its existing service area without rationing.

Some places will be wetter and colder.

Many Plants and animals will not be able to adapt fast enough and will go extinct. Coral reefs are dying now. If they mostly die, it could lead to a collapse of sea food eaten by people. Bee collapse could mean a lack of pollination, and resultant mass starvation.

Large parts of the tropics may become too hot for human habitation.

Cat 5 Superstorms will e-commerce common and develop due to the higher water and air temps.

Tropical diseases will migrate north. Malaria in Canada, for example.

That’s for starters.

[quote] We've just got to let a lot of people die

Or prevent them from being born. Mass sterilization across the board with incentives as necessary.

So what's for the main course and dessert r93?

Our future sounds dramatic but grim.

Whites have controlled their population.

R95, after Trump, an omnibus exec action: “This order hereby reverses every executive action signed by the Trump Administration and reestablishes the actions in force on Jan 19, 2016.”

Followed by similar action in Congress. Then we beg to get back into the Paris accord.

We should tell the auto makers now - Trump has relaxed fuel standards, but they’re going back to Obama levels over night in 2020, with big fines, so maybe they should ignore Trump or face the consequences and massive recalls.

> Most of Dlorida will be underwater by 2100

Assuming you mean "Florida"... no, it won't. Not even close.

Not even the most pessimistic predictions claim "most of Florida" will be underwater by 2100. Lots of areas might get destroyed by higher storm surge... and then get rebuilt, bigger & more-expensive than ever, on additional new fill dirt or new concrete pilings.

Florida is LITERALLY 100% non-seismic, and has enough limestone bedrock just inches below surface, to keep raising "ground level" higher & higher as necessary. Florida Bay might very well grow into a gigantic inland sea where the Everglades is now, with a second beachfront coastline just west of Krome Avenue & US-27, with a vast freshwater bay between US-27 & the Sawgrass Expressway north of Weston that extends up to (and includes) Lake Okeechobee, but the only "ocean" that's going to replace Florida's urbanized coastlines is an ocean of concrete that resembles Coruscant or Trantor.

Oh... Florida's NATURAL environment is *absolutely* fucked. But it would be fucked even if seas don't rise an inch. Florida's biggest industry is its own growth, and it won't be slowing down anytime soon.

Sea level rise will give Florida a second (interior) coastline & expensive reverse-osmosis water will push agriculture out of the state, opening EVEN MORE land up for new explosive development.

50 years from now, the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee will be lined with skyscrapers, Sebring will be a sprawling ocean of townhomes, outlet malls, & golf courses, and Naples will have hundreds of 50-150 story pencil towers with one residence per floor, while Miami International Airport sits in a concrete valley between a Coruscant-like concrete plateau of skyscrapers to the north and south.

R98 What about all the sinkholes?

r99, sinkholes, even LARGE ones, are a minor issue for large skyscrapers. Skyscraper foundations are DEEP. If there's a cavern beneath a skyscraper under construction, you're going to know about it LONG before you've finished pouring the third floor... probably before you've finished drilling & hammering the piling cores.

Single-family homes are vulnerable because their construction doesn't put much dynamic stress on the land, or involve deep boring. So, a water-filled cavern might be ok now, and collapse 11 years later as the water dries up. If you're drilling 18" diameter holes & ramming 16" concrete beams into them over a sinkhole, you're going to end up with a geyser and 50' concrete beam that suddenly breaks through & falls 25 fest into the hole.

Plus, "real" sinkholes are only abundant in a relatively narrow band between SR-50 and SR-70. The only "sinkholes" in SOUTH Florida are just caused when a pipe bursts or something similar & washes out a hole under something (usually a road), which can happen ANYWHERE you have loose, sandy soil.

Worst-case, in a place like Sebring, developers could build townhomes with additional long, deep concrete beams that span far enough to allow a unit or two to hang (supported by the beams extending beyond the sinkhole), even if the land directly below gives way. Single-family detached homes will always be problematic there, because any given home is likely to be smaller than a potential sinkhole. Rows of homes resting on long concrete beams would simultaneously spread their load over a much wider area AND give them a margin for error if the ground collapsed below just a few units.

Ultimately, Florida's future urban density is what will save it... civil and structural engineering that would be utterly cost-prohibitive to do for single-family homes becomes affordable & sensible when you're talking about 4-story townhomes & 40+ story towers.

Worst-case, SE & SW Florida (south of the Caloosahatchee & St. Lucie rivers) becomes two huge islands rather than peninsulas, to improve water circulation within the future "Gulf of Florida" (where the Everglades are today) and avoid having its northern end become stagnant by intentionally opening up a path for water to flow INTO Lake Okeechobee from the Atlantic & Gulf, then flow south (across the former Everglades) into the Straits of Florida (ensuring that West Broward, West Dade, and East Naples all have nice, sparkling beaches where the edge of the Everglades used to be).

R98: Here’s Florida in 2100. I think it’s “close enough” for me.

Tampa, Miami, the Gold Coast, the Gulf Coast, the keys. Thank God the Villages will make it!

How did this thread turn from focusing on moose captivity to Florida real estate?

My moose speculates in land around St. Petersburg. He like swimming in St. John’s Pass.

R103 (FOCM), I believe you would find this thread of interest if not concern:

Is it sad that I hope and pray this is the end? I’m ready to be done, tbh.

r32 r85 r87 I used to read JHKunstler when the big threat was peak oil. He didn't seem like a RWNJ then.

Is it unusual to suspect dementia or brain disease in people like JHK who have late and profound shifts in political ideology? Was he one of those closet Russia-supporters ("we have to prepare for peak oil, ergo let Russia and Saudi Arabia do what they need to to keep oil a viable energy", "you just wait, the Chinese will buy up the West Coast of North America and YOU WILL BE SORRY") all the while, is he one of those double-digit percentage of the population who immediately turn authoritarian when an authoritarian assumes power?

I know this isn't about resource scarcity/global warming/climate change, but knowing the answers'll help me evaluate people who suddenly and noticeably shift allegiances, like Roseanne being an outspoken Trump supporter because of Israel, mental illness or both...

At this point we'll be lucky if we're invaded by hostile aliens. It's much sadder when we do it to ourselves.

R107, would the aliens free a moose in Stoneham, Massachusetts?

R101, those animations are scientifically-bullshit for multiple reasons:

* They only count height of "natural" terrain, without regard to subsequent civil engineering to improve height & drainage. South Florida hasn't had anything vaguely resembling a "natural" coastline or terrain in DECADES.

* They assume nothing WILL be done to mitigate sea-level rise, and that urban areas will be passively left to become inundated without interference.

* They model worst-case storm surge at historic high tides & pretend it'll be the daily norm AND simultaneously affect the entire state at once (instead of being mostly isolated, transient storm events).

Simply put, they aren't exactly lying, but they're selectively deceptive by omission & over-generalization.

Go ahead... run the algorithm used to generate the "century from now" images against New Orleans RIGHT NOW, and they'll show the entire New Orleans metro area ALREADY underwater even though it clearly isn't.

Just because you see a compelling illustration of something doesn't automatically make it accurate. Do we need massive civil engineering to mitigate sealevel rise? Absolutely. Is Florida going to be an archipelago a century from now? Only in fantasies of delusional Greens.

R108,the moose in under contract to Warner’s and interference in a contractual relationship by YOU will have you shoveling out the capybara pen for a decade!

R110 (WMA), I believe you would find this thread of interest:

R106, I went to the website and I don't think it is "dementia" to be annoyed with the sellout and insane current "left" -which I do not think is genuinely Left. There is a lot to criticize re corporate establishment "Left," "sustainable" "green" policies which continues destructive capitalism, and the lunatics that want to censor and promote regressive causes. A lot of quite sane, intelligent people are disgusted by all of the above.

R106, I never heard of that guy, but I knew a guy in construction a few years ago and he said the Chinese were buying up places left and right in Vegas and remodeling them to be very luxurious to the point of being overdone. He said one person he worked with was extremely wealthy and just buying stuff up left and right. He said they were really becoming a presence.

At the same time I was trying to sell a property in LA. All the real estate agents there warned me the Chinese would offer next to nothing for large properties and then be very offended if you didn’t take it. Like, offer 50% of market value. And they did. They were known in the commercial RE business to do that everywhere. They thought if they offered money, any amount of money, you shouldn’t be able to tell them no. They were kind of like Trumps is all I can say.

So I don’t know anything about that guy, but he probably does know people that would tell him about it.

Just watched a documentary about the advances that some European countries (e.g. Denmark, the Netherlands) have made with respect to green technology and sustainable communities that are still very livable and desirable. Also, they talked about how China is full-on gung ho about energy independence and green energy. I felt ashamed after watching that - why is North America so far behind? Yes, we do not have the one party system but neither do European countries and many of them are farther ahead.

For the record: James Howard Kunstler is a full-blown Trump cultist now.