David Suzuki, Professor Guy McPherson, and Kevin Hester give their take or where we’re at with our early stage runaway climate catastrophe.
David Suzuki believes that in 20 years life won’t be worth living.
Professor McPherson believes that there won’t be a human on the planet in 2025 and most of us and most complex life will be gone long before.
I’m with Professor McPherson, as I defer to his award winning knowledge as an Evolutionary Biologist, his inherent honesty and the fact that there is not one dollar in this for him.
Brickbats, slander, death threats, that’s his payment for speaking truth to power.
Judge for yourself, prepare for the worst.
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
The one thing we don’t want to hear, so sadly, is the truth.
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WASF OBE
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I believe that the reason the message is ‘ignored’, only by some I might add, is because sapiens are hard wired to deny existential crisis. We are so far over the cliff we are now plummeting into the abyss. One of the next 3 melt seasons in the arctic will almost certainly see the discharge of the 50 gigatonne methane bursts hypothesised by Shakova et al from the University of Fairbanks in Alaska which will jump start the domino effect of the collapse of grain production and industrial civilisation and quite likely the atmosphere due to 450 nuclear plant meltowns and 1300 spent fuel pool fires.
If we are still having this debate in 5 years I shall be stunned, otherwise it will have been incinerated back into the ether.
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This point in particular (450 nuclear power plant meltdown) makes absolutely no sense and never has. It fails to address the effort that will be / can be expended to mitigate this problem. Whether it works or not remains to be seen, but it could be. As it is, it has not happened yet and therefore, cannot be claimed as a certainty either way. It is not yet the predicament as claimed.
Shakova’s estimates are interesting, but you may noticed she’s not a NTHE person herself. She’s actually backed off from her fears in some presentations. Most scientists, even “in the know” of biosphere collapse do not embrace the NTHE message or movement.
Food wholesale prices by the way just jumped average 40% a few days ago. Competition for critical resources is obviously increasing, but we’ve not seen anything yet. This will force more action and attention, but it certainly doesn’t mean “it’s over”. Not yet.
Our cognitive dissonance is only part of the human problem, civilization is the real issue and what it really means. We’re enamored with it and refuse to consider anything else. We are in accelerating collapse, but we’ve got a long ways to go yet. We are not yet out of options. No options means ‘predicament’, but we are not there yet and won’t be for some time (way past 2025). Yes, it will be a hellish place (no matter what), but humans have lived in hellish places before.
The reality is this: we’ve not even really tried yet (as a species / country / movement) and there are many of these tries and efforts left even in the midst of accelerating collapse. Therefore, we are not really at the predicament point – and won’t be for quite some time. There are (some) real solutions that can be enacted for (some) of the known problems. They will eventually be tried. Their outcome is as yet unknown (and actually, irrelevant). We know we are going to try irregardless of the expected outcome because we will have to. It is what humans have always done. That is not going to change – even in collapse.
This is why the predicament claim remains inaccurate. It’s a distracting claim that endorses defeatism. It presents itself as the known outcome, which is simply false. It is not the outcome, it is simply a prediction, but one based upon numerous variables known and unknown, each with different and unknown outcomes. As predictions go, the “predicament” claim is actually highly inaccurate. It is being used in the present tense to engender fear versus action and change. This is part of the false narrative that I write about.
There is a real danger that arises when picking dates, I’ve seen this many times before, it tends to discredit even those who may eventually be correct or partially right. The real danger however is it puts everything on hold for the duration by those that embrace this. It’s a false reality in other words and fosters a false existence for those that embrace this. Then the dates come and those years spent in that false reality are forever lost. We don’t have this luxury of time, because the real reality needs our attention – and efforts.
I’d like to see the NTHE movement, climate change awareness movement, and related activism ‘mature’ to the point of sincerity, i.e., “tell it like it is and focus on trying”. That is at least in part, the human story (the latter part). We do tend to self-deceive and distract.
Both points are missing from the current narrative and are being seriously distorted. Either it’s being told “like it really is” (current state of collapse) but refuses to try or foster effort, or it’s not being told like it really is (whitewashed / greenwashed) with false optimism / hopium of how current levels of trying “will work” (somehow) while being considerably dishonest about it, or both components are being falsely interjected into the current narrative (no sincerity, false hopium, false efforts). The real narrative (reality) is still not being properly shared and / or embraced.
I fully recognize that that real narrative is painful, ugly and harsh, but I fail to see the point to pretend otherwise or spend critical time on the false narratives and the efforts being spent on these.
Nearly all the messages about climate change, biosphere collapse and human response contain various components of dishonesty right now. Hopium filled assessments or inaccurate, watered down stories. This isn’t what is really happening. It is not reality. It’s very important the we speak fully in terms of reality now. It will be the only way we can gain the proper focus.
This is related to the NTHE message being widely ignored and cognitive dissonance. The movement has gone off the rails. It has become a cult of personality and vying for attention, along with huge media distortions and here in America, mass denial and disinterest. The reality is very, very few people embrace NTHE globally. Its message is presently highly inaccurate and it is making a huge mistake by picking early date(s) (or picking dates at all).
There is an entirely different reality actually unfolding that has nothing to do with the NTHE message, and this is what is actually real and needs to be presented to the world – not what the NTHE people “believe” or have adopted as part of their creed. A very important point that needs to be seriously considered if a course correction will be adopted or considered.
If not, then as a movement, NTHE will continue to be discredited (and implode) while still gaining cult followers who will be left standing in the rain when their “reality” didn’t happen as expected. It will be a huge waste on a massive scale, when it has an opportunity to actually do some real good.
Sorry for the longish posts.
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It is perfectly natural for large segments of society to label, reminders of death’s inevitability, as propaganda. Denial is a natural human protective coping mechanism. It is frequently expressed in various forms of cognitive dissonance.
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Your views are based upon the assumptions that billions of people make. It is part of the nuclear design strategy that has always assumed that after the fission control rods are inserted into the hundreds of nuclear reactors that, for at least 5-10 years following, there will be ample supplies of trained nuclear technicians, a viable supply chain of replacement parts for the spent nuclear fuel cooling pools and a reliable supply of externally supplied electrical power to operate the cooling pumps. Some of us have considered factors that are never taken into consideration because they are considered too improbable.
Consider the Fukushima Das-ichi triple reactor meltdown fiasco. They, like all nuclear power plant designs, where designed so if one reactor experienced a major problem it would not affect the other reactors. The plant had multiple backup power options, including four power lines coming in from outside sources. Each reactor was designed with layered safety backup systems so if one failed others would take up the slack. The reactors were based upon a U.S. General Electric (GE) design still in operation in the U.S. They depended upon teams of engineers consulting with each other and followed by regulatory agencies. These engineers were superbly confident in themselves and repeatedly reassured government officials and the public that they had considered every credible fault scenario. It is the job of many officials to provide reassurances that they have done everything possible to maintain the safety of the public and to not put them into the kind of debt that is happening with the Fukushima fiasco.
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We can’t even keep them safe on a good day. Chuck in Dr James Hansens super storms and the collapse of industrial civilisation and I cannot understand anyone not seeing 450 meltdowns and 1300 spent fuelpool fires.
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I watched it. I don’t agree of course. You’ve simply assumed that there will be concurrent failures all at once, no efforts to mitigate or repair, essentially a near-instantaneous “vaporization” of all personnel worldwide at once and thus, nuclear catastrophe. Of course this makes as much sense as the Rapture which proposes the same ridiculous conjecture.
Fukushima was a natural catastrophe that was initiated over mere minutes – not years or even decades as describes climate collapse / sea-level rise. Not the same thing at all. I am aware of the very long periods of commissioning and the process involved.
This is a good example of the type of message that is distraction (and defeatism – “it’s going to happen and we can’t do anything about it”). Hogwash. This story is purely assumption without basis in time or fact, but has become a component of the narrative and being presented as fact (already – it’s not). It is simply wrong and is just as guilty of the over-reaching and inaccurate claims being used by climate denialists.
The real narrative will align with reality – not one based on assumptions, inaccuracies or falsehoods. It is far more likely that accelerated decommissioning will be undertaken versus “let them burn” (a certain path of stupidity and death), which will be the preferred path for survival and strategy. And if you consider the actual history of human intervention in nuclear crisis – this is what we tried – every time. We will most likely (with high confidence) try this again and would in fact, have far more time to do so then what has happened in the past.
This is why this element is just a story based on multiple erroneous assumptions.
There is a lot we still don’t know, but it does no good at all to promote a narrative that is incorrect. Perhaps the greatest failure in the NTHE narrative is the failure to recognize that need for human survival inherent to our species – and what we are willing to do to actually try and have it.
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Oops – no edit available. I meant “very long periods of decommissioning”.
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Here’s the thing….do you see anyone really changing their behavior in time to avert disaster? I mean, really, the G20 nations are only now grappling with this? Post Paris Accord 2016, which honestly should have been in 1976, at the latest….well, all’s well that ends well. Just look up Peter Ward’s work if Guy’s timeline is too aggressive for you. Nearly every kid grows up wondering about dinosaurs, what they were, what killed them…then one gets older and thinks about other life that came after them, what killed them off, etc. Methane is the great killer, that and a dead ocean system that makes hydrogen sulfides to kill off more life. ‘We’re’ waking up that methane through our current civilization. Cthulu will awaken. Extinctions will accelerate. But now countries have nukes, to settle up old ethnic hatreds, terrorize people or just end civilization if it becomes too difficult to maintain at some point. Dr. Strangelove was right. Learn to love the bomb. The methane bomb. And then all the others will likely ‘bat last’.
Ice cream?
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I love the way Tim Bob edits Guy’s audio with epic images.
https://guymcpherson.com/2019/09/tim-bob-a-better-world/?fbclid=IwAR23qkgpUvNQzNnhZLdnQdGI8yPa9si2QmyZmwbcD89lBozvrDGR0kA_sTM
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Tim Bob, merging epic imagery with the worst news in history:
https://guymcpherson.com/2021/01/tim-bob-political-misfits-radio-show-clip/
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