There is no slowing down this juggernaut. We’re already off the cliff and they still have their pedal to the metal. “The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) simply blows out of the water anything else that’s been attempted in human history.” “As currently planned, it will involve some 7,000 separate infrastructure or extractive industry projects scattered across 70-odd nations, with a total price-tag of $8 trillion. It’ll span half the planet — from Asia to Africa, Europe and the South Pacific. It’ll affect every facet of human endeavor, in one way or another.” It will be business as usual on steroids. Covered previously on this blog below;
Chris the Natural Progressive and I discuss the Belt and Road Initiative and the role it will play in the ongoing collapse of the biosphere in the video below. I don’t believe much of this project will get very far before collapse unfolds. My main point being that capitalism and the dominant culture will carry on pedal to the metal, full steam ahead. In the August episode of Nature Bats Last we interviewed Arthur Keller about the coming collapse here; “Collapse the Only Realistic Scenario”>
Chris and I discussed the issue of Hospice. I’ve previously written about Hospice here; More information about the rapid stratospheric warming and destabilisation I mentioned is embedded here; The Roger Hallam from Extinction Rebellion interview we mentioned is embedded here
Think for a moment about what life is like for the people of The Bahamas, the trauma for those who survived, the ecological chaos of the pollutants in the flood waters poisoning wells, aquifers, rivers and the adjacent oceans and all the flooded flat lands. The other animals affected. Their fate, is all our fate, seize the moment.
This is a fantastic new documentary showing the importance of the Arctic region, how wealthy it is, in terms of natural resources and why it always has and will continue to be fought over. The “Polar Silk Road” seems to be a precursor the Chinese “Belt and Road Initiative”. The warmongering and resource exploitation adds heat, aerosols to lower the albedo and additional CO2 into the region accelerating the irreversible melt. As always, we’re doubling down on our predicament, the “Super Organism” of Industrial Civilization hand in hand with Capitalism, is grinding the living planet into dust.
I’m editing this video from Danny Haipong and Pepe Escobar into this blog on the fifth of November 2024.
Guy’s latest collaboration with Niall goes into detail about how coal consumption is growing, not slowing down, quite the opposite, it’s soaring, just like the global mean temperature! There are some incredible images of the destroyed nuclear plants at Fukushima Daiichi showing the exposed spent fuel pools which are 20metres above ground making them incredibly vulnerable to earthquakes. It’s pedal to the metal, full speed ahead! Much of that energy is used to make plastic trinkets that end up in the landfills within days and weeks after being carted around the world!
But wait, there’s more, editing this video into the blog on March 16/2025.
This months guest on Nature Bats Last is Arthur Keller author of the You Tube Presentation “Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario”.
Kevin and Guy were joined by Arthur Keller, who studies system dynamics. Initially a rocket scientist, Keller has become an author, screenwriter, and keynote speaker. We lost Arthur for a few moments but the technicians at the studio burst into life, recovered the signal with him and he saw out an interesting hour with us.
Arthur’s seminal You Tube Presentation: Collapse: The Only Realistic Scenario
I mentioned the work of Albert Bartlett and his contention that “The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is our inability to understand the exponential Function” I’ve embedded that presentation for further reference
This interview continues a theme on NBL of non-linear changes we are witnessing. Grasping the significance of non-linearity is crucial to this predicament. Our previous guest Dr Andrew Glikson has a similar contention. That interview and corroborating evidence is embedded here;
Professor Paul Ehrlich was interviewed previously on this blog about his position on the coming collapse. That discussion is embedded here:
“Losing the remaining Arctic sea ice and its ability to reflect incoming solar energy back to space would be equivalent to adding one trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, on top of the 2.4 trillion tons emitted since the Industrial Age, according to current and former researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.”
“At current rates, this roughly equates to 25 years of global CO2 emissions.”
“Algae that live in and under the sea ice play a much greater role for the Arctic food web than previously assumed. In a new study, biologists of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research showed that not only animals that live directly under the ice thrive on carbon produced by so-called ice algae. Even species that mostly live at greater depth depend to a large extent on carbon from these algae. This also means that the decline of the Arctic sea ice may have far-reaching consequences for the entire food web of the Arctic Ocean. Their results have been published online now in the journal Limnology & Oceanography.” “We now know that ice algae play a much more important role for the pelagic food web than previously assumed. This finding also means, however, that the decline of the ice could have a more profound impact on Arctic marine animals, including fish, seals and ultimately also polar bears, than hitherto suspected,” says Doreen Kohlbach.” Ice algae: The engine of life in the central Arctic Ocean
“Experts estimate the washed-up whales represent just 10% of the total number of the dead, with the rest sinking into the sea unnoticed by humans.” “At least 81 gray whale corpses have washed ashore in California, Oregon, Washington and Alaska since Jan. 1. If tallies from Mexico and Canada are added, the number of stranded gray whales reaches about 160 and counting, said Michael Milstein, spokesman for NOAA Fisheries.” Thousands of whales are dying. Scientists have run out of public beaches for the carcasses to rot
In the August episode of Nature Bats Last our guest Dr Andrew Glikson discussed his recent work titled: Beyond Climate Tipping Points: Greenhouse Gas Levels Exceed the Stability Limit of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets. “The pace of global warming has been grossly underestimated. As the world keeps increasing its carbon emissions rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion tonCO2 per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm (parts per million) CO2–equivalent, namely when methane and nitric oxide are included. This level surpasses the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The term “climate change“ is thus no longer appropriate, since what is happening in the atmosphere-ocean system, accelerating over the last 70 years or so, is an abrupt calamity on a geological dimension threatening nature and civilization. Ignoring what the science says, the powers-that-be are presiding over the sixth mass extinction of species, including humanity.”
“As conveyed by leading scientists “Climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences”
“Black carbon particles from Siberian forest fires, fall down to the arctic ice. As these particles are black, they absorb sunlight and can accelerate ice melt if found in high enough concentrations. Our graphic shows black carbon concentrations, where high values can be seen emerging from the Siberian forest fires, circulating into the polar circle.” Forest fires in Siberia, sending ash into the Arctic.
For additional day to day, up to date evidence of our headlong rush towards a Blue Ocean Event, I recommend readers follow Zack Labe on Twitter and Sam Carana at the Arctic News Blogspot
The marine food web isn’t going to collapse, it is collapsing, now, live and direct. The dominant culture and the corporate media are pretending to cover the unraveling of the biosphere but what they aren’t telling you about is the rapidity of the collapse and how the domino effect of crossing these tipping points triggers cascading consequences. I’ll be surprised if industrial civilisation survives an ice free Arctic summer and we might be only a year or two away from that eventuality. One final comment I would make about the impending ice free Arctic sea is that we don’t need to have crossed the official definition of an Ice Free Arctic to see the 50 gigatonne methane discharge from the clathrates as hypothesised by Dr Natalia Shakova et al. That could burst forth at any moment. John Doyle thinks we will see a 10C temperature rise in the coming decades;
Todays guest on Nature Bats Last was Dr Andrew Glikson from the Australian National University. Dr Andrew Glikson is a geologist living in Australia. He is an Earth scientist and paleo-climatologist currently serving as Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. He is the author of dozens of articles and ten books, notably including his 2015 masterpiece Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene.
Put your feet up, relax and enjoy, episode 129 of Nature Bats Last.
I mentioned that both Dr Glikson and Professor McPherson are concerned about the methane threat and how they both respect the work of Dr Natalia Shakova and her colleagues. A link to a recent paper from Dr Shakova titled ” Understanding the Permafrost–Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf”can be found here; A video interview with her courtesy of Nick Breeze is embedded here; As well as discussing the scientific aspects of what we are witnessing, we discussed the psychological roller coaster we are all on and Dr Gliksons’ Poetry and the role it plays in absorbing and expressing the psychological challenges this knowledge of the predicament we find ourselves in entails. Finding an emotional and artistic outlet we believe is imperative. Mine is to volunteer at the not for profit Rakino Island Nursery on a rewilding program. It’s both my “Antidote to despair” as Edward Abbey wrote but also proof that just because I recognise the severity of the multiple crises we face it doesn’t mean I have ‘given up’, an accusation often leveled at Professor McPherson and myself.
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.” Ernesto Che Guevarra.
I had the pleasure of joining Peter Miller on his project “NTHE Hospice Conversation! “
We ventured into discussing the dynamics of watching the conditions for collapse unfolding and gaining non-linear momentum, the incredible lack of understanding that the general populace have to the precarious predicament we face and the psychological wave we’re all riding whether we know it or not.
Good luck everyone, time is much shorter than you are being told by the well controlled corporate media. Click on the subscribe function for updates on the great unraveling. Follow my and Guy ‘s radio show Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network for further updates. Professor Andrew Glikson is our next guest, we will be discussing his latest article at Global Research titled; Beyond Climate Tipping Points: Greenhouse Gas Levels Exceed the Stability Limit of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.
This July 2nd, 2019 edition — episode 128 of Nature Bats Last features a conversation with Rory Varrato, who invited Professor Guy McPherson to testify before the New York City Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection. A day after Guy and others testified, New York City declared a climate emergency. Rory Varrato is a founding member of Extinction Rebellion New York City. He is also a Ph.D. student and research assistant in the Philosophy and Education Program at Columbia University. There’s more: He is also Graduate Coordinator for the Freedom and Citizenship Program in the Center for American Studies at Columbia University. And there’s even more: Rory is also Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University.
Rory, welcome to Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network.
Todays episode is embedded here:
Co-host Kevin Hester mentioned the luncacy of relying on nuclear energy in a time of abrupt climate change and the fact that this week nuclear plants were facing closure as a heatwave grips Europe. So much for nuclear being a ‘solution’ to burning hyrdo carbons. The nuclear lunatics see climate change as an ‘Business Opportunity’; French NPPs Face Threat of Shutdown as Water to Cool Nuclear Reactors Sizzles Due to Heat Wave
We discussed a recent presentation by Dr James Hansen with him lauding the merits of nuclear energy in a time of abrupt climate change, the nuclear insanity know’s no limit and the fact that he thinks a carbon tax will make a difference at this very late stage is patently nonsense and a non starter. Professor McPherson critiques Hansen’s position and points out that he isn’t qualified to comment on the evolutionary consequences of non-linear warming. The presentation is embedded here: James Hansen, Ph.D. – The Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity – Offstage
I discussed the following quote’s first from Jem Bendell :“Getting busy with action can be a distraction from full acceptance of our predicament, where our predicament is that we don’t know. We don’t know what the best things to do are anymore and we don’t know whether what we do with the best intentions will work.” The source of the quote and a wonderful interview with Jem is embedded here;
Then I quoted Ruppert Read: “If people are feeling paralysed right now, I think it is probably because they are stuck between false hopes. On the one hand, there is the delusive lure of optimism, the hope that there will be a techno-fix that will defuse the climate emergency while life more or less goes on as usual. This is, I believe, in a desperately-dangerous way keeping us from facing up to climate reality.”‘Civilisation is finished’
That’s a rap folks, good luck everyone,time is extremely short.
Subscribe to the blog if your interested in further collapse dialogues. Feel free to leave your comments below:
The children are rebelling, the ice is melting, the weather is already chaotic and the feedback loops are multiplicative. How do we navigate the perfect storm when we know that our only habitable spaceship is hurtling into the abyss at the early stages of non-linear, chaotic, runaway warming. As an offshore, blue water ocean sailor, I have always had at the back of my mind the possibility of having to declare a ‘Mayday’ and the order to abandon ship. This emergency is different as there are no lifeboats and there are no emergency services coming to the rescue. Soon there will be no internet to post pictures of the unfolding chaos or to search how to grow something to eat as habitat and the biosphere immolates. I had the honour of hospicing my darling mother as she slipped away, they were the most honest 6 weeks of our life together. I had another experience recently where I looked after Sandra Wihongi, one of my tribes members on Rakino Island as she departed this mortal plane. She joked that she would come back as a Hawk and keep an eye on me! I see hawks daily! Done right hospice can be a wonderful experience. Let’s try and do it well on a planetary level. As I write this the “Empire of Chaos” as Pepe Escobar calls the USA appears on the brink of attacking Iran. Pepe writes that the Iran could crash the global economy by closing the straights of Hormuz. Were that to happen we could well see the loss of Global Dimming which could double the level of anthropogenic warming in a matter of weeks. We really are a day to day, week to week proposition. That’s the brink militarism has brought us too. Whilst no one will get out alive, despite what the likes of the charlatan Elon Musk would like you billionaires to believe, there are many things we can do as we watch the chaos unfold. Failing to prepare is the same as preparing to fail. Knowledge of and acceptance of our predicament can be a lonely, isolating place to be, in many respects it’s the first challenge we need to face. First and foremost it’s imperative to find like minded souls to share our grief with. There has never in the history of our species been a more important time to form a ‘Tribe’ and to cut the dead wood free.
One of the world leaders in triggering this debate recently has been Jem Bendell with his seminal paper that no referee journal was prepared to publish because the ramifications were and are so dire. “I am releasing this paper immediately, directly, because I can’t wait any longer in exploring how to learn the implications of the social collapse we now face,” explained the author Dr Bendell, a full Professor of Sustainability Leadership.” Check out his paper: Deep Adaption here:
Jem has set up a Facebook Group for just this purpose to help us find like minded people who are having the conversation few are prepared to have. “Getting busy with action can be a distraction from full acceptance of our predicament”. Check out Positive Deep Adaption Quite possibly our greatest challenge will be managing our own grief, that of our loved ones and the children and youth in our lives, next come our neighbours and then complete strangers. Any day now we will have 1 billion very, very angry young people on the planet. Start thinking now about what you intend telling them. I shall say “I tried and failed”.
My personal “Antidote to despair” has been to volunteer at the not for profit Rakino Island Nursery where we propagate native trees for a rewilding program. For me it represents my final act of rebellion in a life of rebellion.
“We do not see ecological grief as submitting to despair, and neither does it justify ‘switching off’ from the many environmental problems that confront humanity. Instead, we find great hope in the responses ecological grief is likely to invoke. Just as grief over the loss of a loved person puts into perspective what matters in our lives, collective experiences of ecological grief may coalesce into a strengthened sense of love and commitment to the places, ecosystems and species that inspire, nurture and sustain us. There is much grief work to be done, and much of it will be hard. However, being open to the pain of ecological loss may be what is needed to prevent such losses from occurring in the first place.“Hope and mourning in the Anthropocene: Understanding ecological grief.
“How do we live with the fact that we are destroying our world? What do we make of the loss of glaciers, the melting Arctic, island nations swamped by the sea, widening deserts, and drying farmlands?”
“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.” The Greatest Danger by Joanna Macy Recently I had the pleasure of hearing and meeting Stephen Jenkinson sometimes known as “The Grief Walker”. Stephen was a guest on Nature Bats Last and was interviewed on the Peak Prosperity podcast.
My good friend and staff reporter at Truthout.org Dahr Jamail was recently interviewed on Radio Ecoshock where he discussed his latest book “The End of Ice”and navigating hospice. The episode is embedded here
Professor Guy McPherson and I will continue to chronicle the great unraveling until the curtain falls on Industrial Civilisation which because of the aerosol masking effect and the melt down of 450 nuclear plants and their attendant 1300 spent fuel pool fires is a mass extinction event for the planet. There have been five previous mass extinction events on this planet. We have the dubious honour of watching the sixth unravel live and direct. If we were coal miners we’d be neck deep in dead canaries.
Good luck everyone, make the most of every day, love with passion as “At the edge of extinction, only love remains.” GMP. “At the risk of seeming ridiculous let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality” Ernesto Che Guevara. To get the most from this article click on the embedded links, this really is the perfect storm.
The June 2019 episode of Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network featured co-hosts Professor Guy McPherson and Kevin Hester interviewing Meteorologist Nick Humphrey. The episode is embedded here:
Some background on Nick Humphrey:
Nick was recently interviewed on Radio Ecoshock in an episode titled Harsh News from the Weatherman.
Another excellent interview with Nick via Environmental Coffee House; I recomend subscribing to these two excellent channels.
“This is the slowest corn planting in recorded history, besting the 1995 record of 50% planted for this week.”
The unfolding collapse of the industrial food production in the US, Argentina, Europe and Australia.
Similar issues are unfolding in Mozambique where cyclone Idai has devestated croplands and destroyed the city of Beira where I worked on a development project in 1991. Most of these people were poverty stricken before Idai blasted and then washed everything they had away.
The great unraveling is showing signs of the non-linear stage of the predicament we find ourselves in. More than Half of US Corn Unplanted
Here’s Nick’s latest post about the methane threat from his Patreon Page; The Latest on the Threat for Abrupt Methane Release from the East Siberian Sea
I can honestly say this is one of my favourite interviews on Nature Bats Last. The honesty and frankness of Nick Humphrey is inspirational. I predict he will go on to be a world leader in chronicling the unraveling of the biosphere.
“One of the greatest shortcomings of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function” Albert Bartlett.
It’s critically important to understand the fact that we are in the non-linear stage of the unraveling, change will happen with a rapidity that will make previous predictions meaningless. Dr Michael Mann et al’s “Hockey Stick Theory” writ large, even though he can no longer envisage it.
If we were coal miners we would be neck deep in dead canaries. Good luck everyone, soon the living will envy the dead.
In the March episode of Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM co-hosts McPherson and Hester interview the legendary, Professor Paul Ehrlich. The episode is embedded here Dr Ehrlich is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the Department of Biology of Stanford University and president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology . He is a renowned biologist and ecologist best known for his warnings about the consequences of human population growth.
Wediscussed Paul Ehrlich and Sandra Kahn’s recent book JAWS, you can find more information on this important book here:
Further information and a brilliant documentary on the ‘Aerosol Masking Effect’ or Global Dimming is embedded here
Dahr Jamail, staff reporter at Truthout.org and renowned Martha Geldhorn award winning journalist published his latest book “The End of Ice” on January the 15th 2019.
There are a few audio glitches on Dahr’s microphone but they don’t persist. We joked after that they were reflective of industrial civilisation teetering on the brink of collapse;
Mentioned in the interview was a new project of collaboration between Dahr Jamail and Barbara Cecil
We further discussed the recent work of Jem Bendell and his paper on “Deep Adaption” and Rupert Read’s recent presentation filmed at Churchill College, 7 November 2018.
“A research paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by anonymous reviewers of an academic journal.”
“It has been released directly by the Professor who wrote it, to promote discussion of the necessary deep adaptation to climate chaos.”
Dahr will be touring Australia in June and Aotearoa N.Z. in July, details will be posted on this blog as presentations are organised, subscribe to the blog for updates on the tour and the great unraveling generally. Contact me should you wish to be involved in anyway in both the Aotearoa NZ tour or the June tour in Australia
Good luck everyone, we are so going to need it. This photo was taken by Kevin Hester when he and Dahr dived “The Poor Knights marine reserve” doing research for “The End of Ice”.
Kevin Hester is currently living on Rakino Island, a small island in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand, monitoring the unravelling of the biosphere and volunteering at the Rakino Island Nursery is currently developing a proposal to create a marine reserve near by. The Island has no grid tied electricity or reticulated water. I catch my own water from the roof and generate my electricity from the ample solar radiation on the island.
My Submission to the Ministry of the Environment
Kevin Hester, Dropping Anchor in an Exponential World
This photo was taken by Kevin Hester when he and Dahr dived “The Poor Knights marine reserve” doing research for “The End of Ice”.
Kevin Hester 