“I have reported on the dire impacts of global peak oil at guymcpherson.com for many years. My reports from August 2007 onward indicate the potential for peak oil to terminate industrial civilization. Information I discovered a few years later indicates that stopping or even slowing industrial activity will cause our extinction. Our extinction could result from a reduction in aerosol masking or the meltdown of some of the world’s nuclear facilities. The latter phenomenon would cause stratospheric ozone to be stripped away, thereby causing extremely rapid planetary heating. Again, I have reported these findings previously in this space. Responses to my freely available work, rooted in evidence, have included denial, non-evidentiary argumentation, and a coordinated defamation campaign that effectively removed me from public service. But enough about me.”
“A reduction in aerosol masking has caused regional increases in temperature that have led to regional increases in precipitation, as indicated by peer-reviewed research I have shared in this space. Fortunately, these impacts have not yet gone global. Rather, they have remained regional in scope, beginning in the area around Wuhan, China, where the pandemic broke out. Regional increases in temperature and subsequent increases in precipitation followed the pandemic to India, Europe, and the northeastern United States.” All of the analysis above is via Professor Guy McPherson’s Substack post Titled: Science Snippets: Global Peak Oil Remains an Existential Threat
Science Snippets: Global Peak Oil Remains an Existential Threat
Colleagues and I in the dynamic group Peak Oil have previously debated this subject. Join us for the latest developments as we circle the drain of Peak Oil triggered collapse.
Readers of this blog know that I concentrate on the climate and extinction crises and the contemporaneous issue of the re-rise of fascism and unfolding collapse. Collapse isn’t an event, it’s a process, a process that is clearly underway. Aotearoa New Zealand has just closed it’s one and only oil refinery, yes, you read that right! I filled out an Official Information Act submission to find out what are NZ’s strategic reserves. The government department responsible refused to divulge what we have in reserve! We are led by Donkeys. Not having a refinery means we’d suffer societal collapse in a matter of weeks of a blockade of our territorial waters being enforced, by whoever, “Friend or Foe”. Remember France was supposedly our ally when they blew up the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior murdering Fernando Pereira in downtown Tamaki Makaurau. The Insanity of Aotearoa New Zealand Closing it’s One and Only Oil Refinery
A Metaphor for a Dying Planet. I’ve completed 16 ocean passages in the Pacific Ocean on small yachts between 37 and 75 feet. More than half of them as skipper. I sailed 5000miles in the 37-footer at an average speed of 4/5knots! Surfing the boat down 15 metre ocean swells at double our hull speed, accompanied by Dolphins and Pilot Whales, followed by an 800-mile sail down my beloved Great Barrier Reef, diving every day for 6 weeks before crossing the Tasman Sea via Lord Howe Island and back to Aotearoa New Zealand. I sailed a transit of the Mediterranean Sea from Gibraltar to Greece, pre-GPS satellite navigation. That 1200 miles doesn’t count as an “Ocean Passage” as it’s an inland sea.
Every skipper has to have a plan in the back of her or his mind, how they would act when the vessel is sinking, on fire or otherwise compromised and how to respond, bearing in mind everyone is looking to you for answers and some have daggers in their eyes and no doubt in their pockets or life jackets! I’ve spent 4 decades considering my response.
I’ve saved a few yachts in distress, each were frightening and the challenge dangerous. Shit can go wrong very fast on the ocean. Especially when it has already gone wrong, and you’re flung into the rescue, often without a moment’s preparation, often during extreme weather events, once after an evening of Scotch Whiskey I was roused from my slumber and into the storm we rode! My rescue of Sea Toy was a cracker! First came the rescue and after the Shark Attack! Shark Attack at Minerva Reef I once asked a mate to come as crew on one of my ocean passages and he replied, “No way Hester, shit always happens on your watch”. So, it seems!
The Sinking of the Titanic (Hour by Hour)
Had I been the Skipper of the Titanic, this is what I would have done, immediately after the untimely rendezvous with the iceberg.
What Elon Musk would call an “Unscheduled Disassembly” began unfolding within minutes of impact!!! Orwell and Huxley would be cackling like banshees at that double speak!
Your first responsibility to the passengers and crew, is to burst the crew into action, first on mitigation of the immediate danger and then to come up with an ongoing strategy to protect the vessel, passengers and crew. Instilling confidence and leadership at this crucial moment is imperative. Everyone needs to be reassured the captain and crew have this ‘under control’ or at least have a “Plan”. Leadership is imperative.
The captain, the vessel designer and the engineers knew that because of the Titanic not having full height bulkheads, an omission due to allowing “Bean Counters” to decide how safe to make the vessel, that the boat was doomed! Did they tell everyone? Of course, not. Remember the capitalists behind the construction jinxed the vessel by describing it as being “Unsinkable”! No other skipper in the history of our species would vomit up that hubris.
My next ‘command’ would be to release everyone from steerage, otherwise known as “Cattle Class” and ask them to assemble in the massive First Class lounges. I’d have food waiting for them. First, we divide our “Human Resources”, how I despise that notion, into teams. Nurses here, tradesmen here, families, the disabled, the elderly and children here.
Then I instruct all the tradesmen and able bodied to start ripping down the satin curtains and their miles of curtain rope and by combining the deck furniture and squabs, etc together, we start making rafts to be strung between the lifeboats that designated members of the crew are launching. The aforementioned accountants decided that they only needed lifeboats for the first-class vultures/passengers so a battle for the life rafts was preordained, by design. The ‘second-class’ passengers were caged below deck.
When the Titanic sunk the seas were dead calm, pardon the pun. The opportunity to successfully save the vast majority of the passengers was at hand but the ongoing class war killed most of them, including the wealthiest of them, because the ruling class, whose ego’s had sunk the ship, only thought of themselves. They died as a direct result of that class war. Now to get to the real point of the story:
We are on Planet Earth, which should have been called “Planet Ocean”, heading rapidly into the abyss of abrupt climate change and extinction. If I were the skipper of this ship, I’d let everybody know that the ships on fire, that’s clear to see and it’s sinking “Faster than previously thought” and that no one is coming to the rescue. In my own country, Aotearoa New Zealand, as a government policy, I would buy as much staple foods as possible on the global markets and stockpile them in multiple “Strategic Reserves” around the country, employing local rural people as their own “Civil Defence” force, community involvement is imperative. Borrow the fucking money, if necessary, money will clearly be worthless soon, as will be debt. After New Zealand recently closed down it’s only oil refinery, yes you read that correctly, I’d buy as much diesel as I could store, old oil tankers are an immediate way to store fuel, in an emergency. During the Covid lockdowns oil had a negative value at times. I submitted an Official Information Act request to find out what are Aotearoa New Zealand’s strategic reserves of petrol, diesel and grains and the faux liberal Labour government declined to answer my request! That’s how insane our predicament has become! Oil crash explained: How are negative oil prices even possible? The Insanity of Aotearoa New Zealand Closing It’s Only Oil Refinery To understand the importance of diesel read Alice Friedemann’s epic book “When the Trucks Stop Running”.
Because no one will admit how far over the cliff we have careened, our moronic ‘leaders’ are preparing for a world that simply no longer exists. Fortunes will be made, and millions wasted on ridiculous attempts to hold back the rising seas. As Paul Henry said to Guy McPherson when interviewing him at TV Three “We may as well shout at the tide not to come in” Humans ‘don’t have 10 years’ left thanks to climate change – scientist
Climate change has always been about the class war and racism. 50 years ago my dear departed dad said to me “If we don’t overthrow capitalism, it will make the planet uninhabitable”. Here we are, staring down the barrel of abrupt, non-linear climate change with governments worldwide continuing to target growth as an indicator of “Progress” when in reality it’s killing us and quite possibly all complex life on our beleaguered planet.
Infinite growth on a finite planet is clearly unsustainable. Edward Abbey the “Desert Anarchist” said “Infinite growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”. Planet Ocean has terminal cancer, and we are the carrier. The Pain You Feel Is Capitalism and the Living Planet Dying.
“The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite…”
As World War Three progresses with the proxy war in Ukraine grinding the nation and its war weary people into dust, we need to pay close attention to the second front. The systematic demolition of US Dollar Hegemony.
We are witnessing epochal changes in the global economy with the independent states, centred around the BRIC’s nations, now trading oil in their own currencies. This development represents an existential threat not ‘just’ for US Dollar hegemony but for US military and industrial hegemony in what has rapidly become a multi-polar world. China and to a lesser extent Russia are masters of “Soft Power”. The controlled demolition of US dollar hegemony is clearly underway.
Let’s take a field trip to the frontlines. Batton down the hatches, it’s going to be one hell of a transition, let’s hope we survive it! I would rate our chances as slim because of the mendacity existing in the USA and the impossibility of it meeting it’s debt obligations once the Greenback is no longer the worlds reserve currency.
“Brian Berletic and Danny Haiphong discuss the HUGE implications of Saudi Arabia taking steps to join China in forging peace in the Middle East.”
“The BRICS collective, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is working on a common currency in an attempt to ditch the US dollar and push back against America’s dominance. The move comes as Moscow and Beijing call for de-dollarisation in the face of Western sanctions”. Dumping the Dollar: Will a new BRICS currency replace the US currency for trade?
“As the United States combats a recent flood of countries ‘de-dollarizing‘ – trading commodities in other currencies, the last thing that was needed was French President Emanuel Macron amplifying this message.“ If Macron keeps talking like that, I can feel an “Arab Spring” being forced on France.
“March 31, it was reported that France became the first European country in the West to sign a trade agreement allowing payment in yuan instead of dollars or euros. The state-owned company Total, the world’s second-largest LNG giant, was the first to carry the flag of de-dollarization, signing the first LNG purchase agreement with a Chinese state-owned oil company to pay in yuan, while the gas was imported from the United Arab Emirates. This new landscape in global energy markets and international reserve asset space now suggests that the role of the U.S. dollar is being weakened or shared, especially as landmarks of de-dollarization by several major Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, represented by Saudi Arabia, Iran and others, continue to emerge and be exploited. The European Central Bank, Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Bank for International Settlements have formed a digital currency development group to bypass the centrality of the dollar. The SHTA trade facility being developed in Switzerland to help the Iranian central bank settle cross-border has also carried out a number of international transactions that bypass the dollar settlement. Switzerland has officially started the process of building a yuan hub, replacing some of its dollar reserves with yuan by selling off dollars in the international reserve space.”
I take the same position as the “view of the highly respected French anthropologist, Emmanuel Todd.” ” We are now one errant missile away from World War III. Some go so far as to argue that World War III has already begun.” De-Dollarization. A discussion at the Valdai Club in Rome.
We have never been in a more dangerous position that we are today, the Cuban Missile Crisis notwithstanding. During the Cuban Missile Crisis all of the parties were at least sane. I would question that today looking at the pathology existing on Capitol Hill.
The USA is broke, and the end of US dollar hegemony is clearly underway. Imagine, a nuclear armed bankrupt whose normal reaction to a ‘problem’ is to bomb it!!!!!
All declining empires in history lash out at their victims and take their vassal states down with them, tragically this declining empire is nuclear armed and controlled by the sociopaths of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.
We are witnessing the end of an era, or should I say the end of an error?
It’s hard for me to not see this leading to an armed conflict between the collapsing “Empire of Chaos and the new Russia/China led axis! The Empire of Chaos phrase is attributed to the wonderful geo-political analyst Pepe Escobar. “The third and the final stage on the new economic order transition will involve a creation of a new digital payment currency founded through an international agreement based on principles of transparency, fairness, goodwill and efficiency.” “I expect that the model of such a monetary unit that we developed will play its role at this stage. A currency like this can be issued by a pool of currency reserves of BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India and China] countries, which all interested countries will be able to join”. Pepe Escobar: On the Dawn of a New Global Financial System
“To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.” ~ #HenryKissinger
“Countries worldwide are dropping the US dollar: De-dollarization in China, Russia, Brazil, ASEAN”.
Ben Norton’s courageous work can be found at Geopolitical Economy Dot Com German foreign minister: ‘We are fighting a war against Russia’ “We are fighting a war against Russia”, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told the Council of Europe. “We can fight this war only together” she said, calling to send tanks and more weapons to Ukraine.”
If the German Foreign Minister thinks their country is at war with Russia, why wouldn’t we?
I’ve previously covered on this blog the environmental implications of all this warmongering: ““U.S. Military World’s Largest Polluter – Hundreds Of Bases Gravely Contaminated Producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined, the U.S. Department of Defense has left its toxic legacy throughout the world in the form of depleted uranium, oil, jet fuel, pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange and lead, among other pollutants.” “One of the most recent testaments to the U.S. military’s horrendous environmental record is Iraq.” “U.S. military action there has resulted in the desertification of 90 percent of Iraqi territory, crippling the country’s agricultural industry and forcing it to import more than 80 percent of its food. The U.S.’ use of depleted uranium in Iraq during the Gulf War also caused a massive environmental burden for Iraqis. In addition, the U.S. military’s policy of using open-air burn pits to dispose of waste from the 2003 invasion has caused a surge in cancer among U.S. servicemen and Iraqi civilians alike.” Militarism’s Role in the Sixth and Possibly Last ‘Great’ Extinction
What happened the last time a major oil producing nation decided to walk away from the Greenback? “Before the fall of Tripoli and his untimely demise, Gaddafi was trying to introduce a single African currency linked to gold. Following in the foot steps of the late great pioneer Marcus Garvey who first coined the term ”United States of Africa”. Gaddafi wanted to introduce and only trade in the African gold Dinar – a move which would have thrown the world economy into chaos.” Libya: Ten Things About Gaddafi They Don’t Want You to Know
The Empire of Chaos demonised Colonel Gaddafi because he was the greatest Pan-African in history imho. He was murdered because he was creating a unified African Union. The colonial powers run by their corporations would have none of it, so they had him murdered, much to the delight of the monster Hillary Clinton. His legacy in Africa will outlive the Greenback.
“Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War:
“We have exquisite information about what that state is, because we have a paleo record going back millions of years, when the earth had no ice at either pole. There was almost no temperature difference between the equator and the pole,” said James Anderson, a Harvard University professor of atmospheric chemistry best known for establishing that chlorofluorocarbons were damaging the Ozone Layer.”
“The ocean was running almost 10ºC warmer all the way to the bottom than it is today,” Anderson said of this once-and-future climate, “and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere would have meant that storm systems would be violent in the extreme, because water vapor, which is an exponential function of water temperature, is the gasoline that fuels the frequency and intensity of storm systems.”
“This has to be done, Anderson added, within the next five years.” Oops, Published Jan 15, 2018
“The chance that there will be any permanent ice left in the Arctic after 2022 is essentially zero,” Anderson said, with 75 to 80 percent of permanent ice having melted already in the last 35 years.
“Can we lose 75-80 percent of permanent ice and recover? The answer is no.”
Not mentioned in Guy’s latest work is that as CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase, the nutritional value of the crops decreases, in a double whammy. I doubt that Sara Manker’s analysis factors in the non-linearity we are witnessing in the climate system, nor the war in Ukraine, that will drastically lower its food production this year and for the foreseeable future. Rising CO2 is reducing nutritional value of food, impacting ecosystems.
“Things are far worse than you are being told. Over the past few months, I have been carefully documenting facts that show that global food production is going to be way down in 2022. Unfortunately, most people out there don’t seem to understand that the food that isn’t being grown in 2022 won’t be on our store shelves in 2023. We are potentially facing an absolutely unprecedented worldwide food crisis next year, but the vast majority of the population doesn’t seem very alarmed about this.” A List Of 33 Things We Know About The Coming Food Shortages
Abstract “In the 1972 bestseller Limits to Growth (LtG), the authors concluded that, if global society kept pursuing economic growth, it would experience a decline in food production, industrial output, and ultimately population, within this century. The LtG authors used a system dynamics model to study interactions between global variables, varying model assumptions to generate different scenarios. Previous empirical-data comparisons since then by Turner showed closest alignment with a scenario that ended in collapse. This research constitutes a data update to LtG, by examining to what extent empirical data aligned with four LtG scenarios spanning a range of technological, resource, and societal assumptions. The research benefited from improved data availability since the previous updates and included a scenario and two variables that had not been part of previous comparisons. The two scenarios aligning most closely with observed data indicate a halt in welfare, food, and industrial production over the next decade or so, which puts into question the suitability of continuous economic growth as humanity’s goal in the twenty-first century.”
As we watch the US banking system totter and begin to collapse, like the proverbial Jenga stack, we need to consider the implications this has for the global financial system and its supply chains. I’ll begin with the stellar work of David Korowicz published on
Overview
“This study considers the relationship between a global systemic banking, monetary and solvency crisis and its implications for the real-time flow of goods and services in the globalised economy. It outlines how contagion in the financial system could set off semi-autonomous contagion in supply-chains globally, even where buyers and sellers are linked by solvency, sound money and bank intermediation. The cross-contagion between the financial system and trade/production networks is mutually reinforcing.”
“It is argued that in order to understand systemic risk in the globalised economy, account must be taken of how growing complexity (interconnectedness, interdependence and the speed of processes), the de-localisation of production and concentration within key pillars of the globalised economy have magnified global vulnerability and opened up the possibility of a rapid and large-scale collapse. ‘Collapse’ in this sense means the irreversible loss of socio-economic complexity which fundamentally transforms the nature of the economy. These crucial issues have not been recognised by policy-makers nor are they reflected in economic thinking or modelling.” Financial system supply-chain cross contagion – a study in global systemic collapse
The Modern Economy, Civilisation, Complexity & Collapse – David Korowicz
“Last year, vials of the decades-old chemotherapy drug fludarabine could be purchased for a wholesale price of around $110. Not so much anymore.”
“This year, one company—Areva Pharmaceuticals—has jacked the figure up to $2,736, Stat News reports.”
In the video discussion below, recorded seven years ago between Professor Guy McPherson and myself we discuss the tenuous state of the supply chain.
Edge of Extinction: Disruption of Supply Chain
“By 2027 the world could be facing a 214 trillion calorie deficit, says Sara Menker, founder and chief executive of Gro Intelligence, an agricultural data technology company.” Published in 2018, do the math: We Have Five Years To Save Ourselves From Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says” So which goes first? The Supply Chain or the Food?
When not if Industrial Civilisation collapses we lose the “Aerosol Masking Effect” as pointed out by one of my readers in the comments section below, hence this edit on March 15th. “The impact of the aerosol masking effect has been greatly underestimated, as pointed out in an 8 February 2019 article in Science. As indicated by the lead author of this paper on 25 January 2019: “Global efforts to improve air quality by developing cleaner fuels and burning less coal could end up harming our planet by reducing the number of aerosols in the atmosphere, and by doing so, diminishing aerosols’ cooling ability to offset global warming.”
As the ongoing collapse unfolds as always, I’ll add additional links and information below in the comments section. Feel free to do the same, make yourself part of the story.
I’m a first generation immigrant born in Aotearoa New Zealand to an Irish couple, both of whom were born into actively engaged Irish Republican Families. Ma’s dad worked in the Irish health department, he became a Quartermaster in the Irish Citizen Army. He was captured with weapons, arrested, charged, and imprisoned. Whilst in prison he served 23 days on hunger strike. His health was forever compromised.
Da’s family had a long history of republicanism, that led to his two older brothers having to escape to America whilst being hunted by the merciless “Black and Tans”. He never saw them again after he emigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand. Had I been born in either the war zone, or the Free State, I seriously doubt I would have survived my 20’s.
When I was 21 the 1981 hunger strike was underway by the 10 brave men in the occupied 6 counties jail, you know, like one of those gulags where world renowned journalist Julian Assange is being publicly tortured to death as I write. I remember watching Ma walking around the house weeping, “What must their Mamies be going through”. She knew what they were going through, as she had watched her mum go through the same trauma. One by one those heroic comrades starved to death whilst the monster Margaret Thatcher ignored their simple demands to not wear a prisoners uniform and be treated as political prisoners as was their right under the Geneva Conventions. The mid-eighties rolled around, and I set off to Ireland to make some sense of it all and to show some solidarity. Dean Parker a NZ playwright and fellow member of the H Block Committee in NZ gave me the address of some comrades affiliated to the Irish Republican Socialist Party and I was off to witness the war.
An incredible aspect of the war was how people maintained their sense of humour, Irish gallows humour was everywhere to be found in the occupied 6 counties.
One evening I was invited to have drinks at The Felons Belfast and arrived promptly on time to occupy a table for four, all my mates were ‘fashionably late’. Shortly after two gorgeous young women entered the bar and asked if they could share our table ! Who was I to deny them a seat in their own pub! The Felons provided jobs for the partners and families of prisoners and much of the profits went to the prisoners fund! Innovative bunch these Paddies! Another thing I learned was that many of the Glazing companies were owned by the ‘RA’, another source of funding. Blow them up, sell them more. All war zones are ‘gamed’ by someone.
One thing led to another and these two young revolutionaries invited us to their home for another drink. I said I didn’t have anything to bring and they laughed and said “We’ll get Take Outs”. We left with booze from the bar and made our way in a cab to Ballymurphy !
The “Murph” was famous for a slaughter carried out by the British Parachute Regiment in 1971. That slaughter led to both the INLA and the PIRA having their own brigades evolve in this one tiny suburb in the conflict zone.
When I entered Edie’s home the first thing I saw was a framed Irish Tricolour flag with a beret and gloves centre piece, hanging on the wall. This is something given to the families of our fallen volunteers. Remarkably Edie’s husband and I were born on the same day with the same first name. It kind of freaked us all out ! Kevin Delaney had died when the bomb he was transporting prematurely detonated ! R.I.P. comrade.
We had a great night and around 4am I set out down the hill towards the Falls Rd and then ‘home’ on Donegal Rd. At this time in our history you couldn’t walk 1000m in Belfast without ‘bumping into’ a Brit patrol. One soldier would search you whilst the others trained their guns on you. To have half a dozen soldiers pointing guns at you in anger is disconcerting, more so because I could see the fear in their eyes! These young Brits were perpetually in fear whilst on patrol. I was first stopped near the top of the White Rock Rd, put up against a wall, frisked, hassled, slapped around, kicked like a dog and released. Not long after I reached the Falls Rd, hung a left and walked past the off-licence opposite the Rock Bar as a dude was carrying boxes of booze from the pathway adjacent to the establishment and loading them into an Austin A40!!! He offered me a bottle of Whiskey, I declined politely and shuffled another 20m and turned right onto Donegal Rd, wondering wtf was going on! As I walked down Donegal Road a Saracen and two armoured Land Rovers raced passed me, 3 soldiers in the turrets all training their semi-automatic assault rifles on me.
They flew passed me and when they got to the intersection with the Falls Road they stopped in a road block formation.
The plucky wee Austin A40 bounced off the side of one of the Land Rovers and was screaming, slowly, down the road towards me, the Brits immediately opened fire spraying automatic weapons fire down a residential street, in my direction. I heard the A40 being perforated with bullets as it ‘sped slowly’ towards me. I saw sparks fly off the vehicle and the road indicating that they were using “Full Metal Jacket” ammunition. Note to self and others, never use an Austin A40 as a getaway car! Note the message on the Land Rover below. Informants were called ‘Tout’s’, we were betrayed by many informants.
I instantly dived onto my hands and knees in an adjacent pathway and I could hear bullets going through the foliage near and above me. I’m uncertain if they were trying to kill me but if not they were lousy shots because my position was a long way from the illustrious Austin A40’s path down the road. These monsters were spraying bullets down a residential street, it was common behaviour from the occupying forces. I crawled to the doorway of the house and tentatively knocked on the door whilst still on my hands and knees, pretty much in shock! The curtain moved, the occupant had a look around then opened the door, reached out a huge hand, grabbed my collar and dragged me into his house and closed the door.
Then in an incredibly thick Belfast brogue he asked this startled kid “Who are you, what’s going on and why are the Brits shooting at you” Reasonable enough questions I suppose lol. I told him my name, where I was staying and who with. He laughed and replied “Oh, you’re the Kiwi I’ve heard about, make yourself at home.” Then with fingers pursed to his lips he whispered “The Brits will be at the door any second, don’t say a word, don’t move a muscle”. All the while my heart rate is through the roof and my chest is heaving !
Nekminit pounding on the door and in a broad Cockney accent the Brit, silhouetted through the glass door, rifle and all, yelled “Open up or I’ll smash the door down.” All the while my ‘host’ has his fingers to his lips and mimes “Say Nothing, Don’t Move’. The Brit hung around for a moment or two and then was called back by his commanding officer in the Saracen and they drove off. My host offered me a whiskey and a sleeping bag and I was invited to sleep on the couch. Even though I was only 50m from my home it was suggested that I lie low until later in the morning. I gratefully accepted the hospitality that put them in danger.
I woke up a few hours later with a small girl asking “Mister, who are you, why are you sleeping on our couch”. If you want an idea of what the Belfast kids are like check out Becky and multiply her militancy by 100. I once heard a woman ask an 11 yr old what she wanted to do when she left school. She replied “I want to join the IRA and drive the the Brits out of our country”. All the children in war zones are traumatised. No soldier, nor civilian returns from war uninjured. On multiple occasions I watched Brits use kids as “Human Shields”, another war crime.
I was generously given breakfast, we retold the story to the neighbours and I went ‘home’ where I was questioned on the nights action. Later that day I was told that I was invited to a party in the adjacent St James and all the booze was ‘on the house’. Can you see where this is going? Remarkably the stoic Austin A40 had escaped the clutches of the Brits and whilst some of the loot had been ‘spilled’ as the car was ‘perforated’ much was saved and I was invited to imbibe and share my version of events. It was fascinating to see the camaraderie that these people developed during the war.
Not long after this ‘incident’ I was at the funeral of a young INLA volunteer in Strabane who had been shot whilst on ‘Active Duty’ by a Brit sniper. I took 3 of my IRSP comrades down in my car for the funeral. The Brits searched the car in the morning, removing the seats, the carpets and the door linings. When they were finished they walked away leaving me to put it all back together. ‘Community building’ that’s referred to apparently! We jumped in my German registered VW Golf and set out for Strabane. Whilst still on the Falls road smoke started coming from under the hood and I stopped at the adjacent petrol station knowing they would have a fire extinguisher to put the fire out. The bastards had put some flammable material on my manifold and it caught fire as planned when the car heated up. One of the many reasons the Brits were hating on me was the Provo’s were bumping off Brit soldiers regularly in Germany so they didn’t like seeing a German car in the Occupied 6 counties!
We arrived at the Catholic Church in Strabane where the service was being held and being a bunch of ‘Commies’ we didn’t enter the church but remained on the doorstep. That night footage of the funeral was shown on the BBC, the British Bullshitting Corporation.
When the ceremony ended we hung outside to chat with the other mourners. All the while the funeral attendees were surrounded by Brits brandishing assault rifles, choppers over head, Saracens and armoured Land Rovers all around us whilst we were mourning the death of a young volunteer. Shot by these very same people. Ma saw the clip on TV in New Zealand and recognised me, tracked me down through Dean Parker, got my number and called me with money she couldn’t spare and said “Son, Ireland doesn’t need anymore Martyr’s you know”. It freaked Ma out that I was back in the war zone, angry as fuck and being assaulted by the Brits.
The four of us got into the Golf and went to leave and were pulled over within 100m of the Church carpark. We were separated and interrogated individually. A Brit officer pulled me aside and said “WTF is a Kiwi electrician doing over here hanging out with known terrorists”. I replied “Rubbish, I’ve only just met you”. He instantly lashed out and punched me in the sternum. I thought he had collapsed my ribcage! Before he could assault me again another Brit touched his shoulder and said “Bob, too many cameras”!!! When we left, the one person in the car who I didn’t know well, went ape shit at me for provoking the Brit. He said “What have you been told to say when being interrogated? STFU. All they need to do is shoot you and then they slip a ‘short’ into your belt and say, “He went for his gun”, end of investigation.”
I did a lot of growing up in the occupied six counties. I was fortunate to meet such caring people who kept me out of trouble and didn’t take advantage of my youthful anger.
Many years later I had the honour of naming a road in Aotearoa New Zealand after Patsy O’Hara, one of the INLA volunteers who died in the 1981 hunger strike. I’ve written about that here; My Tribute to My Comrade Patsy O’Hara and His Family After this ‘adventure’ I returned to my home in Ashaffenburg in Bavaria and within days I was pulled over by a ‘Plain Clothes” police vehicle. The German cop or spook walked up to the drivers window and said, “Welcome back from Belfast Kevin “, in perfect English. He walked away without waiting for a reply, pure intimidation.
Ireland divided will never know peace;
This song was often sung in our singalongs in Belfast. Kevin Barry was an 18 yr old medical student hung by the Brits. Listen to the lyrics and his heroism. Kevin was no ‘Tout’, his lynching was proof of his loyalty. Irish Republican music was a salve to our wounds. Ma used to sing this song to me as a kid and then got shitty with me when I headed into the war zone. It’s the dilemma that all parents are confronted with in oppressed societies.
When I first arrived in the war zone, I was uncertain of my position on the “Armed Struggle”, and fascinatingly it was an elderly Patsy Marron that convinced me that the armed struggle wasn’t a choice our people made but was forced upon us. The state was out of control and the pogroms were well documented. Patsy convinced me it was our duty to resist and protect our own communities if the state had no intention of doing so. The rest is history.
Patsy Marron, continuing the struggle as seen here when she was 92yrs old.
After I left the occupied six counties, I went to Gibraltar to help a friend’s computer company install computers at a new bank. I had to walk over the footpath where Mairead Farell, Dan McCann and Sean Savage were murdered in cold blood by the British SAS on March 6th, 1988. Mairéad was shot in the back along with her comrades Séan Savage and Daniel McCann, as they walked unarmed. Britain always denied that they had a “Shoot to Kill” policy with us Irish Republicans but the evidence is clear.
Sean was shot 18 times. “Farrell, Watson said, “was hit by five bullets to the face and neck and three in the back. . . . Danny McCann was shot twice in the head and twice in the back.”
Tiocfaidh ár lá , our day will come. Ireland divided shall never know peace. I’m posting this on the 25th anniversary of the execution style murder of Mairead, Sean and Dan. R.I.P. comrades.
The urgency these concerned individuals display reflects the danger the entire planet is in, with the pathologically insane lunatics of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex provoking China and Russia at the same time. This, by definition, is insanity and a step change in cold war posturing quickly morphing into a hot war. For me the first shots in WW3 have been fired, by the usual suspects.
In half a century of monitoring geo-politics we have never been so close to potential armageddon, imho.
In the link below, various speakers on the Security Council mention the huge ecological consequences of the terrorist attack on the Nordstream pipelines.
“Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Ray Address UN Security Council under the rubric ‘Threats to International Peace and Security’ February 21, 2023. (Each was asked to include discussion of the Hersh report on Nord Stream.) Sachs: minute 21:00 to 31:23; McGovern: min. 31:24 to 48:46″ circa Ray McGovern. Threats to international peace and security – Security Council, 9266th meeting
Seymour Hersh’s block buster report, that has been ignored by all the corporate media, surprise surprise, is embedded following: How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline Subheading: “The New York Times called it a “mystery,” but the United States executed a covert sea operation that was kept secret – Until Now.”
“American Empire is merely the most lethal manifestation of industrial civilization, hence any civilization. Because this culture is inextricably interconnected with this civilization, I have concluded that contemporary culture is worthy of our individual and collective condemnation. Walking away from empire is necessary but insufficient to terminate this horrific culture.” The Trifecta of Imperialism
The Trifecta of Imperialism.
I was living in Germany when the wall came down and the Nato block/Warsaw pact negotiations took place. We lived and breathed those negotiations. Many of us were appalled at the poor wording of the agreement. Nato agreed to not move 1 inch East and they have breached that agreement continuously ever since. Installing a puppet, neo-nazi government on Russia’s border reopens the mortal wound of 27 million Russians who died at the hands of fascism. A Rubicon has been crossed and Nato has opened the doors of hell. Lay the blame at the feet of the aggressors NATO, not at the predictable response of a proud nation that will never forget nor forgive the slaughter of 20 + millions of their people.
As the dynamics unfold keep a wary eye out for more so called “False Flag’s” being used to justify military expansionism.
As the triple dip La Niña wanes, we need to consider the consequences of the next El Niño on the Arctic Sea Ice minimum, which ‘normally’ unfolds in the middle of September. That could soon stretch into October, adding weeks to the melt season, with its attendant consequences.
Senior Management Pauline Schneider, First Mate Guy McPherson, Skipper Kevin Hester.
“The ENSO Outlook continues at LA NIÑA, but La Niña is weakening.” “Although NINO indices in the tropical Pacific are similar to two weeks ago, cool sea surface temperature anomalies in the central and particularly the eastern tropical Pacific have weakened. However, the atmosphere remains indicative of La Niña.” “Climate models anticipate neutral ENSO during February 2023.” “La Niña typically increases the chance of above average summer rainfall in northern and eastern Australia.”
We’ll have more certainty in May or June 2023. I expect it to be a catastrophic tipping point and “Step Change” in the great unravelling of the biosphere. The Great Barrier Reef and I wait with bated breath, sigh. ENSO Forecast; An alert system for the El Niño–Southern Oscillation
I’ve previously delved into the issue of climate grief: The Coming Tsunami of Grief Managing our grief and more importantly the grief of our youth, is our biggest pre-collapse challenge.
It’s impossible to have this discussion without addressing the issue of tipping points we’ve already triggered. Guy McPherson has chronicled over six dozen in his monster climate change essay “Climate Change Summary”.
One of the audience questions concerned the slowing down of the AMOC. My reply was that its current consequence has been the disruption of the Jetstream’s. Jennifer Francis has done excellent, if conservative work in this field. Jennifer Francis – Understanding the Jetstream
Below is an image of what the Jetstream’s used to look like. To see what it looks like today check out “Climate Reanalyzer” for the latest meandering!
The critical issue Professor McPherson and I wish to convey is the rapidity of the unravelling. To quote Professor Albert Bartlett: “The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race is our Inability to Truly Understand the Exponential Function.
Good luck everyone, we sure are going to need it! Soon the living will envy the dead. Have your own say on our predicament below & subscribe to the blog to keep up with my interpretation of the great unravelling of the biosphere. Aroha Nui from Aotearoa New Zealand. If you feel the urge to buy me a pint or two you can do it via Paypal: kevin@iconicproperties.co.nz
A recurring theme, as we chronicle the unravelling of the biosphere, is the term “Sooner than Previously Thought”. Every prediction of cause and effect in the climate system is happening much sooner than expected or predicted. Clearly, we have grossly underestimated “Climate Sensitivity.” I covered that catastrophic failing previously, Full Earth System Sensitivity to CO2 has been Grossly Underestimated We shouldn’t be surprised that a violent patriarchy underestimated “Climate Sensitivity”.
Because the narrative has been controlled by the dominant culture of Industrial Civilisation and its proponents, the corporations who control all the mainstream media, we have been corralled into ‘believing’ that we could destabilise the atmosphere ‘safely’ by increasing global mean temperatures by 1.5 or 2C. Neither of these guardrails or what has now become missed targets, were either safe or achievable. The Myth of 2C Being Safe and Achievable
William Nordhaus won a Nobel Peace Prize for sealing the planets destruction with his unscientific hypothesis that 2C was safe. What he really meant was he thought Capitalism could survive a 2C temperature increase. The ecosystem’s slow but accelerating and torturous demise proves him catastrophically wrong. Moving the ‘Goal Posts’ or the baseline date to calculate anthropogenic warming has become an art form that even many climate scientists turn a blind eye to. Baseline Temperature dishonesty at the Edge of Extinction
The following data and analysis courtesy of @SamCarana from the Arctic News Blog: What is pre-industrial? “The Paris Agreement called for a special report by the IPCC on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways. In the report, the IPCC first defines pre-industrial as “the multi-century period prior to the onset of large-scale industrial activity around 1750”. Yet, the IPCC then proceeds to use the period 1850-1900 to “approximate” pre-industrial. This raises the questions, has the IPCC been downplaying the temperature rise and is this continuing? “
The entire debate around what level of destabilisation of the atmosphere we can ‘get away with’ is in itself omnicidal and in no small way clinically insane but having said that the whole culture is insane. Complex systems are vulnerable to minor perturbations and there is nothing minor about the larceny we are conducting. Tristan Sykes one of the co-founders of “Just Collapse” points out that we add the equivalent of 4 Hiroshima nuclear bombs of energy per second to our atmosphere, this is war.
When did the temperature start rising?
“Orbital changes are responsible for Milankovitch cycles that make Earth move in and out of periods of glaciation, or Ice Ages. Summer insolation on the Northern Hemisphere reached a peak some 10,500 years ago, in line with the Milankovitch cycles, and insolation has since gradually decreased.”
Oceans and the snow & ice cover have been acting as a buffer
“While temperatures rose rapidly in the past, especially during the period leading up to the insolation peak, the speed at which temperatures did rise was moderated by oceans and by the snow and ice cover, in a number of ways:”
Emissions by people
“While emission by people did accelerate since the start of the Industrial Revolution and even more recently, the rise in emission by people had already started thousands of years ago with the rise in modern agriculture and associated deforestation” “The temperature has risen accordingly since those times. In the year 1520, temperatures had risen by 0.29°C, compared to some 5000 years earlier. When also taking into account that the temperature would have fallen naturally (i.e. in the absence of these emissions), the early temperature rise caused by people may well be twice as much.”
“Conclusion“ “For thousands of years, people have been causing emissions that made the temperature rise. From 3480 BC, the forcing of these emissions became even stronger than the natural trend for temperatures to come down, in line with decreasing Summer insolation on the Northern Hemisphere. The term “natural” can be ambiguous, as forest fires and albedo changes are often regarded as “natural forcing”, but of course the deliberate acts of peat burning and cutting down trees can hardly be regarded as ‘natural’.”
“Anyway, the net effect was that the temperature started to rise from 3480 BC, so it makes sense to calculate temperature anomalies versus that year as pre-industrial base. The rise from pre-industrial to 2020 could thus be as much as 2.29°C, which would mean that the thresholds set at the Paris Agreement have already been crossed and the rise from pre-industrial may well exceed 3°C soon, in turn effectively making 3°C the (new) threshold that should not be crossed.”
As a footnote don’t forget the Aerosol Masking Effect or Global Dimming. Dr James E Hansen described the AME as our Faustian Bargain, more on that sleeping giant here; Global Dimming Keeping the Planet Habitable
We have been aware that burning fossil fuels would alter, destabilise and warm the atmosphere since at least 1847 and the narrative has been controlled since shortly thereafter. Had we described the phenomenon as creating what it is, a “Planetary Gas Chamber” for most, if not all complex life on the planet, perhaps we might have acted to save the biosphere rather than perpetuate the extraction industry which is in the accelerating process of incinerating the entire ecosystem. What an incredible irony that a Republican Congressman from the USA was the first person (that I am aware of, feel free to correct me below if I’m wrong) to give a lecture on human induced climate change. We have been through a raft of ‘slogans’ that have all downplayed the reality that the unfettered incineration of fossil fuels would negatively alter the atmospheric energy and ‘Green House Gas’ balance. “Green House”, such an innocuous term for an existential threat, tailored to not scare the serfs. A near-forgotten speech made by a US congressman warned of global warming and the mismanagement of natural resources in 1847 The 1847 lecture that predicted human-induced climate change. “But I would argue his defining moment came on 30 September 1847, when, as a congressman for the Whig party (a forerunner of the Republican party), he gave a lecture to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont. (The speech was published a year later.) It proved to be the intellectual spark that led him to go on and publish in 1864 his best-known work, Man and Nature: Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action.”
To give some reference to the insanity of the current debate around “Green House Gas” emissions everyone is arguing and or lying about what degree we can destabilise the atmosphere. Think about that lunacy for a second. The Cognitive dissonance is a mind fuck for me. Cognitive Dissonance and Outright Lies at the Edge of Extinction The reality is, there was no safe level of destabilisation of our atmosphere. It’s pitifully obvious in hindsight. The next nonsensical aspect of the predicament is the debate around how much of a “Carbon Budget” we have left. The short, sharp Scientific Reality is there is no carbon budget, clearly, we are in early-stage nonlinear runaway and the atmosphere has been destabilised well beyond the point of no return. Every additional gram of carbon released speeds up the already unfolding collapse now dominated and driven by a multitude of feedback loops documented here. Climate Change Summary
1989, quoting “Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.”
“He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.” You’ll note that the rogues at the UN are still saying the same thing 33 years later! The 1989 Associated Press article warning of the phenomenon, titled “U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked,”
There has been much debate about the time lag between when emissions are dumped into the atmosphere and when we feel the full effects. Warming from Methane is, to all intents and purposes, effective immediately after it is vomited into the atmosphere, hence some of the shocking heat we are currently witnessing in the Northern Hemisphere.
Abstract “The stability of widespread methane hydrates in shallow subsurface sediments of the marine continental margins is sensitive to temperature increases experienced by upper intermediate waters. Destabilization of methane hydrates and ensuing release of methane would produce climatic feedbacks amplifying and accelerating global warming. Hence, improved assessment of ongoing intermediate water warming is crucially important, especially that resulting from a weakening of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).”
Carbon on the other hand can take up to centuries to manifest depending on the scale of the pulse. As the Northern Hemisphere’s forest’s burn huge quantities of carbon are released in very short time frames.
The above peer reviewed paper debunks the Liar Michael E Mann who recently said for a dumbed down US audience that “If we stop emissions now warming will stop”. 1)That’s a blatant lie and 2) How, pray tell, do we Stop Emissions Now when every single thing we do in industrial civilisation requires fossil fuels.
Anyone paying attention to the rapidity of the changes we are witnessing can see non-linearity unfolding in the chaos we are witnessing daily now. The Rate of Change is the critical issue to remember as we chronicle the great unravelling. “If you think long-term exponential growth is interesting and disruptive, there’s another kind of growth that is even more curious and potentially disruptive. That is faster-than-exponential (superexponential) growth. Unlike exponential growth, where the curve looks the same at every point, superexponential growth has one or more “knees” in the curve, places where growth suddenly switches from a slower to an even faster (or sometimes slower) exponential mode.” Superexponential Growth (J-curves) Hat tip to Kevin Lister, author of “The Vortex of Violence: and why we are losing the war on climate change” who taught me about Super Exponential change. Kevin Lister can be followed on Twitter at @kevsclimatecol
I’m not saying that we are witnessing Super Exponential Growth, yet, but anyone following the Precautionary Principle is forced to consider it. Peter Wadhams and others have pointed out that the Feedback Loops are multiplicative. That’s the pathway to Super Exponential changes.
Have your say in the comments section below. I’ll add additional data to the comments as they come to hand. “I say to my soul, be patient and wait without hope, for to hope is to hope for the wrong thing” TS Elliot Good luck everyone, we sure are going to need it.
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
Kevin Hester 