Doomsday Chronicles, cont'd

January 24, 2011 by Keith Kloor | Filed in climate change, doomsday, energy crisis, resource revolts | 10 comments

Michael Klare sees a bad moon rising.

I hope you got your things together:

climate change doomsday energy crisis resource revolts

Keith Kloor

10 Responses to “Doomsday Chronicles, cont'd”

1. L. Carey says:

   January 24, 2011 at 5:42 pm

   This blog is beginning to remind me of an acquaintance in junior high who incessantly railed against using seat belts because his drunk cousin crashed his car at 85 mph, was thrown clear and walked away with a couple of cuts.  Yes, it’s unmanly to suggest that, wow, there might be benefits in taking safety precautions or that there might be limits to some natural eco-sytem services or resources, or that when climate change begins to really bite there might be some … ah, difficulties.  Yes, much better to poke fun at the very possibility that anything might go wrong after pumping half a trillion tonnes of CO2 into the open sewer we refer to as the atmosphere within .

2. L. Carey says:

   January 24, 2011 at 5:43 pm

   … within a couple of centuries.

3. rustneversleeps says:

   January 24, 2011 at 5:44 pm

   Pretty sure that’s Paul Krugman on the drums… didn’t realize he was in CCR.

4. Keith Kloor says:

   January 24, 2011 at 6:01 pm

   LCarey: You read too much into my gentle mockery. I’m on record that we have some problems to deal with.

   But I also have a problem with the excessive catastrophe rhapsodizing. Additionally, I  figure that there’s so much of it that some folks might appreciate a bit of levity to go with their doomsday countdown.

   In an upcoming post I’ll describe how my experiences in a previous incarnation perhaps shaped my penchant for black humor.

5. Dave H says:

   January 24, 2011 at 6:36 pm

   … segue into the best Werewolf transformation in cinema history.

6. Vinny Burgoo says:

   January 24, 2011 at 9:20 pm

   L. Carey, your acquaintance got things upside down. It wasn’t the lack of a seat-belt that saved his cousin; it was being drunk. Relaxation ruggedizes a body against all sorts of traumas.
    

7. Roddy Campbell says:

   January 25, 2011 at 5:56 am

   I’m surprised he didn’t get the Moscow airport bombings in there.
   Or the 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots.
   Or the Cultural Revolution.
    

8. Steven Sullivan says:

   January 25, 2011 at 1:04 pm

   “But I also have a problem with the excessive catastrophe rhapsodizing.”
    
   Keith, is it a problem for you because you think it will delay action on the ‘some problems to deal with’?
    
   Or is it it because it just annoys you temperamentally?
    
   I’m kinda thinking it’s more the latter than the former. Even if you can’t help finding doomsday scenarios worhty of point-and-laugh, referring to AGW as encompassing merely ‘some problems to deal with’  seems a little bit of understatement, don’t you think?
    
    

9. L. Carey says:

   January 25, 2011 at 1:39 pm

   KK, apologies for getting wound up, but the post you linked to @4 did hit on one of my major concerns – namely that a bunch of important interrelated environmental bad things are happening at the same time, and not many folks seem to care much.  I myself am very skeptical of economic doom-mongering (remember Japan, Inc. in the 80s) but physical processes are something else entirely – climate disruption, ocean acidification, water issues, shrinking forests, possible major loss of phytoplankton, land use problems, changing ocean ecology (declining fish stocks, overfishing, jellyfish expanding at the expense of fish(?)).  I don’t KNOW that this formidable collection of issues is going to lead to a calamity, but I’d sure like for somebody to offer a credible, science-based explanation for why not — instead of drivel about how “all the scientists said we were were going to have an ice age in the 70’s and Holdren lost a bet and it still snows in the winter so you can’t believe anything scientists say”

10. kdk33 says:

    January 25, 2011 at 5:31 pm

    Not to worry: jellyfish are edible.  Quite tasty, apparently.

    http://www.jellyfishfacts.net/sesame-jellyfish-recipe.html