'MAYDAY! SOS! MAYDAY! SOS! MAYDAY! SOS!' I'm Trapped In A Psychotic/Psychopathic Civilization Of Serial Killers...

Click on photo to enlarge - photo credit unknown, image courtesy of Erv Nichols

Warning!

Rant Ahead!

~

"Take the rag away from your face, now is the time for your tears"

from 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' © 1964 Bob Dylan

~

It's way past time we took the rags away from our eyes and looked directly into the horrific reality of our petroleum addiction.

Ours is an insidious addiction, mostly hidden from us beneath layers of lifelong denial, which enables us to mindlessly murder our mother, the living earth, with the sick vengeance of a deranged serial killer.

We talk a good line though, like so many addicts in denial do, claiming to care most deeply about our families and the environment, about freedom, democracy and the quality of life. But our actions speak much louder than our words, and those actions prove us to be hopelessly dependent upon the destructive extraction and consumption of the world's ever more scarce resources, a cultural co-dependency created over a dozen or so decades by mixing great quantities of oil with our short-sighted desire for comfort, convenience, self-gratification and security.

Our habitual dependency upon this ever more frenzied oil-driven civilization of reckless consumption has undermined democracy and freedom at home and around the world. It's destroying our environment and ruining the future, not only for our children, but for every species on earth. So we lie to ourselves when we say we care about these things above all, because it's obvious that what we really care about is stuff.

We want a continual fix of stuff; more, bigger, cheaper, labor-saving, convenient, stylish, sexy stuff!

Americans are fond of the term, "Put your money where your mouth is", and we do exactly that. Just look at the billions of dollars you and I have squandered on the destruction of Iraq in our country's futile attempt to monopolize their oil.

Our former president said, "the American way of life is not up for negotiation", and we've forcefully demonstrated that anyone who gets in our way is totally screwed.

As we display increasingly antisocial behavior in our relationships with the other people and species we share the planet with, we reveal that, in fact, we have become a psychotic/psychopathic civilization, a species of sociopathic ecocidal maniacs to put it bluntly.

Yes, I mean all of us! The symptoms of psychosis are clearly defined; a loss of contact with reality, grandiose delusional beliefs, paranoia, defensive aggression, thought disorders, hallucinations and antisocial behavior.

Our disease is systemic throughout society, a classic substance-induced psychosis resulting from our 150 year addiction to petroleum and its associated derivatives.

We can no longer imagine living without our daily fix of oil even though every shot we take further destroys the world which made our lives possible in the first place.

Through our addiction to this cheap abundant (although quite temporary) energy packed substance, we've fooled ourselves into believing we're super-beings, exempt from the laws of nature and the limits to growth. In other words we have lost contact with reality.

Under the influence of the happy-juice we call oil we've experienced a euphoric rush that has kept us obliviously stoned for a century and a half, which by comparison, leaves the high from any other addictive substance paling to utter insignificance.

The manic hyperactivity induced by that rush of oil into the arteries of our society allowed us, in very short order, to transform our primal insecurities, and our creative wet dreams, into a monstrous civilization whose monolithic edifices will stand for centuries as eroding monuments to the ostentatious arrogance of a narcissistic species gone mad with self-absorption, over-consumption, and obsessive compulsive disorders.

We have deluded ourselves into the grandiose belief that this pile-of-crap civilization we've plastered across the planet is a modern miracle, evidence of our manifest destiny as masters of the universe.

We Americans make up only about 4.5% of the world population yet we consume 25% of the world's resources. We are the world's number one trash producers, generating 40% of humanity's trash, and we're number two in climate altering CO2 emissions (just recently displaced from #1 by China), responsible for over 20% of global atmospheric accumulations.

We are---and have been for over a century---the development model for a civilization that has spawned the 6th greatest extinction episode in the 4.5 billion year history of earth and it is estimated that we are now losing around 200 species a day, or 70,000 species a year, through habitat loss and the pollution of ecosystems.

You and I are the ones responsible for this latest round of extinctions; for the climate change happening now; for the melting of the polar caps and glaciers; for the coming rise in sea levels, and the subsequent displacement and homelessness of billions of human beings.

We may also be primarily responsible for the very existence of those unsustainable billions of people because of increases in the world food supply created by our development of an international industrial/agribusiness model.

A model completely dependent upon the petrochemicals used for fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, a model which also requires the production & maintenance of gargantuan fleets of farm equipment and transportation networks to produce those agricultural products and get them to markets around the globe.

All of this has unleashed global-wide opportunities of unprecedented magnitude for greedy profiteering by a select few at the expense of everyone and everything else. So, as a matter of course, the world economy is now managed by a gang of legalized thugs & racketeers, rivaled in greed and ruthlessness only by illegal drug cartels, fundamentalist religious fanatics, and an emerging flotilla of Somalian pirates.

~

"Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

from Sweetheart Like You - © 1983 Bob Dylan

~

Capitalism is a Ponzi/Pyramid Scheme which robs the larger populace of the commons to benefit a handful of elites, where obscene profits perpetuate unlimited growth on a finite planet. One of the results has been the contemporary hallucination that our destruction of the planet somehow makes us wealthy.

The wealth of America is now nothing but an imaginary bubble kept aloft by the printing of money, which becomes ever more worthless by the moment. Before long that debt bubble is going to burst into flames like the Hindenburg Blimp, as we might gather from the precedents unfolding in Iceland, Greece, Portugal, and Spain (not to mention California---the 5th largest economy in the world---which is essentially bankrupt).

The perpetual wars we're now waging have deepened not only our national debt, but our national paranoia as well, resulting in over 6,700 military installations--- bases, warehouses, or support facilities in nearly 150 countries (under the guise of defending freedom & democracy)---all to enforce our world dominance and gain control of dwindling resources in the interest of "national security", or what I call our assumed national supremacy.

Meanwhile, here in the "land of the free, the home of the brave", we have the highest per-capita imprisonment rate in the world, 25% of the incarcerated human beings on planet earth are behind bars right here in the good ol' USA.

Is this the definition of Democracy and Freedom?

Is this what the Statue of Liberty stands for?

We all know better...

True freedom lies in the unspoiled bounty of nature where all species are created equal, where those who can't, or won't, adapt to the limits of their environment eventually perish.

We're so deep in denial of our collective addiction that we've kept shooting petroleum into the bloodstream of our lives without facing those limits until we have, quite suddenly, found ourselves up against a wall, with the limits of our ecosystems staring us in the face, point blank.

Perhaps this will wake us up, most addicts need to bottom out before they can face reality and attempt some sort of recovery, but sometimes it's too late for that, when the damage is beyond repair.

So, go ahead my fellow addicts...

Drill Baby Drill!

Buy Baby Buy!

Drive Baby Drive!

Kill Baby Kill!

...but beware, our chickens are coming home to roost.

~

My name is Jim, I'm in recovery from the Petroleum Age*

*Thank you, Chellis Glendinning, for the societal recovery concept.

Celebrating 13 Years Without A Car

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2005/2010 jim otterstrom

Today is the 13th Anniversary of our decision to live without a car.

Peggy and I truly love knowing that we can live quite comfortably without a gas-guzzling, CO2 belching, atmosphere destroying, infernal combustion death-trap parked in our (no longer existent) driveway.

We are proud that our decision means we haven't spewed approximately 163,000 pounds (or 81.5 tons) of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere during those 13 years.

It makes our hearts feel good that we actually enjoy life without an automobile as much or more than we did when we owned one.

It was another step toward freedom from servitude to the corporate state.

We don't buy their cars, we don't buy their gasoline, we don't buy their oil & tires, we don't buy their auto insurance, and we don't borrow their money for car loans.

But, for me, the most important aspect of all this, is that, in a couple of decades when our kids are facing the ever worsening consequences of this culture's destructive behavior, they will know that mom & pop gave enough of a damn about their future to at least make dramatic and constructive changes in our own lifestyles now.

We are leaving our descendents an unimaginable mess and future generations will not look back on us favorably.

The graph below, borrowed from Wikipedia, shows the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations over the past 50 years. I have slightly modified the chart by circling the maximum 300 to 350 ppm target we need to achieve if we are going to avert irreversible climate catastrophe (read a related up-to-date article here), and by placing a black X at the point where Peggy and I stopped owning cars.

As you can see we got rid of our climate killing vehicle a full decade after that 350 ppm target was exceeded, so---fully realizing by that point in time that we could no longer live at peace with ourselves if we didn't take personal responsibility for our own emissions---we took action.

We're trying to do our part and I'm renewing my pledge right now, to all the species of planet earth, that I will not own another fossil fuel powered vehicle during this lifetime.

On that note, Peggy and I will toast each other tonight with glasses of Pinot Noir over a spaghetti dinner by candlelight.

Click on graph to enlarge

The photo at the top of this post, of a 1940 Chevrolet Master Deluxe 4 Door Sport Sedan, was made on April 18, 2005, at Goffs, a historic railroad town on old Route 66 near Needles, California.

The town is being restored by the Mojave Desert Heritage And Cultural Association, of which Peggy's stepbrother, Phil, is Vice-President.

Peggy, her sister Penny, and I, were out there for the weekend as part a of a volunteer crew to do some weed abatement and other work.

Transitions - Seasonal and Otherwise...

Click on image to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

Ice on the lake cracked, buckled, and melted this year, like always, even as world credit markets remained frozen solid.

The lone Bald Eagle circles intently above the marsh, fishing, unconcerned with the global financial meltdown.

A pair of finches cheerfully weave their nest into the first 'a' of the pharmacy sign, as if Rite-Aid was expected to survive another quarter.

Tilted toward the vernal equinox, the frosted earth warms slightly; wild onions dispatch eager shoots skyward, heedless of greenhouse gases or climate change.

I imagine myself standing in a bread line, during the first Great Depression, finding cheer in tufts of grass growing from broken concrete.

I envision a Final Great Depression, and eventually, masses of lovely wildflowers blooming among the skeletal remains of Wall Street, and the Pentagon.

Spring is on the wind, General Motors is bankrupt, and Peak Oil is upon us.

Take heart, friends of the earth.

Change is in the air…

We Made The Front Page!

Click on article to enlarge - © 2008 Big Bear Grizzly & Kathy Portie

Our local newspaper, the Big Bear Grizzly, has been doing some recent stories on the high cost of gasoline and how people might cut back on their fuel expenses.

The paper got word of our car-free lifestyle and called us over the weekend to arrange an interview about our experiences.

So we knew this was coming out today but were surprised to see our mugs on the front page.

Peggy and I think the article is nicely written, simple and to the point, and we feel honored to be featured in our local paper.

There is one slight error in the story that I will correct here. It says that we retired from the Postal Service in 1997, but I retired in 2001, and Peggy retired in 2004.

Wake Up Call - Earthquake At 4:14 A.M.

~A Mild 4.0 - This Time~

Click on map to enlarge

All maps in this post are courtesy of the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

I added some of the text to personalize the information.

Peggy and I were jolted awake by a shaking rattling house at 4:14 this morning.

It was a relatively mild quake but it served, once again, to remind us of where we live and what we can expect from the geology of our locale.

As life-long residents of Southern California, and most particularly, because we've always lived on, or at the edges of, California's Transverse Range and the infamous San Andreas Fault , we're both well experienced with earthquakes.

The above map shows significant earthquakes in Southern California over the 25 year period between 1970 and 1995. I have added the numbers 1 through 4 to the map to show where I've lived my life, in close proximity to the most frequent and strongest quakes. Peggy has lived her life in the same places, except that she was born in the San Fernando Valley, where we grew up within a few miles of each other.

Todays little temblor (shown on the USGS shake map below) was a polite wake up call for us to make sure we're as prepared as possible for the impending disaster somewhere ahead of us.

In the last map of this post I've highlighted an oval which shows a 100+ mile section of the San Andreas Fault that is way overdue for a major quake, and, where we live in relationship to the fault.

It's not a matter of if, but when.

You can read a related National Geographic News article, by clicking here, which explains the known history of this segment of our infamous fault, and what we might expect in the very near future.

This isn't lunatic fringe doomsday prophesy, it's the factual reality of the geology of places like this, which straddle the edges of tectonic plates.

Today's Mild Temblor

The closer you are to the red areas on the above map, the more frequently you can expect earthquakes to occur.

Click on the above map to see the highlighted overdue section of the San Andreas Fault, which could very well bring us the next Big One, if the, also overdue Hayward Fault, in Northern California, doesn't beat us to it (again, you can see a related National Geographic News article by clicking here).

Fires! Floods! Earthquakes!

Why would anyone, in their right mind, want to live in the crowded, congested, expensive, smoggy, crime-ridden sprawl of Southern California when they also know, for certain, that some catastrophic disaster always lies just ahead?

Well, I can't speak for the millions of people who came here from somewhere else, for the climate, the scenery, a job, or to make it big in Hollyweird, whatever. In fact, it wouldn't break my heart if they all went home.

Because...

For me, it's simply about Place!

And, regardless of those who would question whether I ever had a right mind to be in, I'm going to explain why place is important to me anyway.

I was born here 62 years ago, at the west end of this gorgeous range of transverse mountains. And, if overdevelopment, sprawl, pollution, squalor, and outrageous prices hadn't driven me off, I'd still be living with the fires, floods, and earthquakes of Santa Monica, Reseda, or Topanga Canyon.

But somewhere along my journey I realized that we can't keep trashing the places we call home, and then just move on, because, as we should understand by now, we're about to run ourselves completely off the planet.

So, instead of invading someone elses part of the world (maybe even yours), I'm hanging on here, at the easternmost end of my home on the Range, where I can still afford to live, where I'm familiar, and where I'm surrounded by the relatively unspoiled beauty of Southern California's San Bernardino Mountains.

A few minutes walk from our dwelling, in any direction, takes me home to the nature of my place.

Fires, floods, and earthquakes define Southern California every bit as much as our beaches, mountains, and deserts.

They're the interacting forces of nature, which together, created the once gorgeous wide-open freedom of this place we call home.

Plate tectonics built these mountains and coastlines, while floods carved the canyons and filled the valleys with rich fertile soil, and wildfires groomed the dense forests and chaparral, allowing magnificently diverse gardens of botanical inventions to evolve into existence, along with a corresponding abundance of animal species.

The Transverse Range of Southern California is my home, I love and respect this place deeply. What is good for the nature of these mountains is also good for me.

So, naturally, I would also have a great respect for wildfires, floods, and earthquakes, the most fundamental building blocks of my place.

It's not my goal in life to control the forces of nature, it's my goal to try and learn to live in harmony with them.

Our small cabin is a sturdy wood frame structure which came through the 7.3 magnitude Landers Earthquake (July, 21, 1992 - 4:57 A.M.), and the 6.4 Big Bear Quake a few hours later, relatively unscathed.

Most everything inside the house was damaged or broken from the severe shaking, yet aside from a hairline crack in the foundation, and some slightly tweaked kitchen cabinets, the structure is still sound.

That doesn't mean the place will make it through the next shaker, especially if it's an 8+ magnitude 'mother of all quakes' along the San Andreas Fault some twenty miles from here.

And, a wood frame house doesn't seem the ideal structure to inhabit in a fire prone alpine forest either, does it?

We're also in a bit of a flood plain and have twice experienced our home becoming and island in two-foot deep floodwaters.

Fortunately the builder was aware of that problem and built our place nearly 3 feet above ground but some of the neighbors aren't so lucky.

Still, the unpredictable and extreme weather predicted as part of global warming & climate change could bring us heavier rains than we've ever known before.

If this house is eventually destoyed by fire, flood, or quake, and I live through it, maybe I can construct a dwelling more compatible with the forces of nature (or go back and reclaim my cave in the Santa Monica Mountains).

Architect Nader Khalili, of the Cal-Earth Institue in nearby Hesperia, has had the plans for this environmentally friendly earth home (click here) approved by the County Of San Bernardino.

The house was structurally tested and proved to be very earthquake and fire resistant, and, if thoughtfully situated would withstand floods too.

A wood frame home in a forest makes about as much sense as mobile home parks in the hurricane ravaged gulf coast states, or in tornado alley, or as skyscrapers, freeways and bridges do in earthquake country.

Nature can accomodate us quite sufficiently if only we would live in accordance with her counsel, or even with plain old common sense.

Any species long term survival is all about how they adapt to the opportunities, and the limitations, of the places they inhabit. Humans have a relatively brief history, as species go, yet we have already forgotten how to live, in, and of, our places. We now live upon, and separate from them.

I believe our relationship with our place should be an open reciprocal exchange, like a good marriage. Instead, we conquer the nature of our places, subduing them, like an abusive spouse dominates a potential partner. And when our places become stifled and debased by our control, we covet the wild, free, beauty we see elsewhere, and move along to consume new horizons which soon resemble what we left behind.

In our relentless quest for power, control, and omnipotence, we have essentially divorced ourselves from nature and the ability to love our places for what they are. We mold and form those places to be subservient, something nature's not capable of being.

But the lessons of our time tell us with blunt urgent clarity that we cannot continue living out of context with the nature of our place, whether it be Los Angeles, New Orleans, Greensburg Kansas, San Francisco, Big Bear Lake, or Planet Earth.

Today, on so many levels, we humans are confronting the dire consequences of trying to subjugate nature.

The immediate reality of a grossly overpopulated world, addicted to an economic system that demands growth in the face of rapidly dwindling resources, and the now perpetual wars being waged to gain control of those resources, is sobering and scary.

"Go Forth And Multiply" worked OK, I suppose, until we overshot the carrying capacity of our whole blessed biosphere!

We are now face to face with the man-made calamities of global warming, ozone depletion, climate change, rising sea levels, depleted fisheries, mass extinctions, peak oil and a subsequent economic collapse, as well as nature's relatively benign fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanism, hurricanes & tsunamis. And none of this is lunatic fringe doomsday prophecy either, it's here now, whether we like it or not.

We've been like the Mr. Magoo of cultures as our myopic clumsy civilization bumbled its way into a self-made disaster which threatens the entire globe.

Whereas, throughout human history, extreme events in the natural geology, or weather, of any given place typically affected only those areas. Places where more attuned beings, living with an accumulated, respectful, historical knowledge of their places, might avoid the worst aspects of predictable natural events (like the Sea Gypsies of Surin Island did during the 2004 Indonesian tsunami).

So, the very hard realities of humankind in this Twenty-First Century A.D., and our dismal failure in adapting to our ecosystem, should be our true Wake Up Call. Nature will regenerate much of what we've destroyed (sometimes by fire, flood, and earthquake), and create countless new life forms too. Mother Nature is generous and will even include some of us in the future if we will only cooperate.

A big part of my earthquake survival kit (or should I say, my generic, one-fits-all, disaster kit?) is my awareness of the inevitability of it all. I am mentally prepared for it and will not be disoriented or confused as to how such events could happen. And that applies equally to the ecological and economic cataclysms now unfolding all around us.

In the very near future the unwieldy materialistic lives we now know will have ceased to exist. For much of my life I've seen this coming and I fully understand why we're on the verge of societal collapse. So, if I actually live to see the worst of it, at least I won't be stumbling around in a dumbfounded state wondering how it happened, or why.

I realize the dizzying momentum of all this is overwhelming to many people, but our collective lack of will to change course still pisses me off!

It's not something we want to envision, but young people, alive right now, are going to witness the human population of Earth decline, substantially, to something resembling sustainable numbers.

That is a prediction based on a lifetime of open-minded witness to the verifiable down-to-earth facts of the realities we live with, not on some end-times religious dogma.

I'm not predicting the end of the world, just the decline of the human species.

And, whether you think this prediction qualifies me as a fringe lunatic doomsday prophet or not, history will corroborate the accuracy of this disturbing observation, if anyone's left to record it.

And, when my time comes, whether I succumb to old age, disease, or die as the result of one of these disasters---either natural or man-made---I hope to be right here where I belong, at home, in Southern California, the place I know and love.

In the meantime you will find me, for a good part of each day, outside, walking, and worshiping what's left of the lost paradise that once graced the west coast of Turtle Island.

postscript-

This post is now complete. My personal experiences with Southern California disasters, which I was going to insert here, will now be a future post.

Through A Different Lens....................... 10 Years Car-Free

Click on photo to enlarge - image © jim otterstrom 2007
headlight lens © Ford Motor Company 1937

Today marks our 10th Anniversary of living car-free.

By "car-free", I mean that Peggy and I haven't owned a car since January 31st of 1997.

But, we have found it necessary to rent cars on several occasions, particularly during the time our son was hospitalized and recuperating after his near fatal car-wreck in 2005.

Still, cars haven't been part of our daily lives for those 10 years.

When we owned a car, we drove somewhere around the national average of 12,000 miles per year. So, according to this 'An Inconvenient Truth' CO2 calculator, our personal carbon dioxide output has been reduced by nearly 6.5 tons per year.

That's 130,000 pounds of CO2 over the 10 year period!

But, we must also factor in the approximately 6 thousand miles we have driven during that time, which means we need to subtract 6,500 pounds from that 130,000, bringing our net infernal combustion pollution reduction down to 123,500 pounds for the decade. This means we reduced our personal CO2 output by nearly 87%!

123,500 POUNDS!!!

Talk about a diet, now, to me, that's something to celebrate!

Yet, in a world of 6 1/2 billion people, does it make any difference?

Not really. Not to anyone but Peggy and I, and a small minority of eco-centric types whom, according to the status quo, would be defined as part of the lunatic fringe.

To a planet that's been around for some 4 1/2 billion years, and seen millions of species come and go, does it make a difference?

None whatsoever, unless you happen to be one of those species who have come, but not yet gone.

In a vast Universe of countless galaxies, stars, and planets, does it make any difference?

Nope...

...unless, by some miracle of chance, you have the good fortune to be currently alive and breathing oxygen upon the beautiful blue planet, Earth.

No, a few individual members of an entire culture which is addicted to conspicuous consumption and material gratification aren't going to make much of a difference, so why bother?

Well, that's a good question, and one I've asked myself many times.

Once you know that smoking cigarettes causes cancer do you continue smoking?

Many people do, and continue doing so, even when they're hooked up to an oxygen tank or permanently bedridden. I've seen people, whose vocal chords had been removed because of smoking related cancer, suck on cigarettes through a trachea valve.

That's what I call addiction, mental, emotional, and physical addiction.

Yet, this is supposedly a free country, and I would say that's their business, as long as I don't have to pay the associated medical bills.

So, what is the difference between a person who, through denial, apathy, illness, or self-loathing, commits suicide by ignoring their addictions, and someone who hastens the destruction of a planetary life support system through denial of their addiction and its consequences?

The only difference I see is that people who commit suicide through substance abuse are just hurting themselves, and those who care about them, where people who would poison an entire planet because they refuse to face their own addictions, are not only suicidal, but homicidal, genocidal, and biocidal as well.

Are we that oblivious to reality, and to our own responsibilities?

Do we just not give a damn, or do we feel too hopelessly addicted to our old habits? Or, are we just in denial that there is a real problem, and that each one of us is a big part of it?

Of the thousands of cars which drive past us every week, blowing exhaust in our faces as we walk around Big Bear, how many of the drivers ever think about what they're doing, or about our health, or the stench they're spewing into rarefied mountain air belonging to everybody?

Why is something like that legal?

Should it be legal for me to shit all over everyone and everything?

What's the difference?

Legal or not, it's most certainly immoral!

Todays' infernal combustion automobile is probably the worst of our addictions, because of the magnitude of its destructiveness, but our disease goes much deeper than that.

How often have you heard the term "for the benefit of mankind"?

Humankind, blinded by its own cleverness, and imagined self-importance, values each technology primarily for the benefits to mankind.

Wouldn't a species with the slightest bit of common sense, and some desire for long-term survival, assess technologies primarily on their benefits to all life on Earth and the long-term health of their ecosystem?

Isn't survival considered a benefit to mankind?

We have grossly overpopulated the planet through the invention and use of technologies which supposedly benefit mankind. Yet it is becoming clearer every day that those very technologies may soon render our planet uninhabitable for those who would breathe oxygen, including the mankind they allegedly benefit.

And, once again, we turn to the technologies of an obsolete social & economic model---to the proponents of a failing civilization---for so-called clean car technology, alternative fuels, and renewable energy sources, so the worlds 6 1/2 billion people can, by 2041, become 9 billion (see chart here).

Contemporary wisdom as seen through the dominant lens:

For the good of mankind, all 6 1/2 billion of us, we will find solutions.

The global economy will not fail because our technology will find ways around nature's limits.

I wonder what percentage of the world population ever considers the consequences we face if this ever-expanding global economy of 6 1/2 billion people doesn't fail until our ecosystem does?

Can we even imagine the collapse of our entire civilization, the complete die-off of the human species, a total extinction of life on the planet, or an Earth that more resembles Mars?

Are we aware that the entire world is now embroiled in resource wars over oil, water, minerals, fish & game stocks, and arable land?

Have we paid attention to the fact that huge tracts of land recently used for growing food, or sustaining wildlife, are now being converted to growing crops for ethanol based fuels, or, that more than 50% of the pollution an automobile generates during its lifetime is produced during the manufacturing processes, or that we are in the midst of the 6th great extinction period in the history of our planet, and that habitat loss due to human expansion, industrialism, climate change, pollution, and resource extraction is causing those extinctions (I recently read that 13% of Americans have never heard of Global Warming)? READ THE LATEST CLIMATE CHANGE NEWS HERE (added 2/2/2007).

As the diversity of life on our planet diminishes, as the atmosphere deteriorates, and the pollution of our air, water, and soil increases exponentially, as world fisheries are depleted, and soil erosion claims more & more acres of farmland, how do we respond?

For the good of mankind---to provide jobs, housing, schools, and to accommodate more resource extraction in support of the teeming hoards---we build ever more subdivisions, shopping centers, and freeways.

WE'RE ON THE TITANIC!

We've bumped up against something and the ship seems to be listing a bit. But this is the "unsinkable" Titanic, a marvel of modern technology, and besides, the band is still playing, many of the passengers are still dancing, and the crew in charge says there's really nothing to worry about.

FANTASIA REVISITED!

Anyone who has seen Walt Disney's Fantasia will remember the Sorcerer's Apprentice, whose ineptness with technological wizardry, and Mickey Mouse tomfoolery, backfired when his creations ran amok, swarming uncontrollably with their own single-minded purpose.

WE ARE MICKEY MOUSE!

And unfortunately, like Mickey, we're desperately hoping that the wizard wakes up soon to save our sorry butts.

Only this is no cartoon, unless you believe what you see on television.

Much like the prism design of the headlight lens above, from a 1937 Ford---which aims light in a prescribed direction, for a relatively short distance---our vision today of what lies ahead is mostly defined for us by the corporate media propaganda machine of the dominant culture, and designed to focus our attention on economically specific, anthropocentric, elitist solutions. READ HERE HOW A CONSERVATIVE AMERICAN THINK-TANK IS WORKING TO PUT THIER OWN SPIN ON TODAY'S BEST CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE (added 2/2/2007).

I try to contemplate the future through a different lens than the one offered by those who would rule the world solely for the benefit of mankind.

Through this alternate lens (I might call it a full-spectrum lens), which is focused upon the Laws Of Nature and the needs of all living things, it becomes more obvious that there will very likely be zero automobiles in the not too distant future of planet Earth---bio-fueled, hybrid, hydrogen or otherwise.

But the clarity of Nature's lens is where I also find reasons to hope that life itself---with or without Homo-sapiens---might continue to evolve and flourish on Earth, regardless of the arrogant selfishness of todays' dominant species! (HERE'S AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE PROSPECTS OF LIFE ON EARTH (updated 2/2/2007).

And, like I've said before, hope is more powerful than despair.

My hope might actually evolve into optimism if I saw the faintest hint that individual human beings, in huge numbers, were willing to address their own addictions to destructive technology.

I still have plenty of addictions of my own, like hot-running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, refrigeration, music, photography, the internet, beer, wine, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And I'll be working on some of those...

...but I'm already way over the automobile, and the stupid-ass television, which is nothing more than a brainwashing advertising platform for this whole conspicuously consumptive life-threatening mess.

An 86.7% reduction in our fossil-fuel burning?

123,500 fewer pounds of CO2?

Insignificant, maybe...

...but it's our small contribution to the future, to your future.

It's one simple thing we can do, and it feels good.

It feels right!

Love & Peace

Was Our November A Canary In A Coal Mine? How Hot Might It Get In The Next Few Decades? You Tell Me...

Click on chart to enlarge - courtesy of Yahoo!/The Weather Channel

Warning!!

This IS a RANT!

...and not a very nice or funny one.

I knew we had an abnormally warm November here, I lived it, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up when I saw these Yahoo!/Weather Channel temperature charts!

If these numbers are accurate, and I'm assuming they are, we've just had one extremely freakish November.

In Big Bear City we surpassed our previous record high November temperature by 15° F.

FIFTEEN DEGREES!!!

And, not only that! We surpassed the previous November record of 74° on 22 of those 30 days, with seven days of 80°+ temps. And not one day of the month did we dip down to even the average low temp of 25°.

It was 89° on November 7th (88° on the 8th), fifty-five degrees above average, and just 5° shy of our all-time summer high of 94°.

All over town I hear people cheerfully saying, "Isn't this weather wonderful?", as they go to and from their X-Mas shopping destinations in their SUVs.
Yes folks, it's just lovely, and pretty soon you may not even have to battle the traffic that comes with living in a ski resort either.

Of course you won't have anywhere to work because Big Bear's economy is dependent upon the ski industry. So you'll have to sell your house and move someplace where there is work, but then your house won't sell because there'll be a glut of sellers and no buyers.

And, we may not need to worry about forest fires much longer either, because, with temps like these, the bark-beetles can just chew their way through the forest all year long. Who needs a forest anyway? Then we can just haul all that dead wood home to burn in the fireplace instead of letting the wildfires have it. But we may not need fireplaces to keep warm, we may need air-conditioning instead.

Ahhhhh.... Endless Summer!

So hop in those Escalades, Excursions, Navigators and Hummers folks! You know, the ones with the Jesus fish, the American flags, and the 'family values' oriented bumper stickers plastered all over ém.

Make all the trips you want to McDonalds, Starbucks, Carl's Jr., Taco Bell and Burger King . They all have drive-throughs and you don't even have to climb down out of the car to notice the weather.

Just sit there in your air-conditioning listening to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh or NASCAR results while you wolf down those mega-calories.

Even the Pharmacy has a drive through so you can refill your Prozac, Valium and Viagra prescriptions right from the driver's seat. And if you forget to have your hair cut, or your nails done, you can always make another trip. No worries! Because, thanks to oil subsidies, corporate welfare, and very creative economic policies, gasoline is back below $3 a gallon.

But the hidden costs are becoming more obvious aren't they?

Global Warming may be the most insidious, but what about that $350 billion of our hard earned money spent on the War in Iraq? Or the tens of thousands of human lives sacrificed, just so we can continue driving behemoth gas hogs around in circles all day.

Ooops! Sorry!
Do I sound a bit testy?

Perhaps I'm sick of hearing people say Global Warming is no big deal?
Or maybe I'm a little under the weather from breathing all those exhaust fumes on my walk to the grocery store yesterday morning, especially the diesel fumes?

Oh Look! I just noticed the first syllable of diesel is 'die', as in Die-Off!

I wonder what it feels like to be broiled?
Or what it's like to watch your children or grandchildren being cooked in a solar oven.

Stick around, the fun's just beginning...
...but the party's coming to an end.
Whether we believe it or not.

Pissed-Off?
Me?

Hey, it's my blog, and I can vent today if I want to!

Because our collective ignorance is infuriatingly pathetic and Peak Oil can't come soon enough for me...

...so you can consider this my exhaust, I certainly have to breathe enough of everyone else's!

Love, Peace, & Mercy Earthlings...

It’s looking to me like we're gonna need plenty of each!

The chart below shows the daily high and low temperatures for Big Bear this past November.

Enlarge it and compare them to the record highs, lows, and average from the chart above.

Click on chart to enlarge - courtesy of Yahoo!/The Weather Channel

Most of the folks who visit this blog are well-informed about Global Warming and are making big personal changes toward sustainable living. This post isn't meant for you.

It's for the masses who are either ill-informed or just don't seem to give a damn!

The people who say, "Isn't this weather wonderful?, Have a nice day, and a Merry Christmas"

They sound to me like Stepford Children.

All programmed to speak polite, meaningless, rose-colored gibberish.

Maybe I should apologize for another of my impassioned outbursts, but I'm not going to.

This is a real world we're living in, and I have a full spectrum of feelings about it, so there's little relevence in my simply posting pretty pictures every day.

Now I'd like to refer you back to some charts I posted last January which show the correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature. Click here to review the charts, especially the fourth one down which uses data from the past 160,000 years. Compare where the CO2 levels are right now with the historically corresponding temperature line.

Then you tell me. How hot do you think it might get?

Does It Seem A Bit Warm?

Several people at the blogs we are linked to have commented on the unusually warm winter they are experiencing in their parts of the world, and there's been some discussion on whether or not the steeper slope of global warming is now upon us.

For about 15 years I've been saving articles and charts related to global warming and climate change so I thought I'd share some of these with you, so you can digest the information and arrive at your own conclusions, or speculations.

The graph below is from a newspaper article this past December and shows annual average temperatures since 1880.

Temperatures started their steepest climb in 1975, but if you study the graph you'll see they started gradually climbing back around 1910, just about the time the automobile was becoming popular and everyone was getting their own personal infernal combustion engine.

It's interesting that the heading reads "Slowly warming", because when I look at the rest of the charts, it appears to me that, historically speaking, this is actually a quite rapid and alarming change.

















Click on graph to enlarge

The following graph shows the correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature change over the past 2,000 years. I think this graph includes data through 2003.














Click on graph to enlarge

The next graph very clearly shows the relationship between CO2 and temperature during the past 20,000 year period. As you can see, the longer the timeline for the CO2/Temperature comparison, the more extreme the recent increases seem to be.












Click on graph to enlarge

Below, another CO2/Temperature correlation spread out over 160,000 years, really looks scary to me. It includes the projected increase in the very near future to over 600 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. The is an X on the upward line marking 380 ppm which is the current level of of CO2. If you notice how closely the temperature aligns itself with CO2 levels it looks to me like we're in for some really big changes very, very soon.

To the left a graph shows the increase in our human population since about 950 A.D. and not surprisingly the steepest increase starts at just about the same time as that CO2 begins its climb.

And last, but not least, the chart below shows the radical increase in species extinctions since about 1910.

I'm no scientist but good old-fashioned common sense tells me there's something very disturbing in this information. I don't think it takes a genius to conclude that what is happening is the result of human activity, and that we are in real deep trouble if we don't change our ways soon.

Click on graph to enlarge

I've posted this incomplete as I'll be adding some links to it if any of you would like do some more research.

Where's Winter?

Click on photo to enlarge

The second storm of the winter hit yesterday with forcasts of heavy snowfall, but only resulted in this dusting, bringing our total snow for the season to about 2 1/2 inches!

Last winter by this time we already had about 8 feet. We could sure use a real storm here sometime soon!

But the forecast did get us busy splitting some more of the pine logs piling up around here anyway (see post below).

There is so much tree cutting going on in the Big Bear area because of the bark-beetle infestation that local pine firewood is very cheap, or even free much of the time, if you're willing to do the hauling and splitting. We've accumulated (and are still collecting) several cords just from our own neighborhood, which we haul home in wheelbarrows.

Last year's heavy winter and wet summer were a welcome relief from the 7 year drought that triggered the bark-beetle infestation.

Global warming contributes too, and the poor forestry practiced during the past century, where we haven't allowed fire to naturally thin our forests, or eliminate underbrush & overpopulations of insects, while adding nutrients to the soil.

Instead we subsidize the building of logging roads and the clear-cutting of older large trees, which puts whole ecosytems out of balance, ruins watersheds, causing landslides & flooding, results in dense forests of smaller similar aged trees, increasing the fire danger, while creating unhealthy forests of reduced diversity.

Above you'll see part of my contribution to logging & deforestation, in our deck and picnic table.

But, in my defense, if all the trees I've planted in my lifetime were to reach maturity, I will have been responsible for the growth of far more wood than I'll ever consume.

I've planted hundreds of trees between here and the Santa Monica mountains in the past 40 years, many of which are still growing, and producing oxygen and wood, at this very moment.

Trees---so beautiful and beneficial, their wood so useful to us in countless ways---are a very renewable resource if we would only harvest them sustainably, and then limit our numbers so we don't keep over-running the planet like so many bark-beetles.