Pessimism / fall-back position?

[Meeker Morgan]

Looking at the way things are going there is a very real possibility that nothing of substance will be done about climate change.

What about contingency plans for minimizing the damage?

[NickB79]

1. An assault rifle, a pallet of ammo, and a remote cabin in the woods

Not that I've ever considered such a thing.....

[XemaSab]

2. That's my contingency plan in a nutshell

:P

[malakai2]

3. If you haven't read it, read The Road

I had some ideas after reading that one. Not all of them apply to a hot world as opposed to one locked in nuclear winter, but most of them would apply to a situation where the social safety net breaks down.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. also "The Death of Grass"

I think it's "No Blade of Grass" in the US: ISBN 0140013008
A "fuck, no food" book with the ensuing mayhem. Might give a few things to think about (like, would you slaughter a family for a loaf of bread?)

[Javaman]

13. The Road was good but certainly not a "manual" for survival

that was a manual for the death of a civilization. Try "Lucifer's Hammer". Good scifi written in the 70's by Niven. It's about how people survive after a comet hits the earth.

[malakai2]

31. Oh, no

I didn't read it as a manual. It just gave me some ideas to compliment other ideas.

Jesus, reading that as a manual would have people capturing each other as sex slaves or meals. Perhaps both.

[pscot]

18. Most of us wouldn't know how to cook a moose

if we accidentaly shot one. But help is at hand. I'm sure the stuffed racoon is delicious, and rabbit recipes seem to work with muskrats too. I have my doubts about the skunk sandwich spread.

http://www.coon-n-crockett.org/cookbook.htm

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Move to a small country in the South Pacific....

...with plenty of food production, a fairly intact ecosystem, away from the worst of the temperature changes, and a population of DIY-ers.

Of course, I'd only do that if I thought we were really fucked.

[Nihil]

11. Ha-bloody-ha!

I almost wish that there was something in the HAB hypothesis as that
might roll you buggers back up into a less than friendly climate zone
(quite apart from the mega-tsunamis and other such crap to give you
plenty of opportunity to practice your DIY skills).

:P

(You know I'm kidding really - just jealous! :hi: )

[Dead_Parrot]

20. Oh, I'm pretty sure everything will catch up with us eventually

It's just a straw to clutch at. Anyway, HAB has nothing on NZ geology...

[Javaman]

17. South Pacific? sorry but the majority of those area's have a very low sea level.

You will be underwater before you get your first house built. And don't even talk about the temp rise or the very real probability of drought.

And by the way both Australia and New Zealand have very strict immigration policies. I know, I looked into it.

North, is your best hope.

[Meeker Morgan]

6. I don't see why society would necessarily break down

There could be a situation of no global agreement, but a progressive government ion the USA.

When I said contingency plans I didn't mean individual but societal.

Organized relocating people as necessary, developing new farmland, that sort of thing.

The bad effect don't happen instantaneously, right?

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Depends on your timescale.

The fall of the Roman Empire took a couple of centuries. The fall of the British empire took a couple of decades. With the internet, the fall of the US might take a couple of days, maybe weeks.

That's not a lot of time for re-organising people on a local level: when the shops shut down, most people will be a grocery run away from mayhem.

I'd suggest you look at the Transition Towns concept as a starting place to see how to be prepared: 'Cause if it turns to shit, it will do so very quickly.

[Javaman]

15. 3 days to a week.

that's what some models predict.

Most people in the US don't have enough food on hand to feed themselves for longer than 3 days.

This, of course, is dependant upon the concept that all services suddenly stop. However, more than likely, it will be a massive run up in oil prices.

Personally, I'm predicting $100 oil by the end of the year and $150-175 by the end of next year.

It will be a slow (and sometimes fast) decline of services and support industries.

Like everything we do in this nation, since we never ever seem to plan for the long term, there will be panic. With panic comes violence. That is until people calm down or die.

If there is going to be a revolution in the US, it will be because of lack of gasoline for vehicles rather than the taking away of our rights. The patriot act already proved that.

The upshot of higher gas prices will be a "re-localization" of businesses. But that will take a while. In the mean time, the world will see yet another depression.

When the US fails, the world will collapse. That's why other nations are trying to replace the US dollar with something else.

But trying to come up with a new elephant when all you have is ants, is going to be a challenge to say the least.

[Dead_Parrot]

21. The problem is the level of interdependancy

If a want, say, a tin of beans, I go to the shop. I rely on the shopkeeper opening up, who relies on the delivery man turning up, who relies on the warehouse guy turning up, who relies on a bus driver turning up, who relies on a schoolteacher turning up, who relies on a gas station attendant turning up etc etc.

There's some resilience at every point of course, otherwise the whole system would collapse as soon at the teacher caught a cold but if 5%¹ of the working population said "This is all turning to custard: stuff the job, let's grab the shotgun, jump in the car and head to Oregon" the other 95% would follow pretty quickly when the beans run out.

These days, the number of self-sufficient yeoman farmers (who might bring some semblance of stability) is as close to zero as makes no odds. And while localisation offsets things a bit, getting a community totally self-sufficient for things like power, water and transport is going to be nigh-on impossible unless everyone is prepared to go back to the 19th century.

I have seen the future, and it is Amish.

You're probably right about a gas shortage being the only thing that would bring the US to a revolution, but I suspect by that point they'll be too busy being hungry to do much about it. Besides, it's a long walk to DC.
______
¹ A figure I just pulled out of my arse. Wash your hands if you use it.

[Javaman]

23. You bring up some very good points.

basically, our system is only as good as the people willing to maintain it.

Take your path of consumer, grocery, delivery and gas attendant. Remove anyone one, with the exception of the consumer and the path stops.

When the price of gas shot up in the summer of '08, people were beginning to cut back or do without. I wrote back then a small essay titled, "the depression is but one dollar away" meaning, if the price of gas hit 5 bucks a gallon, we as a nation would be in for it, big time. Luckily or temporarily, the price slide back. We got to the brink and didn't like what we saw, but honestly, nothing has been done since that time to offset the effects on the population of yet another run up.

I like to call it testing the water. Putting a toe in won't harm you. You may lose the toe, but you have 9 others. Next time it happens, people will adjust differently. They will have had the experience once before and know what can be cut back right off the bat, but no one knows what lays behind 5+ dollars a gallon. That's uncharted territory.

And I completely agree, our future is Amish.

The price of anything oil based will sky rocket. Plastic bottles will be sold as a premium to be used for various things.

What I fear the most is: when oil goes up and the price of plastic sky rockets, anything made of wood or metal will become very valuable. Not a problem on the face of it, but think of the long term implications on forests and metals.

Whole sale clearing of forests to for materials to make things originally made from wood then replaced with plastic. The same goes with metal. Rampant use of eminent domain to get to mineral rights.

With population being what it is, it will be short order before all the trees are gone.

too hungry for a revolution? LOL Maybe, but if people can't get from point A to point B to get whatever, I think there will be lots of anger. in the last run up, there were various stories of people getting angry at the pumps and that was only at 4 bucks a gallon. I really honestly don't want to know what is going to happen when it hits 5 bucks.

I don't own a weapon, but I'm seriously thinking of getting one.

[amandabeech]

24. When the British Empire desolved,

the U.K. continued on. There was food on the shelves and there were goods in the stores. The U.K. government at home continued. There was less wealth, but no starvation that I can remember.

Depending on how quickly things change, I would expect that food will become more expensive. Farmers will have to change crops, and more people will probably have a garden.

Alaska might end up with more people due to a longer growing season. Cooler, wetter areas of the country will see more agriculture. That means New England, Upstate New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the northern Midwest and perhaps the wetter areas in the Pacific Northwest. There are abandoned farms in many of these places which will probably go back into production. A lot of the forests in these places are second growth: the area was almost all deforested by 1900. I would expect a certain degree of deforestation again.

My worry is that we have far too many people than we can feed if the plains cannot produce crops due to too little moisture for hotter conditions, the south's production goes down for the same reasons, and the California central valley cannot be irrigated because the snow pack runoff from the Sierras is much less and is needed by the huge population in the cities.

A good place to be would be a small town in one of the currently cold and wet locations. Have a weekend house there now to establish your presence. I grew up in one of these towns, and it takes 10 years for the locals to accept you, unless you are a new doctor, teacher or pastor.

On edit: a serious shortage of gasoline/petrol and diesel wouldl be a much worse problem here in the U.S. However, if there is a serious shortage of petroleum products for transportation, there will be much less carbon spewed into the air. That would be a good thing if we didn't then bring back steam powered transport powered by coal, wood and peat that are even dirtier than the petroleum products that they might replace.

[Dead_Parrot]

29. But the empire was mainly a political construct

The member states were pretty self-sufficient in terms of agriculture, industry and energy. There were some losses - India had to quickly figure out some engineering, the UK found some exotic foodstuffs missing and so on - but none of the basic necessities vanished.

These days we're a lot more globalised. You're right about the food costs going up, farmers having to switch grops and the resurgence of gardens: We're at that point now, I think. It's what happens next that'll be interesting to watch, but it sounds like you have a good idea of the best places to watch from. :)

[amandabeech]

30. The U.S. potentially is a political construct.

The north and the south really don't get perfectly, still.

The mountain ranges also separate major population centers. If transportation becomes expensive and it will eventually, each region might go its own way essentially. Before the interstate highway system, many more manufacturing companies had regional production centers because shipping across the mountain ranges was expensive and slow. So who knows what will happen 40 years from now.

I'm not seeing a huge increase in gardening. The gardening will come first because fresh vegetables are often expensive in our stores. No one around here (DC metro) is talking about planting fruit trees or berry bushes yet.

There are varieties of grain crops adopted to different weather conditions. The first thing that would happen here would be for farmers to switch to varieties that do better in hotter and drier climates. One substitution that might happen would be replacing grain sorghum for corn/maize and the substitution of wheat for corn in some areas of the plains where irrigation water becomes scarce or expensive. You might also see the disappearance of canola/rapeseed and hard red durham what from the U.S. these crops generally don't like really hot weather.

[hatrack]

12. One word - Katrina

nt

[Javaman]

14. It will be a long emergency. when oil production can no longer meet demand...

then things will get very interesting. Population will continue to grow until, the supporting mechanisms are unable to maintain that level of growth.

Everything we do, depends on oil. Eat, breath, drink and live.

If we are forced to cut back on 1/4 of the oil we use, massive problems occur. Heck, if we cut back an 1/8, problems occur.

10 years from now, the World, the US will be very different places. In some area's unrecognizable.

[pscot]

19. I think a model for the not-too-distant future

is probably the USSR of the '70's. Gorky Park offers a vision of that particular hell.

[GliderGuider]

8. Contingency plans? Minimizing the damage? I don't understand your words.

There will be no contingency plans to minimize the damage on a global scale. There cannot be - we are over the edge. We are now in the realm of adaptation, not mitigation.

I am taking a very different path than the "drums of flour, drums of ammo" crowd. Mine is centered around helping people awaken, recognize and accept the state of the world they are living in, engage with their communities and build strong cooperative networks based around exchanges of knowledge, labour and food. Along the way I'm encouraging everyone I can to start seeing and revering the deep interconnections of life and the systems on which we depend.

No guns for me. Death may be inevitable, but I will have no part in causing it.

[Meeker Morgan]

9. This is what I mean by minimizing the damage

... engage with their communities and build strong cooperative networks based around exchanges of knowledge, labour and food ...

What you said is a good example of minimizing the damage, that is to say damage to people.

But I still think something can be done on a national level.

BTW, breaking news. Looks like the Copenhagen Treaty isn't going to make it.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6917564.ece

[GliderGuider]

10. Yes, there are lots of ways of minimizing the knock-on damage to people.

They tend to be local actions that address local needs with local resources. Getting individuals to recognize and feel that they are a part of a community is the first step. No action on that level is ever wasted.

[Javaman]

16. Exactly. One of the first feelings people experience during an emergency

is the feeling of being all alone. That leads to fear, that leads to lines being drawn.

If we all reach out to our neighbors to maintain communication, food sharing and cooperation, it will go a long way to off set what I stated above.

Granted, there will still be problems, but hopefully, the worst of them will be dampened.

[Fumesucker]

22. Cassandra didn't get treated very well..

"Being right too soon is socially unacceptable" -Heinlein

Trying to warn people of disaster on the way is not only a thankless chore, it's downright hazardous to your well being.

I know I would have been personally better off if I had just ignored everything that's happened since 1999 and been a happy idiot, to use a phrase coined by Jackson Browne.

[Nederland]

25. This thread is full of crazy talk

Cataclysmic collapse, from climate change? Really? The slow creeping up of temperatures by 6 degrees over a period of 40-90 years is going to cause that how exactly? No doubt the impact of climate change on the world is going to be huge, especially for the poor. However, I don't see how it is going to be any more severe than the changes we saw in the 20th century, and we got through that pretty well.

[GliderGuider]

26. The unspoken subtext of this thread

is that it's not just warming that's the issue. When you consider the interactions of all the converging crises we face today, the picture looks a lot worse. That's what turns it from a problem (soluble) to a predicament (adaptation and partial mitigation only).

The interacting crises are in the broad domains of the "Three E's": ecology, energy and economics. The main components of "ecology" are global warming, biodiversity loss, the depletion of ocean fish stocks, the depletion of fresh water, reductions in soil fertility, and various types of pollution. Energy problems include oil depletion, the attendant problems of energy/infrastructure replacement, and reconfiguring our social systems for lower energy use. Economic problems revolve around the current economic crisis that is affecting credit, debt and capital pools around the world, as well as the potential for a long-term slowdown if energy supply or EROI starts to slip. I’d add social issues to that mix as well, with wealth and resource inequities, social complexity problems (a la Tainter) and the inertia of human herding behaviour playing large roles.

The boundaries of the problem domain are much larger than just global warming, and although that idea hasn’t been stated explicitly in this thread, it forms the backdrop for most of the thought processes that end with a resounding crash.

[NickB79]

27. Nicely put.

It's easy to juggle one ball at a time, now see how long you can juggle a dozen.

[Nederland]

28. Pessimists are usually wrong

You have a long list of problems that humanity faces. I don't deny that most of them are real (I would argue with you on a few of them, but those are old arguments between us :)) What I don't understand is why you think human innovation isn't up to the task of solving them. The list of problems that humanity has overcome is far longer than the list of problems we currently face. Humanity is on the cusp of a technological revolution that will dwarf anything we have ever seen. You can prepare for calamity if you'd like, but my money is on the Singularity. It's coming.

[malakai2]

Optimists aren't batting 1.000 either

I'd go so far as to say they are usually wrong. Unless you redefine success...what if the coming technological revolution is Soylent Green? Problem solved?

[DU GrovelBot]

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