(no subject)

[farla]

So hello. It appears I exist again.

I'm violently apathetic, so I'm not really going to make much of an entry.

Basically, we're all screwed, but at least when everything goes to hell, a lot of people are going to deserve it.

Comments

Just one question

[(Anonymous)]

Just one Question.
What makes you different from all the other doom sayers that have come before you over the centuries?

Re: Just one question

[farla.livejournal.com]

Why should I need to be? Some people who say the end is near are wrong, but plenty of others are right. History is filled with collapsed civilizations. _Magical_ doomsayers may have a pretty crappy track record, but I've always attributed that to the fact they're all morons. There's a big difference between 'The world is going to end because this ancient text says so' and saying something is going wrong in the real world that's going to have repercussions.

Honestly. You think things are going well right now? You don't see anything at all that makes you pause and wonder, think that maybe it doesn't seem okay?

Re: Just one question

[(Anonymous)]

Yea, but only for three more years, then Bush is out of office, the bashing on innocent republicans will cease, we become an isolationist nation again, voices against the evils of walk in abortions will be silenced, and I can stop being banned from liberial message boards and I can actually have a friendly discussion with my pals at work.

Re: Just one question

[farla.livejournal.com]

Who the fuck cares about politics? Bashing republicans isn't why the water is filled with toxins.

Re: Just one question

[(Anonymous)]

At least it'll all freeze and purify when the next ice age hits us in the next couple of decades. :-)

Re: Just one question

[farla.livejournal.com]

::twitch:: Ice. Doesn't. Purify. Anything.

GAH!

Re: Just one question

[(Anonymous)]

You should have paid more attention in science class.

Re: Just one question

[farla.livejournal.com]

If your science class taught you that freezing mercury turned it into happy pure drinking water, you probably should have paid a bit less attention.

Re: Just one question

[(Anonymous)]

Naw, but freezing naturally removes all impurities from water.

Re: Just one question

[farla.livejournal.com]

No, it doesn't.

If you freeze part of body of water with toxins in it, most of the toxins will not freeze into the ice, and so this water, when melted again, will contain fewer toxins. All this is totally unimportant on a global scale, since life on earth can only use water in liquid form. Freezing half the ocean would just increase the concentration of toxins in the liquid portion, except for those few that were locked up in the ice, ready to be released the moment it melted. Throughout all of this, the same toxins remain present. If you made your statement from a human-centric viewpoint, as we are the only ones who could easily go through freeze-melt steps for our drinking water, it is still unimportant, because we are perfectly capable of manually freezing our water and do not need an ice age to do it for us.

Re: Just one question

[dragoncrescent.livejournal.com]

Meh. Self-preservation is the root of all humanity's actions, etc. Of course, we can protect ourselves through ignorance, which is why everything seems ok to the weak people. So yeah, we're doomed. We doomed ourselves with selfishness. It's not like it's a bad thing, the planet will be able to heal itself once we're gone.

PS: There is no such thing as an innocent republican. :P

[wintersheir]

Yay! I was actually contemplating harrassing you via e-mail to make sure you weren't dead.

So, which way do you want to go--freezing in the dark because we hit the wall for oil production and viable hydrogen cells are still ten years in the future due to suppression by the big companies, or through infection by some long-dormant strain of bacteria unleashed when the ice caps melt? ^_^

[farla.livejournal.com]

Feh. It's not going to be that neat. We're looking at a combination of factors hitting simultaneously. The weather is going to get more unstable - hurricane strength is actually a minor bit of this. The smaller the ice caps get, the greater the fluctuations in temperature get - and while some plants and animals can handle the environment getting warmer, almost nothing can handle greater heat and cold at the same time. This will fuck up food production. Next, on the topic of food, we're running out of both topsoil and water in the major farming areas of America. I don't know how water's doing in other countries, but I know their soil quality is pretty much crap as well. So we're going to have steadily diminishing crop production, and possibly a crash. Animal crops are due for a crash as well - overuse of antibiotics has bred some nasty little diseases. Meanwhile, our gas dries up and we can't transport food from the remaining productive areas into the rest of the country and/or world. The oceans, which we're always looked at as a food source that we could fall back on - I don't even want to go into the number of simultaneous disasters happening there.

My money's on massive resource war, personally. It's already started, and it's just going to get worse.

[wintersheir]

Coolies. ^_^ Looks like I better start filling my basement with drums of water.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Personally, I'd advise massive food and seed stores, machine guns, cement walls topped with barbed wire and the full contents of a pharmacy. Then when America annexes you along with Mexico, we'll get all that stuff.

[wintersheir]

o.o Will they let us keep our toques and hockey?

[farla.livejournal.com]

No. Baseball is the One True Sport. Your infidel game shall fall before our might.

[wintersheir]

*falls to knees* NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOES

[niftysgirl.livejournal.com]

You seem... cheery, today. Or yesterday. Whatever.

If the world is going to end, can you predict the most likely way? My guess is that Bush is going to start a nuclear war and we'll all die of radiation poisening and then the world will be taken over by mutant animals... and then the world will blow up because the mutant animals can breath fire at each other and when they die they explode.

Simple, really. But honestly, what's your oppinion?

[farla.livejournal.com]

We're past the point where one person can really cause anything. We're running out of resources while our population is increasing and diseases are becoming more resistant to treatment as our climate worsens and toxic buildup continues.

We're going to kill each other for what's left until one catastrophe or another shuts that down. Then we're looking at massive, global extinction.

[niftysgirl.livejournal.com]

You'd be surprised what an idiot with nuclear weapons can do. -_-U Really. No... not with your view point on life. Can the world end AFTER I've sold my novel? Or should we just get it all over with and hire an assassin who'll wack Bush and start the nuclear war I'm waiting fore?

[farla.livejournal.com]

That depends. Is selling your novel a 'by twenty' thing, or a 'by fifty' thing? Let's just say, anything you're aiming to do, do it fast.

[niftysgirl.livejournal.com]

Done. It's a before I'm twenty thing, so I should have enough time to make a lot of money off it. Or have it fall flat, whatever.

[kddreams.livejournal.com]

Resource war? Yeah, that's what my Enviornmental text book says will happen. My book also says that a part of the reason why we might have one is due to Bush not agreeing to the Kyoto Protocal. In the end, it all comes down to people not being able to change their ways, because fossil fuels and all that have become a very big part of society.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Bah. Not to knock the Kyoto Protocol, but...it wasn't enough. It was like forming a bucket brigade to stop a forest fire. It wasn't nearly enough to actually solve the problem. Better than nothing, but not really enough to matter. (Once the temperature hits a certain critical limit, massive amounts of carbon are released by the oceans, which will cause a massive increase in temperature and make it functionally impossible to reverse global warming. Climate change will start feeding on itself, and it'll be over.)

That said - it's no excuse for what Bush did, which was basically form his own bucket brigade dedicated to throwing gas onto the flames and occasionally kicking the people throwing water.

[(Anonymous)]

I hope the seventh Harry Potter book comes out before we all die. XD

[farla.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. The fans simply must know if Harry and Draco's pure, noble, totally canon love will be realized.

And I simply must know what precise form the fallout and screeching will be.

Enjoy

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.iceagenow.com/

Re: Enjoy

[farla.livejournal.com]

It's so depressing to see a legitimate scientific theory slandered by deliberate deception and outright lying.

Re: Enjoy

[sanfret.livejournal.com]

LOL, thanks for the laugh. I have to thank the 'new monster' google. I haven't seen this kind of sheer lack of hope since the 'first' gulf war in the early 90s. There were plenty of folks that could do nothing more than fear the wrath of the great rose in the desert. The US isn't the player to solve anything in the desert, not that is can be solved by any person who was raised in the western region fo the world.

There are several cold wars in play already. The China/US resource war. The American intracultural war. The Global cultural war that again has flared up under the guise of a religous war on one front and sheer blindness on the other. The first real conflict that combines the major factions of the resource and cultural war.

There will be a dirty bomb going off soon enough. Hopfully not in my ecosystem. I am glad I moved to a nice upwind location far away from hurricanes and earthquakes. Now lava is another issue.

Re: Enjoy

[farla.livejournal.com]

Huh. Actually, one of the main reasons I think things are so bad is that the majority seems to disagree and think everything will work out. If enough people did think we were in trouble, something could be done.

Re: Enjoy

[(Anonymous)]

You must love talking about the end of the world.

Re: Enjoy

[farla.livejournal.com]

Ironically, my original post wasn't really about this. But I shovel information on the subject at anyone foolish enough to bring it up, just as I do on numerous other subjects that I have unpleasant information on. I like information, I like other people to have information, and I don't necessarily like you, so the information I give is not selected for your own peace of mind.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

Just think, though: when it's all over, whatever survives to evolve and gradually develop some form of sapience may turn out smarter and more benevolent than we could ever hope to be.

Yes, this is my form of optimism.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Perhaps.

But we've already used up about half the planet's lifespan. Also - well, did you ever read Ringworld? Without certain resources, civilizations can't rise. We've used up most of those resources. There are still ores and such left, but they require our current level of development to access. Any technological fall can be permanent because there aren't the resources needed to build up again - if you can't access metal and are stuck at the stone level of tools, you can't advance. If humans are wiped out and the next race has to start from scratch, they're going to be operating on a tight deadline while having far more disadvantages.

Plus, we wiped out most higher intelligence, as well as many social animals. There are smart animals left, but they're generally very short lived and generally not social. That's not a good recipe for civilization.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

...

Damnit. That's absolutely right.

Although I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last paragraph. Most of the animals I think of when I think about intelligence are pretty social. Certainly most of the more intelligent mammals are, though maybe not some of the birds... Or are you just going a ahead and counting species of animal that are currently threatened among those already killed off?

[farla.livejournal.com]

Eh, for a given value of social. A lot of animals are social in the interactive way, but they aren't able to work together. Squirrels, say. They don't get into a group and defend the birdfeeder from others, or work together to get the heaping pile of corn back to their nests. They instead fight over it. They're quite smart and obviously have pretty good communicative ability, but they're not cooperative.

For that matter, a sizable portion of cooperative animals were killed off because it's not a good strategy against humans. Ducks used to be highly social nesting animals. All modern ducks, however, are solitary nesters because group nesters were easier to kill - ducks would be extinct today if it wasn't for the few solitary nesters.

Groups that rely on each other, and that pass knowledge on, which is what made human society develop, are also groups human society excel at destroying. Those groups stop working if you regularly kill many of them because information is lost faster than it can be passed down.

A good sign this has already happened is that, now that there are protections for dolphins, they have started to display new behaviors which are being taught to their young. Either they never thought of this before in the millions of years they've existed, or we killed off all the parents before they could teach their young, and they're having to relearn everything.

It's possible some animals - say, raccoons - might, in absence of humans, develop more communal societies once our selective pressure against it has been removed, and go from there. But there's so much about our own evolution that looks like a fluke, that coupled with the lack of any similar species things do look a bit ominous.

The best bet, I think, would be if monkeys and such did survive, since we know they can produce a space-reaching intelligent species and that they did so last time during climate upheaval, which I figure we'll have in spades. If we're really lucky, rapid evolution might make get them to advanced tool users before our cities are completely gone, at which point they'll have some access to those metals. That might get them advanced enough that they'll be able to cope with the reduced resources they'll have without stagnating at a stone ax level.
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