Special Notes

 




The Hagood Mill, Pickens, South Carolina



One special note I would like to point out about Problems, Predicaments, and Technology is that I do not update my articles off-site, so articles contained on Medium.com [https://medium.com/@emichaels01] and Substack [https://erikmichaels.substack.com/] are not updated or corrected if scientific evidence changes. I do try to keep my articles here updated when I find new evidence or scientific changes, but this is limited to my memory of what I have written. The best way to keep updated on scientific knowledge is to research databases for specifics. Even the best scientists can only keep up with a limited amount of knowledge and information. Most scientific fields nowadays are more specialized than general fields, and these fields don't always communicate well with one another. Just like glitches in computers and their networks, the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing, so to speak. 

My Table of Contents page may not contain every article I have written, as some of the latest articles may not be included on it. 

I continue adding resource links to the Resource Links page regularly, especially since I have discontinued updating the Files section of my blog. 

If you think I should add something here, please comment here and let me know.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why The "War" on Climate Change is Bipolar

Image
  One thing which has become more and more clear as time has moved forward is that the messaging on climate change is bipolar (contradictory; incongruent; hypocritical) in its assessment. More and more articles talk about how we need this and how we need that in order to "fight" climate change DESPITE the facts that climate change is caused by ecological overshoot and building more products (especially building materials) only increases ecological overshoot. Some articles discuss ideas which have already been proven by science to be impossible . Of course, people who deny reality will utilize optimism bias to attempt said impossible anyway. I could continue posting link after link to article after article regarding this same scenario, as there are hundreds of articles which contradict each other in what we need or what we must do or how much it will cost and on and on ad nauseum. So, why is it that there remains this huge disconnect with society? Much of it has to do
Read more

Welcome to Problems, Predicaments, and Technology

Image
Welcome to my new blog - titled Problems, Predicaments, and Technology -  because that is the title to a short article I wrote over a year ago to point out the difference between problems and predicaments (often called dilemmas ) and explain the role technology use (and the culture surrounding it) has had in creating most of the predicaments we face today. While this blog is mainly focused on Ecological Overshoot, Abrupt Climate Disruption ( ACD ) and Energy and Resource Decline (generally associated with peak oil and collapse), there are a myriad of other predicaments closely associated with these three that will also be covered. Many scientists focus a large amount of their lives trying to figure out how to solve these predicaments as if they are problems in the hopes of coming up with a way to at least mitigate some of the harm society is doing to life on this planet. My efforts here are to point out that in a very real sense, this has been rooted in denial of reality  and opti
Read more

What Would it Take for Humanity to Experience Radical Transformation?

Image
Today we shall investigate this question: What would it take for humanity to experience radical transformation of individual and collective consciousness within the next decade? This picture looks inviting, doesn't it? But does it realistically represent the world we collectively live in today? In one word, NO. One look at the news stories of today can easily show how individuals, groups, corporations, and nations of all stripes are arguing and fighting for attention, for purposes, and for goals and strategies. Look at social media and it is ripe with every flavor of disagreement known to society. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that there are few things everyone can agree on, and even when one IS found, nobody can agree on the ways to solve what everyone agreed the problems are. Now, throw in a PREDICAMENT instead of a problem and guess what happens? From my experience, when a predicament is put into the mix, most people still look at it from the same standpoint the
Read more

Denial of Reality

Image
  In my last written post (to clarify the difference between the files, which contain only links to outside material), I mentioned denial of reality. You might wonder what this has to do with climate change and extinction. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most powerful mental issues that affects humans. Rob Mielcarski explains the evolution of how this came to be, quote: " The singular emergence of human intelligence, and its ability to write and read this paragraph, evolved in a gene controlled machine with an unusually powerful computer, that was created by an improbable simultaneous adaptation for an extended theory of mind with denial of reality, and whose complexity was enabled by the increased energy per gene provided by mitochondria, that resulted from an accidental endosymbiosis of two prokaryotes, powered by an unintuitive chemiosmotic proton pump, that originated in an alkaline hydrothermal vent, on 1 of 40 billion planets, in 1 of 100 billion galaxies, and that plane
Read more

Fantasies, Myths, and Fairy Tales

Image
  Advertisement from the mid-20th century I have often used this expression (the title) to describe many things people tend to think of as solutions for one thing or another that either are not solutions or are unrealistic at best in terms of actually solving something. For anyone just joining these articles, this post  will help get you started so as to be able to comprehend what this article is about.  As I have expressed before, my deep passion is to help explain where we are (as a species), how we got here, why we are in this mess, and what can and/or cannot be done to "solve" these predicaments. My very first post explained the difference between problems with answers or solutions and predicaments (or dilemmas) with outcomes. In it, we discovered that predicaments don't have solutions, and that every solution proffered for a predicament winds up causing new problems and/or predicaments or comes with unacceptable costs or just simply doesn't solve anything. The re
Read more

More Cognitive Dissonance

Image
  In my last post , I expressed my concerns regarding methane emissions along with the growing speed which our collective predicaments appear to be gaining. Then I explained precisely why we have thus far not made any real progress on these predicaments based upon our collective denial , which has a considerable amount to do with our basic human psychology. In conclusion, the reality is that very few people are actually paying an ounce of real attention. What they are paying attention to are all the distractions - the hype, advertising, marketing, and propaganda. Today I bring more evidence of the increasing speed of these predicaments as I recall some of my articles which I had privately hoped might be a long way off into the future. I'm not one to try to evade uncomforting news. If I was, I most certainly wouldn't be reading and watching these articles, reports, studies, videos, and other media to try to understand and comprehend fully where we are and where we're heade
Read more

What is NTHE and How "near" is Near Term?

Image
I distinctly remember my first introduction to the initialism (or abbreviation or acronym) "NTHE" which ushered me into a whole new set of exploration. I was a member of a climate change group on Facebook at the time (which I had been a member of for quite some time) and I saw a post which was discussing it. I hadn't seen this abbreviation before and wondered what it meant, so I did a search and a whole list of links was presented (as usual) along with the spelled out version, Near Term Human Extinction. I clicked on one which took me to a website blog by Dave Pollard . I started reading and was introduced to another person, Carolyn Baker, with whom Dave had a video interview with. Through this video, I was introduced to another person, a professor by the name of Guy McPherson. A video of him presenting information at an Indiana university, DePauw, where my grandmother attended, was available; so I watched it. The information was stark and I noticed the looks on the ki
Read more