Problems, Predicaments, and Technology

Relaxing at Sopris Park in Carbondale, Colorado One of the most frequent questions I see regularly in climate change groups from people goes something like this, "Who is so-and-so and why should we trust this person?" This question is usually posed when I post an article, study, or video from a particular scientist or professor. So, I figure that I should answer this question about myself so as to inspire confidence that I am not just some hack writing up blog posts simply for the fun of it. First of all, I am not a PhD science expert, but I spend a large portion of my spare time studying science and researching the nuts and bolts of why things are the way they are. I have a great curiosity as to why today's problems seem to have become a way of life. This is what led me to write the first entry in this blog -  Problems, Predicaments, and Technology . The article was actually a simplified adaptation to a much larger article regarding non-renewable "renewable" en

 This facade of the main street in Thurmond, West Virginia, looks impressive but hides the fact that this is a ghost town. No businesses actually exist in these buildings today and the entire town only has 4 or 5 residents today. More info can be obtained here  and here . One of the pernicious effects of the mainstream media regarding climate change and indeed, all the other predicaments under the banner of ecological overshoot, is the sheer level of denial presented. This can easily be detected in many articles about different predicaments such as climate change and I found one in particular  (out of thousands; this is just one of the most recent ones) that brings this phenomenon into focus, quote: " Climate experts warn that, without urgent action, climate change will continue to cause an increase in the intensity of extreme rainfall that can lead to severe flooding. An international research team have concluded that increases in  extreme rainfall  and associated flooding are pr

  "If yo u’re in your last 10 percent of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of you r mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: Precious." ~ Tim Urban I am about to post the 1000th "Live Now" post in the Prepping for NTHE Group today. It is special for many reasons. Most importantly is how precious the time we all have left is. Another journey awaits me soon and I am poignantly aware of how important this time spent out in nature is, and I eagerly look forward to getting away from the city for awhile. My outlook is tempered by the fact that one never knows when the last trip will be, so it is imperative to treasure and cherish these days of leisure. I have been feverishly adding new scientific peer-reviewed literature to these pages this week, with almost 300 new articles added. 55 articles were added to the Climate Change and Collapse file alone! My efforts to get the message out to Live Now [ <<<link to

  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

  The New River Gorge at Grandview, West Virginia Today, I have a new movie titled  Down To Earth   to discuss. One of my primary goals with forming this blog has to do with educating people not just about the predicaments we face as a species, but also how to reduce the collective harm these predicaments are causing and the grief which often comes with the knowledge of these predicaments.   This film is about a family who decides to go on a journey to discover a new perspective on life not based upon many of today's cultural values surrounding consumption, jobs, and economics but more on nature, spirituality, and the true meaning of life. During this five-year journey, they meet many different indigenous tribes who they call "Earth Keepers" across six continents. One of the many bits of wisdom comes with a quote from the father/husband, while they are exploring the rainforest: "The kids love the rainforest. Today they caught me off guard, asking about its destructio

Happy Earth Day!! The above picture looking into Glacier National Park was taken last year and is among some of my favorite pictures of the trip.  I've mentioned the book Bright Green Lies several times and now that the movie documentary is out (today!), here is a discussion from filmmaker Julia Barnes on her new documentary. I really like how she points out the obvious hypocrisies within the environmental movement here, quote:  "If people are genuinely interested in protecting the natural world in the environmental movement, a film that points out the harmful industries of things like 'renewables' shouldn't be considered divisive. It should just be something that is information that they're going to take in and that's going to affect the way that they look at these issues, and if someone, if their allegiance is to these technologies above life on the planet, then they were never really an environmentalist to begin with and their allegiance is NOT with t

A new book is now available from Springer by author Alice Friedemann titled Life After Fossil Fuels - A Reality Check on Alternative Energy. The really great thing about this book is the fact that it explains so much about not only how society is powered today, what products are made from this energy, and what the future will look like, but also precisely WHY alternative energy from technological devices will fall way short of the mark with regard to powering society once fossil fuels become impossible to extract because the net energy they provide is equal to the amount of energy required to extract them (making them an energy sink rather than an energy source). Alice J. Friedemann is the creator of energyskeptic.com . Ms. Friedemann is perhaps best known for her book When Trucks Stop Running – Energy and the Future of Transportation published by Springer, and Peak Soil , which was edited by David Pimentel at Cornell, Tad Patzek at U.C. Berkeley, and Walter Youngquist (author of G

With as much focus on extinction now that most of society realizes that this is AT LEAST a possibility, many people have come up with the idea of moving different species around the planet in order to insure that they will survive into the future. Some species have been brought to zoos or other places to help them reproduce and raise offspring to add to the number of those species living today. There are a number of seed banks  designed exclusively with saving specific genetics, breeds, and types of plants from being lost to extinction. But is it a good idea for us to interfere with nature, with wild animals who can become habituated to humans, and can we actually "save" other species from extinction or some other awful destiny, the overall reason we are constantly interfering with nature in the first place in this matter? I hate to say it, as this is a repeating theme on my blog, but do we really have agency?  Of course, this is too easy of an answer, and one that leaves out