Visit the ApocaDocs web site for a chance to laugh in the face of disaster - and maybe cause others to laugh as well.
From the site:
About the ApocaDocs Project
How this all started
Originally, this project was to be a web meta-fictional endeavor, jointly created by Jim and Michael. It was a sort of comedic Web novel about relationships, about academia, and about the collapse of civilization viewed through the lens of conflicting doctrines. It had a backstory (most clearly delineated in a faux news article); had a leitmotif of a misguided partner who, over time, would become a very interesting character; included a conflict of philosophical approach with competing apocalyptic institutes. The story even had a mysterious woman.
However, as we constructed the sites, doing background research on the topics, and began gathering the scenario news, we began actually eyeing the bare face of the likely apocalyptic horrors. We shifted to producing only postapocology.com, in order to shift the project, "mute the meta," simplify, and focus on the true, frightening realities facing humankind. We spent a year collecting information daily, thinking about what we were seeing.
Recently, we decided we needed to shift to a more personal, direct, yet participatory framework. So we launched apocadocs.com, which lets us jape, and joke, and quip, and snark -- and let others do the same.
We've got a lot of bits of humor thrown in -- as you'll see if you browse around. Don't miss the PANIQuiz collection in particular. And please help us build the funny, by adding your own quips to any scary item.
If you know of other sites doing what we're doing, pass them on to us, since we haven't found many that match. If you're freaked about what's going on, what you're reading, what you're seeing, then forward this site to others -- and let's see if we can get change a-coming, and have some fun along the way.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
You can't use half an ark: compromise on climate change is suicide.
More forboding insights from Gwynne Dyer (published April 8, 2009):
"We want to be in (the new UN climate pact), we want to be pragmatic, we want to look at the science," said Jonathan Pershing, the head of the U.S. delegation, during the talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Bonn last week. So how will the Obama administration reconcile political "pragmatism" with the scientific realities? "There is a small window where they overlap. We hope to find it," Pershing explained. But it doesn't really exist.
Signing the United States up to the new climate treaty that will replace the Kyoto accord in 2012 is essential. The 1997 Kyoto treaty was gutted to accommodate American objections, but even so President Clinton, who signed it, never dared to submit it to Congress. Then President Bush "unsigned" it.
A dozen wasted years later, the climate problem has grown hugely, so this time everybody else is determined that the U.S. must be aboard - and Barack Obama also wants the United States to be part of the treaty. But we recently learned what he thinks is "pragmatic." It is that the United States should cut its emissions back to the 1990 level by 2020.
The Hadley Climate Centre in England, one of the world's most respected sources of climate predictions, recently released a study showing that even rapid cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, turning the current one per cent annual growth into a three per cent annual decline within a few years, would still warm the world by 1.7 degrees Celsius by 2050.
That is dangerously near the two degrees C rise in average global temperature which is the point of no return. Further warming would trigger natural processes that release vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from melting permafrost and warming oceans. These processes, once begun, are unstoppable, and could make the planet four, five or six degrees hotter than the present by the end of the century.
At those temperatures, much of the planet turns to desert, and the remaining farmland, mostly in the high latitudes, can support at best 10 or 20 per cent of the world's current population. That is why the official policy of the European Union is never to exceed two degrees of warming.
The Obama administration's offer falls far short of that goal.
Obama is clearly calculating how much he can get through Congress. But this isn't an ordinary bill where you settle for what you can get through Congress after the usual horse-trading. If there's going to be a 40-day flood, you either build an ark or you learn to breathe underwater. Building half an ark is not a useful option.
Obama's offer means that the United States would be cutting its emissions not by three per cent annually, the minimum global target if we hope to avoid more than two degrees of warming, but by only half that amount. In the long term, it leads inexorably to disaster. Most other industrialized countries are on track to meet or exceed their modest Kyoto targets. Britain and Germany will both be 20 per cent below their 1990 emissions level by 2012, and Germany is promising 40 per cent cuts by 2020. The European Union as a whole promises a 20 per cent cut by 2020, but will go up to 30 per cent if other industrial countries do the same.
Even that would barely meet the annual three per cent cut in emissions we need if we are not to sail through the two-degree point of no return and trigger runaway warming. And we have yet to figure out how to bring the rapidly developing countries into the regime, for their emissions are growing very fast.
We are in deep trouble, and "pragmatism" will not save us.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. His column appears each Wednesday. His new book, Climate Wars, was published recently in Canada by Random House.
"We want to be in (the new UN climate pact), we want to be pragmatic, we want to look at the science," said Jonathan Pershing, the head of the U.S. delegation, during the talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions in Bonn last week. So how will the Obama administration reconcile political "pragmatism" with the scientific realities? "There is a small window where they overlap. We hope to find it," Pershing explained. But it doesn't really exist.
Signing the United States up to the new climate treaty that will replace the Kyoto accord in 2012 is essential. The 1997 Kyoto treaty was gutted to accommodate American objections, but even so President Clinton, who signed it, never dared to submit it to Congress. Then President Bush "unsigned" it.
A dozen wasted years later, the climate problem has grown hugely, so this time everybody else is determined that the U.S. must be aboard - and Barack Obama also wants the United States to be part of the treaty. But we recently learned what he thinks is "pragmatic." It is that the United States should cut its emissions back to the 1990 level by 2020.
The Hadley Climate Centre in England, one of the world's most respected sources of climate predictions, recently released a study showing that even rapid cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, turning the current one per cent annual growth into a three per cent annual decline within a few years, would still warm the world by 1.7 degrees Celsius by 2050.
That is dangerously near the two degrees C rise in average global temperature which is the point of no return. Further warming would trigger natural processes that release vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from melting permafrost and warming oceans. These processes, once begun, are unstoppable, and could make the planet four, five or six degrees hotter than the present by the end of the century.
At those temperatures, much of the planet turns to desert, and the remaining farmland, mostly in the high latitudes, can support at best 10 or 20 per cent of the world's current population. That is why the official policy of the European Union is never to exceed two degrees of warming.
The Obama administration's offer falls far short of that goal.
Obama is clearly calculating how much he can get through Congress. But this isn't an ordinary bill where you settle for what you can get through Congress after the usual horse-trading. If there's going to be a 40-day flood, you either build an ark or you learn to breathe underwater. Building half an ark is not a useful option.
Obama's offer means that the United States would be cutting its emissions not by three per cent annually, the minimum global target if we hope to avoid more than two degrees of warming, but by only half that amount. In the long term, it leads inexorably to disaster. Most other industrialized countries are on track to meet or exceed their modest Kyoto targets. Britain and Germany will both be 20 per cent below their 1990 emissions level by 2012, and Germany is promising 40 per cent cuts by 2020. The European Union as a whole promises a 20 per cent cut by 2020, but will go up to 30 per cent if other industrial countries do the same.
Even that would barely meet the annual three per cent cut in emissions we need if we are not to sail through the two-degree point of no return and trigger runaway warming. And we have yet to figure out how to bring the rapidly developing countries into the regime, for their emissions are growing very fast.
We are in deep trouble, and "pragmatism" will not save us.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist. His column appears each Wednesday. His new book, Climate Wars, was published recently in Canada by Random House.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Prepare for attack!
"The engines would show evidence of bird strike, and could have enough bird remains to yield DNA that would show the bird species, investigators say."
If the plane turns out to have been brought down by Canada Geese, can we expect the US government to close the borders, and sue the Canadian government for damages? Or will they just make a pre-emptive strike on all goose nests?
If the plane turns out to have been brought down by Canada Geese, can we expect the US government to close the borders, and sue the Canadian government for damages? Or will they just make a pre-emptive strike on all goose nests?
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Why We’ll Never Get Visits from Extraterrestrial Intelligence
I’ve never seen either version of The Day the Earth Stood Still, nor have I watched Independence Day. But visits from either friendly or hostile extraterrestrials are a staple of science fiction. My analysis indicates that they will remain fiction.
It’s not that I don’t believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. It’s my observations of “intelligent” life here on Earth that have led me to this conclusion.
Self-conscious intelligence is an evolutionary dead end. Using our only available example, we can see that humans’ ability to adapt our environment has made it possible to outstrip our resources and damage our habitat to the extent that our existence is in danger. Within a century, we will see our focus shift to basic survival; if we are able to function at a higher level than our current behaviour indicates, we will be trying to survive within our current societal structures as nations. If our current group behaviour persists, we will be struggling to survive as tribes, families or individuals; higher organizational levels will have collapsed.
Since the kinds of technologies necessary for interstellar travel (assuming it is actually possible) require a highly organized society with plenty of excess production of basic needs, and the leisure for intellectual pursuits, we won’t be continuing down that road.
It is my conclusion that any species developing intelligence similar to humans, intelligence conscious of itself, able to develop technologies to exploit its environment for its own (short-term) gain, will overrun its ability to manage the impact of its total group behaviour, and bring on its own collapse. I hope that, somewhere, some intelligent life form develops socially quickly enough to restrict itself to a sustainable set of behaviours. Such a life form will never choose to dedicate resources to interstellar travel.
So neither the self-destructive nor self-sustaining extraterrestrials will ever come knocking on our planetary door.
I wouldn’t rule out interstellar communication of some sort, however. So our planetary phone might yet ring. I hope someone is still here to listen for the call.
It’s not that I don’t believe there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. It’s my observations of “intelligent” life here on Earth that have led me to this conclusion.
Self-conscious intelligence is an evolutionary dead end. Using our only available example, we can see that humans’ ability to adapt our environment has made it possible to outstrip our resources and damage our habitat to the extent that our existence is in danger. Within a century, we will see our focus shift to basic survival; if we are able to function at a higher level than our current behaviour indicates, we will be trying to survive within our current societal structures as nations. If our current group behaviour persists, we will be struggling to survive as tribes, families or individuals; higher organizational levels will have collapsed.
Since the kinds of technologies necessary for interstellar travel (assuming it is actually possible) require a highly organized society with plenty of excess production of basic needs, and the leisure for intellectual pursuits, we won’t be continuing down that road.
It is my conclusion that any species developing intelligence similar to humans, intelligence conscious of itself, able to develop technologies to exploit its environment for its own (short-term) gain, will overrun its ability to manage the impact of its total group behaviour, and bring on its own collapse. I hope that, somewhere, some intelligent life form develops socially quickly enough to restrict itself to a sustainable set of behaviours. Such a life form will never choose to dedicate resources to interstellar travel.
So neither the self-destructive nor self-sustaining extraterrestrials will ever come knocking on our planetary door.
I wouldn’t rule out interstellar communication of some sort, however. So our planetary phone might yet ring. I hope someone is still here to listen for the call.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Do future generations a favour: don't breed.
The “global economic crisis” has diverted public attention from climate change. Governments the world over are responding as if the current situation is just an extreme version of the traditional business cycle. And perhaps it is.
But consider this: the conventional economic thinking is based on continually increasing consumption. The crisis is considered to be the result of reduced consumption, and economic stimulus packages are proposed to get those spending habits back up there where they belong, and then all will be right with the world.
This world view is so obviously short-sighted and just plain wrong that it’s clear to me that our species must be wearing some kind of intellectual blinders. We as a species just can’t accept that the world has limited resources, and we’re reaching the end of them. We have too many people wanting to consume too much.
What we really need to do is come to grips with the reality that we’re living in an unsustainable fashion. It’s all very well to want everyone on the planet to have a single-family dwelling, a car in the driveway, a wide-screen TV in the living room, and a refrigerator filled with fresh food all year round. But this could only happen if we had maybe one-tenth the population we already have. And we would also have to replace all our fossil-fuel energy sources with something sustainable.
Climate change is only going to make things worse. In a generation, we will have world-wide shortages of food and water – of course, we already have these shortages in many places. At that point, the car and the TV will be irrelevant.
The bottom line is, if our civilizations are to survive for another couple of centuries, we need to do three things:
1. Consume less.
2. Reduce our population.
3. Use only sustainable energy sources.
We can do this the hard way, which probably will destroy our so-called civilizations: war, famine, pestilence (and of course death), or the unlikely way: global international cooperation to reduce consumption, halt population growth, develop sustainable energy sources, and accept (for the industrialized world) a greatly reduced standard of living. No government anywhere could get elected on that platform, so the hard landing (or bottomless fall) is the only likely outcome.
Read Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse.
And remember: Murphy was an optimist.
But consider this: the conventional economic thinking is based on continually increasing consumption. The crisis is considered to be the result of reduced consumption, and economic stimulus packages are proposed to get those spending habits back up there where they belong, and then all will be right with the world.
This world view is so obviously short-sighted and just plain wrong that it’s clear to me that our species must be wearing some kind of intellectual blinders. We as a species just can’t accept that the world has limited resources, and we’re reaching the end of them. We have too many people wanting to consume too much.
What we really need to do is come to grips with the reality that we’re living in an unsustainable fashion. It’s all very well to want everyone on the planet to have a single-family dwelling, a car in the driveway, a wide-screen TV in the living room, and a refrigerator filled with fresh food all year round. But this could only happen if we had maybe one-tenth the population we already have. And we would also have to replace all our fossil-fuel energy sources with something sustainable.
Climate change is only going to make things worse. In a generation, we will have world-wide shortages of food and water – of course, we already have these shortages in many places. At that point, the car and the TV will be irrelevant.
The bottom line is, if our civilizations are to survive for another couple of centuries, we need to do three things:
1. Consume less.
2. Reduce our population.
3. Use only sustainable energy sources.
We can do this the hard way, which probably will destroy our so-called civilizations: war, famine, pestilence (and of course death), or the unlikely way: global international cooperation to reduce consumption, halt population growth, develop sustainable energy sources, and accept (for the industrialized world) a greatly reduced standard of living. No government anywhere could get elected on that platform, so the hard landing (or bottomless fall) is the only likely outcome.
Read Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse.
And remember: Murphy was an optimist.
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