"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The graph above shows the average ocean temperature from roughly the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (about 66 million years before present) through the middle Eocene, roughly 45 mybp.
This geologic period is a contradictory and, to some degree, still confusing one. Global climate at the end of the preceding Mesozoic had been relatively warm and moist; think "dinosaur jungle", you get the idea.
Then came Death From Above...
...and the world changed.
Among the changes (and, probably, a huge reason for them) were the second most recent of the immense "mass extinction" events that have swept the planet's biota clean, and a long-term change in the climate that made the planet drier and cooler.
But before it started cooling the planet got considerably warmer. In general - notice the "hill" that starts around 57-59 mybp - this meant a fairly gradual increase in global average temperature that peaked some time near about 52-50 mybp, then from there the climate average began to decline to where we start to see the ginormous "continental glacier" formation around the end of the Pliocene/beginning of the Pleistocene about 1.8mybp. Hello, ice age!
But this climate trendline wasn't entirely gradual.
The spikes on the ridgeback of the trendline that show up around 55.8mybp? There are known as "hyperthermals" and are described in the Wiki entry as:
"...geologically brief (<200,000 year) events characterized by rapid global warming, major changes in the environment, and massive carbon addition...and stand(s) out as a major change in the lithologic, biotic and geochemical composition of sediment in hundreds of records across Earth."
This, the "Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum", or PETM, is important to understand today because, as its Wiki entry says;
"The PETM arguably represents our best past analogue by which to understand how global warming and the carbon cycle operate in a greenhouse world."
Which brings us to what I want to talk about.
War. Economics. Non-alcoholic beer. Sex, including procedures, physical form, and body hair.
If a person, or people, can fuck any or all of that of in ways that make life more fucked up for other people (who didn't do anything to help out, or even fought against the fucker-uppers) I've often had some pretty scathing comments about them, and the fucking-up they did.
This, though?
This is, in my opinion, the single biggest, most grave, most dangerous, and most imperative test presented us humans during the Anthropocene; "anthropogenic climate change".
The fundamentals are simple and obvious.
Since the origins of human civilization; first agriculture, and then, increasingly, industrialization, We the People of Sumer, Rome, the US, &c, have been adding much the same chemicals to the global environment as nature did in the early-to-mid Eocene. Mostly carbon dioxide - the CO2 level shown graphically above - but with a side order of everything from methane, freon, nitrogen...you name it, we've made it. And let it go, into the ground, the water, the air.
It doesn't take a goddamn genius to figure out that if spontaneously-occurring high level releases of natural carbon dioxide could help produce the PETM spike in global temperature, then human-caused released of the same gas could, and most likely would, have the same effect.
The huge, horrific difference?
We - humanity in general - have absolutely no fucking idea what effect a similar rapid spike in average global temperature could, or will, do.
And yet...
The climatology isn't questionable. There's more CO2 in our atmosphere now that there has been in the Pleistocene. Ever. Because, well, duh; we're burning more of everything, starting with wood, then coal, the petroleum. The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions were televised in the form of the grossly changing picture of atmospheric carbon dioxide shown above.
Okay, so. First, yes, there has been that much CO2 in the atmosphere in the geologic past. And. The effect of that CO2 has always been the same; a rise in average global temperature. The effects of those temperature spikes have been all over the place; some seems to have come and gone with little or no permanent impacts.
Others? Mass extinction. Biological diversity (both reduction and/or punctuated evolution). Oceanic current changes.
What will the Anthropocene Thermal Maximum do? I haven't the slightest fucking idea.
Will it do...something? Lots of somethings, probably? Changes in local climate, changes in global stasis like sea levels? Changes in habitability (you think summers in Phoenix suck now..?) or agricultural production or disease or...keep going, I'm sure we can think of more.
But, unless you're a complete moron or a Republican (but I repeat myself...) there's no way to deny or refute that:
1) Human civilization is producing and releasing CO2 at levels not seen before during the existence of homo sapiens, and
2) That's going to change our world. A lot. And,
3) We (that is, humanity in toto) have known #1 and #2 for at least the past forty to seventy years.
Meaning that we've had our opportunity to "do something" about that. Either...
Alter #1.
Or prepare for #2.
Or some combination of both.
And have "we"? Fuck all no, we haven't.
Largely because, frankly, we as individuals and in a group as societies don't have any real sense of urgency about it. Because "altering #1" would mean substantial - and, largely, unpleasant - changes to our industrial societies, and "preparing for #2" would mean somewhat similar changes that those societies don't really understand, or have any deep concern about, as well as requiring a metric assload of money that we'd rather spend on fifth-generation fighter aircraft and outdoor grills or what have you.
Throw in the fundamental problem that, in most non-dictatorial political systems, voluntarily choosing those sorts of drastic present actions (and costs) to (possibly) avert or (probably at least) mitigate the worst of future problems is damn near impossible.
You're asking me to stop eating salmon and running the airconditioning and dump my Chevy Nova and start walking or cycling or riding a train or bus everywhere? Because it's possible - or even probable - that fifty years from now (after I'm long dead) that the Portland area will be a toxic malarial fever swamp uninhabitable in August?
How the hell do you convince me to vote for that?
(Dictatorial systems, on the other hand, just flat out won't do those things, simply because the dictator(s) have, by the very nature of the system, to plan for the short term. The premier or president-for-life or mullah or Donald Trump can't be sure that the regime will survive him (or is very sure it won't, or, because they're a vicious, ruthless, dictatorial bastard, doesn't care...) so why waste the opportunity to steal everything now to prepare for, or avert, some future disaster.
Christ, fucking Trump & Co. couldn't even foresee the predictable result of starting another goddamn war in Southwest Asia! Climate change? Even if they were canny enough to believe it they'd fuck up the response to it...)
Anyway, as we've shown, we human can't do anything that is going to change our power-drive towards PETM 2; Global Boogaloo.
Or won't. Or have tried and failed. But, honestly?
We haven't tried very hard.
So, instead, we've failed the great test that was set before us.
"It" - the most important deliberate choices we as a species were presented with in human memory - is, indeed happening in our time. And as a species, we have "decided to do"...
Effectively, nothing.
And, well...
Yep. Pretty much.
What a fucking fuckstory. But that's how people are, innt?
In some ways we haven't really evolved all that much, now, have we?
Its not just the dictators also ordinary peoples who can't look past their noses! "we want to keep our open view from the beach cottage - not to be obscured by windturbines and we want a dike to be build to protect said holiday house so it won't get inundated."
ReplyDeleteIt's not that ordinary peoples don't want to fathom what's going on - they don't want to!
/Carsten
Yep. That was my point about how our political system(s) outside of pure dictatorships have utterly failed us. To "do something" - something effective - would have required people and governments to choose short term discomfort (all the way up to "major social and economic changes") in order to prevent the strong probability of future...something, ranging from selective harms to widespread chaos to - maybe - civilization-altering disaster. And we don't know and can't predict which of these this climate change will produce.
DeleteThat's a huge ask. Humans aren't good with things like that. And we haven't been. But climatology doesn't care. As Stjohnspock says; whatever this is going to bring us, we're gonna get it full-on.
Chief, good piece and correct (fellow geo/civil here). We deserve what we get and we'll get it good and hard.
ReplyDeleteA constructive question everyone should ask is 'WHY did it come to this terrible point in time, how did we end up here at this most fraudulent criminal ecologically devastating state of affairs?' Because the recognition of the underlying cause(s) would be instructive in terms of HOW we should tackle it to potentially manifest real change in the present.
ReplyDeleteWe got here because of what "advanced" humans are afflicted with a pernicious malignant terminal disease --- "A Soullessness Spectrum Disorder" ... https://www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html
For the masses to potentially get out of the big horrible mess we're in means...
First, virtually everyone has to DEprogram themselves from the programing ("official education" or official brainwashing) they've received since they were a child. It starts with seeing that YOU HAVE BEEN PROGRAMED ALL ALONG.
Second, constantly analyzing and debating current events is a waste of time. Because it's not enough to describe over and over the prison cell (and its guards) --- the ruling pack of psychopaths AND its many loyal minions --- but explain how we got into it and how to get out of it, potentially. Of course, the psychopathic ruling authorities WANT you and everyone to waste your energy and time doing this "clever" analyzing and "figuring out" (and 99% of all "alternative media" is doing this too!) as they had freely told everyone.
Third, how we got into this deep mess is the clue on how we POTENTIALLY can get out of it (and create justice, freedom and peace for all) --- by learning what TRUE morality is ---99% of people don't know what it is because (1) it's NOT taught in the official indoctrination system, better know as the "education system," and (2) it's NOT the same as religious morality: https://odysee.com/@woeih:e/Mark-Passio-Government-Is-Slavery:a
https://odysee.com/@woeih:e/Mark-Passio-Interviewed-By-Shaun-Atwood-2026-06-18:6
Because if you don't know what TRUE morality is you will not stop doing, unwittingly or wittingly, evil things...
"The solution is NOT to create something new (eg, new systems of organization, new technologies, etc). The solution is to STOP being complicit with evil. To STOP doing things that are not moral for a reward. To STOP being complicit with anything the control system tells us we must do." --- Mark Passio, Spiritual Teacher, in 2023
Fourth, commit yourself to ACT on the principles of real morality (see first url at third point)...
"The problem we face is that few people really care beyond being fed and entertained." --- Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D., American economist & former US regime official, in 2026 [https://paulcraigroberts.org/the-lies-used-to-deceive-us]
Fifth, spread and teach these principles far and wide..
"Ignorance is the root cause of all Evil. Since only Knowledge eradicates ignorance, it is our duty and moral obligation to educate ourselves, as well as the masses around us." --- Anonymous
I hesitated a long time with my finger over the "delete" button before deciding to go ahead and post it. Largely because it's a valuable look into one of the many strains of whackadoodle conspiracy-theory gabble that fills so much of our public space. On this and everything from foreign war to domestic society.
DeleteThe anonymous commentor seems to be a devotee of someone called "Mark Passio", who is some sort of woo-woo anarchist/"spiritualist"/secret knowledge-believer. The second sentence is the tell:
..."advanced" humans are afflicted with a pernicious malignant terminal disease --- "A Soullessness Spectrum Disorder"
No.
Humans, "advanced" or otherwise, are...people. They want nice things. They want to be comfortable, to have to struggle as little as possible to attain them. So when they had a chance to move from hunting and gathering to pastoralism and agriculture? They jumped on it. When the water wheel, the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the computer came along? They were all in on it.
They didn't see those as "evil". They were'nt "wasting time and energy" analyzing or figuring out anything. They saw that a motor car made work and travel easier and faster, so they wanted it. Carbon dioxide? Fuck that, I'm not going back to a wheelbarrow or a one-horse shay!
There's one thing the commentor gets right; yes, most of us just want a full belly and a warm place to shit. You can't "teach" people that they need to go without today to make tomorrow a better tomorrow. You have to give them reasons - hard, concrete, real reasons - AND you have to crush the people who will use lies and bullshit (because their livelihoods depend on them - Royal Dutch Shell, c'mon down!) to make them disbelieve your evidence.
We as a society have done horribly at that...which will be the subject of my next post.
But this joker? When you get past the smokescreen of verbiage about "true morality" and "being complicit" the bottom line is that the premise that humanity has dug themselves into this climate disaster because they don't understand what they're doing or have been brainwashed into ignoring it?
Is a massive misunderstanding of how people think and act.
And, as I said, we'll talk about that next.