This shit is really starting to get scary...

[busterbrown]

I sense little fear in this country..
Even I think to myself selfishly.. “Well I’ll probably be gone by the time we are catastrophically effected . Maybe not...

Extraordinary North Atlantic Storms Driving Gulf Stream Water into Arctic Sea...Ice Melting in February...

From Daily Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/16/1278016/--Extraordinary-N-Atlantic-Storms-Driving-Gulf-Stream-Water-into-Arctic-Sea-Ice-Melting-in-February?

[northoftheborder]

1. I agree the weather events around the world are frightening.

I fear for my children and grandchildren.

What is happening in Britain right now is just unprecedented and devastating.

I think it's too late to do anything now. Ten years ago, maybe, things might have been alleviated. The theft of the election by Bush from Gore changed the history of civilization.

PS Thank you to whoever gave me my hearts!

[busterbrown]

2. Also read today somewhere that an extraordinary EL Nino is setting up for later this year..

I’ll try to find it..

[northoftheborder]

3. Do you know whether this means drought for SW or unusual rain?

[Thirties Child]

4. in the Southwest: El Nino = Rain, snow.

The ten years we lived in New Mexico, El Nino brought snow and rain to the Southwest and not much to the Northwest. La Nina did the opposite. The Winter Olympics were in British Columbia during an El Nino year, and I remember they didn't have enough natural snow, while we watched the Olympics wrapped in snow.

[OnlinePoker]

46. I'd like to see that link

NOAA says ENSO-neutral through spring with an increasing number of models suggest a "possible onset of El Nino". Nothing in there about and extraordinary El Nino.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.pdf

This hasn't changed in the weekly sit-rep put out today.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

[hatrack]

5. Yep. Welcome to my world.

At least it won't be boring.

[loudsue]

6. Funny. That's exactly what the SCIENTISTS said was going to happen.

Imagine that.


Ok.

[Mr.Bill]

10. Yeah, but only 99% of them. n/t

[mindwalker_i]

11. But they can't PROVE

Last edited Mon Feb 17, 2014, 02:54 AM - Edit history (1)

that it was the exhaust coming out of Buicks and coal-burning power plants blanketing the sky in, essentially, a gigantic chemical quilt that caused the global temperature to increase. It could have been God farting.

We'll just never know!

[bvf]

15. Nonsense

Come on, everyone knows God's last fart was Ted Cruz's dad.

Otherwise, well said, and agreed this is all very disturbing.

[mindwalker_i]

16. Yikes, that makes Ted Cruz's dad

a divine gas-bag AND the cause of global climate change. Rush is going to get jealous

[bvf]

20. Looks like we better get working on

Genesis II.

"In the beginning, He farted."

Limbaugh's spawn (were he ever to have any) many generations hence could see their forebear take a back seat to some foreigner, in a book everybody's reading some 2000 years hence.

[Scootaloo]

7. Welcome to the dawn of the Anthropocene

Personally, I long ago accepted that I'm inheriting a wasteland. so the scariness has worn off, and instead there's a sense of morbid curiosity. I know hteplanet - and life - will keep on keeping on. There is nothing humanity can do to rival the P-T event in scope and impact, and life came back pretty strong after that one... so I'm more curious about what comes next, how things will change and adapt... including humans.

I can't imagine we'll be trying to maintain agricultural civilization in a thousand years. or, frankly, that we'll have the population to make that an attractive option in the first place...

[jeff47]

8. Humans, as a species, will be fine.

We're far to adaptable for climate change to drive us to extinction.

That doesn't mean we won't lose a few billion. But if we do that leaves a few billion.

I can't imagine we'll be trying to maintain agricultural civilization in a thousand years.

Climate change just means lower yield, assuming the same crops. Moving corn production north as Kansas turns into a desert means we won't be able to grow as much corn - greater variance in day length in the new "corn belt".

However, that assumes we keep eating the same diet. We don't have to do that. Try new Soylent Purple! It's made from different algae!

[SoLeftIAmRight]

13. WHAT?

Had to read that twice. You might want to learn a little mathematics.

[jeff47]

28. If 3.5 billion people die due to climate change, that leaves 3.5 billion people alive.

What, exactly, is the problem with that math?

[Scootaloo]

14. Think more broadly

Humans will continue to persist, yes. Our global distribution means that even in the worst case scenario, we're likely to be the longest-lived hominid species. We could achieve double H. erectus' two million year lifespan.

But that's not what I mean. Consider two things.

1) Humans are not very good at long-term planning even within their own individual lifetimes.
2) Everything around us, our civilization, revolves around a chain of finite and often-dwindling natural resources.

Consider oil and other fossil fuels. These are the most obvious examples of being both finite and dwindling.

Since we're not too good at thinking ahead - in truth we're just chimpanzees with very large penises (compared to other chimpanzees) - we haven't made any forward movement on addressing this problem. Oh, we know it's going to hit us. It's pretty fucking obvious. The thing is, the use of fossil fuels as an energy source is so entrenched that in truth, it's easier to go with the crazy, ultra-expensive and damaging methods of gaining them - fracking, tar sands, mountaintop removal - than it is to try the undoubtedly messy process of converting to something more sustainable. And I'm not even going to touch on industry influence on the issue! Nope, this is plain old animal indolence - it's easier to stick with what we already know than to leap out for a new tree.

So what's going to happen, is that one day, fossil fuels are going to hit that tipping point - where they will cost more to produce than the market agrees they are worth. And I don't mean "one day" as a vernacular artifact, it is going to be a sudden crash. Over a year or so - which in historical terms might as well be a day. Prices will spiral upwards, in a self-inflating process. Governments will use a combination of heavier subsidization and nationalization to try to bring these prices under control, with some success - but that won't make the fuels any more common, or less expensive to produce, and prices will continue to climb. First they will rise out of the price the individual consumer can afford - at eight dollars a gallon, most Americans wouldn't be able to afford to drive. Then it will impact higher and higher; corporations and others with vast liquid funds will not be hit quote as hard directly - but they will catch it when their drivers can't drive anymore, and the plastic they need jump in price, and the power bill jumps to meet the market.

And we, as a species, will be caught with our pants down, that big ol' chimp-dick in our collective hand, going "uh... wait, what?" we will not have the infrastructure in place to swap over to an alternative system on any large scale. where alternatives are available, they will be commissioned to crank out more turbines, more panels, whatever... And given that those products also rely on petroleum and other finite-and-dwindling resources, that might not work out too well.

Our modern world is based on the fast and far travel that petroleum and coal-electricity provided us with. Global agriculture - the foundation upon which everything else is based - is reliant on petroleum-derived fertilizers and pesticides, which are delivered via fueled cars and planes and trains, and which are dispensed using plastic tools, which are also shipped in this way. Everything we have is reliant on petroleum and other fossil fuels, to the point where without them, our definition of civilization ends, and a new one must be developed.

All of this is just what happens when the goo runs out - You can draw your own maps of what happens when seas rise, wilderness spaces are gone, the permafrost and methane traps start burping, the water sources are all contaminated with something, and the prokaryotes reassert their global dominance over us.

Humans will continue onward. We have at least another hundred thousand years in us, minimum, of that I have no doubt. But our civilization at least as we understand it, is a transitory thing. We were using sharp rocks to kill things in the woods for a hundred thousand years before the Sumerians discovered wheat, and i imagine that a hundred thousand years from now, we'll have no idea what wheat ever was, and will be stabbing animals in the woods with sharp rocks again.

[busterbrown]

18. Great Piece... Thanks!!

[GliderGuider]

25. Good summary!

Evolutionary psychology holds most of the reasons why our global techno-industrial culture is screwed. Those who don't see it simply have their evolved blinders screwed on bit too tight. Short-term needs trump future risks. Jobs always trump the environment.

So it goes.

[jeff47]

27. Right, society can utterly collapse. But the species will survive. (nt)

[GliderGuider]

31. Survival will look nothing like we imagine.

If we do drop all the way back to a truly sustainable world population of 10 million or so, with no technological energy (fossil, hydro, nuclear, wind or solar PV) life is going to be a bit different. There is nothing to ensure a global population collapse will just wipe out a "reasonable" percentage (say 50%) of us over the next century or two.

[jeff47]

32. It's not clear that we'd have to drop to your limitations.

Specifically, "no technological energy".

Solar will work for the next few billion years. The raw materials for simple PV panels are literally the majority of the Earth's crust (such as silicon). Solar thermal can be done with extremely common and infinitely-recyclable materials - like iron pipe. More advanced materials make them more efficient, but if we run out of those and can't recycle them, we can still do quite well with the basics.

The wind will keep blowing for a slightly shorter timeframe, but still billions of years. And as with solar, you can make turbines of extremely common and infinitely-recyclable materials like aluminum, iron and copper. Similar with tidal power.

And that also ignores nuclear power. Breeder reactors aren't terribly good for nuclear weapon proliferation concerns, but when you have no other options, they'll make lots of electricity and recycle the fuel for non-breeder-reactors.

Smelting to get those materials? Well, Aluminum is already smelted electrically - that's why it took us thousands of years to start using it economically despite its relatively low melting point. We had to invent reliable, industrial-scale electricity first. Smelting the other materials without fossil fuels is possible, just much more expensive.

Today we use fossil fuels because they are cheap and plentiful. Not because they are the only way to make energy and heat.

Sure, there will be massive societal upheaval as billions starve to death and fossil fuels become expensive. But we won't have to revert to pre-industrial technology.

[GliderGuider]

33. That's what the research indicates may be truly sustainable.

10 million people, consuming no more than 5,000 kcal/day apiece from all energy sources including food. Remember, sustainability has to do with the entire ecosystem of planet Earth, not just us hairless, big-dicked chimpanzees.

Here's an article of mine from last year on sustainability: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Sustainability.html

[jeff47]

34. Problem is that his argument is crap.

In his "energy" approach, he argues a sustainable population based on going back to biofuels. He just assumes no other energy sources are possible. It's burning fossil fuels, or burning wood. He utterly ignores solar, wind, and nuclear. And doesn't bother explaining why. Probably because of the cave man ideal in his "population density" approach.

One problem with his "population density" approach is he just assumes events were inevitable, instead of results of poor choices. For example , he assumes past deforestation was inevitable, instead of the result of poor agricultural policies.

But that's the small problem with his "population density" approach. The big problem is he just assumes we reached our "sustainable" population density in paleolithic times, with utterly zero evidence. He just likes the idea that "cave men" were not destroying their environment.

Problem is "cave men" were destroying their environment. Just not as obviously as a modern strip mine. We hunted animal species to extinction. We harvested plant species to extinction. So his own argument fails his "sustainable" definition. Instead, he is arguing we have to go back to being cave men because he has a romantic view of cave men. He also utterly ignores the effects of technology on sustainability. Just like in his "ecological" approach.

Oh yes, the "ecological" approach. It utterly ignores the effects of technology. The fact that we can generate electricity from sustainable sources means we have far more energy available to us than other species. That means we can support far higher numbers than the species he uses for modeling. We can use that technology to produce food artificially. We can also use that technology to _not_ alter the environment as we had to in the past, and fix places where we have altered it. If we are so inclined.

But the biggest problem with the entire article is he dismisses any other methodology as "not objective" without showing any actual reason it is not objective - it conflicts with his idea, so it must be wrong. Good arguments welcome other approaches and explain exactly how they are wrong. Instead, he just throws out any other approach so he doesn't have to explain why they are wrong. Which is perfect evidence that his argument is crap.

[GliderGuider]

35. In fact, "he" knows that paleolithic H-G's weren't really sustainable.

Here's "his" money graph on the subject:

In fact, the analysis suggests that Homo sapiens is an inherently unsustainable species. This outcome seems virtually guaranteed by our neocortex, by the very intelligence that has enabled our rise to unprecedented dominance over our planet’s biosphere. Is intelligence an evolutionary blind alley? From the singular perspective of our own species, it quite probably is.

The reason "he" discards the notion of technology saving our bacon is that technology doesn't actually do that in real life. It merely makes our destruction of the biosphere ever more efficient. The combination of a problem-solving brain, a preference for prioritizing short-term benefits over long-term costs, and high available energy fluxes combine to render H. sapiens lethal to most other life forms - including itself - over the long haul.

Your view is stunted - it is both grievously anthropocentric and ecologically blind.

[jeff47]

37. You going to pretend the name Paul doesn't imply gender?

Oooookay.

In fact, "he" knows that paleolithic H-G's weren't really sustainable.

Which makes using them as a baseline even dumber. But I decided not to harp on that.

The reason "he" discards the notion of technology saving our bacon is that technology doesn't actually do that in real life. It merely makes our destruction of the biosphere ever more efficient

No it has done that. History is not destiny.

We don't have to suddenly become obsessed with long-term planning to avoid disaster. We'll be suffering plenty of short-term effects to shift how we do things. Such as the fact that we're rolling out solar and wind power despite the currently higher cost.

Your view is stunted - it is both grievously anthropocentric and ecologically blind.

Yes, make sure you just discard any dissent without bothering to address the points in that dissent. It shows just how strong your argument is.

[GliderGuider]

38. No. I was hinting that "he" is me.

Last edited Tue Feb 18, 2014, 02:23 AM - Edit history (1)

That's all.

I don't argue on the internet much any more. Nowadays I just present my ideas, and those who can't accept them or don't feel like thinking about them are always free to reject them.

[Systematic Chaos]

56. This subthread made my week.

[LouisvilleDem]

44. I = PAT ?

What are the units of the various variables in this equation? Clearly the unit for P is simply number of people, but it is unclear what units are appropriate for 'A' and 'T'. Some people say that GDP per capita is suitable for 'A', but that would simply mean that the equation simplifies down to: I = GDP * T, which does't really make any sense because it implies that any increase in 'T' will result in an increase in environmental impact.

[GliderGuider]

45. GDP is a political rather than a physical measure.

GDP is too manipulated to be used in a calculation of environmental impact.

My preference for AT is to use the proxy of "average per capita exergy consumption" of the population under consideration. If exergy calculations are too difficult, simply using per capita energy consumption is close enough for polemics. I try this approach in my article on Thermodynamic Footprints.

I think this approach makes sense, because all our activity that causes environmental impact is enabled by energy use - from agriculture and construction to transportation and manufacturing. It takes in the whole cluster of human physical impacts from deforestation and monocropping to climate change.

I propose using exergy rather than raw energy because in most cases it's the work being done that causes the impact. One place where exergy doesn't work perfectly is for climate change impacts, because waste combustion products are of concern as well as the work done with the energy.

[LouisvilleDem]

47. I read Thermodynamic Footprints

Doesn't this approach assume that all energy use has equally negative environmental impact? That seems like a very bad assumption...

[GliderGuider]

48. That's why I want to switch from using raw energy to using exergy.

Last edited Tue Feb 18, 2014, 10:41 PM - Edit history (1)

nt

[LouisvilleDem]

49. Then that is what you should do

Using exergy instead of energy allows you to distinguish the environmental impact of a society that generates a terajoule of energy via hydro and a society that generates a terajoule of energy by burning coal. Unfortunately, when you do this your claim that "the higher our standard of living climbs, the lower our population level must fall in order to be sustainable" is no longer true. Simply put, a rise in our standard of living does not necessarily result in more environmental impact provided the source of energy used to achieve that rise was renewable energy.

[The2ndWheel]

50. But that hasn't been the case yet

Our environmental impact rose when we hunted with sharp sticks and picked berries.

Now we have a global civilization of 7+ billion people, most of which don't have what some have, but they want it. We hope renewable energy will allow us to walk between the rain drops. Since we do still exist within physical reality, that's probably not going to happen though.

[LouisvilleDem]

58. Irrelevant

The fact that most energy use has a negative environmental impact does not change the fact that if there is even a single example of energy use having a positive environmental impact, the equation I = PAT is invalid.

[The2ndWheel]

61. Is there an example of that?

[LouisvilleDem]

62. Planting forests, restoring wetlands, cleaning toxic waste sites...

You can't do any of those things without expending energy.

[The2ndWheel]

67. Right

Simply put, a rise in our standard of living does not necessarily result in more environmental impact provided the source of energy used to achieve that rise was renewable energy.

More environment impact was the phrase I was initially responding to. As you say, planting forests, restoring wetlands, cleaning toxic waste sites all require a larger environment impact on our behalf, because we're now attempting to take control, since we can't just sail west or whatever anymore. More of life comes to depend on our somewhat fickle goodwill. We can't account for all the complexity of life, so we end up tailoring more of the planet to fit a single species, because we know what we want and need.

We're not going to stop trying to bring more of life under our control. That toothpaste is well out of the tube. It'll either work, or it won't. We keep finding ways to either break or suppress limits though, as evidenced by the reality we know February 21st, 2014 to be. Historically speaking, we didn't have the collective knowledge that we have today to try and figure these issues out. However, we also don't have the space or room for error that we had in the past either.

[GliderGuider]

51. I have a different view of things.

Last edited Wed Feb 19, 2014, 11:36 AM - Edit history (1)

"Simply put, a rise in our standard of living does not necessarily result in more environmental impact provided the source of energy used to achieve that rise was renewable energy."

While that might seem logical, it's not what has happened. The damage to the planet comes from all societies, not just one or another, and in aggregate the composition of global energy supplies has not varied much over the last 50 years:



However, all though history the amount of exergy we have been able to extract from a given unit of energy has increased due to our constant efforts to increase energy efficiency. So over time the exergy of an energy application will tend to approach the raw energy input, and the work it can do with the same inputs will increase (subject to things like Carnot limits and various losses, of course).

In this assessment the impact comes from two places: the work we do with the energy (work that reshapes the environment), and the waste products that are generated from both the work and the energy use, that are discarded into the environment. This is why switching from coal to wind cannot eliminate all environmental impacts. We may reduce the amount of coal ash and CO2 that we dump, but the work we do to reshape the environment in our own interests - and the waste that results from that work - doesn't decline. The only way it would decline is if we did less work - and we're not doing that.

Taking all that into account, and given the difficulty of energy bookkeeping across such a wide variety of sources and applications, on reflection I think it's probably pointless for this kind of analysis to strive for excessive accuracy. I intend this as a thought-provoking idea, not something to base policy on.

And it really doesn't matter all that much except to satisfy a certain morbid curiosity. The complex adaptive system we know as global techno-industrial civilization is already a dead man walking. Adding a couple more decimal places to an analysis of our fuckitude is really neither here nor there.

[LouisvilleDem]

59. Missing the point

You are assuming that all energy use has a negative environmental impact. This is false. When I expend energy to clean up a toxic waste site, plant trees, or restore wetlands I am improving the environment a great deal. You may believe that the net impact is still negative, but you have done nothing to prove that is true. To do that you would have to do a calculation of the negative environmental impact of creating and burning whatever amount of fossil fuel is needed to restore ten thousand acres of wetlands, and then compare that number to the positive environmental impact of such a restoration. I may be wrong, but given that the energy expenditure to do the restoration is likely a one time occurrence, I would be surprised to find that the net effect is not overwhelmingly positive.

[GliderGuider]

60. Prepare to be surprised as time goes on.

Our impact on the planet on balance is overwhelmingly negative. It looks to me as though you have bought the cultural narrative promoted by the unholy union of the corporations and the bright green activists hook, line and sinker, and are embedded in a dream. Good luck with that.

[LouisvilleDem]

63. How do you know that's true?

Our impact on the planet on balance is overwhelmingly negative.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm curious if you can come up with an objective metric that can be plotted over time.

[GliderGuider]

64. While I doubt that anything I say will convince you

Try this. It's from the New Scientist magazine in 2009.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14950-special-report-the-facts-about-overconsumption.html

Global-scale changes in the Earth system, as a result of the dramatic increase in human activity: (a) atmospheric CO2 concentration (Etheridge et al, 1996); (b) atmospheric N2O concentration (Machida et al, 1995); (c) atmospheric CH4 concentration (Blunier et al, 1993); (d) percentage total column ozone loss over Antarctica, using the average annual total column ozone, 330, as a base (Image: J D Shanklin, British Antarctic Survey); (e) northern hemisphere average surface temperature anomalies (Mann et al, 1999); (f) natural disasters after 1900 resulting in more than ten people killed or more than 100 people affected (OFDA/CRED, 2002); (g) percentage of global fisheries either fully exploited, overfished or collapsed (FAOSTAT, 2002); (h) annual shrimp production as a proxy for coastal zone alteration (WRI, 2003; FAOSTAT, 2002); (i) model-calculated partitioning of the human-induced nitrogen perturbation fluxes in the global coastal margin for the period since 1850 (Mackenzie et al, 2002); (j) loss of tropical rainforest and woodland, as estimated for tropical Africa, Latin America and South and Southeast Asia (Richards, 1990; WRI, 1990); (k) amount of land converted to pasture and cropland (Klein Goldewijk and Battjes, 1997); and (l) mathematically calculated rate of extinction (based on Wilson, 1992)

[LouisvilleDem]

65. On the contrary

I'd say over half of those are very good metrics. What I think is interesting is what metrics you didn't include. Curiously absent are water purity and air quality--two of the things the environmentalist movement has always considered of prime importance. Any reason why you didn't list them?

[GliderGuider]

66. Why didn't I list them?

Last edited Fri Feb 21, 2014, 07:40 AM - Edit history (1)

Because it's not my graphic.

The main "air quality" metric I pay attention to in this context is its CO2 content, that is nudging around 400 ppm. That's the one that has a good chance of burying global civilization once and for all.

Water quality falls victim to the same pollutant, with the acidity of the world's oceans rising to the point that corals are at risk and some of the fish we haven't eaten yet may not be able to grow bones.

[LouisvilleDem]

69. I guess we will have to agree to disagree

The most accurate computer models of climate we have predict 2 degrees of warming by 2100. While that is concerning and certainly something that needs to be addressed, it does not fall into the "burying global civilization" category. As always, the poor will suffer the most and the rich will just build new homes further inland.

[GliderGuider]

70. That's a very adult suggestion. I accept. nt

[oldhippie]

54. I would quibble with one of your points ....

Solar will work for the next few billion years. The raw materials for simple PV panels are literally the majority of the Earth's crust (such as silicon).

True, but getting them out of the earth's crust and processing them into a working PV panel is not that simple. Yes, you can scoop up silicon pretty easily from a beach, but getting the other rare earth elements is a little more difficult. The manufacturing process to turn those elements into a useful PV panel requires a lot of interlocking technologies, requiring a fairly advanced technological society.

Granted, the other solar technologies can be accomplished in a less advanced civilization.

I wish I had your confidence that we won't revert to a pre-industrial technology.

[jeff47]

55. Processing the silicon primarily requires heat

Which we can do without fossil fuels - it's just more expensive.

The other materials needed for doping the silicon are needed in very small quantities, so we should be able to make those last an extremely long time, especially when you factor in recycling.

Even if we can't do that, we've got other nearly-infinite options besides PV for electricity.

As for why I don't think we'll revert, it's because we are good at preserving information.

The fall of Rome led to going backwards technologically because vast swaths of the population couldn't read and write, and books were very hard to come by. Preserving information required a very large effort by people who had to be fed by others. No more food, and the information was lost.

Today, virtually everyone can read and write, and books are very cheap to produce. Preserving information is much easier, so societal disruption won't make us forget what we have learned - we wrote it down in lots of places, and can read what we wrote. We won't be running the Large Hadron Collider anymore, but we will know why we built it.

[mopinko]

9. ya know, i have a teenie little farm.

less than half an acre. people think i must be organic, because, ya know, small and all. but i am growing on poisoned land, in an old industrial city. i can be a perfect steward, but it still seems just stupid to me to worry about some purity label.
i have kids, but they don't really want to have kids. i suppose there will be a few grandkids. so i work my little plot, and hope that i can grow at least some food. i don't think like a prepper or anything, just think that huge changes are coming, i don't know what they are, but i do think that little plots like mine have made the difference for a lot of families in a lot of places in the past.
at any rate, it is a fine way to spend the time. as good as work comes.

agriculture is being reinvented as we speak. i am still the thin edge of the wedge. we are smart, and we are stupid. lets hope smart wins.

[Vashta Nerada]

12. A zombie apocalypse will wipe out 3/4 of the planet.

The rest of us will be walker bait.

Sorry. The Walking Dead was on tonight.

[bvf]

19. Some comfort -- novel spoiler alert

I tucked the below away when I first read "The Road," and I only hope I'm not breaking the law here:

Your post brought it to mind (McCarthy strongly hints that the "end" results from different circumstances, although I suppose that's arguable), and anyone intending to read it should read no further here. Not exactly inspirational, unless you take the long view, which is how I read your post.

In that case, I think it really is, which is why I tucked it away a few years back. It's the last paragraph of the book:










~~~~~


Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

"The Road," Cormac McCarthy (2006)

[Scootaloo]

21. Haven't read the book

I've seen the movie, and it's one of those few films that manages to be confusing, depressing, and grindingly dull all at the same time. If prose like that is what the script had to draw from (wimpled? torsional? vermiculate? McCarthy's weaponizing the thesaurus!) I'm not surprised.

If you're into the genre though, I heartily recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl." His Young Adult novels - The Drowned Cities and Shipbreaker - are set in the same sort of world, though all three are disconnected.

[bvf]

22. I should have explained something

just then.

The reason the paragraph struck me (and I might imagine others) is that the prose broke character only twice that I saw. One of these times was this final paragraph itself. (The other involved, about midway through the book, something about an old dog, and could probably be better described as a break in viewpoint. I don't recall if it made it into the script that way.) Otherwise, the writing is about as sparse (meaning not a lot of trips to the thesaurus) and bleak as was the script--deliberately so.

What's the genre you're referring to? Young Adult??

Do yourself a favor and take a pass on "Blood Meridian," (Talk about weaponizing the thesaurus! -- I struggled here and there, but enjoyed every word.)

P.S.

There are lots of action-packed movies about the "end" of the world out there that involve asteroids, zombies, earthquakes, giant worms, and more zombies. They don't grind.

[Scootaloo]

23. The genre is the environmental catastrophe thing

Another one is Trevor Hoyle's "The Last Gasp" - though it's soaked in Cold War stuff and spirals into kinda-wacky sci-fi territory, it's still an interesting read

[bvf]

24. Thanks for clarifying

I do appreciate it, and will revisit your earlier.

[Mojorabbit]

29. It is a powerful book nt

[blkmusclmachine]

17. Pray harder, cuz Gawd's "in the mix."

[Kennah]

39. I switched to Gaia. She's hot! That's usually a good thing, but not this time.

[wtmusic]

52. "Gawd" is a responsibility dodge

but you do whatever gets you to sleep at night.

[NickB79]

26. "Temperatures near the north pole were 35°F (20°C) above normal on February 13."

[PasadenaTrudy]

30. As I always say..

Glad I'm old, glad I didn't have kids....

[stuntcat]

36. +1

Two of the only 4 or 5 things I'm glad for from now on.

[PasadenaTrudy]

43. Seriously! nt

[CRH]

40. Been scary for a long time, ...

When the Rossby waves bring unpleasant cold or drought to the lower 48, the Arctic fluctuates as well. Just which manifestations of short term 'local weather' is noticed, is but a small varying piece of the puzzle, and cannot be separated from the effects of the regional destabilization, of the Arctic.

The unseasonable warm water creating more warming and melting of the sea ice effect, is but a cause and effect, noticed by very few, while iced to the asphalt in Georgia with mufflers puffing; and won't to be felt in the real effect, until years later.

Scary, because what happens now is inconvenience, while incapacitation of social function floats in our inattention of our future, and is predestined by our insouciance of today, to be on catastrophic levels, unless you believe in miracles.

[hatrack]

41. That's the problem - too Goddamned many people in this country believe in miracles

n/t

[truebrit71]

42. Ain't that the truth...

[wtmusic]

53. We need to spend a lot more money on shiny renewable toys

until we realize they don't work very well, and it's too late.

Oops.

[kristopher]

57. The only people who think they don't work are the coal/nuclear industry.

And that's an opinion no different than the 1% who are convinced they are the anointed "job creators".

[Cofitachequi]

68. I can hear the Limbaugh/Fox News reaction when the weather is HOT this summer....

"But, the winter they told us that COLD weather was a sign of Global Warming!!!!"

If they were naturally stupid that would be easier to deal with then them being intentionally stupid.