Post: #26

(05-06-2015 11:40 AM)Veloce Wrote:  There's all kinds of factors here. I lived in L.A. for 15 years and currently in Vegas. I was just at Lake Mead yesterday (it's not dried up) But I agree that the writing on the wall is that the entire SW region is fucked if things continue along their current trend. Lake Mead is currently at 1079 feet. If it dips below 1075 feet, there will be water rationing in Nevada and Arizona.

Here are a couple factors not being mentioned by the media, from a renter's perspective.

In L.A., it's very uncommon for renters to pay for their own water. It's included in the rent, but people don't think about it like that. Basically, they never see a water bill. They pay electricity and usually gas too, and that's it.

Add to the fact that water is too cheap, and this explains some of the stupidest shit I've seen in L.A. Up until I left in February of this year, I was still seeing retards washing down their driveway or sidewalk with a garden hose. Go to any semi-affluent neighborhood and every single house has a lawn. It's the same here in Vegas too. I live in Suburbia and the majority of houses have lawns, with the occasional yard having natural desert landscaping, an aesthetic which I personally prefer. The desert has some beautiful natural wildflowers and cacti, and these look more in place than having a stupid fucking lawn in the middle of the desert.

The place I'm renting has a lawn, and I tweaked the sprinkler system to water less, because I'm a cheapskate and hate lawns. The lawn is starting to get a little yellow and if I let it get too bad, the homeowners association can fine me. So I can either soak the shit out of the lawn which will double my water bill and is a huge waste, or pay for a landscaping company to overhaul the front and back yard here to a desert appearance (which I would do if I owned the place), or do it myself (which would still cost thousands in equipment rental and plants) or request the owner do it, which he wouldn't in a million years. By the time people change their lawn watering habits, it will be too late.

There have been interesting studies on tree rings to study droughts over the last 1200 years. There are indeed droughts that go for 5, 10, sometimes 15 years. I have no doubts that this drought will break, but the problem is the massive and inefficient water consumption. While Lake Mead is at it's lowest point since it was being filled in 1930, the Water Authority has just completed a tunnel that will insert a third straw into the lake to draw even more water out. Vegas is expanding faster than ever.

Gonna be an interesting year

Lets assume no rain for the next 5 years. Will water supplies be so run dry that there physically won't be any water coming out of the tap?

Post: #27

I live on the west coast and have been down to San Fran a bit lately. I cant help but compare the Big Four cities up here; Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and SF.

American cities still use high flow toilets. I haven't seen one of those up here in years. Green laws in California summer, while up in Vancouver during the dry season we are not allowed to water grass for 1-2 months. These two simple measures, spread out over 55 million people makes a hell of a difference.

Walking down the street in SF I see water springing out of cracks in the street, running down walls of buildings and just generally leaking out of the infrastructure. When I was in Sweden a part of the study I was doing was about water infrastructure and how Sweden can maintain itself without having to import water in the future. 14% of the fresh water was lost due to things such as leakage. And that was in Sweden where cities are maintained at very high levels.

To me it was so American to be in a toilet in a bar taking a piss into urinal that was pouring out a constant flush of water, while looking up and reading a poster from the government telling people to conserve water. SF is full of this type of hypocrite. Yell and scream about change, but doing nothing in their own lives to change this.

I really wonder how things are going to go for California. Some guy down there told me that 150 years ago the central valley was under 20 feet of water. So who knows how the earth cycles the water, but for right now the central valley was a dust bowl. We went swimming on the Yuba river and it was only a trickle of its former glory, and you could almost smell the Bud Light piss accumulate in the lower pools.

Post: #28

(05-06-2015 11:47 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

(05-06-2015 11:40 AM)Veloce Wrote:  There's all kinds of factors here. I lived in L.A. for 15 years and currently in Vegas. I was just at Lake Mead yesterday (it's not dried up) But I agree that the writing on the wall is that the entire SW region is fucked if things continue along their current trend. Lake Mead is currently at 1079 feet. If it dips below 1075 feet, there will be water rationing in Nevada and Arizona.

Here are a couple factors not being mentioned by the media, from a renter's perspective.

In L.A., it's very uncommon for renters to pay for their own water. It's included in the rent, but people don't think about it like that. Basically, they never see a water bill. They pay electricity and usually gas too, and that's it.

Add to the fact that water is too cheap, and this explains some of the stupidest shit I've seen in L.A. Up until I left in February of this year, I was still seeing retards washing down their driveway or sidewalk with a garden hose. Go to any semi-affluent neighborhood and every single house has a lawn. It's the same here in Vegas too. I live in Suburbia and the majority of houses have lawns, with the occasional yard having natural desert landscaping, an aesthetic which I personally prefer. The desert has some beautiful natural wildflowers and cacti, and these look more in place than having a stupid fucking lawn in the middle of the desert.

The place I'm renting has a lawn, and I tweaked the sprinkler system to water less, because I'm a cheapskate and hate lawns. The lawn is starting to get a little yellow and if I let it get too bad, the homeowners association can fine me. So I can either soak the shit out of the lawn which will double my water bill and is a huge waste, or pay for a landscaping company to overhaul the front and back yard here to a desert appearance (which I would do if I owned the place), or do it myself (which would still cost thousands in equipment rental and plants) or request the owner do it, which he wouldn't in a million years. By the time people change their lawn watering habits, it will be too late.

There have been interesting studies on tree rings to study droughts over the last 1200 years. There are indeed droughts that go for 5, 10, sometimes 15 years. I have no doubts that this drought will break, but the problem is the massive and inefficient water consumption. While Lake Mead is at it's lowest point since it was being filled in 1930, the Water Authority has just completed a tunnel that will insert a third straw into the lake to draw even more water out. Vegas is expanding faster than ever.

Gonna be an interesting year

Lets assume no rain for the next 5 years. Will water supplies be so run dry that there physically won't be any water coming out of the tap?

The reason your water shuts off isn't because no water still exists in your area - we're not actually going to be the Sahara here.

Your water will be shut off when it is no longer sufficiently profitable for the water to be delivered to you. Maintenance or delivery cost increases and accelerating losses from deteriorating water infrastructure combine with declining levels of AVAILABLE water supplies (those that already have access to market through infrastructure), resulting in a massive increase in the price of water. Whoever can pay, and can swing influence to get infrastructure maintenance, will have water. If you're on the edges of those areas you might get benefits, but if you're in one of the standard working-class or middle-class neighborhoods you're going to be in trouble, because at some point the cost of water will be so high that utilities will simply stop servicing entire neighborhoods. Like what's happening in Detroit right now.

A stroke of the pen, and you shut off half a city. Get used to it - triage is our future.

Post: #29

Most of our water goes into industrial or energy.

What would it take to continue using the fresh water for drinking and to move manufacturing and energy production to a different type water?

Industrial cooling alone takes something like 35% of our water.

Post: #30

^^^ What EC said.

There's still rainfall/snowfall every year, just not nearly enough. Lake Mead is fed by a couple rivers and by Lake Powell, another reservoir about the same size as Lake Mead. So as it stands, there's still a hell of a lot of water out there. We're talking the two largest water reservoirs in the country. More than anything, this is less about drought and way more about consumption.

To give an example, my dad lives in a very small town in a fairly small county in the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern California. They have a local reservoir that, despite the drought, is in no danger whatsoever, because the surrounding population is so small and people are very conscious about using their own resources. Despite record low snowpack, their reservoir level is still maintained at the annual average. They'll weather the storm just fine.

There have always been droughts. Somewhere along the line, there is a threshold of population density that a microclimate simply can't sustain. Humans can use their ingenuity to overcome nature here and there, but the question is for how long, and to what extent? I don't think even Elwood Mead himself could have imagined that the southwest would have reached its current population in such a short amount of time. The population of Los Angeles County (not just the city) when the Hoover Dam was completed was roughly 2.6 million. In 79 years, one lifetime, it's jumped up 384%, and that's one county (albeit the largest) in Southern California.

The population of Clark County (which contains Las Vegas) at the time of Hoover Dam construction was just 14,000! Vegas was just getting started by the mafia bosses and Mormon business owners. It's now over 2 million. Noone could have predicted that kind of growth.

If the shit ever hits the fan, I'm headed straight to my dads (if the highways haven't been shut down). They've got guns, rations under the house and in the freezer, generator, a good sized garden, wild deer and turkeys, and plenty of water.

Post: #31

Funny thing is I just moved from Los Angeles about 6 months ago

Post: #32

(05-06-2015 11:31 AM)Island Souljah Wrote:  

(05-06-2015 09:03 AM)IvanDrago Wrote:  

Who is laughing now?

You spelt soldier wrong.

Post: #33

(05-06-2015 10:06 AM)EnemyCombatant Wrote:  Our problems with environmental or energy issues in America stem from this: we ONLY think short-term and hope for the best, which works until it doesn't. And in fact that naive hope is what prevents any hope of sustainability, because it allows us to ignore the irresolvable issues that our civilization and individuals confront: that we can't keep going on like this, that technology won't save us from our hubristic need for endless material growth, but that we don't really have any "big ideas" that will save us.

We've done pretty well for hundreds of years (as a country) and many more as a civilization and a species, despite periodic dire warnings issued since Malthus and earlier that the end is nigh and "we can't keep going on like this". Maybe what is naive, to borrow a word, is not our "hopes for the best", but the know-nothing assurance of doom expressed in posts like this.

It is very interesting that you feel that your ostensible knowledge as "water research engineer" allows you to speak with complete assurance about how the technology of the future -- which by definition, is unknowable at present -- "won't save us" from the catastrophe that is sure to come; that we don't -- and never will, as you somehow also know with certainty -- have any "big ideas" that will be of any use. Except, apparently, yours and everybody else's big idea that we have sinned against Gaia, and some day, maybe not quite yet but soon enough, She will extract her terrible punishment.

You attempt to cloak your points in the mantle of an engineer's objective knowledge, but when you use phrases like "our hubristic need" for "endless" growth, you betray the emotions that really animate them. And indeed, the certainty that we are incapable of solving the technological challenges that lie ahead of us -- and that, even by your own account, lurk in the relatively remote future, since for now water in the West is plentiful as reflected in its very low prices -- this certainty, which has absolutely no rational basis and flies in the face of the entire history of human technological progress, can only arise from strong emotions that deserve to be examined more closely.

Post: #34

Immediate plans for partly subsidized conversion of lawns to xeriscape, with the tax break more than paid for by the savings on new water development.

Outlaw homeowners rules mandating water-stupid landscaping.

Lawns are completely idiotic

Post: #35

@ Lizard

Is the fact that we haven't had an actual water shortage disaster in this country your argument for why it won't happen? And that you are arguing that we will solve the current crisis with future technological advances because we have previously solved other problems with technological advances?

Because I read your post a couple times and that seems to be what are are saying/implying.

Post: #36

(05-06-2015 01:32 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  Immediate plans for partly subsidized conversion of lawns to xeriscape, with the tax break more than paid for by the savings on new water development.

Outlaw homeowners rules mandating water-stupid landscaping.

Lawns are completely idiotic

I never understood people's obsession with growing east coast style grass on the west coast.

Desert lawns look significantly better and more in place with the environment.

Post: #37

(05-06-2015 01:32 PM)iknowexactly Wrote:  Immediate plans for partly subsidized conversion of lawns to xeriscape, with the tax break more than paid for by the savings on new water development.

Outlaw homeowners rules mandating water-stupid landscaping.

Lawns are completely idiotic

There are alot of things that are completely idiotic, but what I like about america is the freedom to do idiotic things...and endure their consequences, without government interference. Home owner associations..fuck my life...they are like miniature governments gone wild.

I made a conscious choice to buy somewhere that didn't have and HOA because I figured its the worst of both worlds. If I want to be told what to do, why not just rent.

I don't know if I agree with lawns being idiotic though...sure a lawn in a desert is crazy but in my temperate climate but I like having a laws as a buffer greenscape between myself and wildlife that likes tall plants like snakes. Also, its hard to play soccer with your kids on a bed or rocks.

PS, before you flip out, I don't water or fertilize my lawn. Its not a golf course and dandelions never hurt anyone.

Post: #38

(05-06-2015 10:06 AM)EnemyCombatant Wrote:  tl;dr: I'm a water research engineer. This drought is only going to perpetuate and intensify. If you live in the American West, and intend to stay long-term, you should look at the current drought situation, projected rainfall patterns in your area for coming decades, consider how secure your place is - and make serious considerations of bugging out to wetter climates. If you have to stay in the West, stay away from large, urban centers in deserts - all of Southern California, Las Vegas, Phoenix / Tucson metros for AZ are all particularly fucked.

Thank you for your frank outline of the situation. Basically, what I take from this is that at a minimum, water prices will go up, potentially a lot, in California - especially Southern California.

I have heard that the last 100 years or so (corresponding to most of the population growth in California) have been - on average - wetter than in centuries past. And the current drought can be viewed as a return to what was previously normal. Is this right? I'm curious.

Post: #39

(05-06-2015 01:37 PM)Repo Wrote:  @ Lizard

Is the fact that we haven't had an actual water shortage disaster in this country your argument for why it won't happen? And that you are arguing that we will solve the current crisis with future technological advances because we have previously solved other problems with technological advances?

Because I read your post a couple times and that seems to be what are are saying/implying.

There is no particular reason to expect a water shortage "in this country" at large. The US as a whole has extremely plentiful water sources; it is the envy of the world in this regard. So that's that.

We are talking about a specific area of the country, certain parts of the West. It is true that this area is subject to periodic droughts, and we are in the midst of one of them right now. There is nothing exceptional or unusually severe about this drought in historical terms; droughts have happened before, they last for a certain period, then end.

The idea is that we are somehow reaching a "breaking point" in the ability of this region to sustain further growth and increasing human population. There is absolutely no reason to believe this. First, population growth in the US in general, as well as in the West, is quite slow at this point; it's not as if it's doubling every 10 or 20 or even 50 years. Second, our ability to adapt and to invent new technologies that support continued growth has always more than exceeded actual population growth and there is absolutely no reason to expect any different in the future except for emotional reasons of those that believe that the human being must be punished sooner or later for its "hubris".

In short, yes, there is no acute problem right now, and there is no good reason to believe that we won't find ways to manage and meet various challenges as and when they arise, like we've always done. In fact, it's likely that the pace of our advances will far exceed the (relatively mild) pace of actual population growth.

I am sympathetic to the survivalist fantasies of guys who like to imagine what they will do "when the shit hits the fan"; but these are likely to remain fantasies. At the very least, a little drought in Cali is not going to be what causes the shit to hit that long-suffering but still unshat-upon proverbial fan, LOL.

Post: #40

Lizard, I can't help but grin at your endless optimism

The truth is the shit has hit the fan before, and in your optimistic spirit, we Americans prevailed, endured, adapted. I have no doubts of that. I don't foresee any collapse or apocalyptic events. When I say "shit hits the fan", I'm not talking about the earth cracking open and hellspawn leaping from the depths, wreaking havoc and leveling the city.

For me, the shit hitting the fan means water rationing and a skyrocketing price for water. Nevada and Arizona will be hit first. California has first dibs on our water, so they'll be hit last. Shit hitting the fan means farms going out of commission, like they already have in California; about a half million acres are out of commission in California's central valley. So that means higher produce prices, increased raw costs, etc. For someone planning a food establishment, this is the shit hitting the fan. The shit hitting the fan is living in a place with an already higher-than-average crime rate (Las Vegas), and taking that already poverty-stricken demographic and cutting off their water because they can't afford their utilities.

The "apocalypse" won't come overnight. It would be a gradual, drawn out process, allowing officials to react in whatever is the most feasible and logical solution.

Quote:First, population growth in the US in general, as well as in the West, is quite slow at this point; it's not as if it's doubling every 10 or 20 or even 50 years

The population of California more than doubled in the past 50 years.

The population of Nevada grew by 6.6x in the past 50 years.

The population of Arizona grew by 4.5x in the past 50 years.

While it's not as fast as the boom during the early 20th century, it's still significant.

Quote:The idea is that we are somehow reaching a "breaking point" in the ability of this region to sustain further growth and increasing human population. There is absolutely no reason to believe this

We're about to find out. This isn't simply a matter of chicken little running around about the sky falling. The Nevada Water District better have something up their sleeves because if the current trend of usage and precipitation continues, Hoover Dam won't be generating power after a couple years and the reservoir could cease operations within a decade.

Post: #41

(05-06-2015 01:48 PM)Dr. Howard Wrote:  I don't know if I agree with lawns being idiotic though...sure a lawn in a desert is crazy but in my temperate climate but I like having a laws as a buffer greenscape between myself and wildlife that likes tall plants like snakes. Also, its hard to play soccer with your kids on a bed or rocks.

PS, before you flip out, I don't water or fertilize my lawn. Its not a golf course and dandelions never hurt anyone.

Where I currently live, it's like this:



Personally, I prefer this aesthetic:



I mean, just look at that Joshua Tree. Beautiful.

Post: #42

(05-06-2015 02:45 PM)Veloce Wrote:  Where I currently live, it's like this:

Lucky!

Where I live it's like this

Post: #43

(05-06-2015 02:45 PM)Veloce Wrote:  Personally, I prefer this aesthetic:



I mean, just look at that Joshua Tree. Beautiful.

I thought that was an image of Silicon Valley?

Post: #44

(05-06-2015 01:00 PM)Veloce Wrote:  If the shit ever hits the fan, I'm headed straight to my dads (if the highways haven't been shut down). They've got guns, rations under the house and in the freezer, generator, a good sized garden, wild deer and turkeys, and plenty of water.

You'd don't have to move to a tiny village in the Sierras. There's the rest of the country. No shortage of water in the eastern half of the country where it's a more wet climate.

If we were going to build a pipeline to California, what about one from the Pacific Northwest rather than across the Midwest?

Post: #45

(05-06-2015 03:13 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  You'd don't have to move to a tiny village in the Sierras. There's the rest of the country. No shortage of water in the eastern half of the country where it's a more wet climate.

Free rent and then plane ticket abroad

Post: #46

Veloce, I'm happy to make you grin (really) but I don't see myself as some sort of Panglossian optimist. I just don't see a reason to make a mountain out of every molehill, and when posters start talking about how we are about to be punished for our "hubris", or "greed", or need for "endless" growth, I have a strong suspicion -- more than a suspicion, to be honest -- that what really animates them is something other than a cold-blooded consideration of likely outcomes for good or ill. So what may seem to you like "endless optimism" is really a necessary correction to the reality of endless doomsaying that is driven by what I see as a dark and dangerous ideology. It is that ideology that really concerns me, because I see it as the one thing that is capable of causing us some real problems down the line if it is allowed to spread unchecked.

Consider that in the face of every environmental problem, large or small, whether it be the Gulf oil spill, or Fukushima, or drought, or floods, or a heat wave or a cold snap, we are immediately bombarded by concerted prophecies of doom. The event du jour is always declared to be a calamity unlike any other; it always asserted that "studies" show that it will lead to uniquely destructive and irreversible consequences, and that moreover it is the "new normal" that we had better get used to from now on. And it is always asserted with great confidence that things will only go from bad to worse unless we heed Gaia's last warning and take some radical measures to curb our "greed" and "hubris" and forgo our supposedly incessant need for growth in favor of a different way of life in which we largely give up on the idea of progress, and live in such a way as to minimize our "footprint" on this sacred planet.

After a while, each of these events slips out of the public consciousness; none of the dire prophecies ever come to pass (for amusement, spend some time one idle day comparing the frenetic pronouncements of "experts" at the time of the BP spill with what actually happened to the Gulf ecosystem; or do the same for Fukushima; or read how snow was supposed to become "a thing of the past" due to global warming, except now we seem to have more snow than ever; or how "climate change" was supposed to lead to ever more severe hurricanes, except that we've had the fewest significant hurricane hits on the East Coast for years now compared to the last century or more; the list goes on and on and on). But none of that stops the same "experts" (literally the same people in many cases) from pouncing on the new supposed catastrophe, issuing the same dire warnings, and prescribing the same bitter medicine.

Again, what really concerns me -- and this, I feel, is a justifiable and actual concern, unlike the concerns of these serial fearmongers -- is the spread of a sinister ideology of hatred of the human being, dismissal of progress and its possibilities, and fear and hatred of the future. All the things that are best and sweetest about our lives we owe to the hard won achievements of men who have toiled for centuries, using all their wits and ingenuity, often against great odds, to make progress against the stubborn and hostile material world that surrounds us. Our achievements are superb and breathtaking, but we are not done; as a species, we are just getting started, our progress is in its very infancy. It would be tragic and beyond regrettable if it were to be allowed to be halted -- even temporarily -- by a failure of nerve and will that stems from a nihilistic ideology of fear and hatred that is like a sickness of the spirit.

That is what is really in the back of my mind when I address these matters; because I have a very strong sense that these repeated prophecies of doom are not made on some sort of rational case-by-case basis, but are animated by an overarching emotion that should be examined and brought out to light. It is really not a matter of optimism or pessimism, but a matter of whether we allow an ideology that is inimical to progress and to the human being itself to take ever deeper root in our midst. For my part, I intend to keep doing whatever I can to call it out for what it is wherever I see it.

Post: #47

^Great post.

I think you highlighted the ideological problem we face from Academia.

These are all solvable problems. However Academia seems to think the answer is to revert to a pre-industrial state of existence and let the mass of humanity die. They are convinced that humans and technological progress is evil.

They are in this regard like the champagne socialists. Communism for the masses but not for them. Or in this case poverty and starvation for the masses but not for them.

Post: #48

(05-06-2015 01:12 PM)IvanDrago Wrote:  

(05-06-2015 11:31 AM)Island Souljah Wrote:  

(05-06-2015 09:03 AM)IvanDrago Wrote:  

Who is laughing now?

You spelt soldier wrong.

No, I avoid spelt and most other grains but I definitely spelled Souljah correctly, its my name after all, I think I would know. Honestly were not going there are we?

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently
opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

Your just in the first stage of denial thats all, its OK hell, Im still just a male feminist.

Post: #49

The Lizard of Oz,
I can only speak for myself. I have a BS degree in Civil Engineering, combined with a personal passion and research into environmental topics. I have to trust that gives me some ability to speak truths that run counter to conventional wisdom, and at least be accorded a chance to have my viewpoints considered.

I find it hard to actually contribute to discussions like this - or to any other online discourse, for that matter. You know what they say, that arguing on the internet is like the special olympics - no matter who wins, they're all still retarded. Everything is just an endless cycle of manufactured outrage, bullshit political gestures, and general ignorance, on both Left and Right, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There's a general sense of futility underpinning all of it, because no matter how many statistics you or I throw at each other, despite the energy either of us puts in - that at the end we'll probably be at the same place.

It's rare to actually have any chances at real dialogue these days, as opposed to just rhetoric . That especially applies on the environmental issue, I think because we are dealing with a deeper, interconnected issue here. It's one that's been explored by the Manosphere, even. What happens when people realize their own animal nature, or the cold reality of the world at large?
Well, they turn away from it, of course, because it's uncomfortable! and jump to some belief or belief system that will resolve their cognitive dissonance. Hence feminists jumping from dick to dick, and rationalizing it away. Hence some dude working a 9-5 he hates because he believes it'll bring him stability, or a president bombing another country to smithereens and kissing his kid goodnight.

That's the one thing I hold onto, that drives my interest in "environmental issues." That one central, dangerous truth: that we are all just human beings. No matter how much we rage against bars of our cage, that is what we will be: frail, mortal, flawed beings set adrift in an absurd existence. Maybe where I depart you is from something as fundamental as that recognition. I don't turn away from the darkness inside myself, inside of others - that blinds me to truth. We live inside of a machine - I don't let it make its goals my own. I don't subscribe to fantasies of new worlds or of revolution, I only exist in as balanced a way as possible.

I'm not trying be on liberal-savior type shit here, I still drive around, run the house, lights, computer, whatever. We enjoy a standard of living in the United States higher than at possibly any other time in human history. The thing is though - of all the technological miracles promised over the last decades, we live at around the same, or worse, level of people in the 1970s. It's the year 20-fucking-15. Weren't we supposed to be on Mars by now? Weren't we supposed to have hoverboards? Instead we have the Syrian civil war spreading to the whole godamn region, pussy paradise lost with the Ukraine war, most chicks in America are fat or cuntish, and the only added feature of the iPhruit7 is going to be a justin bieber ringtone. In addition, ya know, there's these environmental crises and energy crises I've read a bit about.




Maybe the whole timeline of this progress thing is going wrong. Maybe it's - stay in stasis for 40-50 years then technosingularity!

There's this concept called the tipping point. Imagine a glass of water, filled to the brim. Now start pushing it a bit, and some of the water will spill out. Push it a bit more and water will spill out a bit more rapidly. But push the glass enough, and - it reaches the tipping point. That glass is going to fall on it side, and until you pick it up, water's going to spill out mighty fast. Even if you pick it up, you might be able to get some of that water back in the glass, but you will never get back all of what was in that glass.

That's what we're doing on a global scale. Most of those little disasters you named - the Gulf Oil spill / ocean dead zones, global warming, chopping down all our rainforests, overfishing, or resource consumption - they wouldn't do too much on their own.
As an analogy, say you take Poland in 2001 and gradually add higher standards of living, feminism, looser standards of morality, phones & then smartphones - each one of these wouldn't create a huge change in culture, but at some point the tipping point is reached and girls become fat twats.

The natural systems that shape our biosphere become resilient over millions of years, and it takes a lot to shake them out. But, little pushes, and you increase the chance that system falls out of wack in a big way when it gets too far off-balance. And when nature falls out of wack it results in pretty bad and expensive juju for Man.

You can say that I'm a crackpot, or that I hate people if you want. But I do this out of love, man. If we want to survive what's coming we need to learn a whole new way of living, as people have had to do throughout all of history. I'm making it my mission to help people get ready for that transition, and to be a part of changing how we live.

In that vein, I could be totally wrong about all this horseshit. But it's always good to ask your neighbor for help. Say, Lizard of Oz, what you think? Are we all gonna die of rape culture / global warming or are we going to live forever as brains in robot bodies ?

Post: #50

(05-06-2015 08:56 AM)Island Souljah Wrote:  Our entire planet will face incredible clean water shortages in this century, well not Canada but just about everybody else.

Only a matter of time before we start exporting it south in bulk.