Category Archives: Apocalypse When?

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High-tide flooding caused by rising seas is impacting Miami and cities as far north as Boston with ever increasing frequency and severity. (Photo by Harold Wanless, University of Miami)

The projected sea-level rise of the next quarter-century or so because of climate change will occur, albeit briefly, in Miami Beach next Thursday. On that day, the alignment of the sun, earth and moon will produce a King Tide — the highest high tide of the year, a full foot above normal, or about half the sea level rise Miami is expected to experience by 2060. Construction crews are racing to fit plugs in the city’s stormwater drains that dump into the sea and, suddenly, provide a conduit for rising seawater directly to the streets, and to complete installation of four enormous pumps with which to fight the incoming tide. (By pumping the water where? Um, back into the rising sea. Isn’t that a little like bailing one end of a boat into the other?) Thus we get a preview not just of sea level rise, but of the hapless human response to it. Continue reading →

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Rick Hanauer surveys his realm. On a clear day, you can see disaster.

One of the Masters of the Universe — he bankrolled the startup of Amazon.com, for example — has peered through the bubble of wealth that surrounds him and has glimpsed a terrifying future. Now, the opinions of the rich and powerful have no enhanced value because of their status and deserve no special attention; to the contrary, they are highly suspect given their destructive record. But given the almost universal tendency to defer to people who accumulate money, it’s worth quoting them on the rare occasions when, like a stopped clock, they are in fact correct.

So when Seattle entrepreneur (from the French, meaning “between jobs”) Nick Hanauer publishes an open letter in Politico to his fellow .01-percenters, warning them that unless they change their ways they will come to a bad end, well, it’s worth a listen. Continue reading →

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The last house on Holland Island in the Chesapeake Bay, possibly one of the first casualties of climate change induced storms and rising seas. Think they had any warning? (Photo by baldeaglebluff/Flickr)

According to the world’s largest assemblage of climate scientists, the view forward is bleak. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we should expect:

• millions of people to be displaced by rising seas and more frequent raging storms;
• more droughts, and more intense heat waves, in more places;
• extreme shortages of food, fuel, and medicine around the world.

That’s what the IPCC said in its first report, published in 1990. In reports issued every seven years since, including the one out today, it has said the same things, with increasing urgency and certainty. Continue reading →

Critics across the country are heaping praise on Tribulation: A Novel of the Near Future by Thomas A. Lewis, editor of The Daily Impact and author of the 2009 book Brace for Impact: Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age. The novel picks up on one of the scenarios of collapse laid out in Brace for Impact, and imagines how it might play out. Kirkus Reviews calls it “A riveting, somewhat terrifying work of political speculative fiction…a thorough takedown of corporate statehood, blind wastefulness and human greed.”

Lewis says he was inspired to write the novel by a TED talk he heard broadcast a few years ago in which a storyteller made the point that humans are not wired to enjoy or retain facts, but they remember as good story forever. He thought it might be useful to array the arguments for impending collapse, as laid out in Brace for Impact, in a story telling how the crash might affect a family, and how they might react to it.

The story begins with Brian Trent calling his retired father, one day in the near future, to say, “We’re going to the Farm,” William reacts with alarm. Because Brian, a top reporter for The Washington Post, is really saying that he believes the country’s economy is about to crash, and he and his family are heading for a sanctuary they’ve prepared in the mountains of West Virginia. William does not believe that America could come apart…until he sees it start to happen, with unbelievable speed, the very next day. Continue reading →

The sudden crash of a wealthy, technologically advanced civilization is not rare in history. Can you say Mayan? (Photo by amber.kennedy/Flickr)

A major, multi-disciplinary study combining the perspectives of theoretical mathematics, natural and social sciences and — gasp! — history, among others, has concluded that a total, irreversible collapse of the world’s industrial civilization is both likely and imminent. The peer-reviewed study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Ecological Economics, confirms in detail the conclusions of my 2009 book Brace for Impact, the premises of The Daily Impact, and the scenario of my forthcoming novel Tribulation. Continue reading →

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Egyptian riot police whale on opponents of Mubarak, as they would later on those of Morsi, and now on opponents of the army generals, temporarily back in charge. The prognosis is not good. (Photo by Oxfamnovib/Flickr)

Never forget that where you see rebellion, it arises from terrible privation and loss of hope. Nor forget that where you see privation and despair, you will soon see rebellion. It does not matter whether Egypt is governed by the army or the Muslim Brotherhood, by a dictator or a democrat; what matters is that the Egyptian people cannot get enough food, water or fuel. It does not matter whether Iran is governed by a cleric, a moderate or a Southern Baptist; if the people do not have enough food, water or electricity, the government will fall. And that won’t solve the problems. Continue reading →

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The outline shows the normal extent of Arctic sea ice. This is where it was in the summer of 2012. But wait there’s more. (NASA Goddard photo)

A cascade of recent studies concludes that warming Arctic permafrost and ocean floors are on the verge of emitting massive methane eruptions that will quickly load the atmosphere with many times more greenhouse gas than has been produced during the entire Industrial Age. The ensuing warming will so destabilize the climate that a mass extinction may follow that could be the worst in 300 million years — since the so-called “Great Dying” of the Permian Period wiped out 90 per cent of sea life and 70 per cent of land animals. (Please insert the latest “how-could-there-be-global-warming-when-it’s- so-cold?” joke here.) Continue reading →

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Latest from RMS Titanic:  Nothing bad has happened yet.

Do prophets of doom grow tired of warning against a doom that never seems to happen? Of course we do. But what really saps our spirit is not the jeering from the Business-as-Usual advocates, but the inadequacy of their thinking. It’s not the heat, you see, it’s the stupidity. To reason that because a thing has not happened yet, therefore the prospects of its happening are diminished, is not supported by any accepted rules of logic, and is a staggeringly dumb idea to cling to along the San Andreas Fault. (Of course, delay does not make a thing more likely to happen either, except in earthquake country.)

Other evidence must be consulted, and a review of the things that have not happened in 2013 may help us to decide whether they are more or less likely to happen in 2014. Continue reading →

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What do the Egyptian people want? Islam? Democracy? Or is it just bread, and a way to survive? (Photo by Jerry Jackson, globaltechfirm/Flickr)

Disregard anything the poets and pundits are saying about current events in Egypt as long as they are rhapsodizing about such irrelevancies as democracy vs. tyranny, secularism vs. radical Islam, or when a coup is not a coup. Listen only to those who recognize that Egypt is being sledge-hammered by a perfect storm of peak oil, peak food and peak water, exacerbated by a strong dose of climate change. Egypt is a failing state, whose failure not only will destabilize an entire region, but foreshadows the similar failure of every state whose existence depends on cheap and plentiful oil, food and water. Continue reading →