Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight

[White Crane Feather]

If you can build a fire, trap, make shelter, and handle an AR, you will be just fine. Dig a hole in the woods and let the dust settle. Humans are not going anywhere.

[Guest Br Cornelius]

What is disturbing here is that none of you seem to believe there is anything we can do about the many challenges we face. The clock is meant as a warning in order to galvanize action to defuse the situation. Its seem to have failed.

What I see all around me is people who believe that what we are doing now is inevitable and an expression of human nature. Thats just bull****.

Br Cornelius

[Michelle]

What is disturbing here is that none of you seem to believe there is anything we can do about the many challenges we face. The clock is meant as a warning in order to galvanize action to defuse the situation. Its seem to have failed.

What I see all around me is people who believe that what we are doing now is inevitable and an expression of human nature. Thats just bull****.

Br Cornelius

Being an environmentalist myself, it could have something to do with how many dire warnings we've been given over the years. If this or that isn't done before such and such a date the effects will be irreversible and we are all doomed. Like the boy who cried wolf and the Christians who keep predicting the date of the end of days, which never seems to happen as predicted, people begin to ignore it. This has been extremely detrimental to the cause, in the case of the fence sitters, having placed doubt in their minds as to the accuracy of any other evidence of man made climate change.

[spud the mackem]

Which clock are they working on...G.M.T (Greenwich Mean Time) , E.S.T. (Eastern Seaboard Time) or Washington U.S.A time, and have they remembered to add/delete Summer time, which either puts us at 00.57 am, over the top or 10.57 pm. whichever. Add another 30 minutes for Oceanic pollution and we are all in deep doo doo.

I have to start stocking up on Baked Beans.

[Guest Br Cornelius]

Being an environmentalist myself, it could have something to do with how many dire warnings we've been given over the years. If this or that isn't done before such and such a date the effects will be irreversible and we are all doomed. Like the boy who cried wolf and the Christians who keep predicting the date of the end of days, which never seems to happen as predicted, people begin to ignore it. This has been extremely detrimental to the cause, in the case of the fence sitters, having placed doubt in their minds as to the accuracy of any other evidence of man made climate change.

All of the predictions are slowly and incrementally coming to pass. There was no crying wolf. Soil is disappearing, clean water is becoming scarce, the climate is changing, the species are going never to be seen again. The fact that no one seems to give a **** isn't for the want of been warned.

There's no fluffy bunny way to dress these facts up, they are still as horrific as the day the scientists made them - we have just become dulled to their reality.

Br Cornelius

[Michelle]

Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:

1. "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." - Harvard biologist George Wald

2. "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." - Washington University biologist Barry Commoner

3. "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." - New York Times editorial

4. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." - Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich

5. "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born... [by 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." - Paul Ehrlich

6. "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," - Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day

7. "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions.... By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." - North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter

8. "In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." - Lifemagazine

9. "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." - Ecologist Kenneth Watt

10. "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." - Paul Ehrlich

11. "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate... that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, 'Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, 'I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" - Ecologist Kenneth Watt

12. "[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." - Newsweek magazine

13. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." - Kenneth Watt

cont...

http://cnsnews.com/m...-earth-day-1970

I know you've denyed many times some predictions were made. You say the media took things out of context and there were no widespread scientific reports of global cooling. Be that as it may, this is what was being reported and if scientists were taken out of context I believe they have a responsibility to set the record straight. Seeing as how I jumped on the bandwagon of saving the world at an early age I vividly remember these widespread beliefs.

Now, may I ask you not to attack the site or the author and address the points made...which I believe have been verified?

Edit: The Earth Day 1970 link in the first line of my post is interesting too.

Edited January 23, 2015 by Michelle

[ancient astronaut]

guess the writer of the piece has been watching too much Watchmen.....

.

Love Watchmen. I'm one of the few that actually applauds Zach for sticking to the source material.

[Doug1029]

what global catastrophe? please, nobody is never going to start a nuke war, because they know we all will die, including them. So I call ******** on this.

We have come close to starting a nuclear war by accident. Our Air Force even dropped a bomb on Albuquerque. It was an accident, but only one safety latch survived the drop to keep the bomb from detonating.

And then there are those eleven missing atomic bombs. Seven went missing somewhere inside the US. Two are believed buried in the mud of a Virginia swamp and on the continental shelf in the Atlantic. And four more have been lost outside the US.

One bomb was lost and then recovered: a check of the nuclear arsenal showed a bomb missing. The Pentagon quietly sweated while trying to find it. Then a lieutenant doing an inventory of conventional bombs found one with strange lettering that he couldn't recognize. The word went up the chain-of-command and the bomb was put back where it belonged.

We don't do too bad with conventional weapons, either: there are two earthquake bombs believed to have been dropped in a Colorado lake by a pilot having a mental breakdown. He had just enough left to dump them where they couldn't hurt anybody before flying his plane into a mountain. Then there's eight sarin bomblets that turned up in a trash dump in Denver. The army deactivated them - no harm done. And then there's some canisters of mustard gas that turned up in an Oklahoma State Park about five years ago. Some kid found them while digging for selenite crystals. Again, the army came and collected them, then did a search for more, finding nothing.

If the military can't take care of its toys, maybe it's time to take some away from them.

Doug

[shrooma]

Love Watchmen. I'm one of the few that actually applauds Zach for sticking to the source material.

.

funnily enough, i'm watching Sucker Punch (MASSIVELY underrated movie- the soundtrack alone is priceless! (Emilliana Torrini's version of 'white rabbit' is worth twice what you'd pick the movie up on DVD for) as we speak!

Alan Moore's a funny bugger though when it comes to anybody messing with his s**t- and after TLOEG, can you blame him?

brilliant comics-average movie.

but I reckon David(solidsnake)Hayter did a bloody good job of turning an almost impossible-to-film comic into a working script!

but for the look?

Zack Snyder is the new Ridley Scott.....

.

[shrooma]

We have come close to starting a nuclear war by accident. Our Air Force even dropped a bomb on Albuquerque. It was an accident, but only one safety latch survived the drop to keep the bomb from detonating.

And then there are those eleven missing atomic bombs. Seven went missing somewhere inside the US. Two are believed buried in the mud of a Virginia swamp and on the continental shelf in the Atlantic. And four more have been lost outside the US.

One bomb was lost and then recovered: a check of the nuclear arsenal showed a bomb missing. The Pentagon quietly sweated while trying to find it. Then a lieutenant doing an inventory of conventional bombs found one with strange lettering that he couldn't recognize. The word went up the chain-of-command and the bomb was put back where it belonged.

We don't do too bad with conventional weapons, either: there are two earthquake bombs believed to have been dropped in a Colorado lake by a pilot having a mental breakdown. He had just enough left to dump them where they couldn't hurt anybody before flying his plane into a mountain. Then there's eight sarin bomblets that turned up in a trash dump in Denver. The army deactivated them - no harm done. And then there's some canisters of mustard gas that turned up in an Oklahoma State Park about five years ago. Some kid found them while digging for selenite crystals. Again, the army came and collected them, then did a search for more, finding nothing.

If the military can't take care of its toys, maybe it's time to take some away from them.

Doug

.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash

.

[Doug1029]

For the first nine: most of those folks were novelists, not professional scientists. A couple who were scientists were writing out of their fields of expertise. But a few ere right:

10. "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." - Paul Ehrlich

Came true: pollution from burning coal causes an estimated 22,300 deaths a year in Europe alone (German study cited in The Guardian). The World Health Organization Reports one million premature deaths a year from coal and 24,000 a year in the US.

11. "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate... that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, 'Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, 'I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" - Ecologist Kenneth Watt

Actually happened. But he was talking about light sweet crude. Fracking has changed the entire economic picture. Oil we couldn't extract in the 1970s is powering our cars. With the Baaken, we now have about 20 years of oil reserves in the US. When that's gone, we're going back to the Saudis and beg them for more oil.

12. "[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." - Newsweek magazine

That's an example of a magazine publishing things it knows not of. We have known for fifty plus years that water vapor warms the planet by trapping heat. It is a greenhouse gas. Newsweek should have known better.

13. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." - Kenneth Watt

That has never been true. I have the records to prove it. There was a slight downturn in temps in the late 1960s. Mistaking weather for climate, people like Kenneth Watts put two-and-two together and got 22. A five-year downturn means nothing. There are several climate cycles that run 7, 8 and 9 years. If they all go up or down at the same time, the result is a rise or a drop in temps that will be reversed within a decade.

You say the media took things out of context and there were no widespread scientific reports of global cooling. Be that as it may, this is what was being reported and if scientists were taken out of context I believe they have a responsibility to set the record straight.

Scientists do "set the record straight" in professional journals. But the popular press, including most of the people you have cited, do not read these articles. All the ifs, ands and buts in a typical scientific study make for boring reading for the layman. That doesn't sell advertising, so the media do not report it, preferring the sensationalized versions of events. Many such articles get written without using any scientific input. The media also have a responsibility for accuracy, but even when they publish a retraction, it's buried on page 8 instead of in the headline.

Doug

[Guest Br Cornelius]

Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:

1. "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." - Harvard biologist George Wald

2. "We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." - Washington University biologist Barry Commoner

3. "Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." - New York Times editorial

4. "Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." - Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich

5. "Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born... [by 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." - Paul Ehrlich

6. "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," - Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day

7. "Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions.... By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." - North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter

8. "In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution... by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." - Lifemagazine

9. "At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." - Ecologist Kenneth Watt

10. "Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." - Paul Ehrlich

11. "By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate... that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, 'Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, 'I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" - Ecologist Kenneth Watt

12. "[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." - Newsweek magazine

13. "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." - Kenneth Watt

cont...

http://cnsnews.com/m...-earth-day-1970

I know you've denyed many times some predictions were made. You say the media took things out of context and there were no widespread scientific reports of global cooling. Be that as it may, this is what was being reported and if scientists were taken out of context I believe they have a responsibility to set the record straight. Seeing as how I jumped on the bandwagon of saving the world at an early age I vividly remember these widespread beliefs.

Now, may I ask you not to attack the site or the author and address the points made...which I believe have been verified?

Edit: The Earth Day 1970 link in the first line of my post is interesting too.

Many of the more obvious and grievous forms of pollution have indeed been addressed (smog and acid rain been two), though a person living in China may vehemently disagree in that we outsourced a lot of it to them. Peak oil is happening, despite the little games that Saudi is playing in trying to dominate the market, most of the recent production only been viable at +$80 a barrel. Agriculture is holding in productivity whilstever the oil pumps keep feeding the fertilizer plants at full pelt (wheat taking more oil than its own weight to produce). 50% of all vertibrates have become extinct over the last 50years and the rate of extinctions is accelerating. Particulates were a strong inhibitor of temperatures whilstever we were producing electricity and steel by dirty coal creating vast clouds of partculates, but we stopped that and the underlying warming trend of the other pollutant CO2 came to dominate. And let me remind you that 100,000's of people have and do die from air pollution.

Despite some wild fringe predictions the predictions of the Club of Rome in the Limits of Growth, and the already consensus position that we were causing global warming are ticking along right on schedule.

Br Cornelius

[Michelle]

Current predictions...

WASHINGTON – At an EMS (Environmental Media Services) Press Breakfast, five of the nation's leading environmentalists discussed what they consider to be the most important issues facing the world in the next century.

Below are the speakers and a few of their comments:

Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology at Oregon State University, a MacArthur Fellow and a Pew Scholar in conservation and the environment, on ecosystem dysfunction: Ecosystem services – which purify our air and water, regulate climate, pollinate crops and generate fertile soil – are being severely disrupted by human activity.

"There are very profound ramifications for us, and we're not paying attention. We are in the process of transforming the planet in unprecedented ways ... increasing carbon dioxide content in our atmosphere by 30 percent, transforming two-thirds of our land surface. These changes are disrupting the systems on which we depend. Scientists are only beginning to understand how these ecosystems work. What is obvious is that today is different from any other time on Earth. We have learned that many of these changes are irreversible."

To deal with this problem, "We need good, credible sources of information. We've seen junk science, ignorance and disinformation play out. We need much more comprehensive research. We need to be able to hear that information without having a lot of ridiculous assertions being portrayed as credible science."

Lubchenco was heartened that the National Science Foundation's board recently announced that environmental science must be made one of its highest priorities, calling for an additional $1 billion annually to be added to its present budget for this discipline. She called on all parties to practice the precautionary principle: "Uncertainty warrants precaution."

Bill McKibben, former New Yorker editor and author of The End of Nature, on global warming: "For the first time, we have become big enough as a species to affect everything around us. Climate change is the one issue which – if we don't take care of it – all others won't matter much."

cont...

http://www.ecomall.c...hopping/ems.htm

Many of these issues have been or are being addressed, but constantly telling people the sky is falling makes them take little, if any of it, seriuosly. It makes them feel helpless so that even the small part they can take is worthless.

Edited January 23, 2015 by Michelle

[Guest Br Cornelius]

Current predictions...

WASHINGTON – At an EMS (Environmental Media Services) Press Breakfast, five of the nation's leading environmentalists discussed what they consider to be the most important issues facing the world in the next century.

Below are the speakers and a few of their comments:

Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology at Oregon State University, a MacArthur Fellow and a Pew Scholar in conservation and the environment, on ecosystem dysfunction: Ecosystem services – which purify our air and water, regulate climate, pollinate crops and generate fertile soil – are being severely disrupted by human activity.

"There are very profound ramifications for us, and we're not paying attention. We are in the process of transforming the planet in unprecedented ways ... increasing carbon dioxide content in our atmosphere by 30 percent, transforming two-thirds of our land surface. These changes are disrupting the systems on which we depend. Scientists are only beginning to understand how these ecosystems work. What is obvious is that today is different from any other time on Earth. We have learned that many of these changes are irreversible."

To deal with this problem, "We need good, credible sources of information. We've seen junk science, ignorance and disinformation play out. We need much more comprehensive research. We need to be able to hear that information without having a lot of ridiculous assertions being portrayed as credible science."

Lubchenco was heartened that the National Science Foundation's board recently announced that environmental science must be made one of its highest priorities, calling for an additional $1 billion annually to be added to its present budget for this discipline. She called on all parties to practice the precautionary principle: "Uncertainty warrants precaution."

Bill McKibben, former New Yorker editor and author of The End of Nature, on global warming: "For the first time, we have become big enough as a species to affect everything around us. Climate change is the one issue which – if we don't take care of it – all others won't matter much."

cont...

http://www.ecomall.c...hopping/ems.htm

Many of these issues have been or are being addressed, but constantly telling people the sky is falling makes them take little, if any of it, seriuosly. It makes them feel helpless so that even the small part they can take is worthless.

They are not been addressed in any meaningful way. All those services are continuing to decline as population and resource extraction pressures hem them in.

Really, we need to give these issues the top priority they deserve, everything else is secondary to them since if they decline every aspect of life on earth declines with them - especially our fragile civilization. I would like people to be advocating for addressing them rather than trying to bolster the very drivers of their decline. The economy and how we do business is at the very core of the issue. Which, by the way, is exactly what the quote you gave advocates.

Br Cornelius

Edited January 23, 2015 by Br Cornelius

[Michelle]

They are not been addressed in any meaningful way. All those services are continuing to decline as population and resource extraction pressures hem them in.

Really, we need to give these issues the top priority they deserve, everything else is secondary to them since if they decline every aspect of life on earth declines with them - especially our fragile civilization. I would like people to be advocating for addressing them rather than trying to bolster the very drivers of their decline. The economy and how we do business is at the very core of the issue. Which, by the way, is exactly what the quote you gave advocates.

Br Cornelius

I see you pointing out the problems more often than giving the solutions to them. Besides putting up windmills or solar panels, which most people can't afford even if they do own a house, what can the average Joe do about where their electricity is coming from? What are they going to do about the 20 year old clunker they are driving so they can get to the only job they can find 30 miles away where there is no other transportation? They aren't going to throw away a perfectly good incandescent light bulb to go buy a twenty dollar replacement when they have a family to feed. They certainly can't afford to buy all new energy saving appliances or a new car.

There is only so much the average person can do. I for one am not going to make them feel like what little they can do is worthless, because we're all doomed if the things that are out of their control aren't fixed.

[Guest Br Cornelius]

I see you pointing out the problems more often than giving the solutions to them. Besides putting up windmills or solar panels, which most people can't afford even if they do own a house, what can the average Joe do about where their electricity is coming from? What are they going to do about the 20 year old clunker they are driving so they can get to the only job they can find 30 miles away where there is no other transportation? They aren't going to throw away a perfectly good incandescent light bulb to go buy a twenty dollar replacement when they have a family to feed. They certainly can't afford to buy all new energy saving appliances or a new car.

There is only so much the average person can do. I for one am not going to make them feel like what little they can do is worthless, because we're all doomed if the things that are out of their control aren't fixed.

I recently changed my electricity supplier to one which only invests in renewables, and is cheaper, so thats something that the average Jo can do. He also can enter into very lucrative lease arrangements with grid ties for solar installations - which represents one of the most cost effective investments available at the moment 9though the likes of Koch are attempting to make it illegal or uneconomical in order to protect their fossil fuel investments - you could lobby down Republican laws which attempt it or deselect Republicans representatives who propose them) .

On a more fundamental level, a person can insulate their house (many houses in the USA have almost zero insulation and rely on air conditioning for summer cooling). He can use the car less (as I do) and he can choose alternatives to air flight. He can turn off his computer rather than letting it sit in standby all day. i have replaced all of my light bulbs with first CFL's and then LED's and it has undoubtedly saved me many hundreds of € over the last 15 years, I do not expect to have to buy any replacement bulbs for at least another decade at this stage (consider also that many of these bulbs are subsidized by the government as a means of reducing grid load).

There is a huge amount that the average Jo can do if they have the will. The problem is that most neither have the will or understanding preferring to live in denial.

Your expressing lazy thinking here Michelle.

Br Cornelius

Edited January 23, 2015 by Br Cornelius

[Michelle]

I recently changed my electricity supplier to one which only invests in renewables, and is cheaper, so thats something that the average Jo can do. He also can eneter into very lucrative lease arrangments with grid ties for solar installations - which represents one of the most cost effective investments available at the moment.

On a more fundamental level, a person can insulate their house (many houses in the USA have almost zero insulation and rely on air conditioning for summer cooling). He can use the car less (as I do) and he can choose alternatives to air flight. He can turn off his computer rather than letting it sit in standby all day.

There is a huge amount that the average Jo can do if they have the will. The problem is that most neither have the will or understanding preferring to live in denial.

Most cities and towns in the US have only ONE supplier of electricity or gas...no choice. What makes you think many houses in the US have almost zero insulation? We have one of the biggest movements of green construction, with double paned windows and replacement windows anywhere. Even in the South, where winters are mild, we have well insulated houses. My heat is on 60 degrees, I have on long johns, sweatpants, sweatshirt and a robe.Of course, we are talking about only the people who own their own homes which many have lost due to the economy. Yeah, people have been doing a lot of joy riding in their cars while gas has been four dollars a gallon. I've seen more bicycles and loaded buses in the last 20 years than I have my entire life.

I don't know why you think people, in general, in the US are so wasteful...movies I guess? Especially when jobs are so hard to find, they can't afford to attend school and living on the bare minimum in a lot of cases. Let them eat steak!

Edited January 23, 2015 by Michelle

[gailforce]

im actually looking forward to it my country is not a strategically sound target for a nuclear attack we will probably just get ocupated by Russia and enter a state of war, and you know what that means parents wont let me leave the house to go to school, i just hop doomsday is at the start of school not during the summer

[Dougward5]

Some of us can get by without power ...city water....store bought food....and even " gasp" electronic devices ....

Me and mine will be ok ...in the 70s nutjob hippies were saying it was a coming ice age if we did not bulldoze oil refineries to produce land for spottd owls or whatever .... I say good ...too many useless people on earth anyway ..to quote Abraham Lincolin " root hog or die"

[ancient astronaut]

.

funnily enough, i'm watching Sucker Punch (MASSIVELY underrated movie- the soundtrack alone is priceless! (Emilliana Torrini's version of 'white rabbit' is worth twice what you'd pick the movie up on DVD for) as we speak!

Alan Moore's a funny bugger though when it comes to anybody messing with his s**t- and after TLOEG, can you blame him?

brilliant comics-average movie.

but I reckon David(solidsnake)Hayter did a bloody good job of turning an almost impossible-to-film comic into a working script!

but for the look?

Zack Snyder is the new Ridley Scott.....

.

Sucker Punch is vastly underrated!!!! Soundtrack is killer, I agree, but the Watchmen soundtrack is great also. Zack is the new Ridley, I like that.

[Gumball]

I recently changed my electricity supplier to one which only invests in renewables, and is cheaper, so thats something that the average Jo can do. He also can enter into very lucrative lease arrangements with grid ties for solar installations - which represents one of the most cost effective investments available at the moment 9though the likes of Koch are attempting to make it illegal or uneconomical in order to protect their fossil fuel investments - you could lobby down Republican laws which attempt it or deselect Republicans representatives who propose them) .

On a more fundamental level, a person can insulate their house (many houses in the USA have almost zero insulation and rely on air conditioning for summer cooling). He can use the car less (as I do) and he can choose alternatives to air flight. He can turn off his computer rather than letting it sit in standby all day. i have replaced all of my light bulbs with first CFL's and then LED's and it has undoubtedly saved me many hundreds of € over the last 15 years, I do not expect to have to buy any replacement bulbs for at least another decade at this stage (consider also that many of these bulbs are subsidized by the government as a means of reducing grid load).

There is a huge amount that the average Jo can do if they have the will. The problem is that most neither have the will or understanding preferring to live in denial.

Your expressing lazy thinking here Michelle.

Br Cornelius

There are no fundamental levels when it comes to destroying the planet and its resources. It's fine to point the finger at the average Joe but countries like Russia, US & China have higher priorities when it comes to profit making and countries in Asia and south America would rather cut down their rain forests than maintain conservaton. The little guy cares about the environment, I bet most posters on here would happily make sacrifices to ensure change but the larger powers only care for profit and most of them would rather destruction than to relinquish market share. Unfortunately the clock will continuosly tick till greed destroys the planet and the average joe will go with it. If change is going to happen then it has to be at a government/corporation level but as i've said these people would rather destroy than change. Money is power and power is money. I don't mean this comment as a sanctimonious sermon but more of a way of underlining the fact that so much is out of our hands and the more governments favour expanson the quicker the clock will tick

Edited January 24, 2015 by mesuma

[rayderz]

I'm so tired of hearing about "such and such is ruining the world " yet you never once hear about anyone doing anything about it

[Raptor Witness]

There's a big difference between Doomsday, and the end of the "Times of the Gentiles."

If these scientists understood the power behind the march towards nuclear war, they might have a better chance of stopping it.

I'm not worried about N. Korea, as their motivation is for show.

I'm not worried about Iran, as their motivation is for show.

I'm worried about Israel. Their motivation is about survival. That's when mistakes are most often made in any war.

When one side becomes paranoid because of past genocide, it's a recipe for disaster.

ISIS has an equally bad motivation for pushing Israel into a corner; similar to what we saw when Saddam Hussein was attacked.

All it would have taken for Israel to use their nuclear weapons, would have been a single SCUD missile loaded with poison gas, and launched from Iraq into Israel, and you would have seen a nuclear response.

Has ISIS captured any hidden stockpiles of Syrian chemical weapons? You don't hear anything about this possibility in the main stream news media. Why? It's clearly a risk, given the massive quantities that were stockpiled in Syria.

My crystal ball tells me that ISIS won't just use them against Israel; they will run to the border to do it, if they can find a way.

With memories of the World War II gas chambers still fresh on the minds of the generation who survived the Holocaust, do you doubt Israel will respond in kind?

My advice to the Doomsday Clock makers is to put the clock at about 11:59 to reveal we have about one year left to secure Israel's northern border, and remove the nuclear weapons from their soil.

I wouldn't worry about Iran. I would worry about ISIS and chemical weapons at this point.

I don't casually use the "gates of hell," as a metaphor here. They are wide open, and so long as they stay open, anything, including the use of nuclear weapons is possible.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Raptor Witness

[Guest Br Cornelius]

There are no fundamental levels when it comes to destroying the planet and its resources. It's fine to point the finger at the average Joe but countries like Russia, US & China have higher priorities when it comes to profit making and countries in Asia and south America would rather cut down their rain forests than maintain conservaton. The little guy cares about the environment, I bet most posters on here would happily make sacrifices to ensure change but the larger powers only care for profit and most of them would rather destruction than to relinquish market share. Unfortunately the clock will continuosly tick till greed destroys the planet and the average joe will go with it. If change is going to happen then it has to be at a government/corporation level but as i've said these people would rather destroy than change. Money is power and power is money. I don't mean this comment as a sanctimonious sermon but more of a way of underlining the fact that so much is out of our hands and the more governments favour expanson the quicker the clock will tick

Though I tend to agree with your sentiments, I think its wrong to say that the average person can do nothing useful which was the purpose of my response. Its also important to remember that ultimately every single bigger institution is made up of average jo's and so if they all move in the right direction those institutions will also move. The foundational problem is that most people are still living in denial of the issues and from that place nothing can be achieved.

Br Cornelius

[Just Dave]

The change is intended to represent how much closer the human race is to global catastrophe.

Represent.... explains it all...