”Enjoy life while you can. Because if you’re lucky it’s going to be 20 years before it hits the fan.”

Tomorrows World said we would be driving hover cars by now as well.

Only 20 months or so until we get hoverboards, accortding to Back to the Future 😀

What happend to Cressers?

TBH – I think that the guy is right, we are past the tipping point its just that the ‘Hive mind’ of the human race & economic drives aren’t mature enough to deal with it.
I think deep down we know its too late.

Now im off to prepare my daughter for the future and build my eco time bomb shelter.

Its nowt to do with global warming! We’re all doomed because of men touching each others bottoms

…written in 2008, so only 14 years left!

You need to get on here:

Homepage UK Preppers Guide For Survival Prepping, Bushcraft And SHTF

People only notice changes in short timespans. So because everything has basically been the same for their whole life, and their parents/grand parents and most of history – they see this as continuning.

Its hard to take stock of the changes that are creaping up to tipping point. We will soon have a real refugee problem, not just a few chaps climing the fence at the Channel Tunnel. We will soon have a real fuel / food problem. We can see some flooding problems now, but just goodle info on the Thames Barrier. You would not be buying a house in London after you have read up on it.

Its like that game with the Donkey, you keep loading stuff on it all fine, but eventually it gets too much and all hell breaks loose.

Our rate of consumption has not slowed down, its sped up. Ive seen no action or planned action that will change that.

We are f***ed.

At least we’ll be able to wear the shoes!

I think he’s got it broadly right unfortunately. His timescales are probably a bit short (he has admitted as much in more recent interviews), but I’m sure it’s coming.
As someone said above we’re probably past the tipping point or close to it, and the world as a whole shows absolutely no signs of changing it’s ways.

Having thought about this I’m now thinking it’s not so bad. It’s inevitable really as humans only seem to learn from experience, so once we have screwed up the planet and most of us have died, we then just have to wait a few thousand years for the planet to fix itself and at that point we can start moving forward as a species again, and we won’t make the same mistakes that time because of this experience (we’ll probably make some different ones though…)

Just another geezer floggin a book.

Just another geezer floggin a book

why not have a little read up on mr Lovelock before making stupid statements? he is an extremely well respected scientist

Because i make my own choices what i read and i don’t need you to guide me through my life.

Our species will do no better than bacteria in a culture flask unless we colonise another planet sharpish.
You hear terms like ‘sustainable growth’ on the news all the time. It is not even possible and aiming for it is going to bring down the whole house of cards even quicker.

I am just hoping for 40ish years before it gets to dicey.

The world will just shake the parasites off once more, and then just carry on without us.

twinw4ll
” Because i make my own choices what I(don’t) read and i don’t need you to guide me through my life.(I just make stuff up it’s more comfortable that way) “

sorry but just dismissing something then admitting you have not got a clue what you are talking about is a bit annoying .

twinw4ll – just another poster adding pointless comment.

Read the artical, have a think and reflect on the broader issues, then if you have something constructive to add – post it.

I planted a tree once, I’m apocalypse exempt.

So whats the best strategy to deal with extreme weather, food shortages and hoards of displaced desperadoes?

Another doom monger. Like James Hansen, a NASA scientist who predicted in 1986 that between 2010 and 2020 temps would have risen by 3 or 4F. Around 2C.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=llJeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AWENAAAAIBAJ&pg=5501,1378938&dq=james-hansen&hl=en

Actual rise …. about 0.4C

More on Hansen at

Spectacularly Poor Climate Science At NASA

Standard response (sorry if you’ve seen it before): “Pack up your shit, folks…”

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjRGee5ipM[/video]

Reading that I’m glad I’m old..

Ive seen no action or planned action that will change that.

And while the majority of the world’s consumers live in a democratic environment, you won’t, either. Turkeys and Christmas and all that jazz.

The human race will eventually become “adjusted” to the new level of resources available (i.e. there will be less of us via one means or another). See Easter Island.

There again maybe we aren’t all doomed, not yet

Constructive comment? i’m not a voracious consumer of stuff, i live a basic lifestyle on £11500 a year through choice, the rest i donate to a select few charities, my concience is clear, what are the chattering classes doing?

It’s no good coming on here pontificating about the woes of the world, then raping the worlds resourses because you want instead of need.

I own one bike, donated by a friend, this saves me the angst of choosing which one to go out on and the subsequent “Which bike do i go out on today thread”

Irony, love it.

Our species will do no better than bacteria in a culture flask unless we colonise another planet sharpish.

The chances of finding another planet that we can get to and will be better than even a **** up Earth are essentially nil.

what are the chattering classes doing?

Dunno. What’s your point? Are you saying we should all do what you do? When? Tomorrow?

It will all be fine .
Some floaty houses, a bit of solar power and some Hydroponics,sorted 😉

and as back up

Love plankton based food products, that’ll be the whales ****.

I think he’s right – he certainly talks a lot of sense.

We (humans) are multiplying at an alarming rate and this is likely to be the biggest threat to our own well being when combined with our human nature. We’ve been programmed over the last 100 years to aspire to lifestyles that tare unsustainable and we’ve go very good at not dying.

At some point the Earth is going to have to make a massive correction. Whether that be with floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes or plain old climate change it’s almost certainly going to happen. In a similar manner to the way our body deals with an a virus, the Earth will hunker down and all but eliminate the irritants. no matter how important we like to think we are we are but specs of dust in the grand scheme of things.

Not that makes any of us feel better about our or our offspring’s impending doom. Lets hope that future generations, if there are any, will be more enlightened.

I spent some time working for a Marine Conservation group a while back.
While it was good working for them, I left feeling we stood no chance of stopping the demise of the marine environment. It was quite sad.

Our economic models are all designed to grow via consumption and credit. So basically you keep lending to consume. That consumption requrires raw materials, probably 90% are not renewed.

Recycling does not stop consumption.

We live in the UK, where this problem is either hidden, or removed by giving you the chance to feel green. Spend some time in say India or Africa and the reality will shock you.

Im going to enjoy whats left over the next 20 years and dont hold out any hope of it changing.

sorry twinwall what’s your point? you’re too altruistic to have to understand the things your’e dismissing offhand? yeah good story bro.
james lovelock is a pure science researcher (a rare thing these days). history has shown that we should listen to him. but of course you wouldn’t know that because i have asked you to do a little research before you make dismissive comments on something you know nothing about.

edit; im with Trimix, studying environmental science made me think its too late and we should be planning for what comes next

Recycling does not stop consumption

+1 I hear a lot of people explain they recycle (as do I) but if you look at the waste hierarchy recycling is actually pretty far down the list of options to reduce env impacts.

The human race is not good at making difficult or rational choices about this kind of thing, and large parts of the world lack the education or awareness or luxury of worrying about these things.

As a result no meaningful action will be / has been taken before its too late. Whether directly or indirectly brought about by human activity there will be some big changes coming sooner or later that we won’t like and they will be imposed upon us by powers out of our control. Fingers crossed its not too soon.

i hear you on that ddmonkey, if i was lucky enough to have kids….i would be very scared for their future 😐

james lovelock is a pure science researcher (a rare thing these days). history has shown that we should listen to him

OK. How about this (from http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change)

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

I stopped reading that when I noticed it was published by the Guardian

james lovelock is a pure science researcher (a rare thing these days). history has shown that we should listen to him

WTF is a ‘pure science researcher’? And how is it better than some other underpaid bloke in a univerity publishing peer reviewed research rather than randomly spouting stuff from his farm in Cornwall?

If you throw a dice there’s a 1in6 chance of getting a 6. To throw it six times and get six sixes is a 1in46656 chance. But if you threw 46656 dice six times and looked at the one that threw six sixes (ignore the statistical falacy there, they could all roll sixes all the time), if you were to roll it a seventh time would you take the answer as six regardles of what it was? Of course not. Just because it was right last time doesn’t mean it’ll be right again.

As the article said, plenty of people predict plenty of things, some turn out to be correct. Just because they make him sound like the science equivelent of the A-Team, a Maverick out to save the day, doesn’t mean he’s right.

doesn’t mean he’s right.

Doesn’t mean he’s wrong either. His track record on this stuff suggests he’s worth a bit of attention.

Or you can just dismiss him with some silly dice analogy. It’s up to you of course.

ok, fair question. what i meant by that was he is unfunded by industry. take what you will from that but not alot of people get funded for research for fields that dont turn a profit.
who is funding the study is always a question worth considering. do you not think?