= new reply since forum marked as read
You an Invader Zim fan, btw? 
It's one of the most delightfully twisted things I've ever watched. The article reminded me of the "doom" song Gir sings in the first episode. 
Probably even less in the general population.....which, IMO, isn't a bad thing, not in the least. 
did your head asploded?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022479316
Sorry, I couldn't resist. I used to love watching the re-runs on Boomerang.....
Okay then.....please proceed, Governor.
Armageddon outta here!
Still doing the kind of work that would get me kicked out of the E/E forum, though (pipeline design)
I remember reading the "disasterbater" label on TreeHugger, and it seems like they had another similar-sounding one, other than doomer. And even if the number of DUers that are disasterbaters is only 10-15%, it's much like the Moral Minority: they profess doom loudly! And thus seem to be numbered more than they are.
Personally, I do think our technology will advance enough to help reign the damage in. While I'm still iffy on the ocean-distribution of powdered rust/iron idea, we need to also think that we've already been geo-engineering the planet with pollution. Perhaps not engineering it in a way beneficial to life, but it was still done on a planet-wide scale. Now we need to implement countermeasures. On a global scale
This column in the Bad Münstereifel
church of SS. Chrysanthus and Daria
was made out of the calcium carbonate
deposits in the aqueduct
Particularly desirable as a building material were the limestone-like accretions from the inside of the aqueduct. In the course of operation of the aqueduct, many sections had a layer as thick as 20 centimetres (7.9 in). The material had a consistency similar to brown marble and was easily removable from the aqueduct. Upon polishing, it showed veins, and it could also be used like a stone board when cut flat. This artificial stone found use throughout the Rhineland and was very popular for columns, window frames, and even altars. Use of "Eifel marble" can be seen as far east as Paderborn and Hildesheim, where it was used in the cathedrals. The Danish cathedral at Roskilde is the northernmost location of its use, where several gravestones are made of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eifel_Aqueduct
Our current civilization will likely be dismantled in a similar fashion.
If humans are extraordinarily lucky then a civilization that's not quite so stupid as ours will arise within the ruins. Of course evolution doesn't have a direction. In a hundred thousand years humans could even revert back to what we were a million years ago -- just basic apes with some toolmaking ability.
Again, evolution has no direction.
There are uncounted parasite species that used to be quite a bit more complex than they are now, and even a few "free living" creatures that had ancestors more complex than they are now.
Features gained by evolution are just as easily lost when they become unnecessary or burdensome. It can be simple things like the wonderful reptilian color vision that our small fury ancestors lost because they lived in burrows and only came out at night (unlike birds), or something like dodder (Cuscuta) whose ancestors were a respectable free living member of the morning glory family but lost their chlorophyll and now depend on the photosynthetic ability of more capable hosts.
This dodder is engulfing a
sage in the Mojave Desert
I'm a doomer in the sense that I expect this civilization will die, and I won't be one crying at the funeral. Hell, I might be grave dancing. Fuck Wall Street. But I want it to happen in a graceful way that doesn't involve the usual violence, starvation, disease and death. A warm reboot of society might be possible with the sort of socialism that looks out for the little guy, and this would be much preferable to a hot reboot where bombs are falling and bullets flying, or a cold reboot where economies collapse and people die of exposure, disease, ignorance, bad water, thirst, and starvation.
I'm an optimist because I think this warm reboot of civilization is possible. Maybe the internet and all the other open source and wonderful technologies I've seen developed in my lifetime will make that possible. Maybe the organic gardeners and small farmers growing heirloom varieties will make that possible. Maybe the community and peace activists will make that possible. Maybe we will birth an artificial intelligence and set it loose in the universe as the child of our intellect before biology takes us. I don't know.
My compost heap works. Organic gardening works. Debian works. Planned Parentood works. My wife and I have managed to avoid automobile commuting for more than 25 years, that works. No satellite or cable television, that works.
Most of all, I'm an evolutionary and environmental biologist. The history of life on earth, billions of years of it, is that shit happens. It's not looking too good for humans right now because this time humans are the shit that happened, no different than the photosynthetic bacteria that filled the earth's atmosphere with poisonous oxygen, the climate changes that froze entire oceans or melted ice caps, the big rock that finished off the dinosaurs, the land bridge that let placental mammals loose on the marsupial South American continent, etc., etc., etc. Humans have fucked up the world bad.
If humans want to be a force for something "good," we're not doing a very good job of it. I'd like to change that. If I don't, well then, being one of the small fury mammals living in a burrow, or a little bird, as chaos engulfs the world, that ain't so bad. Watch carefully and get out of the way when the titans fall. Meat is best once it starts to decompose anyways. Leave the fresh stuff to the dangerous carnivores. Watch the T.Rex on T.Rex action from a safe distance and eat what's left over when the victor walks away with a full belly. It may be his last meal, but not yours.
This future basic ape with some toolmaking ability would not be the same species as a past basic ape with some toolmaking ability.
I'm not looking forward to any future where the very wealthy survive in well armed gated communities while the rest of us starve. I also don't think the human species will ever inhabit space to any significant degree, not enough to save us if the earth is destroyed. Space is a difficult environment for us. In my wildest dreams we birth a child species, mechanical, biological, or a hybrid of both, that is adapted to space. Individuals of this child species could step out of an airlock without a space suit on the surface of the moon or mars, or traveling between planets. Maybe they could have photosynthetic wings. Lunch would be a nap in the sun. Maybe they could build safe places for their fragile parent species and invite us to visit.
Returning to more immediate concerns, climate change refugees are going to be an increasing problem, even within the USA. I don't like thinking about what happens in the Southwest as the Colorado River dries up. There's a lot of people living in places like Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego and Los Angeles that depend on that water.
And what happens if Midwest agriculture fails? Or huge storms take out low elevation coastal areas, especially along the East and Gulf coasts?
I think it's crazy to expect large scale geoengineering projects to save us, but we can provide food, safe shelter, and medical care to refugees, at the very least within our own nations, even to those individuals our society labels "failures."
A failure to thrive in our current society is less often a personal failure than it is a social failure. We like to blame victims because we don't want to recognize the random nature of our own success or the dismal failures of the society we are supporting. Blaming victims is a way of protecting our own irrational optimisms and faith in our own society.
I was born without any optimism. I have to take powerful medications just to function. My unmedicated basic nature is "paranoid depressed homeless guy digging through dumpsters trying to be invisible."
Every day I decide to get up out of bed, every day nothing horrible happens to me, it's a miracle. I'm able to see things from the perspective of a guy who once pushed his broken car into a church parking lot because the police were harassing him and then simply existed there. I've simply existed in other similar places too. Simply existing is a good place to start thinking about all problems. If you don't exist, what's the problem?
I think there's a evolved purpose for people like me in human communities. I'm the guy who say's, "Run for the hills and hide the children. Those guys in the long boats down there don't look like they're here to trade."
But it's bloody awful when I'm a guy in the long boat, wealthier than most villagers in this global community, pillaging and plundering this earth every time I spend money. Money sucks.
I'm listening to our efficient furnace right now, burning natural gas fracked out of the ground somewhere. If I turned the furnace off I wouldn't freeze to death, nor would I save any amount of money significant to me, but it would be cold in the house. I wouldn't like that, and my wife would complain, so I don't turn the furnace off.
What kind of hell is this?
