 | edro on Collapsing Cities |
 | Jerry on Collapsing Cities |
| Corporate America Wo… on Carbon Footprint of Your … | |
| edro on Corporate America Won’t … |
 | cyberseer on Corporate America Won’t … |
 | bbd on Links & Keywords |
| edro on Drying Aquifers, Sinking … |
 | flyingcuttlefish on Drying Aquifers, Sinking … |
 | Scott on Posts |
| Scott on Collapsing Cities |
| Scott on Posts |
| Warren on Butterfly Effect |
 | anonymous on Drying Aquifers, Sinking … |
 | ray on Google Gagged |
 | dawn on Earth’s Energy Budg… |
Posted by edro on July 25, 2011
Of a half dozen or so probable future scenarios beyond 2015, as simulated by EDRO models, none would include Corporate America.
NO future is possible under the current economic, monetary, business and sociopolitical systems.
The current systems will collapse within the next 4 years, causing the violent death of the corporations in the U.S. and rest of the world.
Related Links:
Posted in 6th Great Extinction | Tagged: collapsing cities, Corporate America, energy dinosaurs, monetary system, Nature Warnings, The 6th Great Extinction, U.S. Corporations | 2 Comments »
Posted by edro on July 3, 2010
The Moderators confirm that the timeline and speed of collapse are consistent with their earlier forecast.
Related Links:
Posted in Collapse, collapse mechanisms, collapsing cities, Human-Enhanced Disasters | Tagged: 6th Great Extinction, collapsing cities, First Wave of Collapsing Cities, First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities | Leave a Comment »
Posted by edro on May 23, 2010
Based on their research, EDRO Moderators Have concluded that a series of man-made cataclysms will drive the earth’s population to near extinction.
[This section was removed to ensure NO association WHATEVER could be made with "Rapture apocalypse prediction."]
Most of the ‘survivors’ would be highly evolved, ethical and altruistic humans with the ability to overcome the immense difficulties they will have inherited . . .
Nevertheless, the Moderators believe by identifying the major man-made obstacles that stand in the way, they could, for their part, help to keep the flow of life on this planet uninterrupted.
EDRO Moderators
For background to the planetary collapse, search blog contents. Future information will be provided at this site OR at one of the following cites:
http://feww.wordpress.com/
http://msrb.wordpress.com/
http://rtsf.wordpress.com/
Posted in collapse mechanisms, collapsing cities, collapsing ecosystems, energy dinosaurs | Tagged: 6th Great Extinction, man-made cataclysms, Planetary collapse, sixth Great Extinction | 11 Comments »
Posted by edro on March 18, 2010
China and India made “giant strides”in their housing efforts to relocate nearly a quarter of billion people out of the slums, UN Habitat agency reported.
The housing efforts were canceled out, however, by global population growth and the rural migration to cities, the report said.
Here are some of the stats:
Note: Actual numbers of the slum dwellers are much larger, unless people could live in decent accommodations on less than $1.25 per day. It appears that the report used the old figures instead of the newer revised figures. “International Comparison Program’s new poverty estimates released in August 2008 show that about 1.4 billion people in the developing world (one in four) were living on less than $1.25 a day in 2005,” World Bank reported.
EDRO estimate for the number of people living on less than$1.25 per day: 2.2 billion (nearly 1 in 3 globally).
A Mumbai slum (India). Image may be subject to copyright.
UN defines a dwelling as a slum if at least one of the five factors below applies:
Related Links:
Posted in 286W, Dharavi, migration to cities, poverty, poverty in India | Tagged: $1.25 per day, population growth, povert in china, rural migration, Slums, UN Habitat agency | Leave a Comment »
Posted by edro on February 23, 2010
Philippines farmlands are drying up in the intense heat; there’s no rain in sight. The El Niño has affected about 160,000 hectares (ha) of farmland in the country, destroying more than 200,000 MT of crops including palay, rice and corn.
“Below normal rainfall is threatening some 42,000 hectares of rice paddies in the region, with 11,000 already beyond recovery and another 21,250 damaged. The dry spell has also affected corn crops in other areas.” FEWW said.
To ensure food security, for now at any rate, the Philippines National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) is buying 2.65 million MT of rice, mostly from Vietnam and Thailand.
Persistent Drought in eastern and northeastern Syria regions has driven about 300,000 families to urban areas in search of work, a worrying massive population displacements in Middle East in recent history. Some villages have lost about half of their population to overcrowding cities. More than 80 percent of livestock on small and medium-sized farms have died as a result of a 75-percent rise in the cost of animal feed.
A dense plume of dust [sand] swept from Syria into Iraq on February 22, 2010. This photo-like image of the dust storm [sand storm] was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite in the early afternoon (12:30 p.m. in Syria, 1:30 in Iraq). Distinct plumes rise from many point sources in the Syrian desert. Within a few kilometers, the plumes blend into a dense cloud that completely obscures eastern Syria and western Iraq. The veil of dust is thick enough that the ground beneath is not visible, which means that people on the ground are probably getting little light from the Sun. Image Credit: NASA/MODIS/Jeff Schmaltz: Caption: Holli Riebeek.
In China’s southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou, up to 4 million hectares of crops have been damaged by severe drought. Water shortages are affecting about 6 million people and 3.6 million livestock. Several of China’s northern provinces are also affected by the dry spell, with major signs of stress emerging in the farmlands after a 40-day drought.
At least 42 people were killed and 120 others injured when torrential rains ledt to massive mudslides on the Atlantic resort island of Madeira flooding the popular holiday destination and destroying about 240 homes and damaging many more. Roads and other public infrastructure were also damaged by the storm.
Heavy rains which triggered extensive flooding in the country’s southwest province cut off access to the city of Jerez, prompting the authorities to shut down the airport.
In Tenerife, Canary Islands (Spanish Territories), strong winds and violent downpour led to deluge across the island and left at leat ten thousand homes without electricity, according to the officials.
Related Links:
Posted in china, Collapse, drought and deluge, Philippines, Syria | Tagged: 2010 Disasters, collapsing cities, dynamics of collapse, Environment Disaster, Environmental Catastrophe, Extreme Rain Events, floods, Iraq, landslides, Mechanisms of Collapse, storms | 4 Comments »
Posted by edro on February 10, 2010
There can be little doubt the last Moai that was being carved on Easter Island was also the most expensive one in terms of its drain on the natural resources.
So expensive was the production, in fact, the sculptors did not proceed. Perhaps the last subculture was the largest unfinished sculpture, which would have stood about 21m (69 ft) tall, weighing a massive 270 tons.
Moai at Rano Raraku, Easter Island.
Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture “L’homme qui marche I” sold for more than $104 million, making it the most expensive sculpture ever paid for by human civilization. Photo Credit: Sotheby’s
The biggest Moai is dwarfed, however, by Giacometti’s life-size statue “L’homme qui marche I” [Walking Man I] when compared in terms of carbon footprint.
The Walking Man I was sold at an auction for a total price of $104,327,006. Allowing another $26 million dollars for previous sales and currency adjustments, so far $130million dollars have been paid and received to move the bronze sculpture from one ahu to another on Earth Island.
Previously, in How Much Carbon Dioxide Does Your Money Make the CASF members calculated the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide produced for each dollar you earn, or spend, at a global average of 584g of CO2/GDP dollar (2008 dollars).
Based on the above CO2 per dollar value, the Walking Man I has a carbon (CO2) footprint of 75,920 tons, or more than 883 times the weight of the biggest Moai discovered on Easter Island (it weighs 86 metric tons. FEWW.)
Related Links:
Posted in Carbon Dioxide, diminishing returns, Easter Island, First Wave of Collapsing Cities, L'homme qui marche I | Tagged: alien elites, anthropology, CO2 per dollar value, Collapse, Dominant minority, Earth Island, history, Moribund Civilizations, Sculpture, Societal collapse, sociology, Walking Man I | 1 Comment »
Posted by edro on February 8, 2010
Related Links:
Posted in die-off, human impact, human vulnerability, impact of Climate Change, Weather Patterns | Tagged: big freeze, climate change, deluge, drought, Extreme Rain | 11 Comments »
Posted by edro on December 27, 2009
Global warming is causing climate belts to shift toward the poles and to higher elevations. To keep pace with these changes, the average ecosystem will need to shift about a quarter mile each year, says a new study led by scientists at the Carnegie Institution. For some habitats, such as low-lying areas, climate belts are moving even faster, putting many species in jeopardy, especially where human development has blocked migration paths.
“Expressed as velocities, climate-change projections connect directly to survival prospects for plants and animals. These are the conditions that will set the stage, whether species move or cope in place,” says study co-author Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology. Field is also a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
The research team, which included researchers from the Carnegie Institution, Stanford University, the California Academy of Sciences, and the University of California, Berkeley, combined data on current climate and temperature gradients worldwide with climate model projections for the next century to calculate the “temperature velocity” for different regions of the world. This velocity is a measure of how fast temperature zones are moving across the landscape as the planet warms―and how fast plants and animals will need to migrate to keep up.
EDRO Comments:
What the paper doesn’t mention, however, is the fact that the species “climbing a nearby mountain” in search of cooler temperatures would be climbing into an acid rain trap.
Forests and plants in mountain regions are heavily affected by “acid fog,” in addition to acid rain. At higher altitudes, the lingering fog, which is more acidic than rainfall, surrounds the plants, affecting the leaves ability to carry out photosynthesis and produce photosynthetic products.
The acid fog does causes slower growth, disease and death of the plants and forests. Examples of this include the many areas of the eastern U.S., especially high altitude forests of the Appalachian Mountains.
The researchers found that as a global average, the expected temperature velocity for the 21st century is 0.42 kilometers (0.26 miles) per year. But this figure varies widely according to topography and habitat. In areas of high topographic relief, where species can find cooler temperatures by climbing a nearby mountain, velocities are relatively low. In flatter regions, such as deserts, grasslands, and coastal areas, species will have to travel farther to stay in their comfort zone and velocities may exceed a kilometer per year.
EDRO Comments:
The other factor is scarcity of food for many species due to the soil profiles of mountainous areas. Upland areas often have thin soils and glaciated bedrock, profiles that make it extremely difficult for plant growth.
Can the planet’s ecosystems keep up? Plants and animals that can tolerate a wide range of temperatures may not need to move. But for the others, survival becomes a race. After the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated, forests may have spread northward as quickly as a kilometer a year. But current ecosystems are unlikely to match that feat, the researchers say. Nearly a third of the habitats in the study have velocities higher than even the most optimistic plant migration estimates. Even more problematic is the extensive fragmentation of natural habitats by human development, which will leave many species with “nowhere to go,” regardless of their migration rates.
Protected areas such as nature reserves are generally too small to accommodate the expected habitat shifts. According to the study, less than 10% of protected areas globally will maintain current climate conditions within their boundaries 100 years from now. This will present a challenge for many species adapted to highly specific conditions, especially if migration to new habitats is blocked.
Scott Loarie, a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Institution and lead author of the paper, points out that an appreciation of climate velocities could stimulate discussions about sound management for climate change, from the design of nature reserves to the planning of assisted migrations for affected species. He adds that it should also stimulate discussion about strategies for minimizing the amount of warming and thereby help slow climate velocity.
The paper was published in the 24 December, 2009, Nature. Contact: Chris Field cfield@ciw.edu
Related Links:
Posted in 286W, acid fog, acid rain, air pollution, climate change | Tagged: Appalachian Mountains, ecosystems collapse, human development, migration paths, Shrinking World | Leave a Comment »
Posted by edro on December 7, 2009
EDRO Moderators believe that the impact of global climate change, including extreme rain events, storm tides, and rising sea levels caused by both melting ice and slowing down [or disappearance ] of Gulf Stream could flood large swaths of eastern United States, especially the coastal areas of Florida.
Cities and population centers both on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts could experience complete or partial inundation for some of the year, most of the year, or permanently.
About 40 percent of Florida’s more densely inhabited areas, home to more than 65 percent of the population, could be impacted by the climatic events, rendering most of the existing cities effectively uninhabitable and affecting up to 90 percent of Florida’s population.
The elevations correspond to the following legend:
Plotted on these maps are:
Some of the areas most prone to flooding are marked on the map. The markings are meant as an indication only. They do not represent exact locations. Source of images: Unisys Weather. Images may be subject to copyright.
Related Links:
Posted in civilization, climate change, Collapse, collapse mechanisms, collapsing ecosystems | Tagged: energy consumption, Florida flooding, Florida in 2014, planetary homeostasis, The World Is Rapidly Collapsing | 25 Comments »
Posted by edro on December 1, 2009
Let’s for a moment not mention the sea-level rises and just talk about herding 1.7 million mostly wealthy people into “an area of empty desert and sea.”
Nakheel’s Dubai Coast developments: (L to R): The artificial island of Palm Jebel Ali “under construction.” The Palm Jumeirah, located about 14km east of the Palm Jebel Ali. Immediately to the east of Palm Jumeirah, are The World and The Universe Tourist/ Leisure areas. Extreme Right: Palm Deira, the largest of the three palm-shaped artificial islands/ island sites that are located off the coast of Dubai.
Nakheel Property of Dubai says on its website:
The Palm Jebel Ali is a landmark commercial, residential, and tourism development for Dubai, which, along with the Waterfront project, will transform an area of empty desert and sea into a bustling international community, with an estimated population of 1.7 million people by 2020.
Navigator to Pilot: “No, we’re still in Egypt air space, and that’s the great pyramid of Giza to the left.”
Could you even imagine an additional 1.7 million people living in one of the most fragile ecosystem in the world?
What would their environmental impact be like? Where would they get their food and water from? How about traveling, commuting, shopping, entertainment… ENERGY?
Here’s the infrastructure needed for the [luxury] housing of an international community with 1.7 million people:
IN:
Out:
A few back of the envelope calculations could have saved tremendous amount of material and time waste, not to mention tens of billions of dollars of other people’s money. But hey, the banks aren’t there to make sensible lending decisions.
Related Links:
Posted in coast of Dubai, Palm Deira, Palm Jebel Ali, Palm Jumeirah, persian gulf ecosystems | Tagged: Dubai Debts, Dubai World, Eye of a Needle, Nakheel property, Tourism Industry | 3 Comments »
Posted by edro on November 11, 2009
Tens of millions of people sat at home by candlelight as police urged then not to venture outside to prevent an upsurge in street crime.
A major power failure brought chaos to Brazil’s two largest cities, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, for several hours starting at 22:00local time (22:00 UTC).
Street lighting, stop lights, elevators, metro system and everything else that depended on electricity stopped functioning, exposing human vulnerability to electrical power loss.
A map of Brazil. Source: US govt.
Thousands of passengers were stranded as the metro railway systems in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo shut down. Sao Paulo is home to nearly 20 million people, and Rio to another 15 million.
Tens of thousands of passengers had to walk along the underground tracks to reach stations, where buses provided an emergency service.
To prevent an upsurge in street crime, extra police were put on the streets, and residents in Sao Paulo and Rio were urged not to venture outside their homes.
The power failure was most likely caused by a major fault at the giant Itaipu hydroelectric dam, where a loss of up to 20,000 megawatts was reported after the distribution system was shut down by a storm.
Itaipu hydroelectric dam, Paraguay/Brazil. The world’s largest hydroelectric facility. Credit: Itaipu Binacional.
The hydroelectric generator at Itaipu dam, which supplies up to 22 percent of Brazil’s electricity, simply lost its entire output for several hours, affecting at least 9 of Brazil’s 27 states.
Paraguay [population: 6.5 million,] which also relies on the Itaipu dam for 90% of its electricity, plunged into darkness for about 15 minutes.
[Note: Brazil has a population of about 192 million.]
Related Links:
Posted in 286W, energy dinosaurs, failing ecosystems, First Wave of Collapsing Cities, Giga Trends, Human Impact on Nature, Itaipu hydroelectric dam, Next Phase of the Future, power, vulnerability to power loss | Tagged: Another Warning Shot by Nature, Brazil Blackout, Brazil Power failure, Paraguay power failure, Rio de Janeiro Blackout, Sao Paulo Blackout, vulnerability to electrical power loss | 9 Comments »
Posted by edro on October 19, 2009
On September 23, 2009 our colleagues at FEWW posted the following on their blog:
FEWW entry summarized a phenomenal dust storm which had started a day earlier ( September 22), sweeping across Australia’s eastern states of New South Wales (NSW) and Queensland (Qld), reaching Sydney, the country’s largest city, and Brisbane.
The dust plume measured about 500 kilometres wide and at least 1,000 km long, covering dozens of communities, towns and cities in both states.
Recently, they posted details of another dust storm
They have now asked EDRO Moderators the following questions:
‘How much dust would it take, and under what circumstances could it make Sydney uninhabitable?’
Desertification of farmlands, villages and small communities have been commonly occurring throughout history. In recent times, countries like China have experienced accelerated rates of desertification. Up to 3 million km² of land in China have already desertified. The country’s annual desertification rates have more than doubled to 3,400 km² since the 1970s (1,560 km²) and have increased by 62 percent compared with the 1980s (2,100 km²). Thousands of villages have been lost to encroaching deserts.
According to a report by the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), “some 24,000 villages, 1,400 kilometres of railway lines, 30,000 kilometres of highways, and 50,000 kilometres of canals and waterways are subject to constant threats of desertification.”
“Dust-laden blasts have buried villages before blowing into cities and suffocating urban residents.”
Historic examples are abound about large cities in Africa, Asia, Near and middle East that were lost to desert.
Chilean town of Chaitén is one of the latest examples of a town lost to [human-enhanced] natural phenomena, namely lahar caused by volcanic ash deposits, and other pyroclastic materials.
The short answer is yes!
Given copious supplies of dust [or sand,] sufficiently strong winds, as well as extremes of climatic and atmospheric conditions conducive to precipitating large amounts of airborne dust on the ground, dust storms could bury any village, town or city in their path and make them partially or completely uninhabitable.
Under the said conditions, one or more dust storms blowing within a critical period of time, with wind forces lasting long enough to deposit significantly large amounts of dust over a critically large portion of the city could trigger a partial or total collapse of Sydney [or other cities in eastern Australia.]
Australia’s CSIRO estimated that the September 22-24 storm carried a record-breaking 16 million tons of dust from the deserts in the heart of Australia [The Lake Eyre Basin was reportedly the main region, where the dust came from.] Interestingly enough, the media boasted how the benevolent storms had dumped a million tons of iron-rich topsoil from Australia’s outback into the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean.
Most of the dust spread over a vast area precipitating on the continental Australia, Indian ocean to the west, and Tasman Sea to the east, reaching as far as the North Island, New Zealand.
EDRO Team designed a basic model and, using the available data, ran a few dozen simulations. The simulations showed that the amount of dust needed to ‘bury’ central Sydney [an area about 100 km²,] so as to make the entire city mostly uninhabitable, would be about 10-12 times the dust blown off in the Septemeber 22-24 dust storm.
Notes:
Related Links:
Posted in australian coal, carbon-intensive economy, Chaitén town, climate change, collapsing cities, desertification, drought, ghost towns | Tagged: desertification, dust storm australia, dust storm Brisbane, dust storm NSW, dust storm Qld, dust storm sydney, dust storms, First Wave of Collapse, First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities, sand storms | 3 Comments »
