Welcome to the Civilisation Continuity Group!
Recent Developments
European Law - Monsanto must live, you will die if things collapse
on Wednesday, May 08, 2013
Seeds are a critically important requirement for agriculture. It is already harder than it ought to be to obtain heirloom seeds - seeds that will produce plants from which you can easily save your own seed for next year instead of being forced into the clutches of big business to buy new seed every year. Even before this, European legislation discriminated against heirloom seeds in a short-sighted destructive drive to purge a tremendous reserve of seed diversity and breeding experience from the hands of home gardeners and small businesses.
Now this appears to be going one step further.
http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw.html
What does this have to do with you, you might ask? Well, the answer is simply. The more the European Union (and this is not the only part of the world where big business is driving this sort of legislation) legislates against the ability of smaller organisations and individuals to breed and propagate seed - the less food secure you can be in the event of civilisation collapsing. It is bad enough to depend upon the cold corporate monster that is agri-business at the best of times, but if that edifice should crumble and collapse later - what do you expect to eat, supposing you are able to cultivate the land?
Legislation like this should be resisted a lot more aggressively than it is being. It is potentially life and death in the future to lose the ability to retain your own seed.
Building to the second round of collapse
on Saturday, May 04, 2013
With the benefits of hindsight the unusual jet stream behaviour that caused the Russian drought and fires in 2010 (and widespread Pakistan flooding) with the consequent export ban on wheat may have been the first large scale effect that could be suspected of being related to Arctic amplification and the changes occurring in the jet stream driving increasingly extreme weather in the mid latitudes. At that time this pressured global food prices rapidly and a set of nations that in many cases would have imported this wheat experienced significant social unrest - revolutions and civil war. In some of these cases (for example Syria, which we will use as an example of trends of interest) the nations are also directly stressed by the effects of climate change. A previous round of milder unrest correlated fairly well with the nations that underwent regime change.
http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/climate-change-and-the-syrian-uprising
Food prices are currently at levels that historically represent the cusp at which conflict starts to be triggered. Nations that experienced substantial social instability in the last episode of social instability are even now still contributing to increasing stress levels in adjacent regions. This will tend to increase the size of the next round of collapse.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/23/syria-refugees-jordan-tension-grows
It has taken a long time, given that we have been trying to raise the profile of this message for rather a long time now (as one can see from how out of date the information on this website is now) but media outlets are finally starting to run articles that join up the dots we presented on this site nearly a year ago. I would like to think this site helped some people find this information for the first time - but our traffic is still rather small and was negligible a year ago.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/may/02/white-house-arctic-ice-death-spiral
Agriculture is critically threatened and food supplies stand to substantially diminish over a timescale of only years. We live in a world where in developed nations people typically rely upon market forces to feed themselves and where widespread social instability can be expected if this system starts to breakdown. The global economy is in trouble and many nations have vulnerabilities other than agriculture - for example dependence on international trade for resources, products and services. The logistics of maintaining these dependencies will start to unravel as more nations fall into social instability.
Already this year a new threat to US crop production is threatening (though we emphasise it is still too early to make statements as to yield):
http://farmlandforecast.colvin-co.com/2013/05/01/soggy-weather-delays-2013-planting.aspx
If the jet stream stuck in place and delivered the sort of summer the UK had last year to America, this would affect yield just as seriously as the drought last year. The anticipation of this alone could send food prices rising upwards uncomfortably. That is before one considers extreme weather over the rest of the planet, where statistically we would need to be lucky to gain respite year on year.
The situation is very serious indeed and we believe time is running out to prepare for the failure of modern civilisation. It seems likely that another round of substantial social instability can be expected within 12 months from now and possibly sooner.
Perhaps some people will have heard that here first another year from now - but let's hope this is all that happens, and that there are no black swans in the meantime. The situation is increasingly unstable and unpredictable.
The Impending Ending
on Sunday, March 31, 2013
It is our belief that we are approaching the end of the timeframe in which preparations for the collapse of civilisation are possible. The weather is increasingly unstable as a result of climate change - particularly the shifting behaviour of the jet stream as a result of the increasingly rapid positive feedback underway in the Arctic. It cannot escape the attention of the general public or governments (those that are not already considering it and preparing police state oriented responses) that the writing is on the wall and agriculture is seriously under threat.
An increasing sense of fear is detectable within those who know the most about the subject area. It is only a matter of time until that fear takes root within the mainstream population. The human response to the threat posed by agricultural failure is likely to magnify the rate of collapse as nations and individuals start to compete for resources they know will be limited. Given that many aspects of human life are forwards looking we can also reasonably expect to see some very serious and profound effects upon the economy. After all what is the point of a long term investment if there is no long term? What use is a pension plan in a world without modern civilisation?
Our worst case scenario (and relatively probable case) is that this process will begin later this year following another dramatic retreat of the sea ice as the volume jumps ever closer to zero at the time of the summer minimum. As the logistics of daily life become ever harder - and competition from those trying to beat the herd mounts ahead of the stampede - the window in which to prepare an appropriate response to the loss of civilisation will close.
Even in the best case - this scenario is likely to be closer at hand than almost anyone would be comfortable admitting to themselves. Food prices are already at levels on the brink of those that historically trigger social unrest in some regions with the stage set for prices to continue to rise this year.
It would appear that very few people indeed have even considered the issue at this date, let alone made any attempt at serious preparations.
Things can change very quickly. In 1938 Chamberlain returned to Britain declaring "peace in our time" to cheering crowds. One year later - the world was plunged into war. On the other hand - people are capable of great things - if only they will try, instead of acting as passive observers as things unwind.
Cryosat 2 versus PIOMAS
on Monday, February 18, 2013
The recent Cryosat 2 results bear examination against PIOMAS in terms of what new information is presented with respect to diminishing Arctic ice volume.
From the paper published:
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pgc1g08/grl50193.pdf
Between the ICESat and CryoSat-2 periods the autumn volume declined by 4291 km3 and the winter volume by 1479 km3. This exceeds the decline in ice volume in the central Arctic from the PIOMAS model of 2644 km3 in the autumn, but is less than the 2091 km3 in winter, between the two time periods.
This states that for the summer time minimum volume PIOMAS is rather optimistic and for the winter time maximum volume it is rather pessimistic.
This should not come as a great surprise as the PIOMAS site itself states a significant margin of error (in proportion to the remaining ice volume) and a bias in measuring thin ice to be thicker and thick ice to be thinner.
The implications of this bear pointing out however - as PIOMAS exponential fit - well followed to date - predicts the zero axis for ice volume will be crossed for the minimum between 2014 and 2015, which is of course impossible, since the minimum occurs at the end of the melt season, not in the winter. Therefore 2014 is a real possibility, with 2015 rather likely.
However, with Cryosat 2 confirming that PIOMAS overestimates thin ice - I would suggest 2014 becomes far more likely, with risks of massive loss in 2013 therefore higher. This graph is prepared from PIOMAS data:
http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b017d3ebb6764970c-piNote the significant drop for 2010 compared to prediction, and then note that the error bars - based on PIOMAS data - cross the zero axis in 2013 (albeit not by a lot). The projection is a loss of another 1000km^3 this year.
It should also be noted that observations suggest a high rate of fracturing occurring in the winter ice currently, suggesting it to be rather thin and flimsy. Aside from the hope that this will increase the freezing rate slightly - it should be noted that PIOMAS is tracking a surprisingly low volume of ice as we approach the winter maximum volume:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2_CY.png
The graph doesn't show it ideally well, but typically the loss of winter maximum volume has proceeded more slowly than the loss of summer minimum. It is rather more serious therefore if the initial condition includes a relatively large loss of winter maximum volume.
The more time any plan assumes on having - the bigger a gamble it is. The stakes we are gambling for are rather high and prudence dictates the desirability of the best odds obtainable.
Deus Juvat blog
on Sunday, January 27, 2013
The CCG website is starting to attract search traffic from google for certain keywords that suggest to me people are starting to become aware of the immediacy and severity of the climate change issue.
I will experimentally maintain a blog for the Deus Juvat project, for anyone interested in following it's progress.
It may be found at http://deusjuvat.wordpress.com/
I will try to schedule some content additions for the main website soon too.
More news here.