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2013: an Ominous Year For Warnings and Predictions
dcblogs writes "This year may be remembered for its striking number of reports and warning of calamitous events. The National Intelligence Council released its Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds report that included a number of dire possibilities ahead, including the prospect of a catastrophic solar storm, on par with the 1859 Carrington Event. Historical records suggest a return period of 50 years for a repeat of the Quebec-level storm that knocked out the power for 6 million in 1989, and 150 years for very extreme storms, such as the Carrington Event, according to Lloyd's, in a report this year. Scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory recently demonstrated in tests that 'geomagnetic disturbances have the power to disrupt and possibly destroy electrical transformers, the backbone of our nation's utility grid.' This was also the year the average daily level of CO2 reached a concentration above 400 parts per million. In a recent National Academies report this year, 'Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises,' scientists recommend creation of a global early warning system to alert mankind to abrupt climate changes. A recent paper in Nature, Abrupt rise of new machine ecology beyond human response time, said financial trading systems are driving transaction times down to the speed of light, and 'the quickest that someone can notice potential danger and physically react, is approximately 1 second.'"
How are we going to harness tech and knowledge to create a better world for our children and grand-children?
Is it really an improvement to have machines such as the ShapeOko: http://www.shapeoko.com/ rather than teaching children how to use a set of carving gouges, chisels, saws, &c.?
Is it inevitable that we will see the banning of commercial fishing as commercial hunting was out-lawed during our grand-parents' day?
What technologies or organizations are there which offer options for making the world a better place?
- http://opensourceecology.org/ --- and their ``global village construction kit are one bright light --- arguably the ShapeOko has a place in that though.
- http://www.heifer.org/ --- teach a man to fish and all that
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
These predictions are all 100% accurate, just like Ted Danson's prediction that all U.S. cities will be completely uninhabitable by 1980 because Reagan was president throughout the 1970's and are even MORE accurate than ALGORE's 100% accurate prediction that the entire polar ice cap has permanently melted and all polar bears are dead.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Time to put on the sack-cloth and roll around in the dirt.
keeps us on our toes until non-fictional communications & journalism return. never a better time to consider ourselves in relation to momkind our spiritual centerpeace
The sky ius falling! H. Penny
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Billons were spent between 2003 and 2010 to deny climate change (pdf) and probably even more has been used for that goal in the last 3 years. In any case, is more money that was ever used to measure climate change, to detect dangerous asteroids, and prevent the spreading of pandemic diseases.
Maybe science should stop doing warnings and studies and let things happens with no preparations from our side. We deserve it.
I'll be willing to gamble the OP would risk a dollar or two on the shade of his own skin. WTF slashdot, WTF?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is unraveling pretty quickly as a result of the US cooperation with India. Now China is helping Pakistan http://www.newsweek.com/china-commits-65-billion-pakistani-nuclear-project-225076 Regional nuclear was is becoming more likely.
I have a few dollars left that big business hasn't gotten a hold of. Please don't remind me of this nation's worst period in history. When the rich want to get richer, they will find someone make laws that enables them to suck what little that the poor has.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
These predictions are all 100% accurate, just like Ted Danson's prediction that all U.S. cities will be completely uninhabitable by 1980 because Reagan was president throughout the 1970's and are even MORE accurate than ALGORE's 100% accurate prediction that the entire polar ice cap has permanently melted and all polar bears are dead.
These stinking experts are always wrong! I mean when the noted sociologist Ted Danson screws up and the eminent climatologist Al Gore screws up too, you know the scientific community is in danger!
Why when the world famous virologist, Jenny McCarthy, mistook her research regarding the correlation between vaccines and autism and the noted paleontologist Kirk Cameron stated that the World is only 6,000 years old; we just have to wonder, who are these experts and why do we develop policy based on their findings!
Now, I'll have to be careful with the political scientist, George Clooney and his research.
Just what - WHAT - I say, is going on with the scientists and their idiotic predictions?!
for a repeat of the Quebec-level storm that knocked out the power for 6 million in 1989
I was there. And it was really, really creepy. From my apartment building I could see the electrical arcing from the power station way on the other side of town. The lights went out everywhere, and then the Aurora Borealis started lighting up the sky - something that rarely happens at that lattitude (Montreal). It was - surreal.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I just woke up out of comma for seven years and no one warn me that this year Angelina Jolie cut off her own tater tots. I cant believe its true and I don't want to live anymore if it is. Why do she do this thing?
Maybe 2014 will be the year someone links to the one-page version of an article?
Chicken Little!
Yep, Hyperbole is a force which harnesses the innate fears of the masses. But the fact hyperbole falls short doesn't make me less sad about the extinctions of tigers, elephants and great apes, etc. When I see people snickering that polar bears aren't extinct yet, it just makes me sadder. I get truly aggravated by green bumper stickers which discredit the unimpeachable thesis that extinctions of other species are caused by our species at a rate surpassed only by volcanoes, meteors and comets.
Gently reply
Like every other year before it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
2014 will be different though.
How about an article on previous records years of ominous warnings and predictions, alongside the actual outcome.
For example, various Climate Scientists (I use the word "scientist" in its broadest possible sense) predicted that the Arctic would be ice free by this year and 10 years ago, that snow was a thing of the past.
It is funny how people forget history. There were plenty of worse storms and worse times in the past. Read the old newspapers. Talk with old people. This GW scare is designed to make money for the carbon traders and their ilk.
Doom mongering for profit and attention has been with us since mankind invented God. Nothing has changed over the millenia.
No big media sites talk about it. But it clearly shows us the end game.
2014 will be different though.
Nope, I predict that 2014 will get even more ominous predictions then this one.
Be seeing you...
But no commensurate disasters.. Oh we've had bad weather.. but it's been more like the us being the frog being boiled alive. We've adapted to these record tornados, floods etc, where they don't faze us enough...