Wednesday 10 May 2017

Hawking's 100-year countdown to Extinction....2117

Few days ago, the high priest of science Stephen Hawking announced that humans have another 100 years to leave earth and establishment settlements in other planets in space since earth will become inhabitable....perhaps the most important statement on the future and fate of the human race ....the finiteness and finality of existence as we know it is indeed chilling...strangely even now after 3/4 days of his chilling prediction....hardly any reporting on by main stream media....or even any outcry by ppl who have read it...we are indeed an abominable thick skinned mammal race immersed so heavily in our sinful energy intensive, greedy, selfish, anthropogenic, violent lifestyles that these pronouncements don't affect us at all....its business and life as usual....

In fact only in Nov 2016, Hawking had given the human race 1000 years to survive before we are wiped out...strange why he had to revise it so drastically and within six months...10 years ago RK Pachauri, chairman of IPCC, Nobel prize winner... had referred to the IPCC report which had stated that by 2035 the Himalayas will be bereft of all snow....there was an immense hue and cry..then Pachauri had to retract the 2035 deadline mentioned in the report ....

In my New Grammar of Living (NGL) blogs and diaries I have been forecasting that the CLIMOCALYPSE will occur by 2030-50....this prediction was based by the accelerating climate change over the past few decades....which has now over the recent say 5 years or so achieved perceptible critical mass in all respects.....such as: melting poles, heat records outstripping cold records by 7 to 1, disappearing seasons as we knew them, rising sea levels, unseasonal storms & lightening, flooding, permafrost melt, famines, warming oceans, atmospheric rivers, dying species....and list goes on and on...

My plaintive cry for stopping our anthropogenic ways started during the early 70s....when I coined a few anthems....AS WE HURTLE INTO 2001 AND BEYOND ( 2001  was borrowed from Kubrick's masterpiece 2001 A Space Odyssey but 2001 was indeed a milestone year of the next millennium which was about 28/9 years away then).....other anthems were CLOSE TO EDGE....HURTLING TOWARDS THE ABYSS...close the edge taken from an album of Yes which was a searing experience especially if one was suitably high....those were the early years when industrialisation in Europe especially Germany polluted the rivers to the extent fish started dying, and also air was polluted...price society had to pay for producing steel, cars.....

Gradually with factories having come up indiscriminately all over the world in order to satisfy the ever spiralling consumer needs of humans suitably influenced by the innovative, capitalistic Americans...consumer products, durables, food and beverages, cars, air conditioning, heating, ....and also the nations and large corporations got into aviation, ramping up navies, acquiring aircraft carriers....the industrial production of the globe rose appreciably after the Second World War...growth rose geometrically then exponentially over successive decades...which led to pouring mounting levels of effluents into rivers and atmosphere everywhere....

In terms of anthropogenic damage to the planet, as per the NGL estimate (or informed guesstimate or fakestimate!!): about 60% of total cumulative CO2 emissions and other climate threatening effluents / waste added to the atmosphere / ocean since inception of present age ( ie about 50,000 to 200,000 years ago) till now have occurred since 1960...incidentally 60s has been recently judged as the best ever decade for USA in terms of several indicators...(rewind of the car boom of the the earlier part of the 20th century Ford et al, lifestyles, personalities, low individual and national debt, large middle class)......

The model which can prove the hypothesis "60% of earth's total cumulative emissions, etc have come since 1960"..... is based upon function of the variables: (no of cars and usage, aviation, air conditioning, heating, pollution, urbanisation, population, industrialisation, etc) since 1960 is more than 60% of the respective cumulative totals. Actually most of these variables since  the 60s it would perhaps be 70% to 80% of their cumulative totals.

We can see how few of the parameters have increased since '60: world population has risen from 3 bn to 7 bn now; no of vehicles registered has risen from 126 mn to 1 bn, international trade exports rose from $130 bn to a staggering $18,939 bn....this is just to highlight how much of anthropogenic activity has taken place since 1960....which has triggered off the tsunamis of various climate change parameters...this frightening Tofflerian future shockean telescoping of change is absolutely mind boggling for us to digest ....hence the same kind of change must have been inflicted on Mother Earth during the past 57 years or so....any indicator we take up like air travel, air conditioning, washing machines, dishwashers, urbanisation, concrete usage, plastics, manufacturing, electricity production and consumption, crude production......NGL is sure that the 60% principle will hold....NGL hopes to do further research in this direction soon...

Today we are helplessly watching these Frankensteins of our own making ie economic devt, technological progress, improving standards of living, industrialisation....the mantra or more, bigger, better and faster of everything is now striking back at us, consuming us with its anthropogenic tentacles....we are now so hopelessly addicted to all that we have created.... that it's well nigh impossible to extricate ourselves from their baleful effects and impact...though climate change and nature's fury is compounding year by year yet none of us has the courage or sense to break out of the evil spell of modern life with all its comforts, gadgets.....

Over the past couple of months or so there has been an flurry of writings on immediacy of climate change and its harsh impacts...one impactful article said 10 years left for controlling and reducing carbon dioxide.......the Paris accord too was a soft ....no specifics...at least it was some kind of accord...no firm targets...except a wishy washy not exceeding 2f in some fuzzy future....2100....an accord which the largest cumulative emitter of CO2 America may not honour...due to a stream of consciousness tweeting president who has stated in the past that climate change is a Chinese hoax....now has filled his cabinet caligari....full of climate sceptics and tentacles of the deep state.....ironically USA contributes about 20% of emissions...and if we compute cumulative emissions USA must have contributed maybe 30-40%....

The deep state comprising of industrialists who have interests in auto, crude, power, etc....are the ones who desperately want their businesses to prosper and continue even if they are the root causes of climate change. ... politicians like Trump also are hand in glove with the deep state....

In the greater scheme of things maybe the deep state is a few moves ahead in the climate chess game....in the ultimate analysis...maybe even if we stop all new carbon intensive and based projects right away....and try to reduce emissions to zero by 2050..still the toxic impact of the period 1960-2017 may be difficult to fully contain and offset.....the climatic imbalance which has already been set in motion....will be extremely difficult to control....maybe only 1% probability of the runaway climate collapse getting curbed....or delaying the inevitable CLIMOCALYPSE by few decades.... the deep state must be reasoning that in any case the dire consequences of climate change cannot be avoided....hence why stop fossil fuel....does it really matter whether doomsday is 100 or 120 years away....like Keynes said....in the long run we are all dead.....

Swami Sarvapriyanda

https://youtu.be/Fi-XTOIxSPo