Everyone should watch this movie

[Eco Diesel]

My girlfriend brought home Al Gore's movie - An Unconveniant Truth  I was very impressed, unimpressed and depressed. I think everyone on this planet needs to see this movie. Many here on this forum have taken either small or huge steps to reduce their impact or footprint on this planet and we all need to encourage our friends, families, and aquaintances to make real change. We don't need to wait for the gov. to do it for us. Every one of us gets a little enjoyment out of showing off our rebel works. I think more of us need to call our local papers and have it known what we are trying to do. With any luck, one day every home will be off grid except for maybe water and sewer. Troy Erler movie review- a three thumbs up!

[Quinnf]

...and after you watch the movie, or perhaps before, you might want to read this so you can become aware of the other side of the issue:

http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers/HOT%20AND%20COLD%20MEDIA%20SPIN%20CYCLE.pdf

Quinn

[GuyFawkes]

On the contrary, a movie that everyone really should watch, mandatory viewing for all US citizens, is "America, from freedom to fascism"

filed your 1040 lately? pity..

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0772153/                       
              Plagarised someone's review..                                     
             This movie is a must see to every American who is fed up           
             with or questions the government. This documentary is               
             engaging and presents a mystery from the beginning. Why             
             do we pay income tax? Who really controls this                     
             government? Go on an investigation with Aaron Russo and             
             the people he's interviewed. Prepare to be intrigued and           
             entertained and to leave the movie with answers! It is             
             set to be released in July, but if there is a                       
             pre-screening near you, go! He gives both sides of the             
             issues and presents a fair but skeptical view of what               
             is happening in this country. Unlike Fahrenheit 911,               
             this movie does not shove anything down the audience's             
             throats. It presents questions, answers some, and leaves           
             room for your own investigations. This movie is truly               
             spectacular and worth the travel to see it.   

[Doug]

There are two schools of thought with regards to depletion of resources.

Some say suply and demand will meet and the markert will bare the price untill everything comes into ballance.

The other says natural non renewable resources are finnite and at some point will be depleted, when this happens and things become deer speculators will enter the market and hoard as well as drive up the prices by playing long VS short on commodities. At some point things will ballance, some group or goverment will  intervene or the bottom will fall out if demand dries up and the industries that require the scare commodity are forced to find an alternative or stop production.

Earlier this year while no one was paying attention the LME intervined in the long and short possitions and placed a cap as nickel with less than 1/2 world consumption was available for trading. Now the price today is $16.00 as compared to the $13.00 earlier when this happend and traders are getting scared, steel mills are balking at the price increases and orders for steels like 304 are in decline.

This means nothing to most people, so lets look at the Suply VS demand equation for a minute.
Nickle costs to produce range from as low as pennies a pound in the Kola, 2.00 to 4.00 in Canada and Aus for sulphides. Laterites depending on the technology involved can be higher or lower ( conventional arc furnace VS un proven hydro met ).

With markets running in defficit where are the new suplies and why are they not comming in stream 5 years after the metals boom began? Where are the non eccomic producers that cooled markets in the 60's and 80's when prices spiked?

The answere is simple you can't build a low cost mine or find materials to build a mine or afford the cost to build an mine and make a proffit even at 16 USD a pound. You can build a high cost opperation but when the bottom falls out you left with a white elephant for decades or possibly for ever.

Oil is not at this point, copper is making head way to meet demand, iron will always be there....

What you realy need fear is steady cimb to the top and a crash that destroys markets and capital investments in projects that will never make a profit. If this happens to oil we are screwed.

Are we killing the earth?
Sure, as the snow melted around my yard this week I was struck by the amount of black stuff in this falls snow. First of all the snow should be falling not melting, second it suposed to be white not eggs shell.

Lets keep ignoring the signs and see what wall we hit first the ecconomic or the eccosphere.

Doug

"What's troubling Gus you sound demented
is it because someone talked and she told me
he no longer thinks anything that moves and
everything he sees is something to kill and eat?
What's troubling Gus is it nothing goes quiet?
the whip-poor-will at dusk...


What's troubling Gus overhearing conversations
that it's because you're too either them or me
when it's either them or it's us anything that moves and
everything you see is something to kill and eat
What's troubling Gus? Is it nothing goes quiet?
Is that what's troubling ya Gus the mere mention of the name
used to be enough to make every bird stop singing?
Is that what's troubling ya Gus? No is afraid enough?


What's troubling Gus is it nothing goes quiet?
Is that what's troubling ya Gus? The mere mention of the name
used to be enough to make every bird stop singing
the whip-poor-will at dusk tells you no one is afraid


no one is afraid enough
is it afraid
or is it afraid enough?
it's troubling Gus"


I think I know, cause its the same things that keep me up at night...

[Stan]

I'm sorry Quinn...I didnt finish the good senator's speech because I've been innundated with rehtoric like that here in BC for years.  We have an "institute" called the fraser insitute that is composed of researchers who call themselves scientists.  These guys are wholesale bought and paid for by extreme right wing conservative ceo's that pay for research studies by giving the institute the conclusions they want publisized and then letting them come up with the evidence to support it. These guys can "prove" that motherhood is bad for the human race if given enough re$ource$.

As an example they "proved" that the only schools that do a good job are private schools that charge $20,000 per year or more for tuition.  Everyone should send their kids to them they said, do away with public education and send your kids to St. Georges (one of the above mentioned schools).  The only thing the forgot to mention was that your kid has to be 1.)white, 2.)Catholic, 3.)rich, 4.)have an IQ above 125. 

See what I mean?
Stan

[SHIPCHIEF]

No I don't see what you mean.
Resources like fuel, timber and schools are what you make of them. The Soviet Union, after Perestroika, was said to be the only nation that could turn out products worth less than the natural resouces they were made from.
I dissagree. There are public school systems right here in ther US that are not worth the money spent on them. Political correctness, the opposite of the research institue you mentioned, gives us junk science that blames every ill on capitalism and US hegimony.
While these may be contributing factors, no effort is made to see if solar storms, geothermal activity, or poor instrumentation and scientific method have anything to do with it.
The Harlem no one talks about today, was the old one of the 1920's where, with minimal resouces, black students graduated with high grades and entered society as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists etc. When the government stepped in to help, well you see the result.
No resouce is likely to last forever. You need to consider each as a stepping stone that is slowly sinking. Plan to have another ready before this one sinks.
My step kids were home schooled. They did fine because there are better alternatives that pulic schools and private institution schools.
Third world people still cook on wood fires and walk or ride a donkey. We are not going back to that. It's more polluting, dangerous, and wasteful. We can only go forward. Someday oil will be too valuable to burn. Methane hydrates might tide us over until solar satillites can broadcast power to earth or something.
Al Gore has been riding this enviro-distater for a long time, and the world has not come to an end. Nor will it. When I was a kid the big disaster was the impending ice age, now it's global warming that 'might lead to an ice age' etc.etc.
You might read Trashing the Planet: (excerpt)
When DDT was patented as an insecticide in 1939, it was welcomed as a much-needed substitute for the toxic insecticides then commonly in use - arsenic, mercury, fluorine and lead.

During World War II, DDT was discovered to kill body lice without adverse effect on humans. All Allied troops, therefore, made use of it, with the result that for the first time in the history of warfare, no Allied soldier was stricken with typhoid fever, which is carried by lice. (More soldiers died from typhus in World War I than from bullets.)

Soon thereafter DDT was being used against all insect-transmitted (and epidemic) diseases, such as yellow fever, encephalitis and malaria. The result was nothing short of miraculous. For example, in 1948, before the use of DDT, there were 2.8 million cases of malaria reported in Sri Lanka; in 1963 there were only 17.

Overuse of the pesticide, however, led to a small amount of DDT being detected in soil, water and animals. Over-reaction followed. Books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) warned of the demise of all living creatures. As a result, DDT was banned in the US in 1972, despite objections from the scientific community. Much of the rest of the world stopped spraying as well. The result was cataclysmic: in the 1940s, 200 million people a year were stricken with malaria annually, with about two million deaths per year. By 1978 there were 800 million cases of malaria and 8.2 million deaths per year.

The story of DDT illustrates how many of the benefits of modern technology which we now enjoy are under threat by radical environmentalists and pseudo-scientists who are more interested in gaining political control than in pursuing scientific truth. Trashing the Planet is a lengthy elaboration of this theme of who speaks for science and its effect on public policy. Are environmental policies being set by sound science or by politicized special interest groups? The authors contend that genuine scientific knowledge concerning environmental issues is often buried beneath sensationalism, pessimism and sham-science. “There is clearly a dichotomy between what is known and understood by the mainstream body of scientific experts and what the public believes because of the information it gets.”

[Doug]

"Third world people still cook on wood fires and walk or ride a donkey. We are not going back to that."

Could be worse in some aspects. Think about the interconnected world where you need cheap energy and metals to make and move products like DDT. Start pulling the linch pins on that and you have starvation in places that need irigation and chemicals to grow food or buy imported food produced that way.

I'm not talking a total melt down just displaced people, hunger and missery unlike we have seen to date. There will be electric lights for some and big cars, the ease of access to things will be less.

Doug

[Stan]

What I meant "Shipchief" was that you can "prove" any argument you like by manipulating data to suit your own needs.  By manipulating data I mean leaving out specific data, emphasizing other data, comparing dissimilar data etc. etc. etc.
Stan
btw...Typhoid fever is contracted by eating or drinking contaminated food or water.

[SHIPCHIEF]

Epidemic typhus, caused by Rickettsia prowazekii, is transmitted in the feces of the infected body louse. Body lice live in clothing and are easily controlled by good personal hygiene. Louse-infested populations are primarily those who live in extreme poverty. Typhus has been associated with war, famine, refugee camps, cold weather, and conditions that lead to domestic crowding and reduced personal hygiene, like those found in Algeria because of the ongoing civil war
Excerpt from the Center for Desease Control website.
Otherwise, we probably agree on much.
Scott E

[GuyFawkes]

Third world people still cook on wood fires and walk or ride a donkey. We are not going back to that.

You're right, "we" aren't, because if THIS system fails, we won't be able to support enough wood for everyone to cook or enough donkeys for everyone to use as transport and draft animals.

Do a google maps, I live in the county of devon, southwest of the uk, where the Mayflower kinds sailed from because it had to put in to plymouth for a storm, so plymouth was the last landfall.

Ten years ago this county produced a third of the nations beef, and a third of the nations milk, so yeah, lot of cows of one sort or another, go driving around the countryside now and all you see is mile upon mile of empty fields, no livestock, it is really not difficult to go somewhere and look around 360 degrees as far as they eye can see and literally not see a single animal in any field.

======================

I sit here and read the aussie guy tell is what he needs for an outback home in the tropics, shit, I grew up in an outback home in the tropics, no refrigeration, no electric, later electric came, an allowance of one light bulb and one cieling fan, later kerosene refrigeration came, know what, it wasn't the stone age, it was a fantastic lifestyle, beautiful food, everything aplenty

======================

I sit here and watch and listen to people, al gore included, try to tell me what can happen, being a student of human nature I note two things in common.

1/ the 800 lb gorilla sitting in the corner of the room is nobody wants to even discuss the possibility that this is a century old roller coaster ride that is going too fast to bale out without being killed. Like a herd of stampeding animals, you might change direction some, but you can't just stop it, and changing direction means changing EVERYTHING. eg the gorilla is the belief that the safe line in the sand can be drawn and we can all still have pretty much the same shit we have today, more or less.

2/ the 1200 lb gorilla sitting in the other corner of the room is human nature, we got to this place because of human nature, and these assholes thing appealing to the better side of human nature and shouting "danger will robinson" is going to have the same effect as waving a magic wand and saying abracadabra, everyone will suddenly wake up, band together in common unity and harmony, and work peaceably to avert the crisis.

Now neither one is going to happen, because human nature ain't about to change, because human nature has so far been a positive Darwinian force, selected for, not against, who cares if millions die, billions live and carry on the DNA.

I once knew, and talked with, one to one, one of the richest men on the planet, it took me a year or two to figure out everything we said, and from that point on I flatly refused anything that involved credit, bank loans, mortgages, or any of that capitalist crap.

At other times in my life I've been a fly on the wall witness to some unholy crap going down in the name of something or other, people who liked me up until that point decided they didn't like me, made comments about snake eyes, eg watching coldly and dispassionately, well I didn't make any of that shit happen, and I ain't going to make any kind to difference, except to myself and those who depend on me, by getting down and dirty.

I have seen people fight over rotting fly blown fish heads, and worse, and if you think "that shit" only happens to "others" I have news for you, I've heard it all, they are ignorant niggers who would rather fight each other than grow food, well some of those ignorant niggers had a better education than some people on here, and I'm not trying to insult anyone here, but they studied HARD, and in addition to their own native language could read and write english and french, better than many on here, and had proper skills and trades, and they we living in countries with rich agricultural lands, huge mineral wealth, places that should have been a paradise on earth, but when the economy is gone you can't even subsistence farm, hungry people and hungry locusts will both take your shit and leave you with no crop or seed because the alternative is death by starvation in a day or two.

Civilisations as great as ours have crashed many times in human history, ipods won't stop us, just means we have further to fall because so few people can survive sustainably, the vast majority can't live off the land. Fuck, _I_ can't live off the land and I'm a million miles ahead of most people, my great grandfather was the closest link I have to someone who you could dump naked somewhere and come back two weeks later to find he had made clothes, a shelter, etc.

New Orleans, nothing else needs to be said, the only answer anyone had was to send the gestapo in, american citizens in the shit through no fault of their own, an act of god no less, and what do they get? the militia keeping them at the noisy end of guns. What part of "we the people" were they?

What REALLY happened in new orleans?

Have any of you REALLY thought about it?

The energy taps got cut off, that was it.

Sure, the storm surge hit, sure, the levees, broke, sure, miles of shit got flooded, but it wan't exactly on the same scale as being in a city being carpet bombed in a nation already made poor with everything scarce for the war effort, which is why for the first day or two people just sat there waiting, quiet, calm, orderly, civilised people.

But there was no energy.

YOU lot may not have learned any lessons from new orleans, but you can bet your sweet ass our governments did, nationwide realignment of expectations, so you, like the russians, will wait in the queue for a day for bread (the russians were a wealthy country one generation before that shit went down, so don't say it cant happen here) no personal transport, no personal freedom and the jackboot of the secret police keeping everyone in line for the good of all.

you and me all live in fascist police states, they are just marketed as something different, even benito mussolini defined the ideal fascist state and a capitalist state.

I'll leave you with a quote from Goethe

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

[Stan]

Your right about agreeing Scott....I believe someone once said, "the truth shall lie somewhere between"  there are "extremists" on each end of every argument.
Stan

[mobile_bob]

Guy:

no arguement from me

everyone else, oh yes and you too Guy:

the problem with listening to either of the same of any issue is the old "follow the money" routine.

we collectively never learn from history, those few that do seem to survive and thrive even in hard times.

those that study history, and i am not necessarily talking about ancient history, but rather the last hundred or so years
soon come to the realization that there are patterns to everything, and they repeat over and over.
the reason they do is because most folks don't know about them and continue to buy into the same old stuff, and
continue to walk right into failure.
and then there are those that make millions off of this failure, so it is in their interest to keep the majority ignorant

an example is an employer who so berates and degrades his workers that they are afraid to go elsewhere, he the employer keeps
his worker ignorant to the fact that he is qualified and therefore can continue to make profits off the employee's fear and ignorance.

government with all their talk of better schools, better education, is all a ruse. they don't want smarter kids, they just want them to
think they are doing something for the kids.. hey everybody loves kids!

but we keep the kids down, we don't teach them things that might be useful. we don't teach them about finance, about credit, about
interest rates, and debt and its management.. no can't have that.

we want the kids to go to work, buy a house so they are forever on the treadmill, sell them an inflated house and give them a zero down
adjustable mortgage. now you got em right where you want them,,, on the treadmill

pump their heads full of "buy it with plastic", hey buy our car with zero down, cash back,,, what a deal on a POS car that is not worth half what is asked for it.
oh yes,, and geee arent we nice, we will finance it for 7 years!

tell the kids they need to go to college,,,every one of them... forget farming, production, or anything that resembles doing anything for yourself.

you have to be intelligent, remember the new economy?  yeah right..

do that for the last 100 years , but do it incrementally, and then look where we are.

we are a county that doesnt produce 10% of what we did even 50 years ago.

check out the fall of Rome,, the consumate consumer society

they produced nothing, consumed everything.
there is a correction and it is going to be a real tough bone to choke on.

yes these groups that do the studies, are following the money of those, that are going to gain from our collective losses.
does it take a large leap of the imagination to think that the money guy who pays for the study, told the study group what result he
wanted in the first place? you have to be very nieve to think otherwise.

call it short selling, call it whatever you want.
just like the last great depression there will be those that make millions off the pain of millions of folks.
except this go round the decimal point moves  a few places, instead of millions of dollars it will be billions, and instead of millions of people it may well
end up being billions.



bob g

[Quinnf]

Well, so far as the spectre of a collapse of society and mass starvation goes, perhaps some of our colleagues in the UK have a leg up on us:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2-2504978%2C00.html

Quinn

[oldnslow]

No matter what side of the issues you are on, most of us here agree there is some sort of economic correction coming. I think you will have little time to react. No matter how prepared you are, will you have every piece of the puzzle covered by then?

The governments and corporations already know what's ahead. They are just vying for positions. So you see the two views presented and do your research and pick one. We argue, theorize and try to persuade one another what the truth really is and we stay divided. Debt ridden. Weak. Unarmed (but safer, right?). No matter, it will happen anyway regardless of what you believe or how well prepared you are.

The self reliant may only be delaying the inevitable because unless you live on an island you will eventually get a visit from the surrounding population requiring you to share, flee or fight to the death. 

So chill. Do your thing. Live for today and enjoy every minute. You are living in the good old days.

[Doug]

A wide difference of opinion and end games in this thread...

I know what I can do with my hands. I know what a lot of people can do in this area. The truth is no one person can leave the modern world behind and go it alone easy. Groups of people can.

The question is can if forced a group of people salvage enough raw material, know how and harness enough energy to live sustably?

I think so...

Norhtern Ontario generates more electricity from water than we can use. The largest consumer of electricity in northern Ontarion is the Kidd Creak met site. Take away the market for the copper and zinc and you have a lot more energy to do stuff with. Now a colapsed ecconomy can be stripped and recycled of a lot of things to keep people from starving and freezing.

One obscure example I know but lots of hydro there to be harnessed and used for other things.

As Guy points out, probably the only way to cival order is under a Jack Boot, but as long as my stomach is full and I'm warm you can have my cival rights. Point me in the direction of the of the switch yard, substation, mini grid ect and I'll maintain it for a full belly and and a doctor to see my son when he's sick.

Some would call this slavery, I would call it a starting point.

Doug