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Around 50 years ago, our rulers chose to begin a massive project, essentially conducting a unique scientific experiment, one with potentially foreseen but possibly unpredictable outcomes.

They decided to go all out in (1) extracting fuels buried deep in the Earth, energy from the sun stored via photosynthesis and animal metabolism over a span of 500 million years as coal, oil, and gas, and then (2) burning all of this they could find in the brief period of a few decades.

Our rulers were warned by scientists that their project involved serious risk, but they figured the power they could gain and the money they could make was worth any cost. They didn't care about the negative consequences, and/or foolishly believed that future technologies (still a fantasy in the year 2024) would somehow be able to fix whatever problems their actions caused.

And now, guess what — we're seeing signs that this experiment might be out of control. Feedback loops are kicking in, causing "natural" emissions which could trigger cascading effects, breaking down the ecosystem. It also appears that Earth's climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than first believed. Yet our rulers *still* continue to recklessly burn fossil fuels, always drilling and fracking for more, hungry for power and compelled by greed.

#History #Science #Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual

in reply to Bread and Circuses

Re that last paragraph above...

2023: "The United States is Producing More Oil Than Any Country in History"
➡️ https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/19/business/us-production-oil-reserves-crude/index.html

2024: "U.S. Oil and Gas Production Are Ahead of Last Year’s Record Pace"
➡️ https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2024/04/26/us-oil-and-gas-production-are-ahead-of-last-years-record-pace/

And I'll have more on feedback loops in my next post.

This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to Bread and Circuses

At this point, it’s a race between the consequences being sharp enough to take out the modern world vs them being sharp enough to crash almost all ecosystems.
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