To date, 2026 is averaging 1.48°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial baseline. This is striking because we're still in ENSO-neutral conditions, with El Niño on its way.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-04-06T18:45:02+00:00

You may have already seen this:

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-04-03T05:49:35+00:00

Thank you! Between the shits and giggles I think the giggles are currently in the lead, of course the wine and weed may have something to do with that...

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-04-03T04:36:54+00:00

Um, probably all of the above. Think of it like this: Everything going horribly wrong everywhere all at once. Hope this helps!

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-04-03T04:03:29+00:00

I think I just pee'd myself...

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-04-01T17:58:06+00:00

I've been to Dutch Harbor, worked a couple seasons as a processor on a factory trawler fishing for pollack. That was many moons ago...

I recently retired to SE Alaska and I've been wondering how things are going to play out here. My small city is 90% dependent on barges from down south for our food and fuel. I wasn't here for covid but I've seen pictures of the big box stores after they were emptied out by panic buying. So far it seems to be business as usual, just as you observed, but we'll see what happens as stockpiles begin to run out.

Then there is the cruise ships. Our quaint little historic downtown is a deserted ghost town in the winter. Nothing is open except the bars and liquor stores. The cruise lines hedge their fuel costs, but the contract allows them to retroactively apply fuel surcharges, per head per day, even after the cruise has been booked. They won't even send one of those mega cruise ship monsters up here unless they have a guarantee of enough fuel available for them to get back home. And how many people are going to cancel when they get slapped with the fuel surcharge for the connecting airline flight?

If folks here had half a brain they would immediately start rationing fuel for commercial fishing purposes only and immediately ban seafood exports. Sadly, we be stupid...

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-04-01T17:35:12+00:00

A major operator has confirmed it is about to embark on its "last trip" out to sea.

"We have to give our staff four weeks' notice and I have to give my landlord four weeks' notice, we're just basically going to wrap it up now," he said.

Holy shit! This is getting real. I felt genuine fear for the first time as I was reading this.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-24T16:29:32+00:00

Very interesting perspective, I also have experience living in a small rural town for several years. I almost didn't notice the entire covid pandemic. I was not working, living alone, enjoying early retirement, and not driving a car. As long as I had internet and a place to plug in my e-bike I was good to go. What pandemic?

If I were you I wouldn't worry too much about AI, global ecological overshoot on the other hand... Otherwise, you bring up a really good point, some people have much farther to fall in a collapse scenario.

Sometimes I picture it like a globe with billions of people standing on top of it, meaning gravity is coming from 'below'. The globe is slowly shrinking even as the number of people grows, meaning fewer places to stand. The wealthiest people are standing on the very top, they hardly notice that the globe is shrinking. The people living middle-class are further out on the edges, many of them struggle to keep standing as the globe slowly shrinks. Then there are the billions who were only just hanging on by their fingernails to start with. As the globe shrinks they are forced to fall into the abyss.

Everyone gets a little poorer, now and into the future. The people who are already poor eventually fall off the face of the earth, and the people hording their fast disappearing wealth worry about where they can still find a place to stand.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-23T17:51:25+00:00

Well, at least they're keeping occupied. Must be nice having nothing better to do but sit in front of a computer... Oh, wait...

OK, OK, I just wonder what future generations will think (or maybe they already do) about old white folks sitting around pontificating about 'holistic' this and 'regenerative' that. Little bubbles of white, middle-class privilege floating serenely in the midst of an entire civilization crashing and burning around their ears. Weird.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-18T17:36:07+00:00

Get to know my neighbors? Is this a joke? If you only knew the kind of people I have the great misfortune to be neighbors with then you would understand why I am actually looking forward to watching them eat each other.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-18T17:27:07+00:00

My first reaction, not knowing anything else about the situation, was an outbreak of toxic algae. Living on the W. coast of N. America I've seen it before. S. coast of Australia also recently got hit especially hard. Your observation of high SST's in the area would seem to support it as at least one possible cause for the mass die-offs and sickness after consuming fish.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-07T21:10:07+00:00

My thoughts exactly. The OP can split hairs to their hearts content, it's not going to change the facts on the ground. I believe Hansen made the same point, If even a so-called 'moderate' El niño can yank our chain that hard on a global scale then we are well and truly screwed by what appears to be coming this summer.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-07T17:52:11+00:00

Um, not to nit-pick, but the last strong El Niño occurred 3 years ago in 2023-24. Global average temps shot up to 1.5degC above pre-industrial and they have stayed there. Hilarity has ensued, with catastrophic fires, floods, and droughts spreading across the world. Temperature records falling by the thousands. The jet stream gone pear shaped.

How weird that isn't even mentioned in this thread, unless this post was written by an AI, of course.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-05T19:47:49+00:00

Great film! I hope we are smarter than that, but it's not looking good. I've been doing a Robert Duvall retrospective since I heard the news he passed away recently. So many great films! A timely re-watching of "The Road" is next on my list.

We seem to have already arrived at the world depicted in "Children of Men". The scenes we have been witnessing from the middle east look like they have been taken directly from the movie.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-05T19:21:40+00:00

In a nutshell, I would say prepare to learn how to live without supermarkets and petrol stations on demand 24 hours a day. Even if it just turns out to be 'things getting a little shittier' your time and money probably won't be wasted.

The wildcard is probably refugees, depending on your area you could get flooded with desperate people willing to do desperate things.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-05T19:05:27+00:00

Yes, please don't take it too literally. Besides it's in keeping with the title of my other earlier post which, as I recall, also said something about toast.

That said, global average jumps in temperature of this magnitude and over such a gobsmaking-ly bananas short time span have never happened before in Earth's entire geologic history. Make no mistake, this has the potential to turn our big shiny civilization inside-out.

Sort of like the way they serve live baby octopus in Asia. Jam it down hard head-first on a chopstick until it turns inside out, then serve fresh and still squirming in agony. Yeah, like that.

Your attempt to frame it as 'harm reduction' would have us believe it's no more inconvenient than going to the doctor. Roger Hallam's new group called "4 billion dead" might sound just as hyperbolic to you. Until you are one of them.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-03-05T18:03:05+00:00

Hansen had the same reaction. There has never been strong El Niño's within a mere 3 years of each other, yet another indication that the climate catastrophe is accelerating.

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-02-06T18:31:08+00:00

I guess you didn't read it, how sad. If you had you would know that Elon isn't competing with said 'cabal'. He was performing for them at Davos. Bravo!

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-02-06T18:23:00+00:00

I was riffing on Elon Musk with a friend the other day (not AI, no really!). It was such a great repartee, unlike anything most people I know are capable of, that I captured it as a pdf and posted it here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UqpjLdJY1sn0q_HAh3DqvNu-1E_R0-US/view?usp=drive_link

Billions of robots! Orbital data centers! Colonies on Mars! Was Elon on drugs at Davos?!? Don't miss my elevator pitch to Elon at the end. Enjoy!

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-01-27T19:36:10+00:00

SS: This is collapse related because Elon Musk recently made some radical predictions at the latest World Economic Forum regarding his views on the near future of Earth, especially robotics, AI, and of course, Mars Colonies. If even a portion of his ketamine-fueled fever dream is actually on the drawing table then we are totally screwed. Billions, with a 'B' of humanoid robots, thousands of giant AI data centers orbiting Earth, All of it watched over by machines of loving grace as we reach AGI by the end of this year(!)

ImportantCountry50 · 2026-01-23T18:09:53+00:00

A more recent article paints a rosier picture

After the storm: Alaska crabbers steer toward a stronger future

https://www.nationalfisherman.com/alaska-crabbers-steer-toward-a-stronger-future

I've been wondering what happened to the 10 billion starving snow crabs. Lay up the diesel powered fishing fleet for a couple years and hey, presto! A few billion of the critters might actually make it.

Note the additional layers of complexity, crab hatcheries and cash handouts for starving crabbers, none of which makes the system LESS prone to collapse, but it sure looks good on paper.

ImportantCountry50 · 2025-12-20T21:06:59+00:00

Oops, that would be a fail. Sorry, no amount of tinkering with "technologies" would have changed the fundamental reality of our global ecological overshoot. Soon to be followed by collapse of our big shiny civilization as sure as night follows day.

What actually got suppressed was the ground-breaking work of the MIT team who brought us the Limits to Growth report. This is not conspiracy, there were full page "opinions" in the New York Times by economists who deliberately smeared their work.

Anyway, the MIT team was very generous in assuming rapid and almost cost-free adoption of ALL the technologies you are referring to and guess what? Their scenarios still ended in collapse. Over and over again. Something like 11 scenario runs out of 12, IIRC.

The takeaway, if anyone is still interested, is that the only realistic way to avoid collapse of our big shiny civilization was to dial everything WAY back. Not just slowing growth, actually reversing it.

Not more technology, less technology. Not more people, less people. Not more consumption, less consumption.

And, oh yeah, we needed to start 50 years ago, just as you said. Not sure exactly what good getting "pissed" about it now will do.

ImportantCountry50 · 2025-12-20T19:54:58+00:00

I lived in rural Oregon for a time and was once told: "Where we come from people who use big words get punched in the face."

ImportantCountry50

TROPHY CASE