What’s Being Ignored?

Ignorance is bliss

Planetary climate disasters are like bankruptcy. Things go gradually and then suddenly.

We have had a hundred years of gradual changes, which were lost to the large number of variables in weather by area and season. For people living in many parts of the globe, the standard comment on the weather is, if you don’t like it, wait a little while, and it will change.

Our species are naturally short-term thinkers. For most of our existence, the most critical intervals were day and night and the seasons. Tracking seasons was a significant motivator of record creation and mathematics.

Marking the solstices and equinoxes defined the seasons and set the years that could be named, numbered, and grouped into eras and, ultimately, dynasties based on the lives of important people. All human groups do this.

People in regions that could support larger populations with more significant resources allowed more people to keep track of these things.

Most of our population has lost sensitivity to much beyond this. To these people, everything beneath the level of solar movements and seasons is noise with no meaning. Climate change is beyond their ken.

Human religions do not recognize change beyond seasons unless they have origin and final judgment stories. Those events are in the distant past and distant future, so don’t count. The exceptions, primarily religions founded on warrior and sky god myths, create end-of-life judgments that put things back into the limited human time frame.

No wonder half the population is dedicated to remaining ignorant of the climate disaster that has begun to overwhelm our civilization. It’s incredible that something more than half the population understands that there is a climate disaster in countries with educational systems that are dominated by religious ignorance.

Those people unable to transcend our short-term world are beginning to worry, and a significant percentage of them will panic as undeniable disasters befall us. The accumulation of unique disasters historically produces human anxiety and triggers revolutionary change.

The Chinese are the human civilization with the most experience in long-term record keeping. We have a model of longer-term revolutionary change based on the Mandate of Heaven from them. This Mandate was used to justify political rule, but it now makes climate disasters easier to understand and manage with longer-term cultural changes.

In imperial China, religions were coordinated to meet the needs of different population levels, with limitations on irrational myths. This explains China’s much more coordinated response to the climate disaster with broad mass support.

The longer-term and more rational overview of time does not eliminate the materialist economics disaster that has caused climate disaster at a planetary level, of which China is a significant component. Still, it will facilitate revolutionary change as conditions worsen, unlike the American Empire, which has failed to control religion and is caught in the simultaneous collapse of capitalism.

As I have repeatedly said, we can only mitigate the disaster to some extent by managing our inevitable political and economic collapse. We cannot prevent it without profound change at all levels of our dominant culture and a major reduction in our planetary population.

We are now entering a sudden era of climate disaster. We still had a lot of money and time to prepare a few years ago, but that time is now gone. Our one big creditor is our planetary biosphere.

Where has our climate run out of time?

Here is a list from the end of March 2024 collected by Climate & Economy:

[As predicted], TOGO, GHANA, and BENIN just had their hottest day in climatic history.

“HISTORIC HEAT WAVE IN AFRICA — 47.7 [117.9F] at Nara MALI It has never been that hot anywhere in Africa this time of the year.”

“The impoverished country of BURKINA FASO is living the worst heat wave in its history.”

“Lack of rain and strong sun in most of Ivory Coast’s main cocoa regions last week could hinder the April-to-September mid-crop, farmers said on Monday.”

“Southern Africa hit by extreme drought, leaving some 20 millions facing hunger.”

“Hailstorm, downpour and flooding wreaks havoc in Saudi Arabia…”

“10 dead, 12 injured as rain, hailstorm pummel parts of KP [Pakistan].”

“Rain, hail flatten wheat in Malwa region, Punjab.”

“Brace for six heatwaves in April, record high temps this summer [Madhya Pradesh, India].”

“Meghalaya experiences an alarming spike in extreme rainfall due to climate change…I ndia].”

“Five killed and hundreds homeless as ‘mini tornado’ and sudden rain lash eastern India.”

“Giant hailstones weighing 1 kilogram fall from sky in Assam’s Bilasipara…”

“Here’s a brief compilation of the 3/31 overnight extreme downburst in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, China. So far 4 fatalities, 10 injuries reported, three of them were sucked out of their room while the entire window and wall were blown away, another one due to the collapsed roof.”

“Central Tokyo logs 28.1 C [82.6F] on March 31, record-high temperature for March…”

“Northern Thailand chokes under severe smog as wildfires rage.”

“MONSTER HEAT WAVE EAST ASIA. “Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Taiwan, Philippines — March records pulverized all over with huge margins; insane 39.0C [102.2F] in TAIWAN… Last hour records adds: 41.1 Suphan Buri THAILAND; 40.0 Maubin MYANMAR; 39.7 Dawei MYANMAR; 38.8 Phyarpon MYANMAR; 38.3 San Jose PHILIPPINES.”

“Australia’s warming climate transforms soil into a carbon emitter.”

“Driest Perth summer on record may have a lasting impact on WA’s water supply, experts warn…”

“Rainfall records have been smashed after heavy storms lashed Victoria, with NSW now on high alert for a spate of destructive weather…”

There are thirty more disasters for the week of 3/31. Check the link above to see them all. I suggest subscribing to Climate and Economy to follow reality weekly.

And one last from the past week:”

“If humanity is obliterated by climate change, how will we even know it’s happened?

“That’s the question being answered by Australian scientists, who are building Earth’s Black Box — a 32-foot-long steel monolith that captures data about our planet.” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13241173/Earths-Black-Box-Tasmania-built-year.html

Please consider planning for this year.

Originally published at https://rlandok.substack.com.