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July 22 2021
It's another smokey hot Summer on the front range. Apparently most of
the smoke is from the west coast; so far Colorado seems to be escaping a
repeat of last year's epic wildfires. We've even gotten a decent amount
of rain, enough to keep the wildflowers going and the grasses green.
Have finally gotten starting reading William Catton's seminal 1980s book
'Overshoot'[0], a work I regularly see referenced by others. Initially
started with an electronic copy but stopped reading about 3 chapters in
and ordered a used paperback copy as there are several charts and I can
see wanting to keep this as a reference. I'll write up my impressions
of the book at some point. Fans of audio books might check out Michael
Dowd's free reading of 'Overshoot' on Soundcloud[1]. Dowd is a huge
fan of Catton and when he passed away in 2015 encouraged John M. Greer,
who has written probably 10 books or more at least partially based on
ideas gleaned from "Overshoot", to write an eulogy[2].
- -
While waiting for Catton's book to arrive I picked up Paolo Bacigalupi's
'The Windup Girl'[3], a dystopian novel which I quite enjoyed, though
I did find it peculiar that all the scheming, corrupt characters were
largely refraining from burning massive amounts of fossil fuels even
though still available. The author is a native of Colorado and seemingly
a bit reclusive but clearly a prolific writer. 'The Water Knife'[4]
was his followup novel about a drought devastated Southwestern US..
- -
Random things recently come across:
- 'Sixty Years of Climate Change Warnings' [5]
by Alice Bell / The Guardian
Basically a long-form excerpt from Dr. Bell's recent book 'Our Biggest
Experiment'[5] which sounds very similar to David Wallace-Wells
'Losing Earth' previously reviewed on this phlog. Bell is a journalist
and historian of science in the UK so this has a somewhat different
perspective than 'Losing Earth'. I didn't recall Wallace-Wells
mentioning Anne Gorsuch's role in quashing meaningful mitigation efforts.
She turns out to be the mother of Neil Gorsuch, one of the more recently
Republican-appointed SCOTUS judges. Bell gives an introduction to the
book's material in a recent online Citizens Assembly meeting[7].
- 'Problems, Predicaments, and Technology' blog [8]
Came across one of Erik Michael's posts on The Collapse Chronicle[9] and
after poking around decided his blog was bookmark-worthy. Apparently many
of the blog posts originated from material on Michael's Facebook group;
the blog is fairly new, created as a hedge against potential future
Facebook censorship. I very much like that Erik provides links to his
references. He was recently interviewed[10] as part of Michael Dowd's
'Post Doom Conversations' series on YouTube.
- /r/Collapse via GopheRddit [11]
Not really a fan of Reddit but I regularly come across interesting posts
and links on /r/Collapse and for merely reading find the Gopher interface
wonderfully simple. There's also a NEWS interface[12] which may allow
posting if one can figure out how to register on gmane.io; I couldn't.
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Refs:
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overshoot
[1] https://soundcloud.com/michael-dowd-grace-limits/catton-overshoot-1
[2] https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-02-05/as-night-closes-in/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife
[5] https://v.gd/UDQ3Ls
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/\
sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored
[6] https://guardianbookshop.com/our-biggest-experiment-9781472974778.html
[7] https://youtu.be/ddEqmQOXNF8
[8] https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/
[9] https://paper.li/thecollapsechronicle
[10] https://youtu.be/SV9mKajTpSk
[11] gopher://gopherddit.com/1/
[12] news://ciao.gmane.io/gwene.com.reddit.r.collapse