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I've been working on this for a month:
The Busy Worker's Handbook to the Apocalypse
https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7
#climatechange #extinction
Thank you. This is comprehensive.
How do you sleep at night?
What was the biggest, most monumental fallout for you after learning this stuff and thinking about the implications?
I suspect that most people are too busy to sit down and dedicate the time to really understand and come face to face with this grim reality.
This actually helps me sleep at night. I'm a disabled, homeless, unemployed autistic person. More or less broken.
The biggest question I have to face while writing this is whether I'm just seeing what I want to see. I waited 2 years to write this until the evidence just became so overwhelming I feel pretty confident that isn't the case. Mainly the bit on metals availability, and US belligerence towards Russia and China tells me there will be no global action, just war all the way.
@SamYourEyes
Your life sounds awfully difficult. I haven't got any words. 
What vexes me is that the climate crisis is rarely considered when folks think about whether or not to have a child. I think there is a road with significant suffering ahead. I was given genetic counselling for the possibility that I might pass on a hearing loss to a future child. Unless people are aware of the prognosis of the planet, they're flying blind in making this monumental decision.
@shans
100% agree. It makes me want to cry when I see folks I follow on TikTok proudly showing off their baby bump.
Mark Cranfield (who I credited at the end of the article) harps on that point constantly that one of the biggest reasons to raise awareness is to try to convince ppl to stop bringing new life onto a sinking ship.
@SamYourEyes
I struggle with that, too.
A friend said something that keeps coming back to me on this topic: "I wanted kids but I chose not to have them because the most loving thing I can for them is to not bring them into this mess." 
This seems to imply that it is *un*-loving to have children, which I don't think is true. I think the vast majority of people are too busy getting on with life (as per your article - busy people) to get up to speed on the seriousness of our situation.
@SamYourEyes This a brutal read, though somehow I still have hope. Thank you for your time in collecting this information.
@lightning
My assessment is 100%.
Even if we had a grand revolution tomorrow, overthrew capitalism & beheaded every billionaire, and every country went full in with geoengineering, I think best we could do is extend the timeline a few decades.
There's not enuf metals to build a renewable grid, must keep using fossil fuels for most electricity. We must burn fossil fuels in farm tractors to grow food for 8 billion people.
We really needed revolution by 1970. It's been too late for a long time.
@SamYourEyes @lightning Commenting from our old account because our server is broken, how fitting.
Also our neighbor is chipping wood or something, and generally making a noise nuisance.
Is it one of those things where it's worth giving what can be done a shot, but success is rated as a black swan? Can this be parlayed from a man/world-ender to "merely" a civ-ender?
@ellenor2000 @lightning
I don't see how there's any chance, no. I could definitely be wrong about the timing, let's say some nomadic hunter/gatherers manage to survive at 4C, problem is warming doesn't stop there, it keeps getting worse for 1000 years.
That said, I still advocate for revolution. Even if it can't stop extinction, ending capitalism can make our last years less cruel and brutal. We can soften the suffering by removing parasitic billionaires.
I hope we can somehow keep a fire alight (irony...) for man and what we cherish (e.g. limited high tech, some animals) even out to the year 8000 or later. But pure, soft hope is failing us now.
@lightning this is a fantastic article on the topic of hope. I highly recommend it.
@lightning @ellenor2000
I feel ya. 
The biggest question I faced writing this was asking myself whether I was just seeing what I want to see. That's why I tried to thoroughly source my whole thought process in the article, if there's a hole in my logic no one's pointed it out to me yet. There's only a small number of people benefiting from this current ecocidal system, the rest of us are suffering in a wide variety of ways.
@SamYourEyes
FYI: when I click on the link it opens in medium then ends with a ‘500’ error page.
@rauder hmmm. Thanks for heads up. It seems to the whole medium website is down. I'll keep an eye on it, hopefully it's nothing specific to my article.
@SamYourEyes Hi Sam, thank you for this article. I've just finished reading it. This is a topic I've been researching extensively this past few months.
Just like you, I want to make sure I'm not just seeing what I want to see.
I've seen the prediction of a global collapse by 2050 thrown around by other people as well, but what's the basis for this?
The only supporting evidence for that timeline in your article is this one paper on plankton. Sure, there are many risk factors that you list related to global supply chains and war, but that's just guesswork.
I'm missing the line that connects the dots of the issues you've listed with the results described in the abstract, on the timeline of 10-15 years.
@jackofalltrades the plankton thing is totally irrelevant. The key is to look at what scientists think will happen by 4C, and then draw a line between then and now. We're not going to go from fine to billions dead overnight.
Also remember 4C by 2100 is based on current CO2 levels, if we keep emitting for another decade we'll likely reach 5C by 2100. Follow news on crop disasters, ppl don't realize how close we are to the beginning of collapse right now.
@jackofalltrades if the current El Nino cycle doesn't cause a global crop disaster, the next one certainly will. We're just too close to the edge for civilization to make it thru 2 more El Nino cycles.
@SamYourEyes Yep, I've been tracking agricultural news around the world too.
We're looking at about 2C warming by 2050 in the business-as-usual scenario. If we add effects of El Niño on top of that you're saying that will surely break the global food system and kill 6 billion people by 2050.
That's where I fail to see the connection. Even with warming so far, global agricultural production has been growing. What convinces you that this trend will crash so soon?
@SamYourEyes When it comes to El Niño, effects are not uniform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o#Regional_impacts Not all of it is bad, and not everywhere at once. For example, its effects on Europe are not well understood.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o#Regional_impacts
@jackofalltrades @SamYourEyes Alone, the present drought in western Canada is likely to reduce global food production by ~0.5%.
@opendna @SamYourEyes How do you know this, where does this number come from?
@jackofalltrades @SamYourEyes CBC reports on the severity of the drought in Alberta on agriculture are a consensus "total loss". Alberta is about a third of Canada's 1.5% of world agricultural production, so 0.5%. It won't be *literally* total loss, but the drought is also hitting BC, SK, and MB.
Paper napkin math is ~0.5% of global value, more by tonnage (because grains), and much more as share of exports. Industry analysts certainly have better estimates, their opinions cost money to read.
@opendna @SamYourEyes Got it, that's -0.5% of global cereal production in the worst case. Not food overall, not meat, eggs, milk, fruits or vegetables, right?
As to analysts' opinions: wheat futures are slightly up, +3.6% in the last week, not only due to droughts in Kansas and Alberta, but also because of escalating situation in Ukraine. Still, overall they are -23% YTD, so no supply shock is expected. Investors can be wrong, but they understand risks involved much better than you and me.
@jackofalltrades @SamYourEyes The reverse: it's 0.5% of value so it will be more of cereals. Alberta produces ~1.4% of wheat globally. Agreed re the analysts tho.
My point wasn't that serious famines are immanent, but that trends are dire. Climate systems breaking down at the same time as we're on the downward curve of groundwater exploitation. I know one ~$1T agri region which lowered aquifer levels during a "once in 100 years" rainy season, and wells throught California are going dry.
@opendna Yep, I agree there is writing on the wall for our industrial civilization, as it's inherently unsustainable.
I was hoping to find out from @SamYourEyes what's the basis for the dire prediction of a collapse of the global food system within 10-15 years. AFAIK neither climate science neither science on soil or water shows such a rapid decline. The only thing that I know of that could have such an effect is a nuclear war.
@jackofalltrades @SamYourEyes I just happened to see the Canadian news about it float by. It's a bit like the drought in France and Danube Valley last year: if you're not local or on the feed for some reason, you won't hear about it.
The Mississippi Valley will probably be fine this year but will be less resistant in the near future because major aquifers are near collapse. Ironically, Calif drought ended with flooding, which is recharging aquifers: a No-Yes-No-Yes situation.
@opendna @SamYourEyes A follow-up after two months: things are looking better than expected for a change: https://mas.to/@jackofalltrades/110956492750009861
@SamYourEyes this is the single most helpful site for navigating the apocalypse.
@SamYourEyes Sam, I just want to thank you for putting this together. Few people have put as much effort into presenting the information as you did, and I am grateful.
@realaccountnamehere
Thank you! I'm glad some ppl find it useful, my family and friends did not.
@SamYourEyes Well that's horrible to hear. I'm sorry. :(
@realaccountnamehere
At least I can say I tried to tell them 