Hello all,

Am I just being paranoid, or does it seem like something really big is coming?

Perhaps I'm watching and reading to much news;
global climate change
pandemic flu
food shortages
drought
failing economies
unemployment
war
poverty
terrorism
etc.
...you know...the usual.

But it seems to me that we're at a breaking point for so may things, and eventually something has to give.
Couple to that the interconnectivity of many of our "vital" systems and...well, it looks like something big is about to happen.

Anyone else feel this way?

Looks par for the course to me.

Nope, nothing much different now from what's been haunting us for the past 30 years. There's always plenty of bad news to go around. Most of what you cited has been a real threat to us since before I was born, we just are more informed about it these days.

Look for the good in life. We all gotta die sometime Red. (Tom Berenger in Platoon). Be prepared, but try and stay optimistic about things. Life will go much better if you do. Besides, beyond simple preparedness, there's not much you can do about the big ones anyways. If all that "duck and cover" crap didn't condition us for constant anxiety, the media is sure trying to perpetuate it.

Don't let that new feeling of paranoia fool you - we are always teetering on the edge of disaster. It's just that now, there are so many negative things going on that the governments of the world can't put out propaganda fast enough to squash the niggling feeling that something of epic proportions is about to happen.

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get me.

it's always been like this, we just have better media.

plague, pestilence, famine...

it's a part fo the human condition, alwasy was, always will be

I don't know if "better" is the correct adjective to describe today's media but we certainly have greater access to information.

So I am just being paranoid.
To Grouch's point: this is what I mean, the "bad" stuff seems to be happening faster and faster, and collectively, we're not able to deal with it.
I completely agree that haunting (hunting?) us for the past 30 years, though I'd say 60 years. Is it finally catching up?

You may want to take a break from watching the news for a while. It will do wonders for your outlook on life.

+100

I think that we are just aware of more stuff, almost to the point of having too much info to properly process. A lot of what we see as problems can be categorically dismissed because they will straighten themselves out with no intervention.

I once read that we worry too much. To make the point, the author suggested that for a month, we write down everything that causes us to worry. At the end of the month, review the list and you'll likely find that many of the perceived problems took care of themselves.

My suggestions:

1. Turn off the tv
2. Go outside
3. Enjoy life, there's a lot of good stuff out there.

I've cut way back on watching the news and I'm not nearly as grouchy.

The list you made...all these have been causing mankind a lot of grieve for millenniums....and I suspect they will be around far longer then we here have to worry about.

At the risk of repeating myself, life's a [censored]. Then you die.

The news folks love to tell bad stuff. How often to you see "news" about something good happening???

Only a few more weeks before the mainstream media changes its narrative from "grim" to "hope". My guess is that you'll see many more stories in the news taking the "glass is half full" approach in 2009.

I don't know if anything has really changed with the world; but, I have definitely had a different "feeling" for the last few years.
Until just a few years ago, I never thought about keeping extra supplies on hand, or carrying emergency gear. Now, I couldn't imagine not making those types of preparations.

Maybe it's all really just a product of growing older and becoming more conservative or cautious as we age.(?)

Back in the mid 90's, a neighbor of mine was working on her masters degree in journalism. The topic was regarding race relations in the US and how it was reported in the news.

Starting in 1990, the amount of coverage of racial tensions started increasing, while crime data showed a real decrease in the actual number of real race related crime (which had been decreasing for several years). The paper basically showed that after the fall of PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER., there was less 'hard' news that people really cared about. This coupled with the increase in news channels (cable) drastically lowered the bar for what qualified as 'news'.

This is even more true today. I don't feel the world is fundamentally worse off today that it was 30 years ago, but back then, if a husband killed his wife and kids 3000 miles away, it was maybe an inch of news on page 34 of the paper and never mentioned on TV at all. Now we are getting all the details in real time.

When I was a kid, there was an incident where 2 cops got killed and the killer took off and hid for 2 weeks in the corn fields. Today that manhunt would be headline news for a few days. Back then, people that lived more 100 miles away didn't know anything had ever happened.

yep... job opportunity!

Even though mine study and mine job is about disaster and crisis management/policy, i can still sleep well, not worry to much, if not worry less than i used to. Enjoy life, what more can i see.

The media is a for profit business. They make money by getting people to watch. They get them to watch by sensationalizing everything that happens. The proliferation of technology also allows photos and videos of events to come from all corners of the globe now. We are seeing more bad news, but there are not more bad things happening.

True. One of my biggest gripes with the news folk is the way they edit film to show what "they" want "us" to see. Case in point, the Rodney King video. Not until there had been a riot, several deaths, and a jillion dollars in damage and public expenses did I see the first part of that video, the part where Rodney was on his feet, an officer was preparing to 'cuff him, Rodney turned and charged the officer, and the fight began. Pre-riot all we saw was Rodney on the ground being whacked by a bunch of LAPD officers.

And don't even get me started on how the LAPD took over a CHP arrest without being asked to, then messed up the prosecution...

plus about a gazzillion on that, Martin.

We are used to a "faster" lifestyle. As a result, we get overloaded.

As has been wisely said many times here: Take a break from "news." (TV, radio, Internet).

That's one of the benefits of camping for me -- news blackout.

And when I get home from camping (50 nights last year) I've found that I never missed a thing that I could do anything about.

Day after day of The CBS Evening Bad News, CNN's latest missing child case and FOX's morning L.A. car chase, etcetera, is a recipe for despair and paranoia.

With all the cable channels it seems to me there would be a market for The Evening Good News.

My guess too.

I know that it would not make money and would be very resource intensive, I would like to see an independent, non profit media watch dog entity which recorded and stored all media reporting and gave the public free access. Then you could see the patterns in their reporting and the radical shifts in positions, not just of the media, but politicians as well. Lexus/Nexus is way too expensive.

The Internet itself?

As for "independent," it seems that EVERY source of information gets accused of the dreaded "media bias" by somebody, sometime.

The blogosphere seems to be working a revolution on media news reporting, and does serve a sort of watchdog function. But it is far less passive and more demanding of the consumer than the mainstream news media. Moreover, there is a huge signal to noise issue.

Jeff

Independent of ties to a large corporation (Time Warner) or political entity. Humans are biased by nature and that is expected. I mean historical databases of all media reporting for future reference and research. The internet is too disorganized and there is too much misinformation for that to work as a watchdog. The people would have to be focused on reporting on the reporting. Vetting the accuracy and authenticity of the information that is reported by others.

One aspect of news that transcends ideology is the bias toward bad.

Bad news = news

Good news = human interest story now and then.

Excellent point.

There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they Do... Not... Know about it!
Men in Black

-Blast

Looking at the above from a historical context it looks like a pretty good year....

I has been a helluva lot worse during our short history of existence.

Tambora, Krakatoa, Black Plague, Inquisition, 1918 pandemic, WW1 and WW2, last year's family reunion, .... the list goes on...

It's been worse and it will yet again, life goes on.

Oh, the opening that remark leaves me that I'll be nice and pass up.....

And for the more unusual

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/12/31/chance.russia.end.usa.cnn

Life goes on, no matter what, and being prepared and quickly accepting any situation whether it is the 'usual or the unusual suspects' will put you further ahead of the curve. Getting ahead of the rest of the crowd usually means you are ahead in the survival game. All that is usually required is just a modicum of common sense and the ability to think for yourself rather than succumbing to the mass hysteria of the crowd. The mass hysteria today is usually provided by the mass media. Just learn to filter out the news media rubbish and take on board what is important for yourself, your family and your community.

I mostly agree, except that I don't think it's "about" to happen. I think there are going to be major problems over the next 5, 10, 20, 50 years. It's hard to put a date on it, and as other people have said, the last 30 year were OK and the next 30 might be too.

There are threats which have been present for a long time. Terrorism is arguably less of a problem now than it was 20 years ago, at least in the UK, because the IRA issue seems to be resolved. Pandemic flu is more of a risk because of international travel, but we've had international travel for decades now.

I am more concerned about the new issues. Peak oil is a big one, and not just oil but all mineral resources peak. ("Peaking" isn't the same as running out; there's always more in the ground, but production declines when previously it grew because the resource is harder to get to. The easy stuff has been mined now and its downhill from here.) I think much of our finance is built on sand. The recent crisis is just a stressor and the real issues are deeper. There will be other stressors, such as the pensions gap. Some of these are just down to demographics: the baby boom means we will have too many old people one day.

Global warming I think is probably real, although I know that's not a popular opinion in the US. Although there are models which say effects on the UK could be very rapid (if the Gulf Stream stalls), most likely we are talking decades. That said, I wouldn't buy a house on low ground near the coast now.

The trouble is, when I'm so vague about the timing it's easy to dismiss it all.

Brangdon; please understand that not all Americans dismiss global climate change. Some of us have been screaming about it since the 70's (when we might have been able to do something about it) it's only in the last few years that the mainstream has caught on.

The Peak idea is (in my mind) the tipping point. That is to say with so much stress put on systems one "minor" crisis, could/might/will/is going to start an avalanche of system failure. Given that we have mostly eroded away the robustness of most of our necessary systems in the name of efficiency and cost savings, it feels like the whole thing could fall like a house of cards.

I believe you are right about terrorism being less of the threat now, but if the government (any government) is in disarray some people might use that as an opportunity. Just like the Anthrax attacks right after 9/11. It didn't go very far but the potential was enormous.

Even with the threat of pandemic flu; all it would take is a few hundred people getting sick around the country and all of a sudden, no one is willing to go to work. I don't think there would even have to be actual deaths, just panic, and the system would collapse under its own weight. As I write this is realize that it really sounds paranoid. But it seems to be everywhere I look.

I still have doubts...

Global Warming Petition Project

Many people have doubts about that petition, and about the signers. How much do veterinarians, chiropractors and bug scientists know about atmospheric warming?

If we can't see it, it can't be true, can it?

Sue

Compared to politicians?

-Blast, who blames the sun

Signing that petition isn't just a doubt. It's a statement that you do not believe it exists. There is no doubt, you "know" it isn't true.

I recall the spokesman for the former Iraqi government making statements like "We have driven the American dogs out of our homeland. Our fields are now watered in their blood. We have easily defeated their pitiful forces." and on and on as the US was taking Baghdad.

I remember hearing reports of the passengers of the Titanic steadfastly refusing to believe there was anything wrong until they were ordered into life boats.

Rejecting global climate change outright is just like my the people who call us crazy because "nothing is ever going to happen."

Conversely, just because a bunch of people say the sky is falling doesn't mean it is. Look at the War Of The Worlds panic in the 50's.

Just remember, pillage first, then burn.

You really should have come up with that before November.

Sorry, I have to go with Blast on this one. If I have the choice between scientists or politicians, I've got to go with the scientists.
I've actually heard a few stories from meteorologists and climatologists saying none of this is fact, people in that field saying it's bunk - and yet I'm supposed to believe a politician over them? Sorry, maybe I'm getting too cynical in my old age, but I've learned to not trust politicians as a whole.
Now, that being said, I consider myself to be a fairly 'green' person. I like camping and hiking. I volunteer for clean-ups at our local parks and canal paths. I try to recycle everything I can, wanting to keep as much waste out of landfills as possible. I walk wherever I can, rather than drive, unless it's too far or I have too much to carry. I want to leave the planet in better shape than when it was given to me.
I understand all that, but I also want everything we do as a people and as a country to be based on facts, not someones beliefs.
When I see one of those politicians, flying by himself in a large jet aircraft, cover his backside by buying "carbon credits" from a company that he co-founded and co-owns I have a problem. How is his pulling money from his right pocket and putting it back in his left pocket going to help anything? I don't see how this is anything but another excuse to remove money from your purse and put it in theirs.

This is all very true. No one "knows" that global warming is fact. There is a general consensus among scientists all over the world that the climate is changing. Proving that this is caused by human pollution is difficult if not impossible.

Keep in mind that the tobacco companies had dozens of scientists stating that there is no, nor has ever been evidence that nicotine is addictive and that smoking doesn't cause cancer.

Most people dismissed the threat of acid rain, until huge swaths of forest started dying.

My argument is not that it is or is not happening, I'll try to keep my beliefs to myself in this regard. Just that NO ONE can dismiss it off hand, particularly when there is (at least) some evidence supporting that theory.

Looking at the Global Warming Petition Agenda Website and the scientist behind the petition may prove to be useful. If only scientists didn't have a political or religious agenda which cloud the scientific debate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_B._Robinson

Its not really a surprise that the global climate warming issue is taking some time to go mainstream in the US. The mainstream isn't really based on scientific enquiry as in reality a huge proportion of the populus don't believe in scientific enquiry or principles but base there beliefs systems on, for example, 'creationism' and 'intelligent design'

And of course some Scientists are just out to make a name for themselves. Scientific controversy in the mass media debates doesn't seem to hurt the ego's or reputations either.

Scientists can also have an axe to grind, and they too can be politicians or for even better or worse, preachers too.

"...Blast, who blames the sun..."

There ya go...

Believe politicians???? WHERE ON EARTH did you get the idea that I believe politicians???

When bureaucrats are pointing in one direction, they're hiding something in the other direction.

Sue

Not original unfortunately, its what one of my instructors in ROTC used to tell us.

"At this point hopefully..." "HOPE IS NOT A COURSE OF ACTION!" "Roger sir"

A lot of us in the USA are old enough to remember when "Snowball Earth" was the climate catastrophe du jour in the 1970s. Then El Nino a decade later. More important is that there has been no testing of the theories; i.e., nobody is predicting 2010 weather for us to check the theories, and yet the last decade has apparently failed to meet what predictions have been made.

Science has always worked best when theories are vigorously attacked by people looking for every flaw and defect. Calls to stop the investigation of a theory does not give much confidence in that theory.

PS. When guys like Dr. Gray of Colorado State are forced to retire over their scientific opinions on Global Warming something is very, very wrong...

There have been revolutions in computational power and geophysical data collection since the 1970's. While climatology is not a precise science, our understanding of it is vastly better now than it was even a few years ago.

While there is always a minority view, there is a difference between a minority view primarily motivated by legitimate scientific dissent, and one motivated, at least in part, by powerful economic interests with much to lose, religious perspectives, and partisan politics.

Given the stakes riding on the outcome of the global warming debate, the battle has shifted from the purely scientific community into the political and societal arena, and rightly so. Nonetheless, the core issue remains scientific in character, and ultimately for scientists, not lobbyists, pundits and politicians to resolve. The time for a broader debate comes later.

It seems to me that, by far, the greater weight of scientific consensus is that global warming is real, and only a slightly less strong consensus is that human activity is a significant contributing factor. In my judgment, these can be disputed, but only by scientists doing more more and better science, and NOT by politicians, pundits, or anyone else with an agenda.

Jeff

On the original topic- I think Blast has it pretty much right with his MIB quote. There is always something or signs of something going on that could or might be happening. We are suffering from a serious infliction of instant "news" across a global scale. It used to be news took longer to travel and cost more to transmit so people were blissfully unaware, each tech revolution has impacted the flow time and costs so we get more "bad news", faster.

On the issue of the current climate concerns, my understanding is that all of the most current science on climate change is based on relatively simple models of the environment (they are actually quite complex but simple compared to reality) fed by a statistically insignificant amount of actual data (realistically we only measure a tiny fraction of the possible environmental data). These models are run a whole lot of times on supercomputers with the inputs of each run fed by the outputs of the last run. This may be the best we can do but my concerns are best defined by a distinguished gentleman named George Box, who said that "all models are false but some models are useful". The people generating and using the models hopefully recognize they are false and the debate seems to revolve around a disagreement in how useful they are. I would guess that most people on either side of the public (non-scientific) debate do not have extensive backgrounds in numerical analysis, modeling of complex systems, climatology etc. so the debate is driven by other factors.

For what it is worth - I am not a climate expert but I work a lot with modeling complex systems (that are trivial by comparison to the earths climate). All of our models are for safety critical stuff but none of us trust them without out actual in the field testing. That could be a bit of a challenge for those working on climate models!

- Eric

Folks, I'll say it again, and maybe it will sink in somewhere.

Change is inevitable. For us to consider that the world will stay as we think it ought to, or for that matter any other part of the universe around us, is simply arrogant and unrealistic. To conclude that at this point in our cumulative existence we have such great potential to influence our environment ONE WAY OR ANOTHER is annoyingly arrogant, and has no basis in historical fact yet. We could cut our contributions to global emissions in half next year, and one good volcanic eruption or major forest fire will completely nullify our effort.

My advice is to live your lives. Be considerate of others, but let's not get all chicken little when there's really nothing we can do about any of it except watch and squawk. There will always be very real, very substantial threats, just as there have been since time for our species began.

I am not trying to be defeatist about preparation, just realist. We can do things to deal with the minor issues, but the big stuff is for the most part beyond us.

I agree, Benjammin!

I don't waste time and efforts worrying about things that I have no control over.

I sleep good at night knowing that I'm always as prepared as possible, for whatever life throws at me.

I also know that none of us will die of boredom!

I agree - change is inevitable, actually I'll go one further and say life is change. One of the challenges with this is that lots of people think they have the inside track on what the changes are going to be (based on science, religion, philosophy, astrology.....) and we can't get them to all agree. Of course even if they agreed it doesn't mean any of them would be right either.

I doubt that anyone has a really clear view of what lies ahead. We have literally centuries (or decades if you limit yourself to post WWII) of prognostication by various charlatans and experts and none of them really fall close to the reality we have today. Best we can do is prepare ourselves for the ever uncertain future in the way that makes the most sense based on our individual circumstances. To me part of that is learning from the good people here while sharing the odd bit or so that I can contribute.

- Eric

One can never control the waves, but one can always learn to surf....

I'm building this 55 gallon Ark. It looks like a 55 gallon barrel and smells like feet. There is enough room for me and my cat. I'll be in there. knock if it gets better out there.

Now that is funny, can I sell you a tinfoil admiral's hat?

I think someone is drumming up paranoia. The movie industry is getting in on the act. Here is the Link. Yeah baby, surf's up.

I plan to lash my kayaks together and make a mini catamaran like Kevin Costner's in Water World.

Welcome to the new and improved Y2K!

Here is a story that'll feed the paranoia.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,478024,00.html

Just want to point out that estimating low probability events such as the ones on this thread (solar flares, natural and man made disasters, virtual Armageddon, et cetra ) is almost impossible.

The "Black Swans" book has a good strategy for handling things that can't be pinned down as to likely hood.
NNT (the author) also admonishes against (SME's)experts who are more often wrong than right.
Look at finance for a lesson in wrong estimates.

Most of you do it instinctively here on ETS.
Don't worry about if it will happen, just plan to mitigate the outcome.

No one can really tell or calculate if (one of the previously mentioned events) is 5% or 75% likely.

We are better informed now in the day of internet communications, it has always been more likely than the public judged, we just didn't know.

Focus on being adaptable and prepared.
And no you are not paranoid, just informed.
Those feelings are a natural reaction to just how fragile civilization actually is.

Ultimately it is a question of WHEN not IF some of these things will happen.

Preparation, planning and skills are the only edge you have under you personal control.

Blue Sky's and good luck.