[Ibon]

Many of us on this site are horizon scanners and we spend quite a bit of time in conjecture about the future. Here is a paper on Horizon Scanning within the field of Conservation and is made up of a significant group of conservation organizations and individual researchers in biodiversity studies. As part of your horizon scanning tool kit, this document is required reading.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 4713002772

Horizon scanning is the systematic search for, and examination of, potentially significant medium- to long-term threats and opportunities that are not well recognized within a particular field [1]. The focus of this horizon scan is conservation, and it comprises the fifth in a series of annual assessments 2, 3, 4 and 5. Early identification of plausible future issues for conservation could reduce the probability of sudden confrontation with major social or environmental changes, such as the introduction of biofuels in the USA, Canada, and the European Union (EU) 1, 6 and 7. Horizon scanning may also raise awareness and provide momentum to scientific, technological, and policy innovation.

The 20 core participants in the horizon scan (the authors) include professional horizon scanners and experts in disciplines relevant to conservation science who collectively are affiliated with organizations with diverse research, management, and communications mandates. Each participant, independently or in consultation with others, suggested two or more issues that they considered to be emerging, of global scope or relevance, and not widely known within the conservation community.

[dohboi]

Thanks for this, Ibon. Do you think we all have bright futures telling conservation groups about all the dark clouds on the horizon (and in the midst of breaking over our heads)?

[ROCKMAN]

Obviously there's nothing wrong with identifying and describing future potential problems. Been done to varying degrees for decades. There’s no hope to solving any issue if it isn’t thoroughly understood and, more importantly, understood by the majority of the population.

But solutions, whatever they might be, won’t be implemented by the “scanners”. First, a solution has to be identified. But that gets us nowhere if the solution is adapted. And then we’re back to the same brick wall we’ve always had blocking the way: the demand for BAU…if not even more B. And that is controlled by the public IMHO. A public that controls the political system in most cases. And in most cases a political system that will do the bidding of the majority of the voters.

And often it isn’t even a question of the public not understanding the downsides but accepting the benefits and not worrying about the negatives especially if they don’t expect to be around when those chickens home to roost. A combination of self-serving denial and selfishness. Looking back on history it’s difficult to find any examples of that dynamic not controlling life for the most part. Thus IMHO those future “dark clouds” are just as ominous as they were in the past…perhaps more so.

[americandream]

Obviously there's nothing wrong with identifying and describing future potential problems. Been done to varying degrees for decades. There’s no hope to solving any issue if it isn’t thoroughly understood and, more importantly, understood by the majority of the population.

But solutions, whatever they might be, won’t be implemented by the “scanners”. First, a solution has to be identified. But that gets us nowhere if the solution is adapted. And then we’re back to the same brick wall we’ve always had blocking the way: the demand for BAU…if not even more B. And that is controlled by the public IMHO. A public that controls the political system in most cases. And in most cases a political system that will do the bidding of the majority of the voters.

And often it isn’t even a question of the public not understanding the downsides but accepting the benefits and not worrying about the negatives especially if they don’t expect to be around when those chickens home to roost. A combination of self-serving denial and selfishness. Looking back on history it’s difficult to find any examples of that dynamic not controlling life for the most part. Thus IMHO those future “dark clouds” are just as ominous as they were in the past…perhaps more so.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario. Which came first, the culture or the acculturated. Capitalism immersed us into the current mindset. Just as it evolved, something else eventually may. The question really is whether we will have the time to historically bring it to fruition.

[ROCKMAN]

ad - Good point. BTW: "But that gets us nowhere if the solution is adapted". I suspect most understood I meant to say "isn't adopted". And as you point out time is of the essence. What ever we morph into I suspect at the rate at which we're not adjusting there isn't enough time to develop a viable replacement to the current system. But adjustments will be forced upon us whether we're ready for them or not. Mother Earth can be a cruel mistress.

[Ibon]

Thanks for this, Ibon. Do you think we all have bright futures telling conservation groups about all the dark clouds on the horizon (and in the midst of breaking over our heads)?

We should be listening to conservation groups instead of telling them about the dark clouds. But I get your point and dark humor. There is a bright future in scanning for disruptions ahead. My point though is that we need to plug into credible sources and organizations that tell us what is possibly lying ahead just as much as trying to pretend to be an expert when we are at the end of the day lay people speculating with only incomplete information.

I come from an old school pre internet way of thinking. The democratization of information that the internet has permitted has allowed many of us lay people to be informed about issues. That has been good. The negative side is that for every credible relatively unbiased report you get as in the link I sent you we have 999 wackos who think they know whats going down pretending to be experts.

We have lost something as a result. Even though there was obviously bias and politics in the pre internet day amongst the scientific community I can well remember the days when scientists would be vetted and peer reviewed in journals and the public at large would believe pretty much the assessment. That vetting and peer review still happens but the link from those results to public opinion has been destroyed by the internet's power to make any A hole an expert.

In the conservation arena and biodiversity studies there is not nearly as much politics as in climate change or peak oil because there are less vested interests trying to pull public opinion one way or another. The main distortions and polarities that formed in my lifetime around biodiversity preservation and conservation where land developers fighting the EPA on issues around listed endangered species. Snail darters in Tennessee putting a halt to resource development as a classic case.

Part of the reason I started this thread was an attempt to provide sources that are credible on critical conservation issues.

[Ibon]

But solutions, whatever they might be, won’t be implemented by the “scanners”. First, a solution has to be identified.

The scanners role is not solutions, but early assessment of potential critical issues emerging. If you are a graduate student or professor fighting for a grant in a dwindling resource base your chances might be improved if you reference the potential threats brought up by scanners linked to credible conservation groups.

There are unsung heroes out there doing the field work, I have hosted several here in Panama, ranging from herpetologists to entomologists, whose work is contributing to a better understanding of conservation issues. Informally on the bigger issues these folks are as opinionated as any of us and generally pretty doomerish when scanning the horizon. In fact, you have to deal with a certain futility if your studies so accurately reflect the bigger picture. And then to see the distortion out there in the public interpretation and the media and corporate interests taking it even further into unreality.

[Newfie]

FWIW I think that this is a great idea.

Unfortunately I don't have any resources to add to it, at least not yet.

Using your language, I have been thinking of PO as my Horizon Scanning engine for quite some time. Formalizing it will be even better.

Now, how do we keep the trolls out?

[americandream]

ad - Good point. BTW: "But that gets us nowhere if the solution is adapted". I suspect most understood I meant to say "isn't adopted". And as you point out time is of the essence. What ever we morph into I suspect at the rate at which we're not adjusting there isn't enough time to develop a viable replacement to the current system. But adjustments will be forced upon us whether we're ready for them or not. Mother Earth can be a cruel mistress.

Absolutely. Mother Nature always has. However, as a species, we have arrived at a juncture of incredible potential in being able to manipulate our material world in a truly sophisticated manner. We still have lots of baggage from our primitive past to jettison. But as we both agree, the clock is ticking on us with the jury is out.

[Ibon]

Absolutely. Mother Nature always has. However, as a species, we have arrived at a juncture of incredible potential in being able to manipulate our material world in a truly sophisticated manner. We still have lots of baggage from our primitive past to jettison. But as we both agree, the clock is ticking on us with the jury is out.

I sometimes wonder about all that baggage from our primitive past that we have to jettison. Perhaps part of the problem is that we forgot to bring some of the baggage with us into this modern paradigm of thought where we are so solely focussed on manipulating our material world in such an "un"sophisticated manner.

That forgotten baggage is related to the ancestral norm when our tinkering manipulative nature was submissive to the carrying capacity of the environments we lived in.

[americandream]

Absolutely. Mother Nature always has. However, as a species, we have arrived at a juncture of incredible potential in being able to manipulate our material world in a truly sophisticated manner. We still have lots of baggage from our primitive past to jettison. But as we both agree, the clock is ticking on us with the jury is out.

I sometimes wonder about all that baggage from our primitive past that we have to jettison. Perhaps part of the problem is that we forgot to bring some of the baggage with us into this modern paradigm of thought where we are so solely focussed on manipulating our material world in such an "un"sophisticated manner.

That forgotten baggage is related to the ancestral norm when our tinkering manipulative nature was submissive to the carrying capacity of the environments we lived in.

We brought the bad from the past (the system of hierarchy...this from our feudal past) but have lost that connection with nature (the good). That connectdness only really function normally when we act through group impulses (an essential function of group survival is preserving nature's integrity).

Where individualism takes over in the pursuit of profit, everything is commodified including nature and that link is broken. In fact this process is absolutely necessary if we are to convert nature to value in pursuit of accumulation. This has happened to women to state another older example and occurred early in our mercantilist history with the rise of prostitution. Accounting for why man's relationship with women is paradoxical. On the one hand she is the mother figure and on the other, she is a sexual commodity able to be bought and sold. Likewise this paradoxical reverence of nature in capitalism with the rise of conservation whilst we commodify its essence.

[dohboi]

"for every credible relatively unbiased report you get as in the link I sent you we have 999 wackos who think they know whats going down pretending to be experts"

A nicely put version of the saying: "A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on"

[americandream]

Everyone is an expert these days and the rest of us are confused.

[Tanada]

Everyone is an expert these days and the rest of us are confused.

X-Spurt, an unknown material spraying out under pressure.

I think the more people the know the more they are willing to admit that they still have a great deal to learn.

[dohboi]

"Horizons" are looking pretty damn black right now, from where I sit. I doubt any conservation groups or pretty much anyone else want to hear about it.

Consider these questions:

--Does anyone anywhere think that wind and solar can grow to from about 1% of total energy sources to being over 7% in the next year?

--Does anyone think that economic growth can happen while energy use rapidly shrinks?

--Does anyone think that the world will suddenly plan a 6% or more shrinkage of the world economy, or a 10% or more shrinkage of the industrial nations' economies?

If the answer to all of these is "no" (and that is clearly the only honest answer to them), then we have to agree that two of the world's top climatologist essentially said that we are now completely and utterly beyond hope.

(J. Hansen said we need immediate at least 6% annual reducsions in emissions; K. Anderson, 10% annual reductions from industrialized countries to avoid 2 degrees C increase. Potsdam Institute, IEA, World Bank, PWC, and a number of others have said much the same.)

Maybe a global financial collapse will come along just in time to save our sorry a$$e$, lol. But I wouldn't count on it. The collapse in 2008 barely made a tiny, temporary blip in the trajectory of the rise in C emissions.

[Ibon]

If the answer to all of these is "no" (and that is clearly the only honest answer to them), then we have to agree that two of the world's top climatologist essentially said that we are now completely and utterly beyond hope.

I think we should be thankful that the answer is no to all of these. Nobody who understands the scale of human impact on the planet really would want us to solve any of these problems.

Failure is success at this point in the game. And I do not say that with sarcasm or to be facitious. Systemic failures of different resource bases going forward actually act like buoys in the labyrinth of the mangrove swamp. They are the guideposts toward an exit strategy.

My horizon scanning is looking for failure buoys.

[americandream]

DB

We will have to commercially colonise at least another planet in the next 30 years. Bearing in mind that we are still using fire to propel ourselves (not very fast) as we have been doing since the start of the industrial revolution, I'ld say we are pretty much going nowhere.

However, if we develop some other from of (warp speed) travel, perhaps. But then the other problem arises. Carting off planet resources to a wasteful system on a planet already creaking under masses of its pollution

[dohboi]

Ibon, the collapse that will ensue will involve people consuming every last bit of non-human (and probably a good bit of human) flesh, solidifying the essentially total extinction of all complex life forms. The wars that will ensue will also likely continue to burn through the rest of the ff reserves as yet unexploited.

I do not think collapse will be a nice thing for the earth. The only thing that would be remotely kind is a universal realization that humans main purpose must be to be its own 'predator'--that is it's own limiter. Limiting humans must be the new, immediate universal ethos, particularly limiting our power to eradicate the future and our power to over-procreate. Ironically, the latter can best be achieved by EMpowering women. So maybe I should have said limiting man is the most important priority?

[americandream]

Ibon, the collapse that will ensue will involve people consuming every last bit of non-human (and probably a good bit of human) flesh, solidifying the essentially total extinction of all complex life forms. The wars that will ensue will also likely continue to burn through the rest of the ff reserves as yet unexploited.

I do not think collapse will be a nice thing for the earth. The only thing that would be remotely kind is a universal realization that humans main purpose must be to be its own 'predator'--that is it's own limiter. Limiting humans must be the new, immediate universal ethos, particularly limiting our power to eradicate the future and our power to over-procreate. Ironically, the latter can best be achieved by EMpowering women. So maybe I should have said limiting man is the most important priority?

Empowering women is a two edged sword without context. To date, it has tended to populate the board rooms of the growth machine. Where that personal achievement has failed, breeding continues apace.

edit: I apologise if this appears to be thread drift. But the system and its effects is a wide hole in your otherwise excellent informational role. Combine the two, and I think you will be a force on the internet.

[americandream]

I will also make this further point. I guess we have to ask ourselves, what is the role of PO.com. To merely report the news. In which case, commentary is surplus to requirements.

However, where we report the news and embellish it with our our take on the problem (Horizon scanning), I would suggest that we think carefully as to whether we are in fact contemplating a remedial course or more sustenance for the problem.

Patching up the system to fight another day is foolhardy, even if it seems like we have tackled the "real" problem, often a symptom despite appearing a problem.