Empty Oceans

"Pristine" is not a date, and I think it undermines this chart a bit. But the dated items are shocking.

Unbeliev... actually, all too believable.

Damn scary if you ask me! What kind of a future will my six grandchildren have?

That's incredibly depressing.

No, not scary or depressing, just very sad. Oh, I suspect I'll be scared when the zombies start coming for what's left of my food. On the bright side, it just seems like nature doing its thing. What with global warming, peak oil, and all of their consequences, seems like we're in for a big change-a-roo. That's just the ways things are going and nothing, apparently, will really make any difference. That point is way, way in the past. However, Nebularry, I am sorry for your grandchildren. That's a tragedy. Like I said, it's very sad, but very inevitable. I feel equally sorry for the young people I teach. They're in for a "crude awakening." I worry about my dog.

But I am reassured by the fact that humans must abide by the same laws as any other organism. When we overshoot the carrying capacity of our environment, of which all of these things (including global warming) are just symptoms, the result is population die-off, often to levels far below carrying capacity.

I wonder what life will be like on the other side of this great discontinuity. This discontinuity will be the greatest event in human history since the origins of plant and animal domestication. That event was so recent, that I largely think that we have yet to successfully adapt to the changes it wrought. Shades of Ishmael.

"Men go and come, but earth abides."