Sky above Frankfurt, Germany. Picture by Gus Leonisky. The only clouds are the trails of planes at high altitude.

Two thousand and thirty two

In 1994, I had a fleeting dream. A dream that had morphed from another fleeting dream I had in 1972. In 1972, the dream was about the end of humanity as we know it, not via judgement day or a Lucifer crushing defeat — but in a radiating whimper. We were all looking at it from across Pittwater Road, Dee Why... Strange place for it, but the vantage point was letting us see the Norfolk pines of Manly beach — trees that by now were just sticks, joining the night sky to the sands.

The 1994 dream was set in the same place, daytime, but the skies above belonged to Germany.

These skies above Dee-Why Germany were extraordinarily clean as if scrubbed of all life and dust —and we know that dust to dust we are — we all take our turn at it. Deep blue. Only the people wanting to die ventured out. It could have been two thousand and septante two (2072) as my Belgium friends would call it, but then on letting the enormous feelings through it was definitely 2032. The latter version of the dream comes to me often, like a perennial plastic flower that blooms effortlessly since it's there in the shade.

Whatisname and his novel 1984 could have inspired me to write a book about it... The downfall of civilisation, etc... using this crazy fiction to justify my pecuniary existence.

No Gus Leonostradamus does not predict the future on dreams and riddles. So he went to the calculator and crunched a few numbers. Sure, one can make a date fit an expectation... If you crunch the numbers with enough loading in them you can make them do somersaults like you would not believe... That is the purpose of statistics when you need then for painting a viewpoint. In the end the year stuck... No matter how I could permute the numbers and twiddle the error parameter, the date would stick... 2032 it is.

As we acclaim daily the rise and rise of the stock market like puff pastry in an oven or a soufflé with mushrooms, the cream sauce is spilling on the hot plate and burning, contributing to the fire below. Carbonising so to speak. And we're bent on producing more soufflés and more cakes because that is our destiny —more cakes and more soufflés — the destiny of a system that has to make more to make more.... Makes sense? Not really on the natural set ups but that's the way we humans do things since we left our tree.

Worldwide our masters and future masters should put the brakes on us, in a screeching noise. Emergency meetings, public decrees and a total briefing of all the lodges, vatic-anuses, and secret alpha-gammas to stop the underground scrooges complaining about not being able to gouge the eyes of anyone else.

But no despite all the warning signs saying slow down, our engine is overheating, we put more coal and more oil on the fire. The ice in our whisky is melting twice as fast as before... Sorry, I mean three times as fast.... Oops correction: it's melting four to five times faster than ever before, even in the last hey days of the Dicroidium flora.

But economically speaking we're driving this truck at high speed because we've got to deliver the goods to make more goods... So many opportunities to grab and so many opportunities to create before — before 2032.

We've already passed the point of no return. Our previous CO2 emission no matter what we do have already stuffed up our future till 2115. But we could try to salvage a bit of the furniture, couldn't we? No, we can't.... Our system of capitalistic relationship is not geared to cope with a down-turn as necessary as it is... We've got to accelerate at least 10 per cent per year, twenty is better. So as our speed is getting closer to the speed of crap, the steering is going to become unstable. I mean unsustainable. It is already unsustainable but we don't want to know because our butt is siting on the comfy padding. Our high-tech machine has entered unpaved roads, then it will jump onto dirt tracks, then on total rock-falls... and we could fly out at high speed into the ravine.

One can see a string of events, gritty like sand in ball bearings, that will arrest us, right on the edge — and then the quiet, enormous quiet as we admire in awe the inevitable downgrading of our naturalness into the enlightened frenetic fools we were destined to be.

The feeling of standstill, of peace, and the slow-mo of our feet making no noise and no imprint will tell us something... "What?", are we going to ask...

No... Stop and listen... do not move... a single fart could trigger the biggest avalanche ever... it does not matter what... The universe is talking to our burning heart.

In the mean time, let's dig up more coal and burn more midnight oil... just to get there faster...

Yeah... 2032, here we come... No matter who controls the purpose, the beliefs and the how of our destiny.

first published 2007: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/2002#comment-5950

The strongest cyclone ever to hit Mozambique has made landfall in the country’s north, five weeks after Cyclone Idai devastated its centre, according to meteorologists.

Surpassing both Idai and the 2000 cyclone that had been the strongest to date, Cyclone Kenneth hit Cabo Delgado province with wind speeds of 140mph (225km/ph), bringing the threat of extreme rainfall.

After forming off Madagascar’s coast earlier this week, Kenneth passed to the north of the island nation of Comoros on Wednesday night, killing three people and causing widespread damage to homes and infrastructure.

The storm is expected to stall inland for several days and around one metre of rain is expected in the area north of the city of Pemba, more than the usual average for an entire year in the region.

The National Institute of Disaster Management said it would relocate rescue equipment including boats and helicopters from Beira, which was devastated by Idai. Some have been warning that southern Tanzania could be hit too, but the storm path appears to tend south.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/25/cyclone-kenneth-mozambique...

The world’s oceans have become more stormy during the past three decades, according to the largest and most detailed study of its kind.

The findings add to concerns that as the world gets hotter, extreme events such as storms and floods could become more frequent and more devastating in their impact.

Slight increases in average wave height and wind speed were recorded in oceans across the globe, with the strongest effects in the Southern Ocean. The study relied on data from 31 satellites and more than 80 ocean buoys collected between 1985 and 2018, with about 4 billion observations.

Extreme winds in the Southern Ocean have increased by 1.5 metres per second, or 8%, over the past 30 years, while the highest waves have increased in height by 30 centimetres, or 5%. The strongest winds increased in the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic and the North Atlantic by about 0.6 metres per second.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/25/worlds-oceans-are-becoming...

Read from top.