Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Iceman]

But, who's John Galt?

Excellent series of March 5th write-up's Higgenbotham! Always enjoy your up-front and n-depth conversation with people you meet on the street. Thanks, I needed that (those)! Carry on.

Best Regards,
Iceman

[Higgenbotham]

Chemical production outpacing world’s ability to understand the risk, study warns
Feb 16, 2022

With global chemical production increasing 50-fold since 1950 — and projected to triple again by 2050 compared to 2010 — its aggressive pace may outstrip society’s ability to adequately assess and monitor the risk, pushing the planet to the brink, a new study suggests.

There are an estimated 350,000 chemicals or mixtures on the global market, with nearly 70,000 registered in the past decade, and another 30,000 that have only been registered in emerging economies where chemical production has jumped beyond adequate disposal capacity, warns a team of 14 international researchers in the study published by the American Chemical Society.

The emergence of more and more new chemicals that aren’t fully understood puts humanity out of a “safe operating space,” the authors say.

“Chemical pollution has the potential to cause severe ecosystem and human health problems at different scales, (but also to alter vital Earth system processes on which human life depends),” begins the study’s introduction in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Plastic production alone increased 79% between 2000 and 2015, the team found.

The range of manufactured chemicals, from plastics to pesticides, industrial chemicals, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, has pushed Earth beyond one of what scientists interpret as nine planetary boundaries that act as markers for the Earth’s health. These boundaries include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. However, chemical pollution may have breached the boundary referred to as “novel entities,” or things made by humans and introduced into the environment.

The new study, in part, reviews the evolution of the scientific discussion related to the planetary boundary for novel entities. The scientists acknowledged the data was sparse in many areas, but said the weight of evidence indicated a breach of the planetary boundary.

https://esemag.com/hazardous-materials/ ... boundaries

A few weeks ago I ran across a chart of these planetary boundaries that was updated for 2025.

https://www.stockholmresilience.org/res ... aries.html

Novel entities: Technological developments introduce novel synthetic chemicals into the environment, mobilize materials in wholly new ways, modify the genetics of living organisms, and otherwise intervene in evolutionary processes and change the functioning of the Earth system. The amount of synthetic substances released into the environment without adequate safety testing places novel entities in the high-risk zone.

This is probably the greatest overlooked risk of our time. Some say that lead contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. What we are dealing with is probably hundreds of times more serious than lead. It has the potential to extend the coming dark age for a long time.