The arithmetic is simple enough. Fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – make up 84.5 percent of our energy consumption. Hydroelectricity accounts for 7 percent; nuclear 4.5 percent. Wind and solar – the supposed salvation of human civilisation – provide 3 percent; with other renewables adding one percent.
The crisis is simple enough too. The energy cost of extracting fossil fuels and of deploying non-fossil fuel alternatives is now too high for the economy to bear. The result is that the entire planet is now in the early stages of an energy crunch which can only get worse with each passing year.
It is for this reason that any proposed solution to our economic, environmental or energy crises which fail either to save significant amounts of energy or to add new sources of cheap energy alternatives can only serve to hasten the process of collapse.
Prior to 19 March 2020, the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was quietly doing pretty much what it had been doing for the previous 75 years. Its antimalarial properties had been known for much longer. Originally derived from the bark of the Cinchona Tree and sometimes referred to as “the Jesuit powder,” quinine – from which hydroxychloroquine is derived – was used by Europeans as a treatment for malaria since at least the seventeenth century. In the 1940s, quinine’s use was greatly expanded to treat allied troops fighting in jungle conditions in the Pacific and Burma campaigns. And then after World War Two, the chemical process of hydroxylation was used to develop the same hydroxychloroquine compound that is listed as one of the World Health Organisation’s “essential medicines” today.
Carry out a Google search for the drug with a custom date range which ends prior to 1 January 2020, and you discover an entirely uncontroversial medicine which has benefitted millions of people worldwide, and which has proved to have a surprisingly wide range of applications. Crucially, while the drug has long been known to cause a change in heart rhythm in some patients, no heart-related deaths had been reported prior to 2020.
….
It is, perhaps, the results of this research that US President Donald Trump overheard during one of the briefings with his public health officials. Unfortunately, with the usual exaggeration, speculation and fabrication that Trump all too often employs, in a March 19 White House briefing he managed to give the impression that hydroxychloroquine was some kind of miracle cure which would halt the pandemic in its tracks.
From this moment on, hydroxychloroquine became central to both the national populist politics of Trump-supporters and the identity politics of the woke-right. It was no longer possible for anyone to say, “let’s wait and see what the data says.” If you were anti-Trump you had also to be anti-hydroxychloroquine. If you were pro-Trump, you also had to be pro-hydroxychloroquine. And if you were pro-data and reason then you found yourself on the receiving end of a shit storm from both sides.
Interesting, two days ago Chris Martenson flip flopped 180 degrees on his virus position after months of advocating we need to stay locked down and protect ourselves.
His viewers are hammering him for the inconsistency. Today his response was “sorry I confused you two days ago”. Then he flip flopped back. It must be tough trying to make a living from doom.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t have a position because I know I don’t understand the virus. All I do know is I don’t want to get it.
Ha ha! Martenson, born in 1962, is just a salesman whom I confidently ignore. After learning that he has considered Albert Bartlett one of his primary mentors for decades, starting with his college years, I somehow lost interest in him when discovering that he produced three children many years after overpopulation came to the forefront of public awareness. Gee, I guess he thought somehow that “things” were going to get better out there for his progeny. Ego usually trumps empathy and awareness in the majority of humans, as evidenced here.
james
August 6, 2020 6:56 am
Your hiking areas are much more scenic than my own. I put on my large backpack and hiked to Walmart last week. It was sunny and about 92F. Four miles hike and I arrive in pretty good shape. I load fifty pounds of groceries in pack and trek back towards home. At mile seven I’m a little winded and the pack’s shoulder straps aren’t adjusted quite right and are digging-in. I move from the shade (most of journey home) into the sunlight and that threw me over the edge. Had to retreat back into the shade and sit for twenty minutes to cool down. The last mile home was a struggle with a couple of more short stops in the shade, when I could find it. The trip was more “experiential” than driving a car but I think I’m living in denial – that I’m getting old.
“Honey, what’s for dinner tonight?”
“Hawkins cheezies dear, just like every night.”
I’ll have to be more strategic. But I also bought a mountain bike and made the same trip with it, with the backpack. It was still a bit of a struggle (walking bike up hills) but I could coast about 1.5 miles downhill on the way back. I’m putting a rear rack and some pannier baskets on the bike to see if that helps. For the grand finale I’ll be back in the car driving to Walmart.
Looks like you’re moving in a good direction. I bet a year from now you’ll be riding instead of walking up that hill.
Apneaman
August 5, 2020 11:09 pm
That wooden platform the tent is on is cheating, bro.
Speaking of Elon & his ilk
The Psychology of Bullshit
Part 1: Psychology research unpacks this increasingly pervasive phenomenon.
“What is bullshit exactly? In technical terms, it has been defined as “communications that result from little to no concern for truth, evidence and/or established semantic, logical, systemic, or empirical knowledge.”2 Put more simply, bullshit is “something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth.”
So bullshitting isn’t just nonsense. It’s constructed in order to appear meaningful, though on closer examination, it isn’t. And bullshit isn’t the same as lying. A liar knows the truth but makes statements deliberately intended to sell people on falsehoods. bullshitters, in contrast, aren’t concerned about what’s true or not, so much as they’re trying to appear as if they know what they’re talking about. In that sense, bullshitting can be thought of as a verbal demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect—when people speak from a position of disproportionate confidence about their knowledge relative to what little they actually know, bullshit is often the result.”
“Fast-forwarding to the “post-truth” world of 2020, where facts and expertise have been declared dead, opinions are routinely confused with news, and objective evidence is endlessly refuted, the case could be made that bullshit has reached epic proportions. In this regard, the contribution of the internet is hard to ignore. Psychology research from Dr. Matt Fisher and colleagues at Yale University demonstrated that the Dunning-Kruger effect is amplified by access to the internet—we tend to conflate the ability to look up information on the internet with actual personal knowledge.”
Remember the $250 million 3.14 acre sealed Biosphere 2 complex near Tucson, Arizona? It was built to show how colonists could survive on Mars and other space colonization but they only made it for 2 years ON EARTH.
Eight people sealed themselves inside in 1991, planning to live on the food they grew, recycled water, and the oxygen made by plants.
Some of the reasons the Biosphere failed are:
– Oxygen fell from 20.9% to 14.5%, the equivalent of 13,400 feet elevation and after 18 months oxygen was pumped in
– Carbon dioxide levels fluctuated wildly
– Pests ran riot, especially crazy ants, cockroaches, and katydids. Nematodes and broad mites attacked the crops. Most of the other insect species went extinct.
– Not enough food could be grown
– It cost $600,000 a year to keep it cool
– Extinction: The projected started out with 25 small vertebrates but only 6 species survived
– Species included to pollinate plants such as hummingbirds and honey bees died
– Water systems were polluted with too many nutrients
– Morning glories smothered other plants
– The weather was so cloudy the first few months that crops barely grew, leading to the Biospherians breaking into a 3-month supply of food that had been secretly hidden
– The level of dinitrogen oxide became dangerously high, which can cause brain damage due to a lowered ability to synthesize vitamin B12
Rob said, “There’s no escaping the fact that one way or the other our population will fall. One way is civil, the other is not.”
I’ll confidently go with “not.” Some doomer posted this 2008 Tim Kreider piece recently, saying that he’s a combination of Tim and Jim, as am I. Additionally, Tim, born in 1967, chose to have zero kids.
[Quote] But, as my reading of Gibbon reminds me, sometimes the reason everyone’s always saying things are going to hell in a handbasket is that in fact they are. The problem is that, unlike Rob, I am a lazy and disorganized person who does not base my life decisions on abstract ideas, and frankly I find it easier to resign myself to a premature and violent death than to figure out how to invest my money or repair tools or grow plants, at which I have always sucked. [End Quote]
That’s very witty, thanks. I’ve never run into Kreider until now.
There needs to be a 5th person in the comic panel. That would be the one saying that the future could be reasonable if we agreed to mostly stop breeding for a few generations. “Break through your inherited reality denial and think about it. What’s worse, not having kids, or having kids that will probably suffer and die prematurely? And don’t forget, you can still have all the sex you want, which in reality is the real reason your brain thinks it wants kids.”
Kreider did contribute to the book “Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids,” the title an obvious allusion to how the typical member of the human herd judges outliers.
[Quote]: . . . and concludes with Tim Kreider’s rousing defense of the child-free as “an experiment unprecedented in human history. . . . A kind of existential vanguard, forced by our own choices to face the naked question of existence with fewer illusions, or at least fewer consolations, than the rest of humanity, forced to prove ourselves anew every day that extinction does not negate meaning.” [End Quote]
If you do not trust TPTB and want to know what’s really going on with the economy you only need to monitor energy consumption because all of our wealth is produced with energy. If energy use is falling then you know the economy is contracting, and if the economy is contracting then you know debt will soon also contract because debt is enabled by growth. If debt is contracting then you know many things we depend on will soon break because debt is the oxygen that enables our global economy.
It’s a good time to prepare for bad times.
Wolf Richter here documents our current energy consumption drop but remains optimistic that it will quickly rebound. I’m less optimistic. Herd beliefs (and denial) can override thermodynamics for a limited time.
US crude oil production in May plunged by 1.99 million barrels per day, from 12 million b/d in April to 10 million b/d, the largest monthly drop since at least 1980, and the sixth monthly drop in a row, according to the EIA.
Just really beautiful photographs, Rob. Your neck of the woods is gorgeous and it’s actually a bit healing even to view these images. Thank you for sharing them.
Strathcona Park is my favorite place on the planet and it’s only 45 minutes from my home. My best friend and I have gone on an annual hike into the park since about 1975.
I’ve also kitted out my motorcycle for solo camping/hiking adventures and will be going on a week trip to the interior of British Columbia later this month.
Michael Dowd
August 5, 2020 8:54 am
Wow…and wow!!!
jmalpert
August 5, 2020 8:53 am
Rob, Thanks for the breath of fresh air.
I am stuck staying home. But will have new movie ( beta) tomorrow.
Jack
Jack Alpert PhD Director: Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory http://www.skil.org (C) 913 708 2554 alpert@skil.org 13617 W. 48th Street Shawnee, KS 66216 Jack’s work 600 word summary
Hi Jack, it’s an important day when you release a new video! I’ll do what I can to spread the word.
To any readers not familiar with engineer Jack Alpert, he’s pretty much the only person on the planet with a detailed technically and thermodynamically feasible plan to maintain an advanced civilization as oil depletes. Key to the plan is a democratically supported, humane, and fair birth lottery to rapidly reduce the global population to about 50 million people.
Here’s some work by Jack that I’ve posted in the past:
Tim Watkins hit a double today and once again explains the most important reality that almost everyone denies.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/08/06/failing-to-square-the-circle/
Tim Watkins today explains how hydroxychloroquine became political.
We really are a sad lot of monkeys.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2020/08/06/why-do-we-even-know-this/
Interesting, two days ago Chris Martenson flip flopped 180 degrees on his virus position after months of advocating we need to stay locked down and protect ourselves.
His viewers are hammering him for the inconsistency. Today his response was “sorry I confused you two days ago”. Then he flip flopped back. It must be tough trying to make a living from doom.
In case you’re wondering, I don’t have a position because I know I don’t understand the virus. All I do know is I don’t want to get it.
Ha ha! Martenson, born in 1962, is just a salesman whom I confidently ignore. After learning that he has considered Albert Bartlett one of his primary mentors for decades, starting with his college years, I somehow lost interest in him when discovering that he produced three children many years after overpopulation came to the forefront of public awareness. Gee, I guess he thought somehow that “things” were going to get better out there for his progeny. Ego usually trumps empathy and awareness in the majority of humans, as evidenced here.
Your hiking areas are much more scenic than my own. I put on my large backpack and hiked to Walmart last week. It was sunny and about 92F. Four miles hike and I arrive in pretty good shape. I load fifty pounds of groceries in pack and trek back towards home. At mile seven I’m a little winded and the pack’s shoulder straps aren’t adjusted quite right and are digging-in. I move from the shade (most of journey home) into the sunlight and that threw me over the edge. Had to retreat back into the shade and sit for twenty minutes to cool down. The last mile home was a struggle with a couple of more short stops in the shade, when I could find it. The trip was more “experiential” than driving a car but I think I’m living in denial – that I’m getting old.
If you swapped out the Hawkins cheezies for Cheetos you would lighten your load. 🙂
“Honey, what’s for dinner tonight?”
“Hawkins cheezies dear, just like every night.”
I’ll have to be more strategic. But I also bought a mountain bike and made the same trip with it, with the backpack. It was still a bit of a struggle (walking bike up hills) but I could coast about 1.5 miles downhill on the way back. I’m putting a rear rack and some pannier baskets on the bike to see if that helps. For the grand finale I’ll be back in the car driving to Walmart.
Looks like you’re moving in a good direction. I bet a year from now you’ll be riding instead of walking up that hill.
That wooden platform the tent is on is cheating, bro.
Speaking of Elon & his ilk
The Psychology of Bullshit
Part 1: Psychology research unpacks this increasingly pervasive phenomenon.
“What is bullshit exactly? In technical terms, it has been defined as “communications that result from little to no concern for truth, evidence and/or established semantic, logical, systemic, or empirical knowledge.”2 Put more simply, bullshit is “something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth.”
So bullshitting isn’t just nonsense. It’s constructed in order to appear meaningful, though on closer examination, it isn’t. And bullshit isn’t the same as lying. A liar knows the truth but makes statements deliberately intended to sell people on falsehoods. bullshitters, in contrast, aren’t concerned about what’s true or not, so much as they’re trying to appear as if they know what they’re talking about. In that sense, bullshitting can be thought of as a verbal demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect—when people speak from a position of disproportionate confidence about their knowledge relative to what little they actually know, bullshit is often the result.”
“Fast-forwarding to the “post-truth” world of 2020, where facts and expertise have been declared dead, opinions are routinely confused with news, and objective evidence is endlessly refuted, the case could be made that bullshit has reached epic proportions. In this regard, the contribution of the internet is hard to ignore. Psychology research from Dr. Matt Fisher and colleagues at Yale University demonstrated that the Dunning-Kruger effect is amplified by access to the internet—we tend to conflate the ability to look up information on the internet with actual personal knowledge.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202007/the-psychology-bullshit
The wooden platform was offset by bugs. First time in the park that I wore a bug net most of the time.
Alice Friedemann explains why people like Elon Musk who think we’ll escape overshoot on Earth by colonizing Mars are idiots and/or in denial.
There’s no escaping the fact that one way or the other our population will fall. One way is civil, the other is not.
http://energyskeptic.com/2020/mars-is-not-going-to-save-us/
Rob said, “There’s no escaping the fact that one way or the other our population will fall. One way is civil, the other is not.”
I’ll confidently go with “not.” Some doomer posted this 2008 Tim Kreider piece recently, saying that he’s a combination of Tim and Jim, as am I. Additionally, Tim, born in 1967, chose to have zero kids.
[Quote] But, as my reading of Gibbon reminds me, sometimes the reason everyone’s always saying things are going to hell in a handbasket is that in fact they are. The problem is that, unlike Rob, I am a lazy and disorganized person who does not base my life decisions on abstract ideas, and frankly I find it easier to resign myself to a premature and violent death than to figure out how to invest my money or repair tools or grow plants, at which I have always sucked. [End Quote]
http://www.thepaincomics.com/
One more try . . .
http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080423a.htm
That’s very witty, thanks. I’ve never run into Kreider until now.
There needs to be a 5th person in the comic panel. That would be the one saying that the future could be reasonable if we agreed to mostly stop breeding for a few generations. “Break through your inherited reality denial and think about it. What’s worse, not having kids, or having kids that will probably suffer and die prematurely? And don’t forget, you can still have all the sex you want, which in reality is the real reason your brain thinks it wants kids.”
http://www.thepaincomics.com/What%27s%20Your%20Plan.jpg
Kreider did contribute to the book “Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids,” the title an obvious allusion to how the typical member of the human herd judges outliers.
[Quote]: . . . and concludes with Tim Kreider’s rousing defense of the child-free as “an experiment unprecedented in human history. . . . A kind of existential vanguard, forced by our own choices to face the naked question of existence with fewer illusions, or at least fewer consolations, than the rest of humanity, forced to prove ourselves anew every day that extinction does not negate meaning.” [End Quote]
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/books/review/selfish-shallow-and-self-absorbed-sixteen-writers-on-the-decision-not-to-have-kids.html
Thanks for the tip. I added the book to my queue.
Lovely! Nice to know such places still exist. But you’re not wearing a mask? LOL
My favorite computer geek, Steve Gibson, on the importance of vitamin D for avoiding the virus.
If you do not trust TPTB and want to know what’s really going on with the economy you only need to monitor energy consumption because all of our wealth is produced with energy. If energy use is falling then you know the economy is contracting, and if the economy is contracting then you know debt will soon also contract because debt is enabled by growth. If debt is contracting then you know many things we depend on will soon break because debt is the oxygen that enables our global economy.
It’s a good time to prepare for bad times.
Wolf Richter here documents our current energy consumption drop but remains optimistic that it will quickly rebound. I’m less optimistic. Herd beliefs (and denial) can override thermodynamics for a limited time.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/08/05/us-crude-oil-production-plunged-most-ever-natural-gas-followed-the-great-american-oil-gas-bust-phase-2/
It’s back up to 11 million barrels per day, according to the EIA, for what it’s worth.
A link: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_sum_sndw_dcus_nus_w.htm
Excellent, denial on, party on!
Just really beautiful photographs, Rob. Your neck of the woods is gorgeous and it’s actually a bit healing even to view these images. Thank you for sharing them.
Strathcona Park is my favorite place on the planet and it’s only 45 minutes from my home. My best friend and I have gone on an annual hike into the park since about 1975.
I’ve also kitted out my motorcycle for solo camping/hiking adventures and will be going on a week trip to the interior of British Columbia later this month.
Wow…and wow!!!
Rob, Thanks for the breath of fresh air.
I am stuck staying home. But will have new movie ( beta) tomorrow.
Jack
Jack Alpert PhD Director: Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory http://www.skil.org (C) 913 708 2554 alpert@skil.org 13617 W. 48th Street Shawnee, KS 66216 Jack’s work 600 word summary
>
Hi Jack, it’s an important day when you release a new video! I’ll do what I can to spread the word.
To any readers not familiar with engineer Jack Alpert, he’s pretty much the only person on the planet with a detailed technically and thermodynamically feasible plan to maintain an advanced civilization as oil depletes. Key to the plan is a democratically supported, humane, and fair birth lottery to rapidly reduce the global population to about 50 million people.
Here’s some work by Jack that I’ve posted in the past:
https://un-denial.com/2019/01/16/by-jack-alpert-why-a-one-child-policy-is-not-sufficient/
https://un-denial.com/2018/10/20/by-jack-alpert-on-sustainability-without-the-bullshit/
what a beautiful place, and perfect weather