Descending Into Madness

I think our society is going mad because there are so many overshoot related problems converging at once that our inherited denial mechanism is overloaded, with no leaders who understand what’s going on, few experts willing to speak publicly, and no honest discussion about what’s happening, nor what we should do.

I expect something will snap soon in a bad way.

Symptoms I see include:

  • We talk about everything except what matters. For example, our climate has shifted a gear, and peak oil is behind us, yet there is zero discussion about food security or the need for population reduction.
  • We’ve polarized into tribes that are unable to contemplate or respect or discuss the beliefs of another tribe. We attack or ignore opponents rather than engage in respectful debate. We’ve always tended to do this, but it’s getting worse.
  • Facts are irrelevant to beliefs. When facts are unsure or complex we are unable to admit uncertainty. While common throughout history, this phenomenon is getting worse, and is now pervasive in our intellectual leaders.
  • We’re totally dependent for everything we need to survive from other countries that we now view as enemies, yet we never discuss the need for more resilience.
  • We embrace solutions that have zero probability of improving a problem. Think green new deal.
  • Our response to problems often worsens the outcome. For example, printing trillions to further inflate a bubble that when it pops will do additional damage to that which we’re trying to protect.
  • We embrace leaders who created a problem to fix a problem, and there are no longer consequences for illegal or unethical behavior. Think Fauci.

This excellent new video has many useful insights despite the producers not being aware of Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory.

MASS PSYCHOSIS – How an Entire Population Becomes MENTALLY ILL

A mass psychosis is an epidemic of madness and it occurs when a large portion of the society loses touch with reality and descends into delusions.

Totalitarianism is the greatest threat.

306 thoughts on “Descending Into Madness”

  1. For the past four years (to the month), I’ve been reading books, blogs, posts and comments about our extremely complex situation. At various points along the way I find myself descending into madness especially when I read, “The grand canyon was not carved over millions of years. Try under 5yrs. Only time in my life I have ever seen straight walls in water flow paths is when it is moving like a freight train relative to it’s scale. Water is scale invariant, what occurs on the micro occurs in the macro. Grand canyon last I remember does not have many spots where it breaks off into a 45degree slope indicative of a period of lazy flow…” FYI This post was not removed because the person was venting. However, if anyone questions the COVID narrative that comment or post will be removed because it is “provably false”.

    The Weaponization of Medicine by Paul Rosenberg (excerpt below)

    #1: Science is not consensus. Ten, one hundred, or a million people, all draped in lab coats and saying the same thing, does NOT make it so. In fact, it matters not at all. It’s nothing but theater, and it’s anti-science.

    All science is, really, is a process of testing ideas; it is not an organization, it is not based upon authority (it’s inherently anti-authority), and it is very certainly not allied with power. All that matters in science are verifiable results.

    #2: Medicine stands apart from, and above, politics. Medicine is the application of science to the furtherance of human health. Politics is the use of persuasion and power to rule masses of humans. These are fully separate disciplines. To place politics over medicine is to subjugate and degrade medicine: it’s a path backwards into darkness.

    I’ll leave details on this point to working medical practitioners, who can provide them with far greater specificity than I can… provided they’re not too frightened to do so.

    #3: Peer review no longer means much. Again I won’t go into great detail, but peer review has been captured by academic hierarchies and almost fully separated from science proper. It has become a tool of institutional power, wielded by academics who have sold out science for the favors of power and politics.

    At one time, “peer review” referred to the honest replication of experiments. That time is past.

    #4: Medicine and science have nothing to do with social pressure. Once “medicine” and “science” are mixed with social pressure, they are no longer science or medicine. At that point they are instruments of thuggery, and nothing more.

    #5: If you don’t read multiple scientific papers, especially from rebels and cast-outs, you simply don’t know. You can pretend you know, of course, and you can be sure that agents of the status quo will provide you with passable reasons to repeat their slogans, but you won’t actually know.

    What you see on TV is propaganda. What you see on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is pre-censored. If you want to really know, you’ll have to find the scientific papers that address your question… and you’ll need papers that are rejected by televised authorities. If you don’t, all you’ll have are pre-censored conclusions, the underlying facts of which may or may not be reliable.

    At this point, if you don’t include “conspiracy theory” research, you’re more or less stuck with Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Sad but mostly true.

    https://freemansperspective.com/the-weaponization-of-medicine/

    So yes, TPTB have a vested interest in keeping the narrative flowing in a certain direction that keeps us in denial. Too much time is required from the simple minded worker bee to understand these concepts: overshoot, overpopulation, overconsumption, and energy flows and matter cycles all of which is rather overwhelming. Only an elite few can reach that summit to say, “It’s an overshoot loop”. To add insult to injury we discuss this over the internet instead of sitting in a cafe where I can enjoy a strong cup of coffee and a piece of chocolate while I look into your denying eyes. We are all deniers in some fashion. Alas…

    “One way or another, you’re eventually bound to return to times of sustainably tapping natural energy flows. ‘Growing Forever’ makes sense only to human economists and cancer cells. As wise human Lamont Cole said, ‘Growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell and soon consumes the host.'” ~ Nate Hagens, Reality Blind

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    1. I agree some science is broken. How broken seems to depend on how close the science is to influencing our behavior and beliefs.

      Physics, mathematics, engineering, and computer science, for example, are pretty good. They don’t agree on everything, but the disputes are in the open and are debated intelligently with integrity, like for example, string theory and AI.

      Other disciplines like economics, food nutrition, climate change, and medicine have a long history of disgraceful science with political agendas that ignore evidence. These sciences have the power to disrupt lifestyles and beliefs. No one wants to believe that austerity and population reduction is the only good path forward for our overshoot predicament. Or that losing weight and stopping travel might save you from Covid. Or that eating meat and butter is good (or bad) for health and the environment.

      It’s not just TPTB that are ignorant and/or corrupt. They collaborate with citizens that don’t want to change their beliefs and lifestyles.

      I’m seeing this with friends and family on Covid. They want to believe a simple story that if everyone gets injected with an amazing new technology that life will return to normal and there will be no need for lifestyle changes. Anyone that questions this agreed story is a bad person.

      The news media feeds people what they want to believe, because that’s how they make money. And of course big money interests like pharma sell dreams that people want to believe, and influence the media because that’s how they make money.

      Truth seeking seems to be at the bottom of the priority list for most citizens and TPTB depend on those citizens for their power.

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      1. sometimes i get this wild and crazy idea that a refresher course in chemistry, physics, geology or lower level math would be fun … then i smoke a bowl of weed and let that idea float right by me 😉

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  4. This smells legit but I’m not sure. Covid is so confusing. 😦 Start at 3:40.

    Karen Kingston is a former Pfizer employee, a pharmaceutical marketing expert and biotech analyst.

    Kingston joins Stew Peters, and brings the receipts! Kingston reveals how the FDA “approval” is sure to be the “checkmate” move to end the shots that have caused unprecedented injury and death, worldwide.

    https://rumble.com/vlod4c-wow-former-pfizer-employee-checkmate.-game-over.-we-win.html

    h/t Ilargi @ TAE

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  6. Gail Tverberg today explains the link between overshoot and the US capitulation in Afghanistan.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2021/08/30/the-afghanistan-fiasco-and-todays-high-level-of-conflict-reflect-an-energy-problem/

    When the US economy was growing rapidly, it could withstand high and rising interest rates. Since 1981, the general pattern has been one of falling interest rates, making a larger quantity of debt affordable. Indirectly, these falling interest rates also helped prop up asset prices, such as those of homes and shares of stock. In recent years, interest rates have fallen about as far as they can go. To some extent, these lower rates were made possible by Quantitative Easing (QE). But at some point, QE needs to be stopped.

    Today, interest rates are approximately at the level they were during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This makes sense; interest rates to some extent reflect the return an investor can expect to make. Right now, without a lot of government support programs, “Main Street” businesses around the world are struggling. This indicates that the economy is doing very poorly. There are too many people who cannot afford even basic goods and services. Indirectly, this feeds back to commodity prices that are not high enough for producers of energy products.

    Recently, governments of many countries have tried a different approach. Instead of loans, they are providing something closer to giveaways. Renters are allowed to stay rent-free in their apartments. Or, checks are given to all citizens earning below some specified amount. What we seem to be finding is that these giveaways produce inflation in the price of goods that poor people buy most frequently, such as food and used cars.

    The giveaways don’t actually produce more of the required goods and services, however. Instead, would-be workers decide that they really don’t want to take a low-paid job if the giveaways provide nearly as much income. The loss of workers then acts to reduce production. With lower production of goods and services, a smaller quantity of oil is required, so the oil price tends to fall. The price certainly does not rise to the level needed by oil producers.

    Any modeler who tries to take into account the fact that resources deplete and the overall population keeps rising will quickly come to the conclusion that, at some point, every economy will have to collapse. This has been known for a very long time. Back in 1957, Admiral Hyman Rickover of the US Navy said,

    “Surplus energy provides the material foundation for civilized living – a comfortable and tasteful home instead of a bare shelter; attractive clothing instead of mere covering to keep warm; appetizing food instead of anything that suffices to appease hunger. . . For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost, are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.”

    Now, in 2021, as it looks as if this problem is starting to hit us. But no one (since Jimmy Carter, who was not re-elected) has dared tell the general public. Instead, accrual accounting with more and more debt is used in financial statements, including GDP statements. Actuaries put together Social Security funding estimates as if the resources to provide the promised benefits will really be there. Climate change models are prepared as if business as usual can go on for the next hundred years. Everything published by the mainstream media is based on the underlying assumption that we will have no problems other than climate change for the next 100 years.

    President Biden’s abrupt pullout from Afghanistan reflects a reality that increasingly has to take place in the world. The US needs to start pulling back because there are too many people and not enough inexpensive to extract resources to fulfill all of the commitments that the US has made. As mentioned earlier, there are a number of obstacles to success in Afghanistan. Thus, it is a good place to start.

    With the need to pull back, there is a much higher level of conflict, both within and between countries. The big issue becomes who, or what, is going to be “voted off the island” next. Is it the elderly or the poor; the military or the oversized US medical establishment; university education for a large share of students or classroom teaching for young children?

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    1. My favorite: “George W. Bush should have known from the outcome of the 20-year Vietnam conflict (1955-1975) that any guerrilla war was likely to have a bad ending. In Afghanistan, the plan was to train Afghan soldiers, thus keeping US citizens out of the battlefield. This strategy kept the Afghan conflict off the front page of US newspapers, but the overall result seems to be similar.”

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    1. Thanks for asking.
      I am “recovered” – at least according to county health dept. They say that once you are 10 days past the start of symptoms you are no longer shedding live virus so you are free to go about your business. Since the testing facility uses a fast PCR test the county suggests you don’t bother getting tested again as it could easily be a false positive.
      Physically I’m back to normal, except it took a toll on my level of energy. I fatigue more easily and am not pushing myself as hard (that stress could have been the cause of my having a more serious case of covid). My wife tested positive yesterday, but her case has been more like a normal head cold – runny nose, cough, no fever. She is already recovering.
      My take away is I will probably go to town even less as I don’t want what will be the next variant. Once was enough. I will continue with the Quercitin, Zinc, Vit D & C, melatonin with Ivermectin in reserve AND using masks. As for booster shots? I doubt it.
      AJ

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    1. You can feel the contempt and bias oozing from the reporter when he says:

      Ivermectin is most commonly used against parasites in livestock animals including horses and cows. It is also used in humans, against some parasitic worms and external parasites like head lice.

      Instead of saying:

      Ivermectin has been administered safely 4 billion times and has saved millions of lives since it’s discoverer received the Nobel prize over 50 years ago, and may have prevented over half of all deaths from Covid19 had it been administered early upon onset of symptoms, instead of being attacked and blocked by moron leaders who have been corrupted by the pharmaceutical companies because they cannot profit from this off patent drug.

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      1. Yes, we deny we’re animals, and everything else we find unpleasant like:
        – death is final
        – there is no god
        – over population
        – peak oil proximity and its implications
        – climate change severity and implications
        – other symptoms of overshoot
        – other limits to growth

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    1. Actually Rob, Tim did mention the need for population reduction and extreme birth control at the end of his article.
      “Meanwhile, the only serious responses to climate change – such as a massive cut of the human population via extreme birth control, a massive collapse in economic activity and a huge cut to western living standards – dare not even be discussed. “

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      1. Thank you for correcting me and my apologies to Tim Watkins.

        Watkins usually avoids discussing rapid population reduction policies and I quit reading after getting the gist of his essay.

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        1. But you didn’t get the gist of the essay. That’s the whole point of the correction: you jumped to an unwarranted conclusion. Even as you supposedly acknowledge your error, you still attempt, in a back-handed fashion, to shift the responsibility to Watkins for having failed to discuss population reduction strategies to your satisfaction in the past. On the contrary, the responsibility is on you to read what he actually wrote, and then to re-evaluate your belief that Watkins somehow downplays overpopulation, either deciding that your initial appraisal was false, or that it was correct after all, or somewhere in between. That would require you to present a logical argument, with evidence, in support. So where is your argument?

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          1. I’m a fan of Tim Watkins and I think I’ve read every essay he’s ever posted. A summary of what I admire is that he has a deep understanding of our overshoot predicament and is an excellent writer. A summary of what I don’t like is that he doesn’t discuss the need for democratically supported population reduction and austerity policies often enough, whereas he does call for other policy changes that won’t help on a regular basis.

            I also wish he would open his site up to comments so I could engage directly with him.

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  13. My old eyes tell me the climate shifted gears when Covid got on the bus.

    I never thought about connecting the dots until now.

    “Global warming acceleration can be traced to decreased aerosols.” — James Hansen

    https://mailchi.mp/caa/july-temperature-update-faustian-payment-comes-due

    July global temperature (+1.16°C relative to 1880-1920 mean) was within a hair (0.02°C) of being the warmest July in the era of instrumental measurements (Fig. 1, left). That’s remarkable because we are still under the influence of a fairly strong La Nina (Fig. 1, right). Global cooling associated with La Ninas peaks five months after the La Nina peak,[1] on average.

    Something is going on in addition to greenhouse warming. The 12-month running mean global temperature (blue curve in Fig. 2) has already reached its local minimum. Barring a large volcano that fills the stratosphere with aerosols, the blue curve should rise over the next 12 months because Earth is now far out of energy balance – more energy coming in than going out.

    How far is the recent global temperature above the 50-year warming trend? The best measure is probably the average deviation from the trend line of the two El Nino maxima and the two La Nina minima that followed. That average is 0.14°C. That’s a lot, and we know that it’s a forced change, driven by a growing planetary energy imbalance.

    Global temperature doesn’t change that much due to meteorological noise. The ocean is a huge heat reservoir and can burp up heat – indeed, that’s the cause of most interannual variability of global temperature. However, over the past several years the ocean has not been giving up heat – on the contrary, it is gaining heat at the fastest rate on record. Global warming is being forced.

    None of the measured forcings can account for the global warming acceleration. The growth rate of climate forcing by well-mixed greenhouse gases (GHGs) is near the 40-year mean (Fig. 3). Solar irradiance is just beginning to rise from the recent solar minimum; it is still below the average over the last few solar cycles.

    It follows that the global warming acceleration is due to the one huge climate forcing that we have chosen not to measure: the forcing caused by imposed changes of atmospheric aerosols.

    Hansen goes on to focus on the new ship emissions regulations which began in 2015 and does not discuss the economic slowdown caused by Covid, but I wonder?

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      1. One of the reasons I have been interested in following the SARsCOV19 alternative “don’t vax during a pandemic” views provided by Bossche and others, is the possibility that we will eventually learn the consensus science and public policies on the treatment of SARsCOV19 and COVID were wrong, or even very wrong. IF the medical/science/policy consensus turns out wrong on COVID, how wrong is the IPCC consensus about climate change?

        This Mark Cranfield is a “25-year legal ins risk assessor” who, from his management of the data on twitter, seems to possess an a good analytical mind. But is he right about what he says in this twitter thread? Michael Mann, a very certified climate scientist, would say no, and that we can still turn this ship around. Mann has probably already blocked Cranfield on twitter as a doomer.

        From Cranfield’s twitter thread: “Ice core studies tell us that the CO2 already in the air results in a ~4°C world.” “The reality is that, due to the thermal inertia of oceans and a positive Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, 2°C is coming by 2045 entirely regardless of anything humanity does.”
        “All fraudulent. There are no real-world carbon budgets. In fact, when the correct climate sensitivity is used, including slow feedbacks and GHG feedbacks, it’s obvious we are already at a level of carbon debt that defies belief.” “It can’t be overstated. This is the key deception.”
        “For some reason this is being interpreted as meaning that 1.5°C could happen in 2040. No, 1.5°C will happen around 2030. 2°C could happen in 2040.”

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        1. I remember digging in to Michael Mann many years ago and concluding that he does not have a clue about what needs to be done. If I recall he’s another solar panels and EVs will save us guy. I haven’t read anything by him since.

          I don’t know anything about Cranfield so cannot vouch for him. His Twitter feed is a little too heavy with politics for my taste. None of the political parties have overshoot reduction policies so anyone that thinks existing politics will make a difference has a big red warning flag over them.

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  14. Nice summary of how incompetent our leaders and news media have become.

    https://trialsitenews.com/get-sicker-anatomy-of-a-failed-policy/

    Get Sicker: Anatomy Of A Failed Policy

    “It embarrasses me for what we have done in the U.S. in terms of this management,” Dr. Mobeen Syed, a medical educator with 395,000 YouTube subscribers, told me when we spoke of ivermectin for this article. “It embarrasses me that even though we have drug that is safer than Tylenol, we have made people resort to taking horse paste or animal products. We have done this to Americans.”

    But rather than support actual outpatient care, this is what we get from alleged protectors of U.S. public health, including the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and Centers for Disease Control:
    – Willful ignorance of the science supporting ivermectin – or any early treatment for that matter.
    – Demonization of this safe FDA-approved drug, used on 250 million people annually, as fit only for animals.
    – Speedy acceptance of drugs like woefully ineffective remdesivir in a system rife with conflicts of interest.
    – A fantastical supposition that there is one way out of COVID: Vaccines.
    – Greatly enriched pharmaceutical companies thanks to taxpayer largesse and something called the Emergency Use Authorization.

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  15. I finally got around to listening to the YouTube link in your article and enjoyed it. Thank you.
    I came across this video in the feed below

    I’ve watched it a couple of times and found it rather haunting. My overall takeaway from watching this is that there really is no meaning. All we have is the here and now. Depressing and yet rather liberating in a twisted way.
    My other takeaway is that even total nihilists like my self need a degree of denial just to function.

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    1. Thanks Perran, that video is very good!

      It’s awe inspiring that out of 5 thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years, you and I are alive to experience the peak of intelligence and technology, and the only point in time that the universe understood itself.

      Also very cool is another validation of Varki’s MORT. The producers just couldn’t end the story with our mortal life and it’s universe going black. They had to conjure a life after death story that our descendants will find a magic source of energy to spawn a new baby universe for us to carry on in. MORT is amazing!

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      1. Apparently humans alive today had a one in 12 chance of being alive at this time (rather than any time in the past where humans have existed). Why do we exist now??, well the odds were pretty good you’d be alive at this time 🙂

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        1. That’s true but I was thinking about something else:

          1) It took 2 billion years of simple single cell life before the eukaryotic cell evolved to provide enough energy per gene for complex life to exist. This emergence appears to have been an improbable “accident”.

          2) Many hominid species existed for millions of years before one small tribe evolved a uniquely intelligent mind that denies unpleasant realities which enabled it to go into overshoot and destroy it’s habitat.

          3) The period during which we exploited fossil energy to advance science and technology to the peak of what may be possible in universe was only 200 years.

          4) We are alive at the peak of this 200 year out of 4 billion year story.

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    2. Rob,
      On your recommendation I watched this. Depressing and liberating – yes. I agree that we really only have the here and now. I have felt more and more recently that the 14 billion years from the Big Bang to my consciousness (probably after age 40?) was like I was asleep and the countless ages from my death forward again will be like I am asleep. What is sleep other than a loss of consciousness – are we harmed by it? The universe existed before me without my being conscious of it and it will exist after my death without my being conscious of it. I would miss it if I was conscious but I won’t exist so. . .
      As to the fate of the Universe. I am constantly and continuously amazed at how some marginal thinkers (physicists in particular) can delude themselves that they are geniuses because they can do math. I am reminded of Stephen J. Gould who complained that when he met Richard Feynman at Cal Tech, Feynman had the delusion that he could correct Gould and Darwin about biological evolution because he was a physicist genius. HUBRIS is not something lacking in any physicist I have read. Physicists as a group can’t begin to explain the Big Bang and what could have come before or what caused it – just the after effects. The whole of the video was just Hubristic speculation (based on the physicist who made it) who is in complete denial about the universe being beyond their puny ability to explain it (so they will bullshit with math). It is the height of hubris to suggest they can say how the universe ends AND not label it as mere mathematical speculation. I am of the belief that we are a semi-intelligent ape that evolved to be able to figure out social interactions in small groups and maximize our reproductive output while denying how ephemeral we are. That we (some of us) have sufficient brain power to stand in AWE of the universe and marvel at it for our “brief time in the sun” without denying that we are just “dust in the wind” is amazing.
      As you can tell I have this thing with hubristic fools (the Greeks didn’t like them either).
      AJ

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      1. Glad that you’re back and sound well AJ.

        I’ve never understood the fear of death. As you say, what’s so frightening about going to sleep and not waking up?

        I’m guilty of hubris from time to time. It’s hard to say I don’t know.

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  16. Good calm intelligent interview on Covid today by Lex Fridman of Vincent Racaniello.

    Lex soft-balled or ignored some of the hard questions, and Racaniello seemed ignorant about IVM, but otherwise this was interesting.

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    1. Racaniello is definitely not ignorant about ivermectin. I watched TWiV many times early during the plandemic, and he and his guest doctor (name escapes me) were repeatedly ask to address vit D and IVM, to crickets in response. I stopped watching when said doc chuckled over his memories of Vioxx and what a good time he had being involved in that; no mention of the hundreds of thousands killed. Money was made. TWiV is just big pharma cheerleading.

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      1. Thanks for the background. His comments on IVM in this interview were very strange, claiming that it is very expensive and difficult to manufacture, and no acknowledgement of Tess Lawrie’s meta-analysis.

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  17. Good interview today by Alex Smith of Megan Seibert on the dangerous myth of green energy.

    Not only is the G[reen]N[ew]D[eal] technically flawed, but it fails to recognize human ecological dysfunction as the overall driver of incipient global systemic collapse. By viewing climate change, rather than ecological overshoot—of which climate change is merely a symptom—as the central problem, the GND and its variants grasp in vain for techno-industrial solutions to problems caused by techno-industrial society.

    Megan is collaborating with one of my heroes, Bill Rees, and runs a political advocacy organization called The REAL Green New Deal Project that is both reality based and wildly idealistic, but nevertheless it’s refreshing to see written down a platform of what we must (but won’t) do. Good on them for having population reduction front and center.

    – Enact a national one-child policy, encouraging the global community to do the same;
    – Make all forms of birth control (including those for men) free, and in the case of non-surgical forms, available over the counter;
    – Make abortion free and widely available;
    – Pay women/couples a significant financial incentive to have one child or none;
    – Educate children and adults alike about the harmful impacts of overpopulation and its central role in our overshoot crisis, shifting from a human-centric view of the world to an inclusive view that honors and respects all life;
    -Replace the taboo surrounding population with a moral imperative to make it a front-and-center social topic;
    – Given our moral responsibility for global restitution, provide financial assistance to countries who seek it in order to help enact similar policies.

    https://www.realgnd.org/

    I think she triggered some of Alex’s deeply held beliefs that green energy can save us so he wrote a long blog trying to present both sides of the argument to complement the interview.

    https://www.ecoshock.org/2021/09/is-green-energy-a-dangerous-myth.html

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  18. Hilarious take-down of Carbon Capture and Storage,

    and a sad example of reality denial because they think PV + EV is the “real” solution,

    with no mention of austerity or population reduction. 😦

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    1. Yes I nit-picked about the “solution” on LinkedIn and got some engineers grumpy. Australia gets the majority of its electricity from burning fossil fuels. EVs in Australia are just an expensive way to burn fossil fuels way less efficiently. Absolutely useless. Why is it so hard to accept that burning less carbon is the only possible “solution”. Which means we don’t need more of anything, or any new things. We just need to do less year on year. Blasphemy to argue this though apparently!

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  19. The best predictors of economic health are the oil price and interest rate.

    Here are some simple rules:
    – If oil or interest goes up, expect crash.
    – If oil or interest goes down, expect crash.
    – If oil and interest are steady, expect crash.

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  20. I’m not a fan of John Michael Greer because of his woo and tendency to use 100 words to express a 10 word idea, but his essay yesterday on Meadows’ Limits to Growth study was good.

    If this is what’s happening, what can we expect? First of all, many goods and services will become less available over the years immediately ahead. Some goods and services will rise dramatically in price as consumers compete for a diminished supply; some will be available at some times and places and not at others; some—especially those that don’t have any real value in the first place—will simply stop being made altogether. By 2100, if the World3 model continues to be accurate, industrial production will be about what it was in 1900. Population will still be around twice what it was in 1900, however, so serious poverty will be very common.

    Meanwhile food prices will rise as food becomes less available. Some of that can be made up by cutting down on food waste—a fantastic amount of perfectly edible food is simply thrown away in the industrial nations nowadays—but not all. Population will peak and begin a slow decline not long after food and industrial output peak, and so outright starvation will tend to be limited to impoverished countries and classes except during periods of climate change-driven crop failure, but food costs will rise to make up a much larger share of family budgets in the years and decades ahead. Learning how to make cheap healthy foods stretch as far as possible will be an essential skill for most people as we proceed.

    Global population is already cresting and the peak is nearly in sight. Even if no major disruption happens—a major war, a pandemic with a notably larger body count than the present example, or what have you—many people alive today will see Earth’s population begin to shrink. Some will see peak pollution, though that’s a little further in the future. By 2050, if the World3 standard run turns out to be correct, resource availability will have bottomed out at close to sustainable levels, all four of the other variables will have turned down hard, industrial output in particular will be at a modest fraction of current levels, and we will be living in a different world.

    Now of course the first thing that comes to a great many minds when any such scenario gets discussed is flat denial, and I expect to see a lot of that. The second thing is the plaintive insistence that there must be some way to avoid having to go through the future thus sketched out. There was a way to do that, but the past tense—“was”—is essential here. If people had listened and taken action fifty years ago when the warning was first given, we’d have had plenty of time to make a smooth transition to a sustainable steady-state economy, back when our resource demands were much lower than they are now and the planet’s capacity to manage pollution wasn’t anything like so overburdened.

    We didn’t do that, and now it’s too late. It really is as simple as that.

    https://www.ecosophia.net/a-prayer-for-nonbelievers/

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    1. My only problem with JMG’s analysis is it avoids the positive feedback loops the climate appears to falling into. So, any prognostication about population and industrial output in 2050 is probably wildly optimistic. If we, as a civilization make it another 10 year without a drastic die-off and collapse I will be amazed.
      AJ

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        1. All these points are very veritable…
          From my side I will add what captured my attention:
          “Some will see peak pollution, though that’s a little further in the future.”

          Really?? What “little further in he future” means? Becasue as far as I can understand, 2030-2050 will be the time when first nuclear sites will be abandoned due to lack of resources to maintain them. I guess for JMG nuclear rubbish is not a big deal…

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          1. It might be helpful to bear in mind that JMG has Asperger Syndrome. These people can have a lot of difficulty with social and emotional behaviours, often causes them to communicate in ways that seem unnatural or even offensive to regular people. Autistic and aspergers people can focus on different things, often won’t have a strong emotional reaction to some crazy or scary things (like oh nuclear waste: that’s odd and interesting); while having very severe emotional reactions to everyday things (grocery shopping, talking to humans LOL). If they’re not strongly interested in something, it might not cross their radar as it would for a ‘neuro-typical’ person

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    2. I’m tossing JMG’s essays out with the bath water. JMG begins by saying, “I was ten years old when The Limits to Growth first saw print. I have a dim memory of seeing a newspaper article or two about it with this statement as a follow-up “It was not, as the corporate media insisted it was, a prophecy of doom. That’s one of the details that got swept under the rug by the mainstream back in the 1970s and still gets swept under the rug by the project’s critics today. The point of The Limits to Growth was that we as a species, and as a community of nations, had a choice.

      Say what? We as a species had a choice? Does this guy even understand our species? Does this guy understand what he states in his essays? We had a choice but corporate media swept the prophecy of doom under the rug? Where’s the choice if “they” swept it under the rug?

      “we didn’t make that choice while we could, and so it’s emotionally easier for a lot of people to insist that it was never an option at all.” Every day we make choices. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow we confront situations where we must make a choice whether it is “emotionally easier” or not. Since the publication of LTG we’ve decided NOT to make that choice that JMG says we didn’t make in the 70s. This guy lives in the 70s. Stop living in the past JMG.

      “If people had listened and taken action fifty years ago when the warning was first given, we’d have had plenty of time to make a smooth transition to a sustainable steady-state economy, back when our resource demands were much lower than they are now and the planet’s capacity to manage pollution wasn’t anything like so overburdened.” JMG is a could have, would have, should have prophet of confusion. Stop reliving the past, sculpting your historical fantasy with the present. The global population was 3.7 billion people in 1970. Today we are nearing 7.9 billion. How the fuck did we miss that golden opportunity or as JMG would say missed choice to a better, brighter future.

      “We didn’t do that, and now it’s too late. It really is as simple as that.” Nope it ain’t as simple as that. During the 60s and 70s civil rights and the vietnam war was front and center stage. JMG is directing our attention to those nasty people who, unlike himself with his dim memory, want to shift the blame and take what is his (If you want to know the details, I’ve written half a dozen books about that, and I’m far from the only writer to have done so).

      As for the John Denver song, yuck! Rhymes and Reason was released in 1969 according the allmusic.com Get a better song to go out with JMG. I prefer the Jeff Beck Group’s song Going Down which was released the same year the LTG was published.

      Go fuck yourself, it’s as simple as that JMG. Now to crawl back under my rock while I take a social media break.

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      1. Good points. Do we really have a choice?

        The same criticism can be leveled at me for pushing awareness of our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities so we can then take wise actions about human overshoot.

        Here’s the problem. Acknowledging our genetic denial of unpleasant realities is unpleasant so therefore we will never acknowledge denial.

        What then will be our unwise response to the overshoot cliff when it’s so close we can’t ignore it?

        I expect we’ll blame and try to kill other tribes, as we’ve always done.

        In the meantime it’s still satisfying to understand that the improbable evolved behavior that enabled a uniquely intelligent species to exist, also prevents it from using that intelligence to mitigate it’s own overshoot.

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        1. “Acknowledging our genetic denial of unpleasant realities is unpleasant so therefore we will never acknowledge denial.”

          You’ve got your denial and I’ve got mine.

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  21. Tim Watkins is good today.

    Since everything in the economy depends upon energy, and since the energy cost of energy is rising and can no longer be brought down, then we know that theoretically the economy must shrink. We also understand that this forced de-growth is likely to begin in the discretionary sectors of the economy. And because in a shrinking economy it is ever less prosperous consumers rather than businesses who set the price, we look set to see a wave of bankruptcies rather than a wave of inflation in the near future.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/09/02/who-determines-prices/

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  22. Nice big picture summary from Dr. Malone today on what we should be doing.

    https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/1/sorry-facebook-forced-universal-vaccinations-are-n/

    Sorry Facebook, forced universal vaccinations are not the answer
    All the science should be considered, not censored

    On August 5, 2021, we warned against the Biden regime’s forced universal vaccination policy, and Facebook promptly censored us. Now, the World Health Organization Director is pleading that world governments abandon their infinite booster shot madness, warning – as we did – about the possibility of more “virulent” and “potent” mutations. We wonder if Facebook will censor him.

    If we are right – and we have science, facts, and evidence all on our side – there are more than First Amendment rights at stake. Millions of lives – perhaps even the human race itself – hang in the balance.

    Prong One of our strategy is to vaccinate only the most vulnerable – primarily the elderly and individuals with significant comorbidities such as lung and heart disease or diabetes. Online and smartphone tools can allow people to assess their vulnerabilities accurately.

    Prong Two allows physicians to freely prescribe a wide range of safe and effective therapeutics in early treatment, outpatient use. Deploying home-based infection detection test kits would allow such treatment to start as early as possible.

    As reflected in the WHO’s concerns, sound science strongly suggests that the more you vaccinate, the more likely you will spawn vaccine-resistant mutations. Therefore, the more likely those who have been vaccinated will fall prey to the mutations. To put this another way, minimizing the number of people vaccinated is the BEST way to protect the most vulnerable – and most efficiently allocate scarce vaccine supplies around the world.

    It is this simple Darwinian principle of virology that Facebook’s censors can’t seem to wrap their heads around. They argue mutations will occur whether the virus encounters antibodies generated by vaccines or antibodies generated by those previously infected. But here’s the critical difference: The mutations that develop when the virus encounters vaccinated people will be far better armed to defeat the vaccine than the mutations that otherwise develop from far more diverse “wild-spike” and other viral proteins. So the more people you vaccinate, the more vaccine-resistant mutations you get, and in the vaccine “arms race,” the more need for ever more potent boosters.

    And here’s the worst-case – but by no means low probability – scenario: By vaccinating the entire population of the country (and world) with spike protein, you risk developing a “super virus” capable of evading globally harmonized immunity and putting everyone back at high risk yet again.

    Sound science likewise informs us that universal vaccination is foolish because it imposes unnecessary risks on a substantial fraction of our population – think children, the young, the healthy, and previously infected who have developed what are likely to be a more robust, diverse, and long-lasting protective immune response. Recent data from Israel provides yet more support for this logic.

    We must be honest here – because the Biden regime has not been. Each of the major vaccines can cause a wide range of serious side effects – or kill people outright. Yet, the FDA’s system to monitor such “adverse events” appears to undercount such events dramatically.

    In contrast, the European Union’s far more accurate system yields alarming statistics: As of July 31, 2021, the Eudravigilance10 database has recorded 20,525 deaths and 1,960,607 injuries.

    The apparent lack of durability of our current suite of vaccines is equally alarming. Recent data indicates the need for additional jabs every four to six months. This is effectively a medical version of Russian roulette where the small risk of a single jab becomes a much bigger risk with multiple jabs. So why expose those with little risk from the disease – particularly our children – to vaccination at all?

    Sound science further informs us that it is likely far less risky to treat our low-risk cohorts with therapeutics that range from hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin to apixaban, anti-inflammatory steroids, Vitamin D and zinc. We now know these therapeutics can significantly reduce symptoms, length of hospitalization, and mortality rate through the accumulation of data.

    For example, a meta-analysis of more than 300 hydroxychloroquine studies involving over 4,000 scientists worldwide and nearly 400,000 infected patients indicates a 66% overall improvement. Early treatment mortality studies estimate an average – and astonishing – 75% reduction in deaths.

    Despite such overwhelming data, there appears to be a coordinated effort by the Fauci-led federal bureaucracy working in tandem with Big Pharma and chains like CVS and Walgreens to suppress the distribution of a wide range of therapeutics that physicians all over the world are using to successfully keep patients out of the hospital with early treatment. In many cases, patients simply cannot get their prescriptions filled – a clear case of pharmacies practicing medicine without a license.

    That Facebook – which is now requiring all of its employees to be vaccinated – would interject itself into this debate is as distressing as it is deadly. We reiterate we are not anti-vaxers. One (Malone) has been mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on mRNA vaccines. The other played a key role in jumpstarting operation WARP speed.

    We are not just exercising our First Amendment rights. We are doing so from one of the strongest data- and science-based foundations imaginable. Ignore – or censor — us at the world’s peril.

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  24. Rob,
    On August 13 you posted the following link:
    https://patzek-lifeitself.blogspot.com/2021/08/a-letter-to-friend.html
    I read Patzek’s essay which I believe I commented on favorably. However, he effusively quoted Andri Snaer Magnason’s new book “On Time and Water”. So, dumbass that I am I immediately ordered it (should have waited for someone else to spend the money to read and review it). It took a week or so to get here and then I got sick as everyone knows. I just finished reading it and was disappointed. Some very good prose and nice stories from Iceland and visits with the Dalai Lama. However, the author has no clue as to how far we are into overshoot, thinks technology will solve climate change (we always rose to the occasion in the past) and doesn’t seem to think population is the most pressing problem. Can’t seem to understand that we can’t live at the level of technology to which we have become accustomed. A lot of my criticisms of the book stem from his belief that his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have a future (if we all work together we can solve anything -isn’t technology wonderful?). Maybe it’s because he isn’t a scientist, but mostly I chalk it up to denial about how bad our situation is. Maybe I’m a little unfair but I wasted a lot of free time on a book I would not have read based on Patzek’s favorable essay.
    AJ

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