Sidestepping Genetic Reality Denial by Manipulating Behavior for Overshoot Harm Reduction

It’s rare to encounter a new and constructive idea for addressing human overshoot that is not fatally flawed by a lack of understanding of either thermodynamic and geophysical constraints, or the strong genetic behavior to deny unpleasant realities that enabled the human species to emerge and dominate the planet.

For anyone still looking for technically feasible solutions that have a non-zero probability of success for reducing harms from human overshoot I recommend the most recent Planet: Critical podcast in which Rachel Donald interviews Joseph Merz.

https://www.planetcritical.com/p/urgency-action-and-ethics-joseph?s=r

There are no easy solutions to the climate crisis—most governments admit their hope lies in technology which doesn’t even exist yet. Science and “visionaries” propose increasingly mad ideas, like refreezing the Arctic, or sending humans to live in Space. But given the urgency of the situation, would we be mad not to consider these mad ideas?

Joseph Merz thinks we’ve run out of time to ask questions. He founded the Merz Institute to combat the climate crisis, gathering some of the world’s best scientists to establish what is going wrong and how to fix it. He says the answer is behavioural change—and they’re developing a programme that would manipulate mass behaviour on a subconscious level.

How? Well, using the same techniques as the advertising industry.

Key points made include:

  • It is too late to avoid suffering caused by human overshoot.
  • There may still be time to make the future less bad.
  • All actions we might take to reduce future suffering require changes in human behavior to consume less and have fewer children.
  • Information and education to date have proven completely ineffective at changing human behavior in a positive direction, and we are out of time to try new methods of education.
  • The advertising industry has developed technologies that are very effective at manipulating people to desire and acquire things they do not need to be happy, and in many cases cannot afford.
  • Merz proposes to redeploy these proven marketing technologies to manipulate people to desire happiness associated with lower consumption and fewer children.

Neither Rachel Donald or Joseph Merz appear aware of Varki’s Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory but I’m thinking that Merz’s proposal might sidestep the fatal flaw in most other overshoot harm reduction proposals that require humans to first acknowledge the reality of their predicament, which appears to be impossible because of MORT.

The beauty of Merz’s plan is that it does not require reality awareness because it will manipulate humans at a subconscious level.

It will be interesting to see if the marketing technologies are powerful enough to override the Maximum Power Principle (MPP) which is another powerful genetic behavior that pushes us in an overshoot direction. I’m thinking (without any evidence or data) that it might be possible to override the MPP because we are such a strong social species.

Godspeed to Merz and screw the ethics.

P.S. I doubt it is true, but I observe that if you assume the WEF Great Reset has good intentions grounded in overshoot awareness, it is possible they are thinking along the same lines as Merz with their “you will own nothing and be happy” campaign. The WEF campaign does seem rather clumsy compared to say associating happiness with a Corona beer on a high-carbon long distance vacation. I think it is more likely the WEF is trying to prepare citizens for a Minsky moment in which much asset ownership will transfer to the state.

P.P.S. It’s fascinating that so many overshoot aware people are active in the small country of New Zealand.

394 thoughts on “Sidestepping Genetic Reality Denial by Manipulating Behavior for Overshoot Harm Reduction”

  1. Nice update today from el gato malo on possible long term effects of mRNA vaccines. Too complicated for me to understand but el gato has invested the time to understand this new theory and says it’s credible but not yet proven.

    are mRNA vaccines causing innate immune suppression?
    a look at new work on pathways and proposed areas for research

    cliff notes:
    – mRNA vaccines appear to elicit profound, broad based immune suppression
    – they are structured very differently than live virus and have the equivalent of a biological passkey allow them to proliferate through the body
    – they persist in tissues for 60 days or more generating synthetic spike protein which is a toxin
    – and this likely goes a long way toward explaining why the immune response to them is so much more intense and prone to serious, lasting side effects than other vaccines or live virus
    …
    pretty much nobody who gets covid gets dragged through this wringer for 60 days or at this level of intensity, especially while immune suppressed. there is just no predicting where all this is going to accumulate or where it’s going to manifest. fully systemic penetration of a drug that trains cells to generate neurotoxic output for 60 days or more while suppressing something as important and pleiotropic as IFN could set off damn near anything.

    the responses will be so varied (and so prone to look like other infections or conditions) that sorting them out and properly attributing them would pose a serious challenge even under the best of conditions.

    and, obviously, what’s currently going on are not the best of conditions. these are the sorts of questions that should have been studied for years, even decades before giving this to the public. this is WHY vaccine development generally takes 5-10 years, and that’s for traditional modalities that are far safer and far better understood and lack even 5% the potential for biological mischief inherent in mRNA.

    jabbing this into a billion people without even having characterized all or really any of this appears to have created a mass drug trial whose only outcomes evaluation will emerge from actuarial tables years from now. the disregard for safety, informed consent, and even voluntary consent at all has been unlike anything i have ever seen.

    and we have not yet gotten to what looks like the potentially scary part yet.

    stayed tuned for part two of this in coming days…

    end note: yet again, i just want to caution that these is research in progress. it may be incomplete or incorrect. treat this as hypothesis, not settled fact. but these questions need asking and these avenues warrant exploration, so i raise them to further such.

    obviously, if they were truly doing their jobs, this would be the role of a regulator. perhaps some pointy questions about just what their job description is these days ought be asked as well…

    https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/are-mrna-vaccines-causing-innate?s=r

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  2. Ivor Cummins today takes a big picture look at the severity of covid and concludes it’s no worse than our normal flus. No discussion of prevention, early treatment, or vaccines which I thought was a little odd, especially for someone that prides himself on big picture understanding and that has left YouTube to avoid censorship. Kind of like discussing the risk of nicotine staining you teeth and not mentioning lung cancer.

    https://odysee.com/@IvorCummins:f/20220416-Crucial-Viral-Update-Revisited-Checklist-Final

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    1. Wow. He seems to have completely lost touch with reality. This doesn´t surprise me though due to my own experience with rich people. They live in their own world and are totally clueless how life is for the majority of people.

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  6. Re “Un-denial” and “The Dawn of Everything”

    “The Dawn of Everything” is a biased disingenuous account of human history (www.persuasion.community/p/a-flawed-history-of-humanity ) that spreads fake hope (the authors of “The Dawn” claim human history has not “progressed” in stages, or linearly, and must not end in inequality and hierarchy as with our current system… so there’s hope for us now that it could get different/better again). As a result of this fake hope porn it has been widely praised. It conveniently serves the profoundly sick industrialized world of fakes and criminals. The book’s dishonest fake grandiose title shows already that this work is a FOR-PROFIT, instead a FOR-TRUTH, endeavor geared at the (ignorant gullible) masses.

    Fact is human history has “progressed” by and large in linear stages, especially since the dawn of agriculture (www.focaalblog.com/2021/12/22/chris-knight-wrong-about-almost-everything ). This “progress” has been fundamentally destructive and is driven and dominated by “The 2 Married Pink Elephants In The Historical Room” (www.rolf-hefti.com/covid-19-coronavirus.html ) which the fake hope-giving authors of “The Dawn” entirely ignore naturally (no one can write a legitimate human history without understanding the nature of humans). And these two married pink elephants are the reason why we’ve been “stuck” in a destructive hierarchy and unequal class system (the “stuck” question is the major question in “The Dawn” its authors never answer, predictably), and will be far into the foreseeable future.

    A good example that one of the authors, Graeber, has no real idea what world we’ve been living in and about the nature of humans is his last brief article on Covid where his ignorance shines bright already at the title of his article, “After the Pandemic, We Can’t Go Back to Sleep.” Apparently he doesn’t know that most people WANT to be asleep, and that they’ve been wanting that for thousands of years (and that’s not the only ignorant notion in the title). Yet he (and his partner) is the sort of person who thinks he can teach you something authentically truthful about human history and whom you should be trusting along those terms. Ridiculous!

    “The Dawn” is just another fantasy, or ideology, cloaked in a hue of cherry-picked “science,” served lucratively to the gullible ignorant underclasses who crave myths and fairy tales.

    “the evil, fake book of anthropology, “The Dawn of Everything,” … just so happened to be the most marketed anthropology book ever. Hmmmmm.” — Unknown

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    1. Thanks for the heads up.

      I’m only into chapter 1 but am not enjoying it. Lots of blah blah blah about what some social studies “expert” said and how that disagreed with what some other social studies “expert” said.

      I prefer my human behavior to be grounded in evolution by natural selection, preferably with a deep understanding of why our unique intelligence requires us to deny unpleasant realities. I also think any opinion on human behavior is irrelevant unless it integrates our current overshoot predicament with how our species has responded to over-population and scarcity in the past.

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      1. I am on the fence of reading “The Dawn of Everything”, but I know that David Graeber was also a political activist (anarchist). Based on what I have read about the book, his political views are reflected in the content. So the book seems to be biased in this direction.

        Currently, I am reading “The City in History” by Lewis Mumford. What I like about his writing is, that he lists pros and cons of the processes he describes (in this case the evolution of cities). Even though you get a feeling that his conclusions are somehow biased due to the two world wars and the then ongoing nuclear stalemate (cold war), you at least have the (then known) facts on the table and can form your own conclusion.

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      2. I wish I remember the name of the book about anthropology and the nature of bias. It contrasted the famous work on the Yanamamo with some other research about peaceful tribes.

        This problem exists in many fields. There is a book called “Faces In a Cloud” which reviews the psychological theories of Freud, Jung, Reich and Rank. It makes a compelling case that people’s “meta” cognitions tend to duplicate their subjective world. In other words – a persons theory of everything is likely to primarily reflect their personal experience.

        On anthropology, I can heartily recommend War Before Civilization. https://www.harvard.com/book/war_before_civilization_the_myth_of_the_peaceful_savage/

        On Amazon

        My thoughts on the matter is that we’ve always had a mix of peace and war. While we may have one global interconnected economy, we do not have one civilization. We have many civilizations. While some common themes will apply to the future of all, if there is a future it will be a heterogenous one. (Huntingon, 1993)

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          1. Last post on the subject…A good denial perspective starts on page 163 about why people began imagining a peaceful possible world in response to WWII and the fear of war/death.

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          1. This is definitely the book about the Yanomamo I’m thinking about…but I’m trying to think of the major book published in rebuttal as part of the conflict this engendered.

            For anyone interested – the book you mention (Noble Savages) is an essential, and I think, more realistic, read.

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      3. RE “our unique intelligence requires us to deny unpleasant realities”

        I guess you do not recognize the cognitive dissonance in your statement, or that you still live in a fantasy world, because any species that denies “unpleasant realities” is bereft of any REAL intelligence and will go extinct over the long run.

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        1. High intelligence can be both real and short lived, as I expect it is throughout the universe, due to the rare and self-destructive conditions required for it to exist.

          If, on the other hand, you are arguing that a species that can visit the moon yet denies it’s own obvious overshoot is not intelligent, then I agree and intelligence probably does not exist anywhere in the universe.

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  7. Thank you to hillcountry @ OFW for finding this substack by Endurance that argues everything we have been told about covid is false.

    https://endurancea71.substack.com/p/back-to-basics?s=r

    As well as the constant reiteration of the party line, the media has overwhelmed us with the sheer volume of revelation. No sooner did we have the virus than we had all the various countermeasures, treatments, hospital protocols, surges, ‘cases’, clinical trials of ‘vaccines’ and then the growing realization that all is not as it seemed, passports, mandates…the list goes on. The lies about every single aspect of the ‘pandemic’ have been too numerous to count and too frequent to effectively denounce in real time. When one lie follows hard on the heels of others, it is very difficult to gain lasting traction on any one aspect of the malfeasance before the next untruth overtakes us. The mere act of switching focus onto the latest depredation has been interpreted as tacit acceptance of everything that has gone before. Thus, the sheer volume of bullshit serves to validate, rather than disqualify.

    The lesson seems to be that unless the battle is fought and won before the heat leaves the initial argument, it will be deemed to have been lost. It has nothing to do with the facts as they are and everything to do with the desire of the dominant class to move past uncomfortable truths as swiftly and comprehensively as possible. Anybody that attempts to revisit any issue that has been dismissed in this fashion is ignored or maligned and assailed with rhetoric that insists that the discussion is settled.

    However, things that were lies then are still lies now. The passage of time doesn’t scour the truth away and fighting on the latest turf is often what the enemy wants us to do. So, let’s revisit some facts:

    It is a racing certainty that SARS COV 2, the formulation that gives rise to Covid, was created in a lab funded, at least in part, by Fauci and the National Institute of Health (NIH).

    How do we know that Covid exists? Because the Chinese told us and then the likes of the CDC, and the WHO confirmed it. That’s how precarious the entire premise is.

    The WHO changed the definition of pandemic to include non-lethal diseases.

    The ‘vaccine’, to a disease that was allegedly novel prior to the end of 2019, had already been patented by Moderna prior to the ‘pandemic’.

    The PCR test is wholly unreliable, not only in detecting the correct pathogen but also in determining whether it is live (and capable of causing disease) or dead and therefore harmless. It is a secondary diagnostic tool, not a primary one.

    The ‘vaccine’ is not a vaccine. Vaccines prevent infection and transmission; these treatments do neither. mRNA technology is historically identified as experimental gene therapy.

    Because they are not a vaccine, they are not eligible for an Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA), which was nonetheless granted. The EUA is illegal for this reason.

    An EUA cannot be granted to a ‘vaccine’ if there are other effective treatments available. The rationale, sensibly, is that the risk is not justified as the EAU can only apply to a drug that has not received full approval.

    Hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, azithromycin, vitamin D, zinc and others besides are effective early treatments for Covid. Ivermectin is effective at any stage of the disease. The ‘vaccines’ are therefore disqualified from Emergency Use on these grounds also.

    Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were the prescription drugs of choice in the early stages of 2020. This is because they were known to be effective against SARS and they were fully approved drugs, able to be used for off label treatment.

    The FDA and other regulatory bodies around the world retrofitted EUAs to Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. There is no regulatory pathway for these actions. A drug that is approved has never been then downgraded for a specific off label treatment.

    Regulatory bodies, supervised by the WHO, ran two large trials (Recovery and Solidarity) which overdosed patients with lethal levels of hydroxychloroquine. Scores of patients died. The EUA for hydroxychloroquine was withdrawn.

    A regulatory body, by definition, has responsibility for policing the regulations. When it goes beyond those regulations, without authority, it loses its legitimacy and should be ignored.

    There is no scientific evidence for the efficacy of masking.

    There is no scientific evidence for the efficacy of lock-downs and plenty of evidence against them, not least the absolute certainty of collateral damage. It would be wrong to use the term ‘unintended consequences’ instead. When isolation is imposed upon a population who are also denied ongoing hospital treatments for existing medical conditions (such as cancer), the consequences can be easily foreseen and are not, therefore, unintended.

    There is no such widespread phenomenon as asymptomatic spread. There never has been.

    Over the past two years, the number of global deaths have been exactly in line with the average for the years preceding. What there have been are peaks where the old and the vulnerable have been ill with a respiratory disease of some kind. These peaks have then been prolonged by the lack of early outpatient treatment and lethal inpatient treatment.

    Excess deaths are now skyrocketing. These deaths are not from Covid. They are from heart disease, strokes, cancers and auto-immune diseases.

    The overwhelming majority of Covid hospitalisations and deaths are ‘vaccinated’. The injections do not, therefore, prevent hospitalisations and deaths, as claimed.

    ‘Vaccine’ passports are a complete waste of time, if the purpose of them is as stated. If ‘vaccinated’ and ‘unvaccinated’ alike can spread Covid, possession of a passport means nothing.

    According to the authorities, there was no flu season in 2020 and 2021. The same authorities, in the US, have withdrawn the EUA for the PCR test because it couldn’t tell the difference between Covid and flu.

    The authorities told us that the ‘vaccines’ don’t alter human DNA. They do.

    The full list of ‘vaccine’ ingredients and possible side effects has never been made public. This practice is explicitly forbidden by international treaty and human rights law. There is no exemption for emergency use. Governments are therefore in breach of both treaty commitments and the law.

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    1. I mostly agree with his assessment. Some points were new to me, like the PCR test not being able to tell the difference between the flu and Covid. The people, who made up this mess, should definitely be drawn to court. Nevertheless, as the restrictions are mostly gone now in Germany, I feel such a relief that I struggle to further bother with this topic even though this whole mess deserves a thorough clean up.

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  8. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere with the population thing.

    Here’s a quote from Eliot Jacobson
    “Just back from visiting the 20 or so exhibits at Santa Barbara Earth day. My takeaways are that everything is an alliance, disposable chachkies are still a thing, and you absolutely cannot say the word “population.””
    When asked why the reply was “we don’t talk about that because of eugenics.”

    It amazes me how they’ve managed to conflate population reduction with eugenics and all that involves and its historical associations.

    This is a workable definition of eugenics as I understand it
    “the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. Developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people, and other minority groups.”

    Zilch about population reduction but you can see why the endless growthists like to join the two together in the public’s mind

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  10. Here are a couple really smart guys who understand the global banking system and the profound importance of oil on the economy, and yet…
    they thrash around trying to explain what’s going on because they
    just
    can’t
    see
    the reality
    that oil is finite and depleting.

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  11. Steve Kirsch is on fire today with 44 questions that every citizen should demand answers to before accepting any further covid guidance from our “leaders”.

    I’m no where near as well informed as Kirsch and yet I could easily come up with another dozen important questions he missed.

    It’s hard to articulate just how putrid our covid policies are.

    https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/is-there-any-doctor-who-is-willing?s=r

    1) Why is there no all-cause mortality benefit from the COVID vaccines? Shouldn’t a vaccine that we mandate have a measurable morbidity or mortality benefit? That’s what anyone with a working brain would believe. I’ve been one of the few people speaking out about this since I first looked at the VAERS data nearly a year ago. I pointed out in the very first article I ever wrote on COVID vaccine safety (on May 25, 2021 on TrialSiteNews) that everyone was ONLY paying attention to COVID lives saved while at the same time, the deaths caused by the vaccine (the all-cause mortality) were off the charts. I argued that the vaccines shouldn’t be used. In the very first video I posted to Rumble (over 350,000 views) this was clear if you look at point #8 at 8:28 into the video: “Vaccines don’t offer an all-cause morbidity or mortality benefit.” At the time, nobody in the mainstream medical community agreed with me because they never looked at the VAERS data. But now there is a Danish preprint in the Lancet that supports what I pointed out almost a year ago: there is no all-cause mortality benefit from the mRNA vaccines. It is ZERO. Why are we mandating a vaccine that at best doesn’t save ANY LIVES???? This has got to be very embarrassing to the entire medical community since I have no medical credentials (I’m just an engineer with a couple of degrees from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). What’s astonishing is that this was crystal clear as soon as I started looking at the VAERS data. Today, the medical community is still clueless about the all-cause mortality issues because they steadfastly refuse to look at the VAERS data and discuss the data with any of our VAERS experts. In fact, they run and hide whenever we ask for a recorded discussion (similar to what cockroaches do when you turn on a light switch). A year ago, the medical academics I worked with told me I was an evil person and requested that I never talk to them again. I guess that is how science works. At any rate, it appears like that paper is going to get published, so I’ll be exonerated. Eventually, when they take a closer look at the data (such as VAERS and autopsy studies that they should have paid attention to), they will find that the all-cause mortality benefit is actually negative (as shown in the VAERS data and embalmer statistics).

    2) How do we know the mRNA vaccines don’t kill anyone? In the Pfizer trial, far more people died in the group that took the vaccine than in the group that took the placebo. Naturally, the Pfizer and Moderna clinical trials claimed that none of the all-cause mortality (ACM) deaths in the vaccine arms were due to the vaccine. How do they know this? More importantly, how does the public know they are telling the truth? Did anyone see the autopsy reports on these deaths and verify that the proper tests were done that prove there was no causality? If not, how can anyone rule out the vaccines as a proximate cause of these deaths?

    3)How do you explain the 433,000 excess deaths in VAERS? As of April 22, 2022, there are 12,471 US death reports in VAERS associated with the COVID-19 vaccines. There are fewer than 220 “background” deaths reported in VAERS per year. So if we subtract double that (since there are two shots), it means there are around 12,000 excess deaths reported to the VAERS. Using the CDC’s own methodology we can estimate that events in VAERS are underreported by at least 41. This means there are nearly 500,000 excess deaths that are unexplained. Even if we subtract off the 12% of these cases who had a VAERS symptom code of COVID-19 pneumonia, we still end up with 433,000 excess deaths not from COVID. That’s a lot of people. If it wasn’t the vaccine that killed these people, what did that has a symptom profile consistent with that observed in those reported dead? This is very important to explain to the public clearly. This is not overreporting because the URF of 41 was calculated on the ACTUAL reporting rate in VAERS so it already takes overreporting into account. And these weren’t background deaths because the symptom profile (relative size of each symptom) doesn’t match “normal” background deaths. And finally, why do both the FDA and CDC duck and run for cover when I ask them to explain this? Both organizations always claim that VAERS reporting is voluntary and it can’t be used to make causality assessments. The first is true (and irrelevant since the URF is calculated based on the actual numbers of reports compared to the expected number of events) and the second has always been false (as noted in this peer-reviewed paper) and they will always decline to defend that assertion.

    4) How do you explain the fact that in Australia which is highly vaccinated, there are more deaths in the first 4 months of 2022 than in 2021 and 2020? Wasn’t the vaccine supposed to reduce the death toll? The COVID variants are less deadly, but the vaccines make people more susceptible to getting infected as we know from the UK data: triple-dosed people are 3 times more likely to be infected. Isn’t it time we stop making the problem worse with vaccination?

    5) Why was the Pfizer clinical trial fraud in the 12-15 trial never investigated? Fraud is grounds for suing the drug companies and revoking the EUA. There was fraud in the Pfizer trial where a perfectly healthy 12-year old Maddie de Garay was paralyzed for life (she’s currently a paraplegic) less than 22 hours after her Pfizer shot. But in the trial documents submitted to the FDA, Pfizer lied and reported her symptoms as mild abdominal pain. FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock promised to investigate, but nobody ever called the family. Explain to us why this was never investigated and how you know for certain that there was no fraud in any of the trials.

    6) What killed the 14 kids the CDC analyzed? The CDC did an analysis of kids in VAERS who died after getting the vaccine. The problem was that in all cases, the causes of death were not consistent with background death causes for kids that age, nor were they consistent with COVID. So what killed these kids? The CDC never told us that and they never pointed out that these death causes were not normal. They basically said “here are the causes of death and there is nothing to see here so let’s move on.” So how can they be so certain none of the kids died from the vaccine? There was no mention of autopsy reports, so how does the CDC rule out the vaccine as being a possible cause? They are silent on this. Why?

    7) How do you explain why the CDC and NIH ignored early treatment protocols that worked in the real world? The Fareed-Tyson early treatment protocol has been used since March of 2020 on over 10,000 COVID patients of all ages in an area of the country with a high hospitalization and death rate and unfavorable demographics. The results: a few brief hospitalizations and no deaths as long as the patient arrived promptly after symptoms. How could the CDC justify telling people to do nothing was better than recommending this protocol be used? Even today, the absolute efficacy and safety profile of this treatment is superior to any alternative. How do you justify to the public that completely ignoring this protocol was the right thing to do to minimize hospitalizations and deaths? Explain why, in a pandemic that is killing massive numbers of people with no treatments available, the NIH refused to return the calls from these doctors. Why don’t we just use these protocols today as the primary COVID-19 mitigation measure? If we did that, wouldn’t it mitigate the need to do anything else?

    8) How do you explain a 1,000-fold increase in the reporting rate of pulmonary embolism in VAERS after the vaccines rolled out? If the high rates of pulmonary embolism were not caused by the vaccine, what was the cause? Also explain why this didn’t generate a public health warning since the CDC was watching the VAERS data like a hawk. The CDC won’t tell us so we’re understandably confused by that. Why would they refuse to answer this simple question?

    9) How do you explain why individual physicians we’ve talked to are seeing a high rate of adverse events after the COVID vaccines, yet not for previous vaccines? For example, one doctor I know has never needed to file a VAERS report in her 11-year career. But this year needs to file 1,000 reports (a 5% rate of neurological injuries). That’s a 10,000-fold increase in actual events. If it wasn’t the vaccine, what is causing these adverse events?

    10) How do you explain why thousands of records were removed from the VAERS database? HHS has removed 8,600 total VAERS reports for COVID-19 including 491 deaths. There was no reason code or public explanation given for removing any of these records. Why should we not be concerned about this? This is an important government database where lives depend on this information being complete and accurate. Also, there are at least 20,000 missing VAERS IDs that have never been explained. Why should we not be concerned about that? In the old days, we could trust the government. Those days are gone. Why is there no transparency here?

    11) Where is the evidence supporting the FDA’s hand-waving argument that VAERS is just overreported? The FDA says the overreporting in VAERS (where more events have been reported this year than for all vaccines combined in the 30 history of VAERS) is because doctors are reporting significantly more this year than in the past. Seriously?!? Where is the evidence of that and why won’t you show us? Also, the reporting requirement for vaccine-related deaths hasn’t changed this year at all. So why do we see fewer than 220 deaths a year consistently for the past 30 years, yet in 2021 there were 10,100 reported deaths. That’s a 46-fold jump in reporting rate. What caused that if it wasn’t an increase in the number of actual events?

    12) Why was there no investigation into the corruption of the DMED database used by the Department of Defense? There was a huge spike in adverse events after the vaccines rolled out. And then, after this was disclosed at a hearing hosted by Senator Ron Johnson, the spike just “disappeared.” How could that happen? Senator Johnson wrote to Defense Secretary Austin, but there was no response and no investigation. Why not? And what was the cause of the “data corruption?” It seems to us that everyone is hiding hoping that nobody will ask any more questions about this. Surely, there is nothing to hide since the vaccines are safe and effective, right?

    13) How can there be 15% to 30% vaccine injured in the Army if the vaccines are safe and effective? An army flight surgeon estimates there are 15% to 30% vaccine injured from the COVID vaccines in the armed forces. Since there are 9,000 VAERS reports at a 41X underreporting factor, that would be 369K/1.4M = 26%. So the estimate matches the VAERS data. If this isn’t right, then what are the real numbers and what is the source for that data? Also, one army doctor told me he’s seen hundreds of vaccine injured this year, but one in the last 30 years (due to the smallpox vaccine). That would be an increased incident rate of three orders of magnitude. How is that consistent with a safe vaccine?

    14) Why did only 6 soldiers out of 3,000 opt to get the vaccine after COVID vaccine safety briefings by Army Lt. Col. Pete Chambers? Chambers didn’t say anything false and misleading. So why was he relieved of his duties after that?

    15) Why did the F-35 crash? A vaccinated pilot crashed a $100M F-35 jet into the side of an aircraft carrier. I wrote about it on Feb 8, 2022. It’s now almost 3 months later. Why isn’t anyone talking about what happened?

    16) Where is the evidence that the papers showing the spike protein is cytotoxic are all wrong? The spike protein in the vaccines is cytotoxic according to multiple peer-reviewed papers published in the scientific literature. Yet the CDC and Wikipedia both say that the spike protein is harmless. Why haven’t any of these papers (see the references in these links) been retracted?
    – Be aware of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein: There is more than meets the eye
    – Toxicological insights of Spike fragments SARS-CoV-2 by exposure environment: A threat to aquatic health?
    – SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Impairs Endothelial Function via Downregulation of ACE 2
    – Pay no attention to the spike proteins behind the curtain
    – Clearing up misinformation about the spike protein and COVID vaccines
    – Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs

    17) Explain how you know that masks work and the peer-reviewed randomized trials were all wrong. Perhaps there was a randomized trial for masks and SARS-CoV-2 that we missed? Also, let us know what the effect size is for cloth masks, surgical, and N95 masks and explain why the Denmark, Spain, and Bangladesh mask studies all failed to find any effect whatsoever and why the Finland study showed masks actually increased the rate of infection. Also, explain the graphs in this article The More Masks Fail, The More We Need Them.

    18) How do you explain the elevated D-dimer and troponin levels post-vaccine? Tell us what % of people have elevated levels for D-dimer and troponin and how long they last. Assure us that the vaccines don’t elevate D-dimer and troponin levels after vaccination in anyone and how you know that.

    19) Please assure us that nobody has died from the mRNA COVID vaccines and explain how you are confident that this is true. In particular, if you can address the errors Dr. Peter Schirmacher and Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi made in their studies, that would be very important. Please tell us how many post-vaccine autopsy reports you have seen where they did the proper tests to rule out that the vaccine could have caused the deaths? Is there a reason these reports must be kept confidential?

    20) If the vaccines are safe, then how come the NIH hasn’t been able to cure a single vaccine-injured person and restore them to health? How many vaccine- injured people has the NIH tried to cure? How many have been cured? It’s zero as far as we know. Read this article; they’ve known about vaccine injured patients since January 2021, but later had to abandon all 34 vaccine injured patients because they were unable to help any of them and they didn’t want to acknowledge that there were any vaccine injuries. Also, if they had found a link between the injuries and the vaccine, they’d have to admit that, so by terminating the research before it concluded they have plausible deniability: they can say that they weren’t able to find a link (and omit the fact that they prematurely terminated the program so that they could avoid finding the link).

    21) If the vaccines are perfectly safe, then why did the NIH cover up the fact that they were treating vaccine injured patients? The 34 vaccine injured patients that the NIH was seeing starting in January 2021 were told not to say anything because the NIH didn’t want to create a panic that the vaccines caused injuries. As of June 2021, the NIH is no longer treating the vaccine injured. Nath claims publicly that he doesn’t know whether any of the 34 cases were caused by the COVID vaccines. That’s a lie. All these patients with similar symptoms never seen before, all starting shortly after the vaccine, and he doesn’t have any clue as to whether the vaccine might have caused them even though VAERS lights up with all the associations of the COVID vaccines and the symptoms of these patients? If it wasn’t the vaccines causing these symptoms, what was the most likely explanation? If the vaccine was the most likely explanation, they why not admit that? What evidence was there that the reported injuries could not have been caused by the vaccines? But we don’t even need to argue this logically because we have first-hand statements from the vaccine injured who treated him that he knew.

    22) What ever happened to evidence-based medicine (EBM)? What was it replaced with and when did this happen? A lot of us missed the memo. The reason I ask is that both ivermectin and fluvoxamine have published peer-reviewed meta-analyses and systematic reviews which are the highest level of evidence-based medicine. So it is inexplicable that the NIH says there is “insufficient evidence” to recommend these drugs. It’s the HIGHEST level of evidence in EBM!?! Fluvoxamine alone has the potential to reduce death from COVID by a factor of 12: “There was one death in the fluvoxamine group and 12 in the placebo group for the per-protocol population (OR 0·09; 95% CI 0·01–0·47).” That’s another reason the NIH should be recommending it. Giving it a neutral recommendation won’t save lives: it’s a message to physicians to avoid using the drug; the NIH knows this. See also: New Analysis Shows Fluvoxamine Has The Potential To Reduce Covid-19 Hospitalizations By More Than 90%.

    23) How come nobody has been paid any compensation for their COVID vaccine injuries? We have millions of vaccine injured, but our government hasn’t paid even a dime to any of them. So how is the government protecting the public by refusing to compensate them for an injury that the public sustained because the government screwed up and approved an unsafe vaccine?

    24) Deaths per million vaccinated. The smallpox vaccine killed 1 person per million vaccinated. That was previously the world’s most deadly vaccine; too unsafe to use today. Yet the COVID vaccines kill 1,000 times more people per million than the smallpox vaccine. What do we do? We mandate it! How do you explain that?

    25) Re-kindled latent cancers. Please assure us that the rates of “re-emerging” cancers did NOT increase at all after vaccination and tell us how you know that. We are referring to cancers that were under control before vaccination and that shortly after vaccination either became out of control or killed the patient. Many doctors have observed a 10X increase in such events. Clearly, that must be false if the vaccines are as safe and effective as claimed. Can you show us the data showing it is false?

    26) Why are there no autopsies? Why isn’t the CDC requesting that medical examiners in a dozen randomly selected locations do proper autopsies and provide them with the money, tools, and training to detect whether the deaths were caused by the vaccines? Instead, they do nothing. How is that protecting public health? The CDC appears to be behaving like an organization that does not want to know how many people are being killed by the vaccines. Show us evidence that we are wrong.

    27) Blood supply safety. We’ve heard horror stories from embalmers of people who got blood transfusions and died with telltale blood clots found only in vaccinated patients (and those with transfusions). Explain how this is possible if the blood supply is perfectly safe.

    28) Stillbirths since the vaccine. A maternity ward nurse at Memorial Medical Center in Modesto, CA reported that she has “never seen so many stillborn and miscarriages since the jabs started being administered.” Why not have all the hospitals report their numbers so we can have transparency here? And make it a federal crime to report false information. That would inspire confidence that the vaccines are perfectly safe and there is nothing to worry about, right?

    29) Where is the scientific study behind the 6 foot rule for COVID? All of us misinformation spreaders are baffled here. Scott Gottlieb is too. The virus is spread as an aerosol that hangs around for hours to days. As soon as you advance in line to the place that the person was just standing in, you are breathing in what he just breathed out. And the next time he moves forward in line, the process repeats.

    30) Why no debates? There has never been a debate between any of the top misinformation spreaders and any of the health authorities. Why are the health authorities so afraid? In Canada, just three doctors challenged every health authority in Canada and none of the authorities showed up. This makes the Canadian health authorities look really weak if collectively they are afraid of just 3 Canadian doctors. Is “running and hiding when challenged” considered exemplary behavior in science today?

    31) Harm to our immune system. The latest scientific research published in peer-reviewed medical journals shows the vaccines impair our immune system. Tell us how you know for sure that this is just a temporary effect. How long does it last for and how can you be sure of that?

    32) Prion diseases. I tweeted a Substack article that the COVID vaccines cause prion diseases and Twitter banned me for life! But that doesn’t change the science or the data. It just tells me that our government doesn’t want anyone to know this. CHD just ran a story of a mom who died shortly after vaccination from a prion disease. Explain to us why the strong elevation in VAERS reports for prion diseases is nothing to be alarmed about.

    33) Vaccine mandates for kids. We can’t figure out why anyone would mandate the vaccine for kids. Note that we know why the drug companies want it: because it exempts the fully-approved vaccines from liability. Kids are orders of magnitude less likely to die from COVID, they aren’t spreading it to adults in any significant numbers, and we have absolutely no clue as to the long-term effects of the vaccines on them. So even if things look safe today (which they don’t), there is still no compelling reason to mandate vaccination of our kids. Explain to us what we are missing here and please show us the risk-benefit analysis that is being used here because the only one I’ve seen shows we kill 117 kids to save 1 COVID life, which, to be honest, doesn’t make much sense to a lot of us normal people (though if you are a public health official, it seems to make perfect sense for some reason). Also, in the Los Angeles school district, they test all the kids on a regular basis. Surely, there must be a good reason they don’t tell us what the case rates are in the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated. Could that be because the rates aren’t any different? Or because the cases are higher in the vaccinated? Boy, that would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?

    34) Origin of the virus. The gain-of-function research work in Wuhan was funded by the NIH. This isn’t subject to debate anymore. Why didn’t the NIH admit this at the start? Also, why did Fauci cover it up? And when Biden went to investigate the origin of the virus, why didn’t he ask the NIH for Fauci’s unredacted emails which would have told us everything? From our perspective, failing to do that showed that Biden knew full well Fauci funded the virus and covered it up. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he have sought his emails so we can see the information that was redacted in the FOIA request?

    35) The lockdown policies of the US government. We aren’t aware of any science showing lockdowns have worked in past pandemics to save lives (any virus lives saved by the lockdowns were more than offset through loss of lives due to the lockdowns). The Johns Hopkins study of lockdowns for COVID showed that they ended up costing more lives than they saved. Where is the evidence showing the opposite? How is it that Sweden did so well without any lockdowns and other Nordic countries with even fewer restrictions did even better?

    36) Vaccine-induced hepatitis. In light of this paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal (“SARS-CoV-2 vaccination can elicit a CD8 T-cell dominant hepatitis”), explain to us how this paper is wrong and the COVID vaccines cannot induce hepatitis. The conclusion reads, “COVID19 vaccination can elicit a distinct T cell-dominant immune-mediated hepatitis with a unique pathomechanism associated with vaccination induced antigen-specific tissue-resident immunity requiring systemic immunosuppression.” You told us that the vaccines were safe and had been thoroughly tested. So someone is lying. Who is lying and how do you know? Also, there are cases of acute hepatitis in kids 16 and underreported all of a sudden in 11 countries. Do we know for certain that none of these kids were vaccinated? 10% of the kids are having to undergo liver transplants due to the illness.

    37) Vaccine safety vs. efficacy for the elderly. Most people claim that the vaccines are justified for the elderly, but for some reason, they never present data from nursing homes showing that their claims are true. We’ve never seen this anywhere. We do see occasional leaks from nursing home whistleblowers like Abrien Aguirre and these people tell us flat out that it is just the opposite: that far more old people died due to the COVID vaccine than actually died from COVID (and not with COVID). These people, who expose the fact that people are re-coded as COVID deaths to collect the extra reimbursements, are then fired and their nursing homes refuse to talk about the numbers disclosed by the whistleblowers. So we are confused by this. If the vaccines are saving lives, why are the nursing homes hiding the numbers and firing the whistleblowers?

    38) Myocarditis caused by the vaccines. Please show us the evidence in the clinics that the rates of myocarditis actually observed by cardiologists DECREASED after the vaccines rolled out. Since the authorities claim that the rates of myocarditis from the vaccine are small compared to COVID, we should see the rates of myocarditis decrease after the vaccines rolled out, but all the cardiologists we talk to tell us that the rates increased dramatically. Also, why aren’t any schools voluntarily sharing their myocarditis rates to show how low it is? Instead, they are staying completely radio silent. For example, at MVCS, the rate confirmed by the head of school is at least 4 in 400 boys, but she won’t publicly talk about it. Isn’t that a trainwreck? Why are all the school nurses we contacted unwilling to reveal the numbers? The schools are behaving as if they don’t want parents to know that the vaccines they mandate are harming the kids.

    39) Cardiac issues in kids after the vaccines rolled out. What accounts for the increased rates of cardiac issues in kids under 16 that started happening after the vaccines rolled out? This includes things like tachycardia and myocarditis? How could the rates go up so high as soon as the vaccines rolled out for kids? Is this caused by a change in the virus? If so, where is the paper describing this? And why are the hospital lab technicians in fear of being fired if they talk about this publicly? Isn’t this something the public should know? Or is it better for society if these incidents are covered up?

    40) Cause of death shift in 2020 vs. 2021. We know from the Massachusetts death data that after the vaccines rolled out, that the cause of death shifted from respiratory causes (due to COVID) to circulatory issues (which we claim were caused by the vaccines). If the vaccines didn’t cause this, then the only possibility is that the virus decided to fundamentally change how it kills people. Yet we’ve never seen a paper on this. Is that the explanation? If not, what caused this dramatic shift in the causes of death? John Beaudoin would be happy to share the analysis with you before you do your video.

    41) Massachusetts death data. If the vaccines are safe and effective, explain how this analysis got it wrong and why there is nothing to see here.

    42) Telltale blood clots in vaccinated people (and people with blood transfusions). Up to 93% of cases of embalmers seeing long blood clots (never before seen prior to the vaccine) seem troubling. Why are these nothing to worry about, what is causing them, and how do you know that? Do you have tissue analysis you’ve done to reassure us that the vaccines are not the cause?

    43) How can there be hundreds of thousands of seriously injured vaccine victims for a vaccine with such mild side effects? Why did hundreds of thousands of people join vaccine injury groups on Facebook? Why did Facebook shut these down? Were all of these people lying? How did Facebook make that assessment? Was there any coordination with the US government?

    44) The UK government data clearly shows that triple-vaccinated people are 3 times more likely to get COVID. So for those of us with a working brain, it’s silly to get vaccinated if we want to avoid a COVID infection. It’s been argued by the UK authorities that this isn’t really true, but they used a laundry list of hand-waving arguments rather than any actual data to support their claims in the hopes you’ll believe one of the arguments and won’t ask for data. Over time, the numbers got so bad that they now no longer publish the numbers. Show us credible data that shows why these numbers are wrong and the triple- vaccinated are far less likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. Make our day. I’m sure Alex Berenson would love to see this too. Also, can you explain this image from Alex’s Substack? To us it looks like vaccination makes things worse; are we interpreting the graph wrong?

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    1. I really appreciate Steve´s dedication and effort. He is one of the few Covid “rebels” that I still read occasionally. The topic in general is so mentally draining, that I try to avoid it now. A news fast is something that I seriously consider to increase my mental health. Two years of gloom and doom are enough.

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      1. It would be so simple for our leaders to stop “misinformation”. All they have to do is provide answers with supporting evidence for the many questions people are asking.

        But they don’t. Perhaps because they are idiots, or perhaps because their policies have nothing to do with health.

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        1. The opposite seems to be the case. Yesterday, I read in the German news that there is a commission in place to evaluate the Corona measures for their effectiveness, which I would really appreciate. Unfortunately, the major fear mongers from Germany Christian Drosten (the “royal” virologist) and Karl Lauterbach (minister of health) try to sabotage this commission more or less openly. Drosten claims that we don´t have enough data, which sounds totally ridiculous after two years of worldwide data gathering, while Lauterbach wants to delay the release of the results of the commission to the end of this year, currently they are scheduled to be released in Summer. I still lean to them just being idiots trying to rescue their reputation by any means.

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    2. I thought about providing some responses to many of those questions but I then I wondered why Steve Kirsch didn’t do the work himself. It could be because he doesn’t want the answers. Perhaps he could start by looking at data which doesn’t seem to support his opinion and then find out what systems like VAERS actually are and are not.

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      2. Based on what I have seen from Steve, I would not expect that he does not have the answers to his questions. He just wants to hear the answers from the fear mongers.

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        1. I agree. Most of the questions appear to be tinged with a perhaps subtle rhetorical slant. He just wants affirmation from those “in charge”.
          AJ

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          1. Hey AJ, sounds like you’ve been studying Ukraine more than anyone else here, how about quick summary of where you think we are and where we’re going?

            Maybe post it as a new comment rather than a reply to this one so it does not get buried.

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        2. My interpretation is that Steve thinks he knows that valid concerns exist and he wants the authorities to present the logic and data they have used to justify not investigating and/or acting on the concerns.

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  13. Latest from Nate Hagens. Nice to see that Nate succeeded in breaking through the overshoot denial of an important influential person, although Tristan Harris is now finding it difficult to sleep at night.

    I left the following comment:

    Very good interview, thanks. It would be interesting to know if there are discussions on the Taiwan democracy platform about the need for rapid population reduction policies, since nothing else will help with our overshoot predicament. I’m betting not. Addressing social media problems is important but acknowledging our genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities is even more important. Social media simply amplifies an already loud denial problem.

    Further to my point, it was illuminating to see an expert on social media discuss the damage it does to rational thought, and then state that the Ukraine invasion is due to an irrational dictator.

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    1. This was a great article. Thanks for introducing me to Doomberg. It looks like they do very good work and I’ve been gobbling up their content. It seems they are nuclear power optimists. I must confess I’m skeptical, but I see passionate well educated people in disagreement over the viability of nuclear (short term). As you’d no doubt point out, the energy problem if solved would just kick-the-can on many other problems. I’ll keep digging to see if they address overshoot in general. They describe themselves as “human centered” and targeted at minimizing the loss of life. Seems to me this requires birth reduction. I think our actual path will be excess deaths.

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      1. Nuclear is a tricky question that well informed people can disagree on.

        On the one hand, nuclear can be engineered to be safe enough, and is a dense, clean, reliable 24/7 source of electricity.

        On the other hand, electricity doesn’t replace the diesel we depend on for survival, and if you expect fossil energy depletion will collapse the economy then degraded governance and maintenance abilities could make nuclear unacceptably dangerous, even with good intentions.

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    2. On the topic of alternative fuels check out this from national airline here in glorious 100% pure NZ.

      I left the following comment on their LinkedIn post.

      “This ad made my stomach churn. It’s absolute #greenwashing by a distant commitment based on yet to be viable technologies and #hopium. Statements like “could be available sooner than you think” and “might be” confirm this. Your slick marketing team should be ashamed of the way they’ve taken advantage of these child actors when every carbon spewing flight contributes to locking in an unlivable world for their future. I would be inspired if AirNZ faced reality and pivoted to a future of coastal sailing ships. There is no sustainable future involving people flying.”

      I know I’m wasting my time doing this but sometimes you gotta vent. Of course cheap fossil energy depletion and overshoot will trump climate change and the bogus net zero commitments.

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      1. LOL. Our moron leaders love that 2050 date.

        A net zero commitment by 2050 will be the only climate change commitment we ever meet because all the fossil energy will be gone by then and we’ll be net zero whether we want to be or not.

        I agree venting is a waste of time but it does feel good to let the universe know there are a few functioning brains on the planet.

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  16. I initially embraced Substack with enthusiasm. Now I’m cancelling subscriptions. It seems most authors think they have enough important things to say that several posts a day are warranted. Most people don’t have that many good ideas a day. I wish they would concentrate their best thoughts into maybe one post a week.

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    1. I have the same impression. I cancelled quite a few subscriptions because I wasn´t reading them anymore. It wasn´t just the pure quantity of stuff that I had to read but also the quality. I mean you could read hundreds of bloggers on a topic (e.g. Covid), but the important information is coming from the same few bloggers most of the time.

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  17. Tim Morgan today reminds us that pre-covid we were buying $1 of growth with $4 debt (plus $6 more for future liabilities). Post-covid the picture is worse.

    Morgan concludes:

    The extinguishers used to fight (or at least to damp down) the fires of the global financial crisis now contain, not foam or water, but gasoline.

    …the era of self-delusion is over, and the stoicism involved in facing reality will now be the characteristic most required to adapt to a new era.

    https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2022/04/28/227-pictures-of-imperfection/

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    1. Good article as usual! I still have a “wait and see” attitude about the durability of inflation. It doesn’t ultimately change the outcome, but I hope to call an “I told you so!” as the ship goes down. After all – Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

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  18. Just stumbled on a new covid blogger mentioned by the infamous Fast Eddy @OFW.

    I really like the way Joel Smalley writes. Unlike so many other covid bloggers that are WAY too verbose and obtuse, Smalley writes with clarity and an economy of words.

    In this essay published a few days ago he reviews the global data to make a persuasive case that vaccines are doing more harm than good.

    It seems to me when trying to assess any health policy, harms versus goods is THE most important question.

    So he nails the key issue with no excess baggage.

    Other strong points include links to data sources and references to people that I know and trust from 2 years of vetting.

    https://metatron.substack.com/p/covid-requiem-aeternam?s=r

    Conclusion

    The Safe and Effective™ vaccine hypothesis is rejected.

    In fact, according to the evidence, the more obvious conclusion is that the COVID vaccine has caused more death, not less, so much more in fact, that it has actually wiped out the expected natural declines and caused yet more death still.

    The signal is significant in terms of temporal proximity and consistency across countries regardless of geography and demographics.

    Applying the Bradford Hill criteria:

    1. Strength of association – vaccinated (richer) countries have relatively more COVID death than less vaccinated (poorer) countries.

    2. Consistency across countries and continents.

    3. Specificity – the vaccine kills people.

    4. Temporality is observed in a significant number of countries, especially those vaccinating aggressively in the middle of outbreaks.

    5. Biological gradient – there is an evident positive correlation between vaccination rate and COVID death rate and increase in COVID death rate.

    6. Biological plausibility – the 2-week period of immunosuppression immediately post injection has been very widely observed and reported, as have the plethora of fatal adverse events. The evidence suggesting that variants are spawned due to unnatural selection is also growing4.

    7. Coherence – we get the same information from analyses of vaccine adverse event reporting systems, hospital records, national surveillance systems, even the vaccine trial data itself (albeit hidden in the data appendices)5, and other independent mortality analyses with different methods6.

    8. Experiment – the entire world has been subjected to a massive clinical trial without consent. Fortunately, different countries had different rates of vaccine uptake so comparative study has been possible to demonstrate causality, especially between countries with similar geographic and demographic qualities.

    9. Analogy – Marek’s chickens (1970)7.

    This is a global public health failure of truly unprecedented and epic proportions.

    P.S. In the comment thread Fast Eddy is active and presents his trademark Ultimate Extinction Plan (UAP) in its entirety, rather than the usual confusing fragments, just in case you’ve ever wondered what makes that duck quack.

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    1. Commenting on the internet seems to be Fast Eddy´s only activity based on the volume he alone puts out at OFW. He must have found out how to clone himself, if he now spreads to other sites.

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    1. I’ll watch this when I get a chance. Spring is planting season and I have far too much work outside in the rain to do to get some crops in the ground. (Why do I do this??) As I am more depressed by the day. We are purposefully getting into WW3 and sooner or later obama (or whoever controls the senile Biden) will cause Russia to nuke us.
      Shorter reads that explain where we are:
      Larry Johnson seems to be right on point here.
      https://sonar21.com/those-who-cannot-remember-the-past-are-condemned-to-repeat-it/
      Karl Denninger says we are insane (in the U.S.).
      https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?blog=Market-Ticker-Nad
      I hoped we would avoid this fate but denial is strong and most people deny (or are to stupid) to think we have an existential problem with Ukraine.
      AJ

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      1. Thanks, I’ll read those links.

        Things are busy at the farm I help despite cool and wet weather. Finished a project yesterday installing lighting and plugs in a 40′ shipping container we recently purchased. I’ve been encouraging the farm to store more key supplies like fertilizer, fuel, and spare parts. They seem to be taking my concerns seriously now.

        Today’s project is to run the flail mower down both sides of the fence line.

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        1. I know the work never stops. I spent the morning turning over one gardens winter cover crop by hand (shovel and rake). I could rent a roto-tiller but that wastes fuel and I have to drive for two hours (round trip) to get it. I could buy one but again a waste of resources and used only a few times a year. Sure it takes a long time to turn over the soil by hand but that’s what our ancestors did (unless they had cow/oxen – but that’s another story). I have my new scythe blade coming and then I get to cut grass/weeds. I never appreciated how much time/energy it takes to mow grass (or grains). Get a scythe and work with it for a few hours a day and you really appreciate fossil fuels. 😉
          AJ

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          1. A few years ago I worked on a different farm that used almost zero fossil energy. We scythed several acres of grains and legumes and threshed by hand with chaka sticks. I quite enjoy scything but it takes a lot of practice to be good at it.

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            1. Hello friends of the Scythe, so good to hear you’re practicing your swing! What brand blade are you getting, AJ? We’ve had good results with the Falci, an Italian make. Note the similarity to Fauci and isn’t it ironic that our arch Covid nemesis’ name actually means sickle in Italian, could this mean something as the scythe has always been the weapon of choice for the grim reaper. However, these days my left-handed husband uses battery powered Stihl tools, just that much quicker and more versatile with the interchangeable attachments, especially the pole pruner which has been a godsend. One day when he retires, I am sure he will return to the meditative rhythm of scything but maybe by then our food forest will be so dense that grass will be a thing of the past (dream on!) I’ve been joining you in the heads down bum up department here down under, Autumn clean up tasks are as demanding as Spring planting, with the extra bonus of trying to harvest and process the last of the fruit, quinces, medlars, and persimmons will round out our year here in Tasmania. I am also getting ready for my annual winter migration to the highland tropics which will see me flat out like a lizard drinking (don’t you just love Aussie slang!) trying to reclaim the jungle which has grown in my absence. There’s no way a scythe could tame that elephant grass, it’s hard yakka even with petrol powered brushcutters, but once again, the Stihl battery models do a commendable job. My pride and joy there are my beautiful 9 year old clumping bamboo. We have about 20 varieties, all useful in various ways and many edible, some have 25 cm diameter culms and are nearly 25 metres tall in just 3 months–how can anyone fail to be awed by that rate of growth and the cumulative biomass, all thanks to the energy of the sun and a good deal of rain. My goal this winter is to experiment with making bamboo biochar which we will first use to improve our own soil and perhaps later it can be a small sideline for markets/trade, as we think we’ll have a lot of bamboo to turn to charcoal! I’ve been following the posts diligently but admit I haven’t checked out as many links as I wish but am glad that the stalwart band is keeping things ticking over.

              One thing that keeps fermenting in my mind and at the risk of sounding like a tiresome broken record, isn’t everything that is unfolding before us in double time now exactly what is required to accomplish the twin pillars of overshoot correction, that is population reduction and collapse of the consumable economy? How else to orchestrate such a seismic shift but to do it in ways we can just about understand to be part of our human history, that is war, plague, famine, natural disaster, and yes, even ineffectual if not outright imbecilic leaders, whatever it takes to keep the current human morass going until the next big thing is ready to take its place. I am coming to accept this as our inevitable doom but that makes me all the more determined to look forward to another Spring, just as you good people in the northern hemisphere are trusting now that your honest labour will reward you with Autumn harvest. All the best, everyone. Happy May Day, by the way. In addition to the billions of human workers worldwide, let’s honour the trillions of energy slaves who have made our lives of denial possible.

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              1. Hi Gaia,
                I am buying a ditch blade that is manufactured in Austria by Schroeckenfux (Maine Scythe Supply). I already have a grass/grain blade but have a lot of weeds/berry vines to keep cut back. I like the scythe – but it is hard work (especially when you are old). Have fun with the harvest.
                AJ

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              2. I’ve been busy on a project intended to get my ageing mind working again but I did want to jump in on the scythe thread just to say that I’m a big fan of it. I have two (different length snaths as my son is noticeably taller than I) and I think they are both Austrian snaths but I can’t think of the blade manufacturers off the top of my head, and couldn’t be bothered to go check. I love scything but it it so hard on our current land as it is full of tufts of grass, so very difficult to keep a rhythm going. I’m in a bit of a limbo at the moment due to council woes but hope to get many more trees planted in the food forest this autumn and winter. The scythe is good for mulching around trees but I’m using the Ego battery mower to keep the grass down for now.

                I wanted to mention another great gardening tool that I discovered a few years ago. It’s called a “Magna Grecia Hoe”. I got mine from The Scythe Connection and don’t know if they are available anywhere else. If you can get one, do so.

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                  1. Yes. Now you mention it, I think I got one of my snaths from there but, eventually, the same sort became available here in NZ (from gardentools.nz) so my other one was locally sourced. Actually, I believe Scythe Works and Scythe Connection are related sites. Peter Vido seems to be the scythe wizard.

                    Peening is one of the critical skills with scything and I think I’m OK at it but hopefully I’ll get better when I have more time to spend on it.

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  20. I watched the entire piece with Col. Black. He is correct about everything. Just like Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, Chuck Watson, The Duran, the Saker and Col. McGregor (Sp.?). His presentation is excellent. If I criticize it the only thing I think it is short on is the history of our (U.S./NATO) lies with respect to the recent history of the collapse of the USSR and our dealings with Russia/vis-a-vie NATO expansion. We have pushed Russia to the edge for nothing other than a desire to rule the world and rape it of its last resources in the service of our elites. Such is the collapse of civilization. Without denial on the part of the west’s people and leaders this might not have happened.
    AJ

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    1. I agree with the first half of your article. The “why” kind of baffles me on this one.

      It’s possible this is merely anti-russia boomer inertia, and irrational.

      It’s possible that the U.S. believes there is somehow a rational geopolitical advantage to be had, but I can’t see it.

      It’s possible that those involved aren’t thinking beyond the surface of “looking good” by opposing Russia.

      But it seems so obviously ill-considered, both based on the risks and paucity of rewards. This would be a “politics as usual” scenario in my mind.

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  21. Tim Watkins today on the triangle of doom and our denial thereof.

    “It might seem almost heartening that, in the absence of logic and evidence, TINA has become the sole prop retained by the consensus ‘narrative’.

    “We need to beware, though, that TINA may have a far less forgiving sibling, with the confusingly-similar acronym TINAR – There Is No Acceptable Reality.”

    We are, like the passengers on Edwin J. Milliken’s Clattering train, careering toward catastrophe unaware that we are running on automatic pilot:

    Who is in charge of the clattering train?
    The axles creak, and the couplings strain.
    At every mile we a minute must gain!
    A hundred hearts beat placidly on,
    Unwitting they that their warder’s gone
    For the pace is hot, and the points are near,
    And Sleep hath deadened the driver’s ear
    And signals flash through the night in vain.
    Death is in charge of the clattering train!

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/04/29/economic-train-wreck-ahead/

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  23. Another futile attempt to steer the brain-dead Homo Mess-up-the-Planet in the right direction.
    Not gonna work but hey we have to nurture the illusion that we can do “something” about it.

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  24. Rob, et al
    I just finished reading Heying & Weinstein’s “A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century”.
    Although an interesting read I was somewhat disappointed (IMHO the whole discussion on consciousness and culture was obtuse). It is not up to Caton’s “Overshoot” (which is the most essential read). You said they were “politically correct” in not calling out collapse/overshoot, but although I’m sure they ‘get it’ I think they are in denial as to the late state we are in. That they don’t even seem aware that we are heading for an energy collapse. Again, they may get it, but at what point does your not saying something become hopium or denial? They are good ecologists/evolutionary biologists and understand, and at multiple time articulate that we have too many people for the carrying capacity of earth (but why don’t they just say that we are overpopulated? – again being politically correct?). Maybe I’m too old and depressed, but I think a true “Hunter-Gatherer’s guide to the 21st Century” would have focused on: Can agriculture in any form survive or will the remaining humans be itinerant gatherer’s with very little to hunt?
    AJ

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    1. I was very disappointed after the first read. Less so after 2 more reads but I accept your criticisms. Maybe I’m too tolerant with them because of their good works on covid.

      P.S. They also don’t seem too concerned about climate change having just returned from a vacation in the Bahamas.

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    1. I’d give it another shot. Is this book “the answer”? No, and does it cover what you think is the essential fact that needs to be addressed by all books or bloggers? No, but humans are a many faceted mess that warrant analysis that will supplement a singular focus on our overshoot condition.

      Not all reviews have been ecstatic, but it’s at least got some folks rethinking the mainstream narrative. While the authors are in many cases probably as speculative in their interpretation of pot shards as anyone else, they acknowledge that, and so give one pause about whether our conventional storyline is any more solid.

      It is a weighty tome, and I got rather impatient slogging through it, but it makes a plausible argument that we may not be locked in to the current statist rush for the cliff.

      I still think the current culture is too far down the line to alter and choose another path as they think has been done in the past ( some flavor of collapse is baked in now), but in the end, I though the book was worth the read.

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      1. I agree our path is probably fixed. Evidence for this is that pretty much everyone that discusses the human predicament, including these authors, does not focus on population reduction, which is the only thing that will reduce future suffering.

        My focus has been on trying to understand why an intelligent species is unable to see the obvious.

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  26. Assuming the goal was to minimize sickness, death, and damage to the economy, it is a remarkable fact that every single one of our responses to covid was wrong.

    I’m therefore always on the lookout for a plausible big picture explanation for our collective insanity. Today Gail Tverberg gave her spin, which I like:

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/04/21/the-world-has-a-major-crude-oil-problem-expect-conflict-ahead/comment-page-9/#comment-364628

    …until collapse actually leads to a huge reduction in fossils fuel availability, the actions of governments help support the pharmaceutical industry over the education industry, the fancy clothing industry, the convention industry and the tourism industry. When there is not enough resources to go around, they direct a disproportionate share of resources are available to the pharmaceutical industry.

    Pushing the use of vaccines gives the illusion that governments are in charge and know what they are doing. Related shutdowns can cut down on fossil fuel use. This is a big problem for fossil fuel importers. The shutdowns can also help governments keep order.

    The mRNA COVID vaccines mostly have one benefit: they shorten hospitalizations when a person gets COVID. This makes the vaccines very appealing to employers and governments that have to pay for hospitalization after people catch COVID. It also makes they very appealing to US medical groups, who make their money mostly from elective surgery. If there is too much COVID, the elective surgery gets pushed out of the way, by the less profitable COVID hospitalizations. So, the rest of the medical industry strongly supports the vaccines, as well.

    At the beginning, it looked as if mRNA COVID vaccines could prevent transmission. This gave hope that the vaccines could actually stop the cycle of transmission. But, as time goes on, it has become clear that the mRNA vaccines increase overall mortality rates in people under age 65. Also, the length of time that they can act to prevent transmission gets shorter and shorter, as more shots are administered. In fact, the mRNA vaccines seem indirectly to increase transmission because people are so lightly sick that they don’t realize that there is a problem. Once the short period of stopping transmission ends, those with the vaccines seem to be more vulnerable to catching the illness than they would be otherwise. This keeps the virus circulating endlessly.
    …
    The self-organizing economy acts to pull together many pieces that grew up independently:

    Many countries figured out that conventional wars were simply too energy intensive to depend on in the future. The military arms of quite a large number of countries decided to look into the use of biological weapons, to work around this difficulty.

    There are also viruses that naturally jump from animals to humans.

    Pandemics are a known problem. They have happened over and over. Countries are interested in what causes them and what the latest research seems to say is useful for fighting them.

    Medical researchers figured out that finding ways to defeat these viruses (whether biological weapons of naturally jumping to humans) was a useful thing to do. In fact, they could make money if they could patent new techniques. Pharmaceutical companies figured out that they could make a lot of money if they could figure out how to quickly make and sell a vaccine that would stop problem virus. (There was a side benefit as well. Some vaccine techniques might be used as drug delivery techniques, allowing the possibility of more money elsewhere.)

    Someone clever got the idea of calling the COVID mRNA pre-treatments “vaccines.” The use of this misleading term led people everywhere to think of the “vaccines” as a more or less magical solution. Once a person had a vaccine treatment, the virus could no longer harm them. People assumed that the vaccine would stop transmission and would not cause a large number of adverse effects. People in charge of “vaccines” could logically be put in high positions, when it came to decide what to do about the pandemic.

    Johns Hopkins University (with federal money, I am sure) put together a training program called Event 201 to train government officials and influential news media how to respond if/when a pandemic occurred.

    https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/

    Look at this site carefully to see how many influential people from around the world came. The introduction to this site says:

    “The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”

    One of the responses, even at this point, was the idea of using fear to keep people at home to stop spreading the disease.

    There was also a UK modeling exercise, very early on, that led to the belief that the deaths from the pandemic would be far worse than was really the case.

    Also, the only data presented in televised reports was the number of deaths relative to the number of hospitalized patients. This ratio seemed very high, partly because the treatment was entirely wrong, killing the patients, and partly because the large number of people having light cases was not included in the denominator. People everywhere were led to believe that the disease would kill them. Neal Ferguson of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team came up with an approach to be used until vaccines became available:

    Click to access Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

    Politicians were, at that time, having troubles controlling angry mobs, because people were unhappy wages were too low, or pensions were too low. China, where the illness broke out, took an incredibly strict approach to trying to control the virus (perhaps because the Wuhan area also was having demonstrations because of low wages).

    To some extent, those following the example of China were simply following a pattern they saw used elsewhere. It did seem to calm down some other problems. and it gave countries an excuse to borrow more money and begin new programs, to fix financial problems they were having. Indirectly, these financial problems were the result of the energy limits we are reaching. I doubt that many people made the connection between low wages and low profits corresponding to energy limits.

    Volunteers, basically from the pharmaceutical industry (Fauci) and from those investing in the pharmaceutical industry (Bill Gates), took a lead in telling people what to do do. Also, Andrew Cuomo of New York gave COVID briefings that acted to confirm the belief that all of these strange actions were necessary.

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    1. Just quoting you but changing two words and lo, how our worldview is upended…

      Assuming the goal was to maximize sickness, death, and damage to the economy, it is a remarkable fact that every single one of our responses to covid was correct.

      Now the only questions remaining–could this have been deliberate and if so, why? Is this an answer to our overshoot? I’m hopelessly stuck down this rabbit hole because I’m just in denial of how it could be anything else as it’s a perfect bullseye target match for an agenda that will lead to the Brave New World Order with quite a few less brave among us around to be ordered.

      Sigh, best thing is to get back into the garden and await for solace and tranquillity which always seem to find me there.

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      1. Given the globally coordinated covid policies that got, and to this day still get, everything wrong, despite mountains of evidence that there is a better path, it is very tempting to assume a plan exists to address overshoot.

        I still assign a very low probability to such a plan existing because I don’t think our leaders are bright enough to plan and execute such a complicated exercise. Nor do I think so many people could be involved without someone spilling the beans. Finally, I think such a plan would be thwarted by our leader’s desire for self-preservation trumping the global good.

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        1. Hi Rob, I do like and appreciate your logic very much; thank you for being a calm voice of reason to check my hysteria. I suppose I will just have to come to accept that our leaders are egotistical, dumber than sticks maniacs who will continue to have no clue about anything that might preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or facsimile thereof all the above. But what if there is something that trumps them that does, a top down approach so to speak, and our leaders are only on a need to know basis and the more dronelike they are, the better? I must have watched too many suspense thrillers with double/triple crossings in my formative years. Thank you for reminding me that this isn’t a movie even though it seems like we’re in one at times.
          No matter, however the means, can we say that the pendulum has started to swing to overshoot correction in a very decisive way? No plan needed, just inevitability.

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    1. I don´t know whether the price difference between gasoline and diesel is that high in Germany, but it is the first time during my life that diesel is more expensive than gasoline.

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      1. When I visited Germany last in the 90’s I remember most cars were small manual transmission diesels. I’ve read that diesel cars are now being discouraged in Europe to reduce pollution. I wonder if the real reason is to conserve diesel for trucks. Do you know what is the truth?

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        1. Good question. We had the Volkswagen emissions scandal, where VW (and maybe other car manufacturers as well) had built their diesel fueled cars with an emission control only working during lab tests to hide the real NOx emissions. So this whole scandal put a major dent into the popularity of diesel cars. As a consequence, the government is discouraging using diesel powered cars by banning them from streets where high emissions occure. In addition, old diesel powered cars are phased out by strict city access rules. So the explanation, that it is discouraged to reduce pollution, seems reasonable. The conservation of diesel for trucks looks like a “beneficial” side effect to me.

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      2. Here in Australia, as far as I can recall in the 23 years we’ve been here, diesel has always been more expensive than petrol, due to the tax structure as well as the cost of refining. And it just happens we decided to get a VW Diesel Golf when it first became available here 17 years ago (to replace our 22 year old Volvo station wagon) mainly because of the fuel economy because my husband needed to drive over 100km daily to work. He takes the bus now, and thanks to Covid, one of the silver linings is that he is allowed to work from home from time to time. VW has fallen from grace but we’re determined to drive their car until its last km remaining, or when fossil fuels run out, whichever comes first. We’ve woken up to the green energy scandal and have decided that an EV is not in our future. Methinks a mule might be, however! Seriously, I have suggested the idea of starting to breed up mules to a few farming friends here but they think I’m a jackass, no offense to me at all!

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        1. I remember studying the advantages of mules. If I recall compared to horses mules are more fuel efficient, have better tires for traction, and have a better temperament for cargo caravans.

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          1. Yes, and they have hybrid vigour but as you know, the biggest downside is they’re sterile so you will always need a male donkey and a mare to make more. So breeding up would be a very long process, probably just for hobby farmers at this time until the need for another method of carriage becomes critical, but by then it will be much more difficult and late in the game to ramp up large animal husbandry operations without already having enough animals. I have learned that the reverse coupling, that is a stallion with a female donkey produces another sterile hybrid called a hinny that is not as robust nor tractable. However there is the saying “Stubborn as a mule” so apparently this combo in either form needs a lot of patience in training. But then again, there’s “Stubborn as an ox” too, so maybe it’s just human beings trying to get animals to do what they want when the animal doesn’t want that’s the problem. No one really says “Stubborn as a diesel engine” but maybe we will soon, when the fuel runs out.

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  30. Liked by 1 person

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  31. Chuck Watson today with a nice primer on nuclear weapons.

    https://blogenkiops.wordpress.com/2022/05/03/nuclear-weapons-what-you-need-to-know/

    So it is vital to keep in mind that nuclear weapons are not just big radioactive explosions. They have secondary effects well beyond just the explosive force and prompt radiation. The operational characteristics (like selective yields) and plans to use them (doctrine) makes some kinds of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems inherently destabilizing. This is a danger we’ve ignored for the last 30 years, while the technology and doctrine has changed significantly over that time. The framework of treaties and lines of communications that existed at the end of the Cold War has fallen apart, and for all of those reasons the danger of nuclear war has probably never been greater. We need to quickly re-establish safeguards and step away from the brink. The future of humanity – and most other life on earth – literally depends on it.

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    1. Yes,
      Again Chuck Watson comes through with a depressing analysis of where we are with nuclear weapons and how our leaders have no clue (being to young and stupid) to understand what they are “playing” with.
      AJ

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      1. Rich overshoot aware people have I think voted NZ as the best bugout place on the planet. There’s some evidence that Vancouver Island might be #2. James Cameron bought farm land in NZ and in my community. I worked on his farm here for a year. After learning how difficult it is to turn a profit here he sold (or is selling) the property.

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        1. Yes there’s been a bit of media coverage of Cameron’s farm over the years. He and his wife were planning a huge food forest at some point. Not sure where they got to. He’s making the next Avatar movies here too.

          But alas our leaders are idiots here too. Celebrating our borders opening after covid and promoting sustainable tourism. Signing hydrogen deals with Toyota and pushing other hydrogen myths. In response to rising fuel prices they cut fuel taxes so people could still drive around “affordably”. Our climate change minister promotes a clean energy transition as the biggest economic opportunity of our time. They shutdown local farmers markets and small local independent food retailers during covid lockdowns so everyone had to shop at the big chain stores. The list of evidence is long. But it’s still the only place I’d want to be living. Although my uncle and aunt have a place on Vancouver Island and it always looked beautiful there.

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        2. Hey, don’t forget us here in Tassie, maybe we’re an even better bugout because most Americans have no clue where we are or think we’re somewhere in Africa… geography not exactly being a strong point for the self proclaimed greatest nation on earth. With a native population of just over 500,000 it’s a cosy little island but for me the downside is there’s still winter and it’s as long and dark as Vancouver Island. In addition to my vitamin D inadequacy (supplements just don’t seem to cut it for me) we all know winter is gruelling for energy expenditure and food security. Which is why I have an annual migration to the Atherton Tablelands outside Cairns in QLD–now if I had to choose the best spot for maximising self-sufficiency year round, this highland tropics with volcanic soil and adequate rainfall would be it. I think Campbell’s North Island paradise is very similar, especially if you can grow bananas! Bananas are just amazing, the rate of growth and abundance is just spellbinding. If you can get a variety call Blue Java, please try it, it tastes just like vanilla ice cream. And all bananas can be eaten green as a very passable starch, and don’t forget the peels of a ripe (organic) banana can be eaten, too, blended it makes a nice addition to smoothies, cakes and breads, increases nutrients and fibre.

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          1. Tasmania is indeed another good spot Gaia. Our climate is not quite as tropical as Cairns but thanks to the industrial revolution and fossil fuel combustion exhaust gases we are heading that way. Gotta plan ahead with plant selection for a future climate. We don’t have Blue Java bananas yet although I have friends who do so hopefully some plant trading will take place at some stage. All ours are Misi Luki also known as Ladyfinger. Banana flour is in my mind once ours start producing. We also have plenty of Macadamia nut trees which is an Australian native. The rats love them so pest control is a key task here. Your native Possum has done so well here and love all things fruity. While protected over there here we trap millions each year and use them for dog food, fur products and even eat them. The dozens I’ve trapped are feeding the bananas and other fruit trees we’ve planted so far.

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      2. Yeah, I like your odds of avoiding immediate death and nuclear winter (starvation). However, I don’t know if anyone has looked at the odds of your surviving a nuclear war long term (provided no strikes in the southern hemisphere). “On the Beach (1959)” anyone?
        AJ

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        1. Thanks AJ. My moment of smugness has passed 😉
          Yes full blown nuclear war wouldn’t help my garden longterm I’m sure. Today I’m preparing new areas for extending our food forest. More citrus, avocados, nut trees, bananas and more. I’d like to get at least one harvest off them before calamity strikes.

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            1. I haven’t seen that movie and Wikipedia’s entry on it convinces me I don’t want to. This from the plot summary stuck out for me….”Since money serves no value, food takes place as the only form of currency; awarded for labour and withheld as punishment. The narrator states the cruel irony in that for the more people who die, the more food there is to go around.”

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  35. While it’s up for debate whether we’ve reached peak oil, it’s much easier to argue we’ve reached peak oil investment. The end of oil is near, renewables are taking over.

    Which proves we’ve clearly not yet reached peak denial.

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      1. The official difference between a depression and a recession is the duration and severity of a reduction in economic activity. I think one implication of overshoot and fossil energy depletion is that we face a permanent depression. When I hear someone say the word recession I visualize the denial circuit in their brain saying, “don’t worry it’s temporary”.

        A severe (GDP down by 10%) or prolonged (three or four years) recession is referred to as an economic depression…

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession

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          1. The long descent as described by JMG seems like a realistic scenario for the immidiate future. It could be a centuries long mixture of periods of decline interspersed with stabilisation periods on lower levels, but without any improvement.

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            1. We already experienced the slow collapse phase with deteriorating standards of living in the western world. Maybe not you, but others did. It’s either continued exponential growth or the cliff. “Gradually, then suddenly.” I’m sorry for the older people how think or thought they would fade away into the night with BAU still intact.

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              1. I agree that for quite a few people the standard of living has already decreased in the western world, e.g. in Germany, we have a lot of old people that are collecting refundable bottles to increase their meager pension.

                In addition, the infrastructure is crumbling. I once read an article that we only renovate 50% of brigdes in need of renovation. On most freeway bridges we already have a speed limit and driving lane reduction to reduce the wear and tear. In addition, we have some bridges that are in such a desolate condition that even construction workers are not allowed to enter them to do the repair works. At least, we did not have a major catastrophy with crumbling bridges like Italy.

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    1. Great presentation by concerned humans. I have little to no faith that humanity will survive extinction and wiping out most life on this planet. We evolved for a different world and have made a civilization that doesn’t value the natural world. Such is the end of life on this planet. We have answered the Fermi Paradox – evolved creatures can not survive their encounter with technology – there is no other intelligent life in the universe. How sad.
      AJ

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    1. Abortions are not effective to reduce population if you substitute the aborted children with more migrant children. Our native population is already in decline due to a low birth rate in Germany (shared by many industrialized countries). We reproduce below replacement level since 50 years (https://www.bib.bund.de/DE/Fakten/Fakt/F08-Zusammengefasste-Geburtenziffer-ab-1871.html). You see the results mainly in regions without major influx from other countries, which is covering the population decline. The prognosis for the town, where I live, is a population decline of 15% until 2030, and we already lost 50% since the 1970s. There are towns around here, that would be empty in 20 years based on the current shrinking. Sure, not all of it is related to low birth rate as we also have migration movements within the country (mainly from north to south), but 50 years reproduction below replacement level is showing its effects now. Due to our system of endless growth, we try to counter this problem by importing women with lots of children and/or who are willing to procreate.

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      1. We have a similar situation in Canada. I believe without immigration we would have one of the lowest rates of population growth in the world. With immigration we have one of the highest, if not the highest populaiton growth rates.

        I understand problems result from a falling population, but we have no choice. It’s going to go down one way or the other. We should choose the way with the least suffering.

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    2. Hello friends, perhaps this is the best time and place to introduce you to VHEMT, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement as outlined by a “Les U. Knight”. Check out http://www.vhemt.org for a brave and timely offering to our population crisis. It’s a great conversation starter and highly entertaining, the cartoons and chart on pages https://www.vhemt.org/biobreed.htm and https://www.vhemt.org/whybreed.pdf are gold. Anyway, I’ll say no more (now that’s a first!) and let you discover it for yourself. Cheerio.

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      1. I heard the organization disbanded…apparently it had as much internal momentum as “The International Introvert Initiative.” Also disbanded, LOL.

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  40. Gail Tverberg follows the money to explain our covid insanity…

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/04/21/the-world-has-a-major-crude-oil-problem-expect-conflict-ahead/comment-page-15/#comment-365494

    There are a lot of reasons why this situation of “vaccines for COVID” situation is taking place.

    Pfizer is making money off of the sale of vaccines.

    Also, in theory, (and maybe in actuality), if a person catches COVID after being vaccinated, the length of the hospitalization is shorter. In the United States, employers are paying most of the hospitalization costs for people under age 65. So employers become a natural ally of pharmaceutical companies, and the one most likely to fire people if they are unvaccinated.

    Hospitals are in favor of vaccinations, because if too many hospital beds are taken up by COVID patients, it squeezes out the more profitable elective surgery. Thus, vaccination makes hospitals money.

    Politicians can use vaccination to make it look like they are doing something to “save” everyone the world from COVID, even thought the vaccine increases transmission, rather than reducing it. This makes politicians a natural ally.

    The CDC is funded to a significant extent by the pharmaceutical industry and (perhaps others, such as Bill Gates’ foundation??). There are also elected politicians to please. As a result, whatever the CDC tells the world is heavily “spun.” In fact, the General Accountability Office wrote a report related to this issue.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/whistleblower-cdc-fda-altered-covid-guidance-and-suppressed-findings-amid-political

    https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104613

    Various forces are leading to a situation where the media are increasingly being forced to tell the “politically correct story,” rather than the scientifically accurate story. If the CDC says something, it must be the final answer, in their view.

    Once the wrong story has been told, it would be terribly embarrassing to go back and correct the story. In fact, there would be the temptation for citizens to retaliate against the leaders of the strange scenario.

    Now, with the new spread of disease (facilitated by the fact that the vaccine really makes a person more vulnerable to COVID, over the long term), Pfizer is also making money off of its new pharmaceutical product, Pavloxid.

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    1. On our national news today they’re spruiking the next Covid wave which will see Australians overcome with the new variants, like alphabet soup. It’s totally out in the open now that the vaccine didn’t and won’t do diddlysquat to prevent infection or multiple re-infections and they still haven’t worked out why, only that Omicron will continue to mutate and sorry, no one told us about variants when we thought the shot would work. They pretty much have put the noose around their own neck when they admitted that influenza mutates 4X faster than SARS CoV2 but you don’t see people getting re-infected multiple times with flu within one season, so what’s the difference here? It’s becoming so bleeding obvious now that the vaccine is causing people to be more susceptible to the virus and there’s no lasting immunity even after having a bona fide infection. That is truly scary, and now we have been officially warned this will happen by the people who wouldn’t let the misinformationists tell us over a year ago. Funny how everyone seems to have forgotten what the original meaning of vaccine was and now it seems normal that a vaccine is an experimental injection you are forced to take with all the risks to increase your chances of getting again and again what you thought you would avoid for the remainder of your life. But, of course, we’re still being told the best response is getting your booster, and then just wait like sitting ducks. Now we’re getting into the winter months here and not a single peep about supplementing with Vit D or anything else to actually treat oneself, just keep masking, RATting, and isolating until we get another vaccine ready, this time it will be an intranasal one. Hey, how about that idea of actually trying to stimulate the immune system where it needs to be, begs the question why these types of vaccines weren’t shortlisted like the mRNA injections in the first place. But they’re trying to make an mRNA intranasal one, so there’s still something about that technology that just won’t go away.

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      1. Nice summary. I find it hard to express in words just how bad our leadership has become. Scary thing is, the majority of citizens think our leaders have done a good job on covid.

        We seem to be tracking to what Geert Vanden Bossche predicted would happen. Lately he’s been getting even more concerned because he thinks it’s just a matter of time before a variant emerges that harms many more people than we’ve experienced to date.

        I remember my personal journey trying to make sense of my friends and family raving about this new miracle technology that was going to save us all. I had alarm bells going off because as an engineer that has brought many products to market I know how hard it is to launch products quickly without defects.

        I think it was my March 12, 2021 blog post when I flipped fully into the anti-pharma camp.
        https://un-denial.com/2021/03/12/dr-geert-vanden-bossche-on-vaccination-policy-risks/

        At the time I resisted suggestions our leaders were evil. Today I do think they are evil for ignoring science and data that could have prevented maybe 80% of deaths to date and god knows what is going to happen to vaccinated people over the coming years.

        Stepping back and looking at the big picture we really seem to be a species in decline. 50 years ago we knew eggs were healthy and pasta made you fat. 50 years ago we knew you never cut corners on vaccine testing and you never vaccinate with a leaky vaccine in the middle of a pandemic. 50 years ago we understood the risks of nuclear weapons.

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    1. OMG, I think I’m in love! We have been waiting all our lives for someone like this to show up to show us how everything was and can be done. Thank you a million, Rob, for introducing this legend to us. Now someone like him definitely should breed up but the next best thing is for us to learn from his example and start mastering even the most basic of skills. I think I’ll be binge watching all his videos when I’m up north and maybe try out making mudbricks or a pot or anything he’s done. I can’t wait for his book to come out in October, hope we will make it that long!

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    2. Are you tired of your large house?

      For Rent:

      A noble pile of vernacular architecture situated in a woody glen that will appeal to nature lovers. Quiet location. Open concept. Livestock under 100 kilos welcome. Price negotiable. Great place to raise free range kids. Utilities not included.

      Serious inquiries only.

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    1. A reasonable summary, yes. I don’t get the impression, though, that Murray Grimwood fully understands our predicament. We can’t just figure out what we can do with 50% of our current energy inputs. In part, it depends on the quality of that energy, but, really, it seems to ignore the environmental damage that certain ways of life would do. I don’t see any possibility for anything resembling our current way of life, even if we “have a discussion about maximum desirable population”.

      It’s hard to see any politician offering a platform of “Blood, toil, tears and sweat” being elected. Unless all parties and politicians offer that – highly unlikely. It seems more likely that environmental damage will accelerate as global so-called leaders try to find a way to keep BAU going as long as possible. Polls may suggest people are worried about the environment but my guess is that they are more worried about maintaining and improving their standard of living.

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    2. Murray is a great friend of ours. Spent two months of the first covid lockdown living (in our bus) at his off grid paradise north of Dunedin. Learnt a lot. He’s been writing about overshoot and energy and setting his place up for collapse for years. He most recently writes about offgrid life and his low tech projects in The Shed magazine. Here’s an article from 2009 showing how far ahead he’s been in his thinking on energy depletion than most.

      https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/life-grid-one-pioneering-familys-experience

      I know he visits Un-denial.com on occasion.

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  43. Dear Rob, if you can bring yourself to then please read The Philosophy of Redemption or The Philosophy of Salvation by Mainländer. Please don’t kill yourself after it.

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      1. Thanks for the suggestion. It doesn’t look like ideas I would agree with or enjoy. What was his most important idea for you?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Mainl%C3%A4nder

        Philipp Mainländer (October 5, 1841 – April 1, 1876) was a German philosopher and poet. Born Philipp Batz, he later changed his name to “Mainländer” in homage to his hometown, Offenbach am Main.

        In his central work Die Philosophie der Erlösung (The Philosophy of Redemption or The Philosophy of Salvation) — according to Theodor Lessing, “perhaps the most radical system of pessimism known to philosophical literature” — Mainländer proclaims that life is worthless, and that “the will, ignited by the knowledge that non-being is better than being, is the supreme principle of morality.”

        Philosophy

        Working in the metaphysical framework of Schopenhauer, Mainländer sees the “will” as the innermost core of being, the ontological arche. However, he deviates from Schopenhauer in important respects. With Schopenhauer the will is singular, unified and beyond time and space. Schopenhauer’s transcendental idealism leads him to conclude that we only have access to a certain aspect of the thing-in-itself by introspective observation of our own bodies. What we observe as will is all there is to observe, nothing more. There are no hidden aspects. Furthermore, via introspection we can only observe our individual will. This also leads Mainländer to the philosophical position of pluralism.[2] The goals he set for himself and for his system are reminiscent of ancient Greek philosophy: what is the relation between the undivided existence of the “One” and the everchanging world of becoming that we experience.

        Additionally, Mainländer accentuates on the idea of salvation for all of creation. This is yet another respect in which he differentiates his philosophy from that of Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer, the silencing of the will is a rare event. The artistic genius can achieve this state temporarily, while only a few saints have achieved total cessation throughout history. For Mainländer, the entirety of the cosmos is slowly but surely moving towards the silencing of the will to live and to (as he calls it) “redemption”.

        Mainlander theorized that an initial singularity dispersed and expanded into the known universe. This dispersion from a singular unity to a multitude of things offered a smooth transition between monism and pluralism. Mainländer thought that with the regression of time, all kinds of pluralism and multiplicity would revert to monism and he believed that, with his philosophy, he had managed to explain this transition from oneness to multiplicity and becoming.[15]

        Death of God

        Despite his scientific means of explanation, Mainländer was not afraid to philosophize in allegorical terms. Formulating his own “myth of creation”, Mainländer equated this initial singularity with God.

        Mainländer reinterprets Schopenhauer’s metaphysics in two important aspects. Primarily, in Mainländer’s system there is no “singular will”. The basic unity has broken apart into individual wills and each subject in existence possesses an individual will of his own. Because of this, Mainländer can claim that once an “individual will” is silenced and dies, it achieves absolute nothingness and not the relative nothingness we find in Schopenhauer. By recognizing death as salvation and by giving nothingness an absolute quality, Mainländer’s system manages to offer “wider” means for redemption. Secondarily, Mainländer reinterprets the Schopenhauerian will-to-live as an underlying will-to-die, i.e. the will-to-live is the means towards the will-to-die.

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        2. Sounds like a lot of philosophy – garbage in equals garbage out. If what comes out is not grounded in thermodynamics (physics) and the scientific method (falsifiable) it’s idiosyncratic (and probably garbage). IMHO.
          AJ

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          1. I agree.

            There are two ways to explain that life has no meaning.

            The philosopher’s explanation is depressing and is not grounded in science or reality.

            The aware explanation is inspiring and is grounded in thermodynamics and biology.

            I choose the latter and it makes me grateful to be alive and to witness this rare event in the universe.

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  45. Steve Van Metre sounds the alarm on draining the US strategic petroleum reserve to combat inflation and to fund the deficit.

    Reserves are at 20 year lows. The plan is to sell high now and refill in unspecified future years at a lower price.

    Imagine what Van Metre would say if he understood peak oil, the end of growth, and overshoot.

    Only a species in denial would drain its emergency reserve of oil before there was a real emergency.

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  46. If you’re still trying to understand what’s going on with covid I would say today’s interview with Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche is a must watch.

    The interviewer, Del Bigtree, is new to me but seems to be very intelligent with truth seeking integrity and does an excellent job of trying to summarize and simplify a very complicated explanation by Bossche.

    The interview begins at about 1:01:40 so you can skip the first hour unless you want some relevant background.

    My take away is that it is probable that things are going to get MUCH worse soon. Better make sure you have IVM etc. in your medicine cabinet, especially if you are vaccinated.

    Perhaps a good chunk of our overshoot problem will be fixed.

    https://www.bitchute.com/video/v8A7TM6MmK57/

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    1. Great interview. Best 90 minutes I have spent on Covid in a long time. Seems like we will know in a few months if Bossche is right or not. It’s a shame that we have such stupid leaders (and with such hubris). So, for those of us who made the mistake of vaccination, where are we. I think at the very least we need a good supply of Ivermectin and use it at the first sign of any respiratory illness. Not sure if I want to start taking a small dose prophylactically? It could be worse – we could be fighting a war with a nuclear armed adversary!! (snark).
      AJ

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  47. Sabine Hossenfelder weighs the pros and cons of gasoline vs. diesel cars and misses the most important issue. I left the following comment:

    Peak oil is behind us and diesel is becoming scarce before gasoline for geologic reasons. Because we need diesel to survive, think tractors, combines, trucks, trains, and ships, we should expect governments to ration diesel away from car use. Therefore your best bet is an old, efficient, gasoline car. Also, consider moving so you don’t need to drive to survive.

    And yes, Hossenfelder’s already on my list of polymaths in denial.

    On Famous Polymaths

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  48. Karl Denninger today with some important and interesting insights including:
    – how falling interest rates permitted us to live beyond our means
    – why government deficits must now shrink
    – why Russian sanctions demonstrate how stupid our leaders are
    – why we should expect a “significant” adjustment in asset prices 🙂

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=245810

    We’ve spent the last nearly forty years, as you can see here, in a generally declining-rate environment.

    Let me explain what this means for corporate America.

    I borrow $1 million at 13% interest. This costs me $130,000 a year to keep “outstanding.” I produce nothing for the next five years and pay the coupon with the $130,000 each year. I’ve now got $350,000 in cash left (the rest I paid in interest) and I’m very bankrupt since I can’t pay the million back — right?

    Wrong.

    I roll it over. I don’t have to pay the million dollars. It’s five years later and the rate is 9%. Now it costs me $90,000 to keep it out, not $130,000. Note that I just bought myself more time, but since the market is “looser” I can borrow a second million. This costs me $180,000 a year to keep out, but, in five more years…. I refinance it again at 5%.

    Now I’ve only got $450,000 in cash left — remember, I’ve produced nothing — but now my “nut” annually is $100 large. Can I get another $2 million? Probably. With which I sit for another five years or so and do it again, and again, and now I am eventually down to a 2% rate on the money.

    I’m not out of money. I should have been out of money seven years into this game but I got away with it for close to 40 years. If I produce anything whatsoever with the funds I’m even better off in terms of my credit posture, and I’ve probably borrowed even more. Not $4 million, probably $20 million.

    My stock price, which was $5/share back then, is now $3,000 split-adjusted — and it has split several times.

    All I have to do is convince Wall Street — or some venture hack — that he’s got something here and since the market keeps running and the cost of borrowing keeps getting cheaper they finance folks will keep letting me do it!

    Here’s the problem: None of that was ever paid back. None of it can be, because I have no assets that are worth anything and I certainly don’t have any money in the bank. If I had assets originally they’re 40 years old and likely out of date and worthless. How much is an old open-hearth style blast furnace worth these days? Zero. In fact it probably has negative value because you would have to pay someone to wreck it out and haul it away, likely more than the iron and steel in the unit is worth.

    But now those days, my friends, are over.

    The belief that we can spent six trillion dollars on alleged “pandemic relief” without consequence because rates will stay pinned to the floor was stupid.

    Worse what we’ve done to Russia with sanctions has slammed the door on sequestering trade flows in dollars. Why? Because if you produce things overseas you’d be out of your mind to price them in dollars rather than your own currency when your nation might be next. “Oh, that will never happen” sounds quaint, but how certain are you when if you’re wrong you’re instantly bankrupted? Why would you take that risk when you can insist on payment in your currency? Nobody would, nobody is and nobody will going forward.

    This in turn means that every dollar spent in deficit by the federal government will instantly be reflected back into inflation. No exceptions.

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    1. Those in charge will continue to deny any harm from vaxs for some time. To acknowledge harm would destroy the illusion of control. Just like Ukraine, the propaganda needs to be maintained else the populace might demand change.
      AJ

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