There was a nice surprise in my inbox this morning.
Marromai, a frequent visitor from Germany, having tired of seeing the same un-Denial post for 10 weeks, wrote an excellent essay to freshen things up. Thank you.
See also another essay by marromai here.
We all use and need money every day and would often like to have more of it. The vast majority of people don’t really understand what money actually is. Many think it is a medium of exchange that was invented at some point to facilitate commerce – which couldn’t be more wrong.
Readers of this and similar websites at least know that it must be more than that, and that money is connected to energy in some way. Naked Emperor summed this up the other day with a reference to Dr. Tim Morgan’s Surplus Energy Economics:
Dr. Morgan believes that there are two parallel economies. One is “the underlying ‘real’ or physical economy of products and services” and the other is a “financial economy of money and credit.” “Money has no intrinsic value, but possesses value only in relation to the material things for which it can be exchanged.”
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/the-everything-bubble-the-end-of
His article somehow anticipates the conclusion of this essay and describes very well why the divergence between ever-expanding, artificially inflated finance and shrinking real economy will soon lead to a pretty big bang. But an interesting point for me – and maybe for you too? – is how did our financial system emerge in the first place? What exactly is money and how did it become a proxy for energy?
I will try to describe that below, also to better understand it myself – feel free to ask questions or write your critique in the comments. My findings, which I try to summarize in my own words, come mainly from “Ein Buch für Keinen” (A Book for None) by Stefan Gruber which in turn is based on an economic theory called “Debitism” according to German economist Paul C. Martin.
In advance, we must be clear that all life forms known to us are dissipative systems. Every living being is condemned to accumulate energy to maintain itself, irreversibly increasing its complexity and thus entropy. If it cannot collect more energy than its body needs to sustain itself, it dies. A simple basic equation: life requires energy. This is the primordial debt that every living thing owes itself and that it must pay off if it does not want to perish. The crucial thing is that this debt must be paid in time (hunger) to escape the sanction (death). If food (energy) was always and everywhere available, this would be an insignificant automatic action. Only the pressure of a deadline in combination with scarcity and effort to procure measures a value to the debt. This definition will be important later.
Now let’s look at mankind, which for a long time lived in nomadic hunter-gatherer groups and more or less unconsciously paid off its primordial debt, like all other animals. At some point in history, due to external pressures such as depleted hunting grounds or changing climatic conditions, it transitioned to both nomadic pastoral tribes, which learned to raise animals and move with them when a region was grazed off, and permanently sedentary, arable land societies. Tribal societies don’t know or use money, since they produce everything they need on their own and share it among each other. This is called a subsistence economy.
An arable tribe has the great disadvantage of no longer being regionally flexible – its sedentariness was a weakness that made it vulnerable to raids by nomadic pastoral tribes who could rob its earned and stored supplies (stored energy to pay the primordial debt). However, the predatory pastoral tribes soon discovered that a peasant tribe could be raided and wiped out only once. But if it is “offered protection” from other nomads in return for a tribute in the form of the food it produces, this is to the advantage of both (more to the advantage of the herdsmen than the farmers, of course). The shepherd tribe arises as guardians and rulers over the peasants (“The Lord is my shepherd”), promising protection and demanding tributes in return to maintain and expand their power.
Only after the ruler specified the levy, which had to be paid on a date, this levy became a commodity in demand and thus money. And it became the yardstick for the valuation of all other goods. The levy, i.e. money, was a commodity and with this commodity the debt to the authorities was repaid.
The first taxes were paid in kind, e.g. grain (energy to service the original debt) – later, when empires and complexity grew, they were put in parity with silver for the sake of simplicity (e.g. 180 barley grains = 1 shekel of silver in Mesopotamia). After that, weapons metal, i.e. copper, tin and later iron were declared to be levies. Also gold counted at first as weapon metal, because it was easy to work. Whether money is in kind, or metal to produce weapons, or today’s colorfully printed paper slips, is completely irrelevant. Money is, what is defined as levy by the ruling power. It does not need to have an intrinsic value.
The decisive factor for the emergence of money was therefore the simultaneous emergence of a power cycle: the levy could be used to buy mercenaries to maintain power. The mercenaries exchanged the levy for goods and services from the population. The people in turn were able to pay tribute to the ruler, which further strengthened the ruler’s power. But the ruling power had the problem of having to make expenditures in advance. Naturally, it tries to recover this deficit with the demanded levies, whereby it has to expand and increase its power. Whereupon it needs more levies to maintain itself – maybe that looks familiar to you? (A dissipative system)
Since not everyone was always able to produce the required amount of levy goods by the deadline, the subjects were forced to trade among themselves – thus division of labor and specialization developed. While some focused on the cultivation of food, others produced tools for the peasants or weapons for the rulers, for which they received the coveted levy in return, in order to pay off their debt to the ruler. Those who had no other option had to offer their labor (debt bondage, day laborers,…). Individuals in an economy based on the division of labor are practically forced to conclude contracts with others or to fulfil these contracts in order to obtain the required levy and to survive.
By the way, the invention of writing is – not as some people think – due to the preservation of knowledge – but to bookkeeping, as Babylonian cuneiform writings prove. It was a system for documenting the taxes already paid by the subjects. On small clay tablets it was recorded who had paid what amount of tax, which then was used instead of the levy itself – an early form of money without intrinsic value.
The ruler is ultimately the owner of his realm, which is the area he can protect and demarcate from others by force of arms. But he can cede his property, i.e. share it, by granting the subjects the right to private property and defending it against opponents with his military power. The subject can manage the property guaranteed to him by the ruler and trade with it and its proceeds to be able to pay the tribute. And, very important, he can lend on his property to obtain credit. However, if he remains in debt, the subordinate is punished, or his property is foreclosed.
Those who submit and agree to the rules (forcibly set by the ruler) to maintain the status quo are part of that state(!). Those who do not want to belong are left to their own devices without any rights and were thus doomed to death in the past – today statelessness is no longer even conceivable.
The described processes of the emergence of states, money and economy were the initial sparks for today’s global trade economy, which is still based on the assurance of property by the central powers. We see that state, property, money and economy form an indissoluble mesh and a state is always based on the exercise of power and the compulsion to pay a levy. A state can therefore never be based on voluntariness of all participants. Today, more than ever, it is clearly visible that the state apparatus must inevitably become ever larger and more inefficient and, in the final analysis, serves only self-preservation and not its inhabitants. Like any dissipative system, it will vanish someday – this is by the way, the reason why there are so many collapsed civilizations in history and ours will be no exception.
But the trigger for the economic dynamics in a ruling system – from the destruction of a moneyless solidarity community to a highly specialized society based on the division of labor with compulsory trade and individual liability – is solely the pressure to pay the levy to the state on time. The means to pay off this tax debt is money. Money therefore always documents a debt. First, the tax debt to the rulers and, building on this, the contract debt between private individuals. So money is only a debt repayment vehicle. If money exists, a debt must exist at the same time, which can be erased with this money. Money receives its value only by the underlying debt contract, it cannot have an “intrinsic value” detached from a terminally fixed debt.
With this description, the definition of money is suddenly very clear:
Money (usually uncountable, plural monies or moneys): A legally or socially binding conceptual contract of entitlement to wealth, void of intrinsic value, payable for all debts and taxes, and regulated in supply.
Here we close our circle to the primordial debt mentioned above. Only the obligation to surrender a commodity earned by performance to the state at the deadline in order to escape a sanction defines money and gives it a value. Without a deadline there would be no reason to generate money, and without scarcity at the deadline, it would be worthless. It must always be earned first by doing work. Money is a debt, which has to be repaid at a certain point in the future by doing work before that time has come.
To do work means energy must flow. As power is a measure of energy per unit of time, money is therefore actually a measure of power and thus more directly linked to energy than most people can imagine. So, it is absolutely true that energy drives the economy. How fortunate that we discovered fossil fuels, developed combustion engines, etc., to accelerate economic activity, technological progress, and trade exponentially. Fossil energy made our economy grow fast and big.
Our credit-based finance system made it possible to create money which is solely based on the promise to perform work, in order to be able to take advantage of it immediately or to start new economic activity with it. When the modern world started to decouple the financial system from the real economy, the problems began. And this is where it gets ugly: In order to provide the promised future work, energy will be needed. But because far too much credit was granted without taking into account the energy that will actually be available, a Ponzi scheme was kicked off with nothing but empty promises on future energy. The worldwide fantasy amounts of money are no longer matched by any economic output that can be provided in realistic terms – financial collapse is pre-programmed and with it collapses any economic activity driven by energy. At present, attempts are being made to conceal and delay this by all means.
We have bought with lazy money a claim on future energy and have already squandered everything today. When the fossil energy is depleted we will be left with much worthless money.
Our dissipative system aka “modern civilization” will soon not be able to pay off its primordial debt.
I hope that when the world ends, I can breathe a sigh of relief because there will be so much to look forward to.1
P.S. Since we have seen that every state, economy and money are based on oppression and force, all possible future states will be no exception. I see a backfall to small tribal solidary communities as the most promising concept for humanity to survive the coming hardship.
1From “Ein Buch für Keinen” (A book for no one) by Stefan Gruber. The bible of nihilism: How economic, ideological, social, biological and physical systems emerge and why they are doomed to fail. I would recommend this as a must read, but unfortunately, this masterpiece is only available in German.
un-Denial 
@Rob Mielcarski
I read you article about polymaths in denial.
I would characterize some of the polymaths in denial as being partially in denial (e.g. David Attenborough and Jared Diamond)
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Yes, David Attenborough is a good man and is trying hard. He has spoken publicly about human over-population being the core problem.
I can’t remember why I put Jared Diamond on the list. I wouldn’t have done so without a good reason. I have read his Guns Germs and Steel and thought it had many good ideas.
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So much denial. A “Head of Science” at a Climate Change Foundation (whatever that is) wrote this:
“Our current energy system is predominantly based on the use of fossil fuels. And the way we describe it has been developed with that very fact in mind. 82% of our primary energy came from fossil fuels in 2022 (https://lnkd.in/eRYb49xV). Primary energy is the energy as it is available in nature before it has been transformed. This relates to the coal before it has been burned, uranium, a barrel of crude oil etc…
For fossil fuels, primary energy is easy to determine. But for renewables or even nuclear this is much less so and different conversion factors are used by different agencies: the substitution method, direct equivalent, or physical energy content. Depending on this choice the contribution of renewables in the energy mix is quite different. Moreover, for a given energy scenario (like the Net-Zero by 2050 from International Energy Agency (IEA)) the choice of method changes greatly how the future energy demand looks like. For a similar scenario, primary energy could decrease or increase while physically the system is the same. In other words, primary energy does not represent a real physical reality anymore in a low-carbon system.
One other problem with the concept: it omits that 65% of the primary energy is currently lost in different conversions. Every unit of primary energy DOES NOT NEED to be replaced. Using primary energy overestimates the energy needs in the transition: the primary energy fallacy !!
The energy transition requires to talk in final or useful energy.”
https://www.zenon.ngo/insights/beyond-primary-energy-the-energy-transition-needs-a-new-lens
I replied:
“This doesn’t help us at all when primary energy is (and always will be) the base input for every other energy system that we use. This is the energy equivalent of ‘creative accounting’.”
And this was Nate’s reply:
“Nice comments. My quibble is thus: society (and nature) optimize for power, not efficiency. It’s why waste has been evolutionarily selected for. There is also complexity, momentum and built infrastructure. Ie we’re not starting w even playing field.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/55535/waste-is-good. Doesn’t allow invalidate the truth of your underlying statistics-only the path dependence of current situation”
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I didn’t realise that that was the definition of primary energy. Without going deeper, I’d always assumed it somehow meant the energy used for the activities that could be measured (electricity consumed, petroleum products consumed, etc.). So, really, the sun is the only truly primary energy we have as everything derives from that, in some way (except, maybe, uranium).
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Two primary energies.
Fission, in the earth’s core, drives plate tectonics, which provided the energy gradient and ecology for the origin of life in the deep sea vents.
Fusion, in the sun, provides the photons that power all complex eukaryotic life via photosynthesis, and the energy stored in earth’s O2 battery that humans are short circuiting by burning buried carbon, and drives our solar panels and wind turbines.
I just learned that complex life like plants and animals cannot exist without plate tectonics and it’s probable that plate tectonics would not be possible without an improbable collision with a mars size object containing just the right materials, at just the right angle, in the right direction, at just the right time in earth’s history.
This collision created our large improbable moon which is also necessary for complex life by stabilizing the earth’s tilt.
The collision also created a large iron core in the earth which creates a magnetic field which is also required for complex life.
In addition, plate tectonics would not work without earth having received a large quantity of water from asteroid collisions in it’s early days.
There’s dozens of other improbable things that complex life requires. Including luck.
And that’s long before we get to an ape that believes in gods.
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I couldn’t like the comment but I do! Good point about energy from the earth’s core.
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A conversation between Nate Hagens, Bill Rees, Nora Bates and Rex Weyler.
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Good conversation. They’re all trying to make sense of how we can be blind to something so obvious as human overshoot, and yet, every one of them is blind to Varki’s MORT theory, which provides the most probable answer they’re all seeking.
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Great opening by Rex Weyler about where the boundaries between the elements of nature are. I didn’t really understand much of Nora Bateson’s opening other than it’s impossible to understand ecosystems from snapshots, given that so much is going on, continually.
Bill Rees got it exactly right and I’ve said this many times. Humans are no different from other species but we’ve just managed to make the environment favourable to us and so have grown exponentially, as any other species would in favourable circumstances. Humans are a species so don’t expect some voluntary behavioural change that would set us apart from other species.
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It’s surprising to me that ecological thinkers who seem to accept that nature causes overshooting species to contract but don’t appear to be able to think about how nature goes about that contraction. It is almost always by increasing the death rate rather than decreasing the birth rate, probably because the latter causes further problems with the age imbalances. However, Bill Rees did mention war as a negative feedback to overpopulation.
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War and a declining health system. If you know anyone over 85, they’ve normally had multiple surgeries, on multiple drugs, multiple trips to A&E. Bionic bits in them, hip replacements, hearing aids, cataracts lens etc. Multiple trips in ambulances (and sometimes helicopters). Most donated blood is used for older people. There’s no way most oldies could live as long as they do without our incredible healthcare system. In New Zealand it is even more incredible that it’s nearly all free.
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Too true, monk, too true. A good friend’s 84 year old father finally died last week after nearly two months in hospital with end stage heart failure, basically he ended up drowning in his fluid-filled lungs. In the past 5 years leading up to his death, he had heart bypass and replacement valve surgery, radiotreatment for prostate cancer, multiple gastric cauterisations to stop a bleeding arterial malformation in his stomach, and subsequent regular blood transfusions due to blood loss, plural pleural taps (a weak attempt at a pun) to relieve more accumulated fluid, countless trips to cardiac, gastro, and renal specialists, and mountains of medication, all taken care of by our comparably comprehensive healthcare system in Australia. At the end stage, they were hoping to get him home to die and organised a hospital bed, oxygen compressor, CPAP machine, wheelchair and all other aides to be delivered to the house, but he never got there. The cost over the last few years of his life would have to be nearing half a million if not more, and who can tally up the real energy expenditure, and still the end result is decline and death and not exactly an enjoyable process.
And the baby boomers’ onslaught of medical needs has only started to begin, but our government has flagged a health care levy for this eventuality which will not even come close to making up the shortfall. Private insurance will collapse between paying out and loss of premiums from people dropping out from the high cost. As an energy system, even wealthy countries like Australia and NZ will have to curtail their healthcare spending for the aged just so other cohorts of society will have some access to emergency care. But the problem is everyone is now expecting this level of care, first for their parents and then themselves–like electricity and fuel on tap we think we are entitled to health care by virtue of being a citizen of a certain country. Since politicians rely on the senior vote, it will be interesting to see how they can swing this and keep their job. So the end result will just be printing more money to cover the dwindling healthcare resources just to usher sicker and sicker people to their final illness. That’s dissipative energy in action!
WASF, I think I like this catch all acronym!
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Sorry, your comment was spammed by WordPress and I restored it as soon as I got home.
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It’s remarkable and scary at the same time. I hope we don’t lose good healthcare for pregnancy and children. Old healthcare will need to be scaled back at some point
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They obviously struck someone’s nerves.
@4everhdt
“Sorry but this is disgusting. It’s just a circle jerk of misanthropic wannabe Stalin’s who think they know everything. People who live sheltered lives and think that bugs are equal to people. People who reference Rachel Carson’s completely discredited and false book. People who want to cut off our access to plentiful, inexpensive energy based on sketchy computer models of not well understood systems. The “yoga village” crowd.
If Humanity continues give the reins of power to people like this, it will be the biggest mistake we’ve ever made.
As a side note, the ecological movement is really just a front for the globalist movement, financed and controlled by the richest most powerful people on earth to enforce a complete poverty and totalitarianism on all but the very richest. “
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WASF!
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Ugh! It’s so mystifying and frustrating that some friends, with whom I normally get along with well and share interests like growing food and learning practical survival skills, have this sort of perspective (especially the bits about they’re keeping free energy from us and actually we can feed more than 10 billion people) and now our Venn diagram of possible safe conversation has been severely truncated. Actually with most people I know, I cannot even begin to bring up the overshoot issue, much less population reduction or else I would be a very small circle indeed, floating alone in the abyss. That was until I found this blog, now we can all be happy little interconnected Venns holding hands.
I had to look up what WASF means. I first thought What a Shit Fight, but the other is equally the case.
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Hmm, I couldn’t see that comment. Maybe it has been removed.
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I just got back from 6 nights camping near the small community of Sayward on northern Vancouver Island. I had the whole campsite to myself with a nice creek running past my site. No cell phone signal and no internet.
I did a lot of reading including:
– Rare Earth by Peter Ward & Donald Brownlee
– Reality Blind by Nate Hagens & DJ White
– Nick Lane (for the umpteenth time) on the origin of life, the eukaryotic cell, and photosynthesis
– Eric Smith on the origin of life (again)
– Eric D. Schneider on the origin of life (again)
– Alone in the Universe by John Gribbin
Someday I hope to write a post integrating them all. They each tell an amazing story about our improbable existence and yet each misses important pieces of the puzzle, and they all of course miss Varki’s MORT 🙂 .
Tomorrow I’m off for 6 days at a friend’s cabin on Upper Campbell Lake in central Vancouver Island. We plan to do some deck construction and fishing. No cell or internet so I’ll be quiet again.
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Beautiful, perfect break!
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Ooooh, thank you so much for sharing those images. What a breath of fresh air, literally, are those majestic trees. I know Gail would have been in your thoughts as you are carrying on her homage to these life-giving organisms. Enjoy the next instalment of your nature break for all of us.
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An addendum: I cannot help but notice that nearly every photo showed dead or dying trees amongst the living, just as Gail despaired. That makes me feel even more in debt to these life forms’ sacrifice and I honor the fallen who now give back to the soil. Is there anything more magnanimous than a tree?
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Yes, I see sick trees everywhere I look here on Vancouver Island and I don’t remember them when I visited the same areas a decade ago. It’s still very pleasurable to walk in the forest even though I know it’s struggling.
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I was never aware that the Brazilian government banned Daniel Everett from visiting the piraha. How sad
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Did you post this comment knowing I wrote about Everett’s book?
I may not have time to watch this video. A brief explanation of why he was banned would be appreciated.
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Daniel Everett proposed the controversial idea that language didn’t have to be recursive. He used the piraha language as evidence of this. This upset some people like Chomsky (who believes that all language is recursive). and made him some enemies in academic circles. Chompsky publicly called him a charlatan which i thought was unprofessional to say the least.
My understanding from the doco is that some of the academics that he pissed off by daring to challenge the theory/dogma that all language is recursive got in the ear of the department that issues the permits into the reservations and saw to it that he wouldn’t be allowed in. More or less out of spite. As of 2022 he has still been denied access.
Yes I did post it a bit of an update to your review.
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Thanks kindly. I remember respecting Chomsky years ago. Not any more.
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Particularly like his last line, “Don’t indulge in any fantasy’s”.
Not sure I agree with #3 that “Life is decay”. Initially life is growth and renewal until you reach evolution’s “goal” of reproductive fitness (sure you get to this growth by degrading energy gradients, but it’s still growth). After that it’s the long, hopefully slow slide to the grave (without any hope for anything else).
Now I have to chop wood and carry water.
AJ
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Yeah, I guess that’s an arguement.
But animal life is always offset by some greater amount death and decay, of other life forms. ds/dt>0, survival of the fittest, that kind of thing. Autotrophs don’t depend on other life forms, but everything else remains the same.
And, growth and reproduction are never guaranteed. Death and decay are absolutes.
I’m pretty comfortable with the idea that life, growth, death and decay, are all the same.
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This is a wonderful entry point to refer to the “Book for No One” mentioned in the article.
It shows at the end that everything happens in cycles – from a cell to the universe.
Life is an oscillation in the void: out of nothing something arises, grows, gains inner complexity. Like a fractal, it differentiates itself further and further until it begins to collapse at the point of its maximum complexity in order to disappear again into nothingness.
Everything that arises is worth that it perishes. (Goethe)
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I can’t read german, so I can’t read the “Book for No One”.
But yes, complexity is the “goal” of evolution, as outlined by Roddier in “The Thermodymics of Evolution”. This is also in accordance with the Maximum Power Principle, in that all matter will arrange itself to dissipate as much energy as possible, as quickly as possible.
So yes, matter will assume the most complex configure possible, within a given circumstance. The circumstance and the configuration are always in flux. As circumstance changes, often, at least partially, due to the localized configuration, the configuration itself must dissolve, generally into some lower energy state. It may become unrecognizable at this point.
Is this process cyclical? I don’t think so, except maybe in limited situtations. Like the water cycle on earth, driven by the sun. There are reversible and there are irreversible processes. That kind of thing.
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Interesting Frankly from Nate Hagens who says eliminating gasoline (petrol) will not reduce the amount of oil we consume, as EV advocates expect.
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Good piece. If you already knew something about hydrocarbon distillation you understood this intuitively. Most people are totally clueless about where their energy comes from. Only if you move to a purely 19th century agricultural lifestyle (human & animal power) could you live without oil. I don’t see many volunteering for that.
AJ
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Right. But volunteer or not, eventually everyone will have to move there, or to an even earlier lifestyle.
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You are right. The 19th century is my contribution to hopium. We will be lucky to just survive as a species at a lifestyle worse than any hunter/gatherers had it in the not to distant past.
Done with carrying buckets of water to the gardens for 5 hours.
AJ
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you could use bamboo pipes. I have a theory that bamboo is the reason for China maintaining civilization for such a long time
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We have about 300 metres of mature bamboo hedging on our land. A very useful resource indeed.
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Sorry, how do you use bamboo for pipes? I have 3 or 4 varieties of bamboo (1/2″ to 3″ diameter) but . . . all my bamboo grows in internodal lengths of 1 to 2 feet (and then a node and leaf brackets). The node is impermeable to the easy flow of water. Some of my bamboo reaches 30 feet in length. Perhaps you are lucky and have one of the varieties that has long internodal lengths? (I’ve never seen any (maybe only in the tropics?).
AJ
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I haven’t tried using it for piping yet but you would definitely need to clean out the nodes AJ. Here’s an example….
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Wow, this guy was really good with the machete! I would lose fingers fast trying this without some kind of power tool.
AJ
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AJ what’s happened to your account?, it’s sharing your email address.
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I am so disgusted with WordPress I just don’t comment as much as I would like. Between it and Firefox they make me log onto a WordPress account every time I want to comment and say “no account” multiple times. Too much work to remember what they want every time. Sigh.
AJ
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Yeah. I often try to remember to comment via WordPress Reader, instead, as I don’t have problems when doing it that way. However, the feed links me to the un-denial.com page, so many of my comments are done there, which is not pleasant, as you say.
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I double checked the settings. I’ve turned everything off that might make commenting difficult:
1) No name or email is required.
2) Users do not need to be registered or logged in.
My guess is that for the least hassle, and a consistent presentation of your identity, and assuming you want to maintain anonymity, I would create a throw away account with a temporary email and then stay logged in with that account.
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I had a long discussion about this topic with my best friend at his cabin last week. My friend has much experience and knowledge with diesel powered machines of all sizes.
Diesel is better than gasoline for big machines due to it’s higher energy density and ability to operate at higher compression ratios. Nevertheless we could in the future, as we have in the past, operate big machines with large gasoline engines. These machines would not be as efficient or fast but they would work.
Nate is therefore overstating the problem. We could in theory stop driving cars and redirect the gasoline to life sustaining trucks, tractors, combines, and mining machines.
Of course, if all personal transportation ends it’s probable we’ll all be a lot poorer due to reduced economic activity and therefore it is unlikely we will be able to afford replacing a big chunk of the diesel fleet with new gasoline powered machines. So maybe Nate is right but for a different reason than he states.
Also switching from diesel to gasoline does not solve the problem that we are totally dependent on a depleting non-renewable resource. It just buys us a little time to continue doing the opposite of what a wise species would do.
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Yes, I’m sure that the gasoline fraction wouldn’t be thrown away by the refiners and a further market will be targeted by them. So gasoline may well be used for some large machines. Overall, that would mean a lower use of oil in total.
I agree that if all personal transportation ends economic activity will decline. But EV advocates appear to believe that the world can continue as it is, but using EVs instead of ICE vehicles. If that dream was realised (it won’t be) it would not save as much oil as they think.
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Our Inescapable Predicament – Facing Reality
Dale Walkonen, Rupert Read and Michael Dowd
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66183069
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66195722
Heat waves in the news
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I listened to this interview on podcast. Jordan Peterson is sanctimonious while accusing others of the same. Still an interesting mix of realism and denial.
Realism points:
– Green energy doesn’t deliver environmental benefits.
– Green energy makes electricity more expensive.
– Excellent discussion on how poor people are impacted by these green energy policies.
– Understanding that without fossil fuels most people would die.
– Good discussion on how environmentalism has been replaced with climatism.
– Environmental and community harms of wind and solar.
Denial points:
– Believing there is still more than enough fossil fuels.
– Not understanding that fracked oil and tar sands are completely different from regular crude oil.
– Clearly doesn’t understand that diesel is the master resource.
– Clearly doesn’t understand energy return theory.
– Unquestioned belief in technological progress.
– Being mean to Paul Ehrlich. Not worried about overpopulation at all.
– Don’t worry about carbon because it helps trees grow in arid regions.
– Brushes over resource scarcity.
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Thank you for the excellent summary. It’s denial in full display from a polymath, again.
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“This week on Planet: Critical @SimonMichaux and @NafeezAhmed go head-to-head in a debate to determine whether we really have enough materials and minerals to sustain a renewable economy.
After publishing a report stating that we don’t have enough materials, researcher, Simon Michaux blew up the Twittersphere and faced backlash by systems researcher and investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, who critiqued his report.”
https://www.planetcritical.com/p/debating-the-transition#details
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I listened to this driving home from my friend’s cabin. I found it to be a very disappointing and irritating discussion devoid of data and evidence with lots of blah blah blah.
The gist of it is, although we disagree on whether a transition to renewables is feasible, we both agree that it is impossible to do so while maintaining business as usual. If we fundamentally change our goals, and our lifestyles, and our culture, and our economic system, and get better leaders, then we can have a lovely future.
Nothing to it. I wish someone had presented such a simple solution sooner.
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Haha Rob! I’m glad that the few weeks of relative tranquillity away from the full-on doomsphere that is our planet hasn’t totally curbed your refreshing sarcasm!
It reminds me of a news piece here in Australia touting fission as our eminent energy saviour, the quote went something like “we’ve worked out the science, so it’s just an engineering problem now.”
You see, it’s all your kind’s fault that we can’t make things happen, the ideas are there but we just need better engineers!
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Yeh well this engineer doesn’t need to study anything to know that containing and controlling a piece of the sun in a bottle at large scale is a technical challenge that won’t be solved in my lifetime and probably never.
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You hit upon it! All we need is to figure out how to put the sun into a bottle, the ultimate genie that gives you any wish you desire! I knew I could count on good ol’ engineers to come up with the solution! Maybe I need to go back outside and get some fresh air, even though there’s no heatwave where I’m at, it seems my brain is frying being facetious.
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Yes, lots of blah blah blah. Near the end, Michaux details some of the limits with materials. Ahmed says the calculations are probably correct, for the assumptions made. But Ahmed imagines that the whole system will change, so Michaux’s assumptions are wrong. But the imagined changes aren’t detailed, just airy fairy words. At least Michaux is detailing what his assumptions are but Ahmed just shouts more loudly, “but it will all be different when the transition is done.”
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I’ve listened to some of this and was shaking my head. Ahmed assumes we don’t want to stop mining and Michaux agrees. But Ahmed seems to think there is some way of doing mining without damaging the planet. Incredible. The host didn’t grasp that it’s not only about the resources being there but it’s also about the rate of extraction being there for the transition being made in significant time frames. Ahmen even talked about overbuilding renewables by 3 to 5 times, to reduce the battery need, without appearing to realise that would take more resources at a faster pace, though the host did mention the need to replace equipment every 20 to 40 years. Lots more head shaking stuff as well but more to listen to.
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My friend and I visited some recently logged areas last week. When I was 16 years old I had a summer job logging. It was brutally hard work. This is how most logging is done today.
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The horror.
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It’s the same scene in Tasmania, minus the snow (and different species of trees). To think that this is happening in forests flat and sloped all around the world, every single day, and accelerating as we near the end, is a very despairing thought. Trees were always doomed once Homo sapiens realised how much they could give when dead.
A main consideration of bamboo for fibre and structure is you don’t kill the plant when harvesting. We’ve cut over 100 culms from 4 clumps, they are about 4-5 inch diameter and useful length of 25 feet to make a very rustic privacy screen/fence. The clumps still look robust, just thinned. The amount of biomass is astounding. The leaves are excellent mulch, and the branches and thinner tops of the culms make stakes of all sizes and biochar. I am in love with bamboo, but I still view them with a glinting eye for what they can provide besides beauty, shade, windbreak, and oxygen. How much more can we ask of a living species? What have we given back? Maybe it’s not love, after all, if it’s so one-sided.
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When you aggressively harvest bamboo do you have to add a lot of fertilizer to replace what has been removed from the soil?
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Good question, so far we’ve harvested less than 20% of the total mass of the clumps a selection from first year growth to the oldest culms and not even every year. It seems that the vigour of the clumps has been maintained each year in that the size and quantity of the shoots are increasing, so I think so far they are self-sustaining with their copious leaf mulch. But the clumps are rather young, about 10 years old so we’ll see how it keeps up. In any case, there’s been far more biomass in 10 years in a rather compact footprint than any other plant I can think without killing the mother plant. There is an interesting aside in the bamboo lifecycle, however. Each distinct species of the clumping varieties has a “use-by” date in that they spontaneously flower wherever they are all around the world at a specific interval (ranging from 50-80 years) to set seed and then often the majority of that species dies, but having made seed for the next cycle. Most of the clumping type bamboo in cultivation are actually clones from vegetative propagation and are subject to this phenomenon. It seems that this mother of all grass has a built in mechanism to control their population. If only we were so venerable and wise as the bamboo, but we are only Grasshoppers learning.
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Very interesting, thanks.
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Hi Gaia. Our bamboo is around 25 years plus and is going really well still. We gave a about half of it a massive haircut last winter cutting it all by around two thirds in height. The regrowth of both the trimmed culms (thickening up of side shoots) and new shoots has been phenomenal. It looks great and the new growth means lots of photosynthesis pumping sugars into the surrounding soils to be picked up by neighbouring clumps and other plants nearby. I love all the things about it that you mention.
Our shed we’re building will this summer include a large amount of bamboo wattling before daubing with clay from our land.
I’m also aware of the use-by date characteristic and this could happen some time in the next 30 years here in the Far North of NZ with all of the bamboo apparently having a common parentage beginning in the 60s and 70s.
Hope your food forest is doing well. We’re currently enjoying bananas off our very first bunch with another half dozen plants at various stages of bunch development. It’s very satisfying.
Namaste
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Hello there Campbell, thank you so much for painting such a vibrant picture in words of your and Nicki’s fruits of your hard labours, it brought a big smile and a virtual high five to you and your family. I can visualise what you described about your bamboo, having a mental picture of what it looked like before from that inspiring walk-through video that you shared last year. That must have been a huge task to trim them so, hopefully it will last for some years and you can do the other half in the meantime. Just thinking about bamboo and how fast it grows is stupefying and seems to put our cares into another perspective, and reminds us so clearly that there are other living things that matter on this planet, each with their own unique lives. Our largest species (not that size matters!) is a Dendrocalamus Latiflorus, also known as Sweet bamboo for its excellent quality edible shoots, which after 10 years is sending up 250-300mm diameter culms that are 25m high, simply awesome. One day someone will be grateful to use it for a very instructive building project, as for me I am just happy to look up (and hug a culm!) Do you have any other species on your property in addition to your very impressive border? It’s good that you have a sort of heads up on when the next mass flowering event may be (assuming that we’ll be around to witness it!), I have absolutely no idea on any of the 15 different species we have here in Far North Queensland, but it won’t be all at once so that’s a relief. By now you must have discovered that the culm sheaths make incredible tinder, never need to worry about paper for starting fires again! And we got this handheld bamboo splitter device, it looks like a wheel with pie wedges, that makes short work of splitting the culms and when dried, they are also fabulous kindling. As you know, bamboo burns quick and hot but you want to make the cuts between nodes otherwise they explode, quite exciting when we do biochar and it doesn’t matter then outdoors. You can see that I can talk bamboo all day, I am that smitten!
Congratulations on your first bananas, that is a very happy occasion indeed and well earned! Did you have to bag them to prevent “sharing” with birds and critters? I would think that possums would also be celebrating the maturing of your banana clumps! What variety of banana do you have there in NZ? Did you get your hands on Blue Java and Red Dacca by the way?
This year we had a pretty excellent citrus harvest with the hands down favourite being the Cara Cara orange which is a navel blood orange/sweet orange cross. Beautiful jewel like rosy flesh that is just the perfect balance of tang and sweet, and super juicy, too. Do you have access to this cultivar there? Run, don’t walk, and get yourself a tree! And another fire-starting tip, dry orange peels on top of your woodstove (intoxicating orange aroma when they are drying) and then use them as firelighters, the oils in them keep burning well for some time.
I also harvested a couple jackfruit which was really cool, do you like jackfruit? For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, think 5-10 kg bumpy blobs when cut open yield yellow-orange segments in sticky latex and taste like bubblegum! Seriously weird but true!
The black sapotes are also doing well, but still not quite ready to pick and ripen yet. I hope yours is really taking off now, it just takes a couple years and then they’re up and away!
This year we ruthlessly pruned all our subtropical fruit trees, literally removed the top half of each tree to encourage side branching and hopefully more fruiting. Also good for cyclone preparedness, less tree mass to break and possibly do more damage to the main trunk.
Well, I think that’s a wrap from me this time, thank you all for your longsuffering if you managed to read it all the way through. At least you now know that I didn’t choose the moniker Gaia Gardener for nuffin! I am always eager to hear how everyone’s garden is growing, we have such an interesting range of climates represented here and every year is bringing new challenges as well as discoveries. A shout out here for AJ who I hope is having a break from bucketing water. You’ve got a few years on me and I really admire how you’re keeping on, more power (even if fossil fueled!) to you there in the Pacific NW.
Namaste, friends. May you find peace in the simple joys every day.
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Probably nothing to worry about.
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No, nothing to see here, move right along, hey look at that–it’s a Barbie movie, don’t you just love Barbie! gag
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William Rees says it is taboo to discuss overshoot.
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“We’re in a helluva mess” sums it up well.
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Kunstler thinks citizens will soon wake up and get angry. I’m not sure. The friend I spent last week with was a mRNA advocate during covid. I unleashed on him key data and facts he was not aware of that I think proves our health care professionals and leaders are some combination of evil morons.
My friend did not argue I was wrong. He did not counter with conflicting data. He just looked at me with a blank stare and said nothing.
I doubt anything will wake people up.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/situational-awareness/
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A new talk by Tom Murphy which is an excellent heart-felt update on what was my all-time favorite talk until now. What a clear thinking, kind, and wise mind!
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/07/a-one-hour-message/
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Another recent presentation by Tom.
If this does not bring tears to your eyes then you are an AI.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/06/here-we-are/
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Very good. It is a kind of extension of Albert Bartlett’s lecture.
I love the comparison to demonstrate how wrong is the perception that innovation is accelerating. A person from 1900 dropped into 1960 would be far more bewildered than a person from 1960 dropped into 2020.
Some other points:
Civilisation is not even close to sustainability – civilisation is not sustainable
Homo sapiens agriculurali is redlining
We need to reject facile “solutions” and encourage critical thinking
One thing I’d argue with him about is that humans are “better than this.” Humans are simply a species and will never be better than this. Depressing but, I think, factual.
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Four years ago Nate Hagens aggressively told me I was overstating the climate change threat because there wasn’t enough oil left to cause a dangerous climate. I asked for evidence and he sent me a stack of papers that did not impress me because my eyes and the clear thinking of James Hansen told me otherwise.
It’s now clear that I was right and Nate was wrong.
Perhaps four years from now Nate will begin to talk about the need for population reduction policies.
https://www.ecoshock.org/2023/07/climate-catastrophe-could-be-very-close.html
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An updated case for possible near term human extinction:
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2023/07/dire-situation-gets-more-dire-every-day.html
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I’m inclined to discount anything from that blog. It has shown in the past to be remarkably poor at logical thought and maths.
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I have not read enough of the blog to have an opinion. I think I recall Gail Zawacki speaking highly of it.
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The writer known as Sam Carana has often made ridiculous claims about Arctic sea ice. One famous (to me) incident was taking two estimates by Semiletov and Shakhova of Arctic methane release, made years apart – the first with limited observations, the second with much more observations but in quite different areas of the Arctic – and taking them to be two data points dated as the time of the estimate (there were no dates attached by the researchers). Through these so-called data points, the persona known as Sam Carana, drew an exponential curve and claimed some kind of methane bomb by such and such a date. Another example was using data from quite different data sets as though they were from the same data set and claimed it showed some kind of humongous warming exponential growth was going on. Guy McPherson gulped down all this nonsense as some kind of justification for his wild theories.
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Good to know. I’ll remove that site from my newsfeed.
I recall Sam Carana was unmasked as a female climate scientist (I think) somewhere in Europe.
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https://www.rintrah.nl/why-you-dont-understand-it/
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Man this guys goes on a lot about autism. Um autistic people are just as capable of being infallible and they can get a lot of things incredibly wrong if they struggle with ‘black and white thinking’. Saying “I have autism so I must be correct” is a very poor argument indeed.
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I like the tone in general and presentation style but don’t understand the white people bit and it came out of the blue. Living in a rather multicultural environment I’m very certain that non-whites are not exactly more ecological conscious than whites. Visit the middle east for reference that it might be the opposite. And it’s culture anyway. Monotheism and the apocalyptic vision of the Christians did a number on our own culture and MPP made everyone else join in the death cult of our western techno-industrial civilization.
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yea I tend to judge racism pretty harshly as a sign of low intelligence. It is weird for him to do this when he wants his arguments to be taken seriously
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https://climateandeconomy.com/2023/07/18/18th-july-2023-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
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Good essay on the coming depression by Charles Hugh Smith.
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-two-causes-of-coming-great.html
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I don’t know Edward Luttwak and I don’t vouch for him.
He thinks peace with Russia and war with China is imminent.
China had an aggressive enlightened program to reforest their baren slopes. Now (apparently) they are cutting those new trees down to plant more grain in preparation for war.
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If America goes to war with China life for Australians is going to become a living hell overnight. It will be instant rationing of everything important. No more intestate travel. No fertiliser. Mass job losses and extreme poverty.
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If we avoid war with China you may have to deal with Australia having the world’s biggest real estate bubble.
https://podcast.app/the-grant-williams-podcast-matt-barrie-full-e335836140/
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https://psyche.co/ideas/learning-to-be-a-loser-a-philosophers-case-for-doing-nothing
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At least he had the good sense not to subject some poor soul to the misery of having him as a father. Imagine being raised by someone like that haha
But to be serious, if you found this idea interesting, you might like the Escaping Society podcast. One of the best podcasts out there run by two hobos from the USA
https://g.co/kgs/ckWKTi
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blimmin ‘eck google shared the wrong thing. Here’s the link https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/gumby-montgomery
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Reminds me of a friend who wants to become a Useless Dolittle (use-less-do-little). An admirable goal and he’s well on the way.
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Today’s essay by Tim Watkins is a good one to bookmark for a friend that someday approaches you seeking to make sense of troubles in the world.
It’s hard work to write a long detailed essay like this and I admire Watkins.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/07/19/our-predicament-re-stated/
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Rob,
You are right, this was a long and detailed look at how we got to this tipping point in history (due to the fossil fuel blip) and how the way forward historically (probably rapidly backward civilizationally) is likely to be a bumpy road to fewer people and no technology. No easy fixes and I think he would say JMG’s view of a catabolic collapse is probably as much wishful thinking as a “Green” future.
AJ
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Thank you Rob for this link. That was a great overview of how it came to our predicament and what awaits us in the future.
He also explained very well and aligned with the debitistic theory I mentioned above, how it came to this misery by the discrepancy between real and financial economy through the debt based financial system.
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Good essay. Long, can’t say that I didn’t skip over large parts of it. It did prompt some thoughts.
Part of the problem is having “visions of the future” in the first place, no matter the content of the vision. Of course these “visions” can be nothing but delusions of various sorts.
Being the “Doomer” that I am, I foresee, based on various portents, an extreme human population crash in the relatively (10 – 50 years? Maybe sooner?) near future. Not many share my “vision”. I think that’s because no one alive today has seen it happen before. So they can’t imagine it.
Another big problem is thinking that things could somehow be different now than what they are “if only” something different had happened in the past. The problem here is that nothing else could have happened, other than what did happen, because that’s what happened. Thinking anything else, and extrapolating some imaginary alternative outcome, is just a fantasy.
I like to think of everything as both contingent and ephemeral. But that’s just me.
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Very wise.
I am with you on the contingent, ephemeral and population crash (with a slight window variation, maybe 5 – 30 years and I surely hope it’s a delusion, due to my natural mistrust)
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I don’t know there’s any real difference between 5- 30 and 10 -50.
I’ll be surprised if there are more than 2 billion people alive on earth in 20 years. I’ll be even more surprised if I’m still alive in 20 years.
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Before the internet goes down, we should have a big doomer session on Zoom and congratulate ourselves on what we got right! There’s also a lot of people I want to say “I told you so” to. 50% facetious, 50% serious
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Agreed. I am unfortunately envisioning roughly the same outcome. I believe it’s the first time, I have explicitly heard someone state it. I sure hope I am just a pathologically depressed and negative person rather than a lucid individual. But since I started studying this topic (almost 25 years ago), I believe no global metric has truly improved. And only recently has the public awareness increased.
However, there is still a faint shimmer of hope in my mind. It’s in a way a source of torture (the trap of the future outcome), since it relentlessly forces me to push myself into action rather than calmly contemplate the evolution of things (I guess it is the implacable survival imperative). Thus, there are three versions of “positive” stories (one could say denial, since so far they have bumped into hard numbers and the reality of human nature) which coexist in my mind on the background of hopelessness:
* the new Genesis/new Golden Age/reconciliation type. That is, a collective rise in consciousness which makes everyone work in unison towards greening the planet with trees. The rise of a new logic where human beings tend for the living so that it provides, where we abandon power structures in favour of dialogue. We lose material possessions but are able to feed almost everyone and then gradually bring the population down. Utter wishful thinking, I know 🙂
* the Exodus type. That is, we wander 40 years in the desert, in extreme conditions, which purifies our soul, reconnects us with reality(/God) before we get to the promised land. And I am part of the first generation which is too old to make it to the end. This story is positive in that, even though none of the Israelites who started the journey made it to the promised land, if my understanding is correct, the population size was stable throughout the Exodus (new births replaced the deaths).
* the ark of Noak type. That is, be part of the few who prepared and are then somewhat lucky (or in other words forgiven by God)
To Rob, here are some ideas for future post: we could have a poll on future world population and time range. Or we could collectively list all the limits to human population and strategies that could on the contrary give some room. And then come up with a few alternative scenarios. But probably, at this point, on the edge of “the acceleration of collapse”, that’s just pointless work and too depressing…
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Hi Charles, those ideas would make an interesting post. Would you like to write a guest post?
I posted above an excellent presentation by Dr. Tom Murphy that made me feel something emotional and spiritual (which doesn’t happen very often). I think you might like it.
Here it is again for those that might have missed it:
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/06/here-we-are/
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Thank you Rob for the kind proposition. It will be my pleasure.
I can’t promise when I will be done, though. Also,proofreading will be welcome.
If that’s fine with you, would you send me an email to my private address so that I know how/where to submit?
I watched Murphy’s video. A great one, and a great person it seems, with a nice balance between cold analysis and sensibility.
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Excellent. I’ll send you an email.
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Hello friends,
I, too, have been indulging in predicting how many more years I may be alive and for me, 20 more years seems far too optimistic, I am afraid. On a good day I am thinking maybe I have 5-10 years on this planet before things get so bad that I don’t want to be on this planet anymore. Then it would be time to give someone else who wants to fight to survive a chance at whatever resources I would have been using. I am coming to terms with what it means to make that decision and feasible ways to effect it and it is not so objectionable as it first may seem, choosing one’s manner of death seems to me a very fitting way to cap off a self-directed and examined life, which remains our privilege and for the Stoics, a duty no matter the outer circumstances. To me, this philosophy is especially empowering and comforting now.
I am trying to practice detachment as a way to prepare for inevitable loss of everything that is my world. The discipline seems to swing wildly, some days I think since there’s so little time left it doesn’t matter if I hold onto whatever attachment I am contemplating and at other times, I can look at an object or preference and think that will be the last one I need or the last time I will do something. It comes as a blessing that I am finding it easier to accept and forgive myself and others–our time here is so short, it has always been so, and no life has been without suffering.
We still make choices until the very end. I found myself very moved by what a recent guest of Nate’s said, it was Nora Bateson who participated in the last roundtable discussion. For me it was the takeaway message because it represented something I could actively do to create meaning and purpose in the remaining days of my life, when everything else of our reality has been talked or written to righteous excess but little avail. She emphasized relationships and communication as defining an understanding of ecology, and she challenged us to take the view of this question whenever we interact with another “what can I encourage or support you to be when I am with you?” There is real power for both parties and a total shift in dynamics from the usual what can I get out of this exchange. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I thought that was the most positive suggestion as it can be a path to help relieve suffering and that is always our choice.
Thank you for allowing me the choice to share these thoughts. Namaste, friends.
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Some here might enjoy A. Schopenhauer’s philosophy. I’ve found it to be helpful in many ways.
He developed a prescription for life that I try to keep in mind: Art, Compassion, Resignation.
My own brief unpacking:
Art – A general appreciation for and contemplation of asthetics, both manmade and natural. Development and use of the intellect, very few are capable of this in my experience.
Compassion – We are all suffering beings trapped in the madhouse of life on earth. We should aviod adding to the suffering if possible. Note to self: keep in mind that very few are capable of exercising thier intellect.
Resignation – You and everthing around you will fall apart, die. A visceral understanding is important.
A little more information:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer-aesthetics/
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There is a good book called Weltschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy, 1860-1900. You might enjoy it.
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I do, very much, agree with the central premise of German Pessimism: Life is not worth the bother.
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I’m always reminding myself: remain detached from JHK’s righteous indignation. Not always easy…
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-downfall-of-blobism/
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I remain very impressed with RFK Jr. Also very curious if the blob will kill him.
One of the 7 things that most scares Nate Hagens about the future is that he might be killed for speaking the truth.
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Friend Panopticon alternates between economic and climate updates. The two topics seem to be merging into one with almost every economic crisis having some link to climate.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2023/07/21/21st-july-2023-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
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India which supplies 40% of the world’s rice exports has decided to stop exporting all non-Basmati rice.
Now we know why China is cutting down recently planted forests to plant more grain.
This is consistent with my guess of how things will unfold. First the price of an essential item will go up, then it will become unavailable.
Next up beef? To my eyes the hay harvest this year looks like it is 25% of normal.
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Good thing i only eat basmati rice ah ah ah *scared
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I was a little worried that I had stored too much rice. Not worried now.
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