Today’s guest post by Hideaway reviews our ‘plan’ to transition off fossil energy, and shows it is in fact a mirage.
Hideaway is a new force active at un-Denial and other sites that discuss energy and overshoot. He focusses on the feasibility of transitioning our energy system, and brings a data-backed, reality-based, adult conversation into a space that is more often than not filled with ignorance, hope, and denial.
As I was writing a post about EROEI, I came across data for energy production and consumption from Our World in Data. It’s all very professionally made and ‘free’ for anyone to use in their energy discussions.
I spotted one problem though, the data presented has a caveat, they use the substitution method for non-fossil fuel generated electricity, and in the fine print this is explained as… “ Substituted primary energy, which converts non-fossil electricity into their ‘input equivalents’: The amount of primary energy that would be needed if they had the same inefficiencies as fossil fuels. This ‘substitution method’ is adopted by the Energy Institute’s Statistical Review of World Energy, when all data is compared in exajoules.”
OK, how do they convert non-fossil energy into fossil fuel equivalents??
This chart provides the conversion factor.
An efficiency factor of 0.4 means that nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, biofuels and other renewables are made to look much larger than they really are by a factor of 2.5 in the following chart.
It suggests we are making good progress at replacing fossil with renewable energy, and that with a bit more effort we can convert all fossil energy to renewable electricity.
As is common in energy discussions today, reality differs from what is presented. The following chart shows electricity production by source.
Notice that total world electricity consumption for 2022, which of course must equal production, is 28,660Twh. Yet the above chart for energy consumption by source shows that nuclear, hydro, solar, wind and other renewables are by themselves 11,100Twh.
If we divide non-fossil electricity consumed by the 2.5 efficiency factor we get 11,740Twh which is close to the correct amount of non-fossil electricity produced. I say close because the energy from non-fossil sources adds up to 641Twh more than that shown on the electricity production chart, so this extra energy must be used for some other purpose, but has still been treated as 2.5 times more efficient.
From the above chart we see 10,212Twh of electricity from coal and 6,443Twh of electricity from gas, and we can calculate how much of the total oil and gas production was used for electricity by multiplying by 2.5.
From the 44,854Twh of total world coal consumption we used 25,525Twh for electricity, and 19,329Twh for other purposes. Likewise for the 39,412Twh of total world gas consumption we used 16,107Twh for electricity and 23,305Twh for other purposes.
With oil we only produced 904Twh of electricity. Assuming the same 40% efficiency for oil as coal and gas, then only 2,260Twh of oil was used for electricty and 50,710Twh was used for other purposes.
We can now complete the following table and use it for assessing how our energy transition is going.
Total primary energy production is 134,313Twh of which wind and solar contribute 3,408Twh or 2.5%.
Electricity is 21.3% of total energy, and fossil fuels produces 61.3% of electricity.
Only 8.2% of total energy comes from nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, and other renewables, and the remaining 91.8% comes from fossil fuels and traditional biomass.
The following chart illustrates this graphically. Blue is all non-electricity energy, orange is electricity from fossil fuels, and grey is electricity from all other sources.
The world is currently trying to replace fossil fuel produced electricity (orange) with electricity from nuclear, hydro, solar, wind and other ‘sustainable’ methods (grey). It is not possible to manufacture, install, or maintain more ‘sustainable’ energy (grey) without fossil fuels. Even the newest mines and factories require fossil fuels in many forms.
There is no plan for the non-electricity portion of energy (blue).
Let’s now consider how fossil fuel and traditional biomass use has changed over time. Are we getting anywhere?
Traditional Biomass was 100% of energy used, according to Our World in Data (OWiD), until coal started to be used in the year 1800 at 1.7% of total energy. Interestingly, they attribute no energy to water power, wind (sails), or animals, perhaps because they were too small or hard to measure.
Fossil Fuels (FF) and Traditional Biomass (TB) contributed 100% of total energy until 1920 when Hydro contributed 1%.
The contribution of FF and TB to total energy changed as follows:
- <1920 100%
- 1920 99%
- 1940 99.2%
- 1960 98.4%
- 1980 97.6%
- 1990 95.2%
- 2000 94.4%
- 2010 94.3%
- 2020 92.1%
- 2022 91.8%
Most energy analyses lump TB in the mix without paying much attention to the size of its contribution. At 11,111Twh, as measured by OWiD, TB is a larger source of energy than nuclear, hydro, wind, solar and biofuels combined! TB is not going to be replaced by any other type of energy. Most energy analyses place TB on the other side of the ledger from FF, when in fact TB should be added to the FF side, as it is burnt and adds to greenhouse gasses.
The following chart shows the total contribution of energy from non-FF or TB, with columns 1-4 representing the period 1990-2020, and column 5 is what is ‘expected’ to happen by 2050.
We can see how little decarbonization progress we have made over the last 30 years, and the extraordinary progress we expect to make over the next 26 years, towards achieving our climate goals.
Now let’s consider fossil energy used as feedstock for products, and high heat applications.
There are around 1,100 million tonnes of coking coal mined, 700 million tonnes of oil products, plus vast quantities of gas (I couldn’t find the quantity of gas used as feedstock for products or high heat applications) to make 430 million tonnes of plastics, 240 million tonnes of ammonia (fertilizer), 160 million tonnes of asphalt, plus huge amounts of high end heat for cement and steel production, and hundreds of other products and high heat applications.
OWiD does not provide data on energy used for product feedstocks, or high heat, or normal heating, or transportation, or agriculture, or mining. It’s a huge weakness in all energy calculations.
Product feedstocks, by themselves, are a huge gap in our plan for an electricity only future. A world based on renewables would have to make these products from captured carbon, because there is no unused biomass, and we cannot increase our use of biomass without causing significant further damage to the natural world that sustains us. Only if we were willing to decimate remaining forests could we replace fossil fuel products with biomass, especially as world food demand is expected to go up by 60-70% by 2050 according to the FAO.
The only example of using renewable energy to create synthetic fuel, which is the base for all fossil fuel products, is the Haru Oni plant in Southern Chile. It has a 3.4Mw Siemens Gamesa wind turbine with an expected 70% capacity factor producing an expected 20,848Mwh of electricity per year. The first ‘commercial’ (sic) shipment of e-fuels was just sent 11 months after beginning operation, and 8 months after declaring commercial operations, of 24,600 litres. That is a process efficiency of only 1.77%, assuming an annual production of 36,900 litres, without considering the energy expended in the capital ($US75M), or operating and maintenance costs (unknown or not released).
Assuming we had to make ‘products’ from this process, replacing the Coking Coal 1.1Bt = roughly 7,700Twh, plus approximately 10% of a barrel of oil (using all liquids), another 6,205Twh, the raw energy needed from renewables to do this at a 1.77% efficiency rate would be 785,000Twh, or nearly 5 times current annual energy production from all sources!!
This is before adding the energy needed to mine, process, manufacture, and transport the materials required to build it all!!
It’s a ridiculous idea.
Considering I didn’t include the products from natural gas, or any capital, operating, or maintenance costs, and even assuming significant improvements in efficiency, it’s not even close to being possible.
One final calculation to further expose the mirage.
To make the products from renewable energy, with a Haru Oni type efficiency, would require over 1.8B tonnes of copper for the energy production side of the operation, based on 5 tonnes per Mwh of a solar power plant, and over 5 hrs/day of sunshine. This would consume 100% of our current copper production for about 80 years.
Modern civilization is a complex system. It has systems within systems, and a complexity far too high for anyone to understand as a whole. Our discussions and plans for continuing modern civilization after changing from fossil to renewable energy usually concentrate on one minor part of the overall system. It’s the only way to get an answer that looks plausible.
When multiple feedback loops are considered, it becomes obvious that we do not have the energy nor materials to keep modern civilization going for all. Unless of course, the real plan is to retain modern civilization for only a very small portion of humanity, much smaller than present…
February 15, 2024
Rob here, there are many interesting comments by Hideaway below that expand on his energy and materials analysis.
I found one comment particularly interesting because it introduced Hideaway’s background and the life path that led him to his current clear-eyed view of our overshoot predicament.
I’ve copied that comment here for better visibility.
I first learnt about limits to growth in 1975 in my first year of an Environmental Studies course. I’ve been studying and researching everything about energy and resources for decades. My wife and I moved to the country 40 years ago onto a block of land and started farming.
I was the state secretary of an organic farming group and on the certifying committee over 30 years ago. Virtually all organic, biodynamic, permaculture, regenerative properties I came across had similar characteristics. The profitable ones used lots of off property resources, which I argued was unsustainable, because of diesel use etc. I left the organic movement, also decades ago, because there was nothing really sustainable about it.
I was a believer in a renewable future for decades, always believing it was only a matter of time until they became better and cheaper than fossil fuels, which were clearly depleting. I had an accident 15 years ago, and since then have had way more time to do research than just about anyone. I really got stuck into working out how mines could go ‘green’ until I just couldn’t make the numbers work. (BTW I also had some economics and geology in my tertiary studies, but have learnt way more on both subjects in the last 15 years).
Eventually I reluctantly did my own calculations on EROEI because I just couldn’t find anything with an unbiased approach that came close to making sense. I’ve been against nuclear for decades, mainly because of humanities failure to deal with wastes and the nuclear bombs we create, so I very reluctantly calculated the EROEI using my method and was stunned at the results.
I use to be a believer in the 100:1 EROEI that everyone in favor of nuclear constantly states (before I worked it out for myself). The reality is nothing like that, it’s pitiful worse than solar and wind, which instantly made me realise that modern civilization is not sustainable any any way, shape or form.
I also kept checking the numbers I calculated for Saudi oil and a small gas project in WA. Sure enough these came to the rough numbers we need for modernity, but of course fossil fuels are leaving us due to depletion, they are a dead end anyway, even before we consider climate issues.
All my work, over years, has given me a point of reference for when the world as we know it is in real trouble. It’s when the oil extraction decline accelerates to the downside. Everything runs on oil, especially farming and mining and heavy transport. The world falls to pieces without any of these, once they struggle to get the diesel/bunker fuel they need, collapse is baked in. A date of when? no idea, but suspect we will know by higher oil prices and a failure to respond with greater oil production, then the next year a further decline in oil production, while oil prices remain high etc.
Not even coal can save modernity, the EROEI is too low. Even if we went on a massive Coal to Liquids campaign, the energy return for the cost is way too low. When coal was last king we had approximately a 70% rural population even in the west, now we have multiples of the overall population, mostly in cities, and badly degraded agricultural land.
un-Denial 
American voters have the power to cause meaningful positive change. But they won’t. Why?
I’ve never heard such a clear and simple explanation for NATO expansion. It has nothing to do with defense.
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So the U.S. isn’t expanding NATO to protect the independence of Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states?
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Are you kidding? They don’t care about the Polaks and slavs. We are below the Irish on the pecking order. Look at how they put zero value on the life of a Ukranian.
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Eerily similar to nazism.
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I knew that the U.S. had some ulterior motives to expanding NATO. I thought it was merely to expand its sphere of influence. I was also being a little bit facetious.
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Adding to the comment above. In the global pecking order, Slavs are still higher than the people of the Global South.
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Dr. Joe Lee with an overview of his story and a brutal take-down of the big ego morons in denial on both sides of the vaccine “debate”.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/141568091
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If you enjoy scathing criticism about colonialism, capitalism, and our meat industry, this video is for you. (you dont need to have seen the movie to appreciate his analysis)
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Half the comments on Peak Prosperity’s latest video are idiots ineloquently trying to talk about ‘abiogenic petroleum origin’ theory. They go on about fuel not being made from fossils. LMFAO these people are dumber than flat-earthers, or at least on the same level… (see what I did there)
How on this round earth did Chris Martenson develop such a following of muppets? LOL
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Another strong correlation is almost all anti-vaxers deny climate change.
Here’s the peak oil video I think Monk is refering to.
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Groan. When you hear someone use the word “Malthusian” you can be certain they have normal denial genes.
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I always think, “you say Malthusian like it’s a bad thing”
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If I hear someone described as “Malthusian”, I automatically know they have at least some understanding of how the world works. I actually view the term “Malthusian” as a complement.
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Video of the podcast on Spotify I posted a few days ago. It’s even worse when you can see him saying it with a straight face.
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He probably managed it by giving them a large dollop of the nonsense they yearn for. Views makes money on You Tube and maybe adds a few more Peak Prosperity paying members at $30 per month. A nice little earner for Chris.
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Minerals like copper are also abiotic, but that does not make them renewable.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2004-10-03/abiotic-oil-science-or-politics/
Abiotic oil theories are just wishful thinking.
So, the abiotic oil theory is irrelevant to the debate about peak oil and it would not be worth discussing were it not for its political aspects. If people start with the intention of demonstrating that the concept of “peak oil” was created by a “Zionist conspiracy” or something like that, anything goes. In this case, however, the debate is no longer a scientific one. Fortunately, as Colin Campbell said, “Oil is ultimately controlled by events in the geological past which are immune to politics.”
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These people just make shit up, they think it can renew at any speed that we need. LOL I’ve tried debating with them, they got no idea. They don’t even understand the definitions of the words they’re using
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A perfect score for me. Zero seconds watching the Olympics and zero seconds watching the super bowl.
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The only part of the Olympics I always watch is the Parade of Nations. I sometimes watch the gymnastics though.
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I watch the gymnastics and the skating years later when it’s free LOL.
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A company I used to work for bought an Israeli competitor. Despite us being theoretically in charge it did not take long for the Israeli company to effectively control the show. They are very aggressive and very focused on their own success with no regard for other teams.
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Amazing video if you haven’t already seen it.
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Good for a laugh. The best humor is true.
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B today explains entropy and why reuse is much better than recycling.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-arrow-of-time
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If you’re hoping Israel pays a price for genocide, today’s essay by Indrajit Samarajiva might provide some short-term hope, however in the long-term, everyone loses.
https://indi.ca/120-days-of-resistance/
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Truth and integrity are so refreshing.
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Although Tucker can be wrong on some things, like climate change, he is the only person out there in the MSM that has any humility and can admit when he’s wrong. It’s so refreshing and sad.
AJ
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There’s been zero mainstream discussion of the content of the Putin interview. If they disagree, they should reply with fact based substance to show he is wrong. Instead they behave like children and call him names. How do journalists sleep at night? Same way doctors sleep I guess. Integrity is very scarce today.
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Personally, I want nothing to do with Putin and wouldn’t trust him at all. Not much different from other politicians I guess but the way he’s ensured that no-one who might take more than 5% of the vote gets to stand against him. They are either jailed or get tangled in paperwork. It’s incredible that a potential candidate needs 100,000 signatures to even start to fill in the paperwork to stand in the election. Almost everyone who’s tried has failed to get past the election commission, even something as minor as spelling mistakes in the paperwork can invalidate a potential candidate. People need a choice. Putin ensures they don’t get one.
Just my two cents worth.
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As usual showing that your thinking is very limited in fact I would say that it is not even worth 2 cents.
I wonder where you get your info from, probably the same sources telling you vaccines are safe and effective. Just take it to get along.
Putin is no doubt a tough dictator/president but he has made Russia a very strong country again for which I am sure the citizens are thankful. He has the strongest approval rating – polled by the same companies that do polling in western politics.
One thing that most people don’t take into account is that the west has been constantly trying to break Russia up to steal its resources. Practically most of the opposition to Putin are West sponsored. He knows (and his political allies) that once they get in they will dismantle Russia through FREE TRADE which screws every country involved.
Keep the change.
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Think what you want, Niko. If Putin is so confident in his position, he wouldn’t need to ensure that no half-serious candidate stands against him. I don’t think any of your comments on candidates is specific to Russia. Didn’t I say that most politicians aren’t much different?
I’m amazed that some people think that they are the ones to have access to full and accurate information about the subject at hand.
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I think that he is confident in his position because they stop western puppets right from the get go. The pattern from the west causing revolutions and then installing their guy is very obvious.
Again if Russians are better off in practically every way since Putin has taken the presidency, what is the problem? “He doesn’t let our piece of shite get a standing so that we can run the country”.
You seem to fail to realise that Russia has been on a war footing due to the west’s encroachment for the last 20 years. You don’t hand over the reins to weak hands while in this position.
I would rather a Putin in OZ than the intestinal worms we’ve had since Paul Keating (1996) left the prime minister position. Let’s not get started on the pathetic arse dribblings that Canada and NZ have leading their countries.
I imagine many will keep saying how bad Putin is when they are sitting at home shivering in the dark with the power out, trying hard to forget that Russia will still have all those fossil fuels to keep burning.
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OK. Seems like an argument for any actions Putin takes but that’s your prerogative. I said “personally” in my top comment and, personally, I can’t support dictators, apparently benign or not.
As regards fossil fuels, they will eventually become uneconomical to extract. So it doesn’t really matter if some countries can keep going longer. Ultimately, we’re all in the same boat as regards the polycrisis.
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Dear Charles, Rob, Chris, Monk & Stellarwind72.
thank you for your replies and insight.
I feel like my past usual-self for the first time in months, words are powerful.
Charles,
I can only cherish and embrace your kind words, they radiate warmth and gentleness.
I hope you radiate such tenderness to others and they appreciate it in return.
I do agree, what’s the point in suffering mentally over things which are out of control.
Cheers, to life without fear.
”Those who defeat others are strong, those who defeat themselves are mighty.” - Lao Tzu
In regards to sharing deeper reflections, I cannot promise something which I cannot keep. However, if such a time ever arrives when I do share, I’ll do so gladly and I hope Charles it will be to your liking.
Rob,
health is indeed wealth, a simple fact often overlooked.
Routine & prepping provides a sense of ”control” which is key for mental wellness (physical too if need arises).
Choice of profession will be fascinating, mixed emotions on that front…
Chris,
Catton & Meadows might have arrived to similar conclusions which Charles mentioned.
”Stupid is as stupid does” – Forrest Gump Regarding the predicament.
* H.Sapiens is tenacious, adaptive & innovative.
* 99.99% less than todays 8 billion means ~800 000.
* Only time will tell.
Being alive is a miracle in itself, engaging in mindfulness and appreciating the moments is a wonderful practice. Closing your eyes for a deep breath, to appreciate the earth and allowing yourself to enjoy a delicious meal is superb.
Monk,
I live in Finland, Helsinki.
Price regarding land and sustenance, I can relate.
- I am not fond at all when it comes on extended periods of darkness & cold.
Did/do you have some country/location in mind in your fantasies?
– Excluding the financial side of things, New Zealand seems otherwise splendid with natural beauty (seems to be comfortable weather year round, if I’m not mistaken?)
Importance of relatives is 100%, as long as the capability for critical thinking is included.
– Unfortunately, I cannot relate…
Stellarwind72,
being young was supposed to be easy, I guess we can’t have everything after all.
Take care, we got a long way to go!
Warm & kind regards,
ABC
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We joke in NZ that Finland is the New Zealand of Europe. Your winters are tough the weather is definitely much better here. Cold in winter, but no snow. You would definitely like it here, it is very green and blue.
As I understand, Finland has high rates of mental illness and a rather tough social environment. Is that true?
Your relatives will likely never get it, but they are still important as long as they are safe to be around.
Do you think NATO/Russia puts Finland at risk? It is scary times for that part of the world
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🙂
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h/t Nima Alkhorshid
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Steve St. Angelo makes a presentation on how wood depletion was at the core of the collapse of ancient civilizations and how this parallels what we are doing today with oil.
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Dear Rob,
I hope you’re well.
I’d like to hear your thoughts regarding this matter (and everyone else’s too).
An entity by the name;
Eclipse Now
commented on Andrii Zvorygin videos (links below).
– Claiming that Dr.Simon Michaux presents matters which are not entirely up to date and/or are in fact incorrect, whilst presenting countering perspectives on the matter regarding energy and resources.
Eclipse Now’s website:
https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com
Can’t wait to get a more insight from all of you,
Kind regards,
ABC
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I did a quick skim of Eclipse’s site.
If you are aware of our overshoot polycrisis and are seeking reasons for optimism I guess this is an above average site. He tries to find a positive spin for every issue.
His prescription for climate change is revealing. It demonstrates he has zero understanding of our predicament and therefore we can safely ignore everything else he says.
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Dear Rob,
thank you for the reply.
Affirmative,
hopium comes in many forms.
Kind regards,
ABC
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There is also this bit from that page …. “But unlike oil and gas and coal, every mineral we mine for wind and solar and batteries can be recycled forever.”
OK, so what do we recycle 100% of?? Nothing, and often lose a percentage of whatever during the recycling process. Plus of course most recycling these days involves downcycling, the recycled material is not used again for the original purpose.
I wish that just one of the people that propose recycling as the answer for materials, would do a full energy calculation on the collection, sorting and separation of components, then transport and energy used in making all the equipment needed for the recycling and the final process itself. No-one ever does this, recycling is just another hand wave of what we can do.
Like everything else in the world, if it was energy saving and cheaper (both are really the same!!), then it would already be happening on massive scales as those doing it would have an economic advantage. Just because it works with steel and copper, doesn’t mean it will work with everything else.
It is so easy to pull apart the arguments of cornucopians. Why? because it’s mostly make believe..
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Apparently, Vladimir Putin thinks that Poland is responsible for starting WWII.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2019/12/23/putin-blames-poland-for-ww2-and-says-soviet-occupation-saved-lives/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/30/polish-pm-furious-at-putin-rewriting-history-of-second-world-war
Also, Donald Trump apparently told a NATO member to pay its share or he’d ‘encourage’ Russia to do what it wanted
https://apnews.com/article/trump-nato-foreign-aid-russia-2b8054a9fe185eec34c2c541cece655d
Trump doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.
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Good overview of the Eurodollar system and its history which underpins the US reserve currency, and why the Chinese yuan will never replace it.
Jeff Snider thinks a digital currency is the only possible replacement candidate. Which I think means when extreme debt causes the US dollar to hyperinflate, causing the real economy and it’s grids to collapse, there will be no replacement, and global trade will drop to a fraction of today.
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https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/tokenized-inc-blackrocks-plan-to-own-the-fractionalized-world-
TOKENIZED, INC: BLACKROCK’S PLAN TO OWN THE FRACTIONALIZED WORLD
In the aftermath of the recent Bitcoin ETF approvals, BlackRock’s Larry Fink revealed that soon everything will be “ETF’d” and tokenized, threatening to fractionalize not just existing assets and commodities, but the natural world, reducing most living things into Wall Street financial products to be traded on a single, universal ledger.
Saludos
el mar
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Dear Monk,
How cold and for how long does it last in NZ? (Celsius)
New Zealand seems stunning with its landscapes.
I can see how NZ thinks that, in a way I suppose it is similar.
In the decades or century to come, it is very likely that Sweden & Finland will become very popular when things start to crumble.
– Plenty of water, forests, arable land (plenty of forests which can be cleared for land), small & educated population, minerals and other resources.
– Governments which are supposedly “least corrupt in the world” for now…
– ”Liberal and open” (until those values are not appreciated)
– Immigration causes strain in Sweden (Europe overall) due to integration issues will likely increase in the future.
Finnish people are suffering because of:
– The weather
– The economy
– Alcohol consumption
– A sort of backwater recently developed culture which is shy and introverted yet prideful which fails to express this in a healthy way. Hidden and myopic arrogance (world class ranks etc.)
– Forgot it’s history and “roots” (part of Sweden & Russia before etc.)
– Thinks everything is alright when not.
– Politicians talk same nonsense as all the rest.
– A relative of mine just became the president (not joking). Don’t ask me what I think about all of it…
People in Finland are more open to discuss ideas perhaps than most (at least when foreigners say them), yet the cultural brainwashing and domestic broadcasted discussion going on here is “postmodernism and woke” and rather pathetic and myopic at best.
– Covid was a prime example.
– Simon Michaux has mentioned that he’s presented government officials his findings, they supposedly seem to be at least somewhat willing to engage in some form of talk about the problems.
I have had unfortunate experiences regarding people.
– My trust has been betrayed many times by family, friends & government.
– (I forgive all of humanity and all of them intellectually because of biology, determinism and lack of free will etc.) yet the level of denial is so overwhelming (in my family at least, presumably a majority of all people) that it mostly is just as effective to talk to a wall.
– I also do not share strong bonds of affection towards my immediate relatives, if they’d cease to exist my life would be magnitudes less complicated for multiple reasons.
– I don’t know what to think of all that as of yet in the larger picture of things, human relations are wildly entropic to say the least.
NATO.
I cannot make any sort of reasonable assumption regarding that front.
(Who really can anyway?)
Saw a poster of anti-nato military base.
– If they construct one, that will be extremely disheartening…
Finland fears Russia, has done so for a long time, “understandably so.”
– Yet seems to forget the plausibility of “soft power interference” which might seep in through foreign influences (EU & NATO)
– Finland is not led to with actual domestic interest in mind, hasn’t been for decades.
From my limited ignorant perspective Finland is not and hasn’t been a problem for Russia.
– No hostility towards Russia, only defence based measures. (NATO on the other hand is a different matter entirely.)
– Russia also has its hands full, (try to govern such a large nation).
– Arctic sea hydrocarbons on the other hand, that will be intense.
I hope this clarified some aspects.
Kind regards,
ABC
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To clarify, yes.
– Suicides and mental illness are high.
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The coldest NZ gets where I live is around -4C.. and up to about 33C in summer. It’s windy a lot of the time though.
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But I guess that would be -4°C at night. Average daily highs, apart from mountainous areas, range from about 9 or 10°C in the deep south to about 15°C in the far north, in the worst winter months. Of course, there are colder snaps, especially in the south. It’s fairly mild most of the year, not too hot, not too cold. Usually. In my experience, anyway. And, yes, many areas do seem to get quite windy fairly often. The odd tropical storm, or its remnants, hits us.
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Yea negative 4 is the lowest we would go at night. I live in Canterbury
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Dr. Tom Murphy today.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/02/sustainable-timescales/
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Today’s interview of Dr. Bret Weinstein by Joe Rogan is good with a nice recap of the covid and mRNA evils, and how someday soon we must stop the cabal that is controlling our governments.
The problem is that both Rogan and Weinstein are blind to overshoot and therefore have no ability to connect the dots on probable motivations of the cabal.
After reading Weinstein’s book twice I was pretty sure he was overshoot aware but in this interview he questions the reality of a climate emergency and joins Rogan at deriding population reduction initiatives.
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Excellent new one today from the great Sid Smith looking at the magnitude of human overshoot and its impacts.
He starts with a tale reminiscent of the late great Dr. Albert Bartlet, then provides a superb description of industrial agriculture, and concludes with a few wise words of advice.
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Accurate, but again, depressing reality of our more extreme overshoot condition and how both civilization and population will collapse soon. Almost make me want to have a drink, but I’m trying to limit the alcohol 🤐. Too bad most of humanity is in deep denial – if we weren’t maybe we could lessen the suffering that is to come and the damage that we are doing to the ecosphere. MPP and denial till the end and collapse.
AJ
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The fact that humans are a species, and so act like other species, seems to be gaining ground. As it should.
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Why does a species block the use of safe and effective drugs, to coerce billions to be injected with an inadequately tested novel gene therapy technology, and then denies that clots and other side-effects killed millions?
What kind of species is this?
Is there any similar behavior in any other species on this planet?
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I don’t know. Other species haven’t built the kinds of complex societies that even make such a behaviour possible. And human societies will become increasingly less complex in time. Regardless of the internal societal squabbles, the environmental predicaments we face are entirely consistent with a clever tool using species. Which is what Sid Smith was essentially saying.
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I don’t like my species.
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Oft-times me neither.
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I’m a huge fan of Sid Smith’s work. Yet like every other message of how stuffed humanity really is, it just gets ignored.
Mind you the “How to enjoy” bit really should be ‘Try to enjoy the lead up to’ TEOTW, but it’s probably too many letters..
TTETLUTTEOTW….
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A new video released today by the widow of Michael Dowd.
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Hi Rob,
Thank you so much for sharing that uplifting posthumous sermon which resonates so clearly with me at this time. What a fitting offering to our new young friend ABC (and all the rest of us in the alphabet soup!) as a perspective striving for peace and acceptance in these days allotted to us. Each day is a complete universe, suffice in itself with beginning, choices, and closing. Our lives are still our own story to write and enact, and that is a privilege and grace unfathomable.
I trust everyone is finding and sharing beauty, contentment and goodwill in every day.
Namaste, friends.
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Almost none of the influential covid dissidents have embraced string theory, nor have they explained why it is wrong.
Are they all blocked by big egos and Lee’s abrasive personality?
Or could it be the dissidents don’t want to kill mRNA if that means traditional vaccines will also have to be withdrawn?
Before covid I remember being certain that anti-vaxxers were crazy people and wanted nothing to do with them.
Then I learned that everything our leaders and health professionals said about covid and mRNA was exactly opposite of correct, and they killed and harmed millions of people with unethical and unscientific policies.
Now I don’t believe a word they say about anything, including that traditional vaccines are safe and effective.
I say burn it all down and start over with new people that have good ethics and sound scientific skills.
Here is the latest interview with Dr. Joe Lee from a few days ago.
https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/precipitins
https://rumble.com/v4cdtsx-precipitins.html
Much more detail on Dr. Lee’s string theory is provided at the above link.
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Dr. Joe Lee suspects RFK Jr. has told the dissidents to ignore string theory, and they respect RFK Jr. enough to do as asked.
Why would RFK Jr. want to block string theory?
Maybe because if he was associated with killing most vaccines he’d have no chance of being elected.
So being elected is more important than stopping harm to children?
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Fascinating – you can produce empirical data in the lab to support test this hypothesis. This is helpful rather than relying on clinical trials run by the vaccine manufacturers. I need to spend some time getting my head around his argument – but heaps to learn as I don’t have a chemistry background argh
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In case you or anyone else missed it, string theory is only one piece of Dr. Joe Lee’s take-down of vaccines.
Clots explained by string theory is the easiest piece to understand and evokes the most emotion to stop the shots.
A bigger and probably more important piece of Lee’s theory is that the whole premise of vaccines is wrong: antibodies do not protect us from viruses.
I do not understand this latter piece well enough yet to defend it, but it smells correct to me.
If he’s right, the entire medical profession is composed of idiots.
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Brought to you by health care professionals.
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rintrah talks about this
https://www.rintrah.nl/why-people-are-now-constantly-sick-all-the-time/
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Thanks! The immune system is so complicated my old brain struggles to retain the details. My take-away is that mRNA breaks the immune system and vaccinated people will continue to get sicker.
A kinder person than me might forgive mistakes made by doctors in the early days of a global panic. There is no forgiveness for continuing to push mRNA today. Doctors are evil morons.
This essay by Rintrah and the discussion in the comments are a must read.
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I don’t know why my wife and myself are so healthy.
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You probably were injected with a batch of duds, with the correct aspiration method. Plus you are super healthy.
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But I shouldn’t be super healthy, should I? And this would need to apply to all of the other people I know who’ve had vaxes. There is perhaps only one person I know who is less healthy now than before vaccinations but that is not because of infections, just bodily failures.
I was a bit worried for a while after seeing that my booster was probably worse than useless and that so many contrarians seemed to think mRNA vax would lead to untold misery down the line. But the longer my, and others’, health lasts, the less I see any validity in those claims. Of course, I could be wrong and there is a ticking time-bomb inside of me.
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If you are healthy your body can withstand more assaults.
Time will tell us what is true, one way or the other.
I hope they gave you duds.
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https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/c4e04c709eff5c8bf5907057e35b8e4e
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-10-2023/#comment-770238
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Thanks for posting this. The storms and fires were well away from us, yet the stupidity of what people think the future will look like is just beyond comprehension. One aspect I did find out during the storms was the maximum power our grid can import from interstate, after all it is a ‘national’ (east coast) grid. It was 1.6Gw, imported from interstate when the price of wholesale power went up to $16,600/Mwh.
A lot of talk of an all renewables future is about how the Southern areas can import power from sunny Queensland (up North) during the winter. A cloudy, windless period during winter can cover most of South Australia, all Victoria and the Southern part of NSW, leaving up to 15- 20Gw supply needed (all before we all go to heat pumps and EVs!!). There are no plans for this type of transmission from North to South, so blackouts it will be when they close the coal power stations, with the last remnants of heavy industry moving to where they can get cheap reliable power, elsewhere in the world.
The one aspect I keep coming back to is how one dimensional the thinking is by just about everyone. They see a major problem, grab onto the cheapest and easiest solution, with no thought for all the ramifications of that solution on a gigantic world wide scale. Nor do they bother to work out if anything is possible on a world wide scale. If it appears to work on a small scale, then that’s the solution for the world.
People put their lives at stake for their own god/gods/religion all the time, they have done so for thousands of years, when realistically they have been conned by another human with some made up story, about life after death, and it is worth dying for (religion of all types).
So I shouldn’t be surprised that people treat solutions to overshoot with simplistic beliefs about these solutions, so they can go on happily living in denial, thinking how they have done their little bit by buying an EV and purchasing some solar panels for the roof of their house, while continuing to believe that all those fossil fuel companies and supporters are evil humans.
Putting the transmission cables underground is the best solution, especially if larger storms are expected in the future, yet it’s way too expensive to do, plus uses too much copper. A quick calculation of the copper needed for about 13Gw of underground HVDC transmission lines, the ones necessary to bring power from outback Queensland to Southern Victoria, about 3000km distance, would need 1.8 million tonnes of copper, excluding the copper in the substations, conversion stations from AC to DC and back, and excluding the copper needed for the ‘renewable’ generating facilities.
It’s a total nonsense. Most people don’t want to worry themselves about these minor details, if it sounds like a good idea, providing their own power bill doesn’t go up.
Of course the cost of power will go up without cheap coal and gas power stations close to population centres, yet the religious belief of renewables permeates our society, because people have been conned that renewables are cheaper, when they are clearly not cheaper, on any grounds, on a like for like basis.
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I share your amazement at how we can be so blind to something so obvious and so important.
There are very few people like you and Dr. Michaux that do original research on resource requirements, availability, and affordability for our “plans”.
Keep up the good work.
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Art Berman has a new post on how electricity from solar and wind is really more expensive than that from coal and gas. https://www.artberman.com/blog/renewables-are-not-the-cheapest-form-of-power/
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Sorry if this is kind of off topic but I was wondering if Gaia or anyone else here with expertise could help me understand whether the vaccine related clots could lead to bowel ischemia. Thank you in advance.
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Hello there Kira,
Hope you and your family are going well. I am not a practising doctor and certainly do not claim any expertise but I have a mind trained to look at the over-all picture and give credence to what is the most logical reason behind an outcome. It is highly likely if not outright proven that the mRNA therapy causes various clotting scenarios throughout the body, both on the micro (small vessels) and macroscopic (larger diameter) level, therefore it is a viable mechanism for ischemia (which means reduced blood flow causing damage) in any tissue or end organ.
Bowel ischemia can be caused by direct clot formation inside the lumen of the blood vessels, this can be acute or occur through critical narrowing of the supply blood vessels, both which are the same mechanisms which lead to heart attack and stroke, or the twisting or involution of the bowel which can pinch the vessels, cutting off supply of blood. Cells in that organ (small or large bowel) can be damaged and die just like heart and brain cells cut off from blood supply. Usually there are many collateral vessels that can bypass the occlusion but if the clot is in a larger vessel that supplies a bigger part of the bowel, then more severe damage can occur. This is a life-threatening emergency as dead bowel tissue can easily perforate and then you have rip-roaring peritonitis (infection and inflammation of the abdomen cavity).
I hope that explanation helps and even more so hoping that all in your circle are healthy and this has been an academic query, not a situational one.
All the best to you,
Gaia
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I might add with much less expertise than Gaia that clots are not guaranteed for all mRNA injections due to:
1) Poor manufacturing quality control resulting in wide variability of shot strengths.
2) Poor storage & shipping quality control due to temperature variation and RNase contamination.
3) Injection method was more dangerous if health care workers followed required procedures however some ethical souls probably injected mRNA the correct way to avoid spreading mRNA throughout the body.
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Hi Rob,
Very good to point that out, thank you. The mRNA therapy shots have the potential to cause novel clotting. Yes, everything has been variable and it is only the trend results we see, and that cannot determine individual events. One thing that really gets me (and you) is the insistence on booster shots knowing the cumulative risks and non-existent benefit. I am still hearing of deaths and newly diagnosed advanced cancers from all quarters. One of my husband’s colleagues (who is an academic medical doctor) just lost both her mother and her father-in-law in the same week and they were only in their late 60s. Another good friend told me as an aside that the craft group she attends is no longer gathering due to so many members dying over the past few years. This has become our new normal but it is definitely not natural. Hope you’re keeping steady and looking forward to Spring just around the corner.
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Thanks Gaia, I’m in a bit of a low right now. Angry and procrastinating what I should be doing in my life. On a more positive note, I’m keeping my carbs down, back to walking 6 km every day, and my hip/back problem seems to have completely healed.
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Hello Rob,
I feel for your angst and frustration which I know all of us share here in some degree.
I think you are underestimating yourself because what you have begun here so many years ago has helped more people than you can know and continues to be an oasis in the desert. Since that is what you have accomplished consistently through your own volition, it must be what you should be doing in your life and not a procrastination at all because every day you can, you share valuable information to which we can add in discussion, And on the days you do not, we hope that is because you are enjoying walking and camping in the wilderness, communing with Nature, the source of all acceptance and comfort. And you can do that with agility and facility because you have taken good care of your physical health as is your right and responsibility, so you should be commended highly. That’s great news about your hip/back issues resolving completely, well done.
So by this erstwhile doctor’s diagnosis of well-being, I pronounce you exceedingly fit for our times and keep on going and doing what you have been!
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Thanks for the kind words Gaia.
I need to part company with a bunch of my past papers, books, and souvenirs, plus a bunch of my mother’s, and I’m struggling to make progress. This is turn blocks me from progress on other tasks. Procrastination has been a lifetime defect of mine.
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Hi Rob,
I can understand the task ahead of you as I have just gone through a massive clearing out project on behalf of my mother who is still living, which turned out to be an extremely stressful exercise. Do you think the main cause of your angst is the sheer volume of items needing to be processed or the emotional energy in letting go of them? Most likely it is a combination but it can be very helpful to identify the source of blockage and then step back and ask, well, why do I feel that I need to do this at this time? If you actually have the space and organisation for these items (as in it doesn’t take over your living quarters and become a health hazard in the case of my mother’s house) then there is no real hurry to attend to them, and if you are emotionally not ready, then that is the answer, too.
I think it is actually a very reasonable decision to delay this sort of task given what we are facing in the world, firstly it’s a psychological carry-over comfort from a past that we knew and secondly, because our time is so limited and precious now, we want to be doing other things that we enjoy. Finishing the cleaning out may satisfy what we think is expected of us, our duty, responsibility and such, but actually there is no real external pressure except for what we place upon ourselves. There is no “have to” or “must do” if we choose, just what works best to get us to the real goals we have. Perhaps the main source of frustration comes from self-judgment, and acceptance of what one deems as insufficiencies is the real lesson and task, and in this I speak for myself as much as generally.
Your life is uniquely your own and cannot be compared to any thing else ever having existed or will ever exist in this universe. That’s a mind-blowing thought and if your make-up comes with a penchant for self-identified procrastination, then that is just how it is. By the way, I believe your idea of procrastination is very different from what is the norm, you would not have accomplished all that you have in your life if truly it were a cardinal attribute in you.
Anyway, that’s just me waffling on in the airy-fairy ether where I do levitate from time to time as you know!
All the best to you and I think I speak for everyone here how proud we are of you and how much we appreciate the community you have fostered.
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🙂
Passing by… Just wanted to say I liked this last comment of yours and the one just before (as many other I don’t necessarily reply to).
Good to hear you overcome the purification project (I like to call it that way) that was bestowed upon you.
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Thank you so much Gaia for that detailed answer, your explanations are always very easy to understand and a joy to read.
I hope you and your family are doing well and in good health. I truly wish this was merely an academic inquiry but unfortunately it is not. One of my cousins recently lost his father and the COD was septic shock which lead to low blood pressure. Before that the family was informed that there was necrosis, peritonitis and full body infection (possibly from stomach contents leaking out into blood stream).
All of this perfectly aligns with everything that you said.
All of this happened so suddenly that the family barely had time to process it before he was gone. I know that this is not an isolated case and these stories are playing out everywhere these poisons were injected but experiencing it up close makes it very different. I tried to explain to him about the dangers of these untested substances but he trusts his family doctor who keeps telling him that these things are perfectly safe and that this was an unfortunate case unrelated to vaccine.
Thank you again for your valuable expertise, we are fortunate to have someone like you on this site to help us make sense of things in these difficult times.
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Hello Kira,
I am sorry to hear that your family has suffered through a sudden loss. Although I could help you understand a possible reason for your family member’s unexpected rapid decline, I am as hopeless as all of us in trying to accept that so many people have experienced grief through what has been unleashed upon us. Several times I have been directly asked by family members who had a loved one die if the vaccine contributed to their death and I can honestly say that I don’t know and it can’t be known (especially since an autopsy is never done) because each individual circumstance is different and that is the comforting response they are ready and wanting to hear. At some point at their own timing, a few have come around to their own decision that the injections led to the declining health of their family, whilst others staunchly believe what the medical narrative tells them. Humans seem to balance between both anger and denial in order to navigate through these turbulent times.
Thank you for your warm thoughts for me and my family, we are well in all ways that matter, starting with having our basic needs more than met which seems at once so banal yet it is the only and often unreachable goal for most of our beleaguered species. Every day I need less and less reason to remind myself of our incredible fortune.
All the best to you and your family, and thank you for being there for them in whatever way you can.
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Thank you so much for your kind and comforting words Gaia. You are right about being grateful for the present even more so when we can see what is coming in the future. If there was ever any doubt about how the polycrisis will be handled the COVID handling put that to rest.
You are right about denial and anger. When I first came across the truth about mRNA on this site I was in denial and didn’t believe it because I didn’t think that something so sinister can be allowed even by warmongering and imperial governments of west. But after seeing evidence both statistical and anecdotal that denial has turned to anger. And the anger cannot be directed at anyone because the people responsible are beyond the reach of consequences.
I am also concerned about my family and dear ones and needed your guidance. If we operate with the assumption that there may be clots in the bodies of people injected with the vaccines then can clot busting substances help protect them from the worst. Since none of my family believes the truth about mRNA and taking clot busting medications regularly is not feasible I was wondering if achieving the same effect is possible through natural substances .
Ginger,turmeric,garlic,cayenne,cinnamon,vitamin E all have blood thinning effect and it would be easy to recommend them because they are quite beneficial to overall health without ever mentioning vaccines. If these are taken everyday for months can they have same protective properties as clot busting medications?
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I asked Dr. Lee your question.
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Fasting for a few days may be beneficial.
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Dr. Lee is an angry prick but I like his integrity. When people try to exaggerate covid threats without sound science like shedding, synthetic spike, DNA contamination, passing on altered genes to offspring, etc. he aggressively tells them they are wrong.
Lee cleanly sticks to only the threats he is certain are real.
I think we can trust him.
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I may have triggered Dr. Lee’s denial circuit. Lee’s kids are mRNA’d. Don’t think he was aware of Radagast’s work. He’s gone silent. Maybe he’s just digesting. Hoping he comes back and says it’s bunk.
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Just saying, could be wrong but Lee comes across as a full on Narcissist. I don’t find any of his arguments convincing because they are always wrapped in self aggrandizing.
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He does think a lot of himself, and he can be dificult to understand. I don’t like him.
I am looking for someone that can do serious harm to the pharma complex. I was hoping he had the weapons.
Give me the reason you think string theory is wrong and I will challenge him with it.
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nikoB, you seem to be a better judge of character than me.
Lee responded to my question with a strange stream of babble that I do not understand. I told him I was disappointed with his response. He replied with more babble but did say he’d have a closer look at Radagast’s work.
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Thanks, that is reassuring to know. Does Dr.Lee have a hypothesis as to why people are dying from heart attacks and strokes years after being injected with the vaccine. Is it because some people’s bodies have more difficulty breaking down the clots than others and they are more vulnerable?
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I have not heard Dr. Lee speak to that. He is focused on the clot threat he identified and is closed-minded to any other threat.
The best description of the cause of heart attacks and strokes I’ve heard is by Dr. Bret Weinstein. He explains:
1) We were told mRNA would stay localized to the injection site. This is untrue, in part because they told nurses to override the historic safer injection procedure, with the goal of minimizing pain to reduce “vaccine hesitancy”, which created a much higher risk that mRNA would circulate throughout the entire body.
2) We were told mRNA has a very short lifetime in our body. This is untrue, mRNA remains (if I recall correctly) for at least 6 weeks, after which they stopped the test so we don’t know how long it persists. In conflict with their claim that mRNA has a short lifetime, the Nobel prize awarded for mRNA was related to extending its lifetime in the body.
3) mRNA works by causing cells to manufacture proteins foreign to our body.
4) Our immune system kills cells with foreign proteins.
5) Some organs can repair damage from killed cells.
6) The heart does not repair damaged cells, so scars and permanently reduced heart capacity can result.
There are other issues:
– The only people who maybe benefited from the vaccine were elderly and obese. The vaccine does not stop transmission so there was no reason to vaccinate others.
– Children have zero risk from the covid. The CDC still recommends children be injected with mRNA.
– The small benefit from mRNA in elderly & obese may have resulted from the body’s response to other ingredients in the mRNA, and had nothing to do with the claimed mechanism.
– We discarded a hundred years of vaccine knowledge by deciding to vaccinate billions of people with a non-sterilizing vaccine in the middle of a pandemic, thus preventing herd immunity and causing a proliferation of variants that may someday turn lethal to vaccinated people with now damaged immune systems.
– They aggressivley blocked proven safe and effective drugs that would have made any vaccine unnecesssary for this particular disease.
– They fomented panic with misleading PCR tests and medical procedures that killed people.
– They ignored clear safety signals and are not collecting the data that a regulator concerned with maximizing public health would monitor.
– They employed the biggest psychological warfare and censorship operation in history to persuade people to inject mRNA.
– France just passed a law that makes it a crime to oppose mRNA.
There are other very troubling issues that may prove to be true but I’m not yet confident in defending them so won’t list them.
Most citizens are blind to all of the above.
How is this possible?
The criminals are getting away with it and the majority does not care.
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Hello Kira,
I am very touched by your deep concern for and wanting to help your loved ones through any health issues that may arise from these injections. Time and again, it is through challenges to our very sense of self and rightness that brings out the highest and best that was always ready and waiting within us.
Clotting as a mechanism of dysfunction is understandably high on your radar and it does seem to cause the most overt poor outcomes but as we have learned over these several years, there are other processes in play, notably the “dumbing down” of the immune system as evidenced by repeated infections. You are absolutely spot on that only lasting way to help our body evolve to deal with this new distortion is to support it with the correct building blocks that maximise its physical structure and function, and no less importantly, that generate feelings of wholeness and joy. By this, I mean nutrients from wholesome real food, clean water, air, restful sleep, sunshine, meaningful work and enjoyable play, a sense of belonging and continuity in community, all those ideals that seem so elusive in today’s world. Once we appreciate our true health to be much more than just absence of disease, then we fully have the tools to achieve wellness and deeper healing. Drawing upon all the foundations of wellness is important in helping the body recover from illness and regenerate a more resilient version of itself that is long lasting.
All the foods you listed are known for their healthful properties and taken as whole food and not supplement form is probably the best way to allow the body to choose what compound or nutrient it needs to maintain balance. I have found the best way to encourage family members or friends to better health habits is to lead by example, and be ready to offer advice (and especially recipes and even better, pre-made meals, invitations to joining you on walks, trying new activities) when asked or most satisfyingly, when they notice the extra sparkle in your eyes, spring in your step, and rosy glow. Just presenting a list of things to eat, even in the name of better choices for general health, often loses persuasion if one doesn’t have the ability or motivation to stick to a concerted change. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Another way to help your family is to in effect ask them to help you, try suggesting that you would like to kick-start a healthier lifestyle and would really appreciate a buddy-system where you can support each other as you explore together how to make changes and try new things.
I really hope something here resonates with you as I know how determined you are to make a positive change out of your kind and compassionate heart (and strong sense of justice and righteousness!) and that is so courageous and admirable. Your family is very fortunate to have you as an advocate and one they can trust. I feel very privileged to be able to render some advice which may be of assistance to anyone here, and I am humbled to have earned your trust. Please free to ask me anytime if I can do anything to help and I will joyfully do my best. You can always ask Rob for my email if I happen to miss any posts.
Namaste, friends.
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You are absolutely right when you say that clean water, clean air, nutritious food, meaningful work and being part of mother nature’s community all seem to be things of the past. Even though lifespan has risen, healthspan which is far more important has been falling dramatically. I think you hit the nail on the head with the line – Health is not just the absence of disease (it is also the presence of life and vitality).
I agree that no amount of supplements can come close to replicating the benefits of real food that mother nature has provided us with. Also some of the things like antioxidants cannot even be supplemented and must be consumed as real food.
I also think that the best way to implement long lasting changes is by involving people around us when we make them. I love cooking as it is one of the only activities that allows the engagement of all five senses and I have been involving friends and family lately to make it more enjoyable.
The pleasure and privilege is mine to be able to interact and gain some wisdom and knowledge from people such as yourself. Thank you so much for your concern and I feel happy and reassured to know that I can count on you for your advice.
Namaste.
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Chris Martenson thinks we are under attack on multiple fronts:
1) Encourage a flood of unfriendly immigrants.
2) Drain the SPR.
3) Blow up Nord Stream pipeline and take down ability to make nitrogen fertilizer.
4) Over print money.
5) Compromise health care workers and weaken the health of citizens by forcing them to inject people multiple times with mRNA.
Not too impressed with Michael Yon although he has seen a lot more of world than I have. He uses measles as an example of the cabal trying to associate a valuable vaccine with dangerous mRNA. I guess Yon hasn’t seen this graph:
P.S. Martenson is still not brave enough to discuss Dr. Joe Lee’s theories.
Skip ahead to 52:05.
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They are trying to scare us into sending more money to kill more Ukrainians and Russians. The US views both as worthless expendable “slav” cultures.
ZeroHedge said it best: “It’s freaking Russian space sharks with freaking laser beams attached to their heads.”
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Ever since practicing with “safe & effective” they’ve perfected coordinated messages. We are being played like violins.
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I’m back to my blame game and just wanted to comment about it here so that maybe someone can talk some sense into me if I am totally misguided.
I’ve been hung up on sustainable cultures lately, especially with pre-columbus America. In my crazy head, if they are never “discovered”, or better yet, if it’s the only land on earth, the Native Americans are going to exist for a while. I’m thinking a couple hundred thousand years. Just feels like they have a chance to make it because of their wisdom (seventh generation thinking, etc). Of course, “it only takes one” is always gonna be a threat. But they have a huge advantage of never running into the white man. And I think that single advantage would allow them to make a long run in the history books.
Somehow this took me down an unexpected path of researching white skin. And I was quite surprised at what I found. The “collapse” people I follow have never touched on this. Maybe because the evidence is lacking or the topic is too taboo, or maybe I am just reaching here and its pure nonsense. My findings (not much, because I could not find much) tell me that this creamy white skin does not start showing up until 7,000 years ago in Europe. If this is true, that is some hell-a-weird timing. Most of the people I follow date when the real evil started (or when we fell off the path for good) between 5k-10k years ago.
I’m certainly not implying that white skin is the reason we went down this evil path of agriculture and civilization. I’ve invested a decent amount of time in studying human history and I am fairly convinced that skin color is not super dangerous until we get to the 15th/16th century. That’s when some creamy white skinned European males began devoting time and energy into crazy ideas like scientific racism. (if this type of thinking started 500 years ago, I bet it had been brewing for a couple hundred years prior, but just a guess).
What I think I am implying is that white skin seems like a heck of a trick played out by evolution. 300,000 years of homo sapiens and this skin color does not show up till 7kya? Almost feels like mother earth knew what a plague humans were becoming and decided to add in something that would eventually tear this plague apart.
My anger will always be at the way our story played out. The 1% who control the world. If its all about money, then men take the prize here. Majority of millionaires & billionaires in the world are white American males. And yet out of eight billion people, maybe only 10% are white. And now I learn that the skin color of the majority of the people spearheading our full steam ahead drive over the cliff, did not show up on this planet until 7,000 yrs ago. That is one hell of a story. It needs to be in the mythology of our next religion that Tom Murphy is working on.
Thanks for listening,
Chris
(p.s. Rob, if this is too ugly or just too stupid of a topic in your view…. then please delete my entire comment)
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I’m not an expert on this topic but I would suggest a good path for research would connect the following dots:
1) Skin color is determined by UV intensity of a region and elapsed time since migrating to the region.
2) UV intensity is determined by latitude and climate.
3) Migrations are usually driven by climate change and/or resource availability.
4) Agriculture underpins human overshoot, damage to ecosystems, and hierachical cultures.
5) Agricultural lifestyles began simultaneously in mutiple locations on the planet about 10,000 years ago and were enabled by a change in climate.
6) All 8 billion of us descended from 1 small tribe in east Africa about 200,000 years ago, so we are all basically the same.
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Hello Chris,
Hope you are going well. Thank you for opening an enlightening topic (and yes, I just typed that without realising the pun!) I have had the pleasure of reading your posts but as much as I have wanted to comment my appreciation and support, I did not due to severe time constraints as of late. In reading through your latest I had several thoughts pop into my head and wanted to jot them down at least in outline form (and this is very difficult for me, just ask Rob!) before my life that is not quite my own at this time takes over again! It would be very interesting to follow this rabbit hole (a white rabbit, of course!) and I would think that at the end analysis, the white dominance culture is a product of multiple intertwined factors, some of which happened at a critical time in our overall human development which in conjunction with behaviour paradigms like MPP (and MORT!) steered us conclusively down a certain path, as one possibility out of others which were not chosen. We shall never quite know now how the world would have played out if white man didn’t traverse the seven seas and continents as creator and destroyer.
Thoughts (these are my own rambling ones) :
–Homo Sapiens began in central Africa, an equatorial continent, meaning higher UV strength. The first genetic modification in skin was not so much colour but presence of fur, which we mostly lost. All other animals under the African sun are protected by fur or thick hide, our ingenuity allowed us to forego that protection as we could use the hide of other animals or create/seek shelter. Our closest primate relations the great apes have darker pigmented bare skin, this may have been because of the protection from intense UV and/or have been the evolved balance of ideal melanin concentration for necessary Vit D/hormonal production. Early Homo sapiens probably expressed darker skin colouring for the same purpose.
–when migration from Africa began as a result of resource depletion, those humans that found their way north would have had an evolutionary advantage if they could maximise the benefit of reduced UV due to the higher latitude–these would be lighter skinned variants as they need less exposure to the sun to produce the required Vit D levels whereas darker skinned humans would be lacking Vit D production for many months of the year and have compromised health (as has been demonstrated for migrants today from equatorial countries to the colder and darker latitudes) which would severely reduce fitness for survival. So over time, the ascendancy of lighter skinned humans in the cooler climates prevailed and these were the climates where agriculture and feudal living flourished, cementing the dominance of this culture type rather than the nomadic style of earlier hunter/gatherer societies which matched well with the grassland/savannah fauna of equatorial Africa. Once agriculture took hold, that led to the permanence of the ruling class which had both leisure and power over the serfs, and once the military force to control the underlings was established, the imbalance was irrevocable. Science and technological advances led to discovery of more robust metallurgy and weaponry, which culminated in the invention of guns and now whole swathes of humans could be mowed down from a distance. It was whitish skinned people who had the skills and resources building ships to sail, growing food to feed horse and army, and eventually holding the guns that pointed at darkish skinned ones who were “re-discovered” all around the world, and the rest is also history.
–it probably didn’t help matters that humans in varied cultures came to the same conclusion of conferring higher status to those whiter variants amongst the group, probably because that meant they didn’t have to work slaving under the hot sun and therefore were of a wealthier, more powerful class. Darker skinned people were viewed as little more than a two-legged form of beasts of burden, that is probably why it was so easy to enslave them and/or wholesale exterminate them when their presence became inconvenient. Adjunctly, religion furthered this notion as the deities were transfigured into the image of the ruling class, Jesus being blonde-haired, blue-eyed and white a notable example, even though his ancestry was decidedly Middle-Eastern descent. Asian cultures have this carry-over that whiter is preferable to present day, facial lightener creams are extremely popular.
Thank you for indulging my little exploration. I myself am a honey-browned skinned person who knows first hand of the detrimental health issues when not being able to receive enough UV light in the winter months. It’s amazing the difference I feel when exposed to proper levels of sun for my constitution, it’s literally like a battery being re-charged. I would have been hopeless for lack of energy and strength if I had to live in higher latitude climes, so evolutionarily my genes would not have persisted in such locales. But, give me a good day’s work outside under the sun with hands even darker from the soil and I am as happy as a pig in mud.
I do heartily recommend supplementation of Vit D (5000U) daily throughout the winter months for all those living in such latitudes. Nothing beats naturally derived Vit D made from your own skin, so be sure to super-charge yourself when you can in the summer months. Those who are lighter skinned only require 10 minutes of 50% body surface exposure to max out daily, but the darker skinned one is, the more time required (up to 2 hours daily), build up to it or divide in distinct sessions throughout the day. And it’s not enough to just expose your face and forearms, we weren’t evolved with clothing. It would be preferable to expose larger surfaces like the back and abdomen for some time, too. As for skin cancer risk, my take is that if you are eating a truly nutritious diet overflowing with antioxidants (fruit and veg), that should go a long way to counter damage, also enough water, sleep, no harmful substances, you know the drill. As you can see now, it is virtually impossible for our modern Western living style to achieve this ideal, staying indoors nearly all the hours of the day as most do and then frying ourselves to a crisp on our weeklong holiday to the beach with virgin skin never having seen the sun all year, not to mention our very depleted nutritional status. We are just so far from our evolved natural state, how can we truly achieve health? Sigh.
Hope everyone is finding their own melanin/UV balance amongst everything else.
Namaste, friends.
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Excellent Gaia.
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Thanks Gaia!! That was absolutely beautiful. And this quote is already doing wonders for me:
“So over time, the ascendancy of lighter skinned humans in the cooler climates prevailed and these were the climates where agriculture and feudal living flourished, cementing the dominance of this culture type rather than the nomadic style of earlier hunter/gatherer societies which matched well with the grassland/savannah fauna of equatorial Africa.”
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Dear Chris,
a speculative matter of complexity.
Some speculative questions:
A). Do fair skinned h.sapiens posses higher probability biologically for psychopathy, sociopathy, narcissism, autism, cognitive impairments etc.?
B). Could lack of vitamin D + other factors increase a variation for such tendencies to occur?
C). With the seasonal weather which requires “prepping” to survive the winter.
Competition increases, due to scarcity the most dominant behavioural patterns emerge, combined with A & B could that pose an effect?
7th generation thinking.
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois confederacy) & Oren Lyons.
Chief Lyons said it: ”Natural Law shows no mercy.”
Nice mention Chris, indigenous tribes were/are not perfect as William Rees has said. Yet compared to “western ideology” they sure know what’s up.
Kind regards,
ABC
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Hideaway would add to Berman’s analysis that nuclear is even more expensive than wind & solar.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/renewables-are-not-the-cheapest-form-of-power/
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A lot of the LCOE as done by Lazard is junk, because of the assumptions they make. Solar ‘storage’ is 1, 2 or 4 hours, in other words not even lasting the night. It’s not proper storage so that near 100% capacity factor could be reached.
They also use a 30 year life for utility scale solar, in an era where the panels made 12-15 years ago are failing way too often and being replace in this country. These had 25 year warranties. The ‘new’ panels made of thinner materials like the silicon wafers come with 12-15 warranties and are expected to have a 30 year life.
The lifetime of coal, gas and nuclear is given as 40 years in their assumptions even though 60 years would be more realistic for what history has shown.
They also give the maximum possible capacity factor for solar and wind, while cutting back the actual capacity of coal, gas and nuclear.
Then the biggie, they have a ‘cost’ for coal and gas, even though they are just as free to humanity as wind and solar, so they are not comparing like for like.
If you make all the assumptions even, like a reasonable period for storage of solar and wind, accounting for seasonal variation, and extra transmission lines from various areas for solar and wind, the difference is multiples.
The same applies to the cost of solar, wind, coal, and gas, they are all free, just the cost to mine and move coal or gas should be included. Most coal power plants in this country sit right next to the mine, and have the ‘right’ to mine and use the coal. Applying a high market price for coal is nonsense if you are trying to show a genuine difference in costs.
CCS is a cost included for coal and gas, yet it’s not a cost of energy in a report that is meant to be comparing economic costs. OK, if you want to add the environment costs to burning coal and gas, then also add the environment costs of damage done in all the extra mining for solar, nuclear, wind and batteries, plus add the CCS for all the fossil fuels burnt in their manufacture.
These type of LCOE reports are out to prove a point and adjust all the assumptions to make the report ‘prove’ their belief is correct. Way too many people believe this stuff, we don’t want to be honest with our comparisons which is why we are headed to a fast collapse of modern civilization, once the oil extraction is declining rapidly. At that point all the attempts to fool ourselves and each other will be very obvious.
Here are some sums I worked out for costs to produce 1 TWh of energy from different existing producers.
Saudi oil (refined to products) $1.7M/TWh
Walyering gas $1.7M/TWh
NESF (solar) $35.6M/TWh
Mt Gellibrand Wind Farm $34.3M/TWh
Kogan Creek power plant (coal) $9.1M/TWh
Hinkley PC (nuclear) $66M/TWh
There is no CCS included for anything, nor is there any storage or extra transmission lines for solar and wind. All capacity factors and lifetimes are ‘actual expected’ by the operators and backed up by history in the case of coal, gas and nuclear.
The difference when you take the biases out of Lazard’s assumptions is multiples of what even Art has come up with.
Also no-one seems to be capable of recognising that the huge dollar cost of nuclear is directly related to the energy input in building and operating these monstrosities.
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Amazing. You could forgive small errors. Not errors of this magnitude.
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Tucker Carlson’s killing it. Today he compares quality of life in Russia with the US.
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The problem the west has is it operates from an agenda. That is, the west is superior to any other civilization; 1. Because we have a liberal “democracy” and 2. We have capitalism. But what we really have is a kleptocracy with a veneer of democracy that only serves the interest of an entrenched power /money elite.
AJ
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I’ve been wondering recently why people with deeply held religious beliefs are not at least a little happy that their recently deceased loved one is now in a place where they have eternal joy.
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I think it is because at the very back of everyone’s mind is a big dose of doubt that it is all true. Having grown up in a very religious background I noticed no one was keen to go.
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God and heaven are stories we constructed to elaborate our genetic denial of mortality that emerged with behaviorally modern humans.
The core belief is that souls continue to exist after death.
Our loved ones are still gone from our lives so we are naturally sad despite denying mortality.
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Oh yes, I realise that there will always be sadness that one has to live without a loved one, but that sadness never seems to be tinged with some happiness “knowing” where that loved one now is.
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Human Survivability and Liveability to Heat and Humidity Stress in our Warming World: Not good.
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Rintrah’s thinking that one thing we could do at scale to reduce mRNA damage to immune systems is to use Cannabinoids.
https://www.rintrah.nl/why-people-are-now-constantly-sick-all-the-time/#comment-11566
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Another exchange from yesterday’s Rintrah essay:
https://www.rintrah.nl/why-people-are-now-constantly-sick-all-the-time/#comment-11604
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Dr. Joe Lee is speaking live now.
https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OyKAWbmZwrJb?s=20
Hmmm.. If true, why export young males via the Darien gap? One-child policy created too many males?
Lots of crazies on the call. Covid is a magnet to crazies. Guess that explains why I used to think anti-vaxxers were crazy.
Lee is brutal with crazy/dim people. Doesn’t let them speak.
Call descended into left/right political bullshit.
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James today.
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Indrajit Samarajiva today.
https://indi.ca/collapse/
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You got me checking out indi.ca’s website. I like the emotional/angry tone of it. Problem is the site is very hard on my eyes and gives me headaches (font or color scheme?). Ahhh, the joys of getting older.
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I use the new Immersive Reader feature in Edge which makes all sites look the same and the way I like to view them.
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Maybe Gates does lead the cabal. I don’t know.
I do know he is overshoot aware, energy depletion aware, and understands we must get our population down.
He started by funding fusion research. Then when fusion didn’t work he switched to vaccines. Could be a clue.
Could also mean he’s simply trying to grow his wealth. My guess though is that he really is trying to save the world. That doesn’t mean I agree with what he’s doing, nor does it means he’s being honest with himself. Denial as we know is an extremely powerful force.
P.S. I’ve never seen anyone draw a link between vaccines and population reduction and then say it is a good thing if no one suffers or is killed.
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Hideaway’s still fighting the morons in denial at POB. I used to do some of that when I was younger. Then I learned it is impossible to use logic to break through genetic denial. Hunger might eventually work.
I only copied Hideaway’s work, not the posts he was responding to. If you’d like evidence for genetic denial go check them out.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-10-2023/#comment-770229
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lol… Hideaway is great. I actually think he/she is Art Berman, Simon Michaux or someone like that. I have a hard time with energy (which is why I love Sid Smith), but Hideaway is like an energy oracle.
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Hideaway is better than both Berman and Michaux. Berman is deeper on oil but shallower on other energies and overshoot. Michaux has some worrying woo-woo.
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paqnation … I can assure you I am not any one of those people. I’m a nobody, that first learnt about limits to growth in 1975 in my first year of an Environmental Studies course. I’ve been studying and researching everything about energy and resources for decades. My wife and I moved to the country 40 years ago onto a block of land and started farming.
I was the state secretary of an organic farming group and on the certifying committee over 30 years ago. Virtually all organic, biodynamic, permaculture, regenerative properties I came across had similar characteristics. The profitable ones used lots of off property resources, which I argued was unsustainable, because of diesel use etc. I left the organic movement, also decades ago, because there was nothing really sustainable about it.
I was a believer in a renewable future for decades, always believing it was only a matter of time until they became better and cheaper than fossil fuels, which were clearly depleting. I had an accident 15 years ago, and since then have had way more time to do research than just about anyone. I really got stuck into working out how mines could go ‘green’ until I just couldn’t make the numbers work. (BTW I also had some economics and geology in my tertiary studies, but have learnt way more on both subjects in the last 15 years).
Eventually I reluctantly did my own calculations on EROEI because I just couldn’t find anything with an unbiased approach that came close to making sense. I’ve been against nuclear for decades, mainly because of humanities failure to deal with wastes and the nuclear bombs we create, so I very reluctantly calculated the EROEI using my method and was stunned at the results.
I use to be a believer in the 100:1 EROEI that everyone in favor of nuclear constantly states (before I worked it out for myself). The reality is nothing like that, it’s pitiful worse than solar and wind, which instantly made me realise that modern civilization is not sustainable any any way, shape or form.
I also kept checking the numbers I calculated for Saudi oil and a small gas project in WA. Sure enough these came to the rough numbers we need for modernity, but of course fossil fuels are leaving us due to depletion, they are a dead end anyway, even before we consider climate issues.
All my work, over years, has given me a point of reference for when the world as we know it is in real trouble. It’s when the oil extraction decline accelerates to the downside. Everything runs on oil, especially farming and mining and heavy transport. The world falls to pieces without any of these, once they struggle to get the diesel/bunker fuel they need, collapse is baked in. A date of when? no idea, but suspect we will know by higher oil prices and a failure to respond with greater oil production, then the next year a further decline in oil production, while oil prices remain high etc.
Not even coal can save modernity, the EROEI is too low. Even if we went on a massive Coal to liquids campaign, the energy return for the cost is way too low. When coal was last king we had approximately a 70% rural population even in the west, now we have multiples of the overall population, mostly in cities, and badly degraded agricultural land.
One last aspect on Simon Michaux’s work. I’ve always noticed he didn’t include all the extra energy needed to dig out all the resources he rightly claimed we didn’t have. He based his numbers on total world energy use in 2018. He was and is well aware of the lack of energy available to mine the much lower grades of ores from deeper underground, but never added that to his energy calculations. I have been wondering if he was keeping this up his sleeve for sometime later, or perhaps just used it in quiet conversations with politicians who questioned his ‘public’ work, so he could say he was giving the rosy picture as reality was way worse..
Anyway, thanks for the kind words above, greatly appreciated..
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Thanks for the background Hideaway, very interesting. My ability to guess the age and living of participants here is terrible. I was off by a mile on you.
I too am a disillusioned farmer. The organic farm I assist is completely unsustainable and I often disagree with how precious resources are deployed on “green” initiatives.
I’ve appended an edited version of this comment to your essay above because I think future readers will appreciate learning a bit about you. Send me an email if you want any edits.
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I’m not surprised the organic farm you work on is not really sustainable, none really are. Some claim they are importing nothing, which means they are just mining the soil and ‘something’ will eventually ‘give’.
I listen carefully to people who claim they have a sustainable property these days, and occasionally point out one or two things that are not sustainable. The usual reply is ‘well mostly sustainable’.
I’ve come to the conclusion that farming and agriculture are just unsustainable in the long term (after farming for 40 years). Liebig’s law of the minimum will eventually decrease yields no matter how good the husbandry, unless you import every mineral that goes out via markets, plus add back what gets washed downstream by rain. Some mineral shortage will eventually show up as increases in pests and diseases, decimating whatever crop you are trying to grow. That usually happens before any outward signs of shortages in plants themselves. Animals are just extensions of the quality of inputs for the plants.
As the collection and transport of all wastes from cities back to farms is very energy intensive, it’s not possible when oil is gone and it’s not happening while we have a lot of oil either.
The real problem of anyone trying to be just self sufficient on their property, is that our modern civilization demands that you pay taxes for the privilege of ‘owning’ property (sole occupying realistically, when we die we own or have nothing, the land owns us, not the other way around). To pay the taxes, you have to make money, so are forced into the modern world. Every person that claims they are going to be self sufficient overlooks this simple reality. Possibly the enjoyment of being young and naive.
Like most ‘aware’ people I’m in the older part of life at 67. I suspect we all need the wisdom of age that tells/shows us how unsustainable and temporary modern civilization really is.
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Very good point about taxes. Age does bring a different perspective. I don’t know what I would have done as a young man if I knew then what I know now.
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Nothing that humans do when embedded in an unsustainable society can be sustainable.
Tom Murphy has a go at thinking about sustainability in his latest essay.
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I love your fine understanding of these topics: energy and agriculture.
Correct me if I didn’t understand well.
Reading your comment did not lead me “to the conclusion that farming and agriculture are just unsustainable in the long term”.
Rather, it seems to me exportation of the produce (more precisely the minerals contained) to the city is the unsustainable part (taking without replacing).
Which goes back to the notion that civilization (life in cities) is unsustainable. To be more precise, it seems to me a certain level of concentration (of people, minerals, power…) is unsustainable because flows must redistribute and they require energy.
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Thanks for that reply Hideaway. I love to hear life journeys of people who “get it”. And maybe you’re not Art or Simon, but I think you should be a guest on Nate Hagens channel.
(p.s. Thats a nightmare scenario for me by the way. Becoming an expert at something and then content creators seeking me out for interviews. I dont have the self-confidence, I get easily flustered, and my anger usually gets the best of me. It would have to be audio only, and I’d probably still end up telling Nate to “fu*k off” on a live broadcast. haha)
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Ditto for me. I’d blow a gasket with Hagens for his silence on population reduction and mRNA.
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Here is a classic example of how most (all?) covid dissidents have other wacky beliefs grounded in denial.
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James Howard Kunstler interviewed Art Berman today.
Apparently they had some heated disagreements. Will listen later today.
https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-395-art-berman-on-the-us-oil-scene/
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Definately some tension between them. My guess is Berman does not respect Kunstler’s knowledge of the energy space and does not want to be associated with a doomer message. Berman does back flips trying to explain that a coming decline in oil supply will not be a big deal. Kunstler thinks Berman is spinning hopium.
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Mmm, will have to have a listen. Art has come over, to me, as someone who doesn’t like being disagreed with but seems to prefer reality to hopium.
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I made it to 28 minutes and had to abandon the podcast. Berman states the Natural Gas pipeline (Nordstream) that was blown up “never had gas flowing through it” and yet we all saw video of enormous quantities of gas (under massive pressure) able to make it to the sea surface.
Berman obviously understands the relationship between production-rate and market-price but seems lost by geopolitics.
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There was gas in the pipeline but it had not then delivered any gas. At least according to Wikipedia. Is that wrong?
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Something big happening in Ukraine. Avdiivka may be captured by the Russians soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Avdiivka_(2022%E2%80%93present)
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/planetary-scare-russian-doomsday
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It’s not just Fauci. It’s western world insanity and it’s getting worse rather than better.
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This is something that has been deeply troubling me since the start of covid. There has been zero substantive political opposition on any of the issues. There is no one to vote for that will ban mRNA and put Fauci in prison.
Why?
It could mean that most citizens agree with what we are doing. That’s even more troubling given the science and evidence.
Perhaps the tribe senses scarcity and conflict on the horizon and is saying “get in line and follow the rules”.
https://soniaelijah.substack.com/p/frances-pfizer-amendment-could-turn
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I think she means there was no public debate. (I myself wasn’t aware and am just discovering now about this law)
However, from what is explained here (https://lcp.fr/actualites/derives-sectaires-l-assemblee-adopte-le-projet-de-loi-en-retablissant-la-creation-d-un), it seems the law still seemed difficult to pass precisely because of article 4.
The article was rejected a first time (116 against 108) https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/scrutins/detail/(legislature)/16/(num)/3365, then presented a second time with a new version and passed (182 against 137) https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/scrutins/detail/(legislature)/16/(num)/3367
Then the whole law was passed (151 to 73) https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/scrutins/detail/(legislature)/16/(num)/3368
No, I don’t think all citizens agree with what is happening. On the contrary. But, there is a disproportionate power play: some (the “they” pulling the strings in the dark 🙂 own most medias, are able to corrupt many politicians, lobby institutions, buy many scientists, put pressure on the rest of them…
The whole system is rigged from top to bottom.
It’s probably too late for it to be renovated and, in the middle term, I see only two outcomes: tyranny or collapse (or the gong show as you like to call it). And I think it is going to be an increasingly impotent tyranny within a collapsing system.
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Thanks Charles for giving us the view from your home in France.
Although it’s all predictable I find it very distressing. We have more than enough biophysical problems to worry about without also having to worry about unethical/evil leaders.
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The Achilles Heel of Global Food Supply: Farmers Can’t Work in Extreme Heat and Humidity
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Here’s another good deep conversation about how the US and Europe have lost their political and institutional wisdom and intelligence.
The participants are I believe overshoot blind. I would love to hear equally competent people discuss world affairs in the context of resource scarcity and looming economic collapse.
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Big things are shifting in the middle east.
All regular Arab citizens now agree Israel must be obliterated and want war. Previously unfriendly countries are aligning against Israel. US likely to be pushed out of the region. This is the most dangerous point in the region for hundreds of years. Col. Macgregor is worried Israel won’t survive.
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The smart climate people are really worried.
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I just heard of this story where Putin is urging Russian women to have three or more children. In a quick search, he’s been urging this sort of thing for several years.
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Aren’t they all the same: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240117-natalist-macron-sparks-uproar-revive-france-birth-rate…
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Hideaway at POB today…
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-10-2023/#comment-770390
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Yes, it’s likely impossible for 8 billion humans to return to a hunter gatherer lifestyle. However, I suppose the huge numbers of domesticated animals could be released into the wild by tearing down all of the fences.
Your comments about humans wiping out the megafauna prompted a thought. Humans wouldn’t have even known that their hunting was unsustainable, at least not until it was probably too late. However, as we’ve seen, even knowledge of the effects of out behaviours has not prompted a change in them. A species does what species do.
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You are selective about what you acknowledge species do.
Our species uses it uniquely powerful intelligence to form hypotheses and to perform experiments to validate its hypotheses resulting in theories than explain how our natural world works. We then use these theories to modify our natural world in ways that benefit our species.
That’s one of the things our species does. Except when it conflicts with some other things our species does.
Acknowledging that our species evolved to deny unpleasant realities is a much more satisfying explanation of what is going on.
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What does using our knowledge to our advantage conflict with? Humans are clever and can modify our environment much more quickly and widely that other species but that doesn’t turn them into a not-species.
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Antonio Turiel today on AMOC.
Tough to read this one. He ends by recommending we pull the emergency brake and cut fossil energy use by 90% in one year.
Kind of like fixing brain cancer with decapitation.
https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2024/02/si-nuestra-supervivencia-fuera.html
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I know there have been other periods like this but it gets scary when the graph turns almost vertical.
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Nate Hagens recaps his India trip.
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OK friends, let’s recap world affairs…
Did I miss anything important?
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Thanks a lot Rob. You got me thinking….. I’m sure most people share my extreme fear of dying from hunger. I hope our collapse is quick (the slow hundred year drawdown version is not even fun to speculate about). The power going out and never coming back on is how I picture it starting. And I’m sure hopium is dripping in full here. I imagine waking up every hour and thinking the power is back on (something like the classic twilight zone episode “The Midnight Sun”). After the nearby stores are completely empty, most of us will just sit in our house and wait till we run out of food/water while simultaneously praying no bad people come knocking.
This is where “community” will shine for some well-prepared people. But not for most of us because “the system” has done a great job at isolating everyone. I dont know any of my neighbors, and they are never outside (in fact my bullshit HOA even has a rule that car garages have to be kept shut). So we are all locked up in our own houses with an occasional opening of the door to pick up yet another delivery of junk from Amazon. This is not “living”. Sid Smith’s newest video touches on how (from an ecological perspective) we humans are a completely different species because of the energy bonanza. It’s so easy to instantly know what he is talking about when you are “collapse aware”. But nobody can break thru to the masses with this “so obvious a child could grasp it” knowledge. But who I am to judge, 5 years ago I would not have understood what Sid was talking about. So maybe the only path is individually, once you have that feeling that something is wrong in the world, then you have to “hope” you are researching the correct rabbit holes. Uggh, we have no chance if that’s what has to happen.
But back to our demise. After our 2-4 week food/water supply runs out (I live with my mom, brother, two cats, one dog), some tough decisions are gonna have to me made. End it all now? Venture out into the unknown? I think thats it for options. I am the only doomer (they are somewhat collapse aware, but only because I cant shut up about it), so it feels like I’ll be the leader of the family. And all that really means is that I’ll probably be the most sane person because I spend my free time on sites like this. I dont think venturing outside is an option (amazing! i’ll be too lazy even at the end of the world). So what then? A nice cozy family suicide? Well even if I am successful at convincing my mom and brother, the hardest part is obviously going thru with it. My exit strategy is inert gas, but I think it’s only enough for one or two of us. The backup plan is the only gun in my household. And just thinking of shooting my animals is enough to get me teary eyed right now. Maybe let the animals loose and into the wild. But that is surely a death sentence for these domesticated, loveable creatures who would have no idea how to hunt for their own food (just like me).
And then there is the “timing” factor. I’m in Arizona. If this happens during our 110-degree days, then forget the 2-4 weeks of supplies, we probably only have a couple days before we melt away. Ahhh, what a lovely story ha?
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Awareness is very tough. Denial is better but unfortunatley once you see overshoot you can’t un-see it.
I’m VERY sorry if I was the one that made you aware.
My modest advice for feeling better is:
1) Be aware that pretty much every doomer including me thought things would unravel 10+ years ago, which means things will probably continue much longer than people like me predict.
2) Do something useful to prepare for tough times. You will feel better.
3) Get out into nature and really appreciate how good things are now.
4) We’re all going to die someday, often unpleasantly, even without collapse. That’s life. Look after your health and enjoy it now.
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Good advice. Reason #1 is how I can even still function at this point. And I was only teasing you. I was well aware prior to finding your wonderful website.
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Thank goodness. I don’t want to cause depression in others. There was a day when I hoped to motivate wise responses to overshoot. Now I just want to bare witness to what is happening on a vanishingly rare planet. And of course to hang out with a few nice people that see what I see.
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Yes, I’m amazed at how long the can can be kicked down the road (and has been). One of the things that confuses me is that crude oil (+ condensates) production peaked in November 2018, but, though the decline hasn’t really yet set in, this doesn’t seem to have had a broad effect on global economies. Some are now slipping into recession so maybe this is where the collapse begins in earnest.
I’ve done some things to prepare: moving to a rural property on the edge of a small town and trying to grow as much edible plants and trees as possible, and eating healthily. But I’m under no illusions that I’ll reach my targets before collapse affects me, nor that, even if I do, that will give me and my family more than breathing space to brace for what’s coming.
I guess that if I could persuade my wider family to do whatever we could (I can’t) we’d move to a remote location deep withing a natural forest in the south of the country. However, the local council there would undoubtedly stop us doing anything to set up a home there.
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I moved to the country during Covid. It’s a much harder life living out here and I finally appreciate how nice the suburbs are. If it wasn’t for peak oil, I’d live in the city near a nice beach if I could afford it – and just enjoy life. Damn this lack of denial gene!
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Here is a new high integrity analysis that concludes mRNA and bad policies are the cause of increased all-cause mortality.
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The “Ethical” Skeptic appears to be a climate change denier. Even if climate change were not a problem we would still have to deal with all the other symptoms of overshoot including but not limited to:
Ocean Acidification
6th Mass Extinction
Depletion of Non Renewable Resources
Deforestation
Physical Water Scarcity
Top Soil Erosion
It is quite sad that most critics of the Covid vaccines are climate change deniers. You and John Michael Greer seem to be among the few exceptions. By denying climate change, critics of the vaccines destroy their credibility.
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Dammit. I didn’t notice that. I thought he was clean.
It’s so hard to find anyone that does not have some serious denial somewhere.
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Per capita:
In 1861~1865, with a US population of about 31,444,000, and 654,500 civil war deaths, this equals about one death for every 48 people.
Disease caused more deaths than any other cause:
https://www.civilwaracademy.com/civil-war-diseases
In 2020-2024, with a population of about 331,449,000, and 1,252,000 ‘covid’ related deaths, there was about one death for every 264 people.
I don’t know the demographics, but am guessing that in 1860 the average age was lower than it is now. I know some young people are dying now, but Is ‘covid’ mostly a faster harvest of the elderly?
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The disease itself only killed the elderly or those with comorbidities. mRNA seems to harm all ages.
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Must watch. Mind seriously blown.
Tucker Carlson takes a deep dive into how democracy and public opinion are shaped and censored by deep state interests.
Now I understand why so many intelligent people I used to respect were manipulated to believe obviously untrue covid stories.
Here’s a couple interesting dots to connect. The interview did not draw this connection, I saw it.
Since the deep state apparatus for censoring and controlling public thought via social media shifted into overdrive in 2016, BY FAR, their two biggest campaigns have been:
1) covid
2) mail-in ballots for the 2020 election
Notice that 1) created the “need” for 2) which may have influenced the election.
Add an unethical pharma industry looking for a reason to bypass long-term safety testing, which they know would fail, for an mRNA platform they believe is required for a profitable growing business, and you have pretty much everything needed to explain what happened.
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I fault everyone even myself for going along with this mRNA junk. I was well aware of the failures of Gene therapy, 10 to 20 years ago. Since it held so much promise for big pharma, it was rebranded as mRNA and rushed out in the pandemic. If I had spent a little more time researching it, I would never have done even the first shot, so let’s call it what it is, Novel (failed before), gene therapy.
After listening to this excellent podcast, I have no doubt that all of us are now in the database to be removed if and when the deep state takes complete control. Edward Snowden and Julian Assange have been trying to warn us about all of this, and look where it’s gotten them.
AJ
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In hindsight I can see the power of coordinated media. I’d notice a unified message wave across all news channels. like the miracle of how operation warp speed tested mRNA without cutting any safety corners, and then I’d visit friends and relatives and they’d parrot those messages signaling their intentions and trying to persuade me to do the same.
It was quite remarkable how we were played.
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Why Gaza May Be The End Of The West
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The hypocrisy and evil of the west for not only allowing this, but also funding and providing the weapons, will never be forgiven by billions. I agree there will be big consequences.
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I’ve said it before, the Israelis have morphed from the victims of Nazism to being the perpetrators of genocide. It all goes along with the belief that you are superior to all other people. Hubris before the fall.
AJ
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The languaging they use to describe gaza people is horrific.
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Very good discussion on the history of how the US is responsible for the loss of all nuclear arms agreements.
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Hi Rob,
Always remember that Col. Wilkerson is pro vaccine. He castigated US Service members that refused to take the jab. Consequently, I parse his positions very carefully because he has significant blind spots. I suspect that he took the vaccine though I do not remember seeing a video were he said so publicly.
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https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/02/17/or-to-put-it-another-way/
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I wish Chuck Watson would write more frequently.
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I don’t blame him for keeping quiet. He gets swamped with hate e-mails and death threats whenever he writes about Russia/Ukraine. In the State Department, those with dissenting R/U opinions keep quiet — it’s all Ukraine-good-Russia-bad all the time.
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A new one today from Radagast.
https://www.rintrah.nl/the-abnormal-antibody-response-persists/
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Has anyone ever heard a credible reason for why they required boosters?
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yes, to make more money silly
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Dr. Lee finally responded with a very clear and thoughtful dismissal of Radagast’s hypothesis.
What a prick.
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Maybe Lee will turn out to be the one full of useless ideas.
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Yes, that’s possible. It might explain why Weinstein, Martenson, Malone, McCullough, Couey, Bossche, Rancourt, etc. are ignoring string theory.
I think there’s a high probability string theory is correct, and Gaia who knows more than me agrees. The best evidence for this is the total silence from all the institutions. If they had a good rebuttal we’d of heard it by now.
I suspect people are ignoring Lee because it will be VERY embarrasing for all the regulators, and pro-vax experts, and anti-vax dissidents to have missed an obvious dangerous flaw that has existed for 50+? years.
Kind of hard to say “oops sorry” when you’re mandating dozens of vaccines into every new baby, and autism for some unknown reason (maybe brain clots?) is increasing.
So we may witnessing denial via MORT on steroids.
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I thought autism had been increasing for years? Perhaps due to the cocktail of chemicals in the air that ramps up continuously.
If string theory hasn’t gained much traction, that could be a good enough reason for not seeing rebuttals. Doesn’t mean it’s not correct but I think there would need to be wider knowledge of the theory for others to feel it worth rebutting, if they have heard of it at all.
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Clots are not exclusive to mRNA. Lee claims 50% of vaccines in use today cause clots. Something to do with the size/shape of the antigen/antibody.
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https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/easy-to-read/child-easyread.html
US CDC today recommends 11 vaccines, some injected multiple times, for a total of about 38 shots for every child.
https://historyofvaccines.org/activities/history-immunization-schedule
Vaccines:
– 1958 (my birth): 3 vaccines
– 1980: 3
– 1990: 5
– 2000: 9
– 2024: 11 vaccines (38 shots)
Autism:
1980: 1 in 2000
2000: 1 in 159
2010: 1 in 68
2020: 1 in 36
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060815102230.htm
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Dr. John Campbell has recently focussed on the clotting issue. Don’t know if he is aware of Dr. Joe Lee’s string theory.
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Yes, definitely on the rise for a long time. Regarding the correlation with some potential factor, as you know, that doesn’t prove causation at all. It’s also correlated with economic growth and population growth.
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Your open-mindedness would be more persuasive if you said “Hmmm, it deeply troubles me that they’re not investigating this. Doing autopsies on unusual deaths since 2020 would be a good start.”
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Unusual deaths? But, regarding autism, the increase should be investigated, or at least factors that may cause autism should be investigated. I’ve a feeling it already is; I’ll take a look.
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Make sure you check for pharma conflicts of interest with every author of every study you look at.
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I couldn’t find anything that didn’t emanate from a health body but there is little consensus on the causes with the possible vaccine link being ruled out. A Lancet 2013 paper by Andrew Wakefield, suggesting a link between Thimerosal, a preservative in some vaccines, and autism, was later withdrawn. Thimerosal has not been used in childhood vaccinations since 2001, though (other than the flu vaccine). A common theme seems to be that doctors are becoming more aware of autism and so are diagnosing the condition more readily than in the past, not that this is the only cause of the increase. Exposure to pollutants during pregnancy was also mentioned and pollution with chemicals has increased. However, there are probably thousands of activities that have increased over the decades which are correlated with each other but not causative.
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“with the possible vaccine link being ruled out”
Isn’t it remarkable that the vaccine link has also been ruled out for elevated all-cause mortality since 2020?
Somehow they’re certain that fiddling with one complex system causes no problems, yet uncertain about the effect of many other complex systems.
Perhaps all the really smart people work on vaccines?
Did you see a comparison of autism rates in the US with a similarly developed country that injects their children with fewer vaccines? That would be an obvious place to start.
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No, but I did see a WHO estimate of 1 in 100 autism rate worldwide. At the time, a CDC estimate (not WHO estimate) for the US was 1 in 50.
Regarding rising deaths, in NZ that hasn’t been the case, beyond expected from a growing and ageing population (in fact age-standardised deaths are lower than before COVID-19). I don’t know about other countries apart from Australia which also doesn’t have a rise when population growth is accounted for.
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There is also possibly a link between autism and oxalates, which definitely needs more research.
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I’m reluctant to share this because artsy films are so love/hate. But this movie was so good I can’t help myself. Its themes and monologues are sure to interest some of you. ‘The Wall’ (2012). Filmed in beautiful Austria. Incorrectly labeled as a sci-fi thriller, it’s more about isolation, nature and survival. The way the story is told, feels like you’re reading a book. Free on a few streaming platforms. I watched it on Tubi.
(here’s a sample of the excellent writing)
“I pity animals and I pity people because they are thrown into this life without being consulted. Maybe people are more deserving of pity because they have just enough intelligence to resist the natural cause of things. It has made them malicious and desperate. And not very loveable. And yet life could have been lived differently. There’s no impulse more reasonable than love. It makes life more bearable for the loving and the loved one. But we should’ve recognized in time that this was our only chance, our only hope for a better life. For an endless army of the dead, mankind’s only chance has vanished forever. I keep thinking about that. I can’t understand why we had to take the wrong path. I only know, it’s too late.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall_(2012_film)
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Thanks for the tip. Downloading now.
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I watched this tonight and enjoyed it. Nice change of pace from the usual movies I watch.
Beautiful setting and very nice cinematography with a back to nature survival theme and a hint of collapse awareness.
My brain doesn’t do poetry so I’m not certain about the message. Maybe something about enjoying the ride regardless of the road. Or maybe to achieve happiness we need to shut up that damn voice in our head.
Definitely something about dogs being much nicer than people.
Gail Zawacki loved poetry. She would have written a brilliant essay about this movie.
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Glad you enjoyed it. Ya, my main takeaway was that modern humans are the only species (in history) that do not belong here. But your website is slowly making me adjust the start date to 100-200k years ago.
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If you’re interested in big picture things happening in the global financial system you will enjoy this interview of Luke Gromen by Grant Williams.
There’s a lot here but I’m only going to highlight a few points.
1) 20% of the world’s oil is already trading outside US dollars, mostly yuan backed by gold.
2) US is already in a fiscal/debt crisis. The problem is too much debt, too much deficit, and not enough price-insensitive buyers of the debt. In the past if the Fed needed more buyers it could increase the interest rate. It can’t do that today because there’s too much debt.
The fed is trapped:
– If it cuts short term rates then people sell the long end and rates go up.
– If it raises short term rates then the dollar goes up causing foreigners to sell treasuries and long end rates go up.
What options do they have for “solving” the problem?
1) Create a new everything bubble by forcing the US dollar down. They didn’t explain why this happy option won’t work. Maybe someone reading this can explain?
2) Raise taxes: not politically possible today and won’t help for long because of harm to the economy.
3) Find a productivity miracle. These guys are not overshoot/energy aware so what they really mean is discover a bunch of cheap oil.
4) Kill senior citizens to reduce the huge cost of keeping them alive for their last few years.
So now we can connect another possible dot to the covid story (this is my speculation, they did not discuss this):
1) Launch a fake or mild pandemic.
2) That requires mail-in ballots to elect someone on board with the plan.
3) Whip up panic so it’s easy to hide killing elderly people with a) isolation from family b) ventilators, remdesivir, medazolam, etc. c) withholding antibiotics, ivermectin, etc. d) moving sick people into extended care homes, etc. e) finish off any stragglers with mRNA boosters.
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Luke Gromen missed a 5th possible solution to the fiscal/debt crisis.
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Iraq has Lost 70% of its Farmland
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scary
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Nice, Gail Tverberg made it to ZeroHedge.
Most of the comments are about abiotic oil and the climate change hoax.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/10-reasons-why-world-cant-run-without-fossil-fuels
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I wonder if the more peak oil reality hits us in the face, the more the abiotic oil paradigm will spread…
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The easiest reply to abiotic oil is to agree to the concept but just state that the refilling time is 1000’s x slower than the extraction time. THat way you agree with them but still show it is useless. Always ask for an example of a oil deposit that has been extracted that has come back to full capacity. There isn’t one.
Of course all of this requires interacting with an idiot so why bother.
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I’ve tried that, but they’re all convinced the refill rate is whatever time suits their denial gene. You also get a lot of people who I suspect were laborers who worked in oil fields, and say they remember so and so field being closed up until it refilled. Any geologist / engineer will know that’s just the pressure rebuilding and doesn’t prove the earth is making more oil. I’ve just started saying these people are no different to flat earthers and I’m convinced a lot of them are fake accounts / paid to disrupt peak oil spaces.
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I’ve noticed an uptick in such references. I wonder how they deal with the fact that crude oil production peaked in November 2018 (so far)?
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They seriously are as dumb as flatearthers
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Biophysical reality couldn’t care less about what Zerohedge readers think.
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Found this song from an old Michael Dowd comment on reddit. I dont love it, but great concept and lyrics.
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I paid respects to my deceased friend Gail Zawacki by re-listening to this 2018 interview with her on my walk today.
You’d be hard pressed to find another interview by any other Themist that does a better job of articulating all of the overshoot issues we face.
Gail had a great mind with amazing awareness and dot-connecting ability. I miss her a lot.
Does anyone here know if her Facebook group is still up and running? I used to be an active member until I closed my Facebook account many years ago.
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First time listening to Gail. For it being 6 years ago she really had put everything together quite well. She appeared to be quite close to where Tom Murphy is now. The only problem was she didn’t identify the U.S. as a potential problem in destroying the world and identified herself as a liberal. The chance that we destroy ourselves by a nuclear war didn’t seem to be in her lexicon. Denial at work? Otherwise an excellent interview.
AJ
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I’m pretty sure Gail was worried about nuclear war. I suspect it was an oversight in an unscripted conversation.
Her comment on Trump brought back a flood of memories. She was such a rational person on all matters and then when Trump was elected she went a little crazy with a singular focus on destroying him. I saw that in a lot of Americans including Sam Harris who I used to follow. Trump broke something.
I think Gail felt collapse would begin with evil populists taking power and doing bad things like unwinding women’s rights. She saw Trump as the start of this.
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Ya, I enjoyed this interview a lot. Made me look for more. Surprisingly, I’ve had her lovely “The silent war on trees redux” bookmarked for years. Found a good radio interview with video from a hot air balloon on her channel from 2011. She reminds me of Donella Meadows and Mary Evelyn Tucker because I can listen to these people talk about anything. (their voices are just so relaxing)
Do you know of any other interviews with Gail?
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Radio Ecoshock podcast episodes 185 and 295. If you can’t find them I have offline copies I can share.
I have what may be the only copy in existence of all 26 episodes of her Dispatch from the Endocene report she did for Extinction Radio in 2015. I can share if you want but be aware it is 500MB.
Here is a collection of my favorite written work by Gail:
https://un-denial.com/page/2/?s=Zawacki%3A
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Hey Rob. I was able to find those 2 episodes of Radio Ecoshock. And I read your favorite Gail works from the link. One of these days I might take you up on your kind offer for those 26 episodes.
Question. Do you know if Gail personally knew David Graeber? Heard her talking about Occupy wall street and it got me curious.
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Sorry I don’t remember Gail discussing Graeber but my memory’s not very good so she may have.
Here’s a couple photos of Gail you may not have seen:
https://desdemonadespair.net/2022/06/the-diva-of-doom-remembering-the-late-great-gail-zawacki-in-the-end-what-matters-more-than-time/
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She was quite a character. Wish I had known her. You were lucky. With each interview/article I just end up liking her even more. And that was a real good tribute by James Galasyn. A couple things had me smiling from ear to ear:
The details of how she was highly critical of Dmitry Orlov’s speech at the Age of Limits conference.
God bless you Gail. RIP
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One of few women I have met in my life that I could have fallen in love with.
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The latest from Alice Friedemann at Energy Skeptic.
https://energyskeptic.com/2024/what-percent-of-americans-are-rational/
The odds of avoiding collapse back to nearly nothing are totally overwhelming given the stupid beliefs of most people. Given the percentages of so many wacky things people believe, what hope is there for reality to prevail?
There is obviously something causing human irrationality, denial of reality is very, very real. Denial is obviously very comforting in all facets of existence and had to provide some type of advantage to early humans. Humans definitely have a delusional trait and being a ‘gene’ is as good an excuse as any.
Think of a young child 100,000 years ago, who is able to walk independently. They have to believe whatever the parents or elders of the group say, as in wherever to go, those that don’t, quickly get separated from the group and are easy prey. Clear survival benefit for those that just believe following others ‘knowledge’ is correct.
The denial mechanism/gene might be something to do with the time it takes for a human child to grow into an adult. The very mechanism that made humans so successful on this planet, is highly likely to be the same mechanism that brings about our destruction.
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I think Dr. Varki would mostly agree with the following.
To have as powerful and programmable a brain as ours it must complete development outside of the womb, hence the long and dependent childhood.
A brain this powerful that can model an extended theory of mind will eventually become aware of mortality.
Mortality awareness would depress activities necessary for survival so fitness would drop.
To retain this powerful and useful brain evolution had to find a way of denying mortality.
It’s likely (but not certain) that a mutation to damp our fear module was discovered.
This had a side effect of causing our species to deny all unpleasant realities including mortality.
Hence our species smokes tobacco, drives cars. basejumps, scuba dives, threatens the border of a rival nuclear power, denies all aspects of overshoot, and injects mRNA.
Denial of mortality explains why we are the only species on this planet with gods and religions, and why those gods and religions emerged simultaneous with our extended theory of mind.
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It’s hard to think of humans as just another species. It could be the desire to think of humans as special (in a biological sense) that leads to a search for the reason why humans do such stupid things. But Occam’s Razor may apply; humans are a species.
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For those who are tempted to believe there is nothing unusual about the human species compared to other species including close relatives, here are lists of unique human behaviors:
https://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics
My favorite remains God.
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I doubt anyone thinks humans aren’t unusual, as a species. Many species are. But, yes, they certainly have a lot of odd behaviours, which probably supports a view that they, somehow, aren’t really a species, doing species things. Derrick Jensen’s book, The Myth of Human Supremacy isn’t exactly what you’re referring to but is a good book to rid of the notion that humans are special.
Rob, I realise this can be a delicate subject. Certainly humans exhibit mental traits which effectively deny the reality of what our actions are doing. But I think that can be explained in species terms. Why do you think it can’t?
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It is delicate. One possible explanation is that you are a normal human and I am a defective human.
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Or the reverse. Mind you, it might be that all humans are defective. God needs to try again. Humans Mk 2.
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Not likely. The universe’s peak intelligence has hit peak everything and it’s all downhill from here.
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Was reading some of your older posts and saw some comments from Michael Dowd. Was entertaining. And pretty tame compared to other Dowd comments I’ve seen. There are some old reddit forums where he is cursing up a storm and viciously attacking people that don’t agree with him. I actually like to see this because even Dowd could not stay in that perfect “collapse – true acceptance” space that we are all striving for. I can’t get there at all but gives me some comfort to know that even my “hero” fell off the wagon sometimes. But ya, it looks like he finally caved in on the “thousands of cultures living sustainably by choice” thing.
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Yes, my one phone conversation with Michael got really heated on the sustainable hunter gatherer issue. He later apologized.
The Gail Zawacki inteview a few comments above discusses the “humans have always been unsustainable” issue. Here I agree with Mike. We are behaving like any MPP driven species.
The interesting bit is how do we do it with a brain smart enough to know better?
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Ya, I am in the middle of that Gail interview right now (and loving it!)
And sorry, I meant to post my original comment under the Gail post.
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Woohoo! Maybe some bargains on the way before it all collapses.
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Paging AJ, our resident nuclear war expert.
Do you think the US will walk away from a decisive Russian victory?
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Here’s Simplicius the Thinker’s answer to the same question:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-21824-avdeevka-liberated
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Yes, I think there is a good chance the U.S. will walk away from a Russian victory in Ukraine (and just let the MSM ignore it). Biden has so many domestic issues and the Blob has other fish to fry (who to elect as Biden’s replacement, keeping the economy from imploding, staving off a civil war). But as Chuck Watson has said many times “Proud Prophet” war gaming showed all scenarios led to escalation and a nuclear exchange.
However, I think Netanyahu is insane (or just cornered) and has no way out other than escalating. When Hezbollah starts seriously entering the fray and Israeli losses go up dramatically (and rockets rain down on Israeli cities); Israel will probably resort to nuking Iran and then all bets are off for restraining Russia and China.
Hopefully I am wrong.
AJ
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That’s encouraging. I am worried the US doesn’t have the ability to stand down with Russia.
Israel is in serious trouble I think and US politics won’t let it go down.
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Digital Technologies have an ecological footprint.
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110 views in a month. Over an hour in length. The host (Eric Olson) was good, clear voice, good editing, reasonable questions. The guest (Pitron), is not English first language, needs a much better microphone / room.
There are four embedded adverts.
For a lay person with almost zero knowledge, the video might be useful.
At the 50′ mark, the host literally describes Jevons paradox, but doesn’t use that term, neither does the guest.
When asked what can people do, to reduce their digital ecological impact – Pitron responds (paraphrased):
– keep devices for longer (because of embedded energy)
– watch videos at lower resolution.
– etc.
A few years ago I might have also expected:
– buy the cheapest device that works for you
– or cell phones, get a prepaid MVNO deal (Ultra Mobile, Mint Mobile, etc.)
But that was before I realized, it doesn’t make any difference.
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Copy and paste from above :
** The climate is warming much faster than expected because we underestimated CO2 sensitivity and aerosol masking.
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Here’s a video summarizing Denis Rancourt’s study of all-cause mortality that concludes mRNA has killed 17 million people so far.
FYI: Rancourt denies climate change.
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B is doing the deepest and most original thinking in the overshoot space these days.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/entropy-a-revelation
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B is on fire lately. He just squashed my fantasy of some civilization in the universe successfully making it thru their fossil energy era. Looks like it’s impossible to avoid quadrant #4.
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I beat B by 10 years to the punchline by saying homo sapiens today are the peak of what is possible in the universe.
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I just read your essay. Excellent (most impressive to me is that its from 2015). Got me wondering why I never heard about you and this website (ever) during my four year journey down this collapse rabbit hole. Erik Michaels is the reason I found you and that was only a month ago (of course it could be recency bias and maybe your name did come up during my journey, but I never took notice).
This essay should have been read by Dowd on his soundcloud site. IDK, maybe you rub people the wrong way. But I get the sense that you are a good person (you’re not rude to people in comments, and I dont see any “waste of time” content).
Maybe MORT is just not sexy enough and its too hard to sell it.
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One possibly is that I’m not a very good writer. Another possibility is that genetic denial is a very unpopular topic. Another possibility is they don’t want to be associated with someone promoting population reduction.
For 10 years I have promoted and supported the work of other doomers. Not one of the big names has ever supported me in any way.
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Gail Tverberg had very good words to say about you Rob. That is how I found your site some 8 yrs ago now.
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That’s nice to know. I respect Tverberg very much. I used to hang out at her site until it was taken over by crazies.
In case anyone here is unaware, Tverberg will get credit for understanding that oil prices will not stay high with scarcity. Gail has argued I think convincingly that the oil price will swing wildly with scarcity but eventually the price will be low and most will be unable to afford it.
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I agree with Tverberg and wonder if that was her position before the end of TheOilDrum.com pre October 2013.
Temporary excursions above the ceiling are only possible when credit is available – less so contemporaneously.
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Yes and it was one of the core issues that caused tensions between the people that ran the Oil Drum.
If prices stay high you can argue that conservation, substitution, technology etc. might save advanced civilization.
If you believe prices will be low then you accept an unrecoverable collapse back to pre-industrial conditions.
I think Gail and Nate Hagens differed on this issue.
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Yeah, Gail Tverberg does some great analysis. Her failings are that she often misrepresents climate models (as well as being something of a denier) and she frequently spoils her analysis by thinking a higher power could well step in and save us from collapse.
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This perspective is spot on.
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Gail’s site is much more successful than un-Denial.
It could be due to her superior research and writing skills.
Or it could be due to her faith in god, skepticism of climate change, and never ever discussing things a wise species should do like reducing our population.
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Eric Michaels is the only doomer that I have blocked. To get his site up and running he copy and pasted a big chunk of my site without permission or attribution.
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Wow! That really sucks. Selfishly, I hope it does not affect my liking of Erik’s stuff.
And dont sell yourself short… you are a great writer
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Agreed. And In defense of Erik, he seems to link to you more and more in recent posts. Your writing is great. I just think that most people don’t like to deal with the population reduction problem. And denial of unpleasant realities are part of what make up most people’s personality.
AJ
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Thanks kindly.
Another of my weaknesses is that I don’t do very much original research, unlike people like Tverberg, Martenson, Watkins, Murphy, etc..
I prefer to connect dots between people much smarter than me.
Another factor is that I’ve probably made some enemies.
I’m totally ok with people who have concluded that nothing can or will be done about overshoot. They’re probably correct.
I’m not ok with people who have not given up and that promote “solutions” without having population reduction and confronting denial at the top of their priority list. I have publicly criticized many big names many times for discussing everything except what matters. They probably don’t like being told they are wasting their time. You can include almost every climate scientist on the planet in this group.
Most interesting, not a single person, anywhere, ever, has integrated genetic denial into the overshoot stories they tell. Not even hard core people like Jack Alpert despite several conversations where I tried to get him to add MORT to his story. Not even friends like Gail Zawacki.
Maybe this means MORT is wrong but I don’t think so. I think the evidence in favor is overwhelming, but most can’t see it. Like fish that can’t see water. Put simply, the most unpleasant thing that must be denied is our own tendency to deny unpleasant things.
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For once I disagree strongly with something you have written….
“I prefer to connect dots between people much smarter than me.”
I would suggest many of the people you are referring to are not in any way ‘smarter’ than you. They might have done more research or be better educated in a particular field, but that does not make them smarter.
Your own research has lead you to some very clear analyses and IMHO you have a great grasp on reality. a lot of the people that appear terrifically knowledgeable about something like climate change for instance, then become really dumb with their ‘solutions’ as you have already pointed out.
I use to think the same way, but ditched the thinking about others being smarter than me long ago. Yes they might be better educated in a particular area, but that never makes them smarter. Once I’m really confident about my knowledge in any area/topic these days, I’m not afraid to take on professors or whoever if/when they start talking nonsense or deliberately leave out important facts/details.
Please Rob, don’t sell yourself short ever, just get better educated in whatever field you think is important to concentrate on. Likewise for everyone else on this forum, none of you are dumb or stupid people I keep learning from everyone..
For instance a simple little comment by Hamish a couple of weeks ago, for me added another important part of the overall picture, ” all taxes are carbon taxes” still reverberates in my mind as being so important to remember in the big picture.
I try to ignore the unimportant stuff, being very aware that more mistakes (or deliberate actions) will get worse as the overshoot problem manifests itself. It’s easy to get caught up and distracted by every conspiracy out there or all the covid stuff, or even climate change. The whole lot are symptoms of our overshoot and I’d expect more distractions from all sorts of different areas to crop up in the near future, often out of left field, possibly deliberately done to distract thinking people from the overall predicament we are in.
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Thank you for the very kind and encouraging words!
Hamish’s comment was great. It encapsulates so much truth and so much denial in 5 simple words. I’ve added it to my favorite quotes on the sidebar.
I do apologize to all of you for my obsession with the covid crime. I can sort of deal with and understand why the morons in denial that lead us do not understand energy or overshoot. But forcing everyone, including their own children, to inject a dangerous and unnecessary substance, and then not adjusting their policies to match evidence is unforgiveable.
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Swoon, blush!
I recall, it was a response to Sabine Hossenfelder’s “we need a carbon tax” and questioning (paraphrased) “what is the point of being a Youtube star, if your pension is going kaput”.
Reality is much darker:
We need to ask ourselves some simple questions. What does government do with taxes, it spends them. Is it possible to spend any money, anywhere, in any way – that does not cause more energy consumption?
Michael C. Ruppert knew and understood.
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It is axiomatic, carbon taxes are self defeating.
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Dear Rob,
I hope you are well.
A). Your existence & this website have been fundamental.
– Rob, you are a library & beacon.
Truly, thank you for your all of your contributions.
B). MORT
– Is it a gene (variable) or a hardwired cognitive mechanism (constant)?
My perspective:
– Constant
– A hardwired cognitive mechanism.
example; (why breaking habits is difficult.)
Adjusting neural pathways requires more effort than to operate on “autopilot”.
On top of that there is the complexity of how nature & nurture affects h.sapiens, increasing and/or reinforcing certain traits.
– ie. Darwinism.
Kind & warm regards,
ABC
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Thanks kindly ABC.
Not sure I understand your question. Are you asking if our tendency to deny unpleasant realities is hardwired or learned?
If yes, I think it is hardwired which explains why every tribe in every location in all of time since behaviorally modern humans emerged has had some form of belief in life after death. This also explains why you cannot teach the implications of peak oil to someone with normal denial genes, regardless of how smart or well educated they are.
ABC, any interest in writing a guest essay?
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Dear Rob,
I appreciate your response.
A) Regarding MORT, you assumed my question correctly.
A hardwire problem, although without empirical evidence we cannot say for certain what or how the phenomena occurs.
– I suppose the logical step would be to contact Dr.Ajit Varki and ask him to elaborate further.
B) For you to consider a fool such as myself worthy of an guest essay is quite the surprise.
A compliment which any odd visitor ought to humbly accept with gratitude.
– I cannot deny it does interest me, alas for now I must restrain myself.
C) Would it be possible for us to have an online meeting and converse?
– I’d be honoured to discuss these various subjects.
Warm & kind regards,
ABC
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I’m unclear ABC on your question for Dr. Varki. If you would like to re-word it so it is crisp and clear I will consider sending it to Dr. Varki.
I scanned your previous comments and you do seem to have a lot on your mind about overshoot. If you change your mind and want to write a guest essay I will help you.
I’m an introvert on live conversations. Maybe if you hang around for bit and we get to know each other a little better we could have a live call in the future.
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“Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.”
Many semiarid areas will no longer support agriculture in the not so distant future.
According to a video I posted on this in this comment page, Iraq has lost 70% of it’s farmland.
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That’s a good quote too. I’ll add it to the sidebar. Are you the author?
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Hi Rob:
Indeed a good quote! Several more:
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/690506
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/01/11/chateaubriand-life-society-dissolving/
Weogo
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Thanks, I added it to the sidebar.
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“Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.” I first heard this from Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith. Not sure if they’re the original authors
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Oh it was François-René de Chateaubriand 🙂
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https://climatecasino.net/2024/02/aint-gonna-happen/
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The following looks like great minds think alike:
Eliot Jacobson, Ph.D. (February 2024) Ain’t Gonna’ Happen
https://climatecasino.net/2024/02/aint-gonna-happen/
This list arose from the almost daily onslaught of “we must”, “we should”, “we have to”, “if only we” and “if we don’t” aspirational rhetoric that floods mass media, climate journalism and social networks. This list is also inspired by Michael Dowd’s concept of “The Almighty We“ and my previous essay titled “The Tyranny of We.“
Tim Watkins (January 2024) A small and deceptive word
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/01/30/a-small-and-deceptive-word/
The point being that whenever an activist, politician or journalist uses words like “ought,” “could,” “should,” and “can,” what they most often mean is “can’t.” … Because these antonyms are almost always preceded by another deceptive word… “we.”
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Mistakes were not made.
“Don’t let them get away with it.”
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https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-10-2023/#comment-770594
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Wonderful monologue in the second half on Julian Assange.
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The comments are getting pretty deep.
We need another guest essay to start fresh.
Who’s got something they want to say?
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I was thinking the same, and working on my EROEI article (book?). I keep writing and calculating different bits, but it is going to be long, perhaps I can break it into 2? Nothing really ready yet, lots of thoughts and calculations all over the place in no set order yet. I keep getting distracted writing comments to ignorant posts (and some great ones) on POB and other sites, plus keep reading lots.
Interestingly, there are virtually no ignorant people posting on your pages Rob, people here understand overshoot, way more than most sites, even the doomer sites.
One aspect I try to do is keep looking at papers and videos about a bright shiny green future, nearly as much as the ‘doomer’ sites, just to keep a perspective on if I’m missing something. I usually find there is a hand wave about something as if one important aspect (like all the hydrogen electrolysers and the stainless steel needed for piping, transport and storage just grows on trees, etc). Just yesterday I watched a video by a professor Julia Steinberger and virtually ended up yelling at the screen because of the sheer stupidity of ignoring feedback loops and hand waves of very real problems.
BTW from an earlier comment you made up thread about none of the overshoot aware people understanding denial, I’ve seen Bill Rees mention people denying reality a few times on videos, especially in the Q+A sessions he’s involved in. In one of Jack Alpert’s videos of his plan on the CACOR site, he asked Jack how it would be possible to overcome people’s denial of a problem at all, and they had a conversation about that. From snippets in various videos, I’m pretty sure Bill Rees is right on board the thinking here and knows it’s way too late to do anything really positive.
In regard to Erik Michaels, I’m sorry he didn’t acknowledge his sources of information from you, but he seems to be as accurate in his understanding as anyone. I have read quite a bit of ‘his’? work. He also does acknowledge you at least some of the time like in this bit, linking to here…
“Another post from Rob Mielcarski points out how energy and denial have brought us to this point” https://un-denial.com/2015/11/12/undenial-manifesto-energy-and-denial/.
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I have a hunch writing a comment is much easier for you than an essay, maybe because it’s a bite size piece with a clear subject, start and end.
Here’s an idea. Why don’t you just gather up all your comments, and organize them as sections in an essay. Half your work will already then be done and filling in the holes will feel much less overwhelming. Your comments are already well written so little editing will be required. I kind of had that in the back of mind when I hoovered up your comments into a few comments above.
While your completing the essay maybe someone else will step up. Let’s see, who hasn’t written for a while? How about AJ, or Monk, or Hamish, or paqnation, or ?
If no one volunteers then maybe I’ll finish off one of my couple dozen half finished essays. The problem is I’ve said most of what I want to say. I guess another approach could be to republish some of my older work that I was proud of.
Sorry to keep repeating myself, but once you see the “shiny green” depth of denial in well educated intelligent people, there has to be some really powerful force in play. If not MORT then something else.
I see lots of people acknowledge denial, like Rees, but none that acknowledge denial is what enabled the emergence of our species, and that denial explains some very important things like why we are the only species with Gods and religions. God is a really strange thing about our species that needs an explanation. Why don’t chimpanzees and dogs have gods?
Denial is not just one of many behaviors in humans, it’s the main event that governs the whole show.
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Hey Rob, I have an idea that might be interesting for a guest essay. I could probably have it done tonight when I get off work. How should I send it to you?
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Excellent, I sent sent you an email.
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Since we’re talking about Hamish’s “all taxes are carbon taxes”, here’s an essay I wrote in 2018 in case you haven’t seen it.
It features the longest single sentence ever written about overshoot.
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When your tweet got to 11 views I laughed.
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Another chuckle for tonight.
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11 views! That’s my best ever tweet!
Overshoot and reality denial are seriously unpopular on social media.
Thanks for the hilarious comedy skit!
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1 in 1000 odds is the new normal.
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Isn’t that a pyramid scheme?
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I guess some would call it a pyramid scheme.
Other desciptions include:
– eating your seed corn
– stealing from your grandchildren
– living beyond your means
– transfering wealth from the poor to the rich
– avoiding some pain today in exchange for much more pain in the future
– and my favorite: denying reality
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Rob, have you ever studied modern philosophy, a.k.a. MORT on steroids? I think it will answer a lot of your questions…
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” – Karl Marx
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No I’m not interested in philosophy. Ditto on poetry. I am interested in Evolutionary Psychology.
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This 2024 paper by Mead et. al. on lessons learned about mRNA has had 300,000+ views in one month.
Notice the strength of the case against our “leaders” without even mentioning Dr. Joe Lee’s string theory, which if true, explains a clotting mechanism that exists in about 50% of vaccines including covid mRNA.
https://www.cureus.com/articles/203052-covid-19-mrna-vaccines-lessons-learned-from-the-registrational-trials-and-global-vaccination-campaign#!/
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The criminals are of course trying to censor it.
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I have often wondered whether the journal editors are acting in their own self-interests, or the interests of the “tribe” they perceive themselves to be a part of, or if they are somehow “pledged” to CIA or MI5 etc. If you wanted to some control the narrative on what is “legitimate” science it would help to have some influence over these publications. In this context I cannot quite figure out why some of the journals have gone “woke.” Maybe it is all just about just about “mind viruses” combined with our deep tribalism and the need for shared beliefs. It the case of COVID, it could just be that medical journal editors etc. can sense where the acceptable “Overton window” of acceptable discourse and are not prepared to be the ones that edge out of that window.
The COVID damn/acceptable discourse window seems to be breaking however. In the past few days, there has been some headline coverage in mainstream news sites on a large study documenting vaccine harms. However, I suspect no mea culpas or formal withdrawal of the vaccines until after the November elections in the U.S.A. (Politics over health). It was the U.S.A. after all that drove the design of the virus, and drove the use of the mRNA vaccines without the normal safety tests over multiple years.
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I think the cause of bad science in healthcare is very simple.
Most studies are funded by pharma. Most safety trials are funded by pharma. Most journals receive revenue from pharma. Most regulators receive revenue from pharma and often higher paying jobs in industry if they play nice. Most doctors receive incentives and “education” from pharma. Most politicians receive campaign donations from pharma.
Before trusting any healthcare research you must check for conflicts of interest with all participants, and if you find any, toss it in the garbage.
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” … you must check for conflicts of interest”
Across the board, the need for due diligence always increases, while the ability to do so, decreases.
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Nice explanation of inflation today by Indrajit Samarajiva.
https://indi.ca/inflation-is-because-were-actually-running-out-of-resources/
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Dr. Tom Murphy today compares the energy and materials efficiency of biology vs. machines.
It reminds me of a quote I like:
“Evolution is cleverer than you are.” – Leslie Orgel
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/02/inexhaustible-flows/
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Brilliant. Going to share that with my old colleagues in the sustainability field who are hanging on to the “magic” of the circular economy.
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A remarkable story. Prof. Jeffrey Sachs was literally in the room with Yeltsin when the Soviet Union dissolved. Russia at that time wanted to join the west but was rebuffed by the US.
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It’s simple, the US MIC needs to have a potent enemy to justify the spending, and hence wealth of those owning/running it. Of course they are the largest donors to both political parties, and if either political party put up a candidate that actually wanted and sort peace, then all funding would go against that person/people.
There are some staggering insights from Prof Jeffrey Sachs and I suggest everyone watch it as quick as possible before there is some lame excuse of why it’s taken down….
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I’ve been thinking about MORT recently and trying to figure out what it means to have a mutation of such a reality denial trait happen in the human genome. This implies that before the mutation, all humans (or the human species generally) didn’t deny unpleasant realities that they were aware of.
What unpleasant realities would they have been aware of? What would pre-mutation humans have done differently? Did the mutation benefit those with that trait, to the expense of those without it? Any mutation has to be beneficial for it to become a dominant trait. Neutral mutations may be passed on, but at random so would not become dominant. If the mutation was beneficial (as it must have been) then there should be no expectation of the mutation being deleted, unless such deletion (via another mutation) is advantageous to those with the deletion, compared to those without it. So would the deleted out-compete the undeleted? Hard to think that would be the case.
This is just a ramble as I try to think of how the mutation might have come about, what a reversal might mean, and how poorly adapted the pre-mutation humans might have been by comparison. Any mutation must be beneficial to become dominant. I still think that it might not have been a mutation but just a feature of being a species.
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I don’t think you understand Dr. Varki’s theory.
This is reminiscent of an experience I had trying to get the influential and now deceased [Jay Hanson] (https://jayhansonsdieoff.net/ “Jay Hanson”) to embrace MORT. After a few years of hard work I discovered that his understanding of the theory was completely wrong. Unfortunatley he tried to cover his tracks in a most unethical manner which ended our relationship. I’m sure that won’t happen with you.
Behaviorally modern humans emerged from one small tribe that experienced simultaneous mutations for an extended theory of mind and denial of mortality.
An extended theory of mind is central to our species’ success however it enables awareness of mortality which reduces fitness. The only way for an extended theory of mind to fix in the genome is to find a way to deny mortality.
The probability of the dual mutation is very low. Hence it has happened only once on this planet.
Denial of all unpleasant realities was a side-effect of the method evolution chose to implement mortality denial.
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Oh. Then, yes, I don’t understand it. You keep mentioning this one mutation, but I see two had to happen simultaneously. However, I could think of those two mutations as one mutation, if they happened simultaneously and it would have to have resulted in a more capable human within that one tribe. How would those two mutations have made the bearer of them better able to reproduce than the rest of the tribe?
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One successful male in a leadership position = lots of babies
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Leadership of the tribe, better communication and coordination, more risk taking, etc. causing that tribe to out-compete its competitors.
There were many homo species that all disappeared shortly after we found god.
A piece that Varki and I may disagree on is I think of an extended theory of mind as being essentially a more powerful cpu executing another layer of abstraction. Basically more horsepower. Varki sticks more to the standard definition of an extended theory of mind.
The mutations were probably fragile and easily lost with breeding outside the tribe. Varki thinks this may explain why there are no human/Neanderthals/Denisovan hybrids.
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Dont feel bad Mike. I’m right there with you. Your original post is exactly some of the questions I’ve thought about (but I would not have been able to word it as good as you)
There is no doubt in my mind that Rob understands MORT up and down. But thats why I think it’s such a tough sell. Very hard to teach and grasp. (and Rob is probably right now shaking his head saying “no its not, cmon you guys” lol)
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I’m reading Varki’s Denial “book” right now to get a better understanding. Will comment when finished, so don’t want to pre-judge it. It may or may not be hard to grasp but it’s hard to understand (if that can make sense). So far, the big questions seem, for me, to be answered by the fact that humans are a species. I wonder if anything would be different if those mutations hadn’t happened.
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Just a reminder that Varki is not pleased with his book because he was busy and forced to rush it.
Varki corrected the defects and expanded on his theory in this paper:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-25466-7_6
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Oh. Thanks. I was only a few pages through, so hopefully I can speed through the early sections of the update. (Yes, Anonymous, above, was me.)
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What I did not explain in my story about Jay Hanson is that he aggressively ridiculed me in pubic for believing an obviously stupid theory. Eventually I discovered he had no idea what the theory claimed. Then he deleted his posts that proved his ignorance.
Both he and his disciple Nate Hagens have compiled a long list of behaviors that contribute to our overshoot predicament and both missed the most important behavior that enables all the behaviors they are so proud of cataloging.
They can’t accept that they missed the most important piece of the story.
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Given Hanson’s serious aggression against MORT I suspect he had some god in him.
Unfortunatley for him his bad ethics means he’s now in the fiery place.
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This might bring a tear to your eyes. It did me.
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Kurzgesagt today reviews the implications of nuclear war.
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Wow, this video was hopium end to end. As if even a limited nuclear exchange would not collapse civilization and lead to possible extinction. This is truly for the collapse. unaware and uninformed optimists.
AJ
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Question. Is Marromai still roaming on this site? I just read his guest essay, A Purpose in Life. Damn that was good. Felt like he was reading my mind. The comments were just as good, and Robs was the best. I dont have much to say other than: thank you Marromai.
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Marromai’s last comment was January 17, 2024 on the farmer’s protests in Europe.
His essays were very good. I hope he writes for us again some day.
https://un-denial.com/?s=marromai%3A
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Hello paqnation and thank you very much for the praise.
Yes, I check in here regularly. I just don’t comment as often because I’m more preoccupied with myself at the moment – it’s not just our predicament that can be depressing. Everyday things, especially having a wife, can also make life difficult…
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Everyday things LOL.
I think on balance I prefer being single.
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Wow, isn’t that the truth. I struggle every day with the wife thing. Complete denial & cornucopian “thinking”.
AJ
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Hah! Well, I’m fortunate in that my wife is more or less in step with my thinking though hasn’t really engaged with it in depth. I suppose that if she, and the rest of my extended family in NZ, were totally on board, we’d do something a bit more radical to prepare as best we could. But there is always the chance that at least two of those generations might not have to cope with significant deterioration of the environment or with our global technological civilisation (or even local economy), so radical actions may be left for the youngest of us.
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