By Hideaway: Energy and Electricity

Mirage

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.

Chart 1

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.

727 thoughts on “By Hideaway: Energy and Electricity”

  2. Hideaway at POB today…

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-10-2023/#comment-770390

    George, Dogs do what dogs do, cats do what cats do, fleas do what fleas do, and no-one expects any of these species to change their behavior. It’s pretty obvious humans behave in the same way, we do what humans have always done.

    Even in pre agricultural societies, we had mass extinctions of mega fauna around the world, human behavior in getting what’s needed for the present to survive and make their lives better in the present, with no thought of the future.

    Humans have a ‘belief’ system that has been advantageous to groups of early humans that is now working against us. The simple fact that all the fossil fuel use over the last 200 years has only dragged about 15% of humanity into a modern lifestyle, while we struggle to find more oil, the master fossil fuel, by itself means it’s not possible for all humanity, that aspires to a modern lifestyle all of us on this blog have, to get to our level of lifestyle.

    I know of no examples of hunter gatherer peoples that have come into contact with modern civilization, that have desired, en masse, to return to their original lifestyle, and wholistically decline all modernity. People everywhere like the comforts of the modern world, so will do whatever is necessary to keep it, including telling ourselves delusionary stories that we can have it all without fossil fuels, as if that was the only problem.

    In the pre agricultural world the 4-8 million humans were already having a devastating effect on the natural mega fauna of the world, probably meaning we were in overshoot back then, because of our large brain, collective co-operation and use of very basic tools, gave us a massive advantage. To think that with over 8 billion humans on the planet can have anything other than a catastrophic outcome, is naive at best.

    We have obtained our current lifestyle (for the few) and overall numbers by using every resource we could find use for, no matter the cost to the rest of the ecosphere, mostly without understanding changing the climate, biodiversity, and living environment would end badly for us. The attitude, even here on these pages of ‘peakoilbarrel’, of some, that everything will be fine if we just do lots more mining (as in destroying more natural environment, sending more species extinct, etc), and build different machines using the last easily obtained fossil fuels (ie keep burning more to save the planet), is in any way different to what we have been doing, just seems like self deception to me.

    I’ve mentioned Jack Alpert’s plan before and I’m sure there are similar types of plans by various people, which are dismissed by 99.999% of people as ridiculous, as believing in magical outcomes is far more credible. We’ve had religions for thousands of years, which clearly show how humans can ignore reality for their current convenience.

    People just don’t want to believe that massively controlling population and completely powering down is the only way to save a habitable world, and the more any facts are revealed about the future, the greater the pushback by those that want continued ‘growth’ (by green means of course), the exact reason we are in our predicament.

    Those that have called for restraint of growth and simple sustainable lifestyles have always been out competed throughout human history, because of our innate nature built over many thousands of generations. It’s precisely why we are headed to catastrophic collapse and will take most of the remaining biosphere with us in the rest of the sixth mass extinction.

    My understanding and reading of hunter gatherer interactions with modernity is that it’s the elders that are mostly reticent, but the younger ones get seduced by tobacco, alcohol, cars and the bright lights.

    Here in Australia, there is always the cry for more to be done for the indigenous people, in the way of health, jobs, land rights, etc, but none seem to be advocating for a return to their natural lifestyle pre white invasion of the country. Despite the massive genocide that happened here, because of diseases , shooting, etc, (ie same reasons as in the US), there are 3 times as many people that identify as indigenous now as existed when the first fleet arrived.

    Here’s an extract from the last group of indigenous people coming into the modern world here in Australia ….
    “McMahon did not want to put the group under any pressure to join the community, but he witnessed the moment they were persuaded. “It was unthinkable that they would stay out there because the modern world was so seductive. One of the fellows suggested, ‘Give them a taste of the sugar and they’ll be in for sure.’”

    Indeed, the taste of sugar had a big impact on the Pintupi Nine and it is this aspect of their story which now animates them most. “I tasted the sugar, we didn’t know what it was, but it was so sweet. I tasted the sugar and it tasted so sweet – like the Kulun Kulun flower. My mother tasted it and it was so sweet. It was good,” says Warlimpirrnga.”

    From …
    https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30500591

    My biggest fear for the ecosphere is that there will be nothing to hunt for any type of hunter gatherer society after modern civilization collapses. The process of collapse will see starving billions kill anything that moves for food, so maybe rats and rabbits will be all that’s left. Afterall somewhere between 4-8 million humans were able to kill off a lot mega fauna causing many extinctions in the 100,000 years before agriculture. Now there are over 8 billion people with guns and enough ammunition for many decades.

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    1. 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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      1. 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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        1. 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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      2. The example of Easter Island shows that, no matter how obvious it is that our behaviour is destroying our future, present comforts lure us into continuing it.

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  3. 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

    Dear Readers,

    This is not a comfortable post. Don’t read on if you don’t feel in the right presence of mind. Be warned.

    Last week, the publication of the latest study on a hypothetical collapse of the Atlantic arm of the Southern Loop Current (AMOC) fell like a bombshell. And it is not because this issue has not been studied intensively for decades, but because this study closes a front that still remained open in this debate. Over the last few years, with the increased abundance of data and measurements and better analysis tools, there has been an increasing number of indications that climate change could lead to the collapse of the AMOC. Particularly relevant was a study published last year in Nature Communications that showed that the collapse of the AMOC could occur at any time this century. At that time I published a post on the subject (“If not now, it will be later”), which I recommend you read now if you know absolutely nothing about this ocean current and the consequences of its arrest. And not even a year has passed since the shocking study by Westen, Kliphuis and Dijkstra appeared in Science Advances, which clearly marks a before and after.

    The importance of Westen et al’s study lies in the fact that for the first time it is possible to reproduce the collapse of the AMOC in a climate simulation model used by the IPCC. In the numerical experiment, the flow of fresh water that would come from the melting of continental water in Greenland and Canada is increased very slowly and progressively, while maintaining a constant concentration of greenhouse gases and temperature with values from before the Industrial Revolution. Because the goal of the numerical experiment is not to reproduce what is happening in the real world right now, but to know if with the right forcing the collapse of the AMOC could occur, at what speed it would happen and if there is an early indicator that alerts us to the proximity of collapse. And although the value of freshwater discharge from which the AMOC collapses is high (about 80 times larger than the estimated discharge from Greenland), what is observed is that the AMOC collapses very quickly, so that before 100 years its value is almost residual, and the bulk of the fall is verified in less than 50 years. On the other hand, the flow of fresh water across the 34º S parallel is found to be a reliable indicator of proximity to the collapse point, regardless of its causes (whether it is just excess freshwater from continental melt or other causes individually or combined). In the second part of the work, real-world measurements are taken to make estimates of the flow of fresh water through 34ºS to see where we are, and this is where the demons are unleashed: the current value of that flow reveals that we are very close to reaching the collapse of the AMOC, if it is not already underway. And that, in any case, and if no action is taken, the collapse will begin this century, in line with the Ditlevsen & Ditlevsen study last year.

    As Westen et al’s own paper shows, if the AMOC collapses, the climate effects would be catastrophic. Without the beneficial effect of this ocean current, which brings heat and humidity to Europe, the continent would tend to the climate that would correspond to the latitude at which it is located, similar to that of Canada or southern Siberia. Temperatures in Central Europe would drop by 30 degrees, Arctic ice would arrive every winter at the gates of Paris… The continent would not only become colder, but also drier, and would probably be completely uninhabitable. Southern European countries would be left with much more acceptable temperatures, although the challenge would still be the lack of rainfall (which would depend on whether the Gulf Stream weakens a lot or not). On the other side of the Mediterranean and in Mesoamerica, temperatures would skyrocket because the excess Atlantic heat would have nowhere to be released. In general, storms would become much more violent throughout the North Atlantic, and by geostrophic adjustment the sea level in this area would rise by at least 70 centimeters. But the worst is happening around the Equator: the warming of the Tropic of Cancer would push the Intertropical Convergence Zone several hundred kilometers to the south, which would displace the South American monsoon (wiping out the Amazon rainforest), the African monsoon (wiping out the African rainforest) and the Indian monsoon (compromising harvests in that subcontinent inhabited by 1.4 billion people). The worst part of the matter is that there are many signs that this is beginning to happen: drought in Europe and Mesoamerica, displacement of the ITCZ, drought in India, warming of surface water in the North Atlantic…

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  4. Nate Hagens recaps his India trip.

    • India has 5x population and 1/3 land of US so 15x population density.
    • Main energy source is coal which will double by 2030.
    • Economy is growing at 6% per year.
    • Consumerism of the west is taking over the culture.
    • Climate change really big threat for India. People will be forced to migrate.
    • Few citizens understand climate threat.
    • Nate experienced 100F in middle of winter.
    • 44% of people work in agriculture.
    • India well positioned to prepare for great simplification.
    • India could lead the way and set an example.
    • 60 million stray dogs. Only 10 million pet dogs.
    • Low protein, high carb diet. Gained weight.

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  5. OK friends, let’s recap world affairs…

    • All ecosystems and other species are in rapid decline.
    • The climate is warming much faster than expected because we underestimated CO2 sensitivity and aerosol masking.
    • AMOC will soon stop creating a global climate crisis.
    • Oil production is at an all-time high achieved by exploiting all of the best remaining fast depleting reserves.
    • All of our plans to transition off oil are fantasies that will not work, and we are wasting precious resources on these plans.
    • The economy will soon explode because we used too much debt to force growth rather than making do with less.
    • Wealth inequality and social unrest are at all-time highs.
    • Democracy no longer has any influence on substantive policies.
    • mRNA has degraded already very bad western citizen health and may soon cause a deadly pandemic.
    • Russia is decisively winning the Ukraine war and the US cannot permit this.
    • Israel may soon be destroyed by its neighbors and the US cannot permit this.
    • China, the most powerful country with the most fragile economy, is eerily silent.
    • The intelligence and wisdom of political leaders is at an all-time low.
    • We are unable to discuss, let alone act, on the only wise path: population reduction.
    • There is no awareness or honest discussion about any of these threats because we evolved to deny unpleasant realities.

    Did I miss anything important?

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    1. 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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      1. 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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        1. 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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          1. 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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        2. 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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      2. 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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  6. Here is a new high integrity analysis that concludes mRNA and bad policies are the cause of increased all-cause mortality.

    The State of Things Pandemic – Week 5 2024

    The chart above shows the total impact of our poor decision making as a society, in terms of total mortality, and compares that mortality to the various wars and conflicts our nation has suffered. Of key note inside this death tally are the 701,892 deaths inside the Vaccine/Sudden/Long Covid tally. 95% of this metric resulted from the impact of the mRNA vaccine itself, with the remaining 5% attributable to primarily Long Covid.

    “Speaking with an actuary (40 years experience) at one of the largest insurance companies in the world saying the Mortality Statistics are being dramatically underreported and the actual numbers could be 10 times higher. The number of deaths by drug overdoses, suicides, homicides, traffic accidents, aggressive cancers (including colon cancers as young as 15), blood clots, myocarditis, enlarged hearts, strokes have dramatically increased since 2022.” ~ Tony Seruga, Boardmember at Greenlaw Capital

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    1. 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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    2. 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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    3. The COVID-19 vaccine programme saved a huge number of people’s lives. That people commenting here deny good quality science undermines everything they write.

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  7. 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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    1. 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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      1. 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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      1. 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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    1. 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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      1. Col. Wilkerson was right to demand everyone be vaccinated. The unscientific, frankly dangerous opposition on this site to a clearly vital response to a dangerous virus makes me doubt the veracity of everything else here.

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        1. There is now so much obvious and well documented evidence that mRNA transfection harms far exceed benefits that I think the views you and many others share are yet another example that Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory is correct.

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  10. https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/02/17/or-to-put-it-another-way/

    Green growth was always a myth which – either through delusion or design – the European elites tried to sell to the masses. However, anyone paying attention could see that climate change was just one of the looming crises for the twenty-first century, and that energy and resource depletion would be a greater and more proximate problem for an industrial and financialised civilisation which has no steady state – if it cannot grow, it must collapse.

    The problem at this point is that we have no historical precedent from which we might model a collapse. Previous civilisations collapsed from a far lower standard of living and a far less complex economy. So that all we can learn from them is what our final destination will look like – most likely something akin to the Anglo-Saxon economy but with localised use of machinery and guns. How – and especially how rapidly – we get from here to there though, is a complete unknown. However, insofar as we have traded resilience for complexity, there is good reason to believe that our – that is, the European economies – fall from grace will be fast.

    Following a rapid collapse, we will at least be able to celebrate the fact that wind and water will be providing 100 percent of the energy consumed in our post-industrial economy… something which will no doubt take our minds off a life expectancy which will have fallen below thirty.

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  11. I wish Chuck Watson would write more frequently.

    Space Nukes, Navalny and the most important issue of the day: Assange

    Very busy week in the geopolitical realm. By most reports the Ukrainian armed forces are being absolutely hammered and the Avdeevka sector has collapsed. The bases there have been used to attack civilians in Donetsk for the last ten years of the civil war, and it is a major fortress. For it to be unraveling is a bad sign for Ukraine. Is this the end game? Maybe – but Russia is trying to minimize their own casualties, and are also nervous about what kind of stupid moves the US/NATO might make, given the ongoing “Steadfast Defender 24” exercise and the major troop movements along the border with Russia and Ukraine. Hopefully the Biden administration won’t do anything escalatory and foolish. I think there is much more to come before the end, but the end for Ukraine is likely coming sooner or later. US aid is only making the carnage worse, and delaying the inevitable. Well past time to negotiate – honestly, this time.

    The news out of Ukraine may also help put a couple of other recent events in perspective (and contribute to conspiracy theories). The first is the “leak” about a “disturbing” new Russian satellite capability that involves nuclear weapons. Or nuclear power. Or something, you just need to be scared. The latest public reporting has it as a nuclear weapons based system to disable satellites. As near as I can tell this is nothing new, and is just theater to try to push US House Members in to supporting the insane supplemental budget bill to waste more money on Ukraine, as well as throw some stuff at Israel and Taiwan. In this case I don’t doubt at all that this was a pretty transparent stunt as to try to gin up support for the funding bill.

    The reporting on it was horrible as usual – little to no context that the Soviet Union launched its first nuclear powered military spacecraft in 1968(!), that the US and UK both actually tested nuclear weapons in space already (Operation Fishbowl in the early 1960’s), or that both the US and the Soviets (and now Russia) continued to work on both nuclear powered military spacecraft as well as ways of using nuclear weapons in space (despite the UN Outer Space Treaty that prohibits them). So I suspect that another aspect to all this is the utter lack of institutional memory in Congress, the Administration, the media, and I suspect even in the Intelligence community, much less the public. But the leak – yeah, that was all about pushing Ukraine funding.

    Which brings us to the most important topic of the day: Julian Assange. It’s hard to write this without resorting to invective. The sheer hypocrisy of the US complaining about Gershkovich or Navalny is absurd given what it is doing to Assange. It seems that the only thing Assange did was commit journalism. It is my understanding that nothing Wikileaks has released has been disproved – in fact, the prosecution (persecution, to be accurate) is precisely because it was factual. Going after him is an obvious attempt to intimidate reporters, something it’s hard to imagine the government being much concerned about given their record at this point. His last chance to avoid extradition from Great Britain to certain convection or worse here in the US is next week. There are many ways you can add your voice to those opposing this travesty – please speak up.

    Technically speaking, since Wikileaks published classified information, the problem wasn’t really with Wikileaks publishing it (a long standing US tradition – Pentagon papers anybody?). The criminal act was really the people who gave Assange the original classified documents. However, there is just one problem: these documents were in fact proof of illegal activity on the part of the US Government … the fact that government officials can hide behind classification as a shield against prosecution – and turn the tables on whistleblowers and now journalists who try to report on it – is a serious problem in our system.

    Speaking as someone who has held clearances and takes them very seriously, revelation of illegal acts should be an absolute defense against any security violation. I have no problem with the person doing so being charged and tried – security is that important – but if action being uncovered is illegal, that should be able to be raised as a defense and if proven the charges dismissed. That said, there should never be a charge brought against a journalist for reporting something given to them, even if classified and even if that classification turns out to be legitimate. The breach was the person who had access abusing their clearance – with the caveat again being if it was to expose wrongdoing, they should be exonerated. Journalism and the free flow of information is too vital to our democracy and government accountability to do otherwise. The silence of the major media on this subject is incredible.

    How is all of this related? All of the above stories – Ukraine, supposed new nuclear threat from Russia, and the death of Navalny – require knowledgeable, nuanced, balanced reporting that is independent of government narratives of the day. That requires an independent press free from intimidation and threats. The epic hypocrisy of the US prosecuting Assange, while in the same breath complaining about Gershkovich in Russia, much less remaining silent over the torture and death of Gonzalo Lira (a US Citizen) in Ukraine, is disgusting. And for the press to simply parrot government narratives without context means they are stenographers, not journalists. This country is supposed to be different. It is supposed to be the “shining city on the hill” with integrity and honor.

    Sadly, in these matters, our major institutions of media and government have neither.

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    1. 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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  12. A new one today from Radagast.

    https://www.rintrah.nl/the-abnormal-antibody-response-persists/

    So, a new study looks at how people respond to the most recent variants of SARS2 and you still see that the problems you should be familiar with by now persist. Unusually, we get to look at results from naturally immune people, both children and adults, which we get to compare to people who received two or three shots of mRNA.

    You have deployed an experimental vaccine, that reprograms the human immune response, in a manner that does not work and is now beginning to undermine the population’s ability to deal with all sorts of different pathogens. The evidence shows that the immune response is broken after just two shots of mRNA. That’s 90+% of the adult population in many countries.

    You now have measles spreading everywhere, growing cases of tuberculosis, you have record-breaking levels of pneumonia, seen in all ages groups, you have elevated levels of people going to the doctor suffering coughs that don’t go away. You have winter after winter, of excess mortality you can not explain, when you should be witnessing abnormally low mortality due to the harvesting effect. You have scientific evidence that the lungs of your population are deteriorating at an accelerated rate.

    Your population is deploying antibodies, against all sorts of pathogens that their innate immune system would normally handle. These are overwhelmingly antibodies that do not instruct the immune system to deal with infected cells, these are IgG4 antibodies that are telling the innate immune system to stand down and ignore what’s going on. Pathogens around the world are mutating, to make use of the population’s abnormal immune response.

    I have said this many times now, as long as you ignore what you created with these therapies, it is going to get worse. This virus will not just disappear either, as long as this poor antibody response is constantly being recalled by the majority of the population in developed countries.

    Are you planning on letting teenagers deploy this abnormal antibody response that is continually being recalled with every new infection, for the next fifty years of their lives?

    You need to work out some sort of therapy, to remove these abnormal B cells and T cells from the lungs and allow plasmacytoid dendritic cells, NK cells and other innate immune cells to do the job they are meant to be doing.

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    1. LSWM: Dr. GVB believes those who only received 1 dose of mRNA will still be able to rely on their natural, variant-independent immune response in the same way that the unvaccinated can.

      Radagst: Yes that seems to be the case. Only after two mRNA shots do you see the antibody response expand to target regions the immune system is reluctant to target.

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        1. 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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          1. 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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            2. 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

              Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that children with autism showed signs of abnormal blood-vessel function and damaging levels of oxidative stress compared to healthy children. The children with autism possessed levels of biochemicals that indicate the presence of constricted blood vessels via the endothelium (the cells that line vessels) with a higher tendency to form clots (through cells called platelets). Investigators hope to find new therapeutic options for this syndrome.

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              1. 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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              2. 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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                1. 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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                  1. 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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                    2. 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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                    3. “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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                    4. 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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  13. 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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    2. 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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      1. 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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  14. 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.

    A long-overdue episode seven of Shifts Happen sees Luke Gromen return to discuss the pace at which three things are happening: the acceleration of the US fiscal crisis and debt spiral, the Fed’s policy mistake of not letting inflation run hot enough, and the de-dollarization of global oil markets.

    Luke explains that China needs to de-dollarize its oil imports and commodity imports to avoid a currency crisis, which is driving the de-dollarization of global oil markets and also highlights the importance of gold in this process, as China needs gold to work in order to improve its standards of living and avoid a crisis.

    Luke believes gold will continue to rise in price, and that the pace of events is accelerating towards a US fiscal crisis. He explains the US is facing a fiscal crisis due to its high debt and deficits, and the lack of price-sensitive buyers for its treasuries and that the Fed’s choice is not inflation or deflation, but rather how it wants to lose the long end of the yield curve.

    Plenty of food for thought here with Luke on fine form.

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    1. Luke Gromen missed a 5th possible solution to the fiscal/debt crisis.

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  16. 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

    In my opinion, the problem the world is facing today is like one that smaller economies have faced, over and over, in the past: The population has become too large for the economy’s resource base, which now includes fossil fuels. Today’s leaders reframe the problem as voluntarily moving away from fossil fuels to prevent climate change in order to make the situation sound less frightening.

    As I see the situation, the world needs to scale down its use of fossil fuels because, ultimately, the laws of physics determine selling prices for fossil fuels. We extract the inexpensive-to-produce fossil fuels first. The problem is that fossil fuel selling prices cannot rise arbitrarily high.

    Prices must be both:
    – High enough for producers to make a profit, with funds left over for reinvestment and for adequate taxes for their governments.
    – Low enough for consumers to afford to buy food and other consumer goods produced with these fossil fuels.

    If we assume that all the fossil fuels that seem to be under the ground can really be extracted, climate change from burning them may indeed be a problem. But it is hard to see that they can really be extracted, given the affordability issue. Politicians will hold down prices to get voters to vote for them if nothing else.

    Researchers have been working diligently to find solutions, but to date, their success has been poor. Every supposed solution requires significant use of fossil fuels. So, we need to think through what might happen if we are forced to get along without fossil fuels and without an adequate substitute.

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      1. 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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        1. 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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    2. Most of the comments are about abiotic oil and the climate change hoax.

      I wonder if the more peak oil reality hits us in the face, the more the abiotic oil paradigm will spread

      Biophysical reality couldn’t care less about what Zerohedge readers think.

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  18. 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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    1. 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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      1. 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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        1. 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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            1. 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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                1. 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:

                  In later years, her prolific writing tapered off. She once told me, “How many different ways can you say, ‘We’re fucked’?”

                  Her stubborn insistence on considering mass tree die-off as part of the climate change problem earned her a lifetime ban from the RealClimate blog.

                  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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  19. 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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    1. 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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        1. 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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  20. 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.

    Rob (and Gail),

    I sincerely apologize to both of you for my arrogant and combative attitude in the comments above. Just in the last few days I’ve read the last few samples of my friend and colleague Richard Adrian Reese’s book-in-process, “Wild, Happy, and Free”: http://wildancestors.blogspot.com/ and I’m now convinced that the position both of you have been articulating — even though I don’t hold it exactly as you do — is, in fact, a solid, evidence-based historically valid position. It’s humbling for me to admit, of course, that my ‘know-it-all’ dismissive attitude is uncalled for and, indeed, counterproductive.

    Ah…life’s learnings come in all shapes and sizes. … Keep up the great work!

    ~ Michael

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    1. 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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    1. Here’s Simplicius the Thinker’s answer to the same question:

      https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sitrep-21824-avdeevka-liberated

      Putin is the only one of the players that actually wants peace, it’s just he wants it after Russia gets what Putin feels it is owed—which is its historical lands back. The main US establishment on the other hand doesn’t want peace at any cost, because the whole point of this war is to wage eternal conflict against Russia until it is totally destroyed or subjugated, or at the least wounded and kept in a weakened, enervated state perpetually. Either option requires unceasing escalation and conflict no matter what other side objectives are achieved.

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    2. 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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    1. 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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      1. Copy and paste from above :

        OK friends, let’s recap world affairs…

        All ecosystems and other species are in rapid decline.

        ** The climate is warming much faster than expected because we underestimated CO2 sensitivity and aerosol masking.

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  25. B is doing the deepest and most original thinking in the overshoot space these days.

    https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/entropy-a-revelation

    I had an epiphany after writing my latest post on the topic of entropy. You know, that moment when suddenly everything falls into place and something hidden reveals itself. During one of my long walks the concept of entropy was somehow recombined in my head with the idea of energy and mineral blindness, the destiny of civilizations, and the arrow of time. Who knows, you might also discover something in the end. With that said, treat the following lightly: a kind of a thought experiment or a hypothesis in need for exact data to back it up, either proving or disproving this unified concept. So, researchers in search for a research idea, grand theorists, and fellow collapsniks, off we go!

    If you are like me, you might ask: was there any other way? Could we have somehow sidestepped entropy? What if we never started an industrial revolution? Well, without the widespread adaption of coal, we would have cut down all the forests in Europe, farmed and tilled all the land and extracted every resource we could lay our hands on till now. Without the discovery of the Americas, and the invention of steam engines, Western civilization would have crumbled, and would have found itself in The Empty Quarter already. Following the arrow of time and the inclination of the playing field, we would’ve already performed an elegant “sidestep” from quadrant #1 directly to #4. For a historical reference look no further than the (once) Fertile Crescent (aka Middle-East or West Asia), and see with your own eyes what thousands of years of civilization did to it, even with animal and human muscle power alone. So no, slow burn is not a solution to entropy. As the late eighteenth century French writer François-René de Chateaubriand wrote well before the invention of the steam engine:

    “Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.”

    OK, this civilization is toast, but what will come after this one is over? How will future humans fit into this model? What could come about a thousand or ten thousand years down the line? Ironically, what I see as a clear path forward is: acceptance. Coming into terms with the fact the that the timeframe to build a mineral based civilization is limited, and if it cannot escape the planet to start an interstellar empire in time, then it is “doomed” to return to normalcy. That being: living within the boundaries of a single planet, and entirely off of a flow of renewable resources (wood, grains, fruits, animals etc.) There is simply no other way.

    Once even the memory of this high tech civilization is gone, and those who survive its fall has returned to a lifestyle not seen since the Neolithic age, only then can the slow regeneration of Earth’s resource base begin. Following the large wave of extinction we have so carelessly started, and once the climate has found its new equilibrium (hopefully still within a habitable range), life may start to heal and recover. New species and ecosystems may emerge. Volcanoes, plate tectonics may create and bring new ore bodies close to the surface, which our distant ancestors (or another “clever” species) would be able to mine…

    Will they make the same mistake as we did, and restart this circle of destruction? Only time will tell.

    Until next time,

    B

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    1. 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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      1. I beat B by 10 years to the punchline by saying homo sapiens today are the peak of what is possible in the universe.

        un-Denial Manifesto: Energy and Denial

        The singular emergence of human intelligence, and its ability to write and read this paragraph, evolved in a gene controlled machine with an unusually powerful computer, that was created by an improbable simultaneous adaptation for an extended theory of mind with denial of reality, and whose complexity was enabled by the increased energy per gene provided by mitochondria, that resulted from an accidental endosymbiosis of two prokaryotes, powered by an unintuitive chemiosmotic proton pump, that originated in an alkaline hydrothermal vent, on 1 of 40 billion planets, in 1 of 100 billion galaxies, and that planet had an improbable store of photosynthetic and geothermal generated fossil energy, that the species leveraged to understand and appreciate, the peak of what may be possible in the universe, before it vanished, because it denied the consequences of its success.

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        1. 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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          1. 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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              1. 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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                1. 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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                  1. 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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                2. 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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                  2. 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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              1. 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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              2. 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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                1. 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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                  1. 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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                    1. 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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                2. 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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                  1. 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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                    1. 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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                    2. 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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    2. “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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            1. “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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  26. Liked by 1 person

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  27. https://climatecasino.net/2024/02/aint-gonna-happen/

    Inspired by Sam Mitchell of Collapse Chronicles, here is my “Ain’t Gonna’ Happen” list, also known as AGH. 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.“

    Some of these were one-off comments from Tweets, YouTube videos or other social media. Others are policy or social suggestions, green industry ideas and other social movements. Others are actual technologies or systems that are being developed or already exist in part. None of these will save us. As Sam cogently put it in our last video, “we won’t.”

    Please feel free to suggest additions to this list in the comments. Likewise, I will surely be adding/modifying this list as time goes by, but this is what I have so far.

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    1. 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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  28. Mistakes were not made.

    “Don’t let them get away with it.”

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  29. https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-feb-10-2023/#comment-770594

    George Kaplan:

    I’d guess that there is a lot of cognitive dissonance in the cornucopian camp at the moment because it is becoming apparent that nothing that they expected to happen to ensure that their middle class BAU will continue is succeeding, and they are looking for someone to blame. Like most on the “doomer” side I started off somewhere around “concerned but optimistic” and after looking deeper ended up pessimistic, but at every stage, however pessimistic I’ve been, things have turned out worse. I read Hideaway’s pieces and the sense I get is that he has tried every way to get the numbers to add up differently and each time they come out worse (forgive my presumption if I am wrong). Who would have expected the Keeling curve to continue without a single dent from any green initiative. Who expected EVs to turn into nothing much more than a virtue signaling distraction, which is just now showing its inadequacies as a solution. Who would have expected such large temperature jumps in the last two years. Who would think we could initiate the fastest extinction rate ever seen and devastate most of the wildlife, insects and fisheries in just fifty years and without really noticing as it happened or realising that this is a really bad thing.

    The future scares the shit out of me but I don’t own any super chromatic peril sensitive sunglasses so have to face it. As the freight train approaches it just gets clearer and louder. The past I see with some confused and overwhelming sense of guilt, grief but, especially, regret at my own, perhaps willful, ignorance.

    It took time to understand that overshoot is a systemic issue where the individual symptoms (peak oil, climate change etc.) cannot be solved individually but only by eliminating the overshoot. Biodiversity loss is an unavoidable consequence of overshoot because almost all species compete with others for resources. Usually dynamic equilibria are eventually reached, but not with industrial humankind, we just keep on steamrollering over everything. I see no technical solutions to the other issues that won’t ultimately make this one worse.

    The UK seems to be about to lead the way in economic decline amongst (putative) developed countries (plenty of opportunities for schadenfreude ahead). We might miss out on a swing towards right wing populist demagogues for a few years as we currently have a conservative government that will be voted out in a potential landslide, but I expect it will be coming as things deteriorate. Currently ESG and “green” initiatives and action are all getting pushed aside by economic issues. In my personal life it might well go the same way, short term acts to keep me half way comfortable in the short term will likely trump long term environmental concerns when push comes to shove.

    Hideaway:

    Great summary George. I’ve been aware of our situation for 49 years since learning about Limits to Growth in an Environmental Studies tertiary course in the mid ’70’s, always looking at the ‘problem’ from the point of view of what would humanity do to overcome the problem.
    I’ve even been very much in favour of the turn to renewables in the past, as I’ve previously mentioned buying our first solar panel in 1985 and other solar setups since.

    It’s only in the last few years I’ve come to the realization that all the ‘fixes’ are an elusion, the numbers simply don’t add up, when I do the full calculations for myself, instead of just believing a whole lot of the literature that states wonderful numbers of a technological future, by deliberately (or perhaps inadvertently) leaving out great swaths of energy inputs into the construction.

    Of course energy is just one part of the overshoot problem, something never acknowledged by the cornucopians. We have myriads of other problems that more mining for “renewable minerals” (sic) just exacerbates.

    It’s probably a very nice existence believing everything is going to fine in the future, very calming believing technology will solve everything and magic energy grows on wind turbines and solar panels, however I don’t know of any situation where denial of reality worked in the long term.

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    1. 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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      1. 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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        1. 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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      1. 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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  36. 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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  37. 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#!/

    Conclusions

    Careful, objective evaluation of COVID-19 mRNA product safety is crucial for upholding ethical standards and evidence-informed decision-making. Our narrative review concerning the registrational trials and the EUA’s aftermath offers evidence-informed insights into how these genetic vaccines were able to enter the market. In the context of the two pivotal trials, safety was never assessed in a manner commensurate with previously established scientific standards either for vaccines or for GTPs, the more accurate classification of these products. Many key trial findings were either misreported or omitted entirely from published reports. The usual safety testing protocols and toxicology requirements were bypassed by the FDA and vaccine manufacturers, and the premature termination of both trials obviated any unbiased assessment of potential SAEs due to an insufficient timeframe for proper trial evaluation. It was only after the EUA that the serious biological consequences of rushing the trials became evident, with numerous cardiovascular, neurological, reproductive, hematological, malignant, and autoimmune SAEs identified and published in the peer-reviewed medical literature. Moreover, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines produced via Process 1 and evaluated in the trials were not the same products eventually distributed worldwide; all of the COVID-19 mRNA products released to the public were produced via Process 2 and have been shown to have varying degrees of DNA contamination. The failure of regulatory authorities to heretofore disclose process-related impurities (e.g., SV40) has further increased concerns regarding safety and quality control oversight of mRNA vaccine manufacturing processes.

    Since early 2021, excess deaths, cardiac events, strokes, and other SAEs have often been wrongly ascribed to COVID-19 rather than to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccinations. Misattribution of SAEs to COVID-19 often may be due to the amplification of adverse effects when mRNA injections are followed by SARS-CoV-2 subvariant infection. Injuries from the mRNA products overlap with both PACS and severe acute COVID-19 illness, often obscuring the vaccines’ etiologic contributions. Multiple booster injections appear to cause immune dysfunction, thereby paradoxically contributing to heightened susceptibility to COVID-19 infections with successive doses. For the vast majority of adults under the age of 50, the perceived benefits of the mRNA boosters are profoundly outweighed by their potential disabling and life-threatening harms. Potential harms to older adults appear to be excessive as well. Given the well-documented SAEs and unacceptable harm-to-reward ratio, we urge governments to endorse and enforce a global moratorium on these modified mRNA products until all relevant questions pertaining to causality, residual DNA, and aberrant protein production are answered.

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      2. 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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        1. 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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          1. ” … 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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  38. Nice explanation of inflation today by Indrajit Samarajiva.

    https://indi.ca/inflation-is-because-were-actually-running-out-of-resources/

    Inflation Is Not A Monetary Phenomenon. It’s Planetary

    Inflation is because we’re actually running out of ‘supply’, and demand more than ever.

    The fact is that more money has been chasing more scarce resources for centuries, not just since COVID-19 or whatever the latest shock is. This is simply the mathematical nature of infinite growth on a finite planet. It’s not physically possible to double everything we measure every generation. This inevitably degenerates the planet, as we are physically seeing today. Supply is limited by the actual supply of things in the world, not the imagination of human beings. WTF were we thinking. I think, therefore the economy am? What a sham. Economics is just the mass psychological delusion in perpetual motion. As Earl Cook said in 1982, when I was born:

    “Abandonment of belief in perpetual motion was a major step toward recognition of the true human condition. It is significant that “mainstream” economists never abandoned that belief and do not accept the relevance to the economic process of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; their position as high priests of the market economy would become untenable did they do so.”

    The position of economists to this day is that all reality can be contained within the Cartesian plane, and endlessly manipulated using monetary spells (ie, witchcraft). Well, that plane is crashing, and you might have noticed because dinner service is only available in the literal Business Class, while children are screaming of starvation in the back. That is the phenomenon of inflation, the old horseman with scales. It’s too late for averting this collapse for billions of people (women and children first!), but one can at least remove the scales from one’s eyes for what it’s worth. It’s worth nothing by the way. It’s like waking up inside a hearse. Perhaps it’s better to sleep, perchance to dream. Even if you understand what inflation is, the bubble has already burst.

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  39. 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/

    Now let’s look at the material efficiency of the human body and compare to that of a solar panel. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the global average caloric intake is 2,800 kcal per day, translating to an average continuous power of about 135 W. The mineral requirements to accomplish this constitute just over 3% of body mass, or 2 kg for the global average body mass of 62 kg. Thus, a human achieves roughly 70 W per kilogram of minerals. Note that even though the human body is only 20–25% efficient at converting metabolic energy into external mechanical work, the rest is not waste to us: it provides crucial thermal energy to keep body temperature up, and thus counts as a critical contribution.

    Let’s look at solar panels. Typical 60-cell panels produce 300 W in full sun, and have a mass around 20 kg. Straight away we compute 15 W/kg—a factor of five lower than human performance. But to be fair, we must account for the fact that the sun is not always directly in front of the panel, producing a typical capacity factor of 20%, or an average power delivery of 60 W. Now the deployed panel delivers 3 W/kg: less than 5% as “efficient” as a human, in mineral terms.

    Massive wind turbines at 20% capacity factor (typical global average) score even worse, at 0.4–0.6 W/kg. Without the mass-dominant concrete pad, a wind turbine would pump out 1.6–2.4 W/kg, for the short time it remained standing.

    Just as a wind turbine needs a mounting base, a realistic utility-scale solar deployment has a material mass far in excess of the bare panels: support structures, interconnect wiring, inverters, storage (if truly replacing fossil fuels). I would not be surprised if a whole-system figure dropped to 1 or 2 W/kg, while humans stay smugly perched at 70. The score for wind would erode as well once other necessary components are considered—especially storage. Moreover, the minerals needed by humans are in wide circulation within the community of life at the surface: no mining (and associated tailings, energy, processing, pollution) necessary.

    Thus, biology has far exceeded technology in capturing the inexhaustible flow from the sun using a minimum of minerals—and those being extracted from and re-deposited to the soil in a continuous, self-sustaining cycle, importantly. Biology and evolution really figured things out! Modernity looks like a bumbling idiot by comparison—like R2D2 in a stair-climbing competition against an athlete.

    The Inexhaustible Point

    For all intents and purposes, biology has figured out a way to tap into the continuous and (seasonally) reliable flow of solar energy using a bare minimum of mineral requirements from the land’s surface. It took billions of years to solve this very hard problem. One could consider the result to be a “circular economy,” in that minerals are recycled into the environment and taken in by microbes, fungi, plants, and on up the food chain. By working within the strictures of multi-level selection (evolution) subject to long-term ecological viability in relation to other life, the result has the word “sustainable” effectively built in: sustain-a-built. No? Okay, yeah, that’s pretty lame.

    Our technologies are clumsy and materially insatiable, by comparison—no surprise, given the short development time and our complete disregard for the unforgiving constraint of sustainable practices. Make no mistake: “renewable” energy is not the same as sustainable technology. The only demonstrated sustainable technologies to date are those found outside modernity, in the biodiverse ecological realm (including things made from wood and plant materials, for instance). Until a technology achieves closed-loop sustainability in concert with the rest of the community of life—which may not be possible—it’s not truly “renewable.” Systems that require mining, produce mine tailings/pollution, destroy habitats, and result in collateral damage in the form of permanent species extinctions can’t be considered to be long-term viable, in my view—just part of the jaw-dropping fireworks show that will soon shock itself by self-terminating. Nobody could have seen it coming!

    A typical unsubstantiated knee-jerk reaction is that aggressive/complete recycling could address the concerns. But recycling yield is always going to disappoint, so that a moratorium on new mining (or simple exhaustion of economically recoverable material as the low-hanging fruit is depleted) would result in a slow dwindling of available materials until the weakest link falters below some minimum threshold required to keep the industry alive—likely on a timescale that is lightning-fast compared to that of ecological evolution. Recycling also consumes copious energy: more and more as higher and higher yields are sought. It becomes self-defeating: from what source does such energy come, and at what additional material cost? Plus, I always return to the question of what we use the energy to do. Thus far, it’s been 99.9% unsustainable activity (my crude guess: vanishingly little goes into restoration of ecological damage). Sixth mass extinction, anyone?

    So: technology is on the verge of inexhaustibly tapping into inexhaustible flows? I don’t think so.

    It should not be surprising that we have not yet been—and may never be—able to engineer long-term-sustainable modernity (i.e., high-tech). I strongly suspect that’s not even a thing. Why on Earth would we just assume that it’s possible? Where does that hubris come from? It’s not from a thorough analysis in full ecological context, and certainly not from any demonstration. It’s just a lazy and wishful assumption based on the brief and highly anomalous window on the world to which we’ve been exposed. Comparing modernity-relevant timescales to those relevant to evolution, and looking at the profligate rate of one-time inheritance spending (i.e., of non-renewable resources) that has been required to produce modernity tells us a lot. Unlike biology, this ain’t built to last. I know which team is a better long-term investment—the ultimate victors unless everyone loses first.

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    1. 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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  41. 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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    1. 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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      1. 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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        2. 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.

          By Ajit Varki: Why are there no persisting hybrids of humans with Denisovans, Neanderthals, or anyone else?

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        3. 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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          1. 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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                1. 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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    1. 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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  45. 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.

    By marromai: A Purpose in Life

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    2. 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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        1. 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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