Today’s post includes a recent sobering comment on overshoot reality by un-Denial regular Hideaway that I thought deserved more visibility, and a new essay on acceptance by B, who has recently emerged as one of the best writers about human overshoot.
The ideas of Hideaway and B complement some of the recent discussions here about acceptance and the nature of our species.
P.S. I did not receive permission from B to re-post his essay but I’m hoping that since un-Denial is not monetized he will not object, and I will of course remove the essay if B expresses concern.
By Hideaway: On Radical Reality
The human enterprise of modernity and 8.1+ billion humans is going down. Reduction in available energy is the trigger and there is nothing we can do to stop it, or make it less unpleasant, or save the macrofauna from extinction.
As we build more energy machines of any type, their output increases overall energy available, and used, providing this happens faster than the retirement of old energy producing machines. Over the last few decades we, as in humanity in it’s entirety, have increased fossil fuel use developing more, tearing up the environment more, while increasing the build of renewables.
On a world wide scale, we have not replaced any fossil fuel use, we have just increased all energy use with more fossil fuels being part of that increase, and renewables being part of the increase. At some point growing energy use must stop, unless we make the planet uninhabitable for all life, which means we stop anyway.
Because of our economic system, as soon as we stop growing energy production and use, the price of energy goes up, and we go into recession/depression. It becomes impossible to build ‘new’ stuff of any kind once energy use declines, unless we take the energy from other users, for our ‘new’ builds.
Building more renewables, batteries, EVs, etc., currently means using more fossil fuels to build it all. There is no realistic attempt to build it all with electricity from renewables, nor is that possible. If we diverted existing renewable energy production to, for example, a new mine, then that renewable energy, removed from a city, would have to be made up by increasing fossil fuel generated electricity for the city.
If we ‘ran’ the new mine from new renewables, then these have to be built first, meaning we need the mine for the minerals to build the renewables, or we take minerals from existing users, elsewhere. It’s all just more, more, more and none of the proponents of renewables, including major green organizations want to acknowledge it.
The circular economy can’t work as we cannot physically recycle everything, plus we would need to build all the recycling facilities. If we were to try and do this without increasing total energy use, where does the energy come from to build these new recycling facilities? Other energy users? For the last couple of centuries it’s always come from ‘growth’, especially in energy use. None of us, nor our parents or grandparents, have known a world where the amount of energy available to humanity does anything other than grow.
Because of losses of all materials due to entropy and dissipation into the environment, we will always need mining, of ever lower ore grades, meaning an increasing energy use for mining. It is simply not possible to maintain output from mines once we go to zero energy growth, unless the energy comes from other uses, and users.
Once energy production growth stops, the price of all energy rises, because we need energy production to go up just to maintain the system, as population grows, ore grades decline, etc. If energy production was to fall, the price becomes higher, making everything else cost more. We can see this on a micro scale every time an old coal power plant is closed. On average, the wholesale price of electricity goes up, until compensated for by some newer form of electricity production (the new source taking energy to build).
Visions for the future usually include extra energy efficiency for buildings, etc. but never, ever, include the energy cost of these energy efficiency gains. For example, a simple hand wave about using double glazed or triple glazed windows. To do this, on a worldwide scale, we would need to build a lot of new glass factories, and probably window manufacturers as well. It will take more energy to do this, just like everything else ‘new’.
The phrase ‘build new’ means more energy is required for construction and mining the minerals for the new or expanded factories. The Adaro coal power plant (new) and aluminium smelter (also new) in Indonesia are perfect examples of our predicament. The world needs more aluminium for ‘new’ solar PVs, EVs, wiring, etc. which means more energy use and environmental damage, regardless of whether we use fossil fuels, solar panels, or pumped hydro backup.
Civilization is a Ponzi scheme energy trap, we either grow energy and material use, or we stagnate, and then collapse. Following feedback loops, we see there is no way out of this predicament.
People often claim the future is difficult to predict, yet it is simple, obvious, and highly predictable for humanity as a whole. We will continue to use more energy, mine more minerals, and destroy more of the environment, until we can’t. The first real limit we will experience is oil production, and we may be there already.
Once oil production starts to fall with a vengeance as it must, say 2-3 million barrels/day initially, then accelerating to 4-5 million barrels/day, it will trigger a feedback loop of making natural gas and coal production more difficult as both are totally dependent upon diesel, thus reducing the production of both, or if we prioritize diesel for natural gas and coal production, then other consumers of diesel, like tractors, combines, trucks, trains, and ships, must use less.
Mining and agriculture will come under pressure, sending prices for all raw materials and food through the roof. World fertilizer use is currently above 500 million tonnes annually. A lot of energy is required to make and distribute fertilizer. World grain yields are strongly correlated to fertilizer use, so less energy means less fertilizer, which means less food, unless we prioritize energy for agriculture by taking energy from and harming some other part of our economy.
If we banned discretionary energy uses to keep essential energy uses going, while overall energy continues to decline, then large numbers of people will lose their jobs and experience poverty, further compounding the problems of scarcity and rising prices.
Money for investing into anything will dry up. If governments print money to help the economy, inflation will negate the effort. If governments increase taxes to fund more assistance, then more people and businesses will be made poorer.
The ability to build anything new quickly evaporates, people everywhere struggle between loss of employment, loss of affordable goods and services, increased taxation, and will be forced to increase the well-being of their immediate ‘group’ to the detriment of ‘others’. Crime rates go through the roof, the blame game increases, with some trying to dispossess others of their resources. This will occur for individuals, groups and countries. Crime and war will further accelerate the decline in energy production, and the production and shipment of goods in our global economy. One after the other, at an accelerating rate, countries will become failed states when the many feedback loops accelerate the fossil fuel decline. Likewise for solar, wind and nuclear.
We rapidly get to a point where our population of 8.1+ billion starts to decline, with starving people everywhere searching for their next meal, spreading from city to country areas, eating everything they can find, while burning everything to stay warm in colder areas during the search for food. Every animal found will eaten. Farming of any type, once the decline accelerates, will not happen, because too many people will be eating the seed, or the farmer. Cows, sheep, horses, chooks, pigs, deer, basically all large animals will succumb because of the millions or billions of guns in existence and starving nomadic people.
Eventually after decades of decline, humans will not be able to be hunter gatherers as we will have made extinct all of megafauna. Whoever is left will be gatherers of whatever food plants have self-seeded and grown wild. Even if we were able to get some type of agriculture going again, there would be no animals to pull plows, all old ‘machinery’ from decades prior would be metal junk, so food would remain a difficult task for humans, unless we found ways to farm rabbits and rats, without metal fencing. While we will use charcoal to melt metals found in scavenged cities, it will limited to producing a few useful tools, like harnesses to put on the slaves plowing the fields, or for keeping the slaves entrapped.
Once we go down the energy decline at an accelerating rate, nothing can stop complete collapse unless we can shrink population much faster than the energy decline, which itself may very well be pointless as we have created such a globalised economy of immense complexity, where fast population decline, has it’s own huge set of problems and feedback loops.
Our complex economy requires a large scale of human enterprise. Reduce the scale, and businesses will have less sales, making everything more expensive. Rapid population decline will mean many businesses won’t just reduce production, but will often stop altogether when the business goes bust.
Because of interdependencies of our complex products, a scarcity of one seemingly uncritical component will have far reaching effects on other critical products. Maintenance parts will become difficult to obtain, causing machinery to fail, in turn causing other machines to fail that depended on the failed machines. Think of a truck delivering parts required to fix trucks. The same applies to production line machines, processing lines at mines, or simple factories making furniture, let alone anything complicated. If we only reach population decline as energy declines the problem is still the same.
By B: On Radical Acceptance
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/on-radical-acceptance
So what is radical acceptance? For me, it means: accepting that no single technological civilization based on finite resources is sustainable. Neither in the bronze age, nor in the iron age; let alone in an era of industrial revolutions. None. Why? Because all spend their nest egg — be it fertile topsoil, forests or coal, lithium and copper — a million times faster than it can be replenished. Recycling and “sustainability” practices can only slow down the process somewhat… At least in theory, but rarely in practice. The “circular economy”, together with „renewables” are nothing but fairy tales we tell ourselves to scare off the wolfs at night. Sorry to be this blunt, but the decline of this techno-industrial civilization is inevitable, and is already well underway.
The only type of civilization (if you want to use that term), which proved to be more or less sustainable so far, was a basic hunter-gatherer society; complemented perhaps with some agroforestry, pottery and some low key metallurgy. Anything beyond that inevitably destroyed the soil and the very resource base supporting the entire edifice. With that said, I’m not suggesting that we should immediately go back to the caves and mud huts… That would be impossible for 4 billion of us, entirely supported by large scale agriculture based on artificial fertilizers and a range of pesticides. However, it is important to note, that this is the direction we are headed, with the only question being how fast we will get there and how many humans can be sustained via such a lifestyle.
And this is where acceptance comes into view. Once you understand (not just “know”) that burning through a finite amount of mineral reserves at an exponential pace leads to depletion and environmental degradation at the same time, you start to see how unsustainable any human civilization is. All that technology (in its narrowest technical sense) does is turning natural resources into products and services useful for us, at the cost of polluting the environment. Technology use is thus not only the root cause of our predicament, but it can only accelerate this process. More technology — more depletion — more pollution. Stocks drawn down, sinks filling up. Simple as that. Of course you can elaborate on this matter as long as you wish, conjuring up all sorts of “game changer” and “wonder” machines from fusion to vertical gardens, the verdict remains the same. It. Is. All. Unsustainable. Period.
There are no clean technologies, and without dense energy sources like fossil fuels there wont be any technology — at least not at the scale we see today.
Many people say: Oh this is so depressing! And I ask: why? Because your grand-grand children will have to work on a field and grow their own food? Or that you might not even have grand-grand children? I don’t mean that I have no human feelings. I have two children whom I love the most. I have a good (very good) life — supported entirely by this technological society. Sure, I would love to see this last forever, and that my kin would enjoy such a comfortable life, but I came to understand that this cannot last. Perhaps not even through my lifetime. I realize that I most probably will pass away from an otherwise totally treatable disease, just because the healthcare system will be in absolute shambles by the time I will need it the most. But then what? Such is life: some generations experience the ‘rising tide lift all boats’ period in a civilization’s lifecycle, while others have to live through its multi-decade (if not centuries) long decline.
I did feel envy, shame, and anxiety over that, but as the thoughts I’ve written about above have slowly sunk in, these bad feelings all went away. It all started look perfectly normal, and dare I say: natural. No one set out to design this modern iteration of a civilization with an idea to base it entirely on finite resources; so that it will crash and burn when those inputs start to run low, and the pollution released during their use start to wreck the climate and the ecosystem as a whole. No. It all seemed like just another good idea. Why not use coal, when all the woods were burnt? Why not turn to oil then, when the easily accessible part of our coal reserves started to run out? At the time — and at the scale of that time — it all made perfect sense. And as we got more efficient, and thus it all got cheaper, more people started to hop onboard… And why not? Who wouldn’t want to live a better life through our wondrous technologies? The great sociologist C. Wright Mills summed up this process the best, when writing about the role of fate in history:
Fate is shaping history when what happens to us was intended by no one and was the summary outcome of innumerable small decisions about other matters by innumerable people.
Scientifically speaking this civilization, just like the many others preceding it, is yet another self organizing complex adaptive system. It seeks out the most accessible energy source and sucks it dry, while increasing the overall entropy of the system. We as a species are obeying the laws of thermodynamics, and the rule set out in the maximum power principle. Just like galaxies, stars, a pack of wolves, fungi or yeast cells. There is nothing personal against humanity in this. We are just a bunch of apes, playing with fire.
Once I got this, I started to see this whole process, together with our written history of the past ten thousand years, as an offshoot of natural evolution. Something, which is rapidly reaching its culmination, only to be ended as a failed experiment. Or, as Ronald Wright put it brilliantly in his book A Short History of Progress:
Letting apes run the laboratory was fun for a while, but in the end a bad idea.
So, no. I’m not depressed at all. It was fun to see how far a species can go, but also reassuring that it was a one off experiment. Once this high tech idiocy is over, it will be impossible to start another industrial revolution anyway. There will be no more easy to mine, close to surface ores and minerals. Everything left behind by this rapacious society will remain buried beneath a thousand feet of rocks, and will be of such a low quality that it will not worth the effort. Lacking resources to maintain them, cities, roads, bridges will rust and crumble into the rising seas, while others will be replaced by deserts, or lush forests. The reset button has been pressed already, it just takes a couple of millennia for a reboot to happen.
Contradictory as it may sound: this is what actually gives me hope. Bereft of cheap oil, and an access to Earth’s abundant mineral reserves, future generations of humans will be unable to continue the ecocide. There will be no new lithium mines, nor toxic tailings or hazardous chemicals leaching into the groundwater. Our descendants will be forced to live a more sustainable, more eco-friendly life. There will be no other way: the ecocide will end. This also means, that there will be no “solution” to climate change, nor ecological collapse. They both will run their due course, and take care of reducing our numbers to acceptable levels. Again, don’t fret too much about it: barring a nuclear conflict, this process could last well into the next century, and beyond. The collapse of modernity will take much longer than any of us could imagine, and will certainly look nothing like what we see in the movies. And no, cutting your emissions will not help. At all. Live your life to its fullest. Indulge in this civilization, or retreat to a farm. It’s all up to you, and your values. This is what I mean under the term, radical acceptance.
We are a species of this Earth, and paraphrasing Tom Murphy, we either succeed with the rest of life on this planet or go down together. Nurturing hope based technutopian “solutions”, and trying to remain optimistic does not solve anything. This whole ordeal is unsustainable. What’s more, it was from the get go… And that which is unsustainable will not be sustained. And that is fine. We, as a species are part of a much bigger whole, the web of life, and returning to our proper place as foraging humanoids will serve and fit into that whole much better than any technutopian solution could.
Until next time,
B
un-Denial 
Someone on Quora actually wrote this.
https://www.quora.com/How-badly-would-Russia-defeat-NATO?topAns=1477743743617885
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Anyone seen this new movie?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16280912/
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/humane
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No, but its on my radar now. Plot looks very promising (especially for us un-Denialists).
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No shit, Sherlock.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/04/outside-the-fishbowl/
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Been wanting to post this for a couple months now but could never pull the trigger (pun intended). Gaia helped me out in two ways last night. First by inspiring me with her brilliant, funny and honest preptip post. And then mentioning the topic I am going to talk about here in a different comment.
I want to preface this with a few words. I’m not suicidal. I just want an exit plan for me and my family to avoid suffering if collapse becomes very bad. Many people will admit they have an exit kit, but that’s as far as it goes, and I’m always left wondering what the hell their strategy is. The following are the best methods I have found, and I am wondering what others have concluded. So please share, and if absolutely necessary just change your name to “anonymous” for this one comment. With one caveat: if your method involves a gun, rope, or blade… don’t bother replying, because that’s a dreadful way to go.
Trying to find that perfect combo (quick & painless) has been difficult. Carbon monoxide poisoning always seemed like an easy and foolproof plan. Many people think when SHTF they can just go in their garage, get in the car, turn the engine on and then fall asleep and die peacefully. As soon as you do some research, it starts to look like a bad idea. Too many things can go wrong, and the timing factor is very unstable. Same with a charcoal grill in the house. But I am guessing that with the right engineering involved, the carbon monoxide route could be a decent method.
Drugs/pills would be the ideal way if you had the right access/knowledge. But for most of us, getting our hands on these “magic pills” (or the pill they give to astronauts) is not an option.
The “plastic bag” method is appealing. Not aesthetically (it’s downright creepy looking), but for its effectiveness. In a nutshell, you pop a bunch of sleeping pills, sit in a chair, put on a painter’s mask (the mask is to prevent the plastic bag from being sucked into the mouth and nostrils), put the plastic bag over your head securing it with an elastic band around the neck (large rubber bands will do). Hold open the bag near your adams apple with both of your thumbs so that you can breathe. Eventually you fall asleep from the pills and your arms drop to your side and then the plastic bag seals. Death will happen in about 30 minutes. Breathing continues until death. It’s not suffocation in the usual sense of the word. And there is no choking.
The best method (imho) is inert gas asphyxiation. You can use nitrogen, helium, argon, or methane. Helium is the easiest to obtain (in USA). A plastic bag goes over your head (you dont need a painter’s mask, the gas will keep the bag inflated) with plastic tubing from the gas into the bag taped up firmly and secured with elastic band around the neck. Turn the gas on, and you are unconscious in seconds and dead in minutes. The gas (and plastic bag) should be left on for 10-15 minutes just to be safe. In some cases, as the person is dying from the gas, there is some bodily twitching. This can be avoided by taking anticonvulsant drugs (a couple valium about an hour prior). But taking the drugs is not necessary. Just a personal choice.
In a sane world, euthanasia would be affordable, encouraged, and widely available. And if overshoot/collapse was openly admitted by mainstream media & politicians, total population would plummet after everyone signed up for this voluntary process. Dwindling resources would become much more abundant. win/win… Instead, we are all alone in choosing an exit strategy. And that’s the easy part! A quote from Cloud Atlas sums up the hard part – “Suicide takes tremendous courage”.
Chris
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Dear Chris,
I hope you are well.
This is perhaps one of the most important topics to be mentioned.
– I’ve arrived at the same exact conclusion as thou.
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
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If 100% of the deaths were from the poorest 90% of the population, the difference to our predicament would be 1%.
The numbers are arbitrary, but highlight that the reduction needs to come from those that consume the most. Perversely, they are also the group least likely to step up.
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Hamish I think this is an interesting topic of discussion, but it’s out of context to paqnation’s question.
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I think the people that would volunteer, would not be from the group that “can” make a major difference. The effect of the deaths would likely be inconsequential – other than, those that died, might have “exited” whilst minimizing personal trauma.
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Ah sorry I missed where he said that. I would be interested in a new blog post to discuss this topic more on impact of 90% versus 10% etc because I have a lot of questions on the data. Separate to self-deletion topics 🙂
I don’t think most people would voluntarily end their lives (even if they wanted to), but a lot would engage in behaviours that are more stupid or risker in an effort to get by, e.g., drinking, trading with gangs. Orlov said in the Soviet Union collapse a lot of men died from consumption.
Also interesting to think about this topic in consideration of the mental health crisis unfolding across the modern world. Many are already suicidal before the shit has even really hit the fan….
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I actually agree with paqnation that an “exit” option, that is painless and has little trauma would be beneficial for when individuals get to the end of their road.
After reading the post again, you are correct that I stretched the context – there was no mention that having an exit option would equate with any kind of softer landing overall or alter the descent.
I might have been conflating my post with thoughts about Humane movie mentioned by Rob in a comment above.
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Ya, you make a good point. Think my emotions were talking when I was mentioning the euthanasia bit.
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I would recommend 1,4 butanediol. It is legal and becomes GHB in your body. At high doses it will make you fall asleep and suppress your breathing and heart rate. Overdoses commonly cause death.
I used to take it for dance parties as in small doses following MDMA the high was incredible. Sometimes I would take too much (we are only talking a difference of a ml or two I would have trouble staying awake.
Taking 20mls would likely kill you especially if you took some opioids with it. Should be a pleasant exit.
I initially got mine from Canada sent here to Oz. That was years ago though.
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Nice. Sounds like a good exit plan.
Thanks for sharing and restoring my faith. Was starting to conclude that people don’t want to share their dirty little secrets. 😊
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If anyone here can vouch for a mail order source of nembutal please share.
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Richard Heinberg today discusses another way we could buy time by adding explosives to the bomb.
I think it’s similar to how we’re using debt, although the damage from a debt default will not be as fatal.
https://richardheinberg.com/museletter-373-how-to-build-a-climate-bomb
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We would just be digging ourselves deeper into the hole. Plus, geoengineering doesn’t address the other symptoms of overshoot.
https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/climate-change/cooling-the-earth-by-reflecting-sunlight-back-to-space/
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I try to keep up on Global Warming and where we are on a real time basis. To that end I watch Paul Beckwith videos occasionally. He recently did one where he was coming out for the absolute necessity of geoengineering. I personally think it is preposterous from a collapse perspective, i.e. where do we get the energy to do it and we will never have the political will (worldwide)/time left to implement it. So, when climate scientists start talking about geoengineering it just depresses me. 😉
AJ
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This is why Derrick Jensen always says, “What do all of the supposed ‘solutions’ to climate change have in common? They all take industrial civilization as a given.”
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Tim Watkins with his spin on why growth must end and what that means.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/04/30/a-world-without-growth/
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When growth stops, it is going to look like the great depression on steroids. How do you think governments will respond to 30% unemployment? Or will they print huge amounts of money to bail out the financial system, causing hyperinflation?
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I think we will see massive amounts of industry will be nationalised by governments. Where they can run to provide the good/service without needing to make return on investment for investors
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But what happens to all of the debt? Huge amounts of paper wealth will evaporate. I don’t shed any tears about billionaires getting a lot less wealthy, but I do feel sorry for people living on pensions.
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The debt will be written off or the currency the debt is denoted in will be worthless. The derivatives market is bigger, by orders of magnitude, than all other markets. Clearly it is not possible that everyone can get their money back / debt repaid. Interestingly, New Zealand is the only modern country I know of that does not have depositors’ insurance for the little guys (e.g., under $250k in a bank).
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If the debt gets written off, there will likely be widespread bank runs, like in the early 1930’s in the U.S..
In the U.S., many people will at first viscerally oppose nationalizing major industries, but if they have to choose between that and total economic collapse, they will (hopefully) choose the former.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyHAi6lGl4U
Netanyahu Arrest Warrant From ICC “Imminent”
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I’m the construction/fix-it guy at the farm I assist. In previous years I have received food for my efforts. This year they are growing much less so they gave me a plot to grow whatever I want.
It’s a new experience for me to be in charge of growing my own food. This photo is about a week old. So far I have planted bush beans, beets, carrots, and bok choy. Next up salad, spinach, chard, kale, and in the greenhouse a few cherry tomatoes.
In addition, I’ll still receive some blueberries, asparagus, potatoes, rhubarb, and garlic from their scaled back operation.
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Oooooh Rob, that’s a beautiful sight, so thrilled for you embarking on this endeavour in continuing the legacy of our agricultural heritage. Never mind that it’s probably the single revolution that has gotten us into our current pickle, there’s still nothing to compare to the joy of watching seeds sprout and eventually grow into something you want to eat. Enjoy this season and your harvest to come, weather and wildlife willing!
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Thanks Gaia. It sure takes a lot of oil based products to farm organically. Drip tape, valves, pipe, reemay cloth, metal pins, gas and steel for the walk behind tractor, steel to build the Jang seeder, plastic for the Earthway seeder, plastic for greenhouses, etc. etc.. A lot will change without oil.
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Scaling back? Can you tell us why? Those greenhouses are a lot of investment sitting idle.
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Small farms here cannot function without off-farm income so the owners work off-site and hire someone to run the farm. Farm managers typically stay only 2-3 years because they can make more money in other jobs. This year’s new farm manager quit for personal reasons just before the growing season started. This forced a re-evaluation of the strategy. Growing annuals is much less profitable than growing perrenials because of the labor so it was decided to scale back and focus on perrenials this year.
It’s going to take quite a while to ramp up local food production when the trucks stop running. 😦
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I empathize with you and the farmer. I know all about how fossil fuel dependent, even in the 3 large gardens, I have been. I refused to buy a rototiller and turn all the soil over by hand (shovel/rake) in the fall and partially in the spring. I also did not buy a wood chipper and either rent one or make biochar with all the limbs/pruning every year and put that in the garden. But I have gotten lazy and a local retired nursery person has started a small spring nursery for the people in the area. I use her starts for tomatoes and peppers. Gardening/farming is going to get a lot more labor intensive as we unwind from the fossil fuel splurge we have indulged in.
AJ
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Here, MOST farms can’t make it without off farm income. Not sure if I’ve shared that point here before. There are scores of articles describing the fact, and the USDA data confirms and gives more detail on what the income streams are, and what size farms need it most.
Here is just one such:
https://www.cobank.com/corporate/news/2022/off-farm-income-increasingly-important-for-agricultural-and-rural-economy
CSAs, and other efforts to sell direct at retail prices, can help, but logistics and doing all the marketing and other non-farming pieces is typically not what farmers signed up for. You are fighting the planet destroying cheap food system and it is very hard work.
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It’s a big problem. A wise species without denial would see what is coming and do something to help small farmers survive.
This is MUCH more important than subsidizing renewable energy and EVs.
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That soil looks great!
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That’s great. It is going to be fun.
How big is the plot? It’s hard for me to tell: 200m^2? On the left (maybe in the center too), are these pipes for dripping irrigation? Did you till the soil yourself or did they do it for you with some machinery before handing you the plot (maybe covering with a plastic tarp, as we see in the background was enough)? Did the soil get any input before? What inputs/treatments do you plan to use, if any? Do you have a lot of hungry slugs eyeing the bush beans?
If you want to dedicate a small 2m^2 area (so as not to take too many risks) to either natural or syntropic farming, let me know 🙂 It would be an opportunity to get a feel on the opposite philosophy of these approaches (compared with conventional practices), see how they build up soil year after year (if not reset by tilling) and understand the constraints/compromises which respecting the natural dynamic entails.
Good luck for an abundant future harvest.
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My bed has 9 rows 1m x 18m so about 200m^2 with paths.
There are many more unused beds and space in the greenhouse if I want to plant more.
Most of the beds are covered with plastic during the winter. I tilled with a walk behind BCS tractor. I am using drip irrigation. I ammended before planting with lime and organic 4-13-0+13C fish bone meal. I may also add some 11-0-0 feather meal for some of the crops. I will be covering some of the crops with reemay cloth to protect from insects.
Can you point me to an overview of syntropic farming?
If I don’t post any more pictures you will know I failed. 🙂
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Here is a succinct bibliography of syntropic farming:
If you go syntropic all the way, then you will end up with trees (perennials, orchard, …). So that’s maybe something the farm owner doesn’t want. Even though trees can always be cut, sold or used as input for the next round of growth. (if you have enough space, you can even convert rows progressively and design the area so that there is a rotation and are always able to produce a bit of everything).
Luckily, you can always apply the principles of syntropic farming on smaller timescales and plant only annuals. There is a french gardener who presents designs with sunflower, corn, potatoes, zucchini, gourd, onion, garlic, salad, beets, peas, fava, leek, cabbages, phacelia, cosmos, tagetes. Some adaptation will be needed to pick plants that grow well in your context.
And I have the personnal conviction, that if yield improvements are to be seen year after year, then:
As a last note (mainly to myself :), it’s easy to get overwhelmed, we also need to rest, slow down when that happens. (the possibilities are infinite anyway)
In any case, don’t worry: you won’t fail. You will get to discover your preferred way of gardening. Next year will be different and an occasion to improve.
Have fun!
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Dear Charles,
I hope you are well.
Great to see Ernst Götsch methodology mentioned.
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
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Thank you ABC.
I am looking forward to hearing your experience from within your national emergency security council.
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Dear Charles,
thank you for thine quick reply.
I am afraid, that such a journey to gain a position within said council (if at all plausible) will take years in my condition.
Nonetheless, I cannot think of any other endeavour which could be said to be worthwhile knowing all of this, I simply must act.
The more I learn, realise and understand various matters, the more Kaarlo Collan’s (aka Pentti Linkola) sage like knowledge unveils and lightens up this dreary path.
– The man was truly nothing short of brilliant (as are most of you my dear brethren & sistren here).
It’s unfortunate he passed away rather recently.
– It would’ve been an honour to have engaged in a discussion with him.
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
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Thank you Charles! I will study and think about ways to try here.
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Rob ,the plot of land looks great for growing all types of food crops.
These days I’m against the concept of trying to grow organically, or with permaculture, or syntropically or whatever claimed ‘natural’ approach, for the simple reason none of them are close to ‘natural’ in any way.
Firstly, not your block, but all the terms relate to ‘farming’, where nutrients are transferred from the area the crops are grown to the town or city. Nothing even close to nature in that. If we then moved all the nutrients back to the farm as wastes, we use lots of fossil fuels to do it (both ways of transport). Again not natural or close to sustainable.
Secondly, we grow plants that come from all corners of the world in our orchards and vegetable gardens, that come from a variety of different microclimates and soil types, living with a range of different creatures from their local areas. Thinking we can replicate anything ‘natural’ in a system combining parts of many different subsystems from around the world is just hubris.
Plus we humans have selected plants of thousands of generations to grow according to our needs, not the needs of the plant in coping with a different environment from their natural home. It’s all short termism at best. It can look for a few years or maybe a decade or so, but eventually something will go terribly wrong. This is all before we add how much the climate will change over the next few years, with totally abnormal weather events nearly every year now everywhere.
My suggestion is you grow what you want, using anything that gives good results, while trying to minimise use of chemicals that are likely bad for those eating the produce. You have already worked out plastic pipes for drip irrigation and greenhouses are not even close to sustainable, neither is the rest of the artificial system, no matter what you grow, unless it’s an original natural plant from your area.
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I agree with you.
Organic is definitely not green or natural. The main benefit is no pesticides or herbicides but organic is still completely dependent on fossil energy and a complex industrial infrastructure.
There are so many critical and fragile failure points in modern farming. For example, being unable to obtain a replacement irrigation pump, cooler compressor, water valve, belt, battery, tire, etc, would shut us down.
Every day I am reminded of the magic of fossil energy. Yesterday I planted tomatoes in the greenhouse. I set out to prepare the beds by hand with a broad fork but after a lot of effort and little progress I went and got the BCS walk behind tractor and was done in 5 minutes.
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Hello Hideaway,
Things can be seen that way. I’d like to offer another angle.
Aren’t we just learning and trying to live a bit more responsibly while enjoying ourselves? Some would say re(dis)cover our role in the ecosystem. Doesn’t regenerative agriculture “work” (in that it can build soil, regrow forests, speed up the accumulation process of life)? And yes, it is certainly not perfect. We can go against the flow or with it. We certainly have many choices. This plays on so many levels (inner, cultural, societal, ecological)
Sometimes, I get the impression that you have decided things must be and stay all absolute doom and gloom 🙂
I would like to end with a quote (http://bnzr.vot.pl/en/archives/2193) by Fukuoka from “Sowing Seeds in the Desert” (first published in 1996):
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Hi Charles, we have been farming for nearly 40 years, I was the state secretary of an organic farming organisation and on the certifying committee for a couple of years. I learned a lot, mostly how not to do something.
The future is all doom and gloom because no-one wants to try and take any action to avoid it, not that there is much that can be done now. We are in deep deep overshoot by many billions of people and have played havoc with the ecosphere.
These days I don’t have much time for Fukuoka either. He lived on the side of a volcano with rich very fertile soil, and by selling product off farm he was effectively mining it, but didn’t ever consider this. I read One Straw Revolution back in the eighties along with 5 Acres and Independence and a host of other books. The mining of the soil might take several generations but eventually Liebig’s law of the minimum will get you.
They all miss the mining of soil if you sell anything off farm. They all miss that you have to pay some taxes to occupy the land, or rent to the owner. They all miss that to sell ‘produce’ you need some type of insurance (anywhere in this country anyway). You have to have a large surplus to pay for these fees and taxes. We also have to pay for water rights etc.
Basically it’s illegal for us to occupy land without paying for the privilege, so have to create a surplus, earning ‘something’ from the land. It’s the entire system that demands MORE from everyone to just exist.
It’s great to produce your own products with as much or as little chemical and modern machinery input as you desire, but we are only trying to fool ourselves if we believe there is anything sustainable about it. I suppose it’s all just our own little bit of denial about a bad outcome to believe we can grow enough food in perpetuity for ourselves and our neighbours, and relatives that might turn up when the SHTF and all get along forever without anyone else trying to take our produce.
All without outside inputs, or replacing any broken tool or worrying about how the climate is still rapidly changing, etc..
Sorry Charles, but we do it all for ourselves, and if using a tractor to dig over a portion of the garden this year, instead of digging it by hand is available, then do use it while it’s available to save yourself time and effort today, is my belief (and what my body can handle). Once you’re gone, the ground will quickly be taken over by native plants and weeds, or someone else gardening/farming it their way, which will never be the same as you created.
You do it all for yourself, in the ‘present’ in the process of denying a bad outcome, at some point in the future, so make sure you enjoy how you are doing it and don’t worry about being a purist. If the ground needs potash then buy some potash, likewise for everything else. Trying to build up soils naturally poor in XYZ, via different plantings etc, then trying to grow ABC that is a heavy user of XYZ is a mugs game and your ABC crop would never naturally grow on soil deplete of XYZ anyway, so there is nothing natural about any of it, nor is it sustainable, so just enjoy creating good products for yourself and family and friends today..
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🙂
Things change.
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Hello Hideaway,
About “The future is all doom and gloom because no-one wants to try and take any action to avoid it”, I was wondering, what action you would recommend.
Regenerative agriculture clearly seems to me one of the things, but that too you seem to advise against. So I don’t really understand your position.
Also, please try not to judge the actions of others through your own lenses. There are many ways to experience life. Some people like what other find a chore, some fear what other look for… To each his own. You may not believe it. That’s ultimately your freedom.
🙂
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My friends,
Hope you and your families are well. Thank you for sharing your honest exchange and allowing me to connect on many levels with both your views. In my opinion, neither precludes or excludes the other, as above all we still have free agency to decide how we perceive and what our mental, emotional, and physical reactions will be. I think at the core you are both saying this, just with different filters. In my interpretation, Hideaway is of a radical reality of that what is so (after all, that is the title of this post!) and any decision one makes is just that, but not expecting we can or should direct the wider course whilst Charles is embracing acceptance of infinite shades of perceived reality with the possibility that singular actions have power to change. Ultimately, the universe absorbs it all and I know you both agree to that, we all do, even if we don’t realise it! It’s just so uplifting to know there’s a place here (thank you, Rob!) for all of us to feel free to be the versions of humanity that we are.
This particular exchange recalled to me a Buddhist parable that has impressed me on many occasions on the nature of wisdom and compassion. Thank you for indulging my sharing of it here.
A Buddhist master was encouraging discussion over a particularly tricky passage in scripture with three of his disciples. One disciple gave a very clear and logical exegesis of his interpretation, harking back to prior scripture to provide evidence for his conclusions. ”You are correct.” pronounced his master, and that disciple bowed and excused himself from the gathering. One of the remaining disciples emphatically disagreed with the first’s reasoning and proceeded to give a very passionate exposition for his diametrically different view, to which the master also pronounced “You are correct.” The second disciple seemed mollified, bowed and left the room. The remaining disciple was stymied, having heard both presentations and the master’s responses. ”I am the slowest one here and have obviously much to learn, but Master, how can both be correct? Either one or the other is right or can they both be right and wrong at the same time? When each of them spoke it seemed like the truth but now I am so confused, I just don’t know anymore!” To which his master beamed a smile and said “You are also correct!”
Namaste, friends.
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Thank you Gaia gardener.
I feel there is something I need to uncover. I have to push forward even though it may sound a bit agressive and get a bit rough at times 🙂
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Hi Charles, …
“Regenerative agriculture clearly seems to me one of the things, but that too you seem to advise against. So I don’t really understand your position.”
I’m not advising against doing it for yourself at all. It’s the belief system that goes with it I’m against, as it’s still a denial of reality, in thinking it’s sustainable in the long run.
My opinion is about farming or agriculture, the notion that any of it is ‘sustainable’ at all. It clearly isn’t because the very notion of every type of farming is to produce an excess to sell somewhere else. It’s mining the minerals from one place to take to another, all done in modern times by growing plants that are not natural to the area.
Every type of farming is artificial, as the natural world is a system in equilibrium for a time, until ‘something’ changes (say climate), the entire system changes with different climax species and a new equilibrium is reached. Everything stays within the system, except for what is washed down rivers, and even this minor change in nutrients will change the ecosystem in the longer term.
Many species on this planet have existed for many millions of years. Crocodiles have existed in pretty much the same form for 200 million years, that’s long term sustainability. Our farming practices, whether regenerative or something else have zero hope of that type of longevity, because we take minerals from the soil to other places, towns and cities and cannot return them all to the original area without huge energy use of some type in transport, both ways. It’s all an artificial system and delusional to think differently.
I certainly understand that none of us want to let go, so we all clutch at anything that looks so much better than the direction we are headed. All of us that understand the problems still use these incredible communication devices that allow instant communication across the world. We are part of the overall problem, and it entirely possible there was never any possible way of stopping, nor solution to, the total collapse of modernity that is coming soon.
Sorry to be so doomy and gloomy, but it’s the reality of our situation, a culmination of a couple of hundred thousand years of human’s development and mastery of our surrounds.
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Hello Hideaway. Thank you for continuing the discussion even when we are having a hard time understanding each other 🙂
At one (very ground, human centric) level. Yes, I believe man-made deserts can be grown back to forests (more quickly with the right technique than left alone). I certainly saw how soil can improve. I understand that a forest attracts more life than a desert and that life brings minerals from other places. I do not make any claims about sustainability. I do not say any form of agriculture is necessarily the end-point. I believe any situation however bad can still be made better or worse depending on what we do. I am not claiming regenerative agriculture is the only silver bullet to deploy. I believe it should and will certainly scale (because it is both accessible, out of necessity, driven by people’s will to live). I personally have the luxury of being able to learn these techniques now. If they can be of any use to anybody, I am willing to share them now and then. I know change is coming. I already see it around me far and near. I am not one to sit idle.
We could discuss endlessly the technical details. But this is all secondary.
We could also fight on the true nature of reality without ever agreeing. It may quite possibly be the case, that we do not all have equal access to the various aspects of reality.
You don’t have to apologize to me about being doomy and gloomy. I have myself been there and done that for a time long enough to not be afraid of paper tigers anymore. I now find action guided by fear of poor value.
Ultimately, I am just trying to tell you that these sentences do not reflect my state of being at all:
About the first point. Things are what they are. This doesn’t prevent us from trying to do the best we can, to the best of our knowledge and probably more importantly following our inner guide (heart, intuition, deep feeling of reality). And, then there aren’t any guarantees of outcome. But that’s OK. The process matters, it all matters.
“We do it all for ourselves.” I look around myself and see people doing all sort of things for various things and beings all the time. People love, people care (for their child, husband, elderly, patients, customers, dog, plant…) And I am even ready to concede (even though that is not what I witness) you may be right and that they all ultimately do it for themselves (whatever that word means): but what does it matter for the one receiving?
“and if using a tractor to dig.” Why dig in the first place?
“to save yourself time and effort today.” What am I going to do with the saved time and effort? If I rush all the time, when do I live? Where is the fulfillment?
“don’t worry about being a purist.” My professional life is a constant negociation against the merchants who run this temple. They don’t want me to be a purist in anything. They want to make a quick buck out of badly done work. OK, that’s our culture, that’s our current way of being: productivity, optimization, endless technical means without ends. That’s how you get products which don’t last, vaccines which kill and lives not worth living. I am sick of it. That’s not who I am. (And I quite agree with rintrah who states he can’t stand the techbros because they make the world ugly https://www.rintrah.nl/beauty/. Even though I am pretty sure he and me don’t have the same beauty standards 😉
“If the ground needs potash then buy some potash, likewise for everything else.” What is potash? To me, it’s yet another abstract concept, another detour. I don’t bother about potash when gardening. I see, I feel, I react, I love, even sometimes hurt the plants, the field, life. They give back. We grow and die, intertwinned meshes of beings. It’s even deeper than that: a constant flux. It’s all perfect.
“it’s the reality of our situation, …” To me, this is just one particular way to interpret reality. We are the ones who give all the meaning there is. And yes I agree with Gaia gardener’s Budhist parable. There are infinite, valid ways to read the world.
I understand you are a very intelligent, knowledgeable and practical person with many achievements in his life. Lots of what you say makes logical sense. But it is always negative. Why? I deeply don’t understand you. I don’t understand the doom and gloom. That’s not my experience of life (not that it is without any kind of hardship).
In other words, given the situation as you see it, and acknowledging that the world is not going to end (in that some things necessarily will go on), I’d like to ask you: what would you stand for (despite even impossible odds, reason)? What do you love?
Thank you 🙂
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Hello Hideaway,
I hope you are well.
I was not necessarily looking for it, but while listening to a recent video with Ernst Gotsch, I stumbled about this remark he makes (https://youtu.be/wvEmRngRviU?t=4055) and which made me think of our conversation: “And so nutrients. Hans ???, a scientist last century, microbiologist, In his research he came to the conclusion that in medium so-called fertile loamy soil here in central Europe, we have potassium for at least 80 millions years to harvest every year 4 to 6 tons of cereals”
I thought this might interest you. And I don’t want you to easily discard my arguments under the pretext that I often exude an esoteric flavour not grounded in “reality” 🙂
I have had a hard time understanding him, so was not able to get the name of the scientist he references. If you know who he is referring to, it interests me.
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Hi Charles, When I used potassium as an example. it is just that, one of lots of different nutrients needed by plants and animals. It’s all to do with Liebig’s law of the minimum. If you mine the soil for long enough, eventually something will become so short that the plants you try and grow will become sickly and produce a lot less, eventually to the point of not being able to survive.
Our vegetable and fruit gardens and farms, grow plants from a variety of different regions around the world, they don’t and can’t grow naturally in the one place because they all have slightly different requirements. It’s why they don’t all grow naturally in the area to start with.
The best possible vegetables to grow in your area are obviously the ones that grow there naturally, though often plants form a different region of the world excell at growing, because they don’t have the corresponding pests and diseases from their home area, they grow well for a time anyway, until the natural world catches up with them.
All farming is not natural, we have no hope of understanding all the relationships between the plants we choose to grow, the nutrient requirement, the relationships with all the natural bugs, insects, bacteria, viruses and fungi that grow in the soils, that vary greatly from one location to the next. Plus the crops we grow are vastly different from their natural antecedents. We also don’t and can’t forsee how the local environment will change the natural balance over time in the future.
Plus of course the climate is changing all the time, so trying to keep whatever species growing in our little patch, when in the natural world, their environmental niche would have been constantly moving, or that particular species going extinct, are all examples of human hubris in that we can control the natural world to our advantage over anything more than the short term.
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Argh…
Yes, I agree about human hubris, that we can’t control the natural world or that we can’t hope to understand the intricacies of it all. That’s in fact one of the salient points of Fukuoka: ride the forces of nature instead of constantly going against them to exploit. But before we are able to do that, we have so destroyed the natural processes, that we must somehow let them recover. There are actions which can speed this recovery up. Same with Gotsch, he is advocating for us to re-discover our role as a partner to the whole planet organism. We leave this self-appointed position of owner, master, know-it-all. These are both approaches grounded in humility, love of life, bonding and positivity.
To me, seeing our own hubris, that our suffering is of our own making, is precisely part of the work each of us, westerner need to be doing internally so that we relate differently with the world. Then and while doing so, our ways of being changes.
Going back to the initial essay up there, I find these paragraphs are not true. They are not a fatality. They first and foremost express fear:
Nor this:
It is admittedly a wicked problem (given who human are: destructive, smart, blind and sometimes even evil). But, still many people are doing things. And there are many paths through (even though they, to me, all go through some renewal of our internal being). I don’t know which route will be travelled. But I am confident because this is all a complex adaptative systems, and despite what doomers (and myself) claimed 20/30 years ago, the worst case didn’t realise. And, we haven’t blown ourselves up with nukes (and even there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus).
To state my case precisely, the following trends could become dominant: population spreading and relocalization, population reduction, life regeneration, reduction of the reliance on fire (burning of fossil fuels) and shift from exploitation to cooperation (inter/intra-species). The techniques exist, they are spreading. Necessity is kicking in.
Part of me has been starting to think this discussion is getting nowhere… It’s OK. I won’t convince you that doom highlights rays of lights. And reciprocally. I laid out my case up to this point (and will maybe add some arguments, if they come up), for the other readers, especially younger ones. Because you are a very articulate, experienced, intelligent individual. And you seem to have come to the conclusion human beings have created hell on earth and that the species just deserves to be removed. Whatever we do individually or collectively. I don’t see the point. I don’t see what you are advocating. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to really know you, to understand you, to see the core.
Maybe you are in a mourning phase. And I am being to demanding of you? Or just, maybe we are two different generations, so we are in different stages, we had different things to do. I don’t know. I don’t understand. It’s part of the mystery.
All the words in the world are useless compared to personal experience. Despite your experience on the field, I get the impression you don’t seem to have felt the miracle of recovery of life yourself. Maybe you started from a world so rich I can’t imagine it. I started from a city and a spiritual desert. I just have one thing to say to the younger ones: go out, observe and play.
All the best to you Hideaway. It was fun. Thank you.
🙂
(By the way, evolution, species, Darwin, this is only one particular lens on reality. This sack of cells typing on the keyboard is as old as life itself. There must have been a first homo sapiens at some point. So in a way, this lineage is as sustainable as crocodiles. It just chose a different strategy, that of shape-shifting)
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Charles, where I’ve used the term ‘we’ it is the collective ‘we’ of humanity, not every individual, many of whom are already trying to opt out of the rat race whenever possible.
The coming collapse will be different to every prior collapse of civilizations because of the sheer size of our numbers. Even here in Australia, a country that with a ‘native’ population of 500,000 or thereabouts for 60,000 years, changed the natural vegetation of the the land massively and sent many mega fauna into extinction. Now we have 27 million and have a massive immigration program.
We don’t have as many guns as other places, but more than enough to send most mega fauna into extinction in a mad rush for food once collapse happens.
Farming, involves taking food to towns and cities, once we have eaten the megafauna, there will be nothing but humans to pull carts of food anywhere. We wont be taking anything more than a few miles which will prevent towns from getting to any size.
In the US, every prepper and every ‘doomster’, thinks they are going to survive by their ability to hunt wild game. There are so many guns and so many people that megafauna doesn’t stand a chance, including cows, horses, pigs and goats.
You mention relocalization of city people to country areas. My immediate thought is what shelter will these people use? Where will the materials come from to build shelter after collapse? The sheer numbers we are talking about would cut down every tree to build some type of makeshift shelter.
It’s the massive overshoot of humanity that’s the problem. The UK could support 4-5M people going back a couple of centuries, now has 67 million, all of whom will try to escape to the countryside when collapse happens. It’s the phase of these vast hordes of people trying to survive that will cause immense damage to everything living in the countryside. These spreading masses will also burn everything they can find to keep warm and eat everything in their path that looks slightly edible.
I might sound really doomerish, but I’m just trying to relay to people the reality of what’s going to happen, based on human history with much lower numbers involved.
If you think the modern human is going to do something vastly different to those from historic times, in times of desperation, then I’m all ears. I’d love there to be an alternative to the collapse that’s coming ‘sometime’ in the next decade or so, but so far all I’ve ever seen is a lot of wishful thinking and straight out denial of bad times ahead.
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All true which again explains why population reduction is the only good path, even if there is not enough time to avoid a lot of suffering.
And yet, only a tiny minority of overhoot aware intellectual leaders publicly call for population reduction policies.
Shame on the silent people.
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Rob, the only sane things to do, like a lottery for having children, compulsory contraception for the rest, free availability of life ending drugs for those who wish to end their lives because of infirmity (or any other reason), with encouragement or perhaps even incentives for the remainder of the family are way out there type of thinking.
Yet we have let overshoot go so far, that anything less guarantees massive suffering in the future. Even with the above type of radical policies, I only think it would reduce a bit of suffering and are really of policies that should have been brought in when the population was around 3 billion or less, with an attempt back then to get population under 1 billion by the year 2000.
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It’s so obvious, and so obviously the right thing to do, and yet no one discusses it.
Maybe there’s another level of denial that blocks even the likes of Hagens and Murphy and Jancovici and Bradford and Michaux and Friedemann and Martenson and Watkins and Heinberg and Morgan and Berman and etc.
The only one who gets it is Alpert, and the other overshoot aware leaders think he’s crazy.
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I’ve read the whole thread down to here (May 6 10:45pm) because I have come to the same unvarnished conclusions as Hideaway, after 20 yrs of energy constraints awareness. And I am a confounded permaculture based mixed farmer who knows it’s always been unsustainable. Now what?
Let the music begin!
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Here’s a graph you might all like on minerals for different “green” solutions
1713837164866 (1009×622) (licdn.com)
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Politicians need to sell voters hopium about maintaining our “non-negotiable” way of life.
John Michael Greer once said that the American way of life is non-negotiable in one way: No amount of negotiating is going to save it. (paraphrased)
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The future is unfolding as many predicted.
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(this film is from 2018 so its probably already been mentioned, but just in case you missed it or are new)
Saw this a couple years ago but watched it again recently. These types of films are so much better for me on the second viewing couple years later. The writing is good with a very strong energy focus. It does have some cheesiness. “we’re all in this together” and “if we do this now, we will be able to blah blah blah”. But they probably have to say that crap in order to get funding.
Nate Hagens, Joseph Tainter, and Ugo Bardi were just some of the highlights. And if you have no interest, at the very least its worth watching for five minutes starting at the 17:42 mark. Nice simple breakdown of energy and how we got here.
(even “The Dude” was overshoot aware before me)
Living in the Future’s Past | AWARD WINNING DOC | Jeff Bridges | Environment (youtube.com)
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Has anyone heard about the heat wave in Asia?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/heat-wave-asia-2024-deaths-india-severe-weather-climate-change/
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My friend Panopticon is covering it. Looks like there are heat problems in South America too. The rest of world is experiencing floods or drought.
I can’t read his report every day. 😦
https://climateandeconomy.com/2024/05/02/2nd-may-2024-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
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https://www.okdoomer.io/were-watching-the-elite-panic-in-real-time/
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Chris Martenson covered it today:
1) Smells like another gain of function lab leak. Why would they stop? They experienced no punishment for causing covid.
2) No need to panic, not a single human dead yet.
3) Expect beef and chicken prices to increase because regulators are using this as an excuse to make it harder to be a farmer.
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Remember the Rintrah article you linked to on April 25?
https://www.rintrah.nl/who-wants-some-milk/
In the U.S. it is still legal to feed chicken poop to cows, even though that practice is banned in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the European Union.
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Rintrah is a vegan with rabies so a little thought outside of his bias is warranted.
His thoughts on covid issues are very valid but lets not repeat non thinking responses
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Yes, I read Rintrah with a BIG filter. He’s a very strange person. Maybe crazy.
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So many things stink, and almost no one cares.
They’re getting away with it.
Plus:
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Both these videos were interesting. However, voting for RFK Jr is just the lesser of three evils, probably much less worse than the other two. RFK Jr. is all behind Israel and it’s genocide in Gaza. Even he can’t buck the AIPAC lobby’s hold on the US government. I probably would vote for him as opposed to either Trump or Biden, in that he’s aware of the danger of both censorship and Big Pharma and it’s control of the government. Judge Napolitano had Andy Biggs (Republican from Arizona) on his show the other day. Biggs is standing up to AIPAC, and he admits it might kill his chances for re-election. However, the most interesting thing he said was that he thinks the US Congress is completely captured by Big Pharma and they’re the ones you have to be scared of.
AJ
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I’m still not sure if the main covid cuplrit was pharma or the US bioweapons program.
It’s probable the mRNA debacle was primarily the fault of government which explains zero accountability and zero steps to prevent a recurrence.
Does anyone have any idea why US enemies do not undermine the US by leaking what actually happened?
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humanity is to blame
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Humanity for not giving a shit and believing transparently thin bullshit?
Or those damn denial genes?
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hard to tell and it annoys us all the same
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Every human has flaws. I’m thinking there will never be a better political candidate anywhere. His books are amazing. Trump and Biden probably don’t have the skills to even read RFK’s books, let alone write them.
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Agreed; everyone (from the U.S.) here should watch those two videos above (the first was the best). RFK Jr. is smarter than either Biden or Trump by miles and miles. Biden and Trump are intellectual midgets in comparison. Not to put too much into it, but I knew a fellow attorney who was a great trial litigator and he said that what he loved about being an attorney was that he would work on many different cases (medical malpractice, torts, car accidents, construction defects, etc.) and in each one to be successful he had to learn another discipline better than his opponent in order to educate the jury and win at trial. Obviously from the above videos RFK Jr. is such an intellect. (I just wish he wasn’t captive to the Zionist lobby).
AJ
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Agreed.
I think both sides are to blame for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. They both ignore the core conflict issue which is that there is not enough land and water for the number of people that want to live there, and both are trying to increase rather than decrease their populations.
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I am of the same opinion. 50+ years of failed leadership. The outcomes of terrorism and genocide were so painfully predictable.
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Still, there are some political thinkers, who believe we shouldn’t blame any of our representatives. To them, it is the system of election that leads to the institutions/law being robbed by the powerful. Since, if you have money, you can push your candidate, who is now in debt to you and is effectively an employee.
They argue, we should replace this system (among others) by a lottery where reprensentative, judges, etc… are replaced every year. This way, they can’t be corrupted (not enough time to identify them, to select them) and are more representative (https://democracywithoutelections.org/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition, https://brill.com/view/journals/dyp/56/2/article-p136_003.xml)
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My first exposure to RFK Jr.’s running mate. She seems intelligent and wise and maybe even overshoot aware. I bet she will be popular with young people.
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Wow. They discussed healthy soil, regenerative agriculture, unhealthy food, chronic health problems, a broken health care system, a government that never tells the truth, and many more important issues.
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We are so screwed.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2024/05/04/4th-may-2024-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/
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We are very dry here in NZ where I live. Plus, it is still very warm. Only two months left to the shortest day. El Nino came late here. The dry conditions are not good because we haven’t been able to grow as much grass for winter grazing.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_Initiative
Ever wonder why there is so much immigration to Canada? Here may be why.
Some moron in the U.S. suggested the U.S. grow its population to 1,000,000,000 to compete with India and China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Billion_Americans
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Hideaway today again demonstrates that facts and logic do not change minds. Click the link to read the reply by OFM which simply ignores all of Hideaway’s points.
It would be very tricky to be an aware leader today. Maybe RFK Jr. has a chance because he doesn’t appear to be overshoot aware.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-3-2023/#comment-774556
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Whenever I see ads for cars online, they are usually for absurdly oversized gas-guzzlers, even with gas prices above $4.00/gallon. Why aren’t they promoting more energy efficient sedans?
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Probably two main reasons:
1) Margins are higher on more expensive vehicles.
2) A lot of citizens want big gas guzzlers. The Ford F150 is the most popular vehicle in the US.
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Even better the F350 diesel with 20,000 lbs tow capacity so you can tow a big home on holidays. These are very popular trucks. Why do we even have these vehicles for personal use? They are designed to tow big loads not for going to the store for milk.
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https://www.collapse2050.com/how-to-collapse-hyperinflationary-bust/
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Preptip: Take advantage of sales. On every weekly shopping trip I purchase about 2x the calories I consumed the previous week and put the extra in storage. It takes a lot of time to build up a good buffer if you want to do so by taking advantage of sales.
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reading that, I realize it s a whole different mindset that I don’t have, to be deliberately stocking up now already, on foodstuffs. Plus all the useful tools, usables, etc.
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What do you believe is the correct response to our overshoot predicament?
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I could be interpreting incorrectly, but I read Ian’s comment as the same mindset as me. Not capable of stocking up and preparing for the worst… because collapse does not seem like it is happening tomorrow or next month. So I think he is just amazed that some of you can hunker down and prepare (the correct thing to do)… while the rest of us procrastinate and assume the grocery store will still be open tomorrow.
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Correct response to our overshoot condition?
Good to put me on the spot this sunday morning! Hi Rob, here goes.
First, good for whom? you and me or even our generation? Different answers. Good to run out the clock, I’d do what I am doing and it sounds similar to you. I’m a “doomer-boomer-farmer, downwardly mobile, neopeasant cognescente” by choice. I’m not yet so motivated to stockpile drygoods and foodstuffs. (That was the point of my comment above. Kudos to you and I’ll probably regret not bothering.)
I actually think the Octavia Butler duology Parable of The Talents/Sower is a good and useful scenario to build from. Start by moving to a less dangerous more climate/resource benign area, scavenge regularly for metals and discarded useful tools, suss out an purpose/meaning philosophy (eg god is change etc), set up a community in a rural area (the stazi still found them), grow food, learn native plant medicines, learn selfdefence and weapons, etc. Reading historical accounts of settler lifestyles and howto manuals should give some clues to what level of hardship and resourcefulness the survivors will experience, if not they won’t survive. That’s for the millenial generation and their kids.
How long before we (north american top quartile) are back to a 1950s level of consumption? And then on downward from there? I’d say 20 years. With a major depression sandwiched in there sometime. All bets off the table if www3 now under way goes nuke.
And on that point, I have never seen any theory or investigator make the case that the wild weather events are the result of HAARP type weather mod weaponry by all major powers… The silence makes me suspicious. Already the anti-OWG anti-biggov anti-fascist crowd is trying to position the climate crisis as a hoax perpetuated by the elite to distract the masses. Meanwhile TPTB engineer a population reduction via mRNA genetic mass vaxx, via war, via starving the UN relief efforts.
What should we do in response to overshoot? We the people/species should indeed reduce population by half or more. As you know Jack Alpert has run the numbers keeping the birth rate below the death rate by enough for a decade or two. Refocus the climate debate to address land (mis)use more than co2 pollution to restore lost recycling of water (regenerative ag, afforestration, spongey cities, less hardscaping, more beavers (seriously), rejig social safety net for lower population, seriously tax away economic rents and capital gains). It’s not an exhaustive list, but that would do a lot to lengthen the glide path for humanity, not a nirvana.
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Hi Ian, thanks for explaining. Sounds like we are on a similar path. I agree with your plan. Glad you don’t think I’m crazy for stocking some extra food.
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https://www.indianweb2.com/2024/04/two-largest-floating-solar-plants-of.html
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LOL. Who would have ever thought that weather could destroy something this precious!!! The phrase “bull in a china shop” comes to mind.
I dont see an intelligent species behind this magnificent engineering endeavor. Just a bunch of desperate confused apes.
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In a world of storms having increased intensity, we couldn’t design a floating solar array to withstand storms. Perhaps they thought they would never get them.
Increasingly I’m thinking most major solar and wind installations are nothing more than a scam paid for by subsidies from the government, then quickly sold to whatever pension fund that wants ‘green’ credentials in their portfolio. No doubt someone will sue someone over the failures, but it’s odds on the company that built it already went bust after all the funds were withdrawn in overpriced management fees and directors wages, so no-one to sue..
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B apparently does not buy into my MORT+MPP explains everything story.
As usual with critics, he does not offer another theory that explains all of the evidence. Like, for example, why only one species believes in life after death. Or why well educated polymaths when presented with undeniable evidence still aggressively deny overshoot. Or why almost no environmental organizations have population reduction as a top priority.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/red-herrings-transhumanism-and-well
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Trying to be fair with my judgement of this article (because I love B but was annoyed with this right off the bat). My defensiveness for denial is starting to be akin to my defensiveness for Quinn’s sustainable cultures. So I have to keep that in mind…. It is possible that denial is not the correct aspect or piece of the puzzle. I have to accept that…. But nothing in this article helped to sway me off the Denial bridge. In fact, in an unintentional way, it only reinforced my denial beliefs.
“This is how every civilization’s age of reason ends… Dazed by the riches to be made, they fail to recognize (let alone respond to) the many underlying predicaments of their time — rising inequality, injustice, depleting resources, skyrocketing debt levels, climate change… ”
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Exactly. B was uncharacteristically lame today.
I’d be happy to replace MORT with a better explanation of the insanity that surrounds us. But it has to address the evidence head on. Oblique explanations are not acceptable.
Perhaps B suffers from the same syndrome as Simon Michaux, denial genes that won’t completely quit?
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If MORT is true, the story of humanity will turn out to be a tragedy. The species intelligent enough to realize it is in overshoot doesn’t do much about it due to denial. It is a tragedy because of the (likely millions) of species we will drive extinct and the billions of humans who will die prematurely during the “population correction”.
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Hideaway on the downslope.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-3-2023/#comment-774616
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Hideaway with another important concept:
Any energy system that does not generate a profit must consume the profits of another profitable energy system.
This means that when oil becomes unprofitable due to rising depletion driven extraction costs, most modern renewable energy sources will fail.
Wind for sailing ships and grinding grain, water wheels for small engines, and wood for heating will probably continue because we know they can be profitable without oil.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-3-2023/#comment-774598
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David Attenborough via the BBC just released a new documentary series on mammals. It’s available for download at the usual torrent sites.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001xxn5
Attenborough and Ken Burns are perhaps the last sources of high quality documentaries. I’ve collected documentaries for about 30 years and have watched them steadily dumb down like everything else in our culture.
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Hello Rob,
Thank you for that, a new documentary from Sir Attenborough is a boost of joy indeed! I have to come to see David Attenborough as some kind of talisman for our planet. His ability to spark awe for our home planet combined with the highest level of visual technology attained through these closing years of civilisation is nothing short of a wonder in itself. I cannot view his documentaries without tears of raw emotion, how else does one respond to honouring and fare-welling life? Every day that I wake up and do not see his obituary is another day reminding me that we are all living on borrowed time, and we are hurtling faster through change. Long may this paragon live, surely when his light goes out we will finally know ours are flickering to the end.
Namaste, friends.
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Yes I agree. He is a very good man and he is one of the few that has spoken honestly about overshoot and over-population. I find it hard to watch his documentaries because I know what he films is now rare and getting rarer.
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It happens to be Sir David’s 98th birthday today what that man has seen and done in his lifetime, or even what that man hasn’t seen or done!
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I just checked my library. I have 120 documentaries totalling 353 hours of play time by David Attenborough. I believe that’s everything he’s made.
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https://energyskeptic.com/2024/lab-grown-meat-is-energy-intensive-and-up-to-25-times-worse-for-the-climate-than-beef/
Lab-grown meat will not bail us out.
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Oh no, it’s a code red alert!
Ukraine might use long range missiles to spoil Putin’s inauguration party tomorrow and Russia might retaliate with tactical nukes.
Or maybe not. Who knows?
Tensions do seem to be trending in the wrong direction.
My prepping focus now is shifting to DIY supplies like nails, screws, and plumbing emergency repair parts.
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Got fed up today at my insurance company job which is dedicated to helping corporations hide money. So I said “fu#k it” and decided to surf the web all day instead of work.
Was worth it because I found this great essay by Gail Zawacki. The comments caught my attention because Dowd was involved and he even mentioned Rob. Gail cracks me up with her blunt wording, and Michael is laying it on thick in the 2nd reply. They were both feisty about this topic you can tell. Ahhh, RIP to both of you, the world is not the same without you. And I included one other commenter because she give’s Rob a shout out.
Sorry if I am the only one interested in these old comments, but I find them fascinating. If a civil war ever breaks out amongst the overshoot aware community, this subject (sustainable cultures) will most certainly be the reason. 😊
Michael Dowd July 5, 2019 at 1:20 PM – There is really only one major thing I would take issue with…… ecocentric, rather than anthropocentric. In other words, their technology, their settlements, their ways of exchanging goods and services, their education, their community, etc were (more or less) in accord with the needs of the biosphere.
Gail Zawacki July 5, 2019 at 2:40 PM – Thanks Michael but I’m not buying it, sorry. Humans aren’t special, and to me any religion or “spirituality” is mumbo-jumbo woowoo that people make up to fend off reality. We are no different than any other biological creature and what we ALL do, is grow our numbers until we hit some sort of limit.
Michael Dowd July 6, 2019 at 9:50 PM – I actually spent quite a bit of time this morning pondering how really bright and generally not-denial-prone folk like you and Rob Miercarski can possibly hold such silly and erroneous beliefs such as there have been “zero sustainable cultures” (his claim) or when you write, “the noble primitive and peaceful and sustainable indigenous savage was ever really a thing.”
Lidia17 July 7, 2019 at 8:57 PM – Rob M.’s blog links to the MORT theory make a lot of sense to me.
Wit’s End: In Praise of Themis (witsendnj.blogspot.com)
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Thanks, that brings back good memories.
I spent a lot of time with Gail and her little community on Facebook. It was a great place. I miss her a lot.
Slowly, slowly the un-Denial community is becoming bigger and more active. Maybe someday we’ll become as popular as what Gail created. Or maybe not, it doesn’t matter.
Gail had a powerful intellect, a wonderful personality, and fabulous gift for writing.
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Dear Rob,
I hope thou are feeling well.
Is there such a Facebook group still in existence?
Could thou please share the link?
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
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Sorry I don’t know if the group is still running. I closed my Facebook account many years ago. It was a private group called The Panic Room.
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It looks like it is closed. A few of my facebook friends were members
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Indrajit Samarajiva discloses that he has lost two thirds of his income for writing about the genocide. Sounds like he’ll be leaving Medium. I think he’s a good writer with integrity.
https://indi.ca/demonetized/
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Trying to make money out of gloom and doom is a fool’s errand. If you want money, write about how everything is rosy if people follow the latest XYZ new technology and hand wave away all reality. Unfortunately it’s that simple.
People will pay to believe in a rosy future, isn’t that what all religions are about?
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Sad but true. Also true that the more money you make the more damage you do.
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Houston, we have a problem if we can’t figure out how to grow potatoes on Mars.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/05/how-far-are-stars/
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A reminder of what is easy to forget.
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So which will it be: A $1,000,000 menu at McDonald’s or the Great Depression on steroids?
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I don’t travel and I don’t eat out so I don’t have a good sense of what’s happening in the economy. Karl Denninger does and says he’s seen recent changes that indicate a big problem.
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=251265
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I follow this person because occasionally there are gems. This post and the list of aphorisms are interesting and sometimes correct. I found the last one prescient for those of use who see collapse/death possibly coming soon.
https://www.gurwinder.blog/p/30-useful-concepts-spring-2024?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=3jorpw&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
The last aphorism:
One day you’ll do something for the last time and never know it. So, whether you’re watching a sunset or arguing with a friend, ask yourself: “What if this was the last time I experience this?” A sense of finality can turn even nuisances into miracles.
AJ
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aka mRNA is safe and effective
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This is so true! Sometimes you can’t even find the source’s source
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I’m just so green and sustainable…
Today I flame weeded my organic carrots with organic propane.
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Hey Rob,
You either forgot or deliberately chose not to use your sarcasm emojis skill which you recently acquired. But still, we’re all here so proud of you for being the poster child of green and sustainable in your latest endeavour. Keep the updates coming!
(here I would insert a winking eye emoji if only I had a brain to know how to do so)
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If my sarcasm is obvious I worry about offending the reader by implying they need an emoji to understand reality.
I also started some kale and chard from seed today in the greenhouse and hope to transplant them to the field in a few weeks. This was a completely green and sustainable process except for the potting soil that came wrapped in plastic, and the organic fertilizer that was made from non-organic dead animals in a giant fossil fueled machine, and the plastic trays that I planted the seeds in, and the plastic covered greenhouse that is keeping them warm.
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I probably should have posted this under Charles and Hideaway’s thread above, but I did not want to intrude on their epic conversation. Hideaway mentioned crocodiles having a 200-million-year run. For some strange reason something clicked for me with this statement. I’ve been looking at “intelligence” as an evolution & time thing. Meaning that if Native Americans had no contact with the Old World, and now have the chance to make a run like the crocodiles, they would not be able to sustain it because evolution would keep increasing their intelligence factor over time to the point where they will get too clever for their own good and end up destroying their environment and/or themselves. But why have the crocs been able to do it? Isn’t evolution pushing their intelligence levels upward?
A while back I stopped thinking of it as intelligence or cleverness and replaced it with EROEI. Makes much more sense this way. EROEI governs everything to the point where an alien without even looking at Earth could predict with great accuracy, the details of a human culture just by knowing what their EROEI is. Evolution and Time seem much less important than EROEI. So those crocs have lasted so long because their EROEI has remained relatively the same for 200 mill years.
When you play this out, the dreadfulness for us Quinn fans begins to set in. No idea what those crocodiles EROEI is but for humans to have that kind of a long existence, I’m guessing 1.1 – 2.2 max. A good example to look at is the differing lifestyles of two great movies set in the past. 1990 Dances with Wolves (200 yrs ago) and 1981 Quest for Fire (80kya). More guessing from me, but the Sioux tribe in Dances have an EROEI of 3.8 and Ron Perlman with his tribe in Quest have 1.5 EROEI.
Quinn, Dowd, etc., never focus on this important factor (Quinn does to an extent, but it needs to be more spelled out) that to be sustainable and have no negative impact on Mother Earth, you have to be (and stay which is the key) as “dumbed down” as Quest for Fire. Nobody in this current EROEI level culture can accept that answer (which is probably why its not focused on). But I’m sure there are millions of other species that would gladly jump for joy at the chance of having a Quest for Fire lifestyle. And yes, us Quinn fans want the Dances w/ Wolves life to be the 200 million year thing, but I now know that’s impossible once you get up to their level of EROEI (3.8).
If the purpose of life is for life to thrive and go on as long as possible… and in order to achieve that, no species can ever get above a certain EROEI level… Well, for a brain with the intelligence levels that today’s EROEI provides, this basically means there is no point to life. And this is where the spiritual/religious/voodoo stuff actually helps me sometimes to see the beauty of it all. But the human supremacy in me still asks “Is there really no need/want/purpose for intelligence of this magnitude anywhere in the universe?” If I am correct and the answer is a big fat “NO”, then it is much easier to conclude that there is no meaning or purpose of life. But I think that is the point of it all. Nothing.
Humans with our energy slaves have cheated so hardcore at life and are now at the point where we ignorantly ask what the point of it all is. I can picture George Carlin as God answering the question: “Nothing you assholes!! You shouldn’t even have the EROEI to be able to think/speak/ask that question. You are a complete accident/disaster. Now get your asses back down to that 1.5 EROEI like everyone else so that you don’t end up destroying everything I have worked so hard to create.”
I think I can finally abandon Dowd and Quinn’s rosy picture of human sustainable cultures being driven by wisdom. Feels like I’m onto something here but at the same time none of this logic is new or groundbreaking. A while back Rob summed it all up for me with this perfect reply:
“It was because our population was constrained by resource scarcity, as it is for all other species. For the last 10,000 years we broke through normal resource constraints with agriculture (bigger share of solar energy) and fossil energy (ancient solar energy) and became a destructive unsustainable species…”
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Epic conversation! Never heard of Quest for Fire but oh my god that is hilarious. 80,000 years ago humans were the same as they are now. Homos have been using fire for 1 million years 🙂
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Thanks Monk. Ya, I remember struggling with that. I chalked it up to the director/writer got the years wrong. But is there any chance in hell that some tribes hadn’t conquered it yet? For some reason I can buy it.
btw, It’s a really good movie. Highly recommend for this site. Took me years to finally watch it because I thought I would hate the grunting cave man stuff.
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To answer your question on any tribe not having fire, almost certainly no. Remember homo sapiens have existed through two serious ice ages and first appeared in a glacial maximum. We are descended from fire using homos, and we were not the only homo using fire, e.g., Neanderthals were very competent with making fire.
This is also why I find raw food diets hilarious. Talk about a step back in evolution by a few million years LOL.
main-qimg-7af2867535fa7a097a199076ff4fc48f-pjlq (602×266) (quoracdn.net)
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Gotcha. Thanks monk. Ya, I am still guilty of naively thinking life 50,000 years ago was the same as 1 million years ago.
How about what that old hound dog Rob 😊 is talking about. There is a scene where a female from a more advanced tribe introduces the missionary position to a male from a less advanced tribe (they only knew about the doggy style position). Do you think that too would have been common knowledge by 80kya?
And not sure I understand the raw food thing… Are you saying that we have been cooking our food for a million years so going back to raw food is unhealthy?
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Some people eat 100% raw food because they think it is unnatural to cook food. Nothing wrong with eating raw food 🙂
I have no idea about positions LOL but anthropologist do think pre-historic people had a lot more sex than their civilized counterparts. No idea how they think they know this though hehe.
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Cooking is essentially pre-digesting food which means we can have smaller guts which means ceteris peribus more energy and materials are available for other useful structures like a bigger brain.
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I saw Quest for Fire in the theater when it was released in 1981. My date didn’t like the sex scene. I did.
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A comment on your opening thought experiment about what would have happened to Native Americans had they remained isolated. All 8 billion people on this planet are more or less gentically identical. That’s because our species was bottlenecked and we all descended from one small tribe about 1-200,000 years ago that apparently experienced a rare double mutation for an extended theory of mind and a tendency to deny unpleasant realities.
Geographic differences in climate and diet have caused some minor differentiation like skin color and lactose digestion but we’re all basically the same.
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I totally agree. But you’re reply seems odd. I was not implying anything about humans being different. Was just using the Natives as an example for a small population of humans going through Evolution and Time to compare it with the crocodiles.
However, after reading my opening paragraph again, I can see why you may have thought I was “going there” especially considering my comment history on this site 😊. I should have used a better example to avoid any confusion.
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Sorry, I misunderstood you.
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No problem. No apology necessary.
The funny thing about this is in the moment I thought I it was my masterpiece. Just read it again and maybe I’m saying nothing and repeating EROEI a million times. My award-winning thoughts yesterday were more about how energy is the be-all and end-all which means humans conquered God.
Before my arrival to un-Denial I was positive about there being lots of life in the universe much more advanced than us. I mean c’mon, its too big. I even thought you’re “peak of whats possible” was some laughable BS. Four months later and a lot has changed me here. Its the quickest burst of new info (that makes sense for the puzzle) that I’ve had in any part of my journey. And now its not just that I agree/believe with your website, but I’m starting to see it more clearly finally. Conquering God does not happen and if some miracle of infinity there were a few others besides us, then I already know (prior to undenial) they had massive overshoot and did not make it (or sustain it).
But there are no others and there never were. With MORT, ext ToM, MPP, and throw in my new god EROEI (I really like this better than saying fossil fuels), its absolute zero chance there have been others. Its depressing and beautiful. But my god, what a fu#king waste of the one and only “peak of whats possible”.
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Awareness of the importance and limits of energy changes everything doesn’t it?
My favorite book of all time is Dr. Nick Lane’s “Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution” which explains why we should be in awe of life on this planet, and our brain that figured out how it works. I’ve read it over a dozen times.
It plus Varki’s “Denial” plus Ward and Brownlee’s “Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe” is all you need to understand our place in the universe.
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Hell yes it changes everything! Took me a couple of years to fully understand (on a somewhat expert level) William Rees’s famous line of: “We are living in the most abnormal moment in human history, yet we think its the norm.” But now I have to replace the word human with universe, and it takes on a whole new meaning. Seems like its back to the drawing board for me. I have to go down more learning rabbit holes with concepts like eukaryote. Dammit! I thought my journey was coming to an end, but it might only be in the beginning phase still.
Gonna order a Nick Lane book. If you could only read one, would you choose Life Ascending or The Vital Question?
Seems like the key to it all is in your quotes here: “Life is not some spiritual mystery, but rather a predictable outcome of the fact that the universe abhors an energy gradient, and life is its best mechanism for degrading energy.” (and) “If life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest, death is nothing but that electron come to rest.”
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oops. Nevermind. Just noticed that you said Life Ascending was your favorite of all time. I’ll start with that one first. Thanks
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Later tonight I’ll email you a download link.
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Awesome. Thank you.
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Excellent interview discussing the dire consequences of the US having lost all of its diplomacy skills.
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WOW, more and more pundits are saying that we are moving into WWIII (if not already there) and our short term future does not look good. Sorry folks, the west is ruled by dementia Joe and the idiots. Russia now means business and supposedly threatened the UK and French ambassadors in Moscow with destroying targets in France & UK (with possible nukes?). And still the U.S. thinks they can bully Russia (and China). NOT LOOKING GOOD.
AJ
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They know and they are mostly silent.
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What did he say in the rest of the thread? I don’t have twitter.
Which RCP scenario seems most likely? RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5, RCP 6.0 or RCP 8.5.
I personally think that peak oil will stop RCP 8.5 from happening (but could feedback loops bring us there?), but I also think that RCP 2.6 isn’t likely either.
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Here’s the article he wrote – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature
“Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.”
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I’m not sure why any climate expert would have any doubt about the target of 1.5C not being possible anymore. It’s not like we reduced carbon use at all since the Paris climate talk fest. In reality we have just continued to burn more fossil fuels on average every year since, with no end in sight until we simply reach maximum possible oil production.
The average of the last 12 months is already something like 1.58C above pre industrial times and we’ve only had acceleration in the last 8 years since the Paris talks..
While everything about civilization is downhill after oil production peak, and prices start to go persistently higher, I have no idea if coal burning will then go through the roof in an effort to make CTL or what governments will do. Perhaps nothing and just double down on about the green myth.
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Thanks Campbell.
Stellarwind72, I may be wrong but I don’t think you need a twitter account to read the links I post. They should open just like a web site.
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I’m in the same boat as Stellar with no twitter account. Sometimes the whole thing shows up, and sometimes (like this one) it does not show. No idea why the links are hit and miss like this, but I refuse to create an account.
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Preptip: Today I purchased 1 Kg of 70% Calcium Hypochlorite (aka Pool Shock) for $13. This granulated powder can be dissolved in water to make chlorine bleach for sterilizing drinking water. It has an infinite shelf life compared to liquid bleach which loses 20% potency with each year of age, takes up less space, and weighs a lot less.
h/t to Canadian Prepper for this good idea.
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Was waiting to say this for when we did our collaborative guest essay where everyone explains how they became overshoot aware. I dont have the patience to wait anymore.
The reason I am overshoot aware is because of a Near Death Experience I had a few years ago. I wont bore you with the details (maybe someday I will), but it was just an average run of the mill NDE. The two big takeaways from that experience were an interconnectedness of it all & there is something still going on after death. I was obsessed with these two thoughts and I soon found Michael Dowd and the rest is history.
After my experience, I did a ton of research on NDE’s. 9 out of 10 are the exact same. A bright light. The appearance of a dead relative. And a message of “you have more work to do in this world”. A few other commonalities: During the experience the dead relative (or other people they saw) are not actual tangible things. More like an energy force. And communication is done telepathically. There is an extremely powerful overwhelming sense of peace/love with no ego at all. And afterwards, the NDE person now has an instant knowing/belief (but not forced, more like it was transferred into them) about the interconnectedness of everything. The only common themes that I did not experience was an out of body floating like thing going on, and your life flashing before your eyes.
Could this mean that when the body is close to death and working in overdrive, the brain is having all types of chemical reactions, and the person is just having an acid like trip, and we are channeling everything we think we know about death? Perhaps, but how can the major details of NDE’s be so identical 90% of the time?
With this website changing my view from lots of complex life in the universe to Earth being the only place with it… it’s conflicting with my life after death thing. Makes no sense that there is this next big elaborate thing waiting for us when we die. Especially if we are just some one of kind miracle/accident. But I am being too supremist with that view because it’s totally discounting simple life (and energy in general). And because the NDE happened to me I don’t think I will ever be able accept that it’s just some chemical reactions in the brain.
After 2020 covid, I dumped most of my sources and seeked out new ones to help explain the world to me. So maybe I would have still found overshoot and become awake. But I would have never ended up where I am now without the NDE. Has anyone else here had a similar experience or know someone (that you trust) who has?
p.s. I know I have been posting too much lately. Sorry, but I can’t help it when my mind is spinning like this. Gonna try to chill out and get back into reading books. I’ve got Nick Lane on deck.
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If this site taught you complex intelligent life only exists on one planet them I have miscommunicated what I think is true:
1) Planets that can support life require many rare characteristics (see Rare Earth by Ward and Brownlee).
2) On those planets, simple single cell life will be common, however complex multi-cellular life will be rare (see Nick Lane’s The Vital Question).
3) On those planets with complex life, high intelligence will be extraordinarily rare (see Varki’s Denial).
4) High intelligence on a planet with a fortuitous quantity of fossil energy large enough to create advanced technology will be even rarer.
5) High intelligence with high technology will be short lived due to MORT + MPP + peak oil + climate change + overshoot
6) Being alive to witness and understand the peak of 5 is genuine cause for awe.
Multiplying the probabilities of 1 through 6 results in a very very small number. We’re probably not alone because the universe is so big, but we will be very rare.
Which means we should appreciate our existence much more than we do.
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Damn!!! I love the way you just broke it down like that. Much easier to get the clear picture of it all. Thanks.
But I just inputted all of the info into my supercomputer and it told me we are definitely all alone. 😊
And ya, being in awe of the peak of #5 is criminally undervalued (nonexistent) in our sick society. Trying to get to that Dowd place of appreciation & gratefulness has been an impossible task for me. I hate to overreact, but I think this breakdown of yours is going to help me with some of this living in the moment stuff.
And just wait till I get done reading Nick Lane. I’ll be schooling you on these subjects. 😊
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Ya, I was right about your post. Its real good. I’m sure you’ve written that stuff many times, but have you ever packaged it together like that?
It’s my table (from guest essay) in that it tells such a gigantic story with little info but requires tons of knowledge to decipher and truly understand. Forget the table, I’ll be staring at this when I meditate.
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Thank you for sharing.
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While gardening, I was wondering: did you yourself get the ““you have more work to do in this world” message? And if so, what do you think that is?
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Hi Charles. Yes I absolutely received a message. About a week after it happened I wrote a detailed account of the whole experience. Like I said, maybe I will share it with you guys one day. There is a fear about sharing this stuff. Feels like I will become the guy in a small town that admits to being abducted by aliens and then the whole town shuns him and thinks he is the crazy one. But it is very therapeutic to talk about. (so thank you for inquiring). The other day when I hit the send button for this NDE post, instead of the usual “My god, what have I done! I’m so embarrassed”, it was an instant “My god that felt good, I should have told them a while ago”.
So here you go. I have plucked out the parts of my account that pertain to my “message” so that you can get the gist of it:
Swirling blackness soon disappears. And then I was told that I cannot leave this world until after I help my Mom get through her death peacefully.
Helping my Mom get thru death peacefully. What does that even mean? That was the only part of my experience that was not crystal clear to me. This is where I need to find clarity. Help her to not fear death as much as she does now? Being at her side, holding her hand till the very end? Me being a better person to give her more joy till her end? I dont know. All of the above? None of the above?
(this was an edit I added 6 weeks later) After lots of reading and research on death, it is much clearer to me what my Dad was saying about my Moms death. Its about honoring death. Embracing it. Celebrating it. Be there, comfort, nurture, care for, etc. Instead of being scared of death and shunning it like modern culture teaches us. And not just for my Mom, but for any living thing that is dying in my presence.
(another edit added 3 months later) “everything is connected” is the strongest and most lasting thing from that night. My Dad’s message about my Mom, I can easily forget about for a couple days or so. But not the other thing. Its on the brain 24/7. It has already changed me a great deal. Spent the last twenty years at level 9 on the asshole scale. I’m down to a level 3 or 4 now.
Ok Charles, back to present time. Do you think I’m crazy yet 😊. Almost in a comical way I can picture me being there for my Mom in her final days. And after she passes on, I instantly keel over and die because my work here is done.
Another thought is that the message was related to our collapse. The NDE pushed me into becoming overshoot aware. So helping my Mom get through her death peacefully means me being cool, calm and collective when SHTF. Being prepared, having an exit strategy and all of that stuff.
Chris
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I did not comment on your NDE because I have never experienced anything supernatural and so have no frame of reference. I don’t think you’re crazy. Many people have had NDE’s and believe them to be real. Our brains are complex imperfect computing devices that construct our reality from sensory inputs plus distorted memories plus distorting emotions. It’s tricky to know what is real without the assistance of an external measurement device or other observers that see the same thing. I’d go with whatever makes you feel good about yourself and your family because there is no harm done if you are wrong.
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Thanks Rob. Ya there is a lot of crazy phenomena out there that is hard to explain. And I bet you have experienced some “supernatural” stuff before, but its so bland and subtle that its hard to notice. For example, I had a friend who I had not talked to in years (or even thought about). For some reason I started thinking about them one night and the next morning I had a voice mail from that person just checking in to say hi and wanted to catch up after all these years. That is supernatural in my opinion. Same with that deja vu feeling we get sometimes.
But ya, very tricky to know what is real. And of course, the human mind loves to be a drama queen. Overreaching and connecting dots that are just not there.
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To me, there is no supernatural: it’s all real. It’s just that we tend to reduce reality to what we learned about it. (some say: we forgot who we are)
If I understood well, in hinduism, dreaming state, sleeping state and awake state are put on an equal footing. In the West, we tend to think only the awake state is the norm, the other states are “altered” states of consciousness. Is that really so? (It is worse that than actually, reality is some constructed representation which is supposed to be objective by adhering to the truth which we are being told by scientists. But I digress, again)
So we shouldn’t be surprised when something kicks in which is just out of our mental model.
Reality is so much bigger than what we believe, comprehend, articulate and even experience in the “normal” state of awakeness. Yet, we usually go in loops, experiencing only what we learned to be true.
Life, to me is a constant invitation (sometimes quite painful) to open up to possibilities. Once you open up, you get to see new things, encounter new people. Magic unfolds.
And, no I don’t think you are crazy at all. I’d be thrilled to read your whole NDE account. But maybe not on this site: Rob is very open-minded, but he still has an editorial line to keep which I try to respect (even though I am aware of being on the edge of admissibility :). BTW, Rob is right in that I hate places which got overrun by hordes of trolling gullibles.
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So jealous of how locked in you are to your wonderful special place. My special place comes and goes, but mostly goes. Online educational and spiritual content and reading books will get me there and keep me for a while until the (impossible for me to resist) lure of the “peak of whats possible” snatches me back to the dark side of laziness and many unhealthy habits.
And Charles, you are so weird and not normal (in a good way), I would have no problem sharing my story with you by email.
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Thank you 🙂
I too experience ups and downs 🙂 Although, aging, I got to see that after an up comes a down and then again. Simultaneously, I get to experience every situation more and more like an ephemeral dream that I can just enjoy whatever the outcome. I try to focus on what really matters to me, and let the rest glide (it takes time and experiments to truly know oneself). I try to be nice to people, even if I still carry some amount of inside anger. It slowly drips away by doing things which I love, with meaning, such as building soil, looking at butterflies, or jewel-like insects, teaching younger engineers, smiling to kids and dogs, nurturing my small family… Lastly I learned to accept the “faults” of this being I seem to be somewhat in control of. It’s OK to procrastinate, be lazy, not take on a burden which is too heavy. If I let him be, I know at some point, at the right point, he’ll want to get up and do something else. I still have the constant stream of ideas and negative/positive labelling of the world (I call it the terminator vision). It’s kind of fun once you get that you are free not to necessarily react to it all.
I found out it’s a whole lot easier to be oneself, than any attempt to hide. I find I still have to work on my ability to accept a present (when it’s genuine): my conditioned reaction is always to refuse first. That pride of independence, not wanting to be indebted runs very deep.
It would indeed be a pleasure to read your story. Maybe Rob can put us in contact. Rob, could you be kind enough to send our respective emails to each other? Thank you very much.
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On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America with Abrahm Lustgarten
At the end of the podcast, the host suggests that the U.S. and Canada may merge in the future because of climate migration.
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In this podcast they don’t mention population. Having a population of 8 billion humans is inherently ecocidal.
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Ya, I tried this one. Nothing wrong with Pella, she had many beautiful things to say. But there is something off about this type of interview for me lately. Too much fairytale, not enough reality.
Nates newest one is much better. I’m in the middle of it right now: Zak Stein: “Values, Education, AI and the Metacrisis” | The Great Simplification 122
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I did not enjoy Nate’s recent interview. There’s something very screwed up with the discipline of education. Like clockwork new educators come along with new and better ways to educate people and discard the old ways. Real disciplines don’t do that. They build on and improve the past.
Meanwhile teachers teach nothing that is important, and citizens understand nothing that is important: energy as the source of wealth and food and planetary destruction, how our monetary system works, why we want growth, why growth must end, the implications of the end of growth, the true climate change situation and its implications, overshoot and why humans deny it, etc. etc.
To hell with the education process. They should fix the education content. We could start by forcing all teachers to pass a couple university level physics and calculus courses to screen out the idiots, and then require them to study Martenson’s Crash Course, Hagens’ Reality 101 Course, Tom Murphy’s Do the Math, Jason Bradford’s The Future is Rural, and Varki’s MORT. No exceptions, including elementary teachers.
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I liked Zak, but I also agree with what you said. And we need another course added for those teachers. Whoever is best at explaining our human supremacy. Derek Jensen, Eileen Crist, or someone like that. Oh, and one more thing. They all have to do their thesis on Catton’s book Overshoot.
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My wife is a teacher, so I’ve had a front seat view of how these things work. I think the problem is not so much the teachers is it is a systemic problem. Schools are as much a socialization (programming to fit into society) as it is to learn basic areas of knowledge. So one has to figure out if change is possible upstream of the teachers. Local school boards, state standards, academia chasing the fad of the week, kind set the scene, so no, raising the bar on teacher abilities won’t do much.
As unlikely as the upstream changes are because of denial and inertia, it ain’t going to change.
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Thanks. Content matters a lot more than process.
It doesn’t matter if you bully it into them with a cane, or lovingly motivate them with gold stars, as long as you teach the kids how the world actually works and how lucky they are to be alive on this planet.
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Canadian Prepper has some super secret source with super secret info that confirms SHTF is near.
My take away, buy more food.
Also confirmed by my independent assessment of risks.
I was going to wait for canned chili to go on sale but screw it, I’m buying more now.
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Hello friends,
Today we have the possibility of a G4 geomagnetic storm reaching the earth which could be the singular event that kicks off collapse in earnest. If the grids go down, then this will also be the end of our brief but brilliant sojourn here together meeting at Rob’s corner. This makes AJ’s offering only a few days ago even more poignant, the Finality Clause, everything has a last time to bookend the first and you never know when that will be. If this is to be my final post, I wish to communicate how kith and kin I feel you are through our being able to share, witness, and comfort with one another in these times of awe and how grateful I am for being stardust here with yours. Thank you for your honouring of and contribution to the mystery and possibilities of life. Your unique being-ness has helped define mine through triangulating my finding and knowing my self with another’s perspective. It is an absolute joy and wonder to have been on this same page with you out of all the time and space in this universe.
There may be a poetic justice about it all, the Sun enveloping Earth in a protective embrace, and by one mass ejection our Homo sapiens tenure of dominance may be wiped. Perhaps this could be an allegory of the bright light and sense of total connection with the all as our consciousness and ego lets go and lets be, whether by physical death or chosen awareness.
I wish you and those close to you all that you require to sustain body, mind, and spirit through what we will accept and bear the best as we can. May you know and share comfort, kindness, and peace especially when the way forward may be in shadow. May you know how much you have given and received compassion and love– that has always been your true guiding star and will never fail you.
Namaste.
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The person who writes on spaceweather.com said that although this sunspot is as large as the Carrington event sunspot the most recent CME is the equivalent of a category 4 hurricane and Carrington was equivalent to a category 5. However, this sunspot is continuing to shoot out multiple X class flares (and associated CMEs) every day at the moment. And multiple CMEs are enroute to Earth and can multiply the effect of individual ones. Supposedly the large CME has already hit and Auroras/Northern Lights should be visible tonight.
https://www.spaceweather.com/
AJ
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Enjoyed the aurora this morning in southern Tassie. Best one I’ve seen in over 20years.
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incredible aurora again here tonight. Never seen anything like it. It is pulsating over the sky.
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Bret Weinstein just interviewed an expert on the sun’s activity.
All new to me. Don’t have an opinion.
P.S. Just finished this. Very good. Lots of new ideas I had not heard.
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It’s fascinating to observe intelligent polymaths discuss in breathless detail a 10% probability threat to modernity that can be reduced to a near 0% threat by spending a bunch of money to harden the grid.
Yet the same people are completely silent on, or deny, a 100% probability threat to modernity (overshoot + climate change + degrowth) for which there is no fix and the only good path is to reduce suffering via population reduction.
It’s amazing when you see it.
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Glad he mentioned “Leave the World Behind” because I was already thinking about it before I hit play. (and if you want a self-induced panic attack, watch this interview and then immediately watch the movie. I did it last night, and it was a huge mistake)
Wish he would have turned off the ads for this one though… goes a long way for credibility. I would hope that if this is some clickbait bullshit, that he will lose half his audience. So it seems pretty risky to do if it was not truthful. (but then again, how would they ever know he was lying)
Something about him rubs me the wrong way. He reminds me of the guy in high school who would always be the first one to say he can score you some pot, shrooms, etc…. But when you take him up on his offer he can’t score jack shit.
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Hideaway’s still trying to reason with the denial genes at POB. It’s not working.
POB is a forum for people that study depletion of non-renewable energy. Imagine trying to shift the beliefs of any other group.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-3-2023/#comment-774790
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I have several hundred feet of copper cable that I salvaged from a dead backyard spa. What am I offered? (Of course, this is just a drop in the bucket of needed copper…)
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Rob, on POB, that was started by Ron Patterson, who is definitely very overshoot aware, but he had to allow others to take over running POB because he is just getting too old to do it.
It appears Dennis C is the main person running the forum now and is at the top of the tree in believing the ‘bright green future’, or perhaps is there to stop the word of overshoot being spread.
I find it difficult to believe a person can be so exposed to as many arguments of why industrial civilization must end, yet ignore ALL past arguments to go on with rubbish like he does like (if we just continue growing renewables at x% for y years, everything is hunky dory).
I know I’m hugely repetitive over there, but so are the cornucopians arguments, always ignoring the reality that is presented, from one week, to the next where the old easily disproved statistics he comes up with, re-emerge. A lot of people around the world pay attention to that site, especially the oil forecasts, and I’ve seen Dennis being ‘quoted’ as if an authority. I think I’m always trying to point out his comments really should be taken with a grain of salt, so wont let completely wrong statements sit unchallenged in the comments.
However you are correct about the denial by those on a ‘peak oil’ site, that can’t be convinced of anything, then what hope is there for others…
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Interesting. All of our political leaders, and business leaders, and intellectual leaders, and spiritual leaders, and cultural leaders, and journalism leaders are silent on peak oil.
POB is the only big site that discusses peak oil. Maybe someone powerful is paying Dennis C to sow doubt. It doesn’t take much doubt to derail something.
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I think Dennis is doing his best to understand the world as he sees it but has a very strong BAU bias. It’s like bees where you have some that stay put and others who venture out into the unknown simply based on ‘personality’. As the same kind of evolutionary hedge, some are born pessimists and some optimists. And while his optimism is at some time annoying to me when I need my doom/pessimist nerve itched it’s also pretty clear he does great work with his modeling and at least is very open to discuss his graphs. Also you have to agree that until now the optimists have won the game as we have 2024 and I’m dead or scurrying for food in the remainder of civilization while hiding from cannibals but can post this comment in the comfort of my warm bed with running water and will soon go to a supermarket where I can buy the most exotic fruit and vegetables from all over the world in baskets full for what’s not even a day worth of work.
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Hi Florian, while we have growing fossil fuel use and continued fudging of GDP type numbers to show that everyone in the developed world is better off than 50 years ago, when they are not, especially the young, then all the numbers shown on all Dennis’s graphs will look great. It will appear as BAU is continuing normally until it isn’t, such is the dynamic shift in energy availability once we go from extracting more oil on average each year, to continually less each year, despite a lower EROEI of the obtained oil.
I would expect once we are past oil production peak, with corresponding higher prices, then a lot more ‘other’ energy will be thrown at oil production, making the EROEI worse, but also not really slowing the decline in production (because it’s not physically possible).
The greater energy inputs will go towards the really low quality stuff which we have left, while the really high EROEI oil from wells like the Saudi ones will be rapidly declining, as they try and produce as much as possible in the high price era. So from around the world the high EROEI wells rapidly decline.
Meanwhile throughout the rest of society, there will be less oil and oil products every year. Every human activity that uses oil products will be competing for those products, yet some uses have to miss out. Will it be farmers tractors, large heavy hall trucks, shipping across the world, mines mining all the raw materials to build more of everything? Some of these uses of oil products will not get the required quantity, or perhaps some marginal producers of all of them.
Prices of everything have to rise, including all the ‘renewables’ meant to be replacing fossil fuels, while average earnings are relatively less for all humans based upon lower net energy available on average. Go far enough into the cycle of less production, assuming no catastrophic wars (which is a big ask by itself), and we get to the stage where nowhere near enough food can come from farms into cities, then what? nowhere enough goods’ can be shipped across the seas, lower quantities of every mineral and metal mined. All ‘new’ uses of oil energy can’t happen, like recycling facilities, because they will use huge amounts of oil in the metals and minerals to build them and the internal machinery.
Dennis’s approach is one where we have been going ‘this way’, so can keep going this way, when the climate and environment clearly show we can’t and the physics of all the ‘new energy’ is also totally against us..
Rob, I think I better finish the EROEI work, but it’s extremely difficult to make a short post. If I was to include references for everything, and try and explain all the nuances, it would be lots of ‘theses’, not just a post. I’ll have to start with why EROEI is not a stationary target and never has been, for every form of useful energy, which deeply confuses everyone that’s looked into it in the past. That’s probably a full post by itself!!
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Very much looking forward to a new post but I’m thinking you’ve got a book in you. Maybe start structuring posts as chapters?
No country ever thinks to leave some of the good stuff in the ground for the grandchildren.
More proof we are governed by the MPP I guess.
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Thanks for that info. Helps clear up some questions I had too. I think you and Rob are correct that Dennis is being paid to muck things up. Read my comment below that I was about to send before I saw your reply and it’s even more obvious that Dennis is shady:
Someone a while back had a funny line about Hideaway being sadistic for messing with these clowns. (cant remember who said it and cant find the comment). Might be some truth to that. 😊
But I am more interested in knowing about Dennis and the others background. Do they understand overshoot, but just get hung up on energy? (I dont think you can be overshoot aware and not understand Hideaways comments). Do they hold high level important jobs in the military/govt? (that is a scary, but unsurprising thought). Or are they just a mix of random normal people like un-Denial?
The few times I’ve been on POB, I get a strong sense that I am way out of my league in the IQ department. Seems like a bunch of wasted intelligence over there.
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Paqnation, please never believe your IQ is below others. You may not have done the same research as others on a topic, but it doesn’t mean your IQ is ‘worse’ than anyone else’s.
Whenever I see people deliberately using a lot of hard to understand language on any topic, I never think they have a higher IQ than those they are talking to. Instead I immediately go to the thought of, ‘What are they trying to hide and why?’. This is especially true on subjects/topics I know little about.
Going back a couple of decades, when I was working with top level government officials, specialist consultants, etc, whenever they tried to confuse the issue by using language that others didn’t understand properly, then get a decision from people, I always stated I’d take my decision under advisement. When I then had to explain what I meant, ie I’d go and look it up and seek advise from others, I’d sometimes get confused looks, or just outright hostility about being a procrastinator. It always interested me in how these so called well read people using difficult language to confuse others, suddenly didn’t understand what taking something under advisement meant..
What I usually found was that the people using hard to understand language were indeed trying to hide something, and of course they were angry when I later rejected whatever it was on very legitimate grounds.
Anyway, on POB, the attitude of Dennis certainly seems a lot more than just denial, it’s a type of deliberate denial, which is way worse than ‘real’ denial because of lack of understanding.
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A lot of climate scientists have decided to not speak the truth because they believe panic and/or hopelessness would be counterproductive to making the future less bad.
Perhaps Dennis C is in this camp?
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Dear Rob & Hideaway,
I hope thy are both feeling well.
I came across this article, the antithesis of what Hideaway attentively elaborated.
– Demonstrating how utterly bizarre and absurd such notions are, it is strange how such entities seem to be well versed in poppycock and are handsomely rewarded for their hubris.
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/04/how-many-things-must-one-analyst-get-wrong-in-order-to-proclaim-a-convenient-decarbonization-minerals-shortage/
I cannot but think, that all this sheer gargantuan folly is some sort of twisted grand jest.
– Unfortunately, such unseemly displays are nothing short of common.
Nature is merciless and fair,
may she one day guide us after teaching us a valuable and well deserved lesson.
”There is only the law.”
– Oren Lyons
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
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I skimmed the essay. A little heavy on attacking the credentials of Michaux, and a lot light on providing data to support its claims.
It definately succeeds at sowing doubt to switch off any unpleasant thoughts about overshoot.
This would be a good one for Hideaway to debunk.
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I’ve read this before, and struggle to pay any attention to an author that takes most of the article to do a character assassination instead of just debunking the argument with facts. he doesn’t provide facts at all, which is why the entire article should really worry the reader..
One aspect most people don’t know about all the figures Simon Michaux has come up with, is that it’s the bullish version. Despite all the extra energy he states is needed for BAU western style, he doesn’t add any extra energy for the mining sector to gather materials in multiples of current mining, all at lower grades. His assumptions include using the SAME energy as in 2019.
Not one of the detractors of his work even wants to look at the extra energy in that sector alone needed for the transition and I’m sure Simon has a chuckle about how ridiculous the detractors arguments really are.
To mine twice the copper we currently do on an annual basis, wouldn’t take twice as much energy, it would be more like 3 to 4 times as much, as we would have to mine a lot of much lower grade deposits than are currently being mined.
Not a single article like this ever approaches how much energy it would take to provide the extra materials needed, but are quick to attack the messenger like Simon Michaux, because they don’t like the message.
Interestingly Simon has found there is no money in spreading the truth, so has opted for the fantastical, u-beaut future where people will pay him for working on fantasy.
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Are cities inherently unsustainable?
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Was gonna reply with a smart-ass comment to your question, but just noticed its a Max Wilbert link. Love that dude! One of my favorites
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RFK Jr says a worm ate part of his brain.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rfk-jr-says-his-brain-was-partially-eaten-by-a-worm-that-crawled-inside-and-died-everything-you-need-to-know
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Are you making the point that RFK Jr is crazy, or that people are trying to make him look crazy?
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No, I’m not trying to say that he is crazy. A doctor actually told him that a worm had eaten part of his brain.
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Cool. That explains why I like him. It seems the worm ate his denial module.
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My Mom is a huge RFK fan because shes been reading his books. I told her about this brain worm thread we have going. She already knew about it and sent me this link. She is officially now a contributor for un-Denial. 😊
Check out Kennedy’s comedic standup chops. Not bad. And he obviously has a great sense of humor about it. Worm stuff starts around 1:45
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RFK Jr. can also surf. What a cool president he’d make.
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Did anyone see an aurora last night?
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Aurora visible in Northern Kentucky, especially vivid if you use the night mode on a cell phone camera.
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My next door neighbor told me it was spectacular here last night but I missed it. Will have a look tonight.
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We saw the southern lights, aurora astralis, here in the Far North of NZ. First time for me in my 53 years. Pretty spectacular and awe inspiring. Was nice to share it with my teenage kids.
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I had a great time with it! Took many photos. We saw lots of lights shooting across the sky. Lots of colour was visible too. I’m in the south of New Zealand.
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Nice! Seems like half this audience lives in NZ. I get the feeling that if we could calculate the overshoot aware people by country, NZ would be top dog. What the hell do you guys put in the water over there? And please start spreading it into the water supply of my ignorant country. 😊
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Despite NZ having a lot of aware people, Dr. Mike Joy today says his NZ rivers are more polluted than the Mississippi.
https://www.thelentilintervention.org/podcast/episode/7709093a/dr-mike-joy-our-current-eAcological-and-climate-concerns
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oops. Nevermind you New Zealanders. We’ve got enough poison in our water over here. 😊
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How are we supposed to make money if we don’t exploit the environment?! Jeez Rob! [insert the sarcasm emoji here]
Also we love Mike Joy, even if he is a vegan hippy dippy 😉
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I imagine Dr. Joy is super popular with the NZ dairy industry.
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Paqnation you are correct. Most overshoot blogs, facebook groups etc. are overrepresented by New Zealanders. If you add in the Aussies it’s even more.
What could explain it? Perhaps having the highest percentage of non religious people?
Living at the bottom of the world, on an island?
Our ancestors all having something in common by choosing to move to an island at the bottom of the world?
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Indrajit Samarajiva today with a humorous take-down of the US empire.
Too bad he doesn’t understand MORT.
The insanity makes sense in the light of limits to growth caused by depletion of finite resources, MPP driven behavior, and a denial module that blocks understanding of both limits to growth and MPP behavior.
https://indi.ca/what-is-americas-plan/
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I’m sure that Indrajit Samarajiva would understand MORT if he had the time to deal with it, but Sri Lanka is being buffeted non-stop by hurricanes from the Western economic system — they’re too busy trying to grow their own vegetables and in general attempting to become self-sufficient. As the artist Willem de Kooning has said, “The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.”
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Yes, it’s very easy to forget how lucky I am to have been born in Canada. I’m growing vegetables because I want to, not because I have to, although that might change tomorrow.
Denial is obvious to anyone that is aware, however the reason for denial is not obvious. I know about MORT only because I happened to be listening to CBC Radio on June 18, 2013 when Dr. Varki was interviewed and a light bulb immediately illuminated something that had been troubling me for a long time. Without that luck I’d still be trying to understand why so few can see what is so obvious.
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I would love to think it was something other than MORT, and have tried to find out ‘something else’ as being responsible. Instead of genetic I’ve thought it as a ‘trait’, handed down through generations, but what is a ‘trait’ if it’s not genetic?
Basically there is no better reason for human denial behavior, that makes any sense, better than MORT, so MORT it is unless a better theory comes along, but no-one is offering one.
I have to admit that going back a couple of years when I was trying to work out how we could maintain civilization energetically, I always had the though that it could be just denial of bad outcomes, stopping me from thinking of what happens in the future.
Everything clicked into place when I was watching a video on the Fermi Paradox, with what’s called ‘The Great Filter’. None of the options offered in the video was about lack of energy to run the civilizations, which to me was a big weakness of the program. Despite me spending years not being able to find a way energetically to continue modern civilization without fossil fuel, I though it would have been one of the options the writers thought of. Then kicked in my knowledge of MORT and denial by most people..
I instantly thought, perhaps every other civilization has also run past peak fossil fuels, then collapsed, stopping them sending any radio type signals into space, for more than a short period of time, which meant EVERY type of civilization in the universe would run into the same constraints if using natural resources from their world. It means long term modern civilization is not possible, because of energy constraints, reduced quality and grade of ores for all minerals etc, etc.
Another aspect that really helped me understand MORT was the rocks reported on Mars from whichever NASA probe or robotic vehicle. They were exactly the same type of rocks we have here on earth, because naturally the same type of forces and actions created them.
It’s a universal principle of how in physics, processes, temperature and pressure create the same types of rocks from the source material, which means it happens everywhere in the universe. I would expect on every one of the 5,000 planets we’ve found that we could recognise just about every type of rock (BTW geologists are still finding new combinations of minerals in rock here on Earth, meaning its just a slightly different combination of ingredients, temperature, pressure and fluids, that make anything ‘new’).
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It’s hard to overstate how good it feels to know there are a few people like yourself that see the significance and probable validity of MORT.
I like you will happily switch to a better theory if one comes along.
It’s been very discouraging trying to spread the word on something so important for 10 years with almost no success.
MORT is important because every person in the world that is trying to make the future less bad is failing and will continue to fail unless they first find a way to confront MORT, and even then they may still fail due to the power of MPP & MORT, but at least their odds will be greater than zero. This comment is primarily directed at overshoot aware people like Alpert, Jancovici, Murphy, Hagens, and Berman who are still trying. Most everyone else has given up.
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“no-one is offering one.” Really?
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Art Berman re-summarizes our short term risks.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/the-biggest-risks-of-this-decade/
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First time I’ve encountered him but Professor Steve Starr seems to be in the same class as Chuck Watson on nuclear weapons knowledge.
This is his site: https://nuclearfamine.org/about-steven-starr/
Skip ahead to 39:53 for Starr’s short presentation. He lists many unprecedented escalations and behind the scenes tensions that I was not aware of.
One of the many issues that has been troubling me is the recent total silence on the Moscow concert hall massacre. Russians don’t forgive, they get even.
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Another salvo from Hideaway. Gotta admire the determination.
It’s a similar dynamic to trying to convince someone there is no life after death. Or that mRNA has more risks than benefits. Logic and facts don’t work.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-3-2023/#comment-774839
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It seems that the only real improvement in living standards in the West in the past 50 years has been faster electronic devices. Other than that, has it improved much? I am too young to judge.
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Many more things than electronics have improved:
There’s a much wider variety of food available.
Surgery, dentistry, and eyecare are better.
Entertainment variety and audio/video quality is better.
Long distance travel is easier.
The reliability, safety and performance of cars is much better. Ten kids in my high school class were killed in car crashes. Air bags, shoulder belts, and crumple zones make fatalities rare today.
Bicycles are lighter.
Hiking and camping gear is much better.
Home insulation and heat pumps are better.
LED lighting is much better.
I’m sure there many more things I could think of with more time.
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One thing has definitely gotten worse.
The peak of good music was Led Zeppelin IV in 1971.
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Good question! I read a great article a while back that had like 50 or so of these types of observations. Something like how it takes roughly the same amount of time and same energy process/amounts to fly from New York to Paris today as it did 75 years ago.
So disappointing for dupes like myself who just knew that Back to the Future part 2 (made in 1989) was correct with its flying cars and just overall cool futuristic world of 2015. LOL. While the world was standing in line to watch this movie or Star Wars or any other big blockbuster but impossible, unrealistic (because of energy) … were you overshoot lifers more disgusted or entertained by it all?
Although my journey starts a few years back it’s probably only the last 12 months or so where I start to really grasp and understand that there are limits to everything and how much rampant ignorance there is about it. And only in the last 4 months since I came here, where my grasp is getting super tight. I pretty much understood it from day one with M Dowd, but I’m talking about where I now spend loads of time thinking about it and mapping it out, etc. Mostly been disgust for me. George Carlin got to a point where it was mostly entertaining. That’s my goal.
I can’t even go to the movies nowadays. I’ll get too into thinking about the resources used to build the theatre complex and how much energy used for all the people and their cars and homes. (only half kidding)
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The Wall Street Journal What’s News podcast this morning did an in depth piece on why the energy transition is slowing down in both the US and Europe.
In summary, governments and utility companies are running out of money for subsidies and citizens cannot afford the full price.
https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/whats-news/who-pays-for-going-green-your-questions-answered/6D586507-A0B1-4A3B-B477-314E13030D3C
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This might be an insanely boring and common-sense question, but sometimes you guys correct me on things I am sure of and it knocks me down a peg or two (which I like and need).
My evil job with a big-name insurance company is basically glorified data entry. There is something called Name Insureds (NI’s) which is just the primary name of the company and any additional names. Been working here for years and still can’t tell you a good reason why you need more than one name for your business.
In general (but plenty of exceptions), the higher the $ales the more NI’s increase. The smaller companies (under a $billion in sales per year) have zero additional NI’s or maybe a couple. Medium-large companies start averaging in the low double digits. When you get to the huge money makers its very normal for them to have a hundred or more. I usually get a couple every month that are closer to a thousand. And I’ve seen one from a coworker with 12,000 NI’s. But we only see a fraction of the total policies. (and the worst part about it all – the more NI’s, the more work required from me 😒)
WTF could that be about other than my obvious generalization that its all about shady hiding of money?
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They forgot to mention people with defective denial genes worried about the collapse of civilization.
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