Radical Reality (by Hideaway) and Radical Acceptance (by B)

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

1,497 thoughts on “Radical Reality (by Hideaway) and Radical Acceptance (by B)”

  1. Hideaway @ POB today:

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-19-2024/#comment-773631

    OFM, there are so many flaws in your arguments about the future, for example….
    “A few million people in an area with ample water power can recreate the industries that existed a century, or two or three centuries back.”

    All those industries relied upon raw materials turning up by the boatload from foreign lands. What do you think will be exported as inputs for these ‘industries’ being set up near water power??

    “The “can’t be done” guys don’t seem to consider that engineers have been proving their grandfathers wrong about lots of things ever since the Industrial Revolution, lol.”

    What’s common about the entire period since the beginning of the industrial revolution?? Growing fossil fuel use, increasing energy availability. It’s a fool’s errand to consider the same rules apply on the downslope of energy availability. Who is going to be able to teach all the engineers in a world of falling energy availability?? Even schools and primary education are a product of fossil fuels, why wouldn’t this entire system of education break down when people are desperate for their next meal??

    “The NAME of the game we can all agree on……. it’s contraction, austerity, hardship in countless respects.”
    When oil availability decreases year after year, who misses out?? Once feedback loops kick in accelerating the decline, then whoever had oil products this year will have way less next year, and less again the year after. When farms on average can’t plow fields or harvest crops, nor deliver them to cities or even large towns, do you really think the children in these towns and cities are going to bother going to school??

    Do you think anyone is going to be bothered setting up a local aluminium recycling plant, when they have no food??

    In one breath you agree times are going to be really tough as everything declines, but then assume other parts of the system can operate normally, without considering how they are effected by the great contraction. Who’s going to bother paying any attention to what a government says if the people don’t have food?

    I’m certain lots of the things you have suggested above will be tried on the downslope, all with the promise of a better future than the alternative, but when the food stops getting to people in the cities, as farmers have less fuel, less fertilizer, less pesticides and herbicides to work with year after year, it will all fall to pieces as people become more desperate.
    It’s not just the decline that makes things worse, it’s the feedback loops operating in a highly complex system that fail completely one after another, most seemingly invisible as they don’t seem to use a lot of oil, but might rely upon sales of some product to others that do rely on oil.

    Imagine Sri Lanka right now if there was no IMF to come to their aide with funds so they could continue buying from the world market. Such organizations will be useless on the real downslope of energy availability.

    Don’t get me wrong, I wish you were correct that some form of civilization could continue after we get off the oil and other fossil fuel addiction, but the downslope of supply, particularly of oil will be so savage that nothing of the modern world will last after a couple of decades of the decline, and probably no animals that could be used for even basic agriculture.

    And JT’s response:

    That’s the problem that many miss. We tend to underestimate how complex our system has become and how specialized we’ve become. This requires a robust transportation system. Technology has enabled this trend to greater heights because of productivity gains. But it has ended we’re already seeing a reversal as growth has ended critical mass is being lost which will end affordability. ( masquerading as inflation) If population declines the knowledge base goes with it. We already have a vacuum of critical knowledge such as farming and livestock husbandry. Don’t think the last two generations of video game players will be able to quickly adapt, they will use the knowledge they have acquired for real guns.

    A pattern that we see emerging and repeating is failed institutions consolidated and government subsidized. This happened in banking in 2008 and will be attempted soon with energy systems and we could argue already has with the green initiatives that are failing. And we are seeing oil majors consolidating now. Worst yet the legacy cost of the pollution from mining fracking and nuclear waste hasn’t been dealt with when times were good and certainly won’t be when times are bad. Without a stable electric grid our temporary remediation efforts will fail spectacularly making many areas uninhabitable. How many will be employed managing spent fuel cooling ponds when they need to grow rice.

    Everyone wants to think this time is different but it’s not it’s just bigger. Rome was never rebuilt its ruins are still ruins. It was also an energy based system of conquest consolidating stored resources from developed civilizations. Once it had conquered the known world it ceased to exist. There is no stable state the system grows or declines and this system can no longer grow.

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      1. Especially when all the dying is being done by worthless slavs. There’s some deep racism going on here.

        Ditto for Gaza. No one gives shit when 10’s of thousands of Palestinians are killed until a couple white western people feeding them also get killed.

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        1. Easy there Rob. Dont get me riled up. I’ll end up ranting all night. 😊

          In other news, been wasting my time looking up billionaire statistics. Maybe someone will find this interesting. There are 2,800 billionaires in the world. Only two countries have a high amount of these blood suckers. USA with 4% of global pop has 800. China with 20% pop has 400.

          And it’s so recent. Check out the number of billionaires from USA over the years.

          1970 – hard to get info, but looks like 5-10

          1980 – 13 

          1990 – 66

          2000 – 298

          2010 – 404

          2020 – 614

          2024 – 813 

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          1. Interesting. Must have taken quite some time to collect this data. What an acceleration. It’s probably related to the issueing of debt.

            What’s funny about accumulation is that it becomes meaningless after some point. I believe most of the billionaire’s wealth is phantom.

            People have faith in money because it delivers on its promises. At some point, if the billionaires keep going on the same trajectory, they will just vaccum all the money in the world. Then, every body will just decide money is meaningless as it doesn’t even allow to feed oneself.

            By not caring about the welfare of most, by not understand the responsability that goes with owning the world, they are cornering themselves and the rug will be suddenly pulled.

            I believe, they really have only two functioning choices in the long term: redistribute, or manage the system so that it is at least livable for all (and that’s a damn difficult task at this point).

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        2. If wealthy kids from the U.S. and Western Europe were drafted to fight in Ukraine, support for the war would evaporate almost immediately.

          Our leaders seem to think that if Putin is allowed to win in Ukraine, he will invade several other countries, similar to what Hitler did after the Munich agreement.

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            1. I sometimes watch the mainstream media. When they talk about Putin and Ukraine, they describe it as an imperialist war of aggression. They seem to believe that Putin wants to re-establish the Russian Empire/the Soviet Union.

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              1. I think they believe what you said despite there being no supporting evidence and plenty of contradictory evidence.

                They also believe mRNA saved millions instead of killing millions. They also believe we don’t need oil and must switch to EVs to fix climate change. They also don’t understand how money is created and the danger of high debt when growth stops. They’re also worried about the population falling.

                In summary they understand nothing that matters.

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    2. Because people are not rational, they are emotional and have self interests that override rational thought and outcomes, meaning in the long term, desperate wars over diminishing resources is not only inevitable but pretty much guaranteed.

      Not sure if you have seen Alice Friedmann’s latest on how US think tanks don’t even consider nuclear winter in their strategies…

      https://energyskeptic.com/2024/why-nuclear-powers-are-ignoring-nuclear-winter/

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  4. Glyphosate is not the only reason to buy organic oats.

    http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2024/04/are-your-cheerios-impairing-your.html

    I’ve decided to rename the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). I now think a better name is the Agency for Fertility and Population Decline. I say this after reports that the EPA is thinking about adding even more chlormequat to our diet by allowing American farmers to spray this plant growth regulator—which is linked to reproductive damage in animals—on food crops such as barley, oats, wheat, and triticale. According to Wikipedia, chlormequat “can cause stem thickening, reduced stem height, additional root development, plant dwarfing, and increase chlorophyll concentration.” All of this is useful in keeping the plant upright for easier harvesting and for making it more productive.

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  5. Canadian Prepper is flogging a kit of emergency drugs sold by Jase Medical.

    https://jasemedical.com/

    I’d like to buy a kit (US$350) with the optional Ivermectin add-on (US$175) except it is way too expensive.

    Ivermectin is off patent and should be less than a dollar a pill, not US$20 per pill!

    Have any of you found a cheap source of antibiotics and Ivermectin on the dark web or mail order from countries like India?

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    1. I’ve been buying medications from inhousepharmacy .vu for the past 10 years whenever I didn’t have insurance or for things I didn’t want to pay to see a doctor for and knew what I needed to treat. I keep the leftover medication in the back of the fridge. Looks like they sell the iver for a lot less than $20 a pill.

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      2. Thank you so much for the tip. Unfortunatley they do not ship to Canada.

        We are able to ship orders to the following countries. Unfortunately, if your country is NOT on this list, we are unable to supply to you as your country’s Customs Department prevents delivery.

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  6. This morning I went down a rabbit hole considering whether to buy a lithium battery generator to complement my small gas generator.

    All I want to do is run my fridge, a couple lights, and maybe my computer during a power outage that lasts for a couple weeks.

    For 2000W max output a battery generator costs $2000 versus $500 for a gas generator.

    But the important issue is capacity, not max output.

    One charge of the $2000 battery generator delivers 2 kWh and then you’re screwed until the power comes back on to recharge (I’m assuming power failures are most likely in winter when solar panels don’t work where I live).

    One 4L tank of gas in the $500 generator delivers 20 kWh and then I can refill it 50 times with gas I keep stored during winter months.

    I arrive at 2 conclusions:

    1. There will be no energy transition.
    2. Fossil energy is amazing.

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    1. Of course you are right about solar and fossil fuels. I think that some of the most cynical people about solar are those like myself who invested in an array and batteries. I have about 200 amp hours of gel/lead acid batteries to back up some of my electrical (modem, water pump, water sterilizer, chest freezer). Those 200 amp hours get me maybe 2 days in the winter (no solar from the array then). I can recharge the battery with my gas generator in a few hours and run the generator (Honda 4000 w) to power some other things (like the TV).

      When we had the ice storm this past winter and lost utility power for 3+ days it forced me to consider some lithium batteries. A couple of years ago I put a solar system in a tiny house I built. At that time a 100 amp hour lithium battery was $1K (not much more now). So I thought upgrading the house system to maybe 300 – 400 amp hours of lithium would be maybe $4K or so. . . Called my solar installer and they did all sorts of songs and dances (because my inverter/charger might have to be upgraded). They came back to me with a $20+K price tag without even upgrading the inverter/charger. I said no. This crap (solar) is so technologically complex and fragile it’s going to rapidly fail. If 10 years ago I had invested $10 K in a 6000 w diesel generator and a 100 gallon storage tank I would be dollars and reliability ahead of the game. Solar is a boondoggle to make money for the builders of the equipment and installers – to the detriment of the users (capitalism is grand, isn’t it????).

      Perhaps as an EE you could do all the install yourself and save a considerable sum of money, but that doesn’t make it any more reliable and none of this is any good for the long term. Better to build a nice massive wood heating system.

      AJ

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      1. Interesting story, thanks.

        You can’t beat a diesel generator. My friend’s cabin had an old hand crank air cooled diesel Lister that ran forever with near zero maintenance.

        I predict batteries will be one of the keystones that brings down complex civilization after supply chains fail. A car/motorcycle battery only lasts 5-7 years no matter how careful you baby it, and you can’t repair it. I just ordered a spare battery for my motorcyle. I also ordered a battery tester so I can detect problems before they occur.

        Preptip: For backup power I decided to go minimal and cheap. I’ve ordered an EcoFlow DELTA 2 portable power station at a really good sale price of CDN$940. It has 1 kWh capacity, 1800W max output, and weighs 27 lbs. Battery is good for 3000 recharge cycles.

        It should run my fridge, computer and a couple lights for a day after which I can recharge it in about 1 hour with my little $500 gas generator. One 4L tank of gas should do about 5 recharges, and my ten 20L gas cans will refill the generator many times with some extra for charging my e-bike or running my fuel efficient motorcycle to get supplies.

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        1. I like this topic. Solar was one of the first things I looked into after becoming overshoot aware. Living in Arizona, the only thing I care about keeping on is the air conditioner. I finally let the door-to-door solar salespeople into my house. And I quickly found out what a joke the “on grid solar setup” thing is. If the power goes out, your solar does not work. Yet everyone on my block was getting it done. And at my new house, same thing. Does anyone look into this stuff? My conclusion was that on grid solar is just a racket so that the power companies make more money. And it does nothing to give you power during black outs or brown outs. I can picture a world where the power is out for good and millions of desperate people are scratching their heads saying, “Why wont our solar work?”

          So I changed my approach and started researching off grid solar. Looked like it was going to be a $90,000 project and there were still major issues (costs) with battery storage. Gave up on that idea. Looked into the generator options. I believe it was in the ballpark of $10-15,000. But something turned me off from continuing this research. I think it was the gas storage. Something about the gas becomes stale and no good after a while if you dont regularly maintain it (stir it up once in a while, I dont know).

          I dont know shit about this stuff, so I could be wrong about everything above, but I ended up giving up on my pipe dream of keeping the A/C on for a few months after the lights go out for good. (and I’m not interested in keeping it on for a few hours or days)

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          1. I expect the cost of electricity to increase a lot before the grid fails, and when it does start to fail it will be intermittent for years before completely failing, assuming of course we avoid nuclear war. So you want to configure your life to use less energy and to cope with periodic temporary outages.

            Air conditioners are high power luxuries that you would be wise practicing to live without.

            Try sitting next to a small 25W fan positioned in an open window pointed towards your head.

            My cheap power station would run a 25W fan for about 40 hours.

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            1. What do you think will happen to the internet?

              Consumer electronics will become a lot more expensive and the internet will shrink as well before the electric grid fails. Websites may have times when they are on and off. I heard that TV stations used to sign off at midnight and sign back on at 6:00 AM. Websites and streaming services might start doing that. Things that we are used to having 24/7 will only be available some of the time.

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              1. Damn, Stellar is bringing back some childhood memories for me. TV going off the air at midnight (and playing some bullshit patriotic song. Star spangled banner, pledge of allegiance, or something similar. It was always the worst time for me and my little brother because now we had to go to bed without the idiot box to keep us entertained. Eventually some channels started to stay past midnight, but they usually just aired old black and white reruns… Perry Mason, Three Stooges, The Honeymooners, etc (which was still good for the tv junkies like me).

                I also remember how everything was closed at a certain time. Sunday night at 5pm the entire city shut down. Maybe a convenience store is open, but that’s it.

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              2. Not sure your idea of reducing hours of service will save enough electricity and other costs to make a difference. The servers will still be running even if the load on them is reduced.

                I think an alien looking down at the internet would see:

                1) The internet is a huge complex machine that consumes a lot of energy.
                2) AI is increasing the internet’s energy use.
                3) The cost of electricity will trend up with fossil depletion reducing the profitability of internet companies.
                4) Many (majority?) internet companies do not generate free cash flow and survive on promising investors future growth. When it becomes clear to most that we face systemic de-growth many of these companies will fail.
                5) The big internet companies that are profitable achieve this by advertizing things people will not need and cannot afford in the coming economic depression which means many big internet companies will fail.
                6)) Internet access is a large discretionary household expense that will be jettisoned by many when times get tough. This means fewer customers will have to pay for infrastructure costs leading to higher prices and feedback loops of declining service.
                7) When wars break out the internet will be a primary target.

                I expect to lose internet access before I die and have configured my computers to function without the internet.

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                1. Reducing hours of service will not stop the internet from going out permanently, it will be an attempt at buying time.
                  https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ for example is run on a solar panel and goes off line from time to time.

                  But due to all the points you mentioned above, there will be a serious downsizing of the internet in the not so distant future. I think that text-only websites may remain online longer than bandwidth-intensive video streaming services, just because video is so much more data-intensive (i.e. energy intensive) than text.

                  I recently read a book called “The Dark Cloud” by Guillaume Pitron about the ecological and material footprint of the internet.

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        2. Last weekend I changed out both sprockets on my motorcycle to increase the gear ratio in the hope I can squeeze a little more gas mileage out of my motorcycle at the cost of reduced acceleration. Before the change it burned 3.3L per 100 Km.

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        3. Hello there Rob and friends,

          It’s Gaia here checking in and I’m very glad it seems like everyone is going along as well as can be, yours truly included. I have been busy as you all just trying to take care of life whilst waiting for the collapse show to really start. I used to enjoy the previews at the movies (haven’t been to a cinema for about 15 years now, for various reasons) but with each passing day I am realising that the more snippets of doom we see, the closer we are getting to the main event, whether it happens fast or faster, we are going to be trapped in the theatre when the fire breaks out. Some days I am only just holding it together and crave for any mundane task to keep me grounded in this reality a bit longer so I can reason my way into another day. As always, I find that being kind and helping others in whatever way I can is the best way through, and no matter what happens, for me that choice is the defining quality of humanity that we can still be until the very end. 

          I just wanted to give my two cents to this interesting solar generator discussion. You probably don’t recall but 2 years ago I was banging on about getting one of these to maintain our shed in the subtropics, thinking it would be handy to have the ability to run a fridge, small freezer, and charge battery powered tools which would make life so much easier labour wise, at least in the short term whilst we progressively learn to live a more simplified life. Well, we took the plunge and invested $7000 AUD into a Bluetti plug and play system that has 5000Whr battery and 2000W max output and got the requisite solar panels (another $2400 plus install). This was all about converting some paper dollars into real commodities that would help us through the fossil fuel phaseout transition. All well and good, and the unit works like a dream–UNTIL IT DOESN’T. I arrived back to this locale and the unit which has been going for 20 months has suddenly stopped, and I have the sinking feeling that the motherboard computer has fried because the touch screen doesn’t work and therefore nothing happens. All 50kg of Lithium FePO4 battery is good for nothing at the moment and can’t be accessed because the whole unit is one sealed box. It’s still under warranty (3 years) but the process to start the documenting procedure and then the nightmare of trying to send this behemoth back to someone who might or might not be able to repair it just does my head in at the moment. But I deserve it, the hubris of my thinking I could cheat the inevitable a bit longer, trying to hang onto the easy way of life, still believing that could continue for me because I had the resources now to grasp at it. 

          I have learned a valuable lesson and maybe not a minute too soon for these past 20 months have shown us that everything is spiralling out of control even faster and there is no way out, just the long, hard way through. So I will spend the interminable hours trying to claim on this malfunction (as part of my denial that it can still be fixed and it will still work and be worth all the prior energy since year dot to have produced this marvellous machine) but I am now in a more prepared headspace to contemplate how to live without electricity all together. There’s still wood to be grown and gathered for cooking, heating is not necessary for survival in this climate (one of the main reasons we chose it). We have hand tools–saws, scythes, and axes which we should make a priority skillset now rather than wait for the lights to go out and then bumble about trying to use them. But it’s all just too much labour and energy we don’t have as individuals on a small acreage, we need the village back and that’s not happening at any scale needed to save us. Besides, we only have 3 scythes and 3 axes to share amongst the hordes that will arrive here some day. Perhaps it would have been a far better use of the money to have bought $10,000 worth of hand tools and store them for future distribution. But, so what, how about the remaining millions (billions)? How are we going to equip them for village re-education?

          Maybe this is a good time to quote from Ecclesiastes, King James Version–our human condition described for all time:

          I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
          That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.

          For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

          Go well everyone. Namaste.

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          1. Sorry to hear about your failed power station. It won’t surprise me if mine fails too before the time comes when I really need it. It’s so hard to know when and what to do.

            Problems come with complexity. The simpler the solution, the fewer the problems.

            A simple cast iron wood stove will last a lifetime or more, but I don’t have a source of wood on my property. I’ve been using a small propane heater next to where I sit. I had to repair it with parts that won’t be available post collapse after just 4 years of use. I’ll be lucky to get another 3 years of use from it before it goes in the landfill. I’ve got a spare propane heater in storage which might get me through another 6 or 7 years of use, assuming of course I can still get propane. Then maybe I’ll switch to my simpler somewhat smelly kerosene heater, assuming I can still get kerosene. As a final backup plan, I stocked up on quality long underwear when it went on sale, and I’m teaching myself to tolerate living in low temperatures.

            A classic example of the evils of complexity are raid servers for backing up computer data. On paper they sound wonderful. Data is stored redundantly so if a hard drive fails you experience no loss of data and simply replace the bad drive. Except in practice they are very complex systems prone to their own hardware failures and software bugs. Because your data is spread across many drives in some proprietary format when the system fails you are at risk of losing everything. I’ve never heard of someone with a raid that hasn’t had a problem. I use a very simple backup system. I maintain 3 exact copies of every drive, two of which are turned off and unplugged when the backup is complete. I’ve never had a data loss in 30 years despite many drives failing due to defects and normal wear and tear.

            Simple is good.

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      2. Better to build a nice massive wood heating system.

        For almost everyone, it is too late now, but better would be to own (or build) a home that requires no heating or cooling :

        • Grand Designs Bletchley S21 E04 (DailyMotion.com).
        • Cotswolds The Stealth House S10 E02.

        Seismic requirements in the Pacific Northwest would make those builds more challenging.

        The Bletchley build is likely better, same passivhaus requirement but combined with much more thermal mass. By coincidence both of the above builds are at 51 degrees north.

        Reducing the need for energy is much more important than building (typically) 10 to 20kw supplies. Hyper efficient (extremely well insulated) fridges and freezers (always chest) not stored in hot rooms is a good starting point. I would like an insulated pantry with a chest-fridge that has an external compressor and vents the waste heat to a different room.

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          1. Toque – Now it is primarily known as the traditional headgear for professional cooks, except in Canada where the term toque is used for knit caps. (wiki)

            Below 16 C I quickly start to feel the chill. At 16 I need a lot of layers (everything long sleeved) and/or physical activity. Getting out of a warm bed is the hardest.

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  7. Another good one today from B on how warm poor countries will do much better than rich cold countries, and on the value of simplicity and good enough quality.

    He concludes with a somewhat hopeful vision of the future.

    https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/i-saw-the-future-of-europe-in-india

    One thing is for sure, though: the only possession which you will always have with you is the knowledge and skills you master. So watch these videos as if they were sneak peeks into the not so distant future, and an invaluable source of ideas. Learn what can be done using manual labor alone, or by using some simple tools and minimal resources. Collect low-tech ideas — or even better — experiment with them at home or in your local community. Learn how to make water filtration equipment, or how to turn a generator from a car, some plywood and a lead acid battery into a mobile phone charging station, or a source of electricity to light up your home at night. Experiment with parts sourced from a scrap yard and pride yourself in finding a new use to them.

    Besides all that, the knowledge we gathered during the past decades as industrial nations — like safe manufacturing practices reducing accidents to a bare minimum — could be used to transform our unsustainable, energy and raw material intensive lives to a much more fulfilling, and dare I say: rewarding life. A low-tech, low-energy future could not only help reducing emissions but also increasing resilience, and perhaps imbuing our lives with a new reason to live for. Inventor types will have an especially fun time, while simultaneously taking care of their local communities. Collapse is not all doom and gloom, and not something which happens overnight. It is a long process which will take at least a century to fully unfold (2), and who knows, in the end it might land us in a not so inhospitable place.

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  8. https://animistsramblings.substack.com/p/agriculture-diminishing-returns

    Has Agriculture reached the Point of Diminishing Returns?

    Agriculture is only possible in a stable climate.

    It has become obvious over the past few years that we’ve left the comfortably lukewarm Holocene and entered an entirely new chapter of the Earth’s climatic history – the (much hotter) Anthropocene. This new epoch will likely be characterized by equally wild swings in weather patterns as the Pleistocene that preceded the Holocene.

    What we are currently witnessing is the beginning of the end of agriculture as a subsistence mode.

    Yet virtually nobody talks about it in those terms. Very few people realize what exactly is going on, and the implications are so terrifying that many just choose to ignore the issue altogether.

    Diseases of all sorts might become increasingly common, as diverse communities of beneficial microbes dwindle and are replaced by ferocious, hyper-individualist pathogens scouring an impoverished microbial moonscape.
    …

    For the moment, things might still seem not too bad if we focus only on overall net productivity, but, as anyone embedded in a conventional farming community knows, both chemical inputs (and thus debt) and overall workload (and thus stress) have steadily increased over the past few years. Farmers now have to put in extra work to try to counteract or outbalance the effects of a collapsing biosphere and a rapidly degenerating climate: for instance, if a section of your rice field gets flooded early on in the season for more than a few days, the young rice plants drown and consequently have to be replanted. If a dryer climate and an accompanying decline in soil carbon content necessitate more irrigation, new pumps, pipes and sprinklers have to be purchased and installed, and more energy needs to be used. And if the pollinators of your main fruit crop are in decline, you will have to spend more time manually pollinating durian flowers at night.

    But the most terrifying aspect of our dilemma is this: since the so-called “Green Revolution,” the world population has grown by about five billion. What this means in the simplest terms is that five billion people are currently only alive because of an overabundance of cheap fossil fuels.11

    Oil production will start its terminal decline very soon, and global agricultural yields will follow. As will population levels. If not from outright famine, then at the very least from the deterrent prospect of having to feed yet another mouth while food prices (and the cost of living in general) skyrocket.

    We need a global one child policy immediately!

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  9. Hideaway today at POB.

    I find it fascinating that a site that studies peak oil so aggressively denies overshoot.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-19-2024/#comment-773771

    Nick G …………………”A lot of people, here on TOD and elsewhere, seem to have lost faith in the ability of civilization to run properly.”

    Civilization runs on excess energy, we don’t get energy from civilization. Civilization takes energy from the natural world. Most of our energy comes from fossil fuels, they are clearly damaging the climate, but we also have the problem of scarcity of these energy sources, particularly oil coming soon.

    All renewables, nuclear and hydro energy comes from builds with fossil fuels. We can’t, nor are we trying to, make any of them from anything other than fossil fuels.

    Without the energy inputs, civilization collapses. Once energy availability starts falling, mostly from oil production reductions, it will cascade throughout our civilization, breaking complex systems all over the place. We saw a minor example of this in 2008 when oil price went to $147/bbl, which broke many important aspects of our civilization temporarily. We were able to recover because fossil fuel use grew again after a small hiatus. In 2008 oil production didn’t fall, it just didn’t rise.

    Now imagine 2008 again, but instead of oil price falling, it stays high because production is falling, then price rises again, with further falls in production. Many parts of the economy cease functioning because businesses go bust. They put off employees because of financial reasons, yet these reasons are caused by lack of cheap oil. The problems will cascade around the world as everyone is in the same boat, less energy available. Perhaps you should read J. Tainter Collapse of Complex Societies.

    BTW, I never watch Fox, it’s garbage most of the time…

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    1. I expect inflation to get a lot worse when total liquid volume starts declining. There will likely be another systemic banking crisis when overall liquid volume starts to decline. Next time, too big to fail may be too big to save. After the systemic banking crisis, inflation will likely turn into deflation because many banks will have failed.

      I am even more afraid of the effects of peak oil on food supply.

      BTW, I agree with the quote about Fox News.

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  10. Dr. Tom Murphy begins to flesh out the new religion he thinks we need. I agree with him. Religion is a powerful evolved force for shaping human behavior. It has a better chance at causing positive change than educating people about overshoot.

    https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2024/04/the-anthropic-biodiversity-principle/

    Modernity and the Meta-Crisis

    Gee, all of that might fool a reader into thinking I’m still an astrophysicist, despite my abandonment of that life. What does it have to do with the topic I find most compelling to think about these days?

    In a word: humility. The Biodiversity Principle is the ultimate refutation of specialness. The universe was not designed for us, or to lead to us, or even to lead to life. It could have gone loads of different ways, and maybe only had a 1 in 10100 chance of being capable of supporting life (essentially zero chance, for all intents and purposes, yet still resulting in 10400 possible configurations for life, so immense is the 10500 starting point).

    The Biodiversity Principle therefore requires no explanation for why our universe is “just so.” If it can happen, it will somewhere (in some universe), and ours is obviously one where it did, as must be the case. The tendency among scientists is to ignore or discount our (life’s) presence, but that’s a little weird, isn’t it? Such thinking makes the enormous—and disturbing—assumption that we would pop out of whatever universe physics decided it had to cook up. It’s a blind spot.

    The Biodiversity Principle acts to de-center humans, and frees us up to admire and enjoy the luck we have. It shifts focus to the more-than-human world, so that we might treasure the biodiversity we witness and are a part of—and then perhaps act like it!

    I also see this “we’re not special” mentality as being in opposition to the fanciful notions of free will and consciousness as “special,” transcendent provisions of humans (scientists are finding otherwise). Get over yourselves, I say! Why can’t we be content that we get to be a part of this ride?

    The Biodiversity Principle elegantly removes a problematic sense of purpose (teleology, for those who prefer fancy words). If humans get it in their heads that modernity is somehow “supposed” to happen in our universe (rather than that it happened simply because it could), then we make poor choices and are not as easily convinced that we should abandon modernity. Recognizing the incalculable value of biodiversity as something extraordinary that our universe happens to allow might foster a sense that we should prioritize its long-term health over the usual short-term concerns of modernity and human supremacists.

    A repeat of the first of ten tenets I proposed has more complete context now:

    “The universe is not here for us, or because of us, or designed to lead to us. We are simply here because we can be. It would not be possible for us to find ourselves in a universe in which the rules did not permit our existence.”

    When constructing this tenet, I had exactly the topic of this post in mind, and now perhaps it is more clear what I meant by it. I hope it is also more clear how this topic ties into the thread I’ve been on lately. Belief in the Biodiversity Principle is an important foundation in my approach to life (enough so that it was the first tenet in my list), and I can’t easily tell how necessary it is in order to possess the rest of my worldview. At least I can see the connection, and recommend trying it on. We are tiny, but we’re here, as a matter of luck. Now, don’t squander that luck in a fit of false self-aggrandizement.

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    1. Have not read this one yet. But Murphy replied to a comment I had from last weeks article. Thought I would share. Sounds like he knows about this site.

      my comment:
      I too am a big fan of Daniel Quinn. Recently I found a site called un-Denial. It has introduced me to concepts that are new for me. Theories like MORT (mind over reality transition) and MPP (maximum power principle).

      I bring this up because it has started to shake my firm belief in Quinn’s conclusions regarding humans are not a failed experiment and it’s our culture that is the failure. Sustainable cultures are starting to seem more like an illusion than fact. And wisdom was not the relevant factor, it was all about energy constraints. Leavers had not figured out how to bust thru the energy constraints and that’s all it is. If they could have figured it out, they too would have become Takers in a heartbeat.

      I’m not trying to change your mind, just would like to hear what you have to say since you’ve been at this for much longer than me. None of it matters as far as our collapse goes…. but Quinn’s work sure has a better, healthier vibe than what I am talking about here.

      Tmurphy on 2024-04-22 at 22:37 said:
      I’ll chime in here on two points: I agree that denial is a powerful influence in the world around us. I am not terribly impressed with the MORT theory. Awareness of one’s own mortality would inspire many to procreate more vociferously in order to achieve the next-best-thing to immortality. Some might shut down, but others will do the opposite. Not a compelling argument, in my view.

      As for a fundamental flaw in humans, maybe. I can’t rule it out. I will say that some Leavers intentionally shunned Taker ways, as being incompatible with their belief systems centered on the community of life and ecological sustainability. I’m not comfortable projecting and saying all cultures would do what ours did in a heartbeat. It seems we have evidence to the contrary, and this sort of thinking is a common fallacy stemming from complete immersion in one culture, so that we have a hard time imagining other powerful value sets. In the end, we can’t be sure. But I prefer to operate on the premise that we’re not just rotten to the core and thus are wasting our time trying to find better ways to live.

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      1. Very interesting, thanks.

        Tom Murphy is smart, well read, and wise, so I don’t want to be dismissive of his MORT skepticism, however:

        1) It’s odd to claim mortality awareness would cause many to have more children. I am not aware of any evidence for this. We do know that every tribe in every location in all of time has had some form of religion that denies death, which implies mortality denial is genetic, and is a very powerful force. In other words, there are no cultures in which the majority accepts the reality of mortality so how can Murphy possibly make such a claim?

        We do know agricultural societies that lack a social safety net, and that depend on manual labor to work the farm, and that have high infant mortality rates, tend to have larger families for obvious reasons, but that’s a different issue than mortality awareness.

        2) I suspect it’s impossible for a person with normal denial genes to accept that MORT is probably true. One test I have for assessing defective denial genes is whether an overshoot aware person makes population reduction a top priority for what must be done. It’s so obvious that population reduction is the only good path that if a person does not acknowledge this I think it’s a strong tell that they have normal or somewhat normal denial genes. Tom Murphy does not have population reduction as a top priroty and this may explain why he also thinks MORT is false.

        3) I am not impressed with Murphy’s belief that we are not all rotten to the core. Cells that behave in accordance with the MPP, as I expect they must, are not rotten , or good, or anything. They are just evolving replicators competing for finite energy and resources.

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        1. My comment was actually to another commenter named Jan Steinman. I’ve seen that name all over the collapse world. She/he has been overshoot aware for 50 plus years and I just wanted to get feedback from a well-established lifer. 

          But I had a feeling that Murphy would reply. Daniel Quinn fans cannot help themselves. Anytime Quinn’s work is questioned the fans get very vocal. Which explains why I butt in so quickly on this site when the topic is brought up. 😊 (noticing this fierce protection and loyalty of Quinn has actually helped me to see that he could be wrong)

          The Quinn in me does not like your #1 and #3. But I do like #2. I’m getting to the point where if population reduction is not at the top of your list of priorities, then we can’t be friends. lol.  But seriously, like you said, it’s so freaking obvious. I think Tom knows this, but he does not focus on it enough for sure. And lets not even get started with Nate Hagens, who never says anything about the subject. Same with my hero, the late great Michael Dowd.

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          1. It’s hard to think of anyone other than Jack Alpert and Sam Mitchell who have population reduction consistently at the top of the priority list, which is really quite remarkable given that population reduction is the only good path.

            And Jack’s the only person with a plan that has even a small chance of restoring ecosystems and retaining some of the good things from modernity. Yes I know in the long term even with Jack’s plan we will probably revert to hunter-gatherers, but many fewer people will suffer, and it will provide 100+ years for the next Einstein to think of something, and even if an Einstein does not emerge there will be a beautiful abundant world we can return to as hunter-gatherers.

            The path we are on will leave little in nature to survive with or to enjoy for our future hunter-gatherer lives.

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            1. Very interesting discussion.

              I am just wondering: in a wicked way, isn’t the path we are on better than Jack’s plan at restoring ecosystems?

              The way I see it, our current path ensures the most brutal collapse by stacking the odds as high as possible until it all unravels suddenly. At this point, nature will have a lot of living place to rebound.

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          2. I should have added that I’m not against the ideas of Quinn. We have plenty of intelligence to know we should behave as Leavers because Takers are committing suicide which in the long term violates the MPP (I think).

            I just think the Quinn’s and Murphy’s of the world should focus on figuring out how to override MORT, because everything else is a waste of time.

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            1. Holy shit, did Rob just admit that he might agree with some of Quinn’s stuff? Hell must be freezing over. Just kidding.

              And your last point about overriding MORT because everything else is a waste of time…. so true. This site has hammered that nail into my head. I’m even having trouble watching the Nate’s of the world because listening to a 2-hour interview about why A.I. is gonna be bad is starting to become more frustrating/comical than educational/inspiring. 

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            2. Hello Rob and friends,

              At the risk of being excommunicated from this site, I think we can accept that MORT is just another defining attribute of what makes our species and there’s no possibility of overriding it, just as we can’t live without air or water. MORT is our air and water, and only because of it could we soar and sail through our existence. We couldn’t have evolved to where we are (for better or worse are the two sides of the same coin) without it, and just as it was our beginning, it will be also our finis and thus bookend our existence. MORT is our built-in self-destruct program that raised us to these heights all the while guaranteeing our collapse, it was always ever a matter of time and place and we are getting very close now to the self-fulfilling doom. Everything has a beginning, middle and end, and this is how our story goes, full stop. 

              Maybe we can even say that MORT (denial) has been our species’ only true religion, for through it we almost became like the gods, or more poetically, it was the way in which the gods could become human. We have created worlds and even universes with this power to at once allow and deny into being.  It’s also MORT that allows us to even have any judgment and thus expectation of anything other than what is, and therefore creates the possibility of a choice to change it, either individually or collectively. For example, those of us who have peeled back a few layers of the veil in our self-chosen topic of overshoot still have not escaped MORT’s full grasp because as we are still judging what should and shouldn’t be a priority and how to go about it–we have not let go of denial and come to the acceptance that is the supposed blessing of those rarefied beings who have achieved no-mind. When we desire that something should be done differently, for whatever our reasons, that means we are still in some level of denial of the present, and I am not saying this in any judgement, just a statement. We have not overcome our inbuilt denial in the least just because we can take a minority, however factual, perspective–we have only become aware it is denial that keeps others from our conclusion and it can be argued that it is also denial that keeps us from the majority view.  It is clear that as human, being, we will not be able to separate denial from our fabric, nor is there any need to do so if we truly embrace our denial, the whole spectrum of it. 

              I don’t deny that what I’ve just written sounds totally whacked and please feel free to deny accepting any of it! 

              To end on a self-professed card-carrying un-denial member note, I just want to say for the record that I am all for planting trees as a priority end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it project. I thank monk for tabling this earlier, it is a human-sized task that ticks all the boxes for less harm, most good. How about we try to start a “I Treed, not Breed” campaign? Catchy enough?

              Namaste, friends.

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              1. Yes, MORT gave us an extended theory of mind that enabled overshoot, and this conversation.

                Yes, MORT is the foundation of all of our religions, and is a powerful force.

                Yes, prepping is a form of denial unless the goal is simply to make a little more pleasant the inevitable last 10 years.

                Yes, hoping for something that is not possible is another form of denial.

                And yet…

                Some of us broke through genetic denial and see what should be done. So it’s possible. How did it happen? Can it be scaled?

                With that awareness some of us made dramatic changes to our lifestyles, in opposition to MPP. So behavior change is possible. Can it be scaled?

                Some of us would not have children today if we knew then what we know now. So voluntary population reduction is possible with awareness. Can it be scaled?

                P.S. Planting trees may also be a form of denial when ground level ozone is killing trees worldwide.

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                1. Dear Rob,

                  I hope you are well.

                  I have a question, how many visitors occur per year/month to the UN-Denial site?

                  – Would be fascinating to know how many seem to be interested in such various topics. 

                  Kind and warm regards,

                  ABC

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                  1. I never look at the site stats because then I would have to face reality and that would be depressing and reduce my motivation to fight on spreading MORT.

                    It does feel like a few more people are participating so we are growing exponentially which means in a few years we should be huge and then I will create subscriptions, become very rich, and build a tiny home at Gaia’s commune. 🙂

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                    1. Dear Rob,

                      thank you for your quick reply.

                      I have to express that your statement made me laugh, I suppose my mind has been reduced to a tragicomic cynical state which laughs at about everything knowing our predicament.

                      Regarding Un-Denial fans, wealth and Gaia’s community.
                      If your subscription/marketing “Ponzi scheme” happens, I’ll be glad to move into that commune as well at that point too!

                      Warm and kind regards,

                      ABC

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                    2. Now that’s a goal worth undenying! You are all most welcome to our little stand of trees (so far showing no overt signs of ozone damage, but some have cockatoo and wallaby damage) so you may hunt (I’ll turn a blind eye if you happen to snag a wallaby) and gather (whatever fruit left by the animals) to your hearts’ content! 

                      In all seriousness, and I think this has been suggested before, we really should think about having an end-of-the-world Zoom meeting (and then Rob you will see with your own eyes, un-denied, how many or few followers you have) just so together we can raise a toast to this planet and everything on it before the lights and internet go out. 

                      It would be also great to see everyone’s smile and hear laughter, thank goodness we’ve got a good sense of humour lurking beneath all our doom and gloom.

                      Namaste, friends. 

                      Liked by 1 person

                    3. Dear Gaia,

                      I hope you are well.

                      Hear hear, I concur!
                      – An online meeting sounds delightful.

                      Kind and warm regards,

                      ABC

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                2. What if intelligence over a certain level is inherently maladaptive on long timescales, because it allows you to destroy the very ecology you depend upon.

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                3. You gotta love Gaia’s way of looking at it. And somehow it’s so ‘Daniel Quinn’ too. I might end up reading it once a week.  

                  But like Rob, I can’t get over the fact that some people have sidestepped MORT and become overshoot aware. Might be impossible to figure out how to teach someone to understand and believe it. But it’s obviously not impossible to learn it on your own. 

                  If I am in the ballpark with my gut instinct, then we are screwed. I think most overshoot people fall into 2 categories. Lifers who are born into it or self-taught down the road. Either way its like a religion in that they have been practicing for a long time with the ultimate goal of getting to that place of true acceptance (grateful for everything, a self-reliance, etc). No way to get the average joe to go down that road. Plus, not enough time. Second category is people like me that were guided or pushed into this collapse world thru crisis, trauma, near death experience, midlife crisis, etc…. Cant teach that to avg joe. 

                  The third category might be picking up some traction, but very slowly. Covid woke a lot of people up. But there are so many conspiracy rabbit holes to go down that overshoot is gonna be one of the least likely to end up in. You will get seduced by alien theories, preppers and “Govt is coming for your guns” nonsense way before you start giving any weight into what a Paul Beckwith type says. 

                  A while back Rob had mentioned a guest essay with everyone sharing how you became awake and maybe we see some patterns emerge. Would still like to do that. But would love to try some version of this with the third category because they are worth more investigation. Anyone recently overshoot aware (with no outside help from a crisis, divorce, fired, etc), I’m very interested in the details of how they got here. Hopefully some useful patterns emerge. Man, I can’t tell if I’m sounding logical or desperate. 😊

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                  1. Good afternoon, 

                    I hope thou are all well.

                    After reading your comment Paqnation, 
                    I’ve decided to partake. 

                    • I thought of not publishing this,
                      seems I’ve failed to contain myself. 
                      I apologise for this mindless outburst. 

                    I would add to your speculation of how one becomes aware. 

                    • I wholeheartedly agree regarding the premise of waking up due to recent events & thus going down the rabbit hole. 
                    • Regarding the appreciation of life,
                      both traumatic and healing experiences by default play a significant role and can dramatically alter perspectives. I’d also add the highly sensitive person aspect, as one would be more prone to notice subtle inputs in their surroundings & oneself. 

                    An entirely different matter.

                    Met a friend yesterday who’s highly knowledgeable and a self described sceptic although he is religious (catholic) and is highly privileged (similar to yours truly).

                    When mentioning peak oil and/or peak everything to said friend, the response was “not true, an elite operates everything and is placing an artificial chokehold on all the available resources, we have plenty.”

                    • The plan is to have automation (AI & Robots), then depopulation to replace the human workers…

                    As I heard this I realised MORT, Cognitive dissonance and repeated behaviour/cultural imprints and thought patterns which cannot be overcome by any rational explanation were engaged and trying change anyone’s mind is nigh impossible. 

                    • This only demonstrates even how people who supposedly ”question things” get dragged into reductionist concepts because it fits a cultural context as to “blaming the evil elites” or ”how can you trust the data from companies exploring oil reserves” (meaning this elite would control all corporations & science etc.)

                      The only thing that comes to my mind is as William Rees has mentioned; 
                      ”Humans evolved in simpler times and the brain evolved to think in relatively straightforward ie. simplistic terms.” 

                      Repeated experiences shape the brain’s responses.

                    • Even if there is neuroplasticity, that usually only occurs with some form of severe mind altering experience ie.
                      A shock.

                      I realised how frustrated thou must feel Rob (along with our brethren & sistren of UN-Denial), I deeply apologise for not being considerate regarding the emotional turmoil which such dreadful experiences & knowledge brings.

                    • After fully reflecting and absorbing all of this, I came to think of what thee said unto me “learn to enjoy thine own company”.

                      It pains me deeply that only few of us share this foresight and agony, yet still posses some form of “morality” to consider the wellbeing of all life, both present and future. 
                      Here we are meek and powerless as all such ”flawed” beings, begetting ourselves trampled by the ferocious hubris and ignorance of our misguided myopic brethren and sistren, who’ve become ensnared by regurgitated statements which bear no significance to anything of any importance, whilst simultaneously rampantly spreading ravaging forms of disarray and propaganda. 

                    Kind and warm regards,

                    ABC

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                    1. Thanks kindly ABC, it’s very nice to know there are a few other aliens on this planet.

                      I know not a single person in real life that shares my overshoot awareness/curiosity or any of my beliefs. I find it exhausting and not enjoyable trying to have normal social conversations with people.

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                    2. Hello ABC friend,

                      Thank you so much for all your very mindful and sincere offerings on this site, to me they are like a little pat on the shoulder reassuring me that there are others who have travelled this often lonely and different road, but haven’t our peaks and valleys been worth the effort, especially when shared! 

                      In haste now to go forth into the sunshine of this day and do the work that is a privilege with my own hands, but just wanted to reach out and say how very much I appreciate your and everyone else’s presence here. Not all human experience is vanity under the sun; may friendship and connection sustain and define us, come what may. 

                      All the best to you and all kin, closer and wider. 

                      Namaste.

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                    3. Dear Rob, Gaia & everyone else,

                      I hope thee are well.

                      I thank ye for the quick replies. 

                      Pardon my writing style, I find Middle English to be fanciful and it is an entertaining exercise for a non-native speaker such as myself. 

                      I want to posses these idealistic notions of how Homo sapiens might exist if rationality was used to build a sustainable society and thus we could evolve as a species, yet the more I reflect upon this the more Machiavelli seems to be on point. 
                      (Anti-Machiavelli too for that matter, both sides provide methods for rulership) 

                      However considering our biology & examining our history I cannot help but lean more towards an “Machiavellian and/or authoritarian” view with additives from indigenous cultures and elders from all over the world (7th generation principle, Maastricht principle for future generations, Ubuntu etc), and eastern philosophy such as Taoism along with the deterministic scientific/Spinoza viewpoint, such things ought to be fiercely drilled into the cultural fibre so that everyone knows the established sustainable values in their deepest slumber. 

                      Knowing these things, my “dark/villainous” side of my steps out. 

                      Hierarchy cannot be wiped out, rules and conformity must be had, elites will always exist, a varying degree of soft and hard force must always be involved (education, traditions, beliefs, shame, cultural norms, laws, punishments, violence etc.) 

                      • Power struggles will always exist, thus logically to avoid such a situation which Peter Turchin described as “too many elites”, a very strict system must exist to avoid the chaos of inner power struggles and turmoil alongside the increasing complexity must be kept in control to avoid Joseph Tainter’s collapse due to overshoot etc. 

                      I’d say at least for now, the isolated nation of Bhutan with some tweaks looks rather “exemplary” in this regard… 

                      I wish not to scare anyone, 
                      however I cannot fathom any permanent change without strict discipline and wide social cohesion which requires some form of “strongman/woman” to conquer/unite any group from either the outside or from within. (love/fear/force/necessity etc.) 

                      The peaceful revolutionaries of old used mostly soft methods, although if I’ve understood correctly; hard methods were always available for these groups at a moments notice providing support in case of need. 

                      On top of that these figures are idolised, humans tend to idolise and elevate each other. 

                      Thus I have come to a conclusion that if I am to make any difference I must choose carefully, “changing the world is a naive path.”

                      I will strive to learn practical skills along the way, alas for now the most viable option for myself (as I see it) is to try and get into an high status administrative position. 
                      Both in Finland & Sweden there are emergency/preparation/crisis security councils.

                      (They secure resources, provisions & medicine in times of crisis.) 

                      I want to help “my/this nation” (and others) to transfer into a soft landing position by increasing awareness and cultivating practical skills; 
                      breed horses, construct wooden sailing vessels, barrel coopering etc. and spread this critical knowledge from a “high status expertise” position.

                      • Jack Alperts plan is rational, however the sad reality is it will never happen…
                        Homo Sapiens will collectively never decide on anything rational, only an absolute entity (ruler/elite/group etc.) can get anything done (if that’s even possible on such a grand scale…)

                      I do not know will I succumb and fail miserably on this idea of pursuing a position of preparedness and influence , alas I cannot think of anything else which could provide the necessary power to increase the amount of “lifeboats” which will be critical for any sort of transition which could occur on a national level. 

                      Here is something which you will despise me for… 

                      I’d like to have a family, rear children and experience being a father. 

                      • I know it is extremely selfish if not cruel by all definitions knowing our predicament, however I cannot shake this primal biological urge of self-interest and naïveté of having a “sense of meaning”. 

                      Perhaps it is simply my youth, ego and lack of humility… 

                      Sometimes I wonder do I perhaps posses some personality disorder… 

                      I do not think that is the case (I might be wrong of course) however for now I will place it as thy said it (Rob) on “curiosity”, on top of that I have witnessed a fair share of both wealth and poverty seeing the world and the people inhabiting various “ecological/hierarchical niches.”

                      I must be a narcissistic, megalomaniac, spoiled, privileged, naive and hopeless fool, I cannot think of anything else which could “morally justify any of such thoughts”. 

                      • Sometimes I wish I’ve would have lived in prehistoric times seeing the marvels of the pleistocene. 
                        I must be nothing short of delusional…

                      I apologise for this burst of nonsense, I couldn’t contain myself. 

                      I expect nothing but condescending responses and remarks due to my perceived “insanity,” I often wonder have I lost my wit completely. 

                      I ask for forgiveness alas I expect nothing, I wish ye all nonetheless all the joy this wicked time period of ours still provides. 

                      Warm and kind regards,

                      ABC

                      Liked by 1 person

                  2. Thanks paqnation.

                    I’ve been following many of the covid dissenters from day 1 and I’d say 90+% deny climate change and do not see the connection between overshoot and the great reset.

                    If enough people volunteer to contribute their awareness path I’ll happliy compile and publish it.

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                    1. Hello there Rob,

                      I just wanted to say that a Gaia length awareness path exegesis would probably overwhelm the server when uploading! But one day I might contribute snippets, like those serial periodicals or radio program instalments (which were before my time, but I can still relate). In the meantime, it’s just good to know that we have friends here who do understand and I would very much like to assure you that I very much consider that we are all in our “real life”, this space is a true and comfortable oasis in all the universe to me. 

                      Namaste friends.

                      Liked by 2 people

                    2. Can’t reply anymore where I wanted to (where you are talking about not knowing one other person with your awareness/beliefs).

                      I think most of us can relate. And at times it spills into my other life too much. I get an ugly, and snobbish “if you’re not collapse aware, then we can’t be friends” behavior thing going on.

                      Whenever I get like that I have to take a break on the collapse material. But it’s such a Catch-22 because when I take a break, I end up watching sports or going to the bars with my friends and turning back into the ignorant zombie that I despise. Haha, can’t win.

                      And god bless those of you that have mastered the balancing act of this double life we live.

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                4. Dear Rob,

                  I don’t understand when you state “Some of us broke through genetic denial”.

                  As I see it (for myself), I “just” broke out of a commonly accepted narration about the world. In other words, I bumped against inconsistencies between the world and the narration, accepted my views were flawed and tried to expand my understanding somewhat. (The process sounds easy, but, as you know well, when one’s acquired identity is at stake, accepting facts which go against it, can be quite challenging)

                  But in no way, would I claim, that I have now attained a state of 0-denial. How could it even be so? As we are probably not (consciously) aware of what we deny. Breaking out of denial would mean to shine complete light on our unconscious realm. Or maybe, not hold any pre-conception about reality. If it is the latter, then shouldn’t atheists also let go of their absolute certainties, such as the absence of some form of continuity after death?

                  So maybe, “Some of us broke through genetic denial”, but I wouldn’t say that’s me 🙂

                  keywords: paradox, arrogance of knowledge, self-reinforcing belief systems, relativity, limits of verbal stories

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                5. I would say it’s only denial when we know about the killer ozone and plant trees anyway! Then there’s the biotic pump impact of trees in forests that could indeed stabilize local climate extremes. See the latest post on Seneca Cliff by Ugo Bardi. So we could know about the ozone and the biotic pump dynamics and go ahead in un-denial!

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          3. What about: these are just two competing stories, none of which entirely captures reality, yet none of which is entirely false.

            Believing we can describe reality (capture the truth) in words. Isn’t this a delusion? (there is a story about trying to put all the water of the ocean in a hole dug on the beach using just a spoon: https://inspiringy.blogspot.com/2017/01/i-am-trying-to-empty-ocean-into-this.html)

            Doesn’t the value of a story rather lie in the things it allows us to do, the aspect of reality it reveals, the direction it points to?

            I believe Quinn/Murphy’s story will propagate because it shows a possible way ahead for survival. It is becoming useful in this world of limits, of civilisation/technology collapse.

            Rather than ask whether a story describes an absolute truth, isn’t it more reasonable to ask why we tell ourselves a given story?

            So here are some questions. What does Quinn story show, what does it enable? What does MORT story show, what’s its purpose?

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            1. Hi Charles. Always like your reasoning. Gonna attempt to answer those last questions. Feels like this is a test so grade me on a curve. 😊

              What does Quinn’s story show? That humans lived like every other species for a couple million years (With the exception of fire and stone tools. Man, those are some gigantic exceptions though). And that it was only a few recent bad decisions (totalitarian agriculture) that led us down this evil path.   

              What does it enable? Allows us to not write off humans as being a failed experiment… which gives hope that humans can get back to the correct way of living… which keeps people motivated in trying to get human survivors through the upcoming bottleneck we face.

              What does MORT’s story show? That humans could not have lived like every other species after evolution gave us eToM and denial. Why? Because now we had too much brain power, which allowed us to figure out how to sidestep Mother Earth and the Way. To go along with the ability to deny all of the havoc/destruction that we were causing by sidestepping Mother Earth and the Way. 

              What is its purpose? The MORT story purpose is so that we can go back to writing off humans as a failed experiment. No motivation to get survivors through the bottleneck.

              Ok, screw this site, I’m going back to Quinn. 😊 The main reason I fell so quickly head over heels for un-Denial is some type of gut instinct about how important denial is in our Story. I have questioned my sanity for staying on a website that slowly sucks every last drop of hopium. But the gut instinct thing is very strong and overrides my sanity.

              And one last bit. If the world woke up tomorrow with Quinn’s story on the brain, I feel like it would be more about human survival at all costs. And if the world woke up with MORT, then we would concede our extinction and put everything into helping some animals and plants survive, as well as getting those damn nuclear reactors decommissioned. That is confusing because those should be reversed. But I’ll take if it means nihilistic MORT is finally the good guy at something. 

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              1. un-Denial exists not to suck all hope from the air, but rather to offer some internal peace by providing an explanation for the insanity overshoot aware people see every day.

                I think I’d go crazy if I did not understand why so many intelligent people are so blind to so much that is so obvious and so important.

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                1. Ya, just read it again and sounds like I hate this site. lol. Not at all. It’s just the red pill talking. 

                  I do have some untouchable hopium like running the human experiment and it would not turn out like this everytime (war, greed, inequality). And some spiritual stuff mixed with Dowd and Quinn as well. So ya, I definitely exaggerate about this site draining all hope. I’ll chill out on it.

                  I blame it on my infatuation for the idea of sustainable cultures with wisdom as the main driver. Was untouchable until I came over here. Maybe subconsciously I’m bitter. 😊 

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              2. That’s interesting. I will have to give it more time to sink in. My questions were not meant as a test by the way: I am discovering things along the way, about myself and about how others can see the world. I guess, I am searching for doors which I don’t see entirely.

                I think both Quinn and the MORT story are important. Nothing forbids us to hold various (even apparently contradictory) stories in our heads.

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              3. OK, here is a proposition.

                The Quinn story focuses on the fact that in some settings, some human groups were able to live in balance with their environment and shaped their culture accordingly (until they were overrun by other more extractive cultures)

                The denial story highlights a fatal flaw inherent in our species (the orginal sin? 🙂 which explains why, in some other settings, we can’t stop until we are stopped by collapse.

                We have now the privilege to write the next chapter. Which according to previous collapse stories will most probably go along the way of the death of many followed by a long purification period before redemption (exodus, Noah’s ark…)
                Then maybe some of us get the privilege to add a new chapter to yet a new version of the book whose Rob’s ancestor wrote in the hope that future civilisations would handle their growth phase more wisely 😉

                To exit these loops (of reincarnation), we could try to let go of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and pick the tree of life. That is, accept the fruits of existence as they are, without even labelling them as good or bad. Receive and see the whole, without denying anything.

                What I like about this all, is the fractal nature:

                • a human being is born naïve and unable to do much harm, before the age of reason he is quite content
                • then he gets into a greedy phase enslaved by his notions of good and evil, trying to manipulate reality so that it leads to his preferred outcome (bondage of self)
                • before accepting that being without judgment is the true path to contentment

                Similarly, a civilization.

                And, at last the species, which is maybe just about to get into some forced maturity (if we believe this iteration is the greatest and most fatal one).

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  11. Hideaway’s comments @ POB deserve more visibility so I’m re-posting some of them here for exposure to the millions of daily un-Denial visitors.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-19-2024/#comment-773795

    Dennis. “That is your key assumption, but it remains unproven”.

    Of course it remains unproven, but is certainly the logical approach. We have had 200 + years of increasing fossil fuel use and during that time have achieved immense technological gains, where machines were built that do the work of hundreds of people and animals.

    At sometime soon we are going to have a reversal of this trend of fossil fuel use, with oil being the main fossil fuel used. It will be oil that has contracting production once we pass the peak.

    The illogical assumption is that all the technology gains we have had, only because of increasing fossil fuel use, will continue as fossil fuels use contracts, starting with oil. In fact oil production contraction will also contract coal and gas production as they both rely upon modern diesel machines for their extraction.

    Likewise for the mining, processing, manufacturing and deployment of every other form of energy production. They all rely upon cheap oil and fossil fuels to build.

    You talk of electrifying rail and using it instead of diesel trucks, plus a lot more recycling of everything, yet where is it all? Do you expect it to all be built once oil contraction starts in earnest?

    What energy is going to be used to build these new ways of doing things in a world of contracting energy?? Who misses out?? The energy has to be taken off other users of energy in a world of falling energy production.

    These ‘other’ users will already be under pressure from the overall energy contraction, so will have already cut their energy use to the bone assuming we are using market forces. The following year, even more contraction, before we allocate energy to build new recycling facilities and machinery, more train lines and train carriages, stations etc.

    In other words you are expecting MORE building, MORE machinery, MORE processes, all done in a world of an accelerating decline in availability of energy.

    Dennis your key assumption of lots more building of ‘new things’ in a world of declining energy, is just as unproven as my assumptions. My assumption is that we wouldn’t have had our modern technological world without fossil fuels, and we wont have it without fossil fuels. Our peak of technology will coincide with the peak in fossil fuel use..

    Also an underlying reality check.. Despite 2 centuries of increasing fossil fuel use and the damage it’s done to the climate and ecosystems everywhere, we have only managed to bring approximately 15% of all humanity into the modern technological civilization that those with the ability to read this post enjoy. Falling fossil fuel production will increase scarcity of energy for even these lucky 15%, with higher prices reducing the percentage of humanity that can afford energy use like today.

    The complexity we have with modern civilization is only possible because of the huge numbers involved. A reduced population of participants means a simplification of complexity. This you can learn from Joe Tainter’s “Collapse of Complex Societies”.

    Dennis every time you state, “We’ll do this……” when oil production is in major contraction, means a major build out of ‘something’ and probably a lot of different ‘somethings’. You never ever bother to work out how much new materials or energy it will take, nor where any of it comes from.

    Even the simplest aspects, like better insulation for homes, retrofitting all existing homes, putting in double or triple glazing in windows, thick insulation in cavity spaces, means a vast increase in materials to do that, meaning more mines of some type, more processing, more manufacturing, more distribution.

    Recycling more, sounds easy, when that’s the only mention of it, providing you don’t think of all the new building needed for it (specially designed), the machinery in these plants the trucking of all the inputs, the new trucks themselves, the energy the plant runs on, the consumables it uses. In other words a vast new industry needs building mostly from the ground up, in a world of declining energy availability.

    Because so many people refuse to look at the overall problem of our modern complex civilization, and expect the ‘solution’ to be build MORE (nuclear, solar, wind, EVs, triple glazed windows, fertilizer from recycling human waste in cities etc, etc , or whatever), it’s simply not going to work and guarantees collapse of our civilization in the process of trying.

    I fully expect lots of people pointing out MORE solar, wind, EVs etc next year, when we have used MORE fossil fuels to build them. Every year we just build a higher base of energy use, based mostly on fossil fuels.

    Total growth of non fossil fuels energy since 2008 is about 4,500Twh, while fossil fuel growth has been around 18,500Twh during the same period. It doesn’t matter how you divide the numbers, in the world I live in 18,500Twh is always higher than 4,500Twh, if you divide by 1 or by 8B, the result is still the same. Perhaps you should check your source of information Dennis, or their methodology, unless you claim Our World in Data energy numbers are wrong. Their sources of information are.. Energy Institute and V. Smil

    Dennis, the problem is those numbers use the substitution method, which multiplies actual non-fossil fuel output by a factor of 2.5. It’s a standard case of GIGO to try and change reality.

    This substitution method assumes all coal gas and oil are effectively burned for electricity, and electricity is the only use of fossil fuels. That’s what it effectively shows and how it’s used.

    I’ve seen this garbage turn up all over the place in discussions of energy production. I wrote a post on this over at un-denial.
    https://un-denial.com/2024/01/21/by-hideaway-energy-and-electricity/

    If they really wanted to be realistic, they would have reduced the coal, gas and oil used for electricity production by the average efficiency factor, and left renewables at actual output. However, this method would show just how small renewables are in total energy used, even after allowing for the inefficiencies of burning coal and gas for electricity.

    Also both hydro and nuclear energy production are multiplied by the same 2.5 times, when the electricity from both these sources is far more valuable because of the consistency of continuous production compared to the intermittency issue with renewables.

    All non electricity energy consumption comes to ~105,600Twh in 2022, with electricity consumption another 28,600Twh. Of the electricity supply solar and wind contributed just 3,408Twh. Multiply that number by your 15.7% growth rate takes renewable electricity up to ~10,900Twh by 2030, still only 10% of all energy use. (Of course no-one ever bothers to take off old solar/wind that’s retired, it’s assumed all new installations are add ons).

    Plus of course it misses out all the important products made from fossil fuels, with no allowance for the horrible inefficiencies of trying to turn renewable electricity into ‘products’.

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  12. Tim Watkins today questions commonly held beliefs about modern history.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/04/23/fall-guy-and-not-so-useful-idiot/

    Whether Britain arrived in this position through the duplicity or stupidity of its leaders will likely remain an academic question. If there is a lesson for today, it is surely that an empire which is slowly dying should at all costs avoid getting embroiled in wars which its economy no longer has the means of sustaining – particularly when the potential forces arrayed against it have sufficient resources to sustain a war for far longer than that empire can avoid collapse.

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  13. Promising legal attack against the covid crimes in Australia by focusing on the fact that mRNA is a GMO that was not regulated as per the law requires for GMO products.

    Also a promising strategy for waking up the public because most people are afraid of GMO products and don’t know they were injected with one.

    When they say “but we were worried about causing vaccine hesitancy” you should reply, “shut up, I’m allowed to have GMO hesitancy”.

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    1. I left this comment 2 days ago when she published this video:

      Slowly you are becoming aware of reality. Now look at fossil depletion and the rising energy cost of extracting energy and you will understand there will be no cars in our future. Then study how farms will feed 8 billion without diesel for tractors and natural gas for fertilizer. We are in severe overshoot and should be focused on building a softer landing zone and getting our population down.

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    3. It’s back again, with a few small errors corrected according to Sabine…

      Pity Sabine, like just about all the comments, think it only costs money to build. Not one comment about how it all involves materials and energy, not just the magic of money. All the materials and energy used to build ‘it’ are of course fossil fuels, which increases fossil fuel use to build ‘it’ faster.

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  16. Indrajit Samarajiva today explains that the US military is a ponzi scheme.

    https://indi.ca/nothing-to-see-here-just-the-wheels-falling-off-empire/

    The American war Ponzi is the perverse inverse of their domestic one. At home, they defraud money by at least building infrastructure. Abroad, they make money by destroying it.

    This is the great innovation of American Empire. Figuring out that there’s more money in losing wars than winning them. Only America attacks other places to loot their own treasury. They spent an absolutely soulless $2.3 trillion destroying Afghanistan and didn’t ‘get’ anything much in return. So what do you do when you’re running a Ponzi and one scheme goes belly up? You have to get the sucker into a new con, quickly. As that Wolf Of Wall Street said:

    “You get another brilliant idea, a special idea, another situation, another stock to reinvest his earnings and entice him, and he will, every single time, ’cause they’re addicted.”

    To cover up the loss of Afghanistan America invaded Iraq. When that went screwy they invaded Libya, then Syria. That wasn’t enough so they went even bigger, provoking Russia by corrupting Ukraine. The Ponzi Empire leaves a trail of destruction wherever they go, but the jig is only up if they stop. So they never stop. This is a big reason America keeps starting war after war after war. They’ve got to keep the scam going. As Marohn says, “like any Ponzi scheme, as soon as the rate of growth slows, it all goes bad very quickly.” Which is the point we’re getting to now. America is pushing up against countries like China, Russia, and Iran that it cannot actually intimidate like the innocent civilians and weddings it’s used to bombing from afar. We have finally reached the end of this fatal Ponzi. The scams are getting closer and closer together and running into each other. People are beginning to see, and soon they’ll start withdrawing their money.

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    1. Great article. And found this link from one of the comments. It’s a funny Bill Hicks puppet sketch about the elite.

      And just for the heck of it, here is my favorite Hicks moment ever. It comes at the 2:29 mark, but its worth watching the whole clip to truly get the payoff joke at the end.

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  17. Art Berman explains why oil prices went down when the risk of middle east war increased. I don’t understand his logic and I simply conclude markets are in denial.

    https://www.artberman.com/blog/oil-markets-were-unwise-but-right-in-the-israel-iran-crisis/

    Markets are almost always right on the margin, today. It’s a mistake to believe that markets are considering anything more. I wonder how many analysts understand this. Markets are only concerned with financial benefits to investors, not general benefits to society.

    The outcome for now of recent events in the Middle East seems to justify the limited price response. It was an incredibly risky gamble by the market because its interests are not society’s.

    Markets contain the collective knowledge of its participants. Knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom.

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  18. Someone above expressed doubt about the validity of Darwinism. This seems to be a meme that’s spreading.

    Today’s podcast by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying addresses this and discusses what we know and don’t know about Darwinism, and concludes the theory is sound but there are many things we still do not understand.

    Weinstein also expresses frustration with his discipline of evolutionary biology for making no progress since about 1976. It’s interesting that physics also stalled around that time according Sabine Hossenfelder. I note that space travel also stalled around then.

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    1. Excellent podcast, it was very intelligent and informative. The perspective on evolution/Darwinism was accurate by my understanding of the field. Additionally, both Heather and Brett understand the need for falsifiability of any scientific idea and the true rigor with which which that has to be utilized by practitioners of science in any field. Also their analysis of how this is absent in many areas in academia now is frighteningly accurate.

      AJ

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      1. Two of the most interesting black holes in biology are:

        1. Why did it take 2 billion years for the foundation of complex life, the eukaryotic cell, to evolve, and why did it happen only once?
        2. Why did an extended theory of mind emerge in only once species, despite it conferring an extreme fitness advantage, and why is that species the only species that believes in god?

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    2. That someone still thinks evolution is bullshit, and doesn’t explain anything, except minor adjustments. LTEE? Oh, give me a break. A nearly non reproducible experiment that spans over 20-40 years.

      I was going to reply to you, but saw Hideaway (whom I respect a lot, because he can do some math and understands feedback loops) talking about Mormons, and I realized it’s pointless, as you guys don’t understand the concept of “false dychotomy”. Either you “trust the science” or you are a religious weirdo xD and there’s nothing in-between.

      PS: Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying also “trust the science” when it comes to a deadly virus…

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      1. You are definitively saying something with passion but I don’t understand your argument.

        Maybe slow down, explain where you think Darwinism is wrong, and provide an alternate theory that better explains what we observe?

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  19. Excess deaths up everywhere in the world that pushed mRNA transfections.

    The pushers don’t want to investigate the problem (or themselves).

    The takers don’t want to know there’s a problem.

    Everyone’s comfortable with silence.

    MORT on steroids.

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      2. Most mommies aren’t MDs and just did what their corrupt governments and the TeeVee told them was the best option. This meme thing could easily have been put out by someone whose job it is to deflect blame and confuse the issue.

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        1. Lots of evidence now. Why aren’t the mommies demanding an investigation and prosecutions? Because mommy doesn’t want to know she was duped to harm her baby by the leaders she elected to protect her and her stupid/unethical family doctor.

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  20. I’m thinking this is not so much a case of incompetence, but rather an example Dr. Tim Garrett’s theory that shows depreciation of complexity eventually overwhelms a system dependent on growth when the energy feeding it is constrained.

    htts://indi.ca/how-americas-military-has-fallen-apart/

    What we’ve discussed is that the American military, like the American economy in general, is a Ponzi scheme. It pays off old liabilities with new growth. In this case, it keeps covering up failed wars with new failing wars. It keeps covering up horrendous procurement with more horrendous procurement. It’s a shell game which can no longer manufacture shells reliably.

    Now America’s con wars are getting closer and closer together and bleeding into one. Whereas it took them 20 years to get kicked out of Afghanistan, Yemen has defeated them in a matter of months. Whereas once they were fighting the poorest people on Earth, now they have united China, Russia, and Iran against them, ‘younger’ militaries with far more resources and wealth than America. None of these people actually want to fight or take over the world, they just want to be left in peace, but America has chosen violence. But grandpa genocide just doesn’t have the gumption anymore. The soulless are willing, but the body is weak. The old war machine can’t handle what’s demanded of it. The wheels are coming off as we speak. If we consider the American war machine as a trishaw, the three wheels of air, naval, and land dominance are all deflated and the whole thing is just careening violently before the final destination: financial cliff.

    America’s biggest guns of all are also firing blanks. America is still relying on 50-year-old Minuteman missiles for its ground nuclear deterrent, and it can’t rely on them anymore. As Admiral Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command has said:

    “We can’t do it at all. … That thing is so old that, in some cases, the drawings don’t exist anymore [to guide upgrades],” Richard said in a Zoom conference sponsored by the Defense Writers Group. Where the drawings do exist, “they’re like six generations behind the industry standard,” he said, adding that there are also no technicians who fully understand them. “They’re not alive anymore.”

    The Sentinel, the replacement for the Minuteman, is another case of made-up money chasing non-existent resources across unending delays. These newfangled missiles cost $162 million each, ballooning to a program cost of $131.5 billion (!), and they’re not even close to existing. They’re, in fact, closer to being cancelled. You can really appreciate America’s massive depreciation problem here. They have to bankrupt themselves to not even break even. They have to spend trillions more to get less capacity. All of these programs would return them to less missile capability than they had 50 years ago. And they can’t even do it.

    The US military budget has long been a shell game where they hid decaying infrastructure under imaginary new shit, and now the jig is up. Like a human being at the end of their life, they incur the highest costs on care at the end, for the worst results. American hegemony is in hospice now.

    America would literally need China’s support to attack China. It’s a non-starter. The mandate of heaven is withdrawn, because of massive accounting fraud. America’s military is falling apart. It’s just running on propaganda now.

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  21. Here’s another example of my own denial. I read this dire essay on a probable coming epidemic of bird flu etc. and said to myself I’d better stock up on more canned chicken and corned beef now rather than waiting for it to go on sale.

    https://www.rintrah.nl/who-wants-some-milk/

    I have some good news. If you live in freedomland, there’s a 62% chance the pack of milk you bought at your supermarket doesn’t have any bird flu in it!

    Yes, we’re totally doing this again! Get ready for your next incarnation! The extradimensional jesters are getting bored, they’re rolling this reality up as we speak!

    Pasteurization kills the virus. Probably. Nobody really knows if it’s good enough. If it kills 99.99% of viral particles, is that good enough, on a population of hundreds of millions of people? You tell me. If I drop a thousand grenades into a fireworks factory, but reduce the number of grenades I throw by 99%, is the outcome any different?

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      1. Major plague always kills at the end of civilasation. Look at the historical examples, scary. More people die from plague than war

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          1. If someday soon we face a serious pandemic I expect at least half of the population will ignore everything our leaders say because they destroyed their credibility by lying to us about everything, and by getting 100% of covid decisions wrong. They haven’t even prosecuted the people that engineered the virus FFS.

            Leadership credibility is important in a true pandemic. They blew it.

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  22. Hello Rob and everyone. I’m still reading your excellent posts and comments, though I haven’t posted anything myself for a long while.

    I haven’t seen a link to this posted (sorry if I missed it:)

    The view of the video on YouTube doesn’t say that it’s a talk by Art Berman, so I almost missed it. He’s speaking to a teachers workshop in Texas. It’s a good presentation and interesting in that it’s aimed at educators. At the 31-minute mark Art shows a graph of his that I don’t remember seeing before. On it he normalizes: Energy consumption, Carbon emissions, Ecological Footprint, GDP and (human) Population. Being a graph-centric person, this one graph pretty much sums up the state of things for me.

    Thanks for sharing your thoughts and feeling. It helps me feel less isolated.

    Brent Ragsdale

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  23. More inconvenient facts from Hideaway.

    People who believe an energy transition away from fossils is possible and underway do not show where Hideaway’s data is wrong, nor do they present evidence to support their beliefs, they simply ignore Hideaway and continue to believe. Just like most believe in god. MORT provides a common genetic explanation.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-19-2024/#comment-774038

    Islandboy, of course all these things are possible as we are still going up the fossil fuel use ladder, going to record high uses in 2023. More coal being burnt in places like Indonesia to bring all the nickel and aluminium necessary for the bright green future.

    I never saw your answer to the question of whether the Indonesian company Adaro should have used coal (the plan) to build their new Aluminium smelter or destroyed hundreds of km2 of pristine rainforest and river systems to provide all the Aluminium needed for solar panel frames, and EV car bodies, with solar and pumped hydro energy (which costs 8 times as much as coal for the solar panels alone!!). All done with cheap Indonesian labor and Indonesian bauxite and coal to provide cheap Aluminium.

    Which was your choice again, or was it diversion to somewhere else??

    Not one of those pieces change the fact that fossil fuel use has gone up by over 18,500Twh since 2008 and solar and wind combined total only 3,427Twh.

    No fossil fuels have been ‘saved’ on a world wide scale by all the ‘green’ building. It’s all just in addition. It’s very noticeable that you didn’t tackle the questions I asked, just bombarded the forum with green fluff that looks good to those that know nothing about the situation.

    A 797F Caterpillar dump truck has around a 4000 litre fuel tank and uses around 240 litres/hr working hard. It has a payload of 363 tonnes and an efficiency of around 50%, meaning it has a work index of 1.2Mwh/hr and can go a full 12hour shift without refueling.

    How does the 1.4Mwh battery pack in the new Fortescue fleet of one stack up?

    How long does it run between charges? You seem to know so much about this, so please answer this one simple question, at least…

    Is your plan is to turn the world’s food supply, provided by fossil fuel supplied fertilizers and tractors into fuel?
    What about the products needed from fossil fuels, you are trying to counter my post about products, things like plastics, fertilizers, explosives, polymers, asphalt, paints, herbicides and pesticides, chemicals required in mining for separating metals from waste etc?
    Why don’t you address the actual issue??

    How is it difficult to understand that these businesses you point to wont have any raw product to work with when there is no fertilizer or tractor fuel, no bunker fuel for sea transport, no diesel for heavy truck transport??

    Do you notice neither company bothers to state how much ordinary fossil diesel they use in collection of the waste cooking oils and tallows?

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    1. I love Hideaway, but completely don’t understand his hobby. I mean arguing with folks who don’t understand basic math is like being a sadomasochist xD

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        2. We have discussed it several times. WordPress prevents me from posting links to comments on this site so you need to copy the following links and prepend “https://”.

          un-denial.com/2021/04/04/crash-course-crash-on-making-a-living-from-overshoot-education/comment-page-1/#comment-39592

          un-denial.com/2021/04/20/overshoot-doubt-chris-clugston-kills-it/comment-page-1/#comment-41407

          un-denial.com/2023/03/30/gpt-4-denies-reality-less-than-its-creator/comment-page-1/#comment-82806

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    2. Dear Rob.

      This morning (it is morning in France), I finally pinpoint (I think) the reason why I am feeling some unease every time you show contempt for those who believe in god.

      As I see it, that’s because you seem to similarly show all the external signs of a believer in god, or more to the points, should I say, in gods. Except, they go by the names of laws of physics, rules of chemistry, evolution, MPP…
      Granted, these gods are not personified. But, except from that, they exhibit all the attributes of gods: they are invisible forces, out of reach, greater than us individuals (little self), which permeate everything and whose whim we are subjected to. They create and shape our destinies.
      And, even though, I know that science is supposedly reproducible, debatable, performed by trained reasonable individuals… This is not true in practice. So all we are left with is trusting, believing and worshiping the words of scientists (the intermediary between us, mere mortals, and these new gods).
      And no, we, who can’t spend more than a few hours a week reading some science popularization, can’t pretend to understand these complex concepts enough to yield them and make use of them.
      I know there are proofs all around us that these concepts work: we live in a world built by engineers, we can participate in events which celebrate human achievements/progress (olympic games), even art is conceptual/scientific. But believers in previous religions had similarly proofs all around them: the churches, the power of the prayer, miracles, weekly gatherings…
      So it is easy to disdain what is now a pale shadow of its former self. But it most probably displayed strength, glory and arrogance similar to what we know and practice today.

      I hope, I was not offensive in this comment. I just wanted to share my feelings and the way I react everytime a complex, abstract story is held for evidently true, be it scientifically validated and another complex, abstract story is held for evidently false, since it is propagated by another profession.

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      1. Sorry if my views on god come across as comtempt. I don’t feel contempt. I feel something more like fascination that only one species believes in god, despite there being no evidence, and despite it being by far the most intelligent species. Science theories exist because there is evidence to support them, and while often wrong and incomplete, tend to improve with time as we discover and understand more evidence. God beliefs also change with time, except for the life after death piece that never goes away because of MORT.

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        1. Science is the only self-correcting philosophy.

          Sure other philosophy’s (such as religion) can change with time but they tend to be idiosyncratic expressions of individuals (or a consensus of individuals) but are prone toward dogma and eschew change in the face of new information (flat earth, heaven/hell, sin, etc.).

          Science as it is structured (Popperian falsifiability) is only an approximation of reality, that is independent of what individual scientists’ think(feel). The dogma (if one choses to call it that) of Science is that an understanding of physical reality is the goal and can not be deduced by anything other than rational thought and persistent attempts to falsify any resulting understanding of physical reality that is obtained.

          AJ

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        2. Thank you for your openness Rob.

          There is nothing to apologize: I don’t feel offended. Rather, I get frustrated when I am not being able of conveying my views correctly 🙂 This is partly because I am not able to express my ideas precisely enough, partly because it is subtle, and partly because one has to think outside of our cultural formatting to get the point.

          If it is not too boring for you, I’d like to dig a bit further and try to get to the bottom of this conversation, which we have had before 🙂

          And so precisely, this I believe is a (meta-)myth: “Science theories tend to improve with time as we discover and understand more evidence”. For several reasons:

          • science is practiced in institutions, by groups of humans. There are strong ego-fights and hierarchies. Researchers must have results. Some topics are never picked because of these reasons. The way papers are written, the way the experiments are framed, the results tinkered with… All distort the quality of research. Researchers now have to play the same game as internet influencers.
          • science builds on previous results which are then rarely checked and may just be wrong
          • science is done via proxys (computer simulation), and as we further go away from direct experience, the more it becomes problematic. In some cases, I am unsure the younger generation really understands what they are studying and why. The kind of technology and tools that we possess influences research choices.
          • science is increasingly narrow and, in some fields, a matter of only a few people exchanging, hence influenced by their idio-syncracies
          • not all science can be equally funded. Private funding plays an important role. Science and publications have become political ammunitions. Some topics are never picked because of this reason.
          • we, the general public, get only a watered-down version of scientific insights. We are unaware and can’t make the difference between what is known and accepted by all, what is still subject of debate and to which degree. We have difficulties understanding what are the questions that matter in a given field and how framing a subject slightly differently (or the creation of a new field or interdisciplinary research) could vastly modify the conclusions.
          • anyway, the body of knowledge is too vast, nobody has a clear understanding of it all and the relative importance of results one to another
          • science can be more like going deeply inside an increasingly narrow tunnel, rather than exploring all possibilities in a well-rounded sphere: initial research choices influence the direction in which later research is performed. So much that it becomes a self-reinforcing belief. Who is going to try to go against foundational theories on which empires of reputation have been built?
          • etc…

          Science as it has grown has become as murky as reality. It is subject to the same diminishing returns as any other activity. And I believe the core reason is simply that reality is just so complex, so rich, so large. Ultimately, we can’t get a grip on it all. The tower of Babel seems a good analogy for what is going on in science.

          So yes, the perfectability of science is a myth which has surely been initially true. But it is not the case any more in practice. Science is becoming gradually more mundane, corrupt and decrepit. In a manner, similar to religions corrupting the initial direct revelations of mystics.

          How do we know for sure science is trustworthy: because it self-corrects. How do we know it self-corrects: because we read it in a scientific (philosophy, history of science) book.
          How do we know for sure the Christ resurrected: because Thomas, who believed only what he saw, saw the Christ. How do we know he saw the Christ: because it is written in the Bible.
          See the parallel? See the trick?

          Science, like religion is an intermediary between our direct experience of reality and reality. It is a detour, a proxy, a medium. As such, the ones who are able to prescribe science yield a huge power. That of distorting our experience of reality. Because, we are beings anchored in a mental reality of the verb as much (and often more) than in our own experience.

          Science is not what it used to be. It is on the exit way. (Maybe also because extremely many scientific results will have few importance in the simpler world which awaits us) Most religions are long dead. I feel that what is being criticized in religions, is exactly what will be criticized in science, once we move on to new ways to relate with/make sense of reality.

          And, by the way, there are actually some researchers whose topic is “life after death”. Are they simply quacks, or is it a subject which should deserve more scientific interest, but does not because it goes against mainstream scientific preconceptions? I let you be the judge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruL65FHeAv4, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation#Reincarnation_research)
          Would we be able to acknowledge the reality of a phenomena if it were rare enough to be discarded as a “measuring error”, a “statistical inconsistency” which goes against the theory?
          (And by the way, I find the terms reincarnation and “life after death” misleading. They are too loaded. One should perhaps use “informational remnant through structural reorganization”. Would sound so much more scientific and credible 🙂
          Personnally, I don’t conclude anything, but sometimes find the tenet of “conventional” science to be quite close-minded…

          One last topic. When advaita vedanta says the golden necklace is melt to be made into a golden bracelet. Is it really talking about reincarnation/life after death? Not really. It is just stating that there is something which we are made of (gold) which exists before our life (as a necklace) and will continue to exist after, maybe as another life (as a bracelet). Just like, we could say, today atoms are reused after our death.
          So I believe it is a misrepresentation of this tradition to say it has a “life after death” story. It has a story about something bigger than us, which we are at the same time that we are this mortal being (maybe in the same, admittedly cryptic way that Jesus is God).

          Also, I find it ironic thattraditions feared the eternal cycle of rebirth more than death. Didn’t Buddha offer a way out of metempsychosis precisely called nirvana? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirth_(Buddhism))

          The release from this endless cycle of rebirth is called nirvana (Sanskrit: निर्वाण, nirvāṇa; Pali: nibbāna) in Buddhism. The achievement of nirvana is the ultimate goal of Buddhist teaching.

          These are all probably gross misrepresentations from a western mind like me who superficially studied these traditions. But that’s precisely my point: we can’t make quick generalisation about cultures we don’t really know. And wikipedia is very superficial. (I don’t blame wikipedia here: it can’t be any other way, for reasons of space. Rather the way it is used)

          That was a long one… Had to lay it down 🙂
          In any case, thank you for your patience reading until here. I think I have to stop rehashing these arguments, because I am starting to get into loops of senility 🙂

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          1. Beautiful Charles.

            Recently I found this article by Rex Weyler that describes his experience with “warm data” inspired by Nora Bateson (whatever the heck that means). I am sharing it because I could very much relate to what he was talking about, and your post kind of reminded me of it.

            Searching for Warm Data? — Rex Weyler

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            1. Thank you very much paqnation.

              Thank you for the excellent article by Rex Weyler. I was progressing through its text and came across almost exactly the words I had planned to tell you in a follow up of our conversation about the two stories (Quinn’s and MORT):

              Who am I? An ecologist? A husband? A father, traveler, teacher, and more? These identities co-mingle. If I feel compassion, I adopt a caring tone. If I get triggered with some old point of view I once found annoying, I start compiling my counter-logic. All these versions of me appear to coexist.

              What is my context? I’m a writer, a journalist, recording events for public consumption. I’m an animal. I’m a member of a society. I live in a rural Canadian community, in a coastal rain forest. I live in a history that I only partially understand. I find myself sitting in my group of four, thinking about these things, and sometimes I notice I feel pride that I am thinking these things, and then I feel shame that I’ve lost the thread of what someone else is saying.

              And then later, this expresses exactly the flowing way I like to look at the world these days:

              When I try to explain what ecology means to me, I say: When I eat an apple, when does the apple become me? When does the nitrogen or phosphorus molecule of the apple become a molecule of me? And when I breath in and out, when are the molecules of oxygen and carbon-dioxide me, and when are they the atmosphere?

              We talk about a tree, and the soil, and the atmosphere, but none of those exist without flows of elements from the others. Furthermore, the tree needs the mycelia and needs the bee to pollinate and reproduce, so the mycelia are part of the tree’s nutrient harvesting system and the bee is part of the tree’s reproductive system. The apple is part of all this, and part of me. This is ecology. This is different than thinking about an “environment” that is out there, all around me, that I’m going to clean up, or save, or fix. Ecology, is the state of being of all things, interconnected, co-evolving, nothing existing in isolation from the whole.

              So, I don’t have much left to add. There is a limit to what we can express in words anyway. There is this quote by Stanley Kubrick:

              There are certain areas of feeling and reality—or unreality or innermost yearning, whatever you want to call it—which are notably inaccessible to words. Music can get into these areas. Painting can get into them. Non-verbal forms of expression can. But words are a terrible straitjacket. It’s interesting how many prisoners of that straitjacket resent its being loosened or taken off. There’s a side to the human personality that somehow senses that wherever the cosmic truth may lie, it doesn’t lie in A, B, C, D. It lies somewhere in the mysterious, unknowable aspects of thought and life and experience. Man has always responded to it. Religion, mythology, allegories—it’s always been one of the most responsive chords in man. With rationalism, modern man has tried to eliminate it, and successfully dealt some pretty jarring blows to religion. In a sense, what’s happening now in films and in popular music is a reaction to the stifling limitations of rationalism. One wants to break out of the clearly arguable, demonstrable things which really are not very meaningful, or very useful or inspiring, nor does one even sense any enormous truth in them.

              And strangely enough, I have to admit, I don’t feel oppressed, despair or sadness or guilt anymore. I have had this strange intuition, dating december 2022 that the steam of growth has already started to revert and that because the grip of the machine can not tighten any more, everything is going to be fine. Sure collapse has begun and will soon be felt in earnest. Better prepare psychologically to lose all these crutches 🙂 But life will prevail, the species may even be allowed/will find a way to go on (by being respectful of other life, there is no avoiding this). I am sure many will enjoy the ride, if they let themselves to (even in the worst not so probable scenario, how much better is it to live mad max than to watch mad max, ah ah ah 🙂
              What’s the source of this intuition? I am not sure. But if I were to make a guess, I’d say I have been noticing just below the conscious surface a gradual accumulation of small hints: one more insect here and there, one more crumbled wall, one less bus/train schedule, a more breathable air, slightly less engine sound at night… In short, an increase in built infrastructure decay all at the benefit of living organisms.

              I’d like to end with a link to the 4th episode of “Earth Maiden Arjuna”, titled transmigration https://youtu.be/uM6IqqfoUvc?t=386. I am pretty sure it is an hommage to Masanobu Fukuoka. It provides a glimpse in the way and the philosophy of natural farming. This is the how I garden in the city community gardens. Such a joy (and a funny contrast with the neighbouring plots, all denuded brown just before sowing at this time of the year).

              I have a lot of these guys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QecLl75D4SM&t=254s, the Ohmus from Nausicaä (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nausica%C3%A4_of_the_Valley_of_the_Wind_characters#Ohmu). Except the tiny version, the woodlouse (the large one has not evolved in our world yet 🙂 I love them, as well as the slugs and myriad other life forms. They are my dear friends.

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              1. Love the Kubrick quote. And I should’ve known you were a fan of Miyazaki. I need to get back into him. There was a time when I would watch one of his movies and then immediately after I’d watch a famous American children’s movie (Toy Story, Monsters Inc, etc). I did it that way to highlight the stark contrast of the whole Eastern/Western thing. Not so subtle when viewed back-to-back.

                And your strange intuition was awesome to hear. If I could make myself follow your line of thought, I would in a heartbeat. My intuition says even the collapse world is getting more desperate and that humans are not gonna make it thru the bottleneck. But life surely will.

                And I am still one of those cowards who want to watch Mad Max, but hell no I don’t want to live it. 😊

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  24. I just loaded Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s audiobook “The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race” on my phone.

    Hoping to understand how biological weapons were involved with the covid crimes, and why everyone has remained silent on key questions, like for example:

    • Why did the US fund bioweapons research in the lab of an enemy?
    • What were they researching in Wuhan and why?
    • Why were US officials panicking in the early days?
    • How could they begin manufacture of billions of doses of mRNA a few months after receiving the genetic code?
    • Why did China not transfect its citizens with mRNA?
    • Why were they so confident benefits exceeded risks of a novel untested technology, and why were they comfortable transfecting billions who were not at risk from the apparent risk? Was there a different risk they were worried about?
    • Why were they comfortable discarding 100 years of pandemic wisdom by transfecting billions in the middle of a pandemic with a non-sterilizing vaccine?
    • Why did all western countries perfectly align policies that were obviously wrong for the stated threat?
    • Why did they so aggressively censor critics with scientifically valid concerns?
    • Why are our leaders not worried about possible permanent harms to their own children?
    • Why is Fauci untouchable?

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  26. In this thread, The Ethical Skeptic explains why the community note is wrong:

    The Community Note is not correct. Here is the actual CDC data, week by week. While cases increased slightly, deaths were on the decrease because the entailed cancers were not as deadly. The cancer mortality trend incepted and then inflected with the vaccine. The trolls are lying to you.

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  27. Another brilliant comment by Hideaway that should have been an essay…

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-19-2024/#comment-774078

    Islandboy, as I’ve said previously, I first learned about ‘Limits to Growth’ in a university course I did 49 years ago, and I’ve been looking at/for solutions ever since. Going back 6-10 years ago I was a huge advocate for the ‘bright green future’ based on solar in particular, for exactly the reasons you highlight, plus ‘no moving parts’, that should greatly enhance lifetime of operation, plus minimise maintenance.

    I tried to get the numbers to work on providing power to a remote mine site, where the cost of supplying diesel is extraordinarily high. I couldn’t get the cost to work, including when I again halved the cost of solar panels, before adding batteries for the lull periods. Adding batteries to the system, at greatly reduced prices to what then existed, also did not bring the operating cost down to anything like that of just trucking diesel.

    This was also ALL before the cost of money was included, which is a very real cost to pay. Adding interest onto the capital cost of building vast tracks of solar in a desert, to power a mine, made the operation completely non viable by an order of magnitude, compared to costs for the same mine using trucked in diesel.
    Adding a little solar to offset some of the daytime running costs of the generators, certainly does make a lot of sense, especially when all sort of grants were available to do this, plus it allows the mines to look greener for their ESG requirements, win win.

    Mines operate continuously, and need to do so because of the processing of the ores into concentrates. It is a process with various different sub processes, each happening in a continuous fashion, with chemicals to separate minerals from the gangue at various stages in very precise amounts. It doesn’t and can’t work in a stop start mode of intermittency. Most people have no clue of how something like a copper mine operates and assume the minerals just separate out of ore by magic.

    I also became very aware of the damage done to the surrounding environment of even putting in a small solar farm at a mine site. It was in a desert area, so plenty of sun, but the dozers just flatten everything to make a nice large flat area to install the panels and prevent any shading from the spindly vegetation that did exist in the area, plus crush every lizard and other lifeform throughout the area of the ‘green solar installation’.

    The other important aspect of your ‘bright green future’ is that it’s all made using fossil fuels at every stage of operation, from the mining through processing, manufacture and deployment. No-one is trying to do any of the steps via just electricity from solar and wind, unless they get giant subsidies from the government. It’s not cheaper power at all, because if it was, businesses would do it voluntarily, no subsidies needed.

    Then there is the EROEI, which is nowhere near what most research papers, written by people in favor of green renewables claim it is. They can produce the research showing a goodly EROEI by excluding gobs of energy actually used throughout the system that is totally necessary for the mining, processing, manufacturing, transport and deployment of renewables.

    They always leave out the energy cost of making all the machinery involved, the roads and bridges used in transport, the energy in providing the educated labor at every step of the process, plus the factory buildings and all the services to the factories. We know fossil fuels can provide all these things, simply because they exist, we built all this with fossil fuels over the last 200 years, including our education systems to educate the vast army of people involved in all the steps. None of this is counted in EROEI research papers, none!!

    Why isn’t it counted?

    It’s all energy used and all suffers from entropy, so has to be replaced over time. How much of the physical structure is being rebuilt by renewables, which we have had for decades?? None!! We are still playing games with a bit of steel produced by hydrogen, pretending we can ramp it up to include all steel production, with no-one bothering to do the macro numbers on it all. We have theoretical ways of producing concrete, then transport it in diesel trucks, pretending to be green.

    Instead, what’s happening in the world, are plants like the Adaro Indonesian smelters are being built to provide cheap Aluminium for EV car panels and solar panel frames. We then call the new panels green energy, when the making of them involves burning more fossil fuels. Even if we tried to make all the new Aluminium smelters from solar panels and batteries, the cost of the Aluminium would be way higher. Likewise for every other part!!

    The Adaro example being a perfect illustration of this. Just the solar installation to cover the same output as the planned coal fired power plant, would cost $US16B, plus devastate hundreds of km2 of pristine rainforest, even before we considered backup for the night power and intermittency during the day. The cost of the smelter AND coal fired power plant is $US2B.

    The Aluminium cost would be too high for markets if it was built from solar and whatever backup, the interest costs alone would be massive. In our ‘economic rational’ world, it’s a non starter because of cost to build this plant with solar. How does this reality gel with your belief that solar is ‘cheaper’?

    Solar and wind are only cheaper in reports like Lazard’s LCOE research, if we make a whole lot of assumptions, and not ‘market forces’. Yet we promote ‘market forces’ as being the be all and end all of production of everything.

    The world wholesale price of energy has been around $US40/Mwh on average over the last 10 years. If ‘new’ energy costs around $US40/Mwh to produce, then there is no profit or excess energy for the rest of civilization. We have built the energy provision system, with energy that cost us $US2-5/Mwh!! Again I’ve written a paragraph in what would take a long essay to show, or a book to do full justice to prove, with associated research. We still get and use a lot of $US2/Mwh energy, from oil, gas and coal, but it is also getting more expensive on average.

    Do you think a solar, wind and battery world wide system can get down to a cost of $US2/Mwh for both energy AND raw products combined in todays dollars?? If it’s not possible, then future modern civilization is not possible either after fossil fuels leave us. Collapse is going to happen anyway as fossil fuels get to expensive to extract.

    If society as a whole can’t have an honest conversation about the energy inputs into building renewables, what hope do we have??

    Our system is extremely complex, with layer over layer of complexity. Taking any one aspect in isolation, changing it and expecting the rest of the system to operate ‘normally’ is an extremely naive assumption, because it’s not how the system works, yet this is exactly the approach of every EROEI research paper.

    Imagine every aspect of renewable production could only be built with a green renewable energy sources in the future, from now on. How much would the solar panels, the copper wiring and the batteries cost?? The answer is clearly multiples of today.

    Then fast forward to the next generation built by the expensive ‘newer’ renewables. Remember to allow for even more remote lower grades of copper ore in this thought experiment. Try to build the next generation with the expensive newer energy.. It doesn’t work, nor can it work, yet this is the lie that keeps going on in our society. It’s a denial of the benefits of cheap fossil fuels, relative to other sources of diffuse energy.

    All that’s happened is we have added all renewable energy on top of fossil fuel energy, increasing humanities total energy use. Faster deployment of renewables means more coal mines in Indonesia to produce the Aluminium and Nickel and other commodities, destroying more of the climate because of increased emissions, and more rainforest destruction, by both CO2 and other chemicals released by burning coal.

    How can you not look at the raw numbers and see this for what it is?? Since 2008 fossil fuel use has increased by 18,500Twh while the increase in solar and wind electricity has been 3,176Twh.

    Imagine instead, fossil fuel use had fallen by 18,500Twh, because of simple unavailability, we had passed peak possible production.

    The world would be in serious recession or depression and only a fraction of that new solar and wind would have been built, because there would be a lack of investment dollars and the cost of energy to do it would be through the roof..

    Lastly, without the products provided by fossil fuels we have no future modern civilization and with the exception of metallurgical coal, most of these other products come from a fraction of every barrel of oil and million cuft of gas.

    We have to extract the lot to get the correct fraction. This is why the ‘hand wave’ of we can still get some fossil fuels for products doesn’t work, because those that suggest it never bother to explain how we can just mine the fractions we need and disregard the rest. In the real world, that’s not how it works at all. Without extracting the ‘whole’, it’s uneconomic to extract a small part, so simply wont happen.

    I would love for the bright green future to work, keeping most of the natural world in a more pristine environment than currently, which means rewilding vast tracks of land.

    However the numbers clearly show it’s not possible for the large human population we actually have, to go down this route without destroying the climate and most ecosystems in our mad rush to mine the resources needed. Nor is it possible to maintain any modernity with a vastly reduced population of ‘consumers’, for complexity reasons that Prof. Joseph Tainter has already clearly written about, so I wont go into.

    The path we are heading on, building more renewables and nuclear in an attempt to continue modern civilization, it means burning more fossil fuels to build , until we reach peak FF use, while we destroy more of the natural world and gain a higher level to fall from. This gives great consumer goods and services for those alive today, that are a part of the modern civilization, at the expense of future generations, probably starting with our children.

    Falling from a higher level means more suffering in the world, from both humans perspective and the natural world. Instead of deliberately trying to degrow and lower population, to every living lifeforms overall long term benefit, we have decided to lie to ourselves and create more suffering when the collapse happens, so we can enjoy modernity a bit longer.

    I’ve spent decades researching all this, there is no way out now, we are in a vast overshoot predicament, and denial of the bad future, seems to be the choice of humanity…

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  28. Because I know the scientific evidence is conclusive that harms from mRNA transfections far exceed benefits, Alice Friedemann appears to think I am a gullible Trump supporter that believes in biblical end times.

    WTF is wrong with people? Even intelligent overshoot aware people are broken.

    https://energyskeptic.com/2024/the-biblical-revelations-critical-thinking-and-how-this-affects-us-today/

    This is a book review of Ehrman’s 2023) Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End. I thought this book was both profound and interesting. I have been trying for years to understand what evangelists are thinking, why they voted for Trump, are easily tricked into being anti-vaccination and so on.  And no wonder they are so gullible, they believe in what the Bible says literally, though few have actually read it, or understood what they were reading, which requires knowing history, other languages and more. And also believe whatever their chosen authoritarian leaders and preachers tell them.

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    1. “This is a book review of Ehrman’s 2023) Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End. I thought this book was both profound and interesting. I have been trying for years to understand what evangelists are thinking, why they voted for Trump, are easily tricked into being anti-vaccination and so on. And no wonder they are so gullible, they believe in what the Bible says literally, though few have actually read it, or understood what they were reading, which requires knowing history, other languages and more. And also believe whatever their chosen authoritarian leaders and preachers tell them.”

      It is easy for an opinion to become a belief – just add some reinforcing, intransigence and a dose of faith with hope. “Keep the faith”, whenever I see believe / belief / believing I find it makes no difference to the message if I substitute “faith and hope”.

      E.g.

      “they believe in what the Bible says literally” becomes

      “they have faith and hope in what the Bible says literally”.

      To see beliefs, thoughts, understand (and synonyms) lumped together like that above, just tells me that she is completely lost and has become desperate, trying to make sense, but is overwhelmed.

      I understand that often people will use “beliefs” as shorthand for other things – strongly held opinion / its the truth / etc.

      It is a disservice to any reader, to recklessly write like that first paragraph above. Is she just venting and ‘praying’ people will understand?

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        1. It is a done deal. No undoing the damage. The cake is baked and about to be be rammed down our throats – it will not taste good or be nutritious.

          I see a lot of writing like Alice Friedemann’s. They understand one thing really well and somehow that provides license to become an expert on all things. Karl Denninger is an exemplar of this. He actually got into an ego contest with Nicole Foss about nuclear power. I still read his posts – analogous to the least dirty whore posting on the internet.

          Everyone seems to have too many opinions/beliefs and way too little understanding.

          I’ve given up on the idea of saving people, society, knowledge, culture, wisdom. If I can help nature that will be enough. A semi-viable ecosystem might give a handful of people a chance.

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          1. I agree. I also read Denninger with a big filter and dislike his personality. Today’s post by Kunstler was over the top cringey. Martenson has shifted to complaining about capital gains tax increases and how to avoid paying them. Whitney Webb today in one breathe does a brilliant analysis on Epstein and in the next rants about the dangers of transhumanism. Tucker Carlson thinks evolution and climate change are proven wrong. Hagens remains silent on mRNA transfections and population reduction. My friend Gail Zawacki was right about everything but she’s dead.

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          2. “I’ve given up on the idea of saving people, society, knowledge, culture, wisdom. If I can help nature that will be enough.”

            I’m right there with ya. And spoken like a true MORT graduate. 😊 This aligns with what I was talking about yesterday:

            “The MORT story purpose is so that we end up with no motivation to get survivors through the bottleneck.”

            There is something very dark about MORT when I am too human centered. MORT is calling for the end of humans. And its 100% the correct answer for Mother Earth and everything non-human. Getting to Hamish’s state of mind in his quote above is the final destination where MORT will take you. Concede extinction then help animals, plants, and nuclear shutdowns. MORT is clearly the correct side to be on when I think of it like this. It might even be a religion one day. The horror! The horror!

            Ok, so now we just need to convince millions to come down this (correct) rabbit hole with us to end up understanding that they need to go extinct for the greater good. I love those stories of cultures where resources are thin so some of the elders walk out in the ocean and drown by suicide, to help out. I know, I have trouble buying it too. But they are beautiful stories and those are the values and worldviews we need right now. For some reason I don’t see it happening for us. lol

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          3. Hello Hamish,

            I am not sure to read you well. When you say “The cake is baked and about to be be rammed down our throats”, do you mean war and further enslavement is inevitable? Or are you referring to something else, like a terminal breakdown of society?

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    2. Alice is very much in her “camp” politically. Most USA amercians are like this. Alice didn’t even look at all the studies on Ivermectin for covid. She got into a big facebook discussion with Nicole Foss on it. They both hate Trump with a passion, but then had these two wildly opposing views on Covid-19. I found it so interesting.

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  29. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book The Wuhan Cover-Up may be the second book in a row by him that I can’t finish because the content is so upsetting and so evil.

    I’m barely into the first few chapters and he’s doing a detailed review of the history of chemical and biological warfare, and medical experimentation on prisoners of war.

    Duping and coercing mommies to transfect their babies and children with mRNA is nothing compared to what we’ve done in the past.

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    1. RFK Jr knows the evils that lurk in both political parties and the deep state, and what needs to be done to purge the system of poison. He’s written two impeccably researched books to prove he knows what needs to be done.

      He has integrity and intelligence and charisma.

      And he won’t be elected.

      THE PROBLEM IS OUR CITIZENS, NOT OUR LEADERS.

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      1. All the parties are rotten to the core on covid in both the US and Canada.

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  30. Preptip: I have been doing some tests with my new EcoFlow Delta 2 battery generator and am getting a first hand appreciation of why there will be no green transition.

    When the grid intermittently goes down my main priority is to keep my frozen and refrigerated food from spoiling. I have a modest 18 cu. ft. fridge with the simplest and most energy efficient top freezer/bottom fridge design. It uses the latest inverter technology which converts my 2-phase power to 3-phase to run an energy efficient 3-phase compressor who’s speed can be varied to optimize energy use. I plan the removal/addition of food to minimize the time the fridge door is open. I keep the fridge/freezer full to maximize thermal mass.

    My fridge is rated to use about 1 kWh per day with normal use. Given that I am using the fridge in an abnormally efficient manner I expected to use less than 1 kWh per day.

    My CDN$1000 generator is rated at 1 kWh and of course the batteries are brand new and not yet tired.

    I expected the generator to power my fridge for at least 24 hours. Tests suggests I can expect at best 15 hours, and probably less in the summer when it’s hot.

    Despite being prepared to cook, heat, and light with propane, butane, naphtha, gasoline, kerosene, and alcohol, it still cost me $1000 to run only my fridge for a crappy 15 hours. And then what? I have to run my gasoline generator for 3 hours to recharge it.

    For an extra $1000 I can double my capacity and power my fridge for a whopping 30 hours!

    Not gonna happen.          

    When the grid goes down there will be no refrigeration or air conditioning.

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    1. We have a Frigidaire 25 cubic foot generic crap that we bought a little over 10 years ago for about USD 1k. The ice maker quit the day after the 18 month warranty expired. Now we use a counter-top ice maker that cost about $50 and does a totally adequate job and only gets used during the summer and during the day.

      The energy-star guide claims the fridge uses 582 kWh per year, about 1.6 kWh per day. If energy consumption really was an issue that was taken very seriously, then :

      • the walls would be at least 20 cm thick
      • through-the-door ice makers would be illegal
      • heat exhaust would be trivial to duct away to another room (or outside)
      • compressors would not have motors with a stator that is glued together
      • bearings would be user replaceable, with a simple puller / press
      • brushes (if used) would be user replaceable
      • they would be built to last generations

      In a properly designed home in a region with freezing winter temperatures (when the sun doesn’t shine much), a fan, some ducting, a microcontroller with a couple of temperature sensors and a very small amount of power should suffice. In the summer, thermal mass and insulation should be enough to get through the night with no need for much battery power (if any).

      None of this is rocket science, none of it gets done, except by a very small number of people.

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      1. I agree,

        If I had more space I would consider converting a chest freezer to a fridge.

        My plan now is to make do without a fridge when the grid becomes unusable. I will probably dig a hole in my yard, line it with a garbage bag, and cover it with a sheet of plywood.

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        1. I do the same, even though we all know it will only buy a bit of time of modern convenience, so we all have some type of denial, or perhaps just a wish of preserving something in the coming collapse of civilization.

          BTW, I believe it is still a few years away, as we keep extracting a growing rate of oil or oil like substances from the ground. Minor collapses at the periphery will continue while the EROEI continues to fall a bit, often offset by efficiency gains.

          It’s when the overall quantity of oil extracted declines at an accelerating rate, that efficiency gains, and other energy wont be able to keep up, so the whole house of cards will collapse, because we get into the stage of large important feedback loops of parts supplies failing, which will contract the energy available for energy collection, so the downslope of energy availability will accelerate to the downside, collapsing every part of modern civilization fairly quickly.

          Of course the precursor to collapse will be oil prices going ballistic as companies, countries and people all start to hoard no matter what the money cost, plus the media and leaders all proclaiming to be caught unawares as “no-one could see this coming”…

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          1. There are many things that could affect the onset of oil extraction decline such as war, banking system failure, economic depression, falling agriculture yields due to rising temperatures, Dr. Bossche being right, etc..

            I hope we have a few more years but nothing will surprise me now.

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          2. Hello Hideaway,

            I was wondering, when you mention that we will “keep extracting a growing rate of oil or oil like substances from the ground”, which quantity are you referring to? I thought world oil C+C was all that truly matterred, and isn’t peak of this production already in the past (https://peakoilbarrel.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/World-2.png)?
            (Even more so, since volumes don’t reflect declining EROEI)

            Not that I am not ready to accept your words at face value: I know you are much more knowledgeable than me in this domain.

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            1. Every little efficiency gain and substitution of oil like substances (anything they can pour into a refinery as a liquid or gas that comes out as liquid or non gas product), effectively raises the EROEI of liquid fuels and products overall, just in a different place.

              EROEI is itself never static, going up and down for every energy form, but what we tend to mean is going down overall on average, by ‘declining EROEI’. I believe Dennis Coyne or Ovi showed a recent new all liquids high, while C+C is still below the 2018 high.

              However if the useable stuff out of refineries is still going up a bit, plus adding the effect of the substitutions and efficiency gains of the last 6 years, the effect still is of rising liquids and everything seemingly OK. As net energy falls though, it has to surface somewhere, and through total debt seems to be the place, along with lying in inflation numbers, and stagnant to falling GDP.

              It’s never been a coincidence to me that when we had exponential growth in oil and other fossil fuel availability in the 50’s through to early 70’s was the period of maximum per capita growth and prosperity in the developed nations.

              If we continue to add a bit of extra NGLs, plus have further efficiency gains, and substitutions for oil use, then the system will keep on limping forward, baring any of the disasters Rob raised, though some of them might be handy distractions for TPTB..

              However once we are in serious oil decline, accelerating downwards year after year, the price mechanism will crash the ability to get access to coal and gas, most likely dropping their production as well. Basically the cascade of higher oil prices will rattle every part of the economy, causing shortages all over the place, plus central banks/govts will take the wrong actions in raising interest rates etc, effectively creating the initial crash. Then the continuing downward acceleration of decline will just make the situation worse affecting the inputs to oil extraction, enhancing the decline. Basically a spiral downward, to famine, wars, warlords in charge everywhere, every animal being caught for food etc..

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              1. Thank you Hideaway. I like the expression “limping forward”.

                These last days were a bit eerie around here: a small but well traveled portion of a highway west of Paris is still closed without a reopening date in sight (https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/news/in-paris/articles/309862-the-a13-freeway-closed-between-paris-and-vaucresson-will-not-reopen-on-may-1-no-new-date-set).
                So cyclists, joggers and a family of foxes were enjoying the lanes. It gave somewhat the sound of collapse: no engines humming. Of course that’s only almost me, because most don’t have (refuse to consider) the background context of soon to happen or happening energy limits.

                Funnily it is the first highway ever built in France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A13_autoroute. Not so long ago, if you think about it: 1940.

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      2. There’s this famous woman on instagram who lives quite poor in South America somewhere. She uses her fridge as a clothing storage wardrobe.

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  31. Rintrah rants today about the tailing ponds created to build my battery generator.

    https://www.rintrah.nl/tailings-dams/

    Every once in a while I see some moron with e/acc in his username on Twitter and a link to his Medium, Substack or .io website, yapping on about how AI is about to usher in a post-scarcity age of abundance and I find myself wondering if any of these people have ever really thought about how the world around them really works, or have any real world experience with it at all.

    There’s this growing discrepancy emerging, between the people who interact with physical reality, or at least have a standard of living that renders it relevant to them and a small group of people who engage only with abstract information, numbers on screens. The latter grows increasingly delusional over time, but is not really punished for their delusions, as they simply rearrange more of the industrial surplus to themselves.

    So first of all, what is a tailings dam? Well, when humans mine a resource, like copper, there is a huge amount of waste rock, for the small amount of the ore we need. As we first exhausted the best ores, the amount of waste for the ores we use is continually growing, at a rate faster than our production of minerals (which is also growing fast in its own right).

    But all this waste tend to be full of various toxic minerals. Often it is also full of various acids, that were used to extract the elements we want, from the elements we don’t want. You can’t just dump it back into the environment. So what do you do? Well, you build a big dam out of Earth, then you dump the waste behind that dam. Over time as you add more waste, you increase the height of the dam.

    …in 1940 you have a copper ore that’s 1.2% pure. Then in 2010, you have a copper ore that’s 0.4% pure.

    So around the world, copper production went up eight times in that period. But if the global ore grade went down by 66%, that means the amount of waste material would go up 24 times!

    And this waste amount is all kept somewhere. It has to be kept there, for thousands of years. But the amount of waste being added, to that pile of waste that already exists, is growing exponentially!

    Think about how insane that is for a moment.

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    1. I did a bit of geology in my tertiary degree, and because of my knowledge of Limits to Growth since the 70’s I’ve been investing in Exploration/Mining companies for decades, so I’m very well aware of all the problems of mining. The amount of mining for the ‘bright green future’, would leave vast tracts of land damaged and desolate, plus thousands more species sent to extinction.

      Then I worked out the sheer amount of energy needed to mine the minerals the ‘bright green future’ needs. Not close to possible with the oil we have left, yet oil is needed in the exploration phase, the development phase and mining phase.

      People just don’t want to understand the size of the problem. Take one 400t dump truck. It has a 4000 litre fuel tank and uses around 235 litres an hour. They have a very efficient close to 50%, diesel/electric motor power system, meaning they use around 1.2mwh of ‘work’ energy an hour. They tend to run continuously except for maintenance schedules, with the drivers on shifts of 12 hours with occasional breaks and replacement drivers, during a drivers break. They take time to warm up and cool down when starting/stopping.

      The much vaunted new EV dump trucks that Fortescue is planning, is 200t and has a 1.4Mwh battery, with a charging time of 30 minutes, yet is being portrayed as the great savior of mining going all electric.

      I did some simple sums on all this, just for copper mining, but adding all the excavator power, the processing power, administration and living quarter power etc for remote sites quickly adds up to giant solar and wind farms plus massive battery banks costing many billions of dollars, multiples of what it costs today. However, in the very next breath, all the bright green proponents assume solar wind and batteries will continue to get cheaper as the input materials get more expensive, when everything is turned to dollars.

      A sleight of hand I’ve noticed on the ‘bright green future’ is how energy and energy efficiencies are being discussed, at some point the narrative gets changed to talking dollars, using today’s prices for some part of the transition. It’s always a lack of understanding the entire system and how changing one major input will change everything else.

      One example, the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia. It has something like 68 millions of tonnes of copper in it’s resources. The USGS in their ‘reserves’ category counts all of this in their total world reserves of copper. The ore body starts at 350 metres deep and extends to over 1350 metres deep, plus has a footprint of around 5 km X 3km. The overall grade of this is 0.06% copper in an 11 billion tonne ore body (it’s been mined for 25+ years).

      The current mine is via underground mining the higher grade part of around 2% average grade. I’ve been following costs and expenditures via BHP’s annual report for the last 15 years. Over that time it has lost money on the operation, despite it also being the world’s largest uranium mine as a by product from the copper operation.

      The plan to turn it into an open cut operation would create the biggest hole ever produced by humanity. It would require the removal of somewhere around 15 Billion tonnes of waste rock, just to get to the surface of the ore body. By the time the mine was depleted of ore, it would take the removal of around 60 billion tonnes of waste to gain access to the 11 billion tonnes of ore, a strip ratio of around 6:1. The world would get around 1 million tonnes of copper per year for about 60 years mining this deposit on a grand scale. (recovery of copper from ore is only around 90%), but would require moving around 1 billion tonnes combined, of waste and ore each year, after the initial deep hole of waste was dug.

      Each dump truck will be doing a 5-10 km trip one way with a load of ore or waste, up out of the pit. An average of 15km per round trip, plus time being filled and dumping in the designated spots means only 2-3 round trips per hour. 1 billion tonnes divided by 200 tonnes per load equals 5,000,000 trips and up to 2.5 million hours of trucks moving. Last I looked there were only 8760 hours in a year or 285 trucks operating continuously, so probably a fleet of 300 of the new EV dump trucks. But wait! they need at least 30 minutes for each charging, so that ups the number of trucks closer to 400!!

      How long will the batteries last charging them 4-5 times a day from near flat?

      How many batteries are needed for night time to keep the charge from solar panels, to recharge the trucks during the night, plus of course the processing plant? (the crushing and grinding circuits alone would be 80-100Mw), so around a total of 4-5Gwh of battery storage for the operation, at bar minimum to just last overnight, add a cloudy day or 2 and probably around 30 -40 Gwh of batteries for ONE mine and even then a few times during the year it wont have the power to operate. It would also need at least 4-5Gw of solar and wind turbines.

      Now we need at least 40 of these mines for the world’s annual copper supply, but we don’t have 40 Olympic Dams. The newer deposits are mostly lower grade, like the Caravel deposit (only 3 million tonnes of copper) in WA at a grade of 0.27%, less than half of Olympic Dam’s grade of ore..

      We also need a lot more than just copper..

      The catch 22 is we can do all these sums, then work out we need all the world production of copper, just for all the mines (not just copper mines) , but we also need vast quantities for Agriculture, and all transportation and all the recycling plants that are planned, which makes the beginning number a lot higher, so we go to lower grades of all ores, but they need vastly more copper because of the lower grades etc, which means the sum total needs to be higher, and around around the circle it goes. Eventually we get to mining 50-100ppm of minerals needing vast mines in the thousands, just to gather enough for the first generation we are still working towards, despite destroying the ecosphere and atmosphere, burning the last drop of oil trying to build the system ‘needed’.

      Luckily we will never get there, we don’t have the oil, so some life will still exist on planet Earth after humans collapse their civilization and all the huge machines become statues…

      Sorry for the long rant….

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      1. Thank you for the important work you do.

        What strikes me every time I read your analyses is that we are not off by an amount that can be explained away by uncertainty or reasonable differences of data interpretation.

        All of our plans for the future are orders of magnitude into fantasy land, and you don’t need to have an engineering degree to understand the error.

        The only requirement for understanding appears to be defective denial genes.

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        1. Thankyou for giving us all this important forum to air our thoughts. I was thinking of setting up my own blog, but I simply don’t have the expertise in all the computer and software stuff that you have.

          On the denial side of the ‘bright green future’, people always end up with a hand wave of important aspects. On the mining side, they end up doing the hand wave of “we’ll just use synthetic fuel made from excess solar and wind production”, or something similar..

          No-one wants to think through it all in a systematic way, and it is definitely all fantasyland type thinking. Realistically, they don’t want to know about the reality of it all, hence the denial gene or whatever it is, clearly wins out.

          Life is much better and easier living in denial. People can just go about their business and life in a normal way, not having to worry about anything except food on the table, paying the rent or mortgage, and making sure the kids/grandkids are doing OK today and tomorrow. Next month will take care of itself and next year is too far too think about unless it’s a grand holiday or some such. A decade’s time in the future is just too far away too worry about, let alone 50 years time.. In the long run we’re all dead anyway, so why bother worrying….

          One aspect of the doomsphere that I’m concerned about is how people like Chris Martenson, Nate Hagens and Tim Morgan all get the big picture, but deliberately hold back on telling the real story as their readership all wants to know what to do to potentially avoid the worst of the coming crises when they happen. They all sugarcoat the future and avoid mentioning a bad collapse in all conversations, or ‘worry’ about peripheral areas, while offering some type of possible salvation for their followers.

          While the future continues to get sugar coated in this way, it tends to stop people from looking at the real future including the feedback loops that guarantee much faster collapse than thought by those that have only looked peripherally at the situation. Of course all three of the above, and others that also talk of stairsteps down etc, are worried they will lose their audience by telling the unadulterated truth of the situation.

          I actually think that if all those that had overcome the denial gene enough to see the impossibility of the ‘bright green future’, spoke with the one voice of what’s to come collapse and all the bare boned reality of it, the odds of getting some type of massive degrowth of population are better.

          Then again, maybe it’s just my denial of the reality that we go into fast hard collapse and there is nothing that can or will stop it.

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          1. I wish this site had a bigger audience to give your work more visibility. It’s quite easy to create a blog, especially if you follow the Substack route taken by most people with something to say these days. Unfortunately I predict your blog would not be very popular.

            I listened to Chris Martenson’s podcast yesterday. Wow has he taken a turn for the worse, presumably to grow his subscription revenue. Now he’s targeting high net worth individuals at risk of losing some of their wealth to increased taxation. He knows full well that 1) low interest rates were caused by falling EROEI and have created a socially destabilizing wealth gap; 2) government deficits are unsustainable.

            I agree with you and think a lot about the fact that not speaking honestly makes our predicament much worse and blocks all helpful actions. By sugar coating and pushing impossible solutions the influential people in the overshoot space, including all of the green parties and environmental organizations, are making a huge and unrecoverable error.

            A lot of good could be accomplished with a social awakening that shifted wealth from the military-industrial/automotive/real estate/academic/medical sectors to energy conservation, local food production, and ecosystem restoration. By denying reality there will be little net energy left to accomplish anything useful when reality eventually becomes impossible to deny.

            And as I’ve said many times, just having an honest conversation will drop the birth rate without the need for contentious population reduction policies.

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            1. I used to religiously watch all Peak Prosperity (PP) videos. Now I can’t stand them. It’s all about the USA financial and tax system – practically zero relevance to me. I think the FED matters because they essentially set the world’s interest rates. But yea, PP not adding a lot of value for me. I have paid for subscriptions before and now it’s not worth it. His videos are much the same as the public ones.

              Don’t really know what went wrong for him. Maybe he’s not as good at making money as he liked us all to believe.

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      2. Very interesting. Thank you for your time and carefully picked data.

        All good news to me, should you ask 🙂

        We could start a list all the (crazy and useless) things that won’t happen because of energy constraints: supersonic transport, going to mars, deep sea mining, the electric motoring…
        Would be the techno-utopists hell.

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  32. https://bylinetimes.com/2022/11/28/the-great-contraction-how-the-end-of-cheap-money-and-energy-will-degrade-or-renew-civilisation/

    An analysis in 2021 by the Paris-based Shift Project commissioned by the French Ministry of the Army concluded that Saudi Arabia’s oil production will peak and decline after 2030. And in July 2022, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared that after its oil production reaches a capacity of 13 mbd by 2027, “the kingdom will not have any additional capacity to increase”.

    Many of the major banks and financial institutions at this point were insolvent. If left to the dictates of contagion, the entire global financial system would have evaporated with little prospect of returning.
    …

    A decade ago, I had warned that US shale was less a ‘boom’ than a “ponzi scheme” enabled by excessive borrowing. I argued we would likely see shale oil and gas peak around 2025. In the meantime, the “unsustainable shale bubble” would fuel “a temporary economic recovery that masks deeper structural instabilities”. Eventually, I wrote, the bubble would burst “under the weight of its own debt obligations”.

    At the time, warnings such as this were ridiculed by bullish oil industry executives and liberal pundits alike.
    …
    A decade of seemingly cheap fossil fuel abundance has fostered the illusion that the global economy can continue growing based on a stable supply of oil and gas. But this illusion is about to be upended by the clear demise of both.

    Since the 2008 crash, QE has not gone into productive investments. Instead, it has gone into asset inflation, commodity speculation and consumption, all powered by creating money through borrowing.

    One major area for such investments was cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was founded in January 2009 as the economic crisis deepened, providing a new avenue for stupendous profits that quickly led to a wide range of other blockchain innovations while doing almost nothing to improve economic productivity.
    …

    In fact, there is good reason to suspect that Saudi Arabia is already peaking.

    An analysis in 2021 by the Paris-based Shift Project commissioned by the French Ministry of the Army concluded that Saudi Arabia’s oil production will peak and decline after 2030. And in July 2022, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared that after its oil production reaches a capacity of 13 mbd by 2027, “the kingdom will not have any additional capacity to increase”.

    Of course, given the author’s working denial genes, he has to add some hopium to the end of the article.

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  33. Every Friday, I go to our Post Office to pick up my box mail, and I rummage through the “recycling” bin for interesting magazines and catalogues that others have discarded. The latest issue of International Cranes Magazine has the following snippet:

    https://www.cranebriefing.com/news/wolff-tower-cranes-to-be-built-in-saudi-arabia/8035133.article

    “Manufacturer Wolffkran and the Zamil Group in Saudi Arabia have signed a joint venture agreement to manufacture tower cranes in the Middle East.

    “Wolffkran and Zamil Group aim to meet the growing demand for tower cranes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has been estimated that as many as 20,000 tower cranes will be needed to complete the various NEOM development projects.”

    Whew… that is a lot of cranes. And steel and energy needed to make them. NEOM – what a splendid project to ring out the age of abundant resources –

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    1. Looks like it’s being designed by Simon Michaux.

      https://www.neom.com/en-us/about

      Leading the world in:
      – Future-proof capital projects & infrastructure
      – Circular economy, internet of things & robotics
      – Cognitive cities, autonomous vehicles & digital twins
      – Worker welfare, training & livability for all
      – Low-carbon sustainable construction
      – Enabling industry investment, incubation & certification
      – Off-site modular construction & 3D printing
      – Human-centric design, rapid prototyping & transformational thinking

      Merging digital end-to-end design with sustainable construction in a fourth industrial revolution to ensure NEOM is the standard by which the industry measures itself. A retooled economic model built on advanced technology, best-in-class efficiency, worker welfare and competency – in order to deliver livability and capital projects standards never before witnessed. Not just in NEOM, but in the global market beyond. This is a game-changing circular economy with digital prototyping, built in parallel with a fundamentally progressive society – at a scale and speed previously not thought possible. In short, a new ecosystem to help build smarter, more ethical and highly-profitable industries. Join our transformational movement, be the change.

      And every child will get a pony…

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      1. We can add this to our long list (that we didn’t started yet) of things that won’t happen because of energy constraints 🙂

        This promises to be fun…

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        1. The NEOM Saudi project has already been scaled back – The Line, the linear city as tall as the Empire State Building and 130 kilometers long, has been reduced by 98%, to about 2 km. Worse, several members of a local tribal clan who protested forcible displacement for NEOM’s construction were sentenced to death and face imminent execution.

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  34. Tim Watkins today with an excellent review of fossil energy and it’s relationship to the economy.

    https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2024/04/28/playing-seesaw/

    It is entirely likely that the elements within the governments of the USA and its vassals which provoked the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, were hoping to access the last of the planet’s relatively cheap oil. If that is the case, then it has backfired badly. As China’s foreign minister warned at the start of the Ukraine conflict, “economic warfare is not a game for children.” This is something a large part of Europe’s population is beginning to understand as they come to terms with the depressionary effects of their leaders disconnecting them from Russian gas, refined diesel fuel, and a raft of previously cheap minerals.

    The high oil price after 2021 had exactly the impact we ought to have anticipated. Faced with high prices and – because of the inflation – falling real incomes, most people across Europe switched their consumption even further away from discretionary goods and services in an attempt to cover the rising cost of essentials… a process severely impeded by inappropriately high interest rates.

    Although oil prices have settled around $80-per-barrel, taking account of inflation, this is lower than the 2008 $60-per-barrel point at which recessions were triggered. Nevertheless, $80-per-barrel is far too low for most of the oil-producing states to maintain their domestic economies. And so, we appear to be entering a new form of seesawing in which producers and consumers race to the bottom. That is, while there had been no Goldilocks price in the 2010s, the seesawing allowed some gains to each side – between 2010 and 2015, and again between 2017 and 2019, relatively high prices helped producers, while between 2015 and 2017, oil prices fell sufficiently to allow a short rise in economic growth (albeit underwritten by borrowing at a negative real interest rate).

    This time is different. Real growth – other than the illusion of inflation – looks to be over. And so, we have entered a stage in which both consumers and producers must lose. The only argument is about who takes the brunt of the loss. That is, even though we are already in a depression which is destroying discretionary demand – and thus oil consumption – oil producers are using production cuts in a desperate attempt to hold prices up. Nevertheless, the rapid fall in demand following attempts to raise prices above $90-per-barrel show that the consuming, western economies simply lack the economic demand to consume at that price.

    On the other hand, without sustaining oil prices well above $90-per-barrel, new production is unlikely to happen. So that, oil producing states are likely to gradually remove their remaining production from world markets so as to use an ever-greater part of it for domestic (and probably subsidised) consumption. Even so, in the hallowed halls of university economics departments, central bank board rooms and government departments, economists will still be pontificating about infinite substitutability, and about how if the price rises high enough, someone will unlock the next version of the North Sea or the Gulf of Mexico to keep the economy growing.

    In the 1970s, when the reality that we would one day run out of oil was widely understood, humanity might have altered course. The combination of lower consumption and energy conservation that formed most policy at the time would have left us better prepared. Instead, we somehow forgot that fossil fuels are finite, and embarked on one last burst of debt-based growth. In the process, not only did we consume ever greater volumes of oil, coal, and gas, but we created an economy and an infrastructure which depend upon high and growing volumes of fossil fuel consumption to avoid collapse.

    In the 2020s, we have reached the point at which fossil fuel consumption is forced to fall. And anyone who understands this also understands that – with a light dusting of political froth on the surface – this declining energy is the reason why everything around us seems to be breaking down. But even now, a majority still believes that a change of government along with some brave new energy transition is just around the corner to save the day. Only a small minority understand that – especially for the western economies – we have passed the point of no return.

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  36. If I had to pick a single one hour discussion to demonstrate the miracle of our existence, this would be it.

    I’ve probably listened to this BBC In Our Times podcast episode “The Death of Stars” a dozen times, and every time I do I notice something marvelous I missed from previous encounters. I listened to it again today while raking my yard.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018128

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0018128

    Charles, this might give you a glimpse into why some of us are such fans of science.

    There are at least 3 things to notice when listening to this:

    1. The universe is fantastically amazing. There is no need for fiction to augment reality to achieve a sense of wonder and awe.
    2. Although we are far from having a complete understanding of the universe, what we have been able to understand is staggeringly impressive.
    3. We have achieved this impressive understanding of stars using a unique brain that evolved only once on this planet, from the material produced by the stars we study.

    For me, this story is what all religions should be grounded in because it might motivate us to cherish and protect our little rock in the universe, rather than harming and taking it for granted.

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    1. Thanks for the links. Love star stuff!!

      And I’m with you on “this story is what all religions should be grounded in”. But just to nitpick, its too big. Being grounded in where you are is more practical. Our god is Earth, earth’s god is the sun, the sun’s god is gravity??, gravity’s god is dark matter??, and so on. (btw, when mapped out like this, what is the end god?… the big bang? some deity behind a curtain? or maybe silence/nothing?)

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    2. This was well worth listening to. I agree with you completely that with the brain that evolved on this planet from the remnants of supernovas, we have come to rationally understand that origin. Religion is a pale comparison in it’s attempts to explain the physical/biological world around us. Too bad the guests on the show were unaware of the work that biochemists, such as Nick Lane and his contemporaries, are doing in explaining the evolution of life (and how truly rare and wondrous that is).

      AJ

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  37. It’s behind a paywall but we can understand the gist of Steve St. Angelo from the headline.

    I am worried about the lithium ion cells in my “generator” wearing out before I really need them. If I owned a giant wind turbine I would be much more worried about wear and my ability to repair it when I really need it.

    https://srsroccoreport.com/houston-we-have-a-problem-u-s-wind-power-generation-declines-first-time-in-20-years/

    It looks like trouble might be brewing in the U.S. Wind Power Industry.  For the first time in 20 years, U.S. wind power generation declined in 2023, even though more than 6 Gigawatts of new capacity was added.

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  39. John Michael Greer has a recent post about “stop buying so much stuff”. I dont like this advice anymore, just seems naive and a waste of time. I thought I was gonna laugh or be unimpressed by Greer. Silly me. That man is so good at writing. And I learned a new word. Lenocracy – a government of pimps

    Also like that he touched on storage: “No other society in history has made an industry out of renting places for people to store their excess junk.”

    Having a need for a storage industry seems like the main check list item to determine if you are living in what Rob calls the “the peak of whats possible in the universe”. Same with the assisted living industry. Not so much the peak of whats possible, but if you are treating your elders this way, then it’s more like “the peak of falling off the correct path of the universe”. 

    The Secret of the Sages – Ecosophia

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    1. I’m struggling to absorb another threat from one of the wisest people on the planet.

      That is sarcasm right?

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          1. He believes modernity is done when growth stops (probably true) and there aren’t enough resources on this planet to continue growth forever (definitely true) and therefore we need to colonize other planets (delusional).

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            1. Can modernity exist in a steady state? If it can’t, modernity will not be sustained.

              Modernity is going to go bankrupt. The question is whether it will it be a Chapter 7 bankruptcy or a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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              1. I think you need plentiful credit for modernity because complexity usually requires big up front capital to build, and you can’t have plentiful credit without growth.

                I’ve never heard experts confirm or deny my claim. Perhaps because they can’t imagine growth permanently stopping.

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                1. I think you need plentiful credit for modernity because complexity usually requires big up front capital to build, and you can’t have plentiful credit without growth.

                  After the end of growth, most if not all large projects will have to have to be financed by governments. In theory, governments could use capital to build large projects in a steady state economy. The end of growth does not necessarily mean the end of modernity, but it does mean the end of a debt-based money system and probably the end of capitalism.

                  It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. -Mark Fisher.

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                    1. It can’t. Governments will have to save up for large infrastructure projects. If the energy and material resources for a project are available, it can be done.

                      But overall, governments should not spend more than they tax. A post-growth economy will require more competent and less corrupt leadership than our current leaders.

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                    2. Most government projects today are funded with 100% debt and 0% savings so a steady state world will be much smaller and a lot less “modern”.

                      Home ownership will also change. Most people move into a home after saving only a 5-10% down payment. Mortgages will be scarce with no growth.

                      All of this in addition to Hideaway’s point about steady state being impossible due to mineral and energy depletion.

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              2. It’s physically not possible to have a steady state modern complex economy, because of lower ore grades on average every year. This means more energy to gain access the same quantity of any minerals we use as a society. In steady state, someone else in the system has to miss out on their goods and services. Lower ore grades is a never ending cycle, eventually all goods and services are used in gaining these minerals and nothing for any other part, which of course can never happen as your complex modern economy has collapsed before this point.

                The usual cry I hear from cornucopians on POB is that we will have to recycle everything, which is never 100%, so still requires some mining.

                However there is also the issue of how to build and power all those recycling plants that currently don’t exist. The answer is we have to build them, plus the collection systems of old ‘stuff’, then transport everything for recycling, but that requires MORE minerals, MORE materials and MORE energy to build these new plants, collection points and transport systems, which means either the system has to grow, or some other part of the system misses out on their required resources. All while ‘some’ mining still has to happen to make up for never reaching 100% recycling. (Think of rust from steel, it is a small percentage of iron lost to dissipation in the environment that can never be recovered).

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                1. I think that it will be the double whammy of declining energy supplies and declining ore grades that does modernity in.

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          1. From here https://emojipedia.org/upside-down-face, click on copy and then paste in the comment (not the fastest approach I concede).

            More solutions here https://kubiobuilder.com/blog/wordpress-emojis/

            Unless “Still waiting for someone to tell me how to make a sarc emoji. Google didn’t help.” was more sarcasm from your part? (without any emoji, because you don’t put emoji when expressing sarcasm) I have no way to tell, it’s circular…

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              1. 🙂 OK, I think I understood. (I hope)

                Indeed google does not provide any definite answer. The following emojis seem all acceptable:

                I guess, we can just pick some convention for un-denial and try to stick to it… Or use different ones according to context and add some nuance? (face with rolling eyes is good for Elon Musk 🙄)

                Although, no emoji may still be the most appropriate: https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/17/10777102/upside-down-smile-emoji-sarcasm-ambiguity

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                  1. Hello Rob and Charles and everyone here today,

                    Thank you both so much for providing much needed comic relief to the day–the emoji tutorial was classic! Here I come every day with expectations of reinforced doom and to be greeted with emoji rolling eyes as a proxy for our own makes me realise that maybe we shouldn’t take life so seriously after all–that is until I also tune into Climate and Economy every day to remind us what we’re really up for. It’s interesting that Rob says he can’t take that much doom day in and day out, for me I crave the visual reminder that globally the trends are indisputable and there is no possibility of shirking the truth. It keeps me focussed on the things I still can do in service to life, as all of us here have decided is the only way to go. 

                    Rob, your solar power station stats are not as horrifying as mine. I have just gotten authorization to return my unit for warranty repair and asked a very handy neighbour to help construct a suitable crate (as I obviously didn’t save the original packaging, let this be a lesson to all, you never know when you will need that moulded styrofoam that you are about to throw out!) which now securely houses a 90kg machine/battery so it can be picked up by a truck and sent 2000km to the warehouse where it may or may not be able to be repaired and then sent back in due course. On a sunny day, it does power the shed’s needs and then some, but I know we will not maintain our complex modernity to any level that we are comfortable with at this point. I am also of the mind that greatest simplification is needed and now so we are familiar with our newly honed techniques well before we need them in earnest. I like the idea of a hole in the ground for cooling food, here we have a running creek so that’s more likely how we can keep perishables cooler, but what about not having perishables at all if possible? How far down the track of simplification can we or are prepared to go now?

                    Now to end this on a very serious topic, and I mean it! Bookmark this Prep Tip my friends because someday you will thank me for it, promise! 

                    There will come the day when wiping one’s bum with toilet paper will become a thing of the past (yes, I know that’s hard to contemplate but pandemic panic buying notwithstanding, we are talking collapse of modernity here) but let me assure you that help is at hand (your own hand, I’m sure as heck not going to wipe your butt for you even though we’re all friends here!) Drum roll please…I have discovered many years ago a method to much reduce or even eliminate the need for toilet paper after those number twos (and certainly number ones for the anatomically female). It’s like a personal bidet whenever you need it! All that is required is an old ketchup or mustard plastic bottle with a pointy twist nozzle tip (you know what I’m talking about?) or if you can’t get those, any plastic bottle with a squirt tip like from dishwashing detergent, but preferably not too large otherwise it can’t be manipulated into the correct place, you will know what I mean! The idea is to irrigate the intended orifice with a steady bottle-squeezed squirt of water to do the initial clean (for as long as you think necessary) before the final wipe which then requires way less paper (and if you are keen as I am, I use cut up pieces of flannel or towel and wash them like you would nappies). Female anatomy would only require a handy face washer towel as a blotter after rinsing after pees. There are a few tricks, it is best to always start with a full bottle of water so you get the maximal squeeze time and you can experiment with either a frontal or posterior approach, but both require the bottle being held upside down so gravity does some of the flow work. I find the posterior approach to work best for number twos, obviously. You remain seated on the toilet seat, just shift forward and tilt as you normally would to wipe but hold the bottle and squirt instead, you’ll know when you’ve hit the mark. Warm water would be decadent but icy cold from the tap can either wake you up or close your sphincters or both! So best always refill the bottle for next time so it’s ready to go at room temp. Too much information? Am I being sarcastic here? No siree! You don’t see an emoji anywhere do you? I have been doing this for over a decade now and can say I have saved countless trees by nearly eliminating (haha, pun!) the use of toilet paper, this was devised back in the day when I actually thought I could something to save the planet. It’s still a worthwhile thing to try, you might get to really appreciate this system and you will never go back to just smearing your shit around when you can blast it away! 

                    You know I’ve been meaning to write the above for some time now as a truly sincere offering to help us through the upcoming crisis but somehow held back because I thought the topic wasn’t for polite company and after all personal hygiene is a bit personal. But today was the day to finally break through that false modesty and I hope you all realise by now Gaia has more up her sleeve than all sweetness and light, sometimes self-righteously so. We have to have a sense of humour to have any chance of getting through. Thank you again, friends all here, for sharing laughter as well as tears. 

                    Namaste.

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                    1. 🙄🤣🤔😶😏😣😮

                      That’s a whole new level for preptips.

                      And another reason for me to buy more mustard.

                      When plastic is scarce we might have to train ourselves to eat only with our right hand.

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                    2. Most I’ve laughed in a while. Thank you for that courage. And extremely useful advice. Best part of that post was the letting go of ego.

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                    4. The cloth wipes are called “family wipes” here. It’s a thing, but very rare at this point. We made up a batch for when the time comes. The hand held bidet is a good addition.

                      I also saved back a lot of the inner corn shucks from our flint corn crop. Even trimmed them up into nice squares. Haven’t tried them yet, but they are there if it comes to it.

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                    5. Preptip: The sewer here requires an electric pump. It has a diesel backup generator but I imagine the diesel would run out in a week or so.

                      I have in storage a low cost backup plan. It’s a toilet seat designed to snap on a 5 gallon bucket.

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                    6. Forgot to propose the deluxe (even more than the most expensive industrial toilet paper) and still collapse-compatible version. It is to grow your own.

                      Among what grows at my latitude, I was impressed by the quality of this plant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbascum_thapsus. But it is said, this one brings even more comfort, and relief: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbascum_bombyciferum. Maybe, this one could be used too when you are out of stock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphytum? (it grows very easily around here)

                      There are many more alternative which should be acceptable (the lamiaceae family may even provide some options with a naturallly scented luxury). I believe the properties that have to be taken into account are: growing speed and presence of the plant, size, robustness and softness of the leaves.

                      Apparently, there is even a campaign to encourage people growing their own: https://www.robingreenfield.org/growyourowntoiletpaper/! (They vouch for another plant which I don’t know, probably more for hotter climates)

                      Actually, I believe the act of wiping organically is the first step to regenerating the soil (the leaf balances somewhat the dense content of our excreta)

                      I don’t know which smiley to end this comment with…

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                    7. Thanks Charles, now I know why comfrey is so good for the compost heap, it’s providing some extra nutrients into the compost if it has had prior use.

                      Must grow more comfrey, it will get a lot of use around here…

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                    8. Hello Hideaway 🙂

                      I can’t personally vouch for comfrey: it might be a bit too coarse.

                      There is yet another alternative: a well chosen pebble (reusable toilet paper). Bring your own.

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  42. The only UK MP with integrity.

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    1. This was probably one of the most comprehensive take downs on U.S. incompetent/delusional “leadership” and their ability to screw up the U.S. and the world that I have seen in quite a while. Sure the U.S. has over time screwed up many things, but the combination of a brain dead evil Biden surrounded by venial assistants like Blinken, Sullivan, Austin, etc. does not bode well for our futures (politically). And this sorry state of geopolitics going into late stage collapse leaves one grateful for any ray of sanity (I know HOPIUM).

      AJ

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  46. No wonder we are alone in the galaxy. No one wants to associate with us.

    Young Person Sudden Cardiac Death (left)

    Young Onset Aggressive Cancers (right)

    Both, both Incept and Inflect during the same weeks.

    Yes, this does prove causation. Only the Narrative Zombies walk about denying this now.

    Key principle to grasp here…

    There is no data available which refutes this. One can HIDE the signal through bad technique or extreme single-use constraint. But they cannot REFUTE it through equivalent systemic corroboration or better data.

    Trained professionals understand why this litmus is important. A false modus tollens argument.

    These inferences were fairly easy to draw out of the data. Most systems are much more complex than this.

    Why there are only a few individuals actually doing this work, is beyond me.

    No wonder we are alone in the galaxy. No one wants to associate with us.

    Q: Is there any indication that things are slowing down? The graphs seem to still have a positive slope, which is concerning.

    A: The cardiac arrival is uniform – but that is net of PFE. So we watch. Cancers onset by statistical arrival distributions. While only 75 K excess dead so far (this would be legendary for any other drug) – it is an enormously concerning signal and continued rise, yes.

    Q: Any correlation between increased turbo cancers, diseases, and death based on the increased # of boosters taken? I still know people taking boosters voluntarily, and I know pediatricians are still pushing the “new & improved” covid booster.

    A: I think it will correlate more with the person’s age, as well as genetic and immune susceptibility to cancer. With that much noise, and the fact that older persons take the boosters more – it might give us a false signal in affirmation.

    Q: This needs to be explained. What are the other side’s arguments?

    A: So far: 1. Correlation doesn’t equal causation 2. It’s all made up 3. You’re an anti-vaxxer 4. Nuh-uhh… 5. Occam’s Razor says you lie. 

    The standard brainless fake science/lack of ethics twaddle.

    Q: Would you testify to this in court? Is that something you would be willing to do? In front of congress?

    A: Oh yes. I would take an oath that the data is done to the best of my ability. If it is wrong, there is no way for me to know this or find it out – as no data is available which refutes it. I can HIDE the signal through technique, but I cannot refute it.

    Big difference.

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  47. Just read some of Hideaway’s recent stuff. It’s easy to take him for granted. I have to remind myself how lucky I am that the undisputed heavyweight champion of energy hangs out here and I get to read his thoughts. But the same could be said for pretty much everyone. Well, maybe not Captain Ahab. (we need another appearance from the cap’n. Whoever you are, please get drunk and share your thoughts tonight). 

    One of un-Denial’s biggest strengths is the audience. Some very diverse backgrounds, but we all have two major things in common. Collapse acceptance (because of overshoot) and a belief/understanding that denial is a very important piece of the puzzle. And even though you guys have much knowledge in many subjects, just for fun I’m gonna box some of you into a category as our resident expert. Sorry if I get your category wrong, had to guess for a couple.

    • Mort – Rob
    • Energy – Hideaway 
    • A.I. – AJ 
    • Gardening – Gaia
    • Jack of all trades (a polymath) – Monk
    • Spirituality – Charles and CambellS
    • Humans are a species (the anti-Quinn) – Mike
    • Science – Hamish
    • Farming – Scarrow 
    • Zen – ABC 
    • Current events- Stellarwind72
    • Covid – Rob and NikoB
    • Native American culture- Weogo
    • Wild card who is expert at nothing, but has a fetish for dark topics – Paqnation 😊

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    1. I think I’d prefer to be known for WHY rather than MORT.

      I’m interested in MORT because it explains WHY almost no one can see what is obvious: overshoot, population, energy, minerals, climate, polution, species extinction, fisheries, debt, mRNA, etc. etc.

      Every single unpleasant and important issue is denied, which explains WHY we do nothing intelligent or wise in response.

      Why my interest in denial?

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      1. Ok, fine. I will allow your category to be modified to WHY. 😊

        And great list of questions in that link. Anytime I am looking at your older stuff, I see many names in the comments that are long gone now (or just dont post anymore). And they are good comments and obviously understand overshoot. I sit here and think I will be on this site for the next 10 plus years (if we are still alive). But you are the expert. Why do you think people come and eventually leave this site? Are they finding a better site to hang out in? I doubt it. Do they just hit a wall and no need to keep going down this road? Maybe. Is their MORT telling them to get the hell out of here and back to being an ignorant zombie? I would say yes, but you cannot unsee this stuff.

        Of the current names I know here, NikoB seems like he’s been here the longest. I think I’ve seen comments from 2016.

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        1. I would guess there are lots of reasons people leave:

          1. I don’t do a lot of original research so if you’re already keeping up with current events there is little reason to keep visiting.
          2. I’m a one trick pony so it can become tiresome listening to me say over and over and over how amazing it is that so few see what is so obvious.
          3. Some of my views on life after death and population reduction are unpleasant, even for overshoot aware people.
          4. A lot of people are sick of covid. Not me. It’s the most amazing example of MORT yet. Plus it’s the crime of my lifetime and the crooks are getting away with it. The majority of people REALLY DO NOT WANT TO KNOW what happened.
          5. Once you understand overshoot and what’s likely coming it’s probably healthier to move on and enjoy your life, or do something constructive to prepare, rather than hanging out at depressing sites like un-Denial.
          6. Lastly, and perhaps most important, the majority of people after having a look at MORT, do not think the theory is correct, and believe there are better explanations for denial. Not one writer in the overshoot space who wants to make the future less bad regularly discusses the importance of MORT.

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          2. I would add that accepting collapse, denial and the limited control (if any) we have over the course of events, one can then just simply move on to something else.

            I just come here for the fun of it all and hanging out with the tribe. I think that, maybe like Rob, a part of me, would really like for more humans to be more truthful and truth-seeking: I don’t want to give up on the species 🙂 And then, while typing these words on a computer, I am reminded of the parable of the mote and the beam.

            By the way, Paqnation thank you for putting me in the spirituality category.

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        2. Is it that long that I have been here?

          I sometimes wonder why I keep reading this blog and others every morning but as you say full of fine comments. I still like reading OFW too.

          I figure that if something really important comes up it will be noticed in the comment sections of these blogs.

          Keep up the good work everyone.

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          1. I have a fuzzy recollection that your first post was in the early days of covid when I was still uncertain what was going on to aggressively tell me we were being lied to by our leaders.

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              1. You turned me into a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist and destroyed many of my family and friend relationships. I’m also at risk of dieing from covid because I refused the new miracle mRNA technology.

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    2. Dear Paqnation,

      I hope you are well.

      No captain in sight, for now…

      Do not diminish thyself, few are trying to understand the meta point of view.

      I don’t know if it matters that I comment, alas I find it amusing that I of all people would be labelled as “Zen”.
      – I’d say similar akin to a “madman”.

      I am however rather curious, what is thine reasoning on how one begets a title of harmony, when the said mind is cluttered to the highest disorder?

      Kind and warm regards,

      ABC

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      1. Hi ABC. Ya, I could not think of a good category, but there is no way I could leave you off this list of experts. So I got creative. Was gonna use “Yoda” or “The Force”, but Zen seemed more fitting and professional.

        And now I like the category of “madman”. But you’ll have some tough competition from me and a few others. 😊

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        1. Dear Paqnation,

          I thank ye for thy swift explanation.

          I must commemorate such a display of thoughtfulness and thus I express my appreciation.
          – May others derive joy from our scattered minds and ludicrous ways of virtual dialogue.

          After 7 months of dread, I will now explore the world bathed in sun.
          How I have longed for the rays of solar energy…
          Cursed this northern latitude and the fair skin that comes with it, which painfully burns if exposed for too long to the caress of our closest star…

          Only a fool would consider such melanin pigmentation and location as desirable,
          a strange evolutionary quirk to say the least.

          Perhaps gene manipulation wouldn’t be such a horrendous idea…
          I’d quite gladly want to posses skin which would absorb rays of light more prominently, especially with increasing temperatures and outdoor life due to the oncoming collapse…

          Kind and warm regards,

          ABC

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    3. What would you like me to opine about paq?

      You are at the beginning of your journey perhaps I am near the end of mine.

      Frustrations accumulate and sometimes one needs to voice them.

      I have no feelings of ill will to anyone here on un-denial, as you say there are many a fine voice here – though perhaps yelling at clouds.

      The CC issue bugs me the most because I don’t know of anyone who takes it seriously and is at the same time doing something personally about it. It is mostly just virtue signalling by those that have an interest in it. I really don’t care about it too much because as big as it is there are far more pressing issues hitting us now.

      I also carry this perspective, at any time an asteroid, a solar flare or a yellowstone eruption would instantly change everything. Live while you can as as far as I can gather it is the only chance you will get.

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      2. Hello Captain. I liked you better when you were mean. 😊. I figured you for a younger person. Guess not. Your comment above is perfectly reasonable and well done. You should post more often when you are in this state of mind. Might actually feel good. 

        And I was only calling you out in hopes of a drunken late-night rant (which I am always a fan of). But good to see that you are not in that place right now. 

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  48. I thought there were some pretty good preptips in this interview. A couple that stood out for me:

    1. Most preppers do not have enough food. Make food your top priority.
    2. Don’t plan on barter. Starving people are dangerous. You want to avoid other people for the first year until the great die-off is finished.

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      1. Amen to that, el mar! Hope you and your family are well now and for as long as possible. I just don’t have any drive to survive in a world where we must avoid other humans and be ready to shoot them on sight, that goes against every fibre of my being. If someone must die in order for others to survive, then let it be me and gladly if that decision can be practically of immediate service and relief of suffering, including my own. I would like to choose my time of exit before the tribulation really begins in earnest, and I have been thinking quite a bit on how that might transpire. Probably a topic for another day as I’ve just uploaded something that would make it truly going from the ridiculous to the sublime. I think eventually sooner or later we should collate Prep Tips for the end of life. I know I am not alone here in having these thoughts and intentions, and we should be able to help one another not feel alone in this most poignant of issues as all others. 

        Namaste, friends. 

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        1. Please do come back and write a preptip on what you believe is the best exit plan. Every wise prepper, and especially old preppers, should have a plan. I’m sure with your medical training you will have good advice.

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  49. Preptip: I’ve talked in the past about the many good reasons for keeping a spreadsheet inventory of your prepping supplies. Here’s another reason.

    It took quite a while and a lot of effort to complete my spreadsheet. Now that it is in maintenance mode I have had time to add useful data. For example, I am now tracking when I open and when I finish things that take a while to consume like staples, condiments, dried fruit, pickles, etc.

    This has disclosed quite a few surprises.

    For example, I have 6 large containers of mustard and thought I had plenty for several years. Now I know that with normal consumption it will be gone in 18 months. It’s cheap and stores well so I plan to buy more.

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  50. This was my collapse forcast from 2006 in “das gelbe Forum” – a german blog:

    Due to globalization pressure, excess capacity, austerity and buyers’ strikes, deflation and inflation will threaten our economic system in the next few years. Global oligopolies and monopolies are increasingly destroying medium-sized and regional economic structures. Prices initially fall (as long as they are not monopoly prices or state services) and work becomes ever cheaper and more scarce, with the corresponding consequences for social systems. Later, when the national bankruptcy becomes acute and price pressure from raw materials increases (especially due to scarce oil), deflation is likely to turn into inflation. The succession of deflation and inflation happened in a similar way before the Second World War. There doesn’t have to be a new world war, but we will probably see Bundeswehr operations inside when “the systems” no longer work and the bourgeois middle class falls into existential panic. Citizen surveillance is already being upgraded. Likewise, the lulling of people by “tittytainment”, media trash, whitewashing and “weapons of mass fattening”.

    What cannot be precisely determined is the timing of the development. The “deflation tanker” is still sluggish and the “debt heaters” are still catching up with the firing , but from a certain point onwards, events could take over. We have liberated the world from communism – now the unleashed forces are putting us under deflationary pressure and becoming competitors in the commodity markets.

    The Chinese work for around 70 cents an hour There is hardly any social security and environmental standards. Even in India and Eastern Europe, we cannot (or even come close to) close this cost gap. The reforms acted like a brake on the bicycle on the ICE We find ourselves in a dilemma that every developing society finds itself in in the long term (like the ancient Romans). Market economy systems require constant growth due to interest rate pressure (you always have to pay back more than you borrowed). However, constant growth ultimately eats itself away or reaches its limits. The universal law of diminishing marginal utility applies. Whether it’s beer consumption or economic growth, at some point the hangover comes. Even cancer cells that grow exponentially in their “host” end up becoming victims of their proliferation. There are limits to everything. So it is logical that the emerging countries have more growth potential than mature Germany. My 12 year old son also has more growth potential than me. Because we have now obviously reached limits when it comes to debt and the extent of social systems, reforms are being called for. Without drastic reforms, the systems will crash – this is rightly stated. But drastic reforms are also strangling the cycle. Because if everything in Germany is “halved”, the systems (pensions, health, unemployment and social assistance) cannot survive. Federal, state, local, corporate and private budgets would also collapse. For example, if we cut pensions, this in turn creates deflationary pressure because domestic demand continues to decline.

    So everyone is somehow right and wrong because the circle cannot be squared. It is true that we need to save and reduce costs. However, it is also true that cars don’t buy cars. According to Keynes, it is true that in weak phases the state should take on debt and invest as a replacement demand in order to prevent deflation. But it is also true that debts and interest have long been crushing us. I fear there are no solutions other than drastic contraction and system collapse caused by the “normative force of fact.” The process is already underway and has probably already passed the “point of no return”. In order to “do” something, an entrepreneur needs capital. He obtains this capital on the capital market, usually through commercial banks. Due to interest and compound interest, more and more has to be repaid 2 than the investor has borrowed. The entrepreneur must at least generate this added value, which the lender can repay as a risk waiver or opportunity premium (you could have done something else with the money you lent) in addition to the net loan amount. To avoid going bankrupt, his investment must produce growth. Since this spiral reaches its limits at some point (historically about every 70 years) due to the ultimately exponential effect (chain letter system), because markets are saturated and debts and assets accumulate at different poles, the system must collapse in the end. It looks like it will be that time again soon. Mass purchasing power is visibly going down the drain because “the masses” have to earn more and more for the interest of the wealthy, for monopoly prices and for the state.

    Medium-sized companies and employees are being hit by globalization, while international corporations are growing into political oligopolists or monopolists, destroying everything from the livelihoods of many market participants to cultural peculiarities. In this situation, it is important to maintain local supply functions beyond globalization. The artisanal bakeries are definitely one of them. Politicians can do whatever they want – the debt spiral with its interest rate vacuum cleaner drains us dry, so that deflation or stagflation gain the upper hand in the end. This process is already in full swing, at the transition to the exponential phase. Japan has been in deflation for 15 years and the only reason it hasn’t gone under is because the Japanese have a large reserve of fat. Neither the Europeans nor the Americans have such lifebuoys. The capital base is shrinking. There is too little investment because there is excess capacity and because small and medium-sized businesses can hardly access loans. If you want to get a loan at all, you have to offer three times the amount of security. What was once considered security (e.g. company property) is now often seen as a joke with a guaranteed laugh. Anyone who needs a loan and takes it won’t get it. Whoever would get it doesn’t need it or take it. Demographics (lack of children) act as a multiplier for our problems, as does the decline in our innovative lead and dependence on raw materials, especially the “peak oil problem”.

    It’s not about when we might run out of oil, but rather when we run out of cheap, easily accessible oil and when the first supply problems arise. The reality is that fossil energy supplies are finite and that an excessive lifestyle that does not take sustainability into account can only be maintained for a limited time. The resulting “journey to Jerusalem” in the form of distribution struggles has already begun. In the oil endgame, no power bloc will be eliminated without a fight. Environmental sell-offs and plundering costs (global warming) are added to this. But these are also costs that can still be passed on to the future and have so far mainly arisen in other continents. The Western “way of life” cannot be maintained. If you still plunder down to the last drop, that is murder of the future and the present. We need a global “energy efficiency” project and regionality instead of wasting scarce resources on oil wars. The financial crisis and the oil crisis are symptoms of a system that requires constant growth in order not to collapse. We may be witnessing the final phase of the debt race. The first bubbles have already burst. The new market no longer exists. Many jobs in Germany are on the brink. 4-5 years of deflation are enough to blow out the lights. For many it is even faster. The industrial base and thus the backbone of our value chain is being treated with the wrecking ball. The only things that are (still) growing are discounters and monopolists.

    The majority of market participants are on the brakes and saving. Even the current false bloom cannot hide this. One person’s savings is another person’s lost sales. Visit a hardware store again and see what else is “made in Germany”. Dumping prices everywhere! Almost every day you hear about company relocations and job cuts. A service society without a strong industrial base cannot deliver the growth rates necessary to stabilize the system. The rescue attempt according to the motto “You cut my hair, I will repair your fence” is like a perpetual motion machine. The same corporations and politicians who once spoke loudly about the “service society” are laying the ax at this very point, cutting services and services for the sake of short-term profits. Many services, such as call centers, are now also migrating abroad or are being rationalized away by software. Even dough pieces for rolls are now imported from distant countries and sold off here. – Discount bakeries and discount bars are created. Even if the “stinginess is awesome – madness” subsides, the need to save money will remain. We will not be able to produce cheaply in Germany. The existing structures and cost of living necessary for our economy do not allow this, even if we tighten our belts.

    At the same time, if the ability to innovate worldwide levels out, welfare levels will also adjust. Those who come “from below” hardly have any problems with it. A drastic “downward” adjustment, as is planned for Germany and other Western countries, carries the risk of “distortions”. The state is increasingly losing tax revenue and is now coming up with stupid ideas such as abolishing public holidays. How about using braking rockets to slow down the Earth’s rotation and extend the day to 36 hours in order to be able to work longer. As expected, the increase in tobacco taxes backfired. The “Laffer curve” was confirmed. Tax revenues have dissolved into the blue haze that people wanted to skim off. If the state hadn’t been taking on exponential debt for many years (this is also a chain letter system) in order to compensate for the growing deficit in value creation, the fun would be over long ago. By accumulating debt, the rude awakening has been postponed for many years into the future, with the height of the fall constantly increasing until the compound interest effect finally develops its explosive power.

    The crucial question is: How long can additional national debt grow faster than gross domestic product? The “reunification subsidies” postponed the deflationary pressure in Germany by a few years. The debts accumulated will probably never be repaid and therefore, in my opinion, we will end up with inflation. We have had a long boom that ended with the “new economy mania”. The consequences are not even close to being processed yet. The economy will continue to be artificially kept alive, including in the USA. The money press has already been started there. Americans, especially in Japan and China, buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have. Almost nothing that is consumed in the USA today can be produced more cheaply domestically than in these countries, and hardly anything that the USA produces is even remotely price-competitive there. The resulting consequences, which tend to also apply to Germany, are only beginning to be recognized today. The result is a gigantic foreign trade deficit for the Americans.

    To balance and maintain the cycle, China and Japan buy American government bonds. But the purchases are no longer enough, which is putting pressure on the dollar. This is also a chain letter system with an expiry date. If this pump comes to a standstill, this could also mean the missing “trigger” for the knock-out in Europe. A bursting of the real estate bubble in the United States would have a similar effect. There are early signs of this. What we are now seeing on the stock markets, for example, is an “echo rally” driven by the “fair weather generations” who cannot imagine anything other than constant increases in wealth and portfolio growth, interrupted by small “consolidations”. The USA is now looking for a solution in geopolitical wars. So it’s all about the nitty-gritty. Cheap oil is becoming scarce – faster than many people realize. Actually, all levers should be pulled to reduce dependence on oil. Initially primarily through saving and efficient use, later increasingly through technical alternatives.

    There obviously isn’t much time left – regardless of whether the availability of “cheap oil” lasts 20, 40 or 60 years. Our politicians today give the impression that the upswing is just around the corner. But secretly they are tinkering with the highly democratic media undisturbed by new emergency laws, they – these are the protestants against the emergency laws of 1968 – replaced the old “Economic Security Act” with a much stricter “Economic Security Ordinance” (WiSiV). This was secretly passed in the Bundestag on November 25th, 2003 and in the Bundesrat on August 12th, 2004 passed and came into force on August 13th. During the crisis, bakeries are also told who they have to deliver to. 4 Regional business must experience a new upswing. Globalization is reaching its limits. Regional networks and local suppliers can prevent a bottomless fall. Investments must be withdrawn from castles in the air and returned to the (regional) ground of facts.

    Saludos

    el mar

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    1. Fracking and funny money were not on my radar. Nor did I anticipate the inflation triggered by Covid.
      However, the ulitmative dflationary depression has now started.

      Saludos

      el mar

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      1. el mar,

        I think the deflationary depression was trying to get started just before covid appeared.

        Coincidence? Maybe.

        It’s very odd that enemies are not attacking each other for causing covid, or making it worse, or selling poisons to prevent it.

        The whole world synchronized to print money, even enemies.

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    2. That’s a very good essay el mar.

      You had a very good understanding of the complexity and intractability of our situation 18 years ago. And 2 years before the GFC!!

      We all thought things would have unraveled before now.

      The optimists would say we’ll be having the same conversation 18 years from now.

      I don’t think so, but in fairness I was also sure in 2008. Time will tell.

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    3. Good read. Thanks el mar. It was interesting to read about it from more of a financial standpoint rather than ecological.

      You obviously had an excellent grasp of things to be able to write this in 2006 – “A bursting of the real estate bubble in the United States would have a similar effect. There are early signs of this.” 

      And I’m gonna steal a word from you: tittytainment 😊

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