It Bears Repeating: Best of Overshoot Essays

A year ago Steve Bull assembled a best of compilation of essays titled It Bears Repeating from writers that discuss human overshoot.

Steve contacted me and I contributed my un-Denial Manifesto that launched this site.

Other writers and their essays in the compilation are:

  • Michael Dowd – Forward & Afterword
  • Steve Bull – That Uncertain Road, Part 1
  • David Casey – Preparing
  • Alice Friedemann – Net Energy Cliff Will Lead to Collapse of Civilization
  • Kevin Hester – Militarism’s Role in The Sixth and Possibly Last ‘Great’ Extinction
  • Tristan Sykes and Dr. Kate Booth (Just Collapse) – Talk Collapse for a Just Collapse
  • Erik Michaels – Bargaining to Maintain Civilization
  • Dr. Simon Michaux – Challenges and Bottlenecks for the Green Transition
  • Dr. Tim Morgan – Written in the Skies
  • Dr. Bill Rees – The Human Eco-Predicament: Overshoot and the Population Conundrum
  • Mike Stasse – Turning Marginal Land Into Fertile Soil
  • Tim Watkins – The Narrative Problem After Peak Oil
  • Max Wilbert – Climate Profiteers Are the New War Profiteers
  • Connie Barlow – The Legacy of Catton’s 1980 book, Overshoot

Steve recently contacted me again asking for suggestions of writers that might contribute to a second volume of It Bears Repeating. This triggered me to search for volume 1 on this site, and for reasons I cannot explain, it seems I never provided a link to the original compilation.

This post is intended to correct my error.

You can download the compilation here.

It Bears Repeating V1Download

235 thoughts on “It Bears Repeating: Best of Overshoot Essays”

  1. Long time un-Denial friend AJ has discussed his doomstead over the years and today sent some lovely pictures to help us visualize his impressive accomplishments.

    Uphill toward forest behind house.

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    7. Awesome pictures AJ. Love that is has such a “Goonies” vibe to it.

      Makes me want to send Rob some pics of my doomstead. 😊. Cookie cutter houses packed together with brick wall backyards. No trees. No lush greens at all. Landscape is just rocks in front and back for every house.

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      2. I know Phoenix/Scottsdale. Once owned a house like you describe in Scottsdale many years ago (bought during Savings & Loan debacle in the 80’s) and sold it to buy in the PNW.

        AJ

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  2. Steve Bull’s very impressive compilation gives me good memories from when he posted it last year. The names in that table of contents are the ones who should be in charge of the world. Gonna take me all weekend to read it again.

    Looking forward to volume 2.

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  3. Another brilliant interview with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

    Topics discussed include:

    1. Why did the US unilaterally withdraw from the world’s most important nuclear arms treaty? Because of pressure from the industry that profits from building nuclear weapons.
    2. What are the consequences of the US assisting Ukraine to kill Russian civilians vacationing on a beach?
    3. Why is the US attempting to bleed BOTH Russia and Europe?
    4. How is it possible Biden and Trump are the best 300 million people can offer, and why does neither discuss anything that matters?
    5. What are the implications of the US debt trajectory?

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  4. Hideaway,

    I gave your name to Steve Bull as someone who should contribute to volume 2 of the overshoot compilation. I did not give him your email and asked him to send me the request which I will forward to you.

    My suggestion is that you should collect all of your important comments from POB and un-Denial and assemble them into one essay.

    I think what you have to say is too important and fresh to be scattered across dozens of comments.

    I can help, if you need it, to collate your comments into one document for you to edit into a single essay. I’m also willing to help with proofreading and editing.

    If Steve does not follow through we can still publish your essay here.

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    1. Hideaway, do you have any of that ugly/toxic “what’s in it for me” attitude about this? I have some for you. 😊

      Fight through that shit if you do. Would be so cool to see your name listed among the other big names. (we already know you belong in that club)

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      1. There’s nothing in it for anyone that writes about overshoot except the satisfaction of seeing truth in print instead of the usual bullshit, and proving to the universe that a few fire apes can see reality.

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      2. There is nothing in the reality of our situation for anyone, and those trying to make a buck out of it, like Chris Martenson are just backing themselves into a niche market while destroying their overall credibility.

        One of the reasons I use the ‘nic’ Hideaway is that I expect repercussions for those that bring reality to the masses. ‘Shoot the messenger’ is alive and well throughout human cultures and history. It might be one of the main reasons people like Nate Hagens never states how bad the situation really is, while explaining the only course to reduce suffering, is to reduce overpopulation as quickly as possible. I’m sure many people confronted with overwhelming evidence would say fine to reducing population….’you first’..

        I’m also fairly certain the elite of the world don’t really want reality spread to everyone, they would prefer to live as kings as long as possible, so would not be happy with overshoot becoming common knowledge, as it would mean rapid reduction in their relative wealth.

        They have to keep the myth of continuous growth going until it can’t as otherwise it would mean giving up their wealth as people worldwide strived for equality now, knowing the fate of humanity. I would expect them to protect their privileged position at whatever cost necessary.

        What I write on POB is as much to get the feedback of magical outcomes. They are always with zero evidence, as the proponents of the bright green future, never go into actual numbers and calculations, it is very deliberate.

        Whenever someone decides to get creative with ‘evidence’ of the bright green future, they point to ‘research’ which is massively flawed because of the limits and boundaries placed on whatever the ‘paper’ is looking at.

        It’s clear too me, that everyone that has looked into the future in detail, would come to the same conclusion we have, so those that claim to have details of the bright green future are really getting paid by whatever institution to keep going. The self interest comes with painting a bright green future..

        Has everyone noticed that those ‘in the know’ from the academic world, like a William Rees or Tom Murphy only have talked about future collapse and massive overshoot since retiring from their positions, because such views are not tolerated by those who give funding to these institutions..

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        1. Exactly. That is why many bloggers who are still dependent on the system for their livelihoods write under pseudonyms in order to tell the truth.

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        2. I think that gives Rees and Murphy too much credibility. Rees is firmly in line with degrowth hope fantasy, which has a proud tradition in the ivory tower of voluntary simplicity classics scholar-monks. Murphy likewise spouts bullshit change-the-world hopium, if I remember correctly, or maybe I’m thinking of his NASA affiliation.
          The academy is a conservative religious institution. Just like a religion would never tolerate an anti-religious lecternist, no professor would last long publicly calling bullshit on the whole enterprise.
          I only lasted on my job because it was at the ass end of education where nobody cared about anything, and I still kept my head down to avoid being summarily fired/executed.

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  5. Nice Ivermectin rant and thread.

    I’m going to vote for the nastiest Stalin on offer until a bunch of people hang for this.

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  6. Doomberg specializes in energy analysis drawing attention to the importance of energy supply and why it must, and will, continue to increase because humans want and deserve better standards of living.

    Doomberg also denies overshoot and that energy supply will soon fall, and he uses the word Malthusian to describe people he disagrees with.

    Which probably explains why Doomberg has the highest paid site on Substack.

    In his defense, he does understand the WWIII threat.

    Hideaway should not listen to this because his head will explode.

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    1. Yeah, your analysis is spot on. Doomberg is just another of those “tech” success guys who think they are the smartest people in the room. Sometimes they are but it’s usually about one thing. He had more things wrong than right. Obviously he discounts Art Berman’s analysis (probably to Malthusian). He believes AI is intelligent – it’s just a LLM and simulates spoken thinking without there being anything there. It was maddening listening to all he has wrong. I’m sure you’re right, Hideaway’s head with explode listening to this idiot.

      AJ

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    2. Only because of your comment about my head exploding, did I bother to go and watch that Doomberg video. LOL..

      I often watch and read reports of the bright green future, just to get a balanced view. If I can’t see where their arguments are incorrect, then I might have to change my thinking. So far everything I’ve looked at with any substance to it, always misses large parts of the picture and are easy to poke holes in.

      Surprisingly Doomberg gets a lot correct, especially early in that video, but it’s his insistence on nuclear saving the day being unlimited etc that’s the most ridiculous.

      On oil still being ‘plentiful’ I don’t think is that unreasonable, just because everyone that has called peak oil so far has been wrong. We might keep going up in production for longer than anyone expects, but eventually when the fall in production comes, the longer it takes to get to peak production, the harder the fall will come, as in the accelerating decline.

      Our oil production has had 2 phases, firstly an exponential increase, then a slower linear increase over the last 40 years.

      In the above graph we can see oil production clearly go up exponentially until mid 70’s, then go up linearly since then. Every oil production forecaster expects to overall ‘shape’ to be a normal distribution curve, as every separate oil field has acted that way. However they all did that in a backdrop of growing oil production worldwide, so expecting the same pattern when world oil production is falling is just junk science/statistics.

      Virtually none of the oil forecasters uses actual history of growth in their future prediction. There are lots of people that put some type of normal distribution curve on the above graph to make it fit somehow. I think they are all wrong and overall oil production will not be a fall related to the growth phase.

      The linear growth has dragged future use of much harder to get oil into the present. What happened to the Cantarell oil field is probably the best example of what I expect the future to look similar to. It was flowing at 1.16Mbbl/d in 1980, then up and down to only 1Mbbls/d by mid 1990’s, basically a plateau after exponential rise to 1980, then they used an enhanced nitrogen oil recovery method, that boosted oil production up to 2.1Mbbls/d by 2003.

      That enhanced oil recovery is kind of like what the world has been doing since the approx 2005 conventional oil peak. Once the Cantarell field eventually went into decline, in 5 years production halved, then the next 5 years halved again, and the following 5 year period more than halved again. In 15 years production went from a new record high of 2.1Mbbls/d to 161kbbls/d (2003-18).

      The real question is when does the current linear uptrend stop growing, which we can only guess the answer. Even assuming it’s not an outside event, like WW3, or a financial crash, the trend will eventually end, which makes oil prices skyrocket, so probably bringing on a financial collapse anyway, that feeds back into oil production decline (no money for new investment).

      Doomberg could be correct that it continues for quite a long period, but we’ve all thought the top relatively ‘soon’. I don’t totally discount his thoughts that there is ‘more’ hard to obtain oil available, we could go on for another decade, providing all the ‘other’ problems of climate, species loss, pollution, WW3, financial collapse, etc don’t have dramatic effects.

      Like all forecasters though, he tends to work with the background working normally whenever his large new energy source comes about, nuclear in his case. It’s obvious that the world takes a long time to build a NPP. Even some of the newest ones in China, that don’t suffer all the regulation, which is given as the reason for slow and costly development in the West, were 4-5 years late and cost double original estimations. (We never read about this from Nuclear promoters).

      Simple reality is that Nuclear takes so long to build and takes so much in the way of specialist materials, that it doesn’t have a positive return of energy, especially when we take into account the energy forms required to build and operate the plants. We get energy and products from fossil fuels, so replacing all this with just electrical energy is not the equivalent.

      To replace fossil fuels, the ‘new’ energy sources have to provide an assortment of energy types and products. All the planned replacements provide ‘electricity’ therefore we can’t have modern civilization in the future.

      Doomberg, like every other believer in the continuation of civilization indefinitely, makes the absurd assumption that the background system operates normally when fossil fuels production are in decline, yet never do any of these forecasters explain where the energy to take the workers to the factories, or do the mining of raw materials, will come from. They ‘expect it’ to operate normally, while ‘everything else’ suffers.

      In other words none of these type of forecasters of a bright future have any understanding of how the economy actually works, with everything in the system of civilization affecting everything else.

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      1. Excellent critique of Doomberg’s work.

        Even if Doomberg is correct and we have another decade or two of oil growth, it seems deeply disingenuous to paint it like there is no problem given that 7+ billion will die horrible deaths shortly thereafter. Even with two more decades we should be pulling the fire alarm now to do something useful with the remaining oil.

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        1. Hello Rob,

          Just a random question: is it mainly the privileged spouting nonsense about the human predicament? Maybe at some level, they just do that to maintain the illusion and their privileges. Illusionists.

          If that’s the case, and even if it’s unconscious, this may shed some light on your repeating interrogation: evil or incompetent.

          Btw, for some reason, I feel unease with statements such as “7+ billion will die horrible deaths shortly thereafter.” I can’t quite put my finger on why. Maybe because, this is too bold a statement and has not been definitively proven true. Or maybe it’s “horrible” which sounds like a personal expression of fear and does not mix well with some results from a mind model. Or maybe it’s “shortly” which is not precise enough (a few days, a few years…). Or maybe it’s because life seems to be already quite difficult for a few billions. Or maybe it’s because saying it like that makes it worse than it is: each of us will see when he gets there. Sorry for telling you that, this way. It’s just a feeling that i needed to express.

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          1. It’s the privileged that do every discretionary activity not directly involved with subsistence.

            My statement about the implications of oil running out might be a little inaccurate in time or magnitude but is plenty accurate enough to warrant our species pulling the fire alarm if it did not deny unpleasant realities.

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  7. Hideaway debunks another “plan”.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-4-2024/#comment-778041

    All the proponents of ‘lots more transmission’ to spread power around a large grid, think and work on averages. In reality we get solar and wind gluts and droughts all across the grid, no matter how large it is. When the NE of the US is in a renewable drought for instance, the assumption is that transmission from the SW of the country ‘could’ have great excess to transfer, but it’s not necessarily the case. What happens if it’s cloudy in the SW as well?

    During the drought in the NE, there might be an excess of wind in the NW of the country, so transmission of great power from the SW to NE is useless. What would be needed was huge transmission from NW to NE in this instance.

    What’s actually needed to cover periods of renewable droughts is large transmission lines from the NW and the SW and the S to the NE, plus large transmission from SW to NE and S, and S to NW and SW and, and , and …..

    The system would need to be massively overbuilt in all directions to cover periods of huge in excess and periods of droughts that occur everywhere throughout the system, especially in winter when all solar is low. It’s totally and utterly unaffordable. In the NE of the USA how much would need to be imported 50GW, 100GW?

    If skimming on the whole lot is the plan, then say goodbye to modern civilization anyway. Continuous power to build the new, plus operate and maintain the existing system is how we’ve reached our modern civilization. If we can’t continue to power it enough to enable all these functions, then it’s the modern civilization that is leaving us.

    Plus of course the plan is to have a lot more power than exists at present as all the EVs need making and powering, plus heat in homes and businesses, plus a lot of new recycling plants etc, so power use will have to grow exponentially for all these ‘extra’ uses of electricity. So the 50-100GW of transmission lines need to be larger, but from everywhere!!

    The numbers to build it properly are astronomical, but building it half arsed means no more modern civilization anyway..

    Plus of course over time, no matter how well the recycling is going, more metals will be needed. As all metals on average need an increased energy input to maintain production because the metals are getting lower grade, deeper and harder to grind, then civilization continuously needs to grow to provide this extra energy.
    Infinite growth on a finite planet, what could possibly go wrong…

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  8. Was going thru some of my oldest inner circle emails about overshoot. Funny and embarrassing stuff actually. Found this quote though. (I’m sure I got it from Dowd). I still like it and thought it would be worth sharing here.

    ‘Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, Medieval institutions, and Godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life.’  – E.O. Wilson

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  9. A comment of mine that was tagged ‘successfully sent’ on Doomberg upthread, seems to have disappeared. Might be some problem with the world oil production graph I sent with it…

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  10. Rob, I’ve been continually running into a problem with the ‘scale’ article, then something occurred to me about what I was missing.

    The cities are like minor organs (Rob will understand, sorry everyone else). The following link, warning, it does take time to load, with the very first map gives the clue. Civilization is like one organism…

    https://globaia.org/anthroposphere

    By the way, for everyone, nice representation of our dilemma from lots of perspectives..

    I think I can finish the article, which I think will highlight how much worse off we are than even most in the ‘doomsphere’ realise…

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    1. Excellent, I’m glad you’re working on the scale article.

      Just to let you and everyone else know, I am leaving for a week of camping tomorrow morning so my presence here will be very limited over the next 7 days.

      I hope you all continue on in my absence.

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      1. Have fun Rob. Leave your cell phone and laptop at home. You’ll feel naked but by day 3 most of the heavy withdrawals will be gone.

        And great link Hideaway. Bookmarking that one. Tons of good info. My favorite was the rotating globe of original & current forests.

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        1. Thanks. No laptop, but I am taking my cell so I can watch a movie in the evenings. There’s a fire ban and I’ll be alone so I need something enjoyable to do in the evenings when it’s dark. I loaded a couple of the movies you recommended on my phone.

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          1. Damn!! You can camp by yourself with no fire. That’s hardcore. I’ve been a subscriber to Joe Robinet’s channel over 10 years now. He inspired me to try solo camping (with fire of course) and I even bought some gear from him. Still have never had the nerve to go through with it. I take my hat off to you.

            It’s more impressive to me than both your website and being a lifer with collapse, combined. 😊

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              1. Thanks for genuinely asking and not doing the easy thing of telling me what a wimp I am 😊. 

                I love camping. And I know I would enjoy doing it alone. Yes, fear of bears, but mainly mountain lions. Never a fear when I am camping with someone. But all alone, I think those fears would overwhelm me. Seeing the scariest thing of all out there, Man, would also freak me out when I’m by myself. 

                And there is something about the solitude of it all that intimidates me. Sometimes at home when meditating, I can get to a place that frightens me with my thoughts about who/what I am. I think camping alone would intensify that.

                Maybe someday I will be able to face my fear. But not without fire, that is a whole nother level. 

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                1. Thanks. Again, I don’t know about camping there. How often do mountain lion attacks occur there ?How many fatalities each year ? I’ve done a lot of bushwalking and a fair bit of camping . Here, probably snake bite if you are in an isolated spot is a background concern. I’m not sure ,but I think Australia only has a few snake bite fatalities each year. I have read that India’s annual snake bite fatalities is in the hundreds, but better check if that is correct.
                  I’ve had a few close encounters with Taipans, but haven’t been bitten. The closest encounter was when I was about ten , and in the back seat of a small Renault driven by my brother. We were driving , and an unusually large Taipan crossed the road in front.
                  He stopped, got out, and the fellow he was with threw a rock at the taipan, which was by then across the road. I don’t know if the rock hit it, but the taipan turned ,and shot back at them. They ran around to the opposite side of the car. The taipan came straight at the car,
                  and saw my movement in the back seat. It was large enough to raise the front part of its body up, and struck at the window of the Renault. If the window hadn’t been up, I might have been bitten on the face. Anyway, thanks.

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                2. Here in the PNW, mountain lions are something to be careful about. Bears (regular black bears) are generally as scared of you as you are of them. One of my first summers here I was sitting on my porch at a picnic table working on my laptop with my two dogs at my feet asleep. I looked up and a mountain lion was walking past about 20 feet away (half way between me and the pond). It had come from the forest up the hill. I immediately yelled and my dogs to get in the garage and they did that and did not see the mountain lion. The mountain lion was surprised and walked up the dam of my pond into the forest.

                  Mountain lions are somewhat protected in this area (there is a limited hunting season with very few permits). The state wildlife service wants rural people to call them if a mountain lion is bothering you (eating chickens/ducks or other livestock) and then they may send someone out to catch it.

                  A year ago in the winter (a little snow on the ground) a next door neighbor had his dog killed by a mountain lion. He found the mountain lion eating his dog and shot and killed it. He didn’t tell the state. The same day his next door neighbor saw a mountain lion stalking his grand daughter while she was on the tree swing in his yard. Both neighbors tracked and killed the mountain lion.

                  There are plenty of deer around for a thriving mountain lion population. I’m not sure if they hunt elk as elk usually travel in small herds of at least 4 or 5 adults and that is probably to big for a mountain lion.

                  The most disconcerting thing about mountain lions is that they hunt humans. Numerous people report being stalked in the dense brushy understory of the forests. Hence most carry a gun.

                  I’m sure indigenous people were wary of them. And humans (if the biosphere survives us) in the future will be wary of them.

                  AJ

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  11. Today and Yesterday, I was thinking about the implications of the net energy cliff and felt myself starting to cry.
    Here are some implications:
    Mining grinds to a halt. Declining ore grades combined with declining net energy means that most mining becomes economically un-viable. I know this is good for the environment, but it means that the age of metallurgy will end a few centuries later, as the already mined metals are recycled to the point of being unusable.

    “Involuntary population reduction”. Industrial agriculture becomes un-viable meaning that our inflated numbers will not be supported. It is just sad to think that billions of people will die prematurely.

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    1. Hi Stellar, I’m not talking directly to you here, just babbling to whoever is listening. 

      “It is just sad to think that billions of people will die prematurely”

      It’s not as sad when I focus on the other life forms that we are responsible for destroying. Or when I realize that humans should not even be here to begin with. Forget agriculture and fossil fuels. Anyone that can break through the first energy constraint of fire is already a dangerous, out of control species that needs to be put down.

      Fire seems pretty innocent. And safe from causing population explosions (need agriculture for that). But then focus on what exactly fire is doing (not on the advantages for the species using fire, but to the environment). It’s a constant taking from Mother Earth, and a constant exuding of pollution. If you are cutting down live trees to burn, then you can add thousands of other negative effects. So let’s just focus on deadwood only.

      That piece of deadwood is going to be feasted on by fungi, moss, and a million other life forms until it is completely gone or composted back into the soil. But you just took that piece away from them and made it disappear. In other words, you stole it. (if you had eaten it instead of burning it, that would have been perfectly ok). Fire is the beginning stage of what Quinn calls “Takers”. And you didn’t quite make it all disappear either. By burning it, you created some pollution that is now in the atmosphere.

      It’s so radically new from the planet’s perspective. First time ever that a species is stealing (constantly) and polluting (constantly). And its solely for the benefit of that one species. Fire only (with no agriculture) will eventually get you to a level where you are too good at hunting your prey. This will cause certain extinctions and all types of domino effects. But because you have not been able to efficiently store food yet, your population is not big enough to cause any major world catastrophes.

      The goal for Mother Earth is to have tons of different life thriving. But if I’m wrong and the goal is more about having a sustainable complete domination of the planet by one species, it has to look much more like the dinosaurs 150-million year run than the humans and their 12,000-year run. In other words, no broken energy constraints allowed.

      p.s. I’m trying to do a guest essay about why fire cannot be conquered, but I’m struggling because my research skills are sucking right now. If anyone thinks this subject is a waste of time, please let me know why. You won’t hurt my feelings. Thanks.

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      1. Hi Chris,

        On the contrary, I for one would be most intrigued by your fire essay! I find myself quite aligned to your thoughts on the main, almost scarily so at times. Just a quick little note now to say how much I appreciate your heartfelt participation and contributions here. It’s been nothing short of revelatory to have found my tribe with all here and I do hope everyone knows how much encouragement I have received and how much I wish you all well.

        Namaste, friends.

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        1. Hi Gaia, thanks for that. 

          Yes, very scary if you find yourself agreeing with my crazy ass 😊. Thats another reason I love this site so much. The ideas being shared by everyone here somehow have me focused on fire.

          Two years of overshoot training prior to un-Denial, and I never once thought about fire (in this way).

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      3. Fire is also natural – think large wild fires. Wild fire often has an ecological purpose for many species. Such as helping certain seeds.

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        1. You and Weogo’s comment help me to see how disciplined and on track I have to be with this subject. I can’t go all in with my usual “fire is evil, blah blah blah”.

          The plan is still the same. To show why harnessing fire is off limits in the game of Life. That’s pushing me towards some type of “there is no purpose for conscious deep thinking anywhere in the universe”, but I’m trying to leave that alone. Can only handle one big topic at a time. 😊

          But I hadn’t even thought about any benefits of fire like you said here. Thanks. 

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            1. Looks like wordpress was a day late with these comments, but I see that I was able to track down the ones you recommended. Ep 97 and 205. Will definitely check those out. Thanks again.

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          2. For the Wild has a couple of really good podcasts on wild fire. I can’t link here because WordPress is removing my comment. But you can look it up. That might help with the research. Just FYI the podcast is super duper woke, so trigger warning LOL. But good content to help with your inquiry into fire 🙂

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            1. Thanks monk! This might be very helpful. They have like 400 episodes. These five are the ones that came up when I searched “fire”. If you think I am missing anything important let me know.

              Dr. CHAD HANSON on the Myths & Misinformation of Wildland Fires /97Dr. CARLOS NOBRE on the Shifting Future of the Amazon /106VANESSA CAVANAGH, RACHAEL CAVANAGH, & DEB SWAN on Ancestral Fire Regimes /205MAYA KHOSLA on What the Forest Holds /313ROSEMARY GLADSTAR on Thriving Where Planted /325

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            2. Thanks monk! This might be very helpful. They have like 400 episodes. These are the ones that came up when I searched “fire”. If you think I am missing anything important let me know.

              (WordPress must be messing up today. Hopefully this comment does not show up mulitple)

              Dr. CHAD HANSON on the Myths & Misinformation of Wildland Fires /97
              Dr. CARLOS NOBRE on the Shifting Future of the Amazon /106
              VANESSA CAVANAGH, RACHAEL CAVANAGH, & DEB SWAN on Ancestral Fire Regimes /205
              MAYA KHOSLA on What the Forest Holds /313
              ROSEMARY GLADSTAR on Thriving Where Planted /325

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              1. Yea it did lol. It seems to happen for me when I hit Alt and Enter. Just a normal enter is all that is needed now for comments.

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    2. Trying to bring solace by shredding your last paragraph into pieces 🙂

      “Involuntary population reduction”. Industrial agriculture becomes un-viable meaning that our inflated numbers will not be supported. It is just sad to think that billions of people will die prematurely.

      At some level, this has been individually and collectively chosen, nothing “sad” in living the consequences of one’s own actions.

      Rather than sadness, isn’t it even allowed to despise this bunch of battery farmed humans and revel in the ineluctability of their fate?

      “prematurely” compared to what?

      How many “billions” and how “prematurely” remains to be seen. Industrial civilization is done for. For the rest, who knows? The goddess of life is gentle to those who care about Her. We may glide down the collapse cliff by going along with the flow instead of going on with the fight.

      As paqnation rightly pointed out, from the perspective of other life forms, that’s all good (although a bit late).

      From the perspective of Gaïa/the whole system, this is just another transformation. It might even give rise to a new geological epoch and entirely different life forms.

      A small dot in the universe…

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      1. “Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences”

        Humanity is finally sitting down for their banquet. Overshoot people have trouble with this, so just imagine the masses. It’s gonna be fugly.

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      2. Unfortunately, the Maximum Power Principle and the Multipolar Trap, may mean that this fate was inevitable.

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  12. Found this link on Tom Murphy’s blog in the comments. Cool site that helps you grasp how big space is. Had a few thoughts creep into my mind while I was playing around with it. 

    • The insanity of wasting sacred million-year-old sunlight on anything space related.
    • Without magical energy (unlimited with no pollution), interstellar travel is impossible (even with wormholes).
    • Everything is a trap. Caveman looking curiously up at the stars led to Musk chasing Mars.
    • Space is off limits (unless you have magical energy).
    • The point of life seems clearer when space is off limits:
    • Thriving (with ups and downs), but never breaking through energy constraints.
    • Without fire, no species will ever be a threat to the rest of life and Mother Earth.
    • If fire is never supposed to happen then humans are a one-off random accident, complete disaster, or viscous plague. (many ways to say it)
    • And if that’s true, then it’s silly to think that only humans have something waiting for them when they die.
    • Does the energy of everything go somewhere (or do something) at death? 
    • I hate their take, but the people who say nothing happens and it’s just over, definitely make the most sense.

    If the Moon Were Only 1 Pixel – A tediously accurate map of the solar system (joshworth.com)

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    1. For a comparison to interstellar distances
      The sun is about 8.3 light-minutes from earth. The Sirius, AKA the Dog star is about 8.7 light-years from earth, and is one of our closest neighbors in interstellar terms. So comparing the distances within the solar system to distances between stars is like comparing minutes to years.

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      1. Thanks, that’s a great way of looking at it. I know how huge and empty space is, yet I always underestimate it big time.

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    2. As an additional explanation to the human drive to explore, I want to recommend this comment on a German forum (which I’ve translated via deepl.com).It’s title is “We will never travel to the stars”

      He highlights the emerging and decay of civilizations as predicted by Spengler over 100 years ago, and the modern age aka. “Western civilization” is no exception to this omnipresent cycle of emerging and decay. Since our cycle is coming to an end, star travel and other technological utopies are the last remaining “hopes” for a better future (which will not come). The tragedy is probably that we are significantly accelerating the end through our technology and making the earth unusable for new generations for centuries or even thousands of years.

      https://weltenwende.forum/index.php?id=54388

      <“So building robots must be a deeper drive…”>

      This is erroneous and does not capture the larger, deeper framework of “peoples” and their growth and decay in the respective cycle.

      After the subtle shaping of the emotionally perceived values in a culture (which are reflected in the three arts music, literature and visual art) are accomplished, the epoch of rational civilization begins.

      And this epoch is determined and defined by the rule of money and technology, by mega-metropolises and urban massification, by a complete loss of values. It is rational, purpose-oriented and devoid of any real art.It is cultureless, mechanistic and gives birth in our (!) cycle to the mechanical man, the robot as human’s flat caricature. The intelligence of the peasantry has migrated to the cities, flattened out there and at best just cares about the neighbor’s proper waste separation.

      In German, the term “Zivilisation” defines the period of time, after large peoples had fully developed their culture. Unfortunately, English only knows “civilization” (no distinction to a culture) – and that is important.”Zivilisation” that is: Megametropolis, technology, “money”, complete rural exodus, republic, sterile & emancipated women, immigration from outside, loss of norms, hedonism.=> Artless, clanless, dishonorable, irresponsible, irreligious, without ties, without land…one single “-less” of everything, that once was connected in the previous cultural epoch.

      The only thing that unites them all is the common urge to have “money”.And with the financial collapse, the republic, which had already ceased to be a polity, will collapse.

      All the great physical breakthroughs and special intellectual achievements were concentrated in Europe,or on their European descendants on other continents. And on “our” era since Charlemagne.

      After the future end of European civilization a new cultural sphere will begin somewhere else.And this will be free of “technology” per se for centuries to come: Because “technology” is part of civilization in the first place. And “civilization” is the final epoch that follows “culture”!

      The world has seen many other cultures.Towards the end – in the “civilization” phase – each one had a period of “technology”.These circles have crumbled to dust without ever having left anything “technically” even remotely comparable to “today”.Because there was never a single “Mendelssohn” among them.Never a Leonardo.Never a Siemens.Never a Daimler.Never a Liebig.Never a Tesla.

      Don’t fool yourself:”Europe” will not repeat itself.

      The peoples in every region of the world go through the same cycle of rise, decadence and decline.Farmers, cities -> megacities, culture -> civilization, morality -> financial world/democracy -> chaos -> Dictatorship -> end.

      The former active inhabitants of the flat countryside move to the flourishing cities and wear out.The women no longer have children, but “problems”. Population decline (we are already seeing this in the big cities!). Influx of marginalized peoples. The peasants’ home turf becomes a large-scale latifundia,for the “expedient” production of mass food for the megacities. Formless and senseless mass humanity.

      It is the time of the “apostles of peace” and sterile thinkers.The loss of the “european race” (in a philosophical sense) is complete.All that counts is money. This inevitably leads to a financial catastrophe (interest and election gifts), leading to the end of democracy in civil war, “dictatorship” follows. So far “End of story.”The megacities subsequently die out within a few generations.

      The descendants of the few remaining inhabitants on the flat land are the incompetent dregs of the potential that once existed. What remains are “fellahs” who fall prey to the land-grabbing of young, energetic peoples.

      End of a cycle.We will never travel to the stars.

      No one knows who the Egyptians once were, what purpose and deeper meaning the pyramids had, how they were built. Especially not the immigrant peoples, who displaced the ancient Egyptians.The “Cheops” pyramid with its small, completely unadorned room is no more a burial site than Cologne Cathedral. Although later researchers will find the bones of the Three Wise Men in its ruins and claim just as convincingly that it is.

      Accordingly, the Cambodians knew absolutely nothing more of the jungle-covered Angkor Wat.Once a bustling metropolis of millions.And goatherds grazed their lean animals on the Roman Forum around 650 AD. Rome probably only had around 6,000 inhabitants. The invading fringe peoples would have liked to continue running “Rome”, but this was beyond their capabilities. It was not until London at the end of the 18th century, and in the European cycle of peoples, that it regained this competence.

      What we are currently observing is the final act of the civilization of the “Faustian* spirit” of the northern Europeans. Just putting two lenses in a row to look into the depths of space and into the micro-world of amoebae – not really a big deal, one might think, but it was denied to the “ancients” per se.

      And in five hundred years, an interested person will discover a half-fossilized radio telephone, or a BMW fuel injector, an LED bulb, a Fischer dowel – and briefly ask himself what he might be holding in his hand?

      As I said:We will never travel to the stars.

      *According to Goethe’s “Faust” – the character with insatiable urge to explore and analyze the world.

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      1. Nice one. Thank you.

        Somehow this text conjured up images of Janus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus).

        The past facing head deeply bonded with people from the other side of the Rhine. The future facing head aspiring to the damp wilderness from the other side of the Atlantic ocean or away in the Pacific ocean.

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  13. Jan, I think he lives in Austria, our german speaking neighbours, today supports my dam break analogy on OFW:

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/06/22/the-advanced-economies-are-headed-for-a-downfall/comment-page-5/#comment-463171

    Where could the energy come from for any external or internal conflict?

    The financial system will crash as a consequence of too little resources or WW3 or BRICS. Then the senile old man will go to the public, which noone can hear because of the blackout, and announce, trust me, we have new currency, and the states will accept future tax payments in it. Then people will say, what states, what future, what tax? And refuse to give the failed state a credit.

    That means 99.999% completely unprepared and naive people will think, how can they leave the city and grow some potatoes. They will see no chance: they have no seeds, no land, no water, no skills. And even if, what could they eat in between?

    So they will stay in bed as a secure place and to save nutritional energy. Three weeks later they will be too weak to do anything.

    There will be a few preppers and homesteaders, that have collected tools and food and seeds and books and a sheep and they can make a transition. The problem to come then is, that they cant maintain tools, houses, googles, books, knowledge – or stop the radioactivity coming out of the nuclear fuel ponds.

    I give the idea, that the senile old man can convince 100.000 men to cut logs in the Rocky Mountains and convert them into charcoal to smelt some old-iron into tanks, planes and missiles a chance of zero. He could only activate the weapons that still exist. But what for? He can destroy Russia but he cannot go there and use the advantage.

    The resource countries could invade Europe as a statement of dominance, but why occupy failed states? The Chinese will focus on Saudi-Arabia and Iran. Sooner or later the USA and Europe will do the same. They will fight for the last oil but cannot transport it home as the finance system has collapsed.

    I would say, checkmate, the game is lost!

    People are not interested, a zombie army. They have recently begged Doofenshmirtz to destroy their germ line and the DNA of all of their future offspring. Who believes that these people, including the senate, including finance, including science, will be able of any reasonable thought?

    Saludos

    el mar

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    1. Meh. Reads more like a power fantasy coupled with a christian sense of apocalypse. Things are fucked, but not as linear as we as humans are prone to believe. At least that’s what I learned from the last few doomsday’s that didn’t happen.

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  14. https://realgreenadaptation.blog/2024/07/08/netzero-and-china/

    “Energy is everything for modern life in that all other aspects depend on it.  Something we have taken for granted for all of the modern period is now approaching a point in the future that is undependable.

    We are right here right now at Peak Everything in a prosperity bubble.  This is now a Ponzi with people playing at the casino.  It is not the world of virtue.  A virtue that is the wisdom of knowing what to embrace and what to discard.  We have long since passed the virtue of wisdom embracing truth.”

    Saludos

    el mar

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    1. HS has been doing good work assembling and condensing the collapse concepts that are already out there, but I thought this one was one of the best.

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  21. Man, this site is on life support when Rob’s gone 😢. I’ve been trying to come up with something interesting to help out, but I’ve got nothing that doesn’t require massive research. Screw it, I’m in the mood to write. I’m gonna experiment with a subject that is never talked about here (no reason to on a collapse site). This story is about when my good friend Jason came out of the closet a few years ago.

    Five of us (all friends since high school) took a trip to Hawaii in 2018. Couple days before the trip Jason and I were hanging out and going to Red Lobster for dinner. In the car ride over there he “came out”. He told me how he had already come out to his family and our other three friends over a month ago. He said he was afraid of how I would react (which was instantly very strange because he knows I don’t care about that stuff). And then he reminded me about my gay encounter story. 

    Around 2015, I had a new job working the late shift at a call center and one night while I was in the restroom, a guy came in and of the 5 or 6 open stalls, chose the one right next to me (which is a huge pet peeve of mine). He started to tap his shoe into my shoe. Lightly at first, like it could have been an accident, but then became more aggressive with it. I tried to figure out who it was for a second but after I finally and awkwardly said, “no thanks, not interested”, he got up and left the bathroom in a hurry. The next day or so Jason and I were playing tennis, and I told him about it, and we laughed. But now 2018 Jason was reminding me with excruciating detail how I told the story back then. Stuff like “Can you believe it. That guy was ready to go right there in the middle of me taking a shit! There’s a time and place for god sakes. What the hell is wrong with these animals” (btw, if I ever made it big, my past would have me canceled in two seconds)

    He talked about how he was close to coming out years ago but how incidents like this would always set him back. (and I don’t even remember saying it, that’s how unimportant it was to me). He ended up crying which made me cry. I apologized and told him how much I love him. Within 5 minutes we were both cracking gay jokes and everything was all good. He also broke it down (for my ignorant ass) the roots of why that guy was doing that in the bathroom. And the history of the nook and cranny places that gay men have had to resort to because of how unacceptable society deems it.

    Because I am relentless at asking questions, I also learned that the tv show Married w/ Children and Al Bundy’s gay jokes had a negative effect on him when we were young. I was a big fan of the show and me and my friends would quote it all the time. Jason said he would always have to fake laugh, which was no big deal, but he hated it because sometimes it would steer the conversation into some really dark anti-gay stuff. (dipshit Trump apologists would call it “locker room talk”)

    During dinner I was teasing him that the only reason he finally came out was so that he could “let loose” in Hawaii. Which ended up being kind of true. And because I’m such a night owl, the entire vacation I was the only one still awake when he would come home to our condo after a late night out with “his people”. I’d start grilling him right there on the spot for the juicy details and making him very uncomfortable (in a funny and graphic way 😊). 

    Nowadays we can talk about anything and everything. And the most private and secret stuff. I have watched him grow so much since getting that monkey off his back. For his whole life he was hiding it, and it showed. He is healthier and in much better shape and looks like he’s reverse aging. We traded lifestyles. I partied hardcore back in the day and now I’m a total hermit. Complete opposite for him.

    Could never quite get him into my anti-american ideas but he does show interest in the anti-capitalism stuff. Right before Covid blew up in early ’20, and because of the resources I was using at the time (mainly certain audience members from Scheerpost and Intercept), I was strongly warning Jason how life is about to become very unrecognizable, and everything is going to be shut down completely. He was laughing in my face at the time, and a month later I was finally correct about one of my wacky conspiracies. He was all ears after that. He still talks about how much credibility it gave me for all my crazy paranoid stuff throughout the years.    

    I do beat him over the head a lot with overshoot and he can understand it when he actually takes me seriously. But he’s not interested, and he always wins the conversation by ending it with something like, “Thanks for telling me all that Chris. Good lookin out. I was on the fence about that all-gay cruise ship vacation, but now I’ll definitely book it”… That is the definition of where I want to be with my awareness level. Living it up and taking full advantage of the “Peak”. But I’ll never get there. Un-Denialists know way too much and there’s no going back. In fact, as I type this, Jason is on a road trip (that I turned down) to San Diego while I’m sitting at home thinking about why fire cannot be harnessed by humans. Different life for us doomers.

    How important and disappointing that 2015 moment on the tennis court was for Jason and how indifferent it was for me still bothers me sometimes. With my no-filter loudmouth there is no telling how many people I have offended throughout the years. Since 2018 I have been very aware of it and go out of my way to try and prevent it. Took me 40 plus years to be able to start understanding this quote from Cloud Atlas:

    “To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds, that go on and are pushing themselves throughout all time.  Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

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  23. I like this guy a lot. New interview today on Planet Critical.

    “I’m joined by science journalist Peter Brannen, author of The Ends of the World, to discuss how the carbon cycle has caused five out of the six mass extinction events — with the worst taking 10 million years for the planet to recover.”

    p.s. el mar, how did you get your Geert link above to be a picture? (I always thought Rob did that for us)

    The Sixth Mass Extinction | Peter Brannen (youtube.com)

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      1. Hmmm. I must be doing something wrong. I copy/paste the link (from the address bar) but it never shows up as a picture.

        p.s. I watched this interview with Peter and I do not recommend it. About the halfway point he starts sounding silly with his faith and hopium stuff. The host even calls him out for being all over the map. And I dont think its the normal “tip toeing” to not offend (scare) her audience. It sounded more like Peter really thinks humans are gonna figure it all out at the last minute.

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  24. Killing me how dead this site is. Might have to write another personal story. I’ll make you guys a fair deal. I’m gonna check back here at around 10pm (its 130 now). If there are at least 2 new posts then I will not do anymore stories. Otherwise, I will be forced to write another one. 😊

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    1. Ok ok. I hear ya loud and clear. Bet I could’ve set the bar at twenty new posts and you guys would have still met the requirement. 😊 

      Btw, this one was tame compared to the first one. It’s about my horrible mistake of joining the army. In the middle of it right now. I’m gonna finish it anyway. But I’ll honor my end of the deal and bite my tongue… I need to create my own website for this kind of stuff… but good to know that I have a motivational technique that works like gangbusters here. 😊 

      And I apologize if that first story offended anyone. Was only trying to help this site from becoming a ghost town. Rob, I have no problem if you wanna delete it when you get back.

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  26. Nate Hagens has another episode out, which just adds another dimension to the overall overshoot problem. Humans really have stuffed up the ecology of the world’s environments. However once we’ve gone life can then get ack to normal..

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      1. With this video, of “The world’s Most Sustainable City” .. which it clearly isn’t, because of solar panels, wind turbines, plastic greenhouses with metal frames, plastic pots, irrigation systems relying upon metal, pumps plastic hoses etc…

        I just right clicked in video then left clicked ‘copy video URL’, place it below, watch the little circle thingy go around and around for a few seconds, then hit reply. Maybe it is just waiting for 10 seconds or a bit longer to load…

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            1. Microsoft edge. But main thing is not to use the address bar and instead right click on the youtube video and pick “copy video url”. Paste it and then wait a few seconds. If the picture is not visible prior to you posting your comment, then you did something wrong, and try again.

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  28. This video goes hand in hand with my cat story from last month. If you are into the subject matter, you might enjoy it.

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  29. We were talking about space the other day. Found this video last night. Entertaining and surprisingly educating. If you are a big sci-fi fan, you’ll be impressed with his knowledge. 

    This guy has so much intelligence from a lifetime of reading/watching sci-fi. And all of those sources he got it from. Man, tons of wasted energy. It got me fixated on how different things would be if space was off limits. And energy (the way we at un-Denial understand it) was common knowledge and 100 plus years old. There would be no such thing as sci-fi, and all that energy would have been spent on something else. Hopefully something useful.

    That had me thinking how with a few rational, obvious, and common-sense steps taken in history it would be a completely different world. It’s impossible to be this deep in agriculture and then start using fossil fuels and not go extinct. But it is possible to direct your energy into things that actually make sense. And if knowledge and equality were important in civilization (your still energy addicts, just smarter about it), you could go on a pretty good (and enlightened) run until you destroy all life on earth including yourself.

    Best case scenario with a most disciplined (population control) and wise energy budget, you might make it a over a thousand years. But I’m thinking the average fossil fuel run looks more like ours and just varies on where you directed your energy. It’s like bull riding. Got to be one or two that held on much longer than the rest of us. 

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      1. It wasn’t focused on and more just said in passing, but the stuff about Voyager 1 was mind blowing to me. Launched in 1977 it is traveling at 10.5 miles per second (17km/sec). This insanely fast speed will take 18,000 years to reach one lightyear. And over 40k years to reach the closest star.

        Another thing mentioned was the new estimation for the number of galaxies in the universe. Over two trillion!! If the Milky Way is an average looking galaxy with 100 billion stars that have a few planets revolving around each star… and there are two trillion Milky Way’s… and our universe might just be one of many in the multi-verse… LOL, forget it, it’s too much for my brain to compute. I need a supercomputer to figure it all out and “get it”.

        Entered all the data and my supercomputer only had this message to say: You were not brought upon this world to “get it”. Space is off limits.

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    1. Sorry, I only made it half way through before turning it off. Sure, every action has greater ramifications than it’s intended action. Most people don’t see much more than the direct action of one or two wider effects. But it seems that Nate is trying to have modernity at any cost here. His argument seems to be that if we could just see the much wider effects we could somehow ameliorate them. He never really touches the problem of TOO MANY PEOPLE. I think he is a classic case of denial.

      AJ

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      1. Fully agree AJ. I watched the full episode and all I could think of is another talk fest by Nate, skirting around all the big obvious problems trying to stay relevant to the mainstream by not being too ‘doomerish’.

        Just about everywhere I see the representation of ‘overshoot’ being a little above the carrying capacity, then a reduction after peak, whereas we are in massive overshoot, as in plague phase due to fossil fuels.

        https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7468250ec8a03d8e5b1a6904d2f8d8d7

        I hope the above image turned out. It’s the only one on ‘overshoot’ I could find where the peak is multiples above the carrying capacity, not just a little bit above carrying capacity..

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        1. I highly suspect that Nate is aware of overpopulation, but doesn’t have the guts to openly say it on his podcast for fear of alienating his audience or his sponsors. I also suspect that calling for “population reduction” doesn’t do well with the Youtube algorithm.

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        2. The bigger the overshoot and the longer the overshoot, the more the baseline carrying capacity is reduced. This can be accurately mathematically modelled (see Tom Murphy’s text book). Depending on where we consider overshoot started (herding, farming, or coal), we are looking at a tiny human population post-bust.

          https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347657192/figure/fig4/AS:976607900618756@1609852876738/Left-world-population-growth-through-history-Right-zoomed-view-of-the-global.ppm

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    2. And than what? We are fucked! Everything comes and goes – and our civilization soon no longer can achieve any positive marginal benefits. Gossen’s second law. Nate can stop promoting the great simplification. It will come by natural law.

      Saludos

      el mar

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      1. Totally agree with you (AJ and Hideaway too). Glad it’s not just me who is getting sick and tired of Nate’s routine. His interviews (with a few exceptions) and his Frankly’s (with no exceptions) are a complete waste of time at this point in my journey.

        Nate’s approach is that of someone who is getting thousands of new subscribers who are not overshoot aware. And then delicately trying to show them the bad news without scaring them away. But he is not getting new people. He’s just preaching to the choir. And the choir can handle (and deserves) the truth. He’s at a dangerous level now where he is providing more hopium than actual reality.

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      1. I’m all for it. No way to assassinate “the system”. If lone wolfs start targeting politicians one at a time, then god bless them for having the courage. (my advice would be to bypass the politicians though and aim at the mega billionaires)

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  32. Hi everyone, I’m back from a wonderful camping trip.

    Thanks for keeping the site going in my absence.

    I went to my usual spot about 130km north of here in the Sayward area. It’s a nicely treed campsite with about 7 sites on a lovely creek. Many nights I had the entire place to myself. A saw signs that a black bear visited one night and I could hear wolves howling in the distance some evenings.

    My days were simple but enjoyable. A long walk each morning followed by an afternoon of reading next to the creek, a movie after dinner, and bed early with about 10 hours sleep.

    I read 3 books, 2 of which were superb:

    Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen (2024)
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182733784-nuclear-war
    This is one of the best books I’ve read and I hope to do a book review as my next post. After reading this, and integrating it with current world events, it’s hard to imagine that peak anything, or climate change, will harm us before nuclear war takes us out. This, by the way, is what Jay Hanson, the deceased godfather of doomers, always predicted would happen.
    https://un-denial.com/2018/03/26/by-jay-hanson-reality-report-interview-november-3-2008/

    The Devil’s Element: Phosphorous and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan (2023)
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61089465-the-devil-s-element
    This is a deep dive into a little discussed but critically important and super interesting dimension of our overshoot predicament. I’ll try to do a book review on this as well but in case I don’t get to it, consider this a must read, at least as good as The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager on the Haber-Bosch process, which I’ve reviewed in the past.
    https://un-denial.com/2016/02/03/book-review-the-alchemy-of-air-by-thomas-hager/

    Gratitude by Oliver Sacks (2015)
    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27161964-gratitude
    Oliver Sacks is a most interesting and accomplished neurologist, and I’ve read other excellent books by him in the past. He wrote this book on his death bed and I’d heard good things about it. I thought it was ok but not great, perhaps because I think gratitude is kind of empty without deep overshoot awareness, which Sacks does not have.

    I watched the following 7 movies:

    • The Burial (2023) – Enjoyable drama with likeable characters, I’ll watch it again.
    • Oppenheimer (2023): First class big budget drama on the life of the father of the atomic bomb.
    • It Happened One Night (1934): A comedy romance that won all the Oscars in 1934. I enjoyed it and found the images of early automobile culture interesting.
    • Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One (2023): Excellent addition to the Mission Impossible franchise if you like this kind of big budget action movie.
    • Diggstown (1992): Pretty good con movie, but not as good as The Sting.
    • Defending Your Life (1991): An ok fantasy/romance/comedy, but I would not watch again.
    • Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre (2023) : A so-so action thriller. Not recommended unless you want to switch your brain off and eat popcorn.

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    1. I actually listened to The Devil’s Element as an audiobook. I even suggested Dan Egan as a guest for The Great Simplification. That would actually be an interesting episode.

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      1. Yes, Dan Egan would be an excellent guest.

        I have this theme related to Egan’s work on phosphorus bubbling in my mind.

        It seems all of the deposits needed to supercharge life are created by life: oxygen, phosphorous, potassium, fossil energy.

        It takes life to accelerate life.

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        1. Concentrated by life, not created by life. Every granite boulder and basalt boulder has a wide range of minerals in very minor amounts. It’s the erosion by weathering, then the uptake by plants, followed by the eating of those plants by animals that ends up concentrating so many needed minerals.

          Also note these days we do mine phosphorus from pure mineral deposits, created by geologic forces, (carbonatites), separate from life forces. Humans are spreading that around for the rest of life.

          Some not so light reading..

          https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9174171/

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          2. Which is exactly why, I have totally changed my mind on the “meaning” of the exponential growth of the human species.

            My feeling is that we are going to end up with a much more active and lush planet: accelerated water cycle, more CO2, more nutrients dispersed for life to use. Once, humans are deactivated (which as you rightly point out, will most probably happen at breakneck speed), the species won’t be able to inhibit the natural processes anymore (whether it brutally dies out or “just” loses it’s industrial super-powers). It takes a lot of energy to fell, mow and sickle yearly plant growth.

            Maybe the system is much more integrated than we are able to fathom from our narrow anthropocentric view: we have always been cogs. Or less mechanistically, as her children, for a time, we have been the agents of extraction and dispersion for Gaïa. Now that we have done our part, we are going to feed the next generation of offsprings.

            Life expands, feeding on life.

            From the Gaian point of view, the separation human species/other species probably doesn’t make sense: at some level all living organisms form a magma of cells. Maybe striving for its survival as a whole, consuming energy in order to maximize overall throughput. (Analogy dedicated to paqnation: the Zergs) That, to me, is the extent of natural intelligence. Maybe viruses are a way to orient, control growth within the Gaïan organism. Are species, really the unit of evolution? In order to reason, human beings have to artificially create boundaries, when none totally exist in reality.

            You have been entertaining the idea of the human super-organism lately, please do not discard, just out of habit, the idea that maybe it exists within the Gaïan super-organism 🙂

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            1. Maybe. I see you point but I can also see the opposing view.

              A species that leveraged fossil energy to build thousands of nuclear weapons to protect itself and then launches them all because a mistake is made, or because a desperate nation facing resource depletion lashes out, will destroy much of the planet for millions of years.

              Too much phosphorous can in some circumstances create a lush planet and in others a dead zone with gases toxic to all mammals.

              I do agree we are a small part of a complex interconnected system but I don’t think we predict whether the destination will be good or bad. It will be whatever the feedback loops decide.

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    2. Welcome back. Awesome pic. Makes me want to go camping right now. (did you eat any of those red berries above your chair?)

      Forgot about Diggstown. I like it a lot, but ya not as good as The Sting (Matchstick Men is another great con movie). Might try The Burial tonight. 

      And we all voted while you were gone; you are not allowed to go on anymore vacations 😊

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    3. Welcome back Rob! We missed you. Hope there wasn’t too much comment clean up for you to do. I had a few wordpress issues. Your camping site looks great! Can you drink the water from that stream?

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        1. One of my comments just took a day to come through, probably because of links. I also found that when I hit “shift + enter” that makes duplicate comments. It’s an old habit of mine to make a new paragraph. But don’t need to do that anymore.

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          1. That was me unspamming your comment with links. Sorry, WordPress occasionally flags a post as spam for no good reasons. If it happens again, just wait a day or two for me to fix it.

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  33. Hideaway’s still banging on denial.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-10-2024/#comment-778406

    South sea bubble, tulips in Holland, wall street late 20’s, Japan 1989, 2000 tech bubble….

    Millions of investors worldwide never make mistakes, LOL..

    While we continue to increase fossil fuel use, which is clearly happening, as in more TWh of production added every year than renewables, then of course the ‘renewable’ bubble can keep growing.

    What actually is happening, is the ripping up of rainforest to build new coal mines and industrial facilities, to then burn coal to make the cheap Aluminium, in places like Indonesia, so the new solar panels and transmission lines and EV body panels can be built, so we can claim to be going green.

    Humanity is just digging up more of the planet, with fossil fuels, sending more species into extinction, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, more pollution throughout the ecosphere by building more machines that have relatively short lifespans and all have to be replaced with minerals from lower grade ore bodies, which will take more energy to access.

    This progress is just a hastening of our journey to the end of modern civilization and the destruction of most of the ecosphere in the process. Of course the IEA wants this destruction to happen much faster, we need to invest more.

    It’s always MORE, of everything, never less, which is what’s needed to reduce future suffering when modern civilization collapses due to rapidly declining oil availability, whenever that happens..

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-10-2024/#comment-778419

    All the building of MORE, MORE, and MORE has done is increase the use of fossil fuels over the last 2 decades. The building of MORE has raised the content of CO2 in the atmosphere, brought about MORE rainforest destruction, MORE species extinction etc.

    My arguments of needing LESS building of everything, strict population control and reduction around the world is always in answer to someone’s post about building MORE, yet you never say a word against building MORE…

    The continual building of MORE modern civilization is not possible forever on a finite planet, and what we’ve built has had a massive detrimental effect on the natural world, that we totally rely upon. What’s worse is that we are building MORE with a depleting, one time asset, that needs an increasing complexity to mine from deeper depths and lower grades on average..

    The answer you and every other cornucopian has, always appears to be an acceleration of the building MORE meme, always with handwaves of any approaching problems, like plastics, fertilizers, explosives, chemicals needed for farming, mining and recycling, that are all fossil fuel based, that will all fall in availability once we are past peak mining of oil, coal, gas, and everything else as well.

    LESS economy is what’s needed to reduce suffering in the future, yet the economy has no way to slow down without crashing, therefore it will crash either by choice, or by depletion, which will be much worse than a planned reduction.

    However because most of the population does not want to give up their creature comforts, they look to any piece of fiction to hold onto the modernity they enjoy and deny the possibility of a bad outcome in the future, which is precisely why we will head into a fast collapse when we are past peak oil production in an accelerating decline.

    The feedback loops from the unravelling of complexity of everything in the modern world guarantees the collapse in all energy production and therefore everything else.

    When in history was the last time there was a huge reduction in available energy year after year, an downward acceleration in available energy. The answer is probably never, so the event of the near future, when it happens will be something unlike anything possibly ever experienced by humanity as a whole.

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    1. https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-4-2024/#comment-778041

      All the proponents of ‘lots more transmission’ to spread power around a large grid, think and work on averages. In reality we get solar and wind gluts and droughts all across the grid, no matter how large it is. When the NE of the US is in a renewable drought for instance, the assumption is that transmission from the SW of the country ‘could’ have great excess to transfer, but it’s not necessarily the case. What happens if it’s cloudy in the SW as well?

      During the drought in the NE, there might be an excess of wind in the NW of the country, so transmission of great power from the SW to NE is useless. What would be needed was huge transmission from NW to NE in this instance.

      What’s actually needed to cover periods of renewable droughts is large transmission lines from the NW and the SW and the S to the NE, plus large transmission from SW to NE and S, and S to NW and SW and, and, and …..

      The system would need to be massively overbuilt in all directions to cover periods of huge in excess and periods of droughts that occur everywhere throughout the system, especially in winter when all solar is low. It’s totally and utterly unaffordable. In the NE of the USA how much would need to be imported 50GW, 100GW?

      If skimming on the whole lot is the plan, then say goodbye to modern civilization anyway. Continuous power to build the new, plus operate and maintain the existing system is how we’ve reached our modern civilization. If we can’t continue to power it enough to enable all these functions, then it’s the modern civilization that is leaving us.

      Plus of course the plan is to have a lot more power than exists at present as all the EVs need making and powering, plus heat in homes and businesses, plus a lot of new recycling plants etc, so power use will have to grow exponentially for all these ‘extra’ uses of electricity. So the 50-100GW of transmission lines need to be larger, but from everywhere!!

      The numbers to build it properly are astronomical, but building it half arsed means no more modern civilization anyway..

      Plus of course over time, no matter how well the recycling is going, more metals will be needed. As all metals on average need an increased energy input to maintain production because the metals are getting lower grade, deeper and harder to grind, then civilization continuously needs to grow to provide this extra energy.
      Infinite growth on a finite planet, what could possibly go wrong…

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    2. https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-4-2024/#comment-778111

      OFM, This is the bit you continually overlook…

      “There’s nothing in the way of physical or technical considerations to prevent it….. the materials are and will be available”

      Once we have gone past peak oil, with oil production declining at an accelerating rate, all the materials to build anything will not be available. They all rely upon a growing quantity of oil. Once this oil production decline sets in, the feedback loops of necessary equipment to gain access to oil will fall/fail just like everything else. Those huge tractors and trucks will struggle to get the fuel they need, exacerbating the problems in cities, making the building or making anything extremely difficult.

      Once collapse happens we wont be able to access the remaining oil and gas. It’s no longer the matter of drilling a 100 ft deep well with simple technology to gain access to oil. Any future oil comes from either deep down with horizontal drills and fracking, or deep offshore and similar hard to get places that require complex technology to gain access to. Without the complex technology after collapse, the oil may as well be on Mars.

      But wait, it’s worse. As entropy breaks down everything we build, to build new we will need lots of mined new minerals, which also require modern highly complex processes to gain access to. We used up all the simple and close mineral deposits of high grade. Even gathering old metals spread throughout old abandoned cities requires transport, how will this be done without oil and probably horses that have all been eaten during the collapse??

      Modern civilization is over for good once it fails, there are no second chances. What you state at the end of planned and controlled contraction of the economy and population is what I’ve been advocating for the entire time and we should have been doing for many decades. Instead what’s happened is we’ve gone into massive overshoot in every area of modernity and population, so what’s left is to try and reduce future suffering as much as possible by contracting economy and population as much as possible.

      The problem is no-one wants that, so we continually get told stories of magical outcomes from something that’s not physically possible, and everyone embraces further ‘growth’ calling more destruction of the biosphere ‘green’, by burning more fossil fuels and destroying more natural areas to gain the minerals and metals necessary… All while further depleting fossil fuels and going deeper into overshoot.

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    3. https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-10-2024/#comment-778318

      Just for all the believers in a clean green economy, being entirely a circular economy, I found this announcement from Australia’s largest recycler of lithium batteries..
      https://investorhub.lithium-au.com/announcements/6426354

      They finally made a profit from the operation, not from selling the recycled bits, but by collecting the waste, to a tune of $A5.63/kg…

      This is disastrous for anyone thinking a circular economy is possible. If the only way to make money is to charge people to take away waste, then the overall recycling rate will be much lower. people will dump stuff in holes in the ground a lot of the time before paying to have it carted away.

      It’s all these extra little bits added together, that show how a ‘bright green future’ is not possible. All the waste is collected with diesel trucks, the chemicals used in recycling processes are from fossil fuels etc.

      As soon as really hard times approach, this business will go bust, as people/businesses will not be able to afford the high payment to have old batteries removed, so will either stockpile them or go bury them ‘somewhere’…

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  34. I can’t claim I always understand HHH @ POB, but I do listen to his opinions.

    It seems everything these days is bad: inflation, deflation, rising rates, lower rates.

    What is good these days?

    Perhaps it’s simply that every economic action is bad without increasing energy and materials??

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-july-10-2024/#comment-778377

    Whenever the FED starts cutting rates is when everything blows up. I’ll explain why.

    Banks funding cost are tied to the Sofr rate. So as the FED raised interest rates the Sofr rate went up. Last I checked Sofr or a banks dollar cost funding rate was 5.4%. Banks are sitting on a bunch of unrealized losses on assets they bought during the pandemic that yield less than 5.4%. A lot of these assets yield 3.0-3.5%. So banks are losing money holding these assets. Because those assets don’t yield enough to cover their current dollar funding cost. Even if they hold to maturity the unrealized losses don’t become realized losses. They are still hemorrhaging money by having these assets on their balance sheets.

    So by raising interest rates the FED has in fact supercharged the reach for yield. Banks are forced to buy all kinds of risky assets that yield more than their dollar funding cost.

    CLO’s backed by junk corporate debt and commercial real estate is what the banks are being forced to buy.

    When the FED moves to seriously cut rates. The banks will move back into treasury bonds and out of all the risky stuff they have been forced to buy.

    Corporate bond yields will blowout. Which will lead to freeze on corporate stock buybacks. Sending stock prices lower. Corporates will look to trim headcount’s . Which will put further downward pressure on stock prices due to a cut in passive retirement inflows into the stock market.

    Everyone who currently locked in their current 3 or 3.5% home mortgage and can’t afford to sell their home. As you can see by the record low housing inventory for sale. As the FED cuts aggressively and mortgage rates come down. The supply or inventory of homes for sale will go up drastically. Which means lower prices. Much lower home prices.

    Slowing inflation that leads to FED rate cuts equals nothing good for the economy or the markets.

    The reach for yield is why stock markets continue higher when the FED’s balance sheet is shrinking. If you remove the reach for yields by cutting interest rates stock market goes down not up. The size of the FEDs balance sheet simply doesn’t matter.

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  35. Hello Rob,

    Not particularly exceptional (yet mildly entertaining). This video was recommended to me by youtube algorithm (probably an AI?) I just wanted to say you were right about the impact artificial intelligence would be having on the internet:

    That was fast.

    It reminded me of this article by the archdruid: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-04-30/the-death-of-the-internet-a-pre-mortem/.

    Or this one by Tim Watkins: https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2023/05/23/welcome-to-the-internet-death-spiral/.

    Internet has now become an information landfill (it seems even scientific papers can not be fully trusted anymore, at least in some contentious fields, such as medicine). We are clearly past peak value of information technology. (Didn’t the argument that more people would increase the probably of geniuses being born to fix the problems facing humanity always seemed fishy, if not childish, anyway?)

    Does the kind of AI we are getting increasingly smell like techno-utopian panic? (see the Spotify section in the video above)

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    1. Good one. It’s a cliche but it seems to be true. We are collectively losing our minds. Covid seems to have broken something. I am astonished by the lack of judgement our leaders have shown around Ukraine/Russia (and Gaza).

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    2. Yes that spotify bit was depressing. Reminds me of the “why music sucks” video we had last month. And it reinforces this quote: “Speaks to something beyond just music. Our whole culture is increasingly 1) Easily produced, 2) Easily consumed, 3) Easily forgotten”

      And thanks for the JMG link. I’ve seen it before, but with more energy knowledge under my belt, it now reads like a Hideaway post. Lots of background stuff going on to keep the internet afloat.

      More people equals more geniuses to fix the problems and invent new stuff… LOL, yes very fishy and childish. And with overshoot & overpopulation, what an idiotic message… but not surprising at all when everything we do, and how we do it, is wrong. AKA: conquering fire is evil and off limits (from Life & Mother Earth’s perspective).

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    3. I was watching a trailer for House of the Dragon recently. Scrolled to the comments, 4000 in total. Of the ones I read, 99% seemed like fake comments. Incredible stuff.

      Another thing I have noticed on Pinterest. It depends on images uploaded elsewhere on the internet, especially from blogs. In the age of micro-blogging (Insta, Twitter, etc.) there is just way less new material. So a lot of the reference images still being recommended on Pinterest are now over 10 years old. It is almost becoming like time capsule.

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  36. Hello everyone. This is a question to the ones knowledgeable in farming. More precisely about seed selection. Since, I am doing natural farming, I try to keep most of my seeds in order to be able to “waste” them. (I am not ready to sow a 3 euros worth pack of seeds with a probability so low that at most one plant would come to maturity. Plus, I need for the seeds to adapt to my way of gardening which is so different from the seed producers’)

    In “landrace gardening” (https://lofthouse.com/), Joseph Lofthouse says he tastes all his vegetables to decide whether or not to keep the seeds (when he selects for taste). I understand how one could do that for vegetables which we eat after the seeds have achieved maturity (such as corn, squash or tomatoes). But there are some vegetables for which I find this difficult and I don’t understand how to proceed. For instance, consider carrot, daikon radish, beet or leek.

    How would you do that (in the simplest way)? Could you point me to experts in this field?

    Here are a few ideas I came up with, but am not convinced by any:

    • cut a sample of the vegetable to taste. Won’t this affect survivability (for instance for winter daikon radishes)? Or do I need to uproot the vegetable before winter, store it, cut the tip to taste, just before planting again in spring? But this seems to affect the plant lifecycle and will not select for winter hardiness.
    • decide through a proxy: for instance taste some leaf and assume this is representative (at least when comparing with the neighbouring vegetable to select for the best ones).
    • Pick by some other trait which reflects the taste of the plant (for instance the color, or shape). A beautiful plant is a tasty plant?
    • use a device which measures sugar (I’d rather not do that, I’d like to do it the old way)
    • do not select by taste for these kind of plants, because a leek is going to be a leek (I believe this not to be true)
    • do not select by taste because the genetics matter less than the nature of the soil for these kind of plants (maybe true: the presence of some specific mycelium in soil is said to greatly affect taste. However, I also heard that modern cultivars are not able to extract minerals as well from the soil and do not taste as good. If I am not mistaken, taste matters in that it is our portable scientific device to measure mineral content)
    • More elaborate schemes, such as collect all seeds, put them in distinct jars and label them. Then next year plant them separately and do the taste comparison afterwards, on the offsprings. Select the best ones and get rid of the other jars as well as offsprings.
    • Not select: because our minds are limited and can’t get all the unintended consequences. One should eat what the environment provides, this will lead to the overall optimum for the health of the individual as well as the eco-system. It’s all about co-evolution. I guess this would be the position of natural farming. But I am not ready to entirely forego plant eugenics. Maybe I just have to get rid of one more of my mental mis-conception. Receive everything as gifts instead of trying to control the outcomes. I am wavering on that: I sometimes got some vegetables which became a little bit too wild (not really a problem for me, but there are others with more domesticated palates in my household. I’d like to please them too). That’s a difficult philosophical question for me. What would be your opinion on that?

    Plant breeding and seed keeping is fascinating to me. But, I clearly lack the knowledge and know-how. And, more importantly, I don’t know enough to know how I would like to do it.

    Thank you!

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  37. Chris Martenson is VERY concerned about the implications of the Trump shooting.

    As with covid, he rightly concludes that the authorities are either evil or completely incompetent.

    I had to turn it off because it totally creeps me out when Martenson includes his spouse in the conversation who adds nothing but eye candy, presumably to boost clicks.

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      1. Most models have incomprehensible complexities, fundamental incompatibilities, reality-denying behaviors, and are heavy consumers of non-renewable resources.

        I think it’s best to simplify and make do without.

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    2. Lucky you turned it off. I somehow made it 47 minutes into this garbage. I don’t follow Martenson so maybe it was an unusual topic and “heat of the moment” format for him. And yes, his wife was embarrassingly worthless. But so was Chris. No way can he be this bad in his overshoot videos. 

      The general overall reaction to what happened yesterday is comical. “How did we as a nation get here? There is no place in America for political violence” LOL LOL!!! Nobody can pick up a history book huh? 

      I am getting much closer to that George Carlin level of awareness where it was all entertainment for him in his last few years. Focusing on fire is doing it for me. Incompetence vs malice is a distinction without a difference at this point.

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      1. Martenson has done some excellent work. For example, his crash course is a top-tier introduction to overshoot.

        On the negative side, he never discusses population reduction, and in the early days denied (or didn’t touch) climate change to maximize his subscriptions.

        For more than 16 years I have supported and promoted Martenson’s work hundreds of times, yet he has never acknowledged the importance of Varki’s MORT, nor has he helped un-Denial even once.

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        1. Alright now you have me really hating this clown. 😊

          Overshoot is not rocket science. It’s so damn easy to grasp once you get into it. I don’t know how these well-informed and aware guys that have been doing this for so long cannot grasp that the #1 reason the overshoot community is still so small is because of denial. Therefore, denial should be at the top of their lists of importance. But somehow their MORT/denial is maybe blocking them from seeing this obvious fact?… LOL… I don’t know, I get dizzy trying to figure it out. 

          The fact that you like him (or respect him, or whatever) is all I need to know that he must have correct knowledge on some topics. Your bullshit radar is too good for me to think you got it wrong with this guy. So ya, I’m chalking this video up to him being out of his comfort zone. 

          But there is something that bugs me about him. My salesman radar was blinking sometimes during the video. And the fact that he looks 60 and she looks 30 gives me a bad vibe right off the bat. (Nothing wrong if it’s real love, but that scenario is usually all about ugly insecurities. Money for her, and showing off an impressive trophy for him)

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          1. Not to give to strong a defense of him (Chris). I came across him just prior to Covid and he was one of the first concerned about it and the disinformation we were being fed. He was knowledgeable about hydroxy and Ivermectin and was an early proponent. When more and more info was stuffed behind a paywall I quit following him. Too bad he went so downhill since he picked a younger wife.

            AJ

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            1. CM IMHO became a sensationalist about 3 years ago and basically lost all his credibility.

              Slowly not having much to do with most of the original peak-oilers now. I am this close to giving up Greer. Really don’t think he has much left to say on anything that I can make it to the end of a blog post on. I actually find it rather liberating.

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              1. You’re not alone nikoB. This and the Nate Hagens frankly thread above pretty much sums it up. The collective group here at un-Denial is farther along in understanding the big picture. We require next level sources. But because of the monetary system, they are not willing to go next level.

                I used to have a golden rule to help limit the amount of sources I was using. You had to be talking about overshoot, energy, or sustainable ways of living. Have revised it to – you have to be talking about how zero energy constraints can be broken or what we should be doing to prepare for the end (pop reduction, nuclear decomm, helping animals/plants).

                This revision has me down to zero sources. And I agree about finding it rather liberating. 

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          2. Evie is older than she looks if it makes you feel any better. But goodness me she is rather dumb. She seems like a nice person, so I feel bad for saying it.

            Chris Martenson’s Crash Course is excellent. Really a must for anyone getting into these topics.

            I have been a paid subscriber off and on at Peak Prosperity. The behind the paywall content is no different to his public facing content. Maybe just more illuminati type stuff (which you can get for free on any dope-head’s YouTube channel).

            Back in the day, Chris was more of a finance bro and used to run a really good podcast. But something I can’t help but wonder, if he was so good at finance, why is he so desperate for coin today?

            Alice F, made heaps of dough from the stock market (using her industry knowledge), and retired early so she could read science and educate the public FOR FREE. As a good Samaritan. I believe Gail Tvrberg had a similar story.

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    1. Good piece by Chuck. Not sure any civilization in overshoot with resource constraints (and in denial of both) has ever maintained civility let alone rationality as it slid into dissolution and disintegration. Sadly I think we will use the nuclear option on the way down.

      AJ

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  41. Sarah Connor today warns about forgetting the lessons of history.

    Not mentioned but relevant is that the holocausted are now holocausting, and the global defenders of peace are canceling nuclear arms agreements, and causing wars to defend democracy using undemocratic dupes.

    https://www.collapse2050.com/documentary-how-joseph-goebbels-sold-hitler-to-germany/

    Joseph Goebbels was a skilled propagandist who manufactured a lie so bold it could only be true. He manipulated a population desperate for answers, by telling them what they wanted to hear. The story they sold to Germans was one of the greatest marketing feats ever conducted, resulting in one of most deadly periods in human history.

    I fear humanity has already forgotten.

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  42. B today reposted a good essay on overshoot with a Hideaway theme.

    https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/malthus-was-right

    Malthus Was Right

    Was it wise then to build an entire civilization on a knowingly finite reserve of mineral heritage — especially, knowing that it will heat up the planet when used…? Was it wise to let populations around the world increase in their numbers in a run-away style, literally consuming all natural resources and eating up their own future…?

    —“OK, maybe not… But we will find out something.”

    Sure. The thing we have failed to understand so far is that technology did not ever stop drawdown. It has only accelerated it by allowing us to tap into ancient reserves of carbon and minerals, thereby creating progress traps. Instead of using a pickax to mine metal ores and coal for an occasional tool or sword, for example, we now use immense machinery — powered by finite reserves of coal and oil — to mine what seemed to be bare rock for our ancestors… To uphold the life support systems most of us depend upon. With the depletion of the best resources, and moving on to mine ever harder to get ones, we were walking up against a landslide.

    We have created a Ponzi-scheme on truly epic proportions.

    Now, we are forced to commit ever larger amounts of energy, materials and labor just to stay in place. As mineral deposits deplete, however, they require an exponential increase in energy, and material input — cannibalizing the very things we get from finite mineral deposits. Yes, I know. We will switch to solar, nuclear, wind, hydrogen or fusion. Sure… All made from non-renewable, one time, finite mineral resources.

    What could possibly go wrong…?

    Happy overshoot day everyone.

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  43. Tim Morgan today discusses the fragility of our financial system.

    #283: The seductive risk of financialization

    In reality, the only value commanded by money subsists as a claim on the material things for which it can be exchanged. This is why no quantity of money – be it currency, cryptos, precious metals or cowrie-shells – is of the slightest use to a person stranded on a desert island, or cast away in a lifeboat.

    However we measure it, the aggregate body of monetary claims existing in the system is vastly larger than the ongoing flow of material economic prosperity. Moreover, this body of claims has continued to expand rapidly, even though the underlying economy has long been decelerating towards contraction.

    This means, of course, that we have created the conditions for a chaotic contraction in the financial system.

    Just as money is loaned into existence it is, in the normal course of events, repaid out of existence. This, though, disregards the possibility – which is now a probability – of default. As a series of high profile sectors inflect from growth into rapid contraction, we should be prepared for a cascade of defaults across the system, a process exacerbated by a degradation of the value of financial and material collateral.

    Even if we had complete and granular data on these exposures, it would be hard to quantify the complexity risk implicit in our Byzantine, inter-connected, cross-collateralized financial system. The coming crisis is likely to be triggered, not by weaknesses in the things that we can measure, but by fractures in components so esoteric as to be only dimly comprehended, even by the experts.

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    1. No way!

      The dust bowl and great depression era tell me people are still smart, tough, useful and skillful 90 years ago. This very recent spike has pumped up the idiocracy and uselessness to a blitzkrieg pace. I’m sure it has to do with the internet going mainstream in mid 90’s. The internet is the “peak of the universe”… haha… dont know why thats funny, but I’m laughing.

      Pre internet, the incompetence level was nowhere near what it is today. As soon as confused, long off the correct path, apes got to see what other confused, long off the correct path, apes were up to 24/7… let the freakshow begin.

      But we’ve got to be coming to an end. Peak internet has to be behind us, because I can’t take the next blitzkrieg with A.I. Cannot imagine what that’s gonna do to the incompetence levels ten years from now. (writer/director Mike Judge might end up correct, we’ll be using gatorade for farming and wondering why nothing is growing😊. But I doubt it because how much dumber can it get before the nuclear buttons are pushed)

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  47. Record high temps in the middle east. I can’t imagine being aware and living in that region.

    https://climateandeconomy.com/2024/07/16/16th-july-2024-todays-round-up-of-climate-news/

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    1. The book reads like a thrilling Tom Clancy novel because she structured it around a minute by minute account of how a global nuclear war would unfold using a very plausible scenario backed by technical facts from hundreds of interviews with experts she conducted over 10 years of research.

      Then she goes into painful detail of what the world will be like after the initial couple hour event. If you are vaporized during the initial attack you will be one of the lucky ones.

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  48. https://heatmap.news/climate/summer-2024-heat-east-coast?rxcdsdfsafds=oinniuuh

    A week ago, power outages caused by the hurricane pushed over 2 million Texans into the dark during a record-breaking heat wave, seeing heat indexes above 100 degrees Fahrenheit throughout all of last week. As of yesterday, utility CenterPoint Energy — which has drawn criticism from many, including Governor Greg Abbott, over its response to the hurricane — had yet to restore power to over 320,000 clients. Schulze, a life-long Houston resident, got his electricity back on Sunday.

    Volunteers are even more in need as hospitals in Texas struggle to meet demand. Dr. Owais Durrani told CNN that hospital crowding in Houston is approaching levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic. To ameliorate the conditions in Texas, around 600 Red Cross volunteers from across the nation are stationed in Houston, providing thousands of hot meals, ice, and water, beyond helping maintain 16 emergency shelters.

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  49. Really good interview with Col. Larry Wilkerson, one of my favorite geopolitical analysts. Too much to summarize. He touches on all the big issues except of course the role overshoot is playing in world events.

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  50. I watched most of the Chris Martenson video above.

    Personally, even though I dislike Trump and I think a second Trump term would be a disaster, I think that Trump is a just symptom of the corruption and overall dysfunction in American politics.

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    1. That said, Trump wants to deport 15 million people from the U.S.
      https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/trumps-deportation-army

      Donald Trump wants to deport 15 million people. He has now made that promise on multiple occasions. He made similar promises during his first term, when he said he’d deport 8 million people. Back then, he was thwarted by institutional resistance, other priorities, incompetence, and his general tendency to get distracted.

      But this time there’s a plan. It is not a smart plan, nor is it an achievable one. But it is an unapologetically autocratic plan.

      …

      Depending on which rally or interview you consult, Trump has put his deportation goal somewhere between 15 and 20 million people. The Pew Foundation estimates there are about 10 million undocumented people in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security puts the figure at about 11 million. The far-right Center for Immigration Studies puts the high end at around 14 million.

      This means that already, Trump is promising to deport more people than there are undocumented immigrants in the country. Which means he’s promising to deport between 1 and 6 million people who are legal residents or U.S. citizens.

      …

      I asked several immigration experts what it would take to deport 15 million people. That figure is twice the population of New York City. In fact it’s about the size of the three largest U.S. cities combined — New York, L.A., and Chicago — plus Pittsburgh. A state of 15 million people would be the fifth most populous in the country — ahead of Pennsylvania, and behind only California, Texas, New York, and Florida.

      …

      The Trump immigration plan would be the second largest forced displacement of human beings in human history, on par with Britain’s disastrous partition of India, and second only to total forced displacement during World War II.

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