Art Berman today responded to the many critics that piled on him after his last essay in which he reversed his prior warnings about oil depletion by doubling down.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/peak-oil-requiem-for-a-failed-paradigm/
Peak Oil: Requiem for a Failed Paradigm
Technology, capital, and price—not just geology—now dictate oil supply. The 2005-2014 price boom unlocked more oil than anyone expected. Today, financial markets and geopolitics—not depletion—drive the oil game.
Shale changed everything, unleashing a massive new supply. Peak Oil still pretends it doesn’t exist—won’t even put it on a chart. That’s why it’s a dying paradigm. It had its moment and reshaped my world view in important ways. May it rest in peace.
If you listen to the Art Berman that existed a year ago, and compare him to today’s Art Berman, and observe he did not correct or retract any of his prior analysis, you have to conclude that some powerful force is in play, like perhaps mRNA transfection brain damage, or grandchildren induced MORT.
un-Denial 
I haven’t kept up with Art for a while. This update is very surprising.
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I think that this reaction comes from a breaching of a mental boundary for Art. Essentially Ecological Overshoot went from something that he could think about whimsically while living unheeded. Now that things have become more “real” he is really leaning on that denial.
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If a super-duper deep dive into AI interests you, this is as good as it gets.
I did not understand it all, but my take-away is that we should hope that energy scarcity and societal complexity reduction constrains AI before they make too much more progress.
I very much doubt AI will solve fusion or cancer, but it sure as hell will create a lot of chaos in social media and politics.
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In the spirit of Berman’s declaration that the peak oil “theory” is dead, Matt Orfalea today released a banger on the lab leak conspiracy theory.
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“The Washington Post reported that 5 million people left Wuhan between January 10 (the start of the Chinese New Year travel rush) and the lockdown.[1] . . .
Already we have very strong evidence that Covid-19 was deliberately spread. The disease was observed to spread rapidly throughout Wuhan indicating it was very contagious, yet millions left Wuhan for the new-year celebrations in their ancestral towns, and barely spread the disease, indicating it is hardly contagious at all. Then it suddenly becomes very contagious in Iran, and Italy.” ??
http://www.preearth.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1184&sid=ffcd77e902b4bcb97131e5472ed2bf12
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Yowser. That’s a deep post on all things covid!
I’ve never heard of the author “preearth”. Can you say something to vouch for his/her integrity? I’m always cautious about new sources that I have no track record with.
I see he thinks it was deliberately spread but this could mean:
What is the essence of his explanation for what happened with covid, and most important, why?
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Just an old random comment that caught my attention. This type of sentiment used to make me crazy😊.
Indi handled it perfectly.
Goods Vs. Bads (China Vs. America) — indi.ca
p.s. Ya the 180 for Art Berman is very bizarre… and I’m sure a perfect case study for MORT.
In the “Lazy Thinking” comment section, Art is snapping at people left and right. LOL. I don’t follow his blog so not sure if that’s the norm… but I’m betting it’s not.
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Peter Kalmus seems to have partially defective denial genes. He is still a bit energy blind though and seems to still believe that we have enough for everyone though.
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Another factor could be Art’s colleagues. He still posts frequently on LinkedIn and his old geology mates are soooo mean to him in the comments. He must have got tired of being made to feel like he is wrong and an outsider by them.
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Yes, or maybe he’s worried about his pension losing value soon and needs to keep his income flowing.
The nastiness is two-way. Berman has a history of being very harsh with anyone that disagrees with him. I avoid contact.
I downloaded a copy of the slurping sound video because I won’t be surprised if he asks Nate to delete it. It’s an excellent interview. I think I’ve listened to it at least 4 times.
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It does seem like Berman either got tired of delivering bad news (like Julian Simon fixing his long bout of depression with fuzzy math) or succumbed to general peer pressure behind the scenes.
Doom-reversal can also be about a woman who gets tired of “negativity,” so you fake a positive attitude to keep her around for primal needs. It’s common for women to downplay dark data and dwell on “positivity” and “changing relationships.” Samantha Sweetwater covered this in a Nate Hagens video (#112) where he asked why mostly men talk about Peak Oil.
Berman’s shift also has parallels to guy like Glenn Loury giving up on fixing urban crime culture or acknowledging performance gaps, saying we just need more DEI and cop-bashing after all. Drill, Baby, Riot! It’s all about environmental regulations oppressing innocent resource looters.
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Leon Simons is the climate scientist who with James Hansen figured out that sulphur pollution reduction probably explains why the planet is warming faster than all the other climate scientists predicted.
It’s so depressing reading the comments on his posts because the majority deny the implications of his work.
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“depressing”. i feel that. i felt it so deeply when i first started to understand how bad things were – 20 degree C temperature anomalies at the poles – (and they had to increase the scale recently to include 30C anomalies, lol i think) that i just about escaped doing myself in by instead chucking it all in instead, and going to live in a way that rejected convention as fully as i could manage (eating from bins in an eco-squat and roundly rejecting every ***ing thing i’d ever known or been brought up to aspire to). what cheers me up a little bit, and humbles me when i think WASF, is the realisation of how little we understand. i listened to joe rogan podcasting with brian cox a couple of nights ago, despite my not being a huge fan of techno-optimists (i’m understating for dramatic effect here), and what i took away was in the face of all the hubris, the arrogance and the destruction, we still realise that the bit of the universe that we can actually see and pretend to understand to some degree is about 5%. the othet 95%, dark energy and dark matter, we don’t even pretend to have a clue about, and that’s coming from a species that declared our understanding of science was complete save a dotted I or crossed T here and there, about 150 years ago. humility is not our strong point.
a slightly alcohol-fuelled rant to note that depression and hubris are perhaps slightly related…i have suffered the depression thing my entire life, and perhaps i’ve just reached the stage where i’ve entirely given up on humanity, but that the completely unexpected might pop out of the 95% of reality that we have no clue about at all – and that perhaps everything that’s happening here is happening for a reason we can’t easily grasp – is not impossible.
aka be well, fellow traveller, and don’t let the bastards grind you down.
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welcome and thanks for stopping by. I have a hunch I know who you are.
we’ve built such a complex dangerous world and so many clever monkeys are working to make it more complex and more dangerous that we can be certain of the unexpected
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A Renewable Energy Transition Violates The Maximum Power Principle | Art Berman
I liked that short article from Art, but I really like this comment from Stephen Gwynne. I still have to double check myself when it comes to this subject. For you MPP buffs out there, is this a good description:
And after reading all the comments, I’m even more confused about Art. Can’t get a read on him, at all. LOL… am I missing something here?
And Art’s not talking about that Hideaway stuff of how technically we will never be out of FF’s. They’ll always be here; we just won’t be able to get to em… No, if you read the full comments, you can tell it’s not that. Ok, so this was from 5/20/24. A week later (5/28) he said this to someone else.
What? It’s so strange that I’m doubting myself and assuming I must not be reading the situation correctly. That Steve guy was confused too, but nobody else said anything. Are me and Steve the crazy ones? Or is Art?😊
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It’s Art, not you.
On many occasions Art has said we’ll have to make do with less energy in the not too distant future, and that if we were wise we’d proactively reduce our energy consumption. A story he frequently tells is that life in the 1950’s was pretty good when we used a lot less energy per person. He also said a powerful AI when asked to solve energy scarcity will tell us to use less.
The problem is, as Hideaway has explained, and Art probably deep down understands, a small energy reduction is likely to trigger a simplification that goes far beyond just being a little poorer, with many supply chain and debt feedback loops causing oil supply to fall much further than might be expected due to geology alone.
I think Art’s denial circuit has taken charge and we are witnessing another great case study for Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT.
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https://www.regenauer.press/die-eloi
The Eloi, Part 1
Those who believed the state and its consensus conglomerate under Corona were often ridiculed by critics. As soon as the narrative changes in their favor, the critics in question follow the same sirens. Although the evidence is now clear. Those who want to believe are simply not open to contrary information – and there is a lot of it in relation to Musk and Trump.
Tom-Oliver Regenauer | 25.01.2025
In HG Wells’ novel The Time Machine and the various film adaptations, they are portrayed as ” dissolute, slow and naive .” Marked by ” subhuman intelligence .” For Dan Simmons, they are “ lazy, uneducated and uncultured .” The Eloi . The descendants of Homo sapiens, kept as a source of food for the Morlocks. ” They develop backwards and unlearn thousands of years of culture, thought and reason until they are content with the pleasure of mere existence .” When the key signal to which they have been conditioned by their breeders – a converted civil defense siren – sounds, they trot voluntarily and in hypnotic apathy to the slaughter.
Many critics of the measures had a similar impression of the supporters of the Covid propaganda, which has now been refuted on all points . And rightly so. The followers of Drosten, Lauterbach and Co. were blind to facts and walked into an open knife. Unfortunately, many critics of the measures are now behaving in the same way to a large extent. They have found idols. They want to believe. They ignore information, facts and data and become victims of a newly adjusted, well-oiled propaganda machine. Just so they don’t give up the hopes they have placed in their new heroes and don’t have to face the less than edifying reality.
They believe in Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Alice Weidel, Peter Thiel and above all Elon Musk. In the fact that supranational sustainability corporatism is over, the financial system is saved and justice is being established. Yesterday’s resistance fighters are today’s ” sleepers “. They seem to have forgotten how propaganda works. For this reason – and because it is such a catchy word that you only have to change one letter to create the first name of a supposed savior – I will allow myself to mockingly refer to the followers of the MAGA cult as Eloi in the following pages. A little bit of fun is necessary.
course correction with announcement
Lynn Forester de Rothschild , who is at least one level above BlackRock and Co. in the financial oligarchic pecking order, announced the current narrative change on August 30, 2023, when she told Bloomberg that the term » ESG belongs in the bin .« It was burned. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, who wanted to » force « market participants to support ESG, also shared announced to its investors on March 26, 2023 that it would replace the discredited ESG label with the term “ energy pragmatism .”
At the same time, however, both Rothschild and Fink admitted that the overarching agenda would not change and that the “green economy” would continue to be pushed forward, but that it would have to be marketed better in order not to further antagonize conservative circles. A simple marketing trick. It is therefore not surprising that both BlackRock and six major American banks left the Net Zero Initiative at the beginning of 2025. At the “perfect time”, as the New York Post notes, so as not to be affected by the negative, anti-woke reporting surrounding the devastating fires in Los Angeles.
It seems as if the Eloi have already forgotten that the WEF meetings in 2021 and 2024 were held under working titles such as “ The Great Narrative ” and ” Rebuilding Trust .” The stated goal of the Davos PR department for globalization issues was to keep the increasingly agitated, distrustful mob at bay – through new narratives and trust-building measures. And that has worked excellently, at least for now.
In the USA, confidence in properly conducted presidential elections in 2024 increased somewhat for the first time in years. Confidence is also spreading in Europe. After all, the so-called “ right-wing populists ” no longer only have the upper hand in Italy and Hungary, but also in Finland, Slovakia and the Netherlands. Not to mention the successes of the AfD. As recently happened in Thuringia , despite a clear vote, these parties do not participate in government because ” democratic processes ” and ” firewalls ” know how to prevent this – but being there is everything, as we all know. The fact that peacemaker Alice Weidel wants to double Germany’s defense budget to almost 200 billion does not seem to be slowing down the euphoric critics of dark-green militarization. The main thing is not green. Or woke.
supranational spheres
In view of the facts, euphoria seems anything but appropriate. According to Global Finance, Milei may have ended Argentina’s “ national deficit after 123 years “, but 53 percent of the 45 million Argentines now live in poverty. The highest figure in 20 years. At the end of 2023, this figure was 41.7 percent. Even semantic support from libertarian think tanks such as the Hoover Institution does not change this. The radical privatization campaigns of “ El Loco ” come at a high price. Whether it is Aerolineas Argentinas , the state airline, the steel producer IMPSA or the transport company Trenes Argentinos Cargas , which operates 7,800 kilometers of railway lines – the national wealth is being sold off to the highest bidder. Anyone can imagine who that is. Because his battle cry ” Afuera! « (Get out of here!) apparently does not apply to BlackRock and Co. – after all, Argentina is » pretty cheap ,« as Rick Rieder, the company’s top bond manager, put it back in 2019 .
However, you don’t have to look far to become aware of the real threats to freedom. Those threats that remain completely unaffected by personal details. The European Union is continuing to work on the eID , the basis of the technocratic-totalitarian control grid. Its introduction has been decided . The only thing that is unclear is when it will become compulsory. The personal CO2 budget is also on track. With ETS2 (EU Emissions Trading System), the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has been focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises since January 1, 2025, after corporate businesses, and is requiring them to pay CO2 compensation fees on their gas, gasoline and mineral oil consumption. This is likely to drive heating, freight and, consequently, living costs to new heights. It will probably not be long now before Sunday trips in the family car no longer only cost time, gasoline and nerves, but also CO2 fees .
This non-partisan, supranationally coordinated surveillance and expropriation agenda cannot be escaped by choosing the lesser evil or by emigrating. As can be seen from the website of the “ Global Governance Forum ” (GGF), work is already being carried out diligently on ” Global Government “. The non-governmental organization, which is close to the UN, has set itself the goal of updating the United Nations Charter by 2028 and adapting it to the well-known “ challenges of our time .” The new treaty is to be ratified in 2030 and, in addition to new powers for the International Court of Justice and a UN military force, will also enable a government structure similar to that of the European Union. In other words, a world government. Completely democratic, of course.
In addition to eID and the CO2 budget , the ID requirement for the Internet and the automated censorship of undesirable content are of course still on track. After the United Nations agreed to the totalitarian ” Pact for the Future ” in September 2024, the new ” Convention against Online Crime ” was quickly waved through on Christmas Eve 2024. And since January 2025, the UN has been pushing ahead with the implementation of an even more far-reaching agreement called the ” Global Digital Compact .” A paper that I warned about back in July 2023. What all this means for citizens can be seen in Greece , where the government has been linking social media accounts to tax identification numbers since the beginning of the year in order to introduce age control for the Internet. The government in Athens, which is held in credit slavery by the EU, is thus following the example of Australia , where access to social media platforms will in future only be permitted to people aged 16 and over – which ultimately means that every user who goes online will have to be monitored.
Geoengineering, which many still dismiss as a myth, is also being carried on merrily. Although reports from the US Congress and now even scientific advisors to the EU Commission warn against large-scale solar radiation management . In an official, 54-page report to the EU Commission and an article in the British Guardian on December 9, 2024, the seven-member research team pointed out the incalculable consequences of such interventions and called for an EU-wide moratorium.
How exactly Trump, Musk, Milei, Meloni, Weidel and Co. intend to save the world from this hodgepodge of totalitarian abuses, none of the Eloi has been able to tell me so far.
DJ Trump
I already described in detail on November 14, 2024 why the hopes placed in Donald Trump, the ” father of vaccination ,” and his Zionist warmongering cabinet are likely to soon give way to bitter disappointment. The fact that the two main arguments of his supporters – that he now regrets the mRNA campaign and that he pursued a peace policy in his first term in office – are simply wrong is also clear. Because the bare numbers clearly show that Trump was “ the most warmongering president in recent history .” And he last let the world know on November 17, 2024 on his social media network Truth Social how proud he is of ” Operation Warp Speed ,” which cost countless Americans their health or lives.
Trump is not interested in peace and freedom, but in Donald Trump. It has been that way his whole life. If ” The Donald ” feels indebted to anyone, it is perhaps Wilbur Ross , the former head of Rothschild Inc. Bankruptcy Advising . Because, as Forbes Magazine correctly explained on December 8, 2016, the bank not only saved Trump’s bankrupt casinos a good 30 years ago, but also his entire career. Not because they saw any particular value in Trump’s businesses and real estate, but because they viewed Donald Trump as an “ investment .” Nevertheless, it is surely just a coincidence that Ross was the United States Secretary of Commerce from 2017 to 2021.
Elon Musk
I also wrote a detailed article in September 2024 about PayPal mafioso, CIA henchman and Bilderberg executive Peter Thiel, whose protégé JD Vance is now US Vice President . The same applies to Elon Musk, whose deceptive image as a genius, inventor and entrepreneur I even examined in October 2022. Quote:
» A look at his early years as an entrepreneur suggests that Elon Musk did not become a liberal, cool icon purely by chance. While there were a number of more successful tech entrepreneurs in the legendary Silicon Valley at the end of the 1990s, it was Elon Musk, of all people, who was filmed for an absolutely meaningless guest appearance on CNN, so that a wider public had to take notice of him for the first time. His first company – Zip2 – which he founded in 1995 with his brother and another partner and sold to Compaq in February 1999 for around 300 million US dollars , was not the most revolutionary venture in the Californian IT Mecca of the time. It was a simple telephone directory for the Internet. Little more than a database in which companies could register in order to store their address on the Internet .«
However, my analysis, which is almost two and a half years old, urgently needs updating. Because what Musk has been doing in the meantime – and what he is planning for the future – has absolutely nothing to do with what his almost fanatical followers want to see in him.
For the sake of completeness, let’s start at the beginning: Elon Musk neither founded PayPal nor invented Tesla . Even if he likes to portray it that way. But under his aegis, Tesla then manufactured ” RNA microfactories ” for the German company CureVac , which, together with Bayer, brought mRNA injections against Corona onto the market. And while Musk told the New York Post on September 30, 2020 that he did not want to be vaccinated against Covid, he told TIME Magazine on December 13, 2021 that he had already been vaccinated. So he is flexible in terms of the spirit of the times. Anyone who claims that Musk has significantly changed his opinion on mRNA technology since the Covid fiasco and is now critical of the product is poorly informed. As recently as April 12, 2023, he declared on Twitter that he considers mRNA to be a “ medical revolution .” Comparable to the step ” from analog to digital .”
What Musk means by digital revolution became clear in 2017 with Hurricane Irma. At that time, the company issued a software update for owners of vehicles with 75 kWh that increased the range from 338 to 400 kilometers – which in turn means that Tesla owners are being cheated out of a performance that is actually available from their own vehicle when there is no natural disaster raging. The fact that Tesla customers are also constantly monitored was recently shown in the context of the explosion of a Cybertruck in Las Vegas. Eye movements, facial expressions, gender, skin color, body temperature, luggage arrangement, route, charging stops, payment transactions, phone book, music playlist, online subscriptions, etc. Whatever can be recorded by sensors and connections is recorded, as a study by Mozilla found in autumn 2023. Incidentally, this applies not only to Tesla, but to practically all modern cars. A Tesla just has it the easiest. The data collected is either sold at a bargain price and/or used against us.
But back to Musk, who took over Twitter not to establish freedom of speech, but to make the platform an ” everything app .” His declared role model: the Chinese spy app WeChat. That’s why he wants to ” identify all users as real people .” Biometrically, of course. To achieve this, Twitter prefers to work with Israeli companies founded by former Mossad agents . Perhaps double agent Jeffrey Epstein made contact with the Mossad after Musk learned to appreciate seminars on nudging as a regular participant in his Edge Foundation . Epstein was Edge’s only notable sponsor.
Incidentally, Musk did not buy Twitter with his own money, but with the help of 94 investors , whose names a US federal judge did not publish until August 2024 because Jacob Silverman (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press) sued them. The list includes such illustrious names as Fidelity Investments, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Bandera Fund, Binance Capital Management, Sean Combs (aka Diddy) Capital, Jack Dorsey (Twitter founder), Baron Opportunity Fund and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud of the Saudi royal family. So it seems that ” the swamp ” is being ” drained ” with more swamp . Not to mention the nomination of WEF Executive Chair Linda Yaccarino as the new Twitter CEO and “ Freedom of Speech ” versus ” Freedom of Reach “.
The Twitter files , which the Eloi celebrated as a sensational revelation, should unfortunately not be taken seriously either. They did not reveal anything that was not already known. In addition, it is still unclear where the published information came from, who controlled access to it, what else was stored there, why only one journalist selected by Elon had access to it and why he was only allowed to publish screenshots instead of entire documents. A real leak consists of an archive that you can search through yourself – not a few hand-picked screenshots.
What is still missing is Space X. A company that Musk founded himself, but whose success is largely due to other circumstances. For example, inside Tesla writes on March 22, 2022:
» As early as the beginning of the 2000s, NASA had already realized that it would soon no longer have the ability to bring astronauts and material into space and to the ISS itself. So they started looking for partners from the private sector and found one in Elon Musk’s Space X. As early as 2006, while the Falcon 1 was still in the development phase, Musk’s company received almost 400 million US dollars in start-up funding under the COTS program .«
Saludos
el mar
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The Eloi, Part 2
Space X was intended from the beginning to be an extension of NASA’s workbench, because the US space agency was being cut more and more. The public had lost interest in civilian space travel. As a result, Washington was increasingly cutting back. But since Musk has been making a public announcement about transporting people to Mars – ” let’s build Martian Technocracy ” – interest has been growing again. Unfortunately, I have to dampen my anticipation of a planetary colony somewhat. Because Space X is not being run to transport people to Mars, but to build the ” world’s largest network of spy satellites”. to build up «.
Musk’s space agency is a henchman of the military-industrial complex and one of the Pentagon’s most important contractors . This could already be read in the Observer in 2017. Or on January 9, 2018 on CNBC , which reported on the (failed) transport of a top-secret US spy satellite. On April 15, 2022, Tech Unwrapped commented on two more US military spy satellites that Space X put into orbit. The company has been receiving billions from the US government and intelligence agencies for years. See the Los Angeles Times of May 30, 2015: 4.9 billion. Or an article in the Wall Street Journal of February 23, 2024: 1.8 billion. Or a long list of government grants that Business Insider published on December 15, 2021. Thus, Space X’s success is not primarily based on Musk’s brilliant entrepreneurial spirit, but on subsidies. On taxpayers’ money.
Not to be forgotten: Starlink . The global satellite network operated by Space X. It may have the advantage that it also gives people in remote regions of the planet or disaster areas access to the Internet. However, it should not be overlooked that Starlink in its final stage of development will comprise around 42,000 satellites and thus generate a permanent radiation field. Health risks for Homo sapiens: unclear. In addition, the orbiters have access to the NORAD database system in order to be able to avoid space debris. In other words, they are permanently connected to US military systems. For this reason, Starlink also enables the control of combat drones – see Ukraine conflict – as well as 30 times faster data transmission to and from US fighter aircraft. While the public views Musk’s satellite network primarily as a civilian product, Starlink is primarily of military interest. It is not for nothing that Starshield is being built in parallel, which allows the intelligence-military complex, among other things, to discreetly monitor the entire world in real time. There is also talk of DEW (Directed Energy Weapon) capabilities. By the end of 2024, there were already 98 such satellites in low Earth orbit.
Given this information, it is hardly surprising that Musk has been open to technocracy for years For a centralized, fascist model of rule, which his grandfather Joshua Haldemann already represented as a leading figure in the USA and Canada. Following the family tradition, Musk recommends a CO 2 tax to fight climate change, a universal basic income to counteract the disruptions triggered by AI and his Neuralink brain implant to counteract the threat of transhumanism with some transhumanism.
Technological Future
For customers who find chips in their heads a bit old-fashioned, Musk’s company is developing a more contemporary premium product in collaboration with iota Biosciences : Neural Dust. Intelligent nanoparticles the size of a grain of dust that accumulate in the brain. They can then probably be inhaled through the nose – like the nasal vaccine against Covid that has already been approved in India. Or pumped through air shafts in public buildings. You can practically smell the new freedom.
Just as the 44-page ” National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan ” ( NNI Plan ) of the White House in October 2021 envisaged: ” Engage the public and increase the number of nanotechnology employees .” It was not for nothing that Donald Trump approved additional funding for the relevant agency during his first term in office . Just like Joe Biden after him.
The North American Technate defined by the technocracy movement almost a century ago – that is, the American area of responsibility for a global technocracy – looks amazingly similar to the vision of a ” North American Union ” revived by Trump and Musk. With all the Make Great euphoria, who cares that imperialism sucks, Denmark is a sovereign state and the Panama Canal is a strategic bottleneck for international commercial shipping? Or that the ” North American Union ” was still considered an ” evil globalist plan ” a few years ago , and not just by Trump cheerleaders like Alex Jones .
Let’s look ahead. Towards the ” golden age ,” as Trump calls it. This is likely to be very uncomfortable for the average citizen. Because it is dominated by algorithms. By artificial intelligence. For the Eloi, that means primarily by Grok , the chatbot integrated into Twitter (and Tesla’s ). This is based on technology from the company xAI – founded by Elon Musk in March 2023, according to Wikipedia . That may say so in the commercial register, but it is probably only half the truth. Because xAI is likely to be the continuation of a DARPA project that was started in 2015 under the title “ Explainable Artificial Intelligence ” (XAI) and expired in 2021. When DARPA stopped funding, XAI made the research results available on a server . About 18 months later, Elon Musk hired Igor Babuschkin as chief engineer for xAI. Babushkin had previously worked for Google’s DeepMind project for eight years and most likely used the DARPA results to develop xAI, or Grok.
In July 2023 , Musk announced that xAI was a ” good ” AI, unlike competing products from Google, Microsoft and OpenAI . It’s amazing when the same engineers are at work and the AI is being developed on the basis of a military project. In addition, xAI’s top sponsors don’t necessarily speak for the ” good ” either. Among the biggest donors in the last financing round on December 23, 2024 are such illustrious names as BlackRock, AMD, Nvidia and Fidelity, which together provided another six billion dollars for Musk’s AI company.
Enough liquidity to further develop xAI for the ” Everything App “, where Grok has been automatically creating short descriptions for profiles for a while now , which cannot be switched off or changed. Twitter users no longer have to browse through an account’s profile themselves to get a first impression of the person, but instead get this from Elon Musk’s AI. Prejudice at the touch of a button, so to speak. Comparable to a social credit system. Because the daily new summary is based on user behavior.
” The new, AI-generated Grok short profiles under each X user profile ARE de facto a social credit system based on the Chinese model for the West. The profile of each user is recalculated daily. If you express your opinion on different topics, the AI quickly calls it “tangling”. Grok admits that the profile is created from the user’s own behavior of the day, his own calculations and unspecified instructions ,” commented Journalist Aya Velázquez announced the change on January 14, 2025.
Other users are described as ” easily excitable ,” ” distracted ,” or ” believing in weather manipulation to control the climate .” Such adjectives and summaries certainly do not make the debate space any more open. Who would want to look at the profile of easily excitable chemtrail believers or even be associated with them? Compared to such automated, condescending classification by non-transparent AI, the fact-checking industry was practically harmless. So anyone who assumes that the abolition of fact-checkers on Facebook and Co. means an end to censorship is wrong. On the contrary, it will become much more sophisticated and far-reaching.
Of course, details of your personal score in the Grok social credit system or information on how the rating is determined are not available upon request. However, Twitter will certainly use the resulting hierarchy for reach control, nudging campaigns and other social architectural functions. Especially when the ” X Money ” payment system is introduced in 2025. Then the Eloi will soon no longer just be vying for reach, followers and retweets, but also for money – which, as a result of undesirable postings about genocide X, war Y or person Z, will in future be frozen faster than any bank account. De-banking of the next generation. And at some point, this will affect everyone. Unless you always go with the flow.
But that’s not all. On December 13, 2024, WISeSat, a company that is probably little known , announced that it would be working with Space X in the future to “ combine different products and systems .” WISeSat AG is a subsidiary of WISeKey International Holding AG , based in Geneva (Switzerland) , which is active in the field of cybersecurity, AI and IoT (Internet of Things). The announcement of this collaboration caused WISeKey shares to rise by 107.73 percent in the short term. A first joint launch to transport so-called picosatellites took place on January 14, 2025 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
But what exactly does WISeSat do? A press release from the company dated September 15, 2023 states:
» WISeSAT AG excels in providing secure and effective communication strategies for connected devices thanks to its constellation of ultra-secure picosatellites and infrastructure. The company’s expertise in cryptographic technology and secure data management has redefined secure IoT implementation in numerous areas, from urban innovations in smart cities to cutting-edge industrial automation . (…) WISeSAT is at the forefront of developing ultra-secure picosatellite solutions in collaboration with its ally FOSSA Systems . It is committed to secure IoT communication over space-based networks and uses the latest cryptographic innovations to ensure secure and instantaneous data exchanges in various domains (…).”
In plain language: WISeSat brings satellites the size of a Tupperware container into space. These mini-orbiters orbit the planet in low orbits and establish a network for encrypted real-time data transmission. Flying 5G masts, so to speak. Or WiFi routers. Only much faster. For the Internet of Things – and smart cities.
” This week, WISeSat is launching a new generation satellite, marking an important milestone in the development of a global satellite constellation that will provide comprehensive Earth coverage with ultra-low latency. Designed to track and locate trillions of IoT devices in real time .” ( Carlos Creus Moreira , WISeKEy CEO, January 12, 2025)
A look at the product portfolio of the holding company WISeKey – a ” world-leading provider of cybersecurity, digital identity and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions ” – shows which data carriers this picosatellite network will track and detect in the future. The holding company has existed for 24 years, consists of five companies, has installed more than one and a half billion chips and over five billion “ roots of trust “, is based at six international locations and has delighted a good 3,000 customers in government and business. Surprisingly, there is still no Wikipedia entry for the company, which is listed on NASDAQ and SIX.
But for the “ Chief Digital Transformation Officer “ Pierre Maudet , who has been in office since May 2021. He was a member of the Geneva State Council from June 2012, of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum in 2013 and of the Bilderberg Conference in Telfs-Buchen (Austria) in 2015. After being convicted of accepting bribes by the Geneva Police Court in February 2021, he resigned as State Councilor – and joined WISeKey three months later. On April 30, 2023, regardless of his criminal past, he was also re-elected to the Geneva State Council. How convenient. Such shameless audacity seems to perfectly qualify Maudet for what is being developed at WISeKey under the guise of “quantum security” – a space-based eID ecosystem .
» Quantum security uses principles of quantum mechanics to revolutionize data protection and secure information transmission. At its core is quantum key distribution (QKD), a cutting-edge technology that uses quantum mechanics to create networked particles for the secure exchange of encryption keys .«
Whether digital identity, signature, cloud or software – from know-your-customer biometrics to corporate solutions for employee identification. WISeKey helps. Anyone can register . While the product range for the private sector still sounds like supply chain management, shipment tracking, login solutions for e-banking or Face ID on smartphones – but is much more extensive, if you look at the homepage – the WISeKey offers in the government sector speak a completely different language. Because under this menu item, the discreetly operating group advertises its “ CertifyID Trust Center Platform “:
» The CertifyID Trust Center Platform is an industrialized citizen eID management solution that manages users and their credentials, especially digital IDs and digital certificates for large-scale applications such as nationwide e-government services. It is a complete industrial public key infrastructure and ID management solution that supports government services 24/7.
The CertifyID Trust Center platform is used in a number of government and public sector applications, for example: Identity card, ePassport (ICAO compliant), Driving license, Health, Elections/Voting .
The CertifyID platform has been developed using WISeKey’s security and public key infrastructure expertise and can be fully integrated into e-government frameworks, commercial frameworks (…) and into a country’s e-government service delivery framework .”
So it fits perfectly into the picture that on October 13, 2022, WISeKey announced a “ partnership agreement to cooperate in the development of space-related activities ” with the Swiss army – after all, not only the UN, GAVI, WEF, Club of Rome and a host of NGOs reside in the Alpine republic, but also the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which will certainly find use for a quantum-secured real-time picosatellite network when its ” unified ledger ” is used for the blockchain world financial system of tomorrow. In view of the ” all-encompassing market bubble ” ( D. Webb , 2024) , this is likely to happen in the foreseeable future.
So these are Elon’s projects, plans and new partners. The corrupt Geneva quantum specialists in particular with their picosatellites and turnkey eID solutions don’t exactly give me the impression of freedom fighters. And the ” personalized mRNA injections against cancer ” announced at a press conference in the White House on January 22, 2024 also leave me rather skeptical.
Just like the fact that this ” personalized mRNA ” is to be made possible within 48 hours by the computing power of OpenAI . The company co-founded by Elon Musk and run by WEF and Bilderberg- affiliated Sam Altman is rightly suspected of being responsible for the death of a whistleblower in December 2024. While the police and media declare the death of OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji a suicide , both the circumstances at the location where his body was found and Balaji’s parents speak of ” cold-blooded murder .” Not to forget that Altman is accused by his own sister of years of abuse and will soon have to answer for it in court. Even The Economist admitted on December 10, 2024 that “ the PayPal Mafia is taking over the American government .” And the ” mafia ” thing seems to be taken literally in Washington these days.
But the Eloi, euphoric about a few presidential decrees shot from the hip, will surely find reasons to interpret all this in their favor. After all, Trump has pardoned a few people and wants to leave the WHO. How his fan base manages to ignore the fact that ” The Donald ” wanted to leave the WHO during his first term and failed to do so is unfortunately beyond me. Just like the enthusiasm for a conversation between Musk and Weidel. Just imagine if George Soros, Bill Gates or Eric Schmitt were to confer with German politicians. Or were given airtime on the public broadcaster. It’s unthinkable.
As the saying goes: ” A painful truth is better than a lie ” (Thomas Mann). True. But it is relatively difficult to admit a lie when the person you have to confess it to is the liar.
So we can only hope that as many Eloi as possible will get this step over with as soon as possible. In their own interest. Because, as Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben once said, ” remorse is the understanding that comes too late .” And that can have devastating consequences these days.
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“like perhaps mRNA transfection brain damage, or grandchildren induced MORT.”
No it’s a lot simpler than that Art got Cheap Peak Oil wrong and Doomberg (aka allegedly Keith Watson & Co) got it right:
Xorcist (fka Twitter) “Art Berman & @aeberman12 • 27/01/2024
The Great ‘Peak Cheap Oil’ Debate
Doomberg vs Adam Rozencwajg
This “DEBATE”:
“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing””
🤔
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Peak cheap oil (and peak oil in general) is a question of when, not if.
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In that video Doomberg said:
There was no discussion of the rising percent of energy being diverted to harvest the rapidly declining quality of mineral ores and oil reserves, which means less energy is available to generate wealth and explains why debt growth is now 4-5x higher than real growth (and accelerating), which is required to force the GDP growth our monetary system requires to not collapse, nor what happens to energy supply when the global debt bubble pops because inflation forces interest rates higher.
In other words, there was no discussion of anything that matters.
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His mind will be blown when he finally figures out what causes inflation LMAO
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13 out of 27 people voted against investigating why 1 in 35 children today have autism, when almost no children had autism in 1970.
These people have seriously defective ethics.
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Autism-like Behaviors in Male Juvenile Offspring after Maternal Glyphosate Exposure
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8316667/
Here is the abstract of the article.
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Glyphosate is definitely a candidate to investigate for many recent health issues.
Cheerios is a favorite snack of mothers to give to their children. Tests of Cheerios show high levels of glyphosate. I always buy organic oats now.
A big recent change in agricultural practices is to spray crops with glyphosate just prior to harvest.
What is the history of using glyphosate for desiccating crops prior to harvest?
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Can I just add that studies also find pesticides corelate to reduced IQ and brain cancer in children who grow up in a high pesticide environment.
I would also add that glyphosate gets a bad rap. It is still a very important pesticide to start ecological restoration projects and tackle invasive weeds. Some people online get so mad about spraying a noxious weed with glyphosate acting like that is going to kill us all.
How glyphosate is used on cereal crops is completely differently. It is sprayed directly on the crop while it is growing (not a targeted spray like in ecological work) and then when the grains are harvested, they are often sprayed again with glyphosate directly on the grains themselves. Responsible wheat growers will only use glyphosate as a pretreatment before planting.
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Yes and yes.
I believe polio was caused by a pesticide.
I personally would eat a crop where glyphosate is used to control weeds in the early stages of growth, but do not want to eat a crop that was sprayed right before it was harvested and put into the food chain.
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Gail Tverberg explains why the rich world may have a rougher ride than some poorer areas of the world.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/02/04/southeast-asia-can-perhaps-avoid-the-worst-impacts-of-inadequate-oil-supply/
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Breaking news: pharmaceutical industry creates drug to alleviate mistrust of pharmaceutical industry
But there’s some fierce competition going on:
Wonder Drug Inspires Deep, Unwavering Love Of Pharmaceutical Companies – The Onion
And here is some exceptional investigative reporting on this very important story:
LOL, I love the onion. Article is from 2006. Funny how much more distrustful & powerful these drug companies have become since then. h/t dave@megacancer for the video.
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He believes that is starting off slowly (notice the use of the present tense) but then there will be a tipping point where things collapse all at once. He is somewhere between John Michael Greer and Hideaway. We are already in a catabolic state, but when the feedbacks start kicking in, the collapse will speed up significantly.
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Returning to the original topic of Art Berman’s latest posting, one of the commenters said what I think Art wanted to claim, “When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?”
If what Art says is true about shale extraction being cheaper than conventional today, with lower unit break-even prices and “Tight (shale) oil is cheaper per barrel than oil from most other kinds of plays,” in the comments, the current inflation and debt growing faster than GDP may be caused more by financialization and the Matthew Principle than by EROI. In particular, the upper end of the growing-diameter straw is inserted directly into the mouths of the Billionaires. Since the rest of us stand right below the butt end of the Billionaires, it is clear why all that the Rest Of Us ever see is bullshit.
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If my memory serves me correctly, the key point Art made in his slurping video a year ago was that the productivity of new shale wells is down 50% in from those 3 years ago and that this trend is expected to continue. This is consistent with us using best quality resources first and optimizing for MPP by drilling wells too close together. If Art has changed his mind then he should explain why his analysis a year ago is wrong.
It’s hard to untangle financialization from falling EROEI but it doesn’t really matter. Energy is the economy and vice versa. If the economy is on a trajectory to blow up and to take out energy sector investment and productivity due to failing supply chains in the process, then this should be included in any oil supply forecast.
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A.I. has written another essay signed by Sarah Connor.
https://www.collapse2050.com/arbitrary-criminalization-in-america/
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LOL. Ya, stick a fork in poor Sarah cuz she’s done. Her articles are mostly pure trash now. I wonder when/why she lost her confidence.
You were the first to call her out about it a few months ago… I kind of thought you were being a little paranoid… but nope, you had it right the whole time.
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Whether you love, hate, or are indifferent to Trump… this impression will probably make you laugh. Link should be queued up at the impression joke around the 26:30 mark… but the whole video is worth watching.
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Very nice summary by Charles Rixey on why Fauci and friends should hang, pardon or no.
https://prometheusshrugged.substack.com/p/the-evidence-of-the-origin-of-the-pandemic
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I don’t think Trump & Musk are evil people, but I may be wrong and I don’t care. Our governments broke the trust by deliberately harming citizens during covid, and by not holding those who caused the pandemic accountable. We need to burn it all down and start over. Canada’s next.
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https://www.npr.org/2025/02/04/nx-s1-5287012/trump-netanyahu-ceasefire-gaza
Has Trump lost his mind?
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Trump losing his mind was my first reaction too.
On the other hand, if US pays for nice homes on nice land purchased from another country that welcomes new people, and if the Palestinians agree to move, then it might bring a lasting peace to the area. If it doesn’t work out, plan B should be to move the Israelis to Greenland.
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…after U.S. taxpayer money paid for the bombs used by Israel to destroy Gaza
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It’s like a bad episode of the Twilight Zone.
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Nate Hagens left a comment on Art Berman’s post.
I’m not sure but Nate seems to be saying what I said above that the debt bubble popping is the oil peak we should worry about, and that the decline could be as rapid as a turkey’s demise at Thanksgiving.
I’m less certain what Berman is saying in his reply. He might be saying that there will be no decline in oil as long as we can afford to pay the extraction cost. Isn’t that like saying there’s plenty of gold in sea water? Feels disingenuous to me. You can’t pretend the debt bubble is something independent of peak oil. We have a debt bubble in part because energy and mineral growth couldn’t grow fast enough.
Anyone have different interpretations?
Hideaway, what do you think of Berman’s essay today?
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I’ve read Art’s essay twice and the weakness of his technology and price argument stick out, plus the hand waves in the comments section about how fracking is getting cheaper, without any evidence, but possibly correct anyway. Fracking is probably getting cheaper because the cost of energy and materials are currently down.
As per usual with just about everyone, Art concentrates on parts of the overall system and makes assumptions about these parts in isolation.
On Tim Morgan’s latest essay, Jan Steinman made the following comment…
” Howard Odum taught us that complexity (and thus, technology) is simply a function of energy. Technology is merely a form of emergy, or “embedded energy”.
And that complexity requires maintenance, which has its own energetic needs. Joseph Tainter notes that civilizations fail when the maintenance of their complexity requires all their energy.”
Possibly one of the best I’ve read to describe the underlying problem. However it appears even Odum and Tainter along with many others missed the growth aspect about increasing complexity/technology. The technology and energy use have to increase, to make the lower grades of every material, including energy (oil coal, gas, uranium) available. If we “stand still” as in circular economy etc, we quickly lose technology gains, so our ability to access all the materials declines, with the “price” going through the roof because of increasing demands on lower grades.
No growth, no increasing technology/complexity. Any shrinkage of the system or important aspect of the system, means a simplification as businesses go bust from lack of growth in markets, with the most complex ones going first.
We’ll never run out of copper, or lithium, or oil, but unless the energy and materials flow continues to grow, to enhance further complexification of our large growing system, we will eventually be unable to access the oil, coal, gas, copper, lithium etc, etc. If we only had 1850’s technology/complexity to gain access to our oilfields, then we would no longer have oil supply. We only used the simplest machines to gain access to that oil 40ft below the surface. We’ve used that easy to get oil up, across the planet. It no longer exists.
Art makes the assumption that technology will improve to make the oil available and often talks about existing technology as if it can be stable forever, likewise for price, without acknowledging price, as in cheap price, is only a function of the system growing, as energy is only cheap if there is more than enough for current uses, which have been growing for the last couple of centuries.
As the entirety of civilization continues to grow, the energy required to maintain the complexity also grows, but faster than civilization itself, as there is the double whammy of maintenance of the existing system, plus the lower grade ores of everything required. Meanwhile the complex system of civilization has had massive efficiency gains, which suffers from the Jeavon’s effect plus also suffers from the laws of diminishing returns. Future complexity/technology gains will not overcome increasing energy requirements for all materials.
At some point something breaks the cycle of more humans, more technology, more materials, more energy. It could be climate, it could be food, it could be population decline, it could be energy not able to be kept up because of laws of diminishing returns and price going too high, it could be a combination of all factors including species decline or endocrine disruptors, or perhaps vaccines making too many people too ill.
Peak oil is around the peak in available energy for every other aspect of human civilization as a whole, which means peak complexity, peak ability to increase mining etc. Art has not thought through all the implications, and ended on there is still plenty of oil as if this were in isolation, so it’s just simplistic thinking, possibly induced by grandchildren, with denial kicking in…
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Very good critique Hideaway, thank you from all of us. Your complexity-growth perspective is a powerful new way to think about the world.
I watched the video below of Art’s presentation. I don’t think he’s lost his mind as I suggested above, but I do detect some denial and defensiveness.
I get why a leader in the peak oil movement might want to throw in the towel. The predictions for a decline in oil supply have been wrong for almost 20 years.
On the other hand, I think we understand why those predictions were wrong. Most countries producing conventional oil peaked and declined as predicted but no one saw the impact of shale oil, and few believed we would take on a suicidal amount of debt to keep growth going.
I personally don’t think the correct response is to now say a decline is so far in the future we can no longer see it. But I get why someone might now want to keep their opinions to themselves.
I subscribe to the belief that everything we’ve done to delay the peak will accelerate the decline when it starts.
One final point. If the stock market crashes tomorrow and oil supply falls because many people can no longer afford oil, and supply never returns because of the loss of complexity as Hideaway explains, I suspect the Berman’s of the world will say this was not “peak oil”. I disagree. Our economic system today is fragile because of limits to growth of which peak oil is an important component.
Art Berman explained his recent essays in today’s Peak Oil Chat with Andrii Zvorygin:
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Adam Rozencwajg and Chris Martenson today make the case that Art Berman is wrong and peak oil is still a thing.
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Peak oil supply will cause peak oil demand via demand destruction.
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I didn’t want to listen to Art, but then I fell in my mental trap 🙂
Did you understand the point he wanted to make? That was not clear to me at all.
OK, we have got lots of reserves. That’s true and besides the point.
OK, oil prices will not necessarily explode. That too is true and besides the point.
OK, unconventional was not taken into account, so peak oil didn’t happen as expected first. That is true, but that’s just postponing things a bit.
I think the main point he is making (implying) is that peak oil does not happen till 2030 and decline rates will be low. But he didn’t provide much hard data (if any at all) to support this. He sounds like a broke addict who wants an extension.
Yes, maybe, lack of energy will never be acknowledged as the root reasons for society changing drastically. I now know enough about human beings and belief systems. There will just be a new normal, the old ways will be forgotten like they never existed, and new stories to “explain” it all (in a way that makes the current us look good to the detriment of the “others”, from the past or elsewhere)
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His tone was quite agressive.
Also, he keeps saying there is no difference between conventional and unconventional, but in terms of energy brought back to the bank after extracting and refining a given volume, there is, isn’t it? (and I’d argue, that’s the only thing that matters)
I’d really like to see all these graphs, in energy terms: adapt the volumes to their energy content+remove all that is used by the extractive industries. EROI (computed the right way) matters. A lot of oil will ultimately be left in the ground.
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Good review Charles.
I also found his message very strange. Kind of like “my attempts to predict when a finite resource we need to survive depletes have been wrong, so from now on I’m going to assume it’s effectively infinite.”
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Thank you.
In the Q&A session (https://youtu.be/Hxa-hctXdIM?t=4453), he says:
And then, he goes on talking about the importance of oil in wars (“China is hugely vulnerable on oil, and armies don’t run on renewable energy”). Telling us about war games going on in the strait of Malacca and all the previous episodes where oil made all a difference.
If that’s not an admission that there isn’t enough oil for everybody to merrily go around, then I don’t know what is.
Maybe he is simply hinting at something else. He recently had a talk with Trump’s energy secretary. Peak oil didn’t play out as initially expected 10 years ago (that is true). Maybe he is saying (but can’t really say it out loud), we are now at the point where not everybody can have oil. And that it may not play the way we all expect. Maybe he is hinting about war being inevitable, if some blocks do not accept the US stays the number 1 power. And the US has got the upper hand thanks to unconventional oil. (so maybe he is just sending some kind of diplomatic message to Europe and China, saber-rattling). Maybe we are about to witness the world energy markets dislocate into 3 or more distinct, relatively isolated, blocks. Which is going to be tough, as Hideaway rightly points: economies are interlinked because of the complexity and scale required.
In any case, the Ukraine war was the occasion to unplug Russian gas from Europe. So I can see which limb could be more easily sacrificed first (and if you were to ask only me, I am OK with it, as long as there is freedom).
So, if that’s what he is trying to tell, then it would make sense. I guess, the ones who know understand, and I am not one of them 🙂
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I meant: “as long as there is freedom” (I was kind of hallucinating a world of future triangular trade, where it would be the turn of white europeans to be the target. I guess I am not totally weaned off that built-in guilt and fear thing 🙂
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That type of sentiment always catches my attention. Got me looking for a comment of mine. Thought I made a nice long scary post where I talk about the karma coming back to white man for the last 500 years of his evilness. But I can’t find it so maybe I’m imagining it. Bummer because I want to see what I would’ve written. I’m so done with researching the native american stuff that I couldn’t even fake my way through that story now if I tried.
Closest I could find was this short comment about an Indi article… but I know I have a longer post about it somewhere:
https://un-denial.com/2024/07/29/book-review-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-by-lars-larsen-2024/#comment-104343
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I knew this comment of mine was going to generate from reaction from you 🙂
I wish I were not inhabited by these emotions, but I am. And I don’t really know the root cause, probably education. But then it means these emotions probably serve some kind of purpose at the societal level. (obedient civilian)
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Good speculations. Here are mine:
A small simple Houthis military has rendered aircraft carriers obsolete. A small simple Hamas military has beat the US supplied previously undefeatable Israeli military. Russia, with very little help from its powerful friend China, defeated all that NATO could throw at it, and now is so pissed off that their soon to decline energy will be preferentially sold to China. Iran is much stronger due to its new military alliance with Russia/China. Saudi is flirting with BRICS which means their loyalty can no longer be trusted. The US fracking miracle is about to go into terminal decline.
Sounds like a great time to build a big-ass land-based US military garrison in freshly cleared Gaza, nicely located between two dependent friends, with a port for resupply, to take control of the remaining oil.
Problem is US deficit is too high and inflation is blocking further debt growth, so US desperately needs money to build and operate the military base, and is raising money with tariffs and saving money by shutting down all the USAID funds used for régime change/influence, and will use the money instead for brute force control of the remaining oil.
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Yes. Your interpretation seems more reasonable.
I was trying to understand Art’s point, because it’s not clear at all to me.
Towards the end (https://youtu.be/Hxa-hctXdIM?t=7522), he says:
Exactly!
And a bit before that (https://youtu.be/Hxa-hctXdIM?t=7385):
So, if I am trying to sum up what I think he is saying, it’s that collapse is going to be financially triggered and not dictated by the limits of geology.
My intuition and what I think he is missing, is that financial decisions are dictated by energy, yet in the most complete sense, taking into account the whole system, the real energy return to society. And to understand that, reserve numbers are not really useful.
Collapse is still going to be triggered by the physical limits of this world. They are not restricted to the geology of oil only. And financial indicators are the best proxy we have.
I think Hideaway should appear on Andrii Zvorygin. Because that’s the crux of his EROI argumentation too: money is the best we have to take everything into account and let us correctly discern some aspect of the real state of the system.
In the end, I played that game I initially didn’t want to engage with 🙂 It was still fun. I still don’t understand why Art is saying this in such a convoluted way. There is an emotional load he seems somewhat fighting with, some kind of internal contradiction. At times he is agressive, at other times somewhat apologetic. His past argumentations and the fact he felt not listened to are haunting him. There is some sense of superiority due to his extensive knowledge and privileged access to data. At the same time a feeling of powerlessness he doesn’t quite want to acknowledge.
If I were to make a bet: he is on the fence of acceptance and will turn much nicer and at peace with the world in a few blog posts 🙂
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That’s a great idea for Hideaway to be a guest on Andril’s channel.
Hideaway, are you interested? I will ask him to invite you if you are interested.
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I thought about going on the podcast late last year, but it’s at 4.00AM our time, so realistically just not happening, well not for a while anyway.
All I had to do was email Andril, ABC already suggested it to me and Andril last year IIRC.
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That’s too bad. You ideas deserve more exposure.
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Hi Hideaway,
You could record yourself to send them a video of you. And then accept some questions to answer in a later session, the same way.
It would really great to have your pieces of the puzzle added to the broader public domain.
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Dear Charles, Rob & Hideaway,
I hope thou are all feeling well.
I concur,
Hideaway ought to participate.
Kind and warm regards,
ABC
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https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/02/la-guerra-de-los-aranceles-petroleo.html#comments
Thank you, el mar.
“My opinion is completely in line with Hideway’s.
Oil reserves (or other raw materials) are important, but the speed of extraction (flow) of those reserves is much more important. For example, let’s assume that Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of oil in reserves (not resources). If its extraction capacity does not exceed one million b/d, we cannot care much about the amount of reserves it has. The same occurs with the rest of the large reserves such as Saudi Arabia and Canada.
Even more so. If Saudi Arabia’s reserves could be extracted at a cost of $5 per barrel and it has those 265 billion barrels, the only thing it would have to do to balance the budget is increase extraction and eliminate shale oil competitors, via increased competitive production. But it does not do this and we do not know if those reserves exist at the current price of oil.
Following Ockham’s razor, the simplest explanation is that they do not have such reserves or that they are too expensive to extract at these prices, which brings us back to the barrels in Venezuela.
In the end, systems must be evaluated taking into account all parameters. The Western economic system is on the verge of collapse. The only thing that prevents an abrupt decline is the capacity for debt growth. Processes are increasingly expensive because the easy and cheap raw materials have already been extracted, such as the example of apples at the bottom of the tree. To extract the rest of the raw materials, with very low concentration laws or oil in ultra-deep waters, more of everything is needed. More money, more energy, more technology and there is no turning back. We all know that sooner or later, even with the best technology, the flow of materials will fall and a capitalist system based on growth will collapse as it cannot maintain growth, drowning us in debt and diminishing all kinds of raw materials in a vicious circle of investment destruction and lower recurrent extraction capacity.
The road to the top of the mountain is very slow, but once we reach the top and probably after a small or large plateau, we will face the abyss that represents the beginning of the decline. The structures collapse very quickly and after the desperate measures of the CBs, the lack of confidence in the system will cause a massive fall of everything. Without investments due to economic bankruptcy, the decline in oil production will be unmanageable and the resulting decline in the form of less availability will sink all the processes that need oil fuels, including agriculture and mining itself. Everything that is now slow and calm will acquire a vertiginous acceleration and all this is ignored by the general public, who believe that growth can be prolonged indefinitely.”
Saludos
el mar
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Anyone have a membership on Steve St. Angelo’s site? His comments on Berman’s post are behind a paywall and Berman’s blocked him on Twitter.
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I think nobody knows, because it is too complex.
There are other things that need to be modeled such as the water flows and the impact life has on it.
We are going to be surprised, once human impacts are rapidly reduced, due to lack of energy and minerals. I am not saying this is going to be “worse” or “better” than expected, I don’t know. Something tells me it is going to be all right, but this is not of much use to most (who continuously label every event as positive or negative), because this may be true in a “twisted” way (if we were to see the whole picture, our perspective would probably shift).
In any case, I trust life (not only human life) to have the ability to steer the system in the direction which suits itself, on the whole. We disregard its mechanisms almost completely, because we are too engrossed in ourselves (and at our level of interaction) to notice its subtle, yet powerful and all-encompassing presence (and this is only natural for the kind of animal, we, at some level, are).
Don’t worry. That which is not real fades away.
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This new report sheds light on the covid mystery.
I found it helpful for understanding why:
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/the-covid-dossier?r=l2dy4&triedRedirect=true
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TDS chuckle.
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I’d be wary of the Demagogue, both the richest and most indebted man in the world.
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Yes, you might be right, and a lot of people agree with you. I’m so angry about covid I want him or someone else to hurt as many government people as possible. That’s one of the dangers of not holding anyone accountable for committing a crime.
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Don’t worry, I understand you.
I too, am angry, or rather should I say puzzled about covid. I really want to know the motive for what happened. And also disappointed by the human collective behavior (it shouldn’t be possible to play whole societies like that, but it is…)
I am just emitting a warning, because I care. Your site helped me not fall for covid. I don’t want you to fall in a different kind of trap. (although I may be wrong in my analysis, I still wouldn’t like to have Musk as a boss and I wouldn’t really trust him with my investments or my future)
I remember how at some point, just before it all suddenly stopped, I feared that non-vaccinated were about to become some kind of second category citizens in my country. The tyrant acting as president of France had a speech where he said “Un irresponsable n’est plus un citoyen” (an irresponsible person is no longer a citizen), talking about those who were not vaccinated (january 2022). I also remember there were even stories of quarantine camps in Australia. I don’t want this to happen for anybody. Wokism is stupid, but I’d still like to respect what people do in the privacy of their homes or not judge somebody by it’s skin color only. If only, because I expect the same for myself.
Hopefully, fire battles fire and then extinguishes. That’s maybe what’s going to happen with Musk. Even the devil ultimately works for God’s plan 🙂
So about Trump and Musk, I am in a wait and see cautious attitude: actions speak louder than words.
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Think of how many thousands of government employees in all of the western countries have access to top secret files and not one has sufficient ethics to leak what happened with covid.
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There was one guy in New Zealand and he got sent to jail. Not even home detention!
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/509966/te-whatu-ora-vaccine-data-leak-barry-young-reappears
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And he didn’t even the leak the important stuff: what, why, when, how.
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I actually think that of the above questions “why” is the most important.
If what happened with Covid was intentional, what could be the motivation? Why would a government intentionally kill its own citizens like that?
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My top 3 why candidates:
1) They really were worried about the lethality of the lab leak (because they designed it), and they genuinely believed their mRNA transfection bioweapon countermeasure was the only useful response, and we just got lucky that the disease was mild.
2) There was a mild novel virus that they turned into a panic to test drive tools that will soon be needed when the everything bubble pops. Pharma played along in return for emergency approval of an mRNA transfection technology their businesses need to grow.
3) There was no novel deadly virus and panic was created for an EUA to coerce mRNA transfections into almost every western citizen to achieve some top secret objective that we do not yet understand.
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I think the truth is most likely 1) with some elements of 2). I also think they wanted to re-open the economy as quickly as possible, and they were willing to do that by any means necessary, which included using undertested mRNA technology. They also took advantage of Covid-19 to ram through policies that couldn’t be pursued under normal circumstances. As Chicago’s former mayor Rahm Emmanuel said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”
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Found this paper about denial from a commenter on George Tsakraklides’s blog. It’s a ’94 article written by the godfather of overshoot William Catton. (maybe we should send this link to Art Berman😊)
The Problem of Denial
I had two main takeaways after reading it:
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It’s hard to unsee it.
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Art’s latest posting even contradicts his words from his Jan. 29, 2025 posting. I don’t think anything has eaten his brain. I think he came across new data that forced him to update his views. He has the humility to eat his words. He also acknowledges the ecological misfortune of the advances in oil recovery.
While it is unfortunate that private oil companies have not been constrained, it’s important to remember that they represent only about 10% of oil extraction. The vast majority is done by State-owned oil works such as Saudi Aramco and other oil barons.
An end to the fossil combustion and its life-devouring metabolism has to come from the demand side. Societies have been known to adopt frugality and self restraint and socially enforce it. Such a trend needs to happen again.
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Then, he should clearly present the data. His recent articles are totally unconvincing, muddling the waters of reality.
Graphs and theories don’t matter if they don’t reflect reality.
Today, reality feels a lot more like peak energy is happening now. People are not buying less cars in Europe because they want to. People can’t afford the cars.
There is no voluntary peak demand, there is forced peak demand.
The only thing keeping the wheels off, for now is debt and other shenanigans of the same kind, that keeps people having faith in the system, a little while longer.
And yes, of course, we will be forced to change by hard circumstances and then we can invent new stories to pretend we have chosen so.
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I think I heard a throw-away comment in the Peak Oil Chat video above (or somewhere else) that Berman has some information on the Trump administration plans for energy.
Maybe state subsidies to stimulate production and lower price?
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Maybe you are refering to this point in his presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxa-hctXdIM&t=1295s
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Thanks! My brain ain’t what she used to be.
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Good day to everyone!
This is (MPP) Preston writing to ask how folk are feeling today. Because…
>> Massive flu outbreaks apparently are occurring in Japan, France, and the UK. Japan’s outbreak apparently is bringing hospitals nationwide to their knees as they try to cope with the problem.
>> The first case of deadly henipavirus was just found in North America. The Camp Hill virus, a type of henipavirus, has been found in shrews in Alabama. This has sparked concerns about its spread in humans and a potential pandemic, because this type of virus can cause severe, often fatal neurologic and respiratory diseases in humans and animals.
>> Also, Kansas now reports the largest tuberculosis outbreak in U.S. history. Though fewer than 100 cases (in a single month!), that’s the most since the 1950s, when the U.S. began monitoring and reporting TB cases.
>> And finally, a shout-out to FastEddyNZ for finding Pfizer’s long-demanded list of (1,291) Covid Vaccine side effects. My apology if you’ve found this already. The web site sez it is being censored on the internet (but that couldn’t happen, could it??) However, FastEddy sez he only found it because he used the (relatively new) Freespoke search engine.
As we examine how our current house of cards collapses, I submit these are the kinds of things we should expect with increasing frequency as the fabric of society continues to fray around the edges.
I have my ticket, and I cannot get off this bus even if it is heading straight for a cliff. At a time when so many around me are immersed only in face-time stuff, I cannot help but keep looking out the window at the world around us. Even if others choose not to do so, I will stand witness as humans work to crash civilization.
Having said that, I want to share special thanx with others posting on Un-Denial.com. Its many followers continue to help me stay aware of so much of what is happening. Rob has given us all a special gift, and I treasure it every time I visit. Best wishes to each of you on this web site as our historic journey continues.
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Hi Preston, thanks for the kind words. Stay well.
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I wrote a somewhat snarky critique of peak oil several years ago
Hubbert.pdf
I had stumbled on an old article authored by M.K. Hubbert in which he used his analytical methods to discuss the future of fossil fuels. He very clearly stated that future developments in oil production could “flatten the curve”, so to speak.
What do you know, that’s exactly what happened. In the form of the Arab oil embargo, and then the Iranian revolution in the 70’s. The curve of global oil production was radically altered, a much flatter curve and a much slower peak stretched out over several decades.
I was immediately disillusioned by the peak-oil crowd, myopically zooming in of just a few recent years of production data and then wasting everyone’s time counting barrels on the head of a pin as they desperately try to fit Hubbert’s old curves onto the new production data.
It looks like the graph I made over a decade ago is holding up well…
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Your explanation for the plateau and delayed decline is strong.
I do not understand how your interpretation of Hubbert’s work predicts a gentle decline.
It is intuitive to me that the technologies and debt we have used to extend the plateau will steepen the decline.
Why is my belief wrong?
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“Plateau and delayed decline” is not what I explained. You seem to have been confused by my reference to “undulating plateau” which is what oil industry cheerleaders would often use to “debunk” the peak-oil idiots. That was quite a while ago now, I guess.
“Flattened curve” is what I explained. I would have thought the covid thing would have made that understandable enough.
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Call the flattened top whatever you want. I’m just trying to understand your argument.
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At some point I am going to write an article about how ineffectual academics are for the everything predicament. Case in point, here is a comment from the highly knoweldge (and on our side) Dr Mike Joy.
“Never in human history has transdisciplinary inquiry been needed than it is now. We are on the precipice of collapse and one of the reasons is siloing of research and discourse.”
Sorry mate but I completely disagree. The time now is for ordinary people and leaders to speak plainly and honestly. We have had decades of international academics attending conferences, pontificating, and producing intersectional trans-disciplinary double speak nonsense studies. And what has actually been achieved?
Academics bemoaning siloing in research/discourse has a corollary with big corporations who constantly restructure their organization but never solve their actual problems.
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When the harvest fails and I’m like, “damn, i really wish I had done more un-siloed research”.
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Totally agree. The number of meaningless words written by academics and ‘specialists / experts’ is astounding. A particular fascination I have is with the big 4 of EY, KPMG etc whose sustainability teams write shite in direct contrast to their other teams which instantly tells you it won’t make any difference but gives the illusion of them making a difference.
A friend says we’ve got to the point where everyone is essentially being paid for bringing in each other’s washing. Very little of anything meaningful being done anymore essentially thanks to surplus cheap fossil energy and because there are too many of us.
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Its obvious peak demand is going to beat peak supply at the finish line. The World Bank and IEA recently said were gonna have the mother of all oil gluts starting sometime this year or next and lasting a decade. So, I assume Art is just trying to get ahead of the curve, so he doesn’t get hammered (assuming) that glut hits. That’s what happened to him and others in 2014, and I assume he wants to protect his reputation. And we all know the naysayers will be having a field day.
My best guess at least.
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Seems like a reasonable guess.
In other words, the coming economic depression caused by energy prices being too high for growth will kill energy demand and no one will be believed when they say energy depletion caused the problem.
So I’d better change my story because my reputation is more important than my integrity.
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Going back to the crux of Art’s argument about reserves, I’m keenly aware that most reserves are not reserves by the very definition of reserve..
OK that needs explanation. A reserve is meant to be the economic proportion of a resource using today’s technology and price. By economic meaning profitable to extract..
It begs the question of why so many reserves are just sitting in the ground not being developed, if it was profitable to do so at today’s technology and price? The simple answer is that a lot of what’s called reserves are not really profitable at today’s price at all, plus organizations like USGS often fudge the line between resource and reserves..
In Australia, I did the research looking at what the USGS has listed for reserves in Australia’s copper resources. According to them Aus has over 10% of the worlds copper reserves, but with a little asterisk they divert to a different page of their report where it states JORC compliant resources are counted in reserves. (I wont go into JORC compliant resources as that’s a post by itself).
What’s important is that over 70% of the identified copper in Australia, is not remotely economic at today’s prices, nor will it ever be unless the energy and material cost to extract it falls greatly. What’s happening in the real world is the cost of energy and materials for extraction is going up well in excess of official inflation rates.
Meanwhile in Chile and elsewhere in the world, mines like Escondida are currently mining grades of around 0.82% copper down from much higher grades 20 years ago, yet the “reserve” for Escondida is now down to just 0.64% copper, with around 6.4B tonnes of reserves left. They are high grading what they mine, because that’s how you make the most money, even if it leaves the remainder uneconomic at some point. At Escondida there are something like 18.8B tonnes of JORC compliant resources, mostly inferred of 0.54% copper. Remember USGS include JORC compliant resources as reserves, so Chile’s number of copper resources are also inflated.
The point being that most of what’s claimed to be “reserves” in any type of material extraction are sketchy at best, especially for undeveloped reserves, because if they were profitable, there would currently be an operation there high grading it to make a lot of profit.
Even what we tell ourselves about reserves, is really just human hubris, as if the future costs will decline to extract whatever. I assume most human predictions about how good the utopian future will be from the cornucopians has a great deal of thinking based on the last 200 years of growth with increasing size, complexity, energy and material use, with just about everyone falling for the hubris of human ingenuity, instead of the growing complex super organism.
By placing all the success at the foot of human ingenuity, instead of energy, materials, size, and complexity, it’s easy to see where denial kicks in. The question I have for any Cornucopians is, if it’s human ingenuity alone that’s responsible for our modern civilization, then why didn’t humans 100,000 years ago create a modern civilization? Afterall their cranial space was 10% larger than modern humans, so they must have had a lot more ‘human ingenuity’?
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The reason for “experts” assuming that low grade resources will become economical to extract is quite simple. They assume that as demand outstrips supply the price will go up and that will make previously uneconomic resources available to extract. This is quite wrong because at best it basically assumes that our energy systems, EROI and everything else has remained the same as a 100 years ago and at worst assumes that we can just use fusion, solar panels or other such non sense to maintain status quo.
As soon as oil output starts going down these reserves will drop like a rock to zero.
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When demand outstrips supply the price will go up, but instead we will see widespread demand destruction (i.e. involuntary de-growth).
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I was not aware of Nate Hagens’ latest guest Jean-Baptiste Fressoz but I think he is someone we should be following.
Fressoz does a nice job of integrating non-renewable materials into the energy story, and of debunking the energy transition meme. He reminds me a bit of Jean Marc Jancovici.
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I was just about to put up a link to this one. Despite actually stating that he thinks there are no solutions around the 61 minute and 30 second mark, I still detected a whiff of denial about the future, unless he was just being accommodating to Nate’s views of not knowing..
Jean-Baptiste does have an excellent handle on the complexity and interrelationships of every major material, but does not seem to have linked the growing size of civilization with the ability to gain access to all the lower grade resources.
Both he and Nate talk degrowth briefly and complexity briefly, but as separate different aspects, when they are totally related. There seems to be a belief, but unspoken, about us retaining our current complexity, or even improving it (more technology to solve problems), while we have a controlled degrowth.
What’s missing is of course any evidence it’s possible, or the logic of how this would be achieved, given entropy and dissipation of every material we use coupled with lower ore grades.
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100%.
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Best news of the year. One more vote to go. Can’t wait. He knows how the pharma swamp works.
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Has anyone had an opportunity to watch this yet? I also posted it after the Berman video above and it was released on the same day.
Adam Rozencwajg claims shale oil has started to decline now.
Can anyone explain why he and Berman are so far apart?
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I have been critical of Canadian Prepper for his silence on energy depletion.
He watched the discussion with Adam Rozencwajg which says total oil decline has begun now due to shale peaking, but don’t worry, new nuclear technologies will keep growth going.
All Canadian Prepper could say was: “Incredibly informative.”
This tells us, I think, that Canadian Prepper values his ad revenue from subscribers more than real threats that justify prepping.
https://x.com/PrepperCanadian/status/1887894444571304371
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Another shale forecast that disagrees with Berman.
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Accurate predictions are the best indicator of who to trust.
Every time Dr. James Hansen makes a prediction all the other climate scientists say he is wrong and too pessimistic. Then some time later Hansen’s prediction comes true.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/04/climate-change-target-of-2c-is-dead-says-renowned-climate-scientist
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If the AMOC shuts down, Britain will have the climate of Newfoundland (or something similar).
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UK has more pressing short term problems. They had an emergency meeting today. Don’t know about what. Wonder if they’re worried about natural gas shortages?
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Hideaway, just in case you’re not aware of this book…
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/02/04/southeast-asia-can-perhaps-avoid-the-worst-impacts-of-inadequate-oil-supply/comment-page-1/#comment-477626
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Prof G West, has been working on complexity, as it applies to urban areas, for a couple of decades. I’ve watched a whole heap of his YT videos and read quite a few of the different papers about scale/complexity (West and others).
One mistake his work does make is that towns/urban areas/cities are not isolated, so the rules he comes up with are very loose. His work is what made me search for more about size/scale complexity laws in different areas of science, not just human and life associations. In Meteorology there are size/complexity associations with storms and weather systems, in Astronomy there are size complexity laws that apply to star formations and internal processes and elements.
All these different fields of science came up with their finding independently of each other, basically from observation within the field, then observation of how the same rules of size complexity applied across the board in their field.
My own observations are that size complexity laws apply to all dynamic physical systems. The larger they get, the more complex the internal interactions become. The more complex any system is, the easier for internal systems to breakdown because of the highly interactive nature of every aspect of that complex system (more possible failure points).
Before I came across size/complexity laws, I knew we were in a lot of trouble from an energy and material perspective, but didn’t really have an argument against the human ingenuity aspect of cornucopians, even though the numbers for it (energy and materials), don’t come close to adding up.
The hand wave of human ingenuity is a powerful one, except it never explains why humans of 100,000 years ago with a 10% larger cranial space than modern mankind, didn’t have more technology than us.
Size/complexity laws do explain this perfectly, which is why a civilization of 150 people can never make a nuclear power plant, as ingenuity is only part of the picture. Without the growth in size of the civilization, and therefore development of many different activities (more complexity), getting to the stage of building a nuclear power plant is impossible.
All aspects of the civilization have to grow together to allow a greater range of materials to be produced, but also better tools need to be developed with greater precision to allow for more complex machinery. At the same time, social systems become more complex along with rules and regulations for everything. Education, healthcare, networks in the civilization all become more complex as the civilization grows.
I would encourage everyone to watch some of G West’s videos about size/complexity as it applies to mammals and cities. Forget the exact power law ratios he comes up with as people do dispute some of his findings. However it’s just the ratio of size to growth people have difficulty with, not the overall findings of efficiency gains per unit in larger systems.
In context of overall efficiency gains by having larger systems, think of how a lot of the current meme of going local is going to work out in a world of less energy as the efficiency gains of the entire system go into reverse.
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Hideaway, I’m trying to absorb your size/complexity laws.
Are you sure size is the important independent variable and not energy?
I understand that complex system are more fragile because they have a higher number of failure points, but I’ve always assumed that it’s the energy flow that drives and enables complexity, not the size.
A Toyota Camry and a Formula One race car are roughly the same size but the failure rate of the race car is much higher because of it’s complexity and energy throughput. Ditto for a Beaver float plane and helicopter.
I’m thinking high energy structures are often large, like a city, but it’s the complexity of the city enabled by energy that makes it fragile, not it’s size.
High technology has high complexity and therefore only civilizations with high energy throughput can develop high technologies. They just happen to be large because a single human can only consume so much energy. Maybe small cities managed by AI are possible provided a lot of energy is available to power the AI and its robots.
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It’s all based upon the underlying energy, but imagine a civilization of only 150 human individuals, around the Dunbar number. Of these people there are old and young along with the teenagers and adults.
Imagine they have a Ghawar size oil field that sits at surface, just outside the village. Apart from burning it for heat, they are never going to make any type of car to use it. Most of the people will always be involved in gathering food and basic agriculture. They are never going to be able to mine metals, process them, refine them, shape them into something that can be like an internal combustion engine, with many precision shapes and moving parts.
No-one in the village will ever be educated enough, to even think of anything like a car.
So while energy is the underlying driver and totally essential, the growth to larger size is vitally important in increasing complexity. We don’t get size without more complexity, but we can’t get highly complex without the growth in size either.
It’s a total combination of factors. The energy and materials have to be available, but the growth in size, with excess food (energy for storms and stars) frees up materials to become more complex. As the complexity grows it enables more energy and materials to be obtained.
It’s a self perpetuating growth entity, as without increased use of energy and complexity (increasing efficiency), then existence has to fail because of lower grades of energy and materials needed just for maintenance eventually.
Once some type of limit is hit, the entire complex entity has to fail as it has used all the easy to gain energy and/or materials and relies upon complex operations to gain the lower grades. The complexity cannot go backwards to simpler operations as these will not work on the lower grades. Size of the entity is important as you cannot keep the complexity without the availability of every aspect.
Rob… “Maybe small cities managed by AI are possible provided a lot of energy is available to power the AI and its robots.” For a brief time, possibly, but long term no. Everything suffers from entropy, eventually the AI will fail. The small city will not possibly have the entirety of operations required to do all the mining of the minerals and metals, plus make every machine needed including all the machines required to make highly specialised computer chips for all the computers. Plus of course all the farm equipment, trucks for transporting food, tractors, roads, bridges, toasters, hot water services, new building materials, cement mixers, houses, commercial refrigeration units, freezers, plastics, solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, telephones etc, etc…. OK you get the point. A small city has no chance of creating every aspect of the modern world to all function together in what we call civilization.
Take Simon Michaux’s ‘Venus project’ as an example. A small self contained city based upon a nuclear reactor ( I don’t care what type), with a 3D printer to make all the replacement parts as things break down. Firstly the reactor and every aspect of the little project all comes from the existing industrial system. Secondly you have to have all the correct materials to put into the 3D printer for it to actually make the parts. What happens if the stainless steel you have doesn’t have the right quantity of Molybdenum for a particular application? It doesn’t matter how well prepared they think they are, some aspect will eventually break down that they can’t replace. What happens if the 3D printer breaks down??
Not sure the above explains it fully, trying with points below….
Energy and materials are required for any complex adaptive system to exist.
You can’t get more complex unless the size grows to free up resources to allow the growth, because any increase in complexity is something ‘new’ happening in the system, an addition to all existing processes within the system.
The growth in size and growth in complexity allows for lower grade energy and materials to be available for the complex adaptive system to use.
At lower grades there are a lot more energy and materials available. Entropy and dissipation are always at work, so as the system grows more energy and materials are used in maintenance.
As the easy and simple energy and materials are used up, only the lower grade, complex to obtain energy and materials remain.
If/when the system loses size, the complexity simplifies. With this simplification, the lower grade energy and materials requiring complexity become unavailable, while entropy and dissipation continue their relentless march.
If any of the factors declines, it negatively affects all other aspects, so shrinkage in size, unwinds complexity, making energy and materials less available. Energy availability decline does likewise, a complexity decline will also do likewise, and so will a material availability decline.
Once a complex adaptive system exists and grows, it continues until it can’t because of some limitation. Because larger systems have more complexity and therefore possible failure points, I suspect the more rapid collapse of larger systems is because of cascades of failure throughout the more highly complex system, compared to simple systems, that have less possibility of cascades of failure.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pando_(tree)
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Thanks, I think I understand and agree with 95% of your thesis. The only point I’m trying to make is that I think your argument would be stronger if you do not claim that size and complexity are always proportional.
In some cases it is possible for complexity to grow without an increase in size: For example an integrated circuit with smaller lithography, or a helicopter compared to a small plane.
In some cases it is possible for size to grow without an increase in complexity: For example, a shrew that evolves into a 100,000 times larger elephant. Both mammals are constructed from identically complex eukaryotic cells, and the complexity of their systems are roughly equivalent.
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Rob … “In some cases it is possible for complexity to grow without an increase in size: For example an integrated circuit with smaller lithography, or a helicopter compared to a small plane.”
These are only more complex with less size because of human precision being able to make smaller widgets, they are not self adaptive complex systems. They do not adapt themselves from inputs of energy and materials from the environment. It’s the human system growing that made these possible, they are inanimate objects that can neither grow nor adapt by themselves.
Rob … “In some cases it is possible for size to grow without an increase in complexity: For example, a shrew that evolves into a 100,000 times larger elephant. “
An Elephant is considered a lot more complex than a shrew because of more complex cognitive abilities and intricate behaviors than a shrew.
Also with an elephant the internal cells have become more efficient over time, with the ability to only use 3/4 of the energy of a shrew on an equal weight basis. 4 tonnes of elephant is a lot more efficient than 4 tonnes of shrew and a lot smarter, even though the collective shrew brain weight would be the size or greater than a single 4 tonne elephant.
Back to humans. Why does no small village of natives ever develop the complexity we have of many billions of humans, after all the brain size of all the humans are roughly all the same size? It was only those villages that grew that developed greater complexity.
I would contend that it was surplus food brought into a small village that allowed some humans to be freed from collecting their own food to have time to use their cognitive ability for other things, then develop skills that made better tools or processes for those still doing the farming, which freed up more people and allowed the small civilization to grow with more specialities appearing as it grew.
Elephants were the size of a shrew approximately 24 million generations earlier, and only through evolution did the larger size and cognitive ability happen. The self adaptive system had an advantage for larger size that allowed more brain functions to develop, which had advantages over the smaller size.
Humans had a larger brain size 100,000 years ago, but we didn’t develop highly complex civilizations back then. It was the growth in numbers of humans ‘freed from food collection’ that allowed our complexity to flourish. No individual human’s complexity changed as we are all just made of eukaryotic cells, but the collective of many humans became more complex. In shrews/Elephants the eukaryotic cells are very similar, but the elephant having greater size has more efficient internal systems and greater complexity of cognitive ability.
I’m certain we could find exceptions to the overall rule, looking hard enough, just like nearly every other ‘rule’ that humans come up with, but how much of that is our lack of understanding of exactly what’s going on because of the complexity of everything we try to simplify into simple rules?
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I think we’re using different definitions of complexity. I do not consider an elephant to be much more complex than a shrew. I do consider a shrew to be more much more complex than a bacteria. That’s ok, your argument using your definition is valid.
Don’t forget that size and energy enables complexity but does not guarantee it. Our ancestors had big brains for quite a while before an improbable double mutation unlocked an extended theory of mind that increased social cooperation and also possibly cognitive ability.
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The social co-operation we have, is unheard of in the animal kingdom.
Every one of us that ever drives a car down a road, has the faith and trust that the unknown person from potentially a different ‘tribe’ , will drive towards us at 100km/hr but stay on their side of the road, leaving a gap of 1 metre or less as we pass each other.
Most of the time this trust and faith in the unknown person is justified, but not always (from experience!!).
Rob … ” Don’t forget that size and energy enables complexity but does not guarantee it.”
Yet in some structures like stars it does guarantee it!!
From our current understanding…all stars when they develop, the size and complexity is determined right in the initial formation, dependent upon the amount of stellar matter/dust/hydrogen that accumulates into it. This combination of quantity follows known physics laws of accretion, gravity etc, that leads to processes happening within the stars.
Small stars burn their hydrogen slowly and the mass that develops is too low to allow heating to high enough temperatures that allows further fusion of higher elements formed within the star. Star formation and processes are probably the purest form of size complexity laws, because it’s all physics of basic elements.
In humans when we originally had the unlocking of the theory of mind, we didn’t have modern civilization starting quickly. It appears it took climate stability to unlock surplus energy, as in consistent grains year after year, for humans to develop larger civilizations that could have higher complexity.
The real problem I see is that to understand the system of civilization and where it is heading, we need to have a near expert understanding of physics, anthropology, economics, astronomy, finance, climate, chemistry, biology, manufacturing, geology, politics, ecology, religion, mining, mineral processing, farming, sociology, psychology, material science and a few other areas I’ve left out because I didn’t think of them when typing this..
Take any one of those aspects, and it’s a hugely complex field by itself with no-one fully understanding the entirety of those fields, because there are so many sub parts which are also hugely complex.
Hence us humans use simplification of everything to try and understand what’s going on. The simplification can never explain all the intricacies within any field and once humans are outside their field of expertise, tend to hand wave about an another area, as if it’s processes were simple. Every ‘expert’ I read articles from, tend to hand wave about areas outside of their own understanding, leading to massive mistakes in projections.
Take ‘the honest sorcerer’s’ post mentioned down thread and his conclusion of slow collapse based on much simpler prior civilizations slow collapse. Yet all those past civilizations had a commonality of using basic tools for agriculture, horse or oxen cart transport with wooden ships powered by wind.
Some collapsed faster or slower than others, but all had around the same type of complexity when they collapsed give or take a bit. Our technology, size and complexity is vastly different from the past civilizations, so there is not direct correlation between us and them, except they were also civilizations.
I would suggest, all without evidence, that the difference rates of processes in stars and stars life, is more akin to the difference in prior small relatively simple civilizations and our large highly complex civilization. Small stars have simple processes using less energy than large stars, just like small civilizations have simple complexity using basic energy.
Large stars have much faster more complex processes involving much greater energy and materials use, plus a much faster life and collapse because of the faster processes driven by greater energy use.
Think of the changes throughout our lives and our parents life, compared to changes in technology used from one generation to another in past civilizations. The pace of change and energy use driving that change is vastly faster in our modern complex civilization, more akin to the difference in rates of change between small stars and large stars.
My suspicion, is that there are size complexity physical laws across the universe we don’t fully understand and haven’t defined, that are applicable to all physical systems.
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If you ever decide to write a book, I’d be honored to be one of your editors.
I also happen to have the most comprehensive Hideaway library on the planet. 🙂
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Overshoot has a very simple solution.
Bring back the WOLF!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZl-ssLKyPE
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I’ve watched a lot of hours of Scott Ritter for his excellent Ukraine analysis. This is the first time I’ve heard him open up on his personal experiences with how the deep state actually operates.
He’s thrilled about the revolution that’s underway, doesn’t know if it will succeed, but is praying that the CIA, FBI, and all of congress follow USAID into oblivion.
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New interview with my favorite expert on the deep state, Mike Benz.
My interpretation: Our 6 continent supply chain dependent standard of living has a new risk in addition to the everything bubble, energy and mineral scarcity, and nuclear war. It’s a very good time to prepare for a much less complex, much less abundant world.
Benz was not quite as smooth and confident as he usually is. I think he’s scared about the consequences of the passion in the air this week. I feel it. I hate my government for what they did during covid and will welcome a revolution.
P.S. My Canadian government pulled down their website on foreign aid funding yesterday before any of us could cross reference against DOGE. They also approved mRNA transfections for every Canadian including children without doing any independent testing and they missed or ignored the fraud in the US testing. It’s one big club and I’m not in it.
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Mike Benz openly admits that American Living standards depend on an empire. This is rare outside of left-wing circles. John Michael Greer has also said the same thing, but he seems to have a mixture of “left-wing” and “right-wing” beliefs.
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Must watch. There are several fundamental problems with the mRNA transfections our “leaders” coerced into billions of people that did not need them. This explains why DNA contamination may be one of the more serious problems. There are other problems not discussed. Stop the shots.
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New rip of an soon to be relevant 1995 documentary available.
https://forums.mvgroup.org/index.php?showtopic=106961
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Going back to the original post here on Art Berman’s sudden turn around, he discusses how all the increase in oil production has come from unconventional oil and points to the increase seen in this diagram…
He also points of this as proof of his thesis of lots of reserves. Art misses what most people miss, this unconventional oil did not appear in a vacuum.
There has been a huge increase in gas and coal production in the decade or so prior to the unconventional oil increase. A lot of this was used to build China to be the modern powerhouse of production it is. Without this prior increase in coal and gas production, with all the new mines, roads, ports, factories in China producing cheap parts for everything, including the machinery that made the drill rigs and oilwell casings etc, the unconventional oil would have been too expensive to extract profitably. (there are still questions about if it’s been profitable at all!!).
Art’s thinking is just more narrow vision in not understanding how the world had to grow energy, material, technology and complexity to make the ‘reserves’ of oil locked up in shale, economic. All that extra industrialization to make all the equipment cheaper, for the oil producers to use, suffers from entropy and has a limited life like everything else.
It takes energy and materials to maintain, then eventually rebuild, not just the equipment used by the drillers, but the factories that make the equipment, the machinery in those factories, the ports, ships, roads etc, etc.. It is always a long line of interconnectedness.
Even the people who were involved with the building of it all have to be replaced as they age and retire. This means schools, universities etc, all in cheap labor countries, like China was 2-3 decades ago. China also had cheap coal, and lax environmental laws, which reduced costs of ‘goods’ produced there. As China has developed, the ‘cheapness’ from there is leaving, as they have developed higher standards of living. This is just another aspect of the overall complexity of the entire system of civilization becoming more efficient until it can’t do so anymore because of some limitation.
What we call reserves are a combination of current technology and price. However if/when the price of the equipment required to drill oil wells, or the pipes, or the casings or a million other aspects of drilling become more expensive as we run out of cheap places to produce it all, ‘reserves’ will decline as they become uneconomic due to overall cost of extraction.
If the world’s population were to fall, with there being no ‘cheap’ labor countries with cheap energy resources (are we there yet??), then the relatively cheap equipment to gain access to oil, gas, coal, minerals, metals, water and food, will go up in cost faster than the price of all the commodities produced, reducing ‘reserves’ of everything very quickly and probably the availability of most goods.
It took huge increases in coal and gas production and use to build ‘China inc’ to enable known energy and mineral/metal resources to become reserves that were able to be brought online later from the efficiency gained by the growing civilization. Do we have another China’s worth of population, and energy resources to be a new cheaper, more efficient source of industrial production for the world??
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Wouldn’t a falling population lower demand and therefore lower prices?
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Stellarwind72, Think of a city, any city remembering we now have over half of human population in urban areas.
Now think of how that city would operate with only 10% of the population spread in relatively the same proportion of total population in each of the suburbs. All the networks of the city are still the same size. We still have the same large road system, water system, gas, electricity, rail lines, sewerage, drainage etc. Likewise for bridges, parks, phone lines etc. It all needs to be maintained for modernity to continue. Sure we could change 3 or 4 lane roads down to one lane, or cut regularity of public transport like trains and busses, but most of it needs to be retained with a much lower population to pay for it all.
At some point there would have to be compulsory moving of people from some areas that just get closed down, which could happen if one city gets slowly abandoned while the rest of the country is operating normally, like Detroit, with subsidies from the federal govt to help provide services.
What happens when the whole country or world is undergoing the same population reduction? How do all the manufacturing businesses operate with not enough employees when making their widgets? How do debts get paid from reduced sales?
It’s not as simple as lower demand equals lower prices, it’s a highly complex system we live in with myriads of complex interactions that will behave chaotically when the paradigm of growth we’ve had for 250 years changes to shrinkage.
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I think that during the inevitable decline, there will have to be some consolidation and triage of infrastructure. I actually think that compulsory relocation in some cases may not be such a bad idea (i.e. an area becomes unlivable due to repeated wildfires or flooding). It would actually be better to consolidate in areas like Detroit or Cleveland, OH, than in places like Miami or Phoenix, due to the effects of climate change.
Could some industry exist at a smaller scale than it exists today? I don’t know. Maybe it could for simple products. But what I do know is that the current scale of the human enterprise cannot and will not be sustained.
They won’t be repaid (unless the currency is devalued).
A declining population could in theory lower prices for certain things due to decreased demand, but it could increase the price of other things due to the loss of economies of scale. How these two trends will interact remains to be seen.
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Stellarwind72 … “A declining population could in theory lower prices for certain things due to decreased demand”.
That’s only one side of the story, it assumes there are just as many “certain things” being produced.
I expect a declining population to only come after we have collapsed, but assuming it comes before, then our monetary system based on growth will collapse at some point and the ability to do all the different tasks that now happen in civilization will be depleted.
I don’t think it’s predictable, exactly what there will be less of, or the same amount of, as the decline will be chaotic. This will make many unexpected items not just more expensive but potentially unavailable as well, when the business making them closed down due to too much debt and falling sales, or unavailable parts, unavailable raw resources needed due to closures elsewhere in the system.
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Thanks Hideaway. Would I be correct in summarizing your argument as follows?
Modern civilization must grow or else it will collapse, and growth is dependent on a few key resources that must be abundant and low cost, like oil, coal, natural gas, iron, copper, and sand.
Unconventional oil and alternate energy are not low cost enough to replace depleting conventional fossil energy, and there is no substitute for depleting minerals.
We are now hitting limits to growth that cannot be overcome. Any forecast that predicts growth and business as usual is wrong.
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I’m fairly sure a summary will never suffice because it’s highly complex and the simplification to a summary leaves out too much..
I’ll keep trying though..
The growth to modernity with more complexity has given us efficiency gains, requiring less energy and materials per capita.
The access to lower grade ores of everything (energy and materials, (including food and water)) requires more complexity. We get more complexity from a larger sized system using more energy and materials as it grows.
Entropy and dissipation means we require increasing energy use to obtain the materials and energy from the lower grades, to just maintain the existing system let alone grow. The efficiencies gained suffer from the law of diminishing returns.
Without growth in energy use, the system will collapse as it cannot be maintained with constant energy use.
The larger the system the faster the collapse, as more complex systems have more nodes of failure which leads to cascades of other failures. Because of these cascades of failures, a disruption to energy growth, materials growth, or size will lead to complexity unwinding rapidly, while we have a massive population size.
Our current civilization is the largest to ever exist by orders of magnitude. Energy combined with complexity allows us to become more efficient. A reduction of either leads to cascades of failure. Complexity comes from growth in size and increasing energy use, utilizing a wider range of materials in our complexity.
Reduce any aspect of modern civilization energy, materials, size or complexity and the cascading chains of failure affect every other aspect leading to collapse, just like it has in every prior civilization.
OK, sorry, that’s not short either and still doesn’t cover it all….
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Good article from “quark”
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/02/la-muerte-del-peak-oil-la-escasez-de.html
The “death” of peak oil, resource scarcity, Trump and the zenith of civilization.
A long headline that needs extensive development in several parts.
I will begin by criticizing Art Berman’s article, moving on to the scarcity of resources, and then to Trump’s policies. All of this is to try to explain that we are already entering the final phase of a process known as the peak of civilization, with visible pre- and post-peak consequences.
1º). This week there has been much commentary on Art Berman’s article on oil abundance.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/peak-oil-requiem-for-a-failed-paradigm/
Art starts by saying…
“Peak oil was supposed to be a warning: when global production peaked, it would lead to shortages, soaring prices, and economic collapse. Twenty years ago, Matt Simmons made the case in Twilight in the Desert , arguing that if Saudi oil peaked, a global crisis was looming.
The Peak Oil movement went ahead and predicted an imminent decline. That did not happen. Peak Oil is a failed paradigm .”
And this is the explanation that Art Berman proposes…
“The evidence: oil supply is not decreasing
In “ Lazy Thinking: How Memes Get Oil Wrong , ” I laid out the numbers:
And it ends by certifying the “death” of peak oil (although it does not deny that it will happen at some point, it delays that moment for many years) by glorifying the resources of shale oil .
“Technology, capital and price – not just geology – determine oil supply today. The price boom of 2005-2014 released more oil than anyone expected. Today, financial markets and geopolitics – not depletion – drive the oil game .
Shale changed everything, unlocking a huge new supply. Peak oil still pretends it doesn’t exist, it doesn’t even put it on a chart. That’s why it’s a dying paradigm. It had its moment and transformed my worldview in important ways. May it rest in peace.”
——————————————
Art Berman’s summary goes something like this: “We have enough oil resources, we just need a higher price and good technology to extract everything we need. We need to turn the page on peak oil.”
The problem with “refuting” this type of argument, based on reserves (for no less than 130 years) is that it is only possible through indirect demonstration, via oil flow.
Berman accepts the IEA’s reserve and resource figures. These are based on proposals from the Energy Institute (formerly the BP report) and resources at the US Geological Survey (USGS).
The Energy Institute’s reserve figures are provided by the countries themselves (especially those in OPEC), without a clear audit, so they may or may not be true. And no one can give figures that can be considered accurate, so trying to disprove their claims on this point is useless.
But if there is so much oil left, and it is also very cheap to produce, we can analyze the extraction figures to see what they tell us.
According to Berman, Vitol’s forecast oil demand may be decent, implying that demand will remain high through 2040 and beyond.
Therefore, the flow of oil production should continue to grow or at least remain stable for many years.
Global oil production has plateaued at around 82 million b/d since 2016, peaking at nearly 85 million b/d in November 2018.
https://peakoilchart.com/peak-oil-chart?category=4
However, if we present the production graph for all the countries in the world except the USA , we obtain this other graph, slightly different.
Here the plateau around 70 million b/d dates back to 2005, with a peak in November 2016 at around 74 million b/d and a clear downward trend since then, to 68 million b/d.
In other words, we are talking about a plateau of almost 20 years , with current production 8% below the peak and prices of $80 (average for 2024), not exactly cheap, if what we want is to demonstrate that there are abundant reserves.
We have gone through periods of prices of $50, then $150, a plateau of prices above $100, then prices of $50 again and currently $80 and world production (except the USA) has barely changed, so the price does not seem to be relevant to production (curiously, the peak in 2016 was reached with prices of $50, far from current prices, where with prices of $80, 6 million b/d less are produced than in 2016).
So Berman’s argument that oil prices dictate production may be valid for shale oil, but it certainly does not apply to the rest of the world’s oil, as shown in the chart with the real data. Average prices of $100 in 2022 (and more than $80 in 2023-2024) should have triggered world production (ex-USA) and they did not. In any case, he can always say that the increase in prices takes many years to translate into an increase in production in long-cycle projects (the truth is that the projects in Guyana and Brazil started with prices at $50 and are now reaching production).
In fact, if we move from oil to petroleum products, incorporating natural gas liquids used in the petrochemical industry, the miracle is explained by the production of a single country, the United States.
This chart is absolutely insane. It contains US oil, natural gas liquids and biofuel production.
The next thing we need to do is ask ourselves if it is sustainable.
US oil production reaches 13.3 million b/d in its latest report and that is almost 5 billion barrels per year.
Proven reserves worldwide amount to 1.75 trillion barrels and the figure for the US is … 48.321 billion barrels at the end of 2022. That is, 36 times less than the world total.
https://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/crudeoilreserves/pdf/Table_1.pdf
So the entire world’s oil production depends (according to Art Berman and his defense of shale) on reserves 36 times smaller than the rest.
Yes, as more and more locations are drilled, reserves may last for a few more years, but shale oil is characterized by a 70% decline in wells drilled in just one year, so reserves are very difficult to increase. And the currently known locations only last for 10 years (actually only 9) at the current rate, so after those 9 years, production will simply collapse, according to the known pattern of decline.
Yes, shale oil is huge, but it is temporary and sustaining global production based on such small reserves is an illusion, not a certainty.
In any case, it is a topic that will continue to be debated for a few years, until we verify the true scope of shale oil.
In the rest of the world production we see that it is very difficult to achieve an increase in production (talking about 20 years is a reasonable period to justify this difficulty). And not only that, there are no new discoveries to replace the oil produced , nor new projects after 2029, to compensate for the decline of the old fields. Therefore, the abuse of infill drilling, both horizontal and vertical in mature fields, condemns us to a rapid decline in world production , once we reach the limit.
So even if we assume that the reserves Berman claims exist, we are not able to convert them into cheap oil. And since 2016, the incipient decline that has reached 8% threatens a collapse, with no new projects approved to bring them into production after 2029.
2nd). Scarcity of resources .
When we talk about peak oil, we must not forget other important raw materials that have a similar fate to crude oil.
For example, the silver market is in a permanent deficit that has lasted for five years. Demand continues to grow and supply is falling steadily, on a gentle downward plateau that has not stopped since 2016.
https://x.com/SRSroccoReport/status/1878903593962786885
https://silverinstitute.org/global-silver-market-forecast-to-remain-in-a-sizeable-deficit-in-2025/
(Washington, DC – January 29, 2025) The silver market is projected to record another significant deficit (total supply minus demand) for the fifth consecutive year in 2025. Consistent with previous years, industrial demand for silver will remain the key driver of this favorable supply-demand environment, with volumes projected to reach a new record this year.
As with oil, there are no new silver mines planned for the future. Only two mines in the coming years are not enough to offset the drop in production.
This decline, which began in 2016, was announced long before and no one wanted to pay attention to it either.
Something similar is already happening with the fundamental metal that supports the entire energy transition… copper.
The outlook for copper is the same as for silver, just a few years behind.
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2024/10/revision-actual-del-mercado-del-cobre.html
And soon we will also start with the deficit. In 2026 or 2027, the deficit will begin and will increase, according to the expected demand and the approved projects for new mines and copper expansions. It must be said that a mine takes between ten and fifteen years to bring it into production, so we know more or less the expected production within those 10-15 years…
If oil has been the essential fuel for creating and developing the current fossil-based system, copper plays the same role in the new fully electrified system.
Without abundant copper, we will not be able to grow.
One of the consequences of moving from an energy-dense system (fossils) to a much less dense one is that it needs many elements to be able to replace that lower density. And precisely, in order to extract, refine, process, manufacture and distribute the fundamental elements to build this new system, it is imperative to use the resources from the old system (oil). One of the pressing problems is how to develop a new system in the absence of fossils, since we are still unable to build anything without fossil fuels.
If before starting the transition (remember that we are facing an energy expansion, where we still use all energy sources and consume more and more fossil fuels ), we already have a certain shortage of the vital elements to complete this transition, we should study more thoroughly whether the transition is viable, with the available resources. The example of silver, with its permanent deficit, can be easily extrapolated to the case of copper.
3rd) Trump.
In the midst of this expected shortage of all kinds of raw materials, Trump bursts in.
The first thing you see is China’s dominance in the production of refined raw materials.
And not only is the dependence on raw materials important, but industrial production has migrated to Asia. For this reason, the reindustrialisation of the entire production system is being sought, bringing manufacturing companies back to the USA.
This requires not only the construction of the productive fabric, but also the assurance of the supply chain of basic raw materials.
And suddenly we find ourselves with proposals as wild as annexing Greenland, incorporating Canada into the US and controlling the Panama Canal, so we cannot separate the fight for resources from the policy undertaken from the very beginning by Trump.
It is aware of the need for independence in the supply of resources and to this end it plans to increase the production of gas, oil and coal on US soil and to “acquire” the lands that have an abundance of resources that the US does not have (i.e. Canada and Greenland) while controlling the supply routes.
This time, it’s not conspiracy theories. Trump’s proposals are already on the table.
For a US leader to say out loud that he intends to buy or annex, even by force , an independent territory, is a “savage” example of how far they will go to secure resources.
On the other hand, the America First policy and tariff threats could lead to a sharp decline in international trade.
From the “other side” (BRICS) voices are raised against unilateral decisions and the theory of the “strongest” , which ensures a confrontation sooner or later…
4th) The zenith of civilization.
All of this brings us to a historic moment for humanity. The fight for resources has long since begun, but it is only now gaining the importance it deserves in the eyes of public opinion. It is no longer possible to conceal the need for important raw materials and everyone is beginning to position themselves to “fight” for the last available resources.
Trump uses threats in the form of tariffs (and later, he will also threaten to exclude from the SWIFT system those who do not bend to his will) and has made it clear that if he has to use force, he will do so.
In Europe we have realized this late. However, the race has already begun to strengthen the defense sector , to increase the operational capacity to intervene in those territories of interest.
The proposal to increase defence budgets is so important that even Rutte (as NATO’s top leader) has admitted that we must make sacrifices (including cutting pensions) to reach the level that is adequate to meet Western interests.
The scarcity of resources, a debt so high that it is unpayable, negative demographics, the endless crisis and the desperate struggle for resources are the main points that define the next historical period, the process of which will lead to a brutal adjustment that will lead us from a growing economy to a shrinking one.
The problem with this “adjustment” is that we do not know the consequences and the speed of the process of decline. A system based on economic growth works very well as long as we have enough fuel (both raw materials and monetary resources), but it is impossible to analyze what happens when we stop growing. Economic structures are prepared for perpetual growth, but negative feedback loops, when the process is reversed and we enter into decline, are impossible to analyze once they have started.
We have gained time by financing the system with the printing press (or with the debt created by the banks), replacing natural growth with artificial growth. The limit will be set by resources (until now we have had a certain abundance) and therefore the importance of ensuring supplies.
The 2020-2030 period appears to be the adjustment that precedes the start of the decline .
And from this blog, I defend the idea of an imminent date for the zenith of civilization , although only from the rearview mirror of the years, we can be aware of its verification.
The bursting of the mother of all bubbles may be the trigger (not the black swan, but the “dragon king”) of the beginning of the end.
You see, not everything is as simple as Art Berman claims. At this point, we should connect all the dots to achieve a universal vision, which does not limit ourselves to relying on the apparent “abundance” of oil and the infinite availability of money or technology, to confidently claim that the future of humanity has never looked better (the techno-optimistic policy that prevails today).
Just an opinion.
We’ll see.
Saludos el mar
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Nice find el mar, thanks.
These were the key points for me:
When the bubble pops Art can then disingenuously claim he was right and peak oil did not cause the collapse of civilization and his reputation will be intact on his headstone.
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I will attempt creating my own conspiracy theory.
First a quote:
Then, imagine the hypothetical: US being the biggest liar of all. All it needs is the world believing it is the biggest power and then everybody just subsidize its currency.
Imagine this: there is almost no production of shale whatsoever, and it’s just all paper barrels from a couple of agencies. Fiat money, fiat energy, …
And the oil has been effectively on a plateau for 20 years.
We live in the empire, would we notice?
Of course, I don’t believe any of this, that’s just a conspiracy theory and all data coming from all state agencies are trustful.
🙂
Charles (signing here, because the little email button doesn’t give me the possibility of putting my name any more)
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That’s an excellent summary Hideaway. You’re getting close to a definitive, crisp explanation of our predicament.
I’m thinking of about extracting this into it’s own post.
If I make any edits I will send them to you for review first.
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https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-february-4-2025/#comment-785787
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as an anesthesiologist looking into climate change and peak oil. This must end in in disaster some day?
A lot of healthcare in one moment to non some months later?
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That’s possible, although the most popular drugs prescribed by healthcare “experts” like statins and ozempic have more risks than benefits, and post collapse there will be no highly processed foods, so those who survive will probably be healthier.
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I remember reading some stat that the Venezuelans on average lost 20kg when they had the collapse a few years ago
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I will talk about healthcare and economics on a conference in mars. I am not going full collapse mode, but I will argue for that “high tech healthcare” is way to expensive and fragile. Someone has to pay. Its a pay as you go system. I am leaning on papers like this.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/nmc/45/1/45_1_18/_pdf
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X is unbelievable right now. There’s so much going on. I find it humbling that the “doers” are posting so much that it’s hard for “watchers” to keep up.
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https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-february-4-2025/#comment-785837
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Hi Rob,
I don’t think for a minute that everything is okay in China but at least they have been converting so-called paper wealth (or more accurately digital wealth) into bricks and mortar (or rather, concrete and steel) and all the other massive infrastructure they’ve been building over the past several decades. Whereas we in the West go for our bitcoin (and now Trump coin, WTF?) and stock market shenanigans, just what kind of value is in “financial assets”? Can they house, feed, warm/cool, clothe us directly? We have aging infrastructure everywhere and that includes our military as well. Until the so-called financial assets are turned into something concrete, it’s all just pie in the sky and soon more and more people will realise that their wealth will have evaporated as it becomes more difficult to obtain the goods we want and need to continue our civilisation.
When China “loses” $20 trillion in real estate, they still have their high-rises and shopping malls to show for it. When we will lose $20 trillion in the stock market, we will have poof! nothing, except utter economic and thus societal collapse. Not that any of this matters (as if high rises and shopping malls in cities will be of any use in a collapsing economy and the turmoil that ensues) but for now, I think we would be wise to understand that everything is definitely not okay, anywhere.
It’s not okay here where I am, relentless rain in some areas of 1500m or more in a week has flooded out the main highway that keeps our shell of civilisation intact. In just a few days, the effects of supply chain stoppage have become evident in all sectors and people are starting to see just how much we depend on the trucks rolling 24/7. Supermarket shelves of key goods are empty, and whilst panic buying doesn’t seem to be an issue yet, this should be a wake-up call to show just how fragile the system is. More rain is forecast so it may still be some time before the flow resumes. Thankfully, our property is on a hill (and in the highest elevation town in the state) but a friend who lives at the bottom got 1 mtr of water through their house when the normally idyllic babbling creek became a raging torrent the night we got 150mm of rain. As dramatic as that was, there is nothing to say we can’t get 300 or even 600mm of rain in a short period of time; we are well and truly in new territory when it comes to climate events.
The bamboo I planted 12 years ago are loving the moisture. I am stoked to witness their shoots soar into the air, the fastest growing species can max out at about 1 mt a day! The ones I have near the shed/house are clocking 300mm/day, still pretty impressive. Looking out at the bamboo clump is a very relaxing and comforting sight, sorely needed in these tumultuous days. Bamboo is revered for its strength and the ability to bend but not break in face of adversity. I think they are trying to teach us something!
Hope all are well and swaying with the breezes that come your way.
Namaste, friends.
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That is a lot of rain. Good luck for the rest of the season. We’ve suddenly got really dry down here. We went on a short holiday over to the west cost and on the final night camped at Lake St Clair (Australia’s deepest lake). That night there was a quite a few dry lightening strikes which have started a few bushfires. One of the fires burnt within metres of a 3000 year old huon pine stand. These fires are burning in temperate rain forest which and will never recover within our life time. It’s tragic.
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H
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Hi Gaia, It looks like you are having the same problem I’m having with entering new comments. I do not know if it is a WordPress problem or a Brave browser problem. I temporarily switched to Edge and I’m able to enter comments again. Hopefully they will fix it soon.
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Hello Rob,
Thank you for coming to my rescue, yes, it was I who tried to respond to Perran’s comment, I got as far as typing H for Hi and then the cursor disappeared. It appears to be working now with your change, thank you.
Hope you are going well, has this winter been manageable with your austerity program? Maybe it’s not a great sign overall if you didn’t need to use as much heat, but we have to look for the silver lining somewhere!
I have been lapping up your and Hideaway’s summation of the Predicament. For some reason, I don’t seem to tire of revising the issue that we now know almost backwards, it’s like a mantra to keep us focused and remain devoted to the Truth. I just knew we had the start of a new religion brewing here, perhaps the only one concocted that doesn’t promise any kind of saviour, after life, or meaning outside of just what is.
Namaste, friend.
Edge doesn’t seem to let me sign in with my moniker, so this will be another Anon post. But it’s Gaia here, swear to God.
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It’s like an addiction isn’t it? I can’t unsee it or stop looking.
Gold US$3000 today, everyone demanding physical delivery now. Big red flag.
Curious as hell what will happen in the US. Will the deep state strike back or be beaten? What will Trump do when everything tanks? Could be a dangerous moment.
Bioweapons wasn’t a side gig for Fauci, he was the entire bioweapons program. Bioweapons are ALWAYS developed in tandem with the vaccine countermeasure. That’s why the covid mRNA transfection “miracle” popped out of nowhere. Why is there silence on this? Why doesn’t my or any other government scream for covid justice? What’s wrong with everyone? Why no integrity anywhere? There’s a federal election coming here and I’ve been pounding the leader of the Canadian opposition party every day to demand covid justice. He is silent. I hate my government, hope Trump takes Canada by force.
I’m surviving ok with the thermostat at 15C. Love the 25 watt heated throw I sit on. Bedroom unheated at about 0C now. Toque on head all the time including in bed. Driving very little, once sometimes twice a week at about 20 Km per trip. Cut the cord and canceled cablevision and landline phone, don’t miss it, watch videos stored on my computer. My new security cameras are capturing deer and hunting cats in the middle of the night I did not know visited. Still buying about 3x the food I consume on every grocery trip. Food sales less frequent now. Buy higher quantity when on sale. Love my spreadsheet for tracking supplies, if you don’t have one you should start one, you won’t regret it.
Stay well friend.
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Y
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Hi Rob,
It’s Gaia here, just in case I’m made Anon again and you can’t guess who it is! Thank you for liking a “Y” response, once again I got caught out yesterday with the replies not going through! I wanted to say You’re an inspiration for your continual refinements to simplification, very much admired! But make sure you treat yourself right where it counts the most for you, no skimping on coffee for example!
Yes, I am also almost obsessively intrigued by what is unfolding in the Americas–the trailer we’ve been teased with so far for the movie “America’s Last Stand” sure looks like a ripper. I’m not sure what genre it is in–thriller, horror, drama, comedy, probably everything all at once. I’m with you that we’re just sitting waiting for everything to explode, and whether we like it or not, ready or not, we’re all part of this movie! These months have been so surreal, knowing that we are careening full speed into our collapse, and there’s nothing to do other than stay on the wild ride. Any day now the previews will be over and the real show will begin in earnest.
Speaking of movies and entertainment, any one here watch the new movie The Homestead, released last December in the US and Canada? If it’s out of the theatres by now, I think it’s only available streamed through the production company Angel Studios. I heard about it through Canadian Prepper, who gave it a great review for the accuracy and detail of what might happen in a post-apocalyptic scenario in the US. The premise is a dirty bomb in the Middle East bringing a stock market crash, followed by a terrorist nuclear detonation in the port of LA which sets off societal chaos and collapse throughout the entire US. The movie focuses on what a hand-picked core of survivalists, many with elite military experience, do to protect their elaborate prepper compound through the early days of collapse.
I was intrigued and since I was sidelined from planned outdoor tasks due to the rain, but alas, I couldn’t stream it from Australia. So I downloaded the book Black Autumn by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross (one being a Green Beret and the other the actual owner of the extensive prepper homestead highlighted in the movie) on Kindle from which they based the movie. It’s a pretty thrilling and chilling read, rife with military commando nonstop action which seems to be the main determinant of survival in this scenario. Like the Nuclear Scenario book, it’s a wild play by play unfolding of chaos, this time of a few weeks rather than minutes but still the speed and completeness of total societal collapse is convincingly portrayed. The inner circle glimpse of an elite survivalist situation paints a fascinating picture of just what it might take to weather through the initial melt-down of social order, and looking ahead to longer term survival in its aftermath. Despite being meticulously prepped for this end time scenario, the psychological implications of the world upending and how the masses react are the untested variables and the cause of much unraveling of the main characters. It seems the authors believe that primal urge of kill or be killed will out and the level of violence depicted in the book would do any Hollywood movie proud, but in this case may well be plausible as there are 400 million guns and untold rounds of ammo in the States just waiting to be matched up with an intended or unintended recipient. The book does an excellent job exploring how far would one go to protect oneself and their family, especially when law and order break down.
I do recommend the book (can’t say about the movie, but maybe someone else can comment?) for unbridled escapism with a sobering premonition that this is altogether more real than fiction. Reading it was actually exhausting in a way because of the overall intensity, and brought to mind a lot of questions as well as possible answers to how this collapse might unfold, and highlighted just how unprepared we are for the atrocities. If you’re a fan of military special forces then you would enjoy this read just for that, not my cup of tea but it was instructive in context. And wait, there’s more because this is just Book one of ten in this apocalypse collapse series by these authors. As long as it keeps raining, I might continue to indulge in this diversion, hopefully by the time I read the last installment the world will still be more or less recognisable but who knows?
Seize your bonus day, which is today, friends! And may you have many, many more.
Namaste.
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Thanks for the excellent book review Gaia. I didn’t know Homestead was based on a book. I’ll add it to my library.
I’ve got the movie but haven’t watched it yet. I expect it will be good. Send me an email if you’d like help finding the movie.
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Hi Perran,
I’m trying again to say it’s nice to hear from you. Hope you are going well, how about the crazy Tasmanian weather with one day being 30C and the next 15C! Hope you’ll get at least a bit of rain from the cool change (if not snow!) I am so glad you and your family were able to get out to enjoy the wilderness before all the fires started. If only we could send you some of the moisture we’re getting up here! It really is a terrible shame that the fires are affecting rain forest and alpine areas, both are so vulnerable now. The last time I was at Cradle Mountain/Dove Lake about five years ago, I was shocked to see so many dead trees due to Tasmania’s extended drought, just white trunks and branches sticking out everywhere. I didn’t recall it looking anything like that when we walked the Overland Track (including all the way down Lake St Clair, adding an extra day but so worth it) about 22 years ago, a long time for us but a blink for the noble Huon pine. Have you and your boys walked it? That really was a peak experience (literally, too, for all the mountains) and just remembering it makes me want to find the photos (taken on film!) which are in some box somewhere. Maybe during the collapse will be the time to bring them out and look back at what was, sigh.
I am spending more and more time in Far North QLD these days as we prepare to farewell Tasmania as our home base after 25 plus years. But Tassie, and especially the Huon Valley, will always feel like home in my heart as it was the first land and community that welcomed us so warmly when we were new migrants from America. I am very happy for you that you are in such harmony with the land as your home and source of sustenance and I wish you and your family all the best. I really would love to meet you in person the next time I’m back, it will be some time later this year as we have to get our little house and small holding ready for sale, another huge undertaking on the heels of the last house sale. It looks like the housing market has cooled right off in Tasmania and our area, so it will be interesting to see what interest our little one bedroom artist home/studio on 2.5 acres with 150 fruit trees will generate.
All the best, and enjoy the last of the summer long days.
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I’m sorry to hear about your rain problems. I’ll bet you are much better prepared than your neighbors for a disruption to the grocery store supply chain.
You made a very good point about China. They seem to have much wiser leaders.
Stay well.
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Hi Gaia;
I’ve been having trouble with WordPress taking comments as well.
Paper wealth- By normal accounting, my wife and I are set up just fine for retirement, but I don’t trust that all those magnetic pulses humming somewhere in the cloud are as secure as we all used to think. We slowly invest in physical wealth on our farm, as it is not just real and in our control, but of a nature that will reduce expenditures long term.
The old income/outgo balance that seems to be so hard for the U.S. gov’t to accomplish is not that complicated to understand, just hard to do politically.
Am reading “The Coming Generational Storm” which explains how our national debt is only partly acknowledged by the gov’t, as all the present value of upcoming obligations are not usually admitted. Even based on optimistic investment return assumptions, there is no way they can be fulfilled. The can kicking will end soon, and the younger generations are going to be PISSED. Book was written in 2004 but is still relevnt, and things have only gotten worse. It’s amazing to me that the wheels haven’t come off yet.
bamboo- color me jealous that I don’t have the climate here (not yet anyway!) for that awesome plant. All of life is trade offs, so we’ll manage without it OR the deluges you are experiencing.
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Hello Steve,
Lovely to hear your wisdom and I am so encouraged by what you and your wife are accomplishing together in becoming part of the rhythm of life with the land, for that is very much our aspirations, too. I just re-read your most wholesome contribution essay and I had a big smile and “yes, yes, yes!” thoughts all the way. It brings me so much joy to know that you and many others here are living out your experiment in trying to meld your principles with action and thriving through the challenges and wonder of it all. I can sense that you are increasing your joy and contentment from your chosen way of living and to me that is true wealth and security. Your energy invested in your homestead has been returned in both tangible and intangible dividends, sustaining body, mind, and spirit.
I am thinking you would have Scott Nearing’s writings in your extensive library–to me he and his wife Helen were heroes and it was reading The Good Life many, many years ago that really began my awakening into our place as humankind on this planet, as biological, social and moral beings. I believe he had a firm grasp of our overshoot condition as evidenced by his writings and actions throughout his long and industrious life as homesteader and humanitarian. His book Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History is more relevant than ever, if just to bear witness to our current turning of the wheel in the cycles of collapse.
I send all positive thoughts to my motherland, America the Beautiful, with hope that all compatriots there will flourish along with your communities through these challenging and changeful times. I do see the generational storm that is building and threatening to break. It is my desire that we may be able to teach and leave something of true value to the younger generations, so their rightful frustration and anger may have a chance at redirection into their own choice of meaning and purpose, and thus the possibility for contentment, however the circumstance.
May I ask where in the States is your farm? I am assuming you are still in the Midwest with your selection of fruit and nut trees and the mention of the Russian stove which sounds as delightful as it is ingeniously practical. Another few weeks and the bud burst will herald another Spring, and with that, hope of harvest. May you know abundance in all seasons, in the full growing cycle of life.
Namaste, friend.
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Hi Gaia; From the other side of the world, connecting to someone I will never meet- Amazing what we have wrought! Good to remember there is good coupled with the bad in much that humans attempt.
We live in Southwest Wisconsin, in what is called the “Driftless Area”. The last few glaciation cycles bypassed this area for reasons that I don’t know. So the surface geology is rather old, and incised by streams and is more hilly that much of the upper midwest and great lakes region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driftless_Area
Harder to do industrial farming here, so it has collected more back to the landers and quirky folk than other parts of the midwest. A good place to ride out the descent, I think.
The Nearings- Yes, I have one of their books, but only came across them after we were well on our journey. I should acquire more. While always interested in others acquired wisdom, at this point on our path, I am more in need of time and energy to complete my ongoing projects, not so much more new ideas!
One of my favorite apocryphal sayings is “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear”. I take it to mean that until an aha moment of new awareness happens, someone will not see the source of knowledge that was always there, right in front of them. The other side of this coin, is that for the teacher role, that means being ready to have useful knowledge to share, not knowing when it will be the time to share it. As we all know, there will be ample aha ( or yikes) moments coming. Helping channel the energy ( yes, and anger too) of youth to positive responses will be a central role of those of us seeing the descent.
That is part of what drives me to get systems in place that I still am learning from myself, and some of which won’t bear fruit for decades.
I’m a retired engineer, so writing is not my forte. That’s why I enjoy your entries. Not just evidence of a loving and wise soul, but rather calming and lyrical in tone. Thanks.
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Hello Steve,
Thank you for that heartwarming and connected response, expressed so authentically. I think you’re a great communicator; I sense and respect your earnest intention not just through your words but in the deeds that follow them. It is indeed a wondrous and precious thing to be able to see ourselves in others and know that we are all part of the whole. I really appreciate your humble attitude in wanting to be a student of life and at the same time, taking responsibility to share your knowledge and skills. You have been a teacher to more than you might know, and certainly to us here. Thank you for being an example of steadfastness in these unsteady times.
The area where you live is beautiful and imagining your homestead there truly fits the term idyllic. Fascinating topography and geological attributes that I had no idea about, thank you for introducing me to your corner of our blue-green planet home. I can claim to be a Midwestern girl, having spent my formative school years living in a suburb of Chicago (it really seems like a another life, and many years ago now). But Illinois doesn’t hold a candle to Wisconsin’s diversity of landscape and the rolling greenness for which your state is famous. And the endless suburbs (and concomitant shopping malls) of Chicagoland have long replaced the noble prairies, more’s the pity. I know you share my rejoicing that I have long left that life and found my own corner of green (and wet!) here in the tropical north of Australia.
All the best to you and your family. It’s a great comfort to me knowing we have a family of like-minded and hearted fellow travelers here. Long may we continue to gather at Rob’s site.
Namaste, friend.
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B today discusses the relentless increase of entropy.
He concludes collapse is inevitable but will take decades.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/averting-collapse-is-no-longer-profitable
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On my daily walk I’m working my way through RFK Jr.’s book “The Wuhan Cover-Up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race”.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60686739-the-wuhan-cover-up
It seems I’ve been quite ignorant and naive about covid.
Unethical and illegal and dangerous bioweapons research has been going on for 75 years.
Covid was so hard to understand (for me) because the government and healthcare system I used to trust was covertly trying to coerce me into being a participant in a biowarfare experiment/operation.
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Trusting government has never been a good idea. I suspect this goes back as far as the history of government does, perhaps to Sumer and Babylon. I looked at recent history regarding “conspiracy theories” and a nice example is the Bohemian Grove club goes back to 1872. There’s a vid out there somewhere of people worshiping a stone owl (said to represent Moloch, a Carthaginian deity to whom children were sacrificed) and chanting dirges about ridding themselves of empathy from earlier this century. The rich and powerful have been abusing the masses forever, I think.
Simon.
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