RFK Jr. was confirmed yesterday as HHS Secretary and the MAHA Alliance held a press conference to celebrate this important moment in history.
Del Bigtree was RFK Jr.’s Communications Director. Now that RFK Jr. has been confirmed, Bigtree’s job is finished and he’s able to speak for himself without representing RFK Jr.
Sen. Ron Johnson introduces Del Bigtree at 10:20.
Bigtree’s speech starts at 16:00 and is a must watch for anyone concerned about improving our collective health, and righting the wrongs of covid.
If any of you, like me, feel the need for a little revenge after covid, this speech is righteous.
Bigtree brutally destroys the mainstream news media for their incompetence, indifference, and corruption.
This speech by RFK Jr. after his swearing in ceremony is also excellent.
I don’t have too many heroes, but RFK Jr. is one of them. This video is a nice introduction to the man.
Here is the president’s executive order authorizing MAHA. It’s inspiring and worth a read.
ESTABLISHING THE PRESIDENT’S
MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN COMMISSIONEXECUTIVE ORDER
February 13, 2025
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries, with pre‑COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years. This equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for the United States population. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness.
These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe. Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate. Further, from 1990-2021, the United States experienced an 88 percent increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated. In 2021, asthma was more than twice as common in the United States than most of Europe, Asia, or Africa. Autism spectrum disorders had the highest prevalence in high-income countries, including the United States, in 2021. Similarly, autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis are more commonly diagnosed in high-income areas such as Europe and North America. Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action.
This concern applies urgently to America’s children. In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease. Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s. Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese.
These health burdens have continued to increase alongside the increased prescription of medication. For example, in the case of Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, over 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder — up from 3.2 million children in 2019-2020 — and the number of children being diagnosed with the condition continues to rise.
This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life. Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores. Ninety percent of the Nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures is for people with chronic and mental health conditions. In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively. These trends harm us, our economy, and our security.
To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must re-direct our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease. This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety. We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data. We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.
Sec. 2. Policy. It shall be the policy of the Federal Government to aggressively combat the critical health challenges facing our citizens, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. To do so, executive departments and agencies (agencies) that address health or healthcare must focus on reversing chronic disease. Under this policy:
(a) all federally funded health research should empower Americans through transparency and open-source data, and should avoid or eliminate conflicts of interest that skew outcomes and perpetuate distrust;
(b) the National Institutes of Health and other health-related research funded by the Federal Government should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick;
(c) agencies shall work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world; and
(d) agencies shall ensure the availability of expanded treatment options and the flexibility for health insurance coverage to provide benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.
Sec. 3. Establishment and Composition of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission. (a) There is hereby established the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (Commission), chaired by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Chair), with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy serving as Executive Director (Executive Director).
(b) In addition to the Chair and the Executive Director, the Commission shall include the following officials, or their designees:
(i) the Secretary of Agriculture;
(ii) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;
(iii) the Secretary of Education;
(iv) the Secretary of Veterans Affairs;
(v) the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency;
(vi) the Director of the Office of Management and Budget;
(vii) the Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy;
(viii) the Director of the National Economic Council;
(ix) the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers;
(x) the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy;
(xi) the Commissioner of Food and Drugs;
(xii) the Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
(xiii) the Director of the National Institutes of Health; and
(xiv) other members of my Administration invited to participate, at the discretion of the Chair and the Executive Director.
Sec. 4. Fighting Childhood Chronic Disease. The initial mission of the Commission shall be to advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis. Therefore, the Commission shall:
(a) study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism;
(b) advise and assist the President on informing the American people regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, using transparent and clear facts; and
(c) provide to the President Government-wide recommendations on policy and strategy related to addressing the identified contributing causes of and ending the childhood chronic disease crisis.
Sec. 5. Initial Assessment and Strategy from the Make America Healthy Again Commission. (a) Make our Children Healthy Again Assessment. Within 100 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, which shall:
(i) identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries;
(ii) assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons;
(iii) assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;
(iv) identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles;
(v) evaluate the effectiveness of existing educational programs with regard to nutrition, physical activity, and mental health for children;
(vi) identify and evaluate existing Federal programs and funding intended to prevent and treat childhood health issues for their scope and effectiveness;
(vii) ensure transparency of all current data and unpublished analyses related to the childhood chronic disease crisis, consistent with applicable law;
(viii) evaluate the effectiveness of current Federal Government childhood health data and metrics, including those from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics and the National Survey of Children’s Health;
(ix) restore the integrity of science, including by eliminating undue industry influence, releasing findings and underlying data to the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, and increasing methodological rigor; and
(x) establish a framework for transparency and ethics review in industry-funded projects.
(b) Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy. Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, a Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy (Strategy), based on the findings from the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment described in subsection (a) of this section. The Strategy shall address appropriately restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including by ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis or unsuccessfully attempt to address it, and by adding powerful new solutions that will end childhood chronic disease.
Sec. 6. Additional Reports. (a) Following the submission to the President of the Strategy, and any final strategy reports thereafter, the Chair and the Executive Director shall recommend to the President updates to the Commission’s mission, including desired reports.
(b) The Commission shall not reconvene, following submission of the Strategy, until an updated mission is submitted to the President through the Executive Director.
Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
February 13, 2025.
<edit>
A few comments below from angry, now ex, followers suggest they were unaware of my gradual transformation over the last 4 years of observing and researching covid, from being certain RFK Jr. was a nut job, to now supporting RFK Jr.’s mission to improve our abysmal and worsening pubic health.
I’ve copied my replies to the criticisms here so that the reasons for my new beliefs are clear.
notabilia: You make excellent, well-researched points at times.
And you throw it all away by being an anti-vaxxer ass clown.
I too thought anti-vaxxers were nut jobs.
Then the experts I trusted renamed a 20 year old technology, known to be unsafe and ineffective in humans, from transfection to vaccine, pretended transfection was a new miracle technology, and coerced it into 5+ billion people after insufficient and fraudulent testing, including children that had zero risk from the virus, and when adverse event data showed the transfections were dangerous at levels far higher than had been sufficient to withdraw prior vaccines from the market, they doubled down, and hid and denied the data, and they continued to coerce transfections despite the disease being low risk for all except elderly and co-morbid people, and despite several safe and effective alternate treatments being available.
Today the rate of sickness and all-cause mortality is higher than pre-transfection, and the only thing our “experts” are certain of is that the cause is not the mRNA transfections. This despite there being several easy to understand first principle reasons to suspect mRNA transfections will never, and can never, be made safe.
The mRNA transfections are just the tip of the covid iceberg. They lied about every single covid issue, and they used tax dollars to corrupt news media, and to censor social media, to make us believe the lies.
Every covid policy was exactly wrong. To maximize your probability of good health the best course of action was to do exactly the opposite of what they told us to do. Incompetence does not explain this. They would have achieved a better public health outcome had they flipped a coin on every decision.
After observing 4 years of a healthcare system incapable of learning and correcting when new data emerges, and that pathologically lies, I no longer trust a word they say about anything.
So yes, I now proudly call myself an anti-vaxxer.
Go get ’em Bobby!
Anonymous: The health problems of the US population can largely be traced to a crap diet… good luck changing that. Any real attempt to do so will be shut down as a communist plot.
Yes, unhealthy food is a huge problem. It’s also not that complicated. Reducing sugar would be a good start.
We face many existential overshoot threats for which there is no “fix” thanks to MPP and MORT governing our behaviors, and thanks to the core design of the system that keeps us alive.
The threat from relatively recent, extremely poor public health is different. There is nothing fundamental blocking us from improving public health. I think we should support RFK Jr. and try.
A healthy population will be a strong asset, perhaps our only asset, when the everything bubble pops and modern civilization collapses.
<edit>
Secretary Kennedy delivers welcoming remarks to HHS staff.
Godspeed RFK Jr.
un-Denial 
In case you are not aware of it, I’d like to recommend the These Times podcast for insightful economic analysis.
Its host Helen Thompson is an intelligent overshoot aware historian of energy influences on the economy. She does a good job of hiding her overshoot awareness in the podcast, presumably to keep it profitable, however her bona fides can be confirmed via an interview on Nate Hagens’ Great Simplification.
This recent episode is a super interesting analysis of Trump’s policies and makes the argument that a fast approaching limit to debt growth explains everything we are witnessing.
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You should skip reading this due to too much hyperbolic noise, however the punchline is interesting.
It’s only days since Germany announced big plans to grow its debt to remilitarize and already limits to debt growth are casting doubt on the plans.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/european-chaos-back-eu-leaders-fail-agree-aid-ukraine-german-debt-bonanza-blows-pigs-yields
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Best ever interview with nuclear weapons expert Dr. Ted Postol discussing the surreal insanity of western Europeans, and a graphic play by play description of nuclear war.
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Didn’t watch this Frankly because they usually trigger me. I only watch Nate’s stuff when you guys recommend it. But I loved what James@megacancer had to say about it.
ps. That phrase “sustainable abundance for all” from the Elon tweet on the prior comments page has left me dumbfounded. I don’t think I’ve ever seen those words together like that. It easily beats out “energy transition” as my most hated phrase in the human language.
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There seems to be a trend.
As a brain’s understanding of its predicament approaches perfection it becomes spiritual.
First Paul Chefurka, then Andril Zvorygin, then Tom Murphy, then Art Berman, now Nate Hagens. Gail Tverberg always was spiritual.
Note that this mirrors what happened when humans evolved an extended theory of mind that allowed them to understand their own mortality.
Next up, I’ll be joining Zvorygin’s little band of alien worshipers, and I’ll be writing about the mysterious infinite energy of crystals.
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Good lord! Oh, the nightmare of full consciousness.
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It’s a mystery.
I’ve followed Zvorygin for long enough now to know he is very intelligent, is aware of our predicament, has both computer programming and farming self-sufficiency skills, is a leader in his community trying to proactively influence it in a preparedness direction, is the first person to pull together on a regular basis the best minds in the peak oil/peak minerals space, and he leads a spiritual group that seems to provide comfort to aware people.
Pretty impressive I’d say.
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RFK also promotes raw milk, long known for pathogen risks, and calls it “healthy” for a slight advantage in nutrient density (which can be had from many things besides another species’ baby food). He’s pushing the angle that pasteurization, like vaccines, was invented for no sound reason, and this goes with many other shady medical claims from naturopaths, etc. But I think he’s also a huckster who made a lot of money from anti-vaccine work, revealed by him constantly saying he’s not anti-vaccine per se. Aside from supporting reasonable precautions like removing thimerosal decades ago, he keeps his concerns just vague enough to keep the skeptics happy.
There’s a reason “natural” remedies always had limits but that’s been forgotten in the modern Internet frenzy of “don’t believe anything THEY tell you,” which includes global warming denial, similarly obsessed with being “controlled by the government” when lifestyle changes are requested, like Jimmy Carter asking people to turn down their thermostats for conservation. The anti-vaccine movement shrugs off those similarities but they’re hard to miss. The general theme is that the common people know what’s best for them, not the evil government. We’ve seen the low levels of honesty and intellectual capacity that common people accept in leaders like Trump, making it clear that emotions trump actual science.
Lockdowns and masks are annoying (overdone with COVID in hindsight) but I think millions of people won’t admit they simply don’t care about the common good as much as their own convenience. Anti-vaccine ideology would get a true test if a pandemic had a 5% or higher death rate and was clearly killing healthy people. If the head of HHS or FDA refused to push for mass immunity and defunded vaccines for a highly lethal pandemic, we’d likely see the anti-vaccine movement shunned as an archaic, emotional mob. In other words, it will come down to degree of risk vs. loss of personal convenience. People get a reality-check when they know they could die from something.
Somewhere in this blog I noticed a Suzanne Humphries video (can’t find it offhand) touting her as a vaccine expert, but she’s a religious fundamentalist and hardly a virologist (she worked in nephrology). Religious fervor is common among hard core anti-vaxxers, like those Texas Mennonites who enabled the recent lethal measles outbreak. The Internet has “viralized” regressive knowledge posing as new information and people forget why medical improvements were invented all along. Big Pharma going overboard doesn’t debunk all the good aspects of medicine (that’s more about the finance industry than medical science itself).
See Ms. Humphries crowing about her blind faith, as if medicine was better understood in Biblical times:
https://drsuzanne.net/2012/08/in-vaccines-we-trust-paul-offit-threatens-religious-and-philosophical-vaccine-exemptions-a-response-by-suzanne-humphries-md/ “We are learning that we can trust God’s design to maintain its health, providing we follow God’s principles to support and maintain what he manufactured, which is what it means to have a relationship with God, and to believe in God’s word.”
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Simon knows Dr. Humphries’ track record better than me so hopefully he will respond to your criticisms of her.
On RFK I believe what I see. I have read both his books, and listened to many interviews and speeches. I have not detected any defects in his integrity other than his position on Israel’s genocide of Gaza. I’m aware he’s made mistakes in the past, like drug abuse, but my understanding is that he’s admitted them and corrected which is good enough for me.
One aspect of the vaccine debate I detest is the lack of clarity by BOTH sides on when mandates are reasonable. I think vaccine mandates are reasonable when ALL of the following conditions are met:
1) The virus causes death or serious harm to a significant percent (>1% ?) of otherwise healthy people.
2) The vaccine prevents sickness.
3) The vaccine prevents transmission of the disease.
4) The vaccine has been properly tested to confirm it’s benefits significantly exceed it’s harms.
5) There must be full disclosure of ingredients, tests, and risks.
6) No safe & effective & affordable alternate treatments or prophylactics exist.
If any one of these conditions is not true then a vaccine mandate is not reasonable.
For the covid mRNA transfections, ALL 6 of these conditions were not met.
A generous person might argue that in the early days authorities genuinely believed all 6 conditions were met, however when the data became clear that all 6 conditions were not met, they did not adjust their policies, which suggests gross incompetence or malfeasance.
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It’s endlessly debatable how many people would have gotten COVID were it not for the vaccines. I saw it as a failed test for how U.S. masses would respond to a virus with far higher death rates, requiring even stricter lockdowns unless callousness toward others’ lives prevailed. People are very prone to CYA in a crisis, you know, especially right-leaners with ammo stockpiles.
A guy like RFK who can’t make up his mind on why he’s against vaccines doesn’t give me confidence if something really bad starts spreading. Think just 1/10th of the urgency of “World War Z.”
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I’m not sure what direction you think the test failed.
We got lucky and Covid was only dangerous for the elderly and co-morbid and became even less dangerous with subsequent variants like Omicron.
Given the many lies we were told, and given the incredibly short testing time for a new technology that had failed every prior attempt to use it, I’m surprised billions of people lined up to be transfected.
Those worried about something really bad emerging should focus on shutting down the source of covid: bioweapons and gain of function research. Regardless of your beliefs about the safety, effectiveness and necessity of covid mRNA transfections, there is bewildering silence on this obvious action to prevent a recurrence.
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Just beware of those who trivialize COVID-19 deaths or attribute them to other causes, in the same vein as Suzanne Humphries’ ruthless (to maimed patients) angle on polio: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/wrong-about-polio-a-review-of-suzanne-humphries-md-and-roman-bystrianyks-dissolving-illusions-part-1-the-short-version/ (“I think it obvious that Humphries presentation is defective in numerous ways and displays a callousness towards suffering…”)
And a death rate of 1% is more like 50% or 80% to the frail (who appreciated imperfect mask-mandates). Having contracted COVID-19 twice over two years, I could easily see fearing pneumonia in my 70s or 80s, though I haven’t had serious respiratory systems in middle age. It was/is a novel disease and the body’s reaction isn’t predictable even with known things like the flu as one ages.
Back to RFK: He has a history of exaggerating stories and just doing odd things (see one about moving his hanged ex-wife’s grave) and likes to have income. I think he’s part crank, part concerned activist and part wealth-chaser. His voice problems do contribute to that impression, since it can be hard to hear nuance.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/rfk-jr-peru-shooting-story-b2552006.html (other witnesses say the attack never happened like that)
https://nypost.com/2025/01/29/us-news/rfk-jr-s-anti-vaccine-stance-blasted-as-cynical-ploy-sources/ (initially snubbed a concerned mother, then saw an angle)
He’s probably going to milk his wavering vaccine stance until he potentially gets fired from HSS for meddling in some Trump toxin policy (like delayed funds for lead pipe replacement), then he’ll continue on with what’s worked for him.
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Let’s assume you are correct that the initial strain of covid was dangerous enough to a class of people to warrant mRNA transfection mandates. I listed 5 other criteria, all of which must be met to justify mandates. None of those 5 criteria were met which means we are still light-years away from justifying the actions of our leaders.
Your views on RFK sound like mine did when all I knew was what others told me. I recommend you read at least 1 of his 2 books and listen to a at least one in-depth interview and one detailed speech. Avoid edited clips which are almost always designed to manipulate you into believing he is a crazy or bad person. Go to the source.
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I might be wrong and apologies if i am but I have a feeling you kicked false progress off this sight a few years ago
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I have a vague recollection of a prior falling out and don’t remember if it was over MORT or covid. I could have done a search to refresh my memory but thought I’d try the high road.
It’s amazingly hard to change minds on covid issues. Evidence and logic seem to have no effect.
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Look what RFK just posted: https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1908967854394982414
“…The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine…”
The COVID-minimizing crowd was/is also part of the MMR-causes-autism crowd. Could Kennedy possibly be an opportunist with ever-changing angles, as many have said for years? I applaud him for helping to stop Cape Wind, though.
You booted me for stating facts about blacks and crime, after a bleeding-heart complained of being offended, but the FBI is also in on that “racist” claim: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-43 (half of murders, robberies and vastly “overrepresented” in other crime categories)
Their crime rate got even worse in 2020 after police were defunded, and was far worse when lucid Biden called them “predators on our streets” in 1993 (pre-woke days). Black scholars like Glenn Loury & Roland Fryer acknowledge all that data, and try to help their people with real solutions, not futilely demanding reparations.
Off topic at this point, but a site about vanquishing denial ought not have any ideological filters.
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Yes, I was canceled for telling the truth about crime demographics, e.g. half of U.S. murders from a small fraction of the total population (blacks in the hard ghetto, not all blacks). I figured this site was supposed to be about NOT denying evidence, but ran into ideology limits.
Consult black scholars like Glenn Loury on whether that’s a racist angle or just a hard truth for the crime-apologists of America.
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LOL!! Classic. That’s one of my favorite moves – get 86’d and just come back later hoping nobody notices.😂
Hard to pull off but it can be done. My younger days I was kicked out of a few music concerts (usually weed related). Sometimes we were able to sneak back in.
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I read most of his book on Fauci (whose own persona and COVID ought to be separated) but the book seemed one-sided, and I saw how wingnuts ganged up on Fauci, like they do climate scientists and other bearers of bad news.
The lab leak always seemed plausible, but I don’t see how doctors could have done things much differently once it was global. They’re stuck getting sued if they downplay a novel virus and won’t take patients.
As noted in another post, if something with a 5%+ fatality rates comes along (1 in 20) the response actually needed to control it will probably result in riots, coming from the same types who refused to wear masks.
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There was a time not very long ago when I would have viewed anybody that said vaccines cause autism as a bit loopy. Now I all I tell myself is that I just don’t know. I haven’t got the time to read into it.
What I do know is that I’ve been lied to and continue to be lied to by the medical establishment. They lied to me about what causes heart disease. They lied to me about the food pyramid. They lied to me about the root cause of cancer. They lied to me about what causes crooked teeth and how to avoid caries in your teeth. They lied when they said that covid vaccines would stop the spread of covid.
I now look at the state health departments in Australia and institutions like the TGA as a bunch of scumbags. I don’t trust a single word that comes out of their mouths.
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“I now look at the state health departments in Australia and institutions like the TGA as a bunch of scumbags. I don’t trust a single word that comes out of their mouths.”
I see that as akin to people saying global warming is a hoax because an errant weather forecast cost someone their property or life. Try backing way up and taking each case on its own merit.
Thimerosal was named as the potential culprit for autism, but was removed from most vaccines over 20 years ago. There is a ton of emotion on this topic, wiping out critical thinking with “all bad” or “all good” logic,
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There are lots of people in this country that never would have taken Mrna therapy if it weren’t for vaccine mandates. They were forced into it to keep their jobs. This came about because of advice coming from the respective state’s departments of health. It was an abuse of power.
John Skerrick former head of the therapeutic goods administration (TGA) now works in very industry he once regulated. How is that possible. It shouldn’t be acceptable. Neither should 90% of the funding for the TGA come from the industry it regulates.
And then there’s the whole food pyramid. Probably the biggest sham in the history of nutrition/medicine. And this nonsense is still parroted out by doctors across the country.
Outside of some fundamental reforms I won’t be trusting any health advice coming from the government .
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You’re free to hold absolutist views, but as mentioned earlier, if a pandemic hits with a much higher death rate, the innate stubbornness and/or selfishness in parts of the anti-vaccine movement will be tested. Picture the recent (preventable) measles outbreak among Mennonites in Texas at a much larger scale with something far worse.
Imagine a 2%, 5%, 10% or higher global death rate from some novel virus. Maybe released on purpose as a weapon, who knows? What would it take for mass vaccine mandates to seem reasonable? And will the people who saw it as a “freedom” issue with COVID-19 get into standoffs with authorities for their “right” to expose others if they get infected?
The gubmint Food Pyramid was updated to MyPlate in 2011, you may know. It wasn’t absolute dogma; knowledge just tends to improve as time goes by – if reasonable people are in charge.
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“What would it take for mass vaccine mandates to seem reasonable?”
I believe that Mrna Therapy wasn’t a vaccine but a novel form of treatment. The mandates in Australia were essentially a mandate to participate in an experiment.
I think Rob has done a good job above explaining when vaccine mandates would be justifiable. I don’t think forcing people into experients is ever justifiable. Most reasonable people wouldn’t either hence the covids shots were called vaccines, not a novel form of therapy.
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I’m seeing it too. A desperate search for meaning? a subconscious recognition that our consumer centered culture is a path to nihilism? Don’t know.
An experimental horticulturist I follow in Australia has for years been sharing his learning journey on cross breeding and selecting for new and better food plants that can survive minimal management efforts. A real preparing for a post fossil fuel effort. Then out of the blue just this month, shared that he’s now on a spiritual journey with a rather cultish testosterone drenched social media influencer. I would never have guessed this change from all the very practical, empirically driven work he’s done in the past. Go figure.
Makes me wonder what sudden twist in my own brain might happen. Staring into the abyss has its risks.
Being an agnostic, I remain open to the possibility that there is some sort of “spiritual” plane” but find it pretty unlikely.
I left this comment at Nate’s youtube version of his touchy-feely sharing:
“For me, the dichotomy is acceptance/not acceptance. Both emotionally and intellectually, I acknowledge the great simplification. But I also do not accept it in the sense that I take actions that at the personal level, might make the descent a little less precarious.It’s not hope exactly, more like placing a long odds bet rather than doing nothing. The emotional piece took a while longer, and I still get bouts of anger on occasion(especially lately!)”
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Nice, thanks.
It’s easy to argue prepping is a waste of time, but I prep. Doing something that might prove useful or buy a little time makes me feel better. I can imagine a scenario when supplies and services become intermittent before they turn off for good. Prepping might help that period.
Many aware people have decided not to prep like Sam Mitchell and others at un-Denial. No one in my personal life preps.
When I get really dark about our fate I think about the experience of falling asleep every night. It’s relaxing and vaguely pleasant as the brain shuts down and everything goes dark. Then I imagine I never wake up. I’d never know that I didn’t wake up. Death won’t be a horrifying experience. It will be like going to sleep and not waking up. Totally benign.
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Prepping for collapse is probably a waste of time, but prepping for pre-collapse as we get closer to collapse is probably a good idea.
In the times before collapse, as we continue to go downhill, shortages of all sorts of items will become harder to obtain and more expensive, especially energy intense items.
Also prepping for higher property taxes pre-collapse is also a good idea, along with hoarding of booze, cigarettes to keep you ‘safer’ from the police/military/gangs as bribes in the period before collapse.
Learning to make high quality booze could also be handy heading towards collapse as you then become a person worth protecting by the above groups. Heaps of people can grow vegetables, but how many know how to make good quality booze in your area?
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I would have guessed property prices will fall faster than my town council can get away with raising the tax rate.
Why do you think property taxes will increase?
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Rob …. “Why do you think property taxes will increase?”
Firstly they have been here for many years, well ahead of inflation.
Secondly they are an easy captive source of income for local, state and federal govts when in financial trouble as ‘someone’ always own the land, so can be taxed. Governments will make everyone’s lives worse off to maintain power and control
Thirdly, looking through history, it was the food producers that were taxed the most as civilizations headed into collapse, often being the food itself confiscated to feed the cities.
The rural population of ‘Rome’ were often welcoming the barbarian invaders as the taxes to the city state would disappear, so had no problem feeding them on their way through the local areas.
As an invading force, leaving the rural peasantry better off and not stealing all their food, made for passive allies while making the defending force a whole lot weaker. (you didn’t have to worry about the peasants also fighting you, as you were better than what they were use to).
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Thanks. I can see any asset generating income like a farm being a target. Especially food as you say.
But I’m not sure about a residential home that has lost 75% of it’s value because the real estate bubble popped, and most people are unemployed or scraping buy on a reduced salary. I would have guessed a decline or stop in city services like road repair and garbage pickup.
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The thought of city residential property never entered my brain.
I was entirely thinking of rural/farming property, where we have lived for 40 years. Just before or during collapse I don’t think anyone here would consider being near or in a city if they could help it.
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The city/rural dynamic in the event of collapse has had me thinking for a while now. If collapse is relatively slow i.e. occurs over weeks or months, I would expect large numbers of folk to leave the cities to friends and family who live in the country.
This would increase the rural population substantially, potentially increasing availability of manual labour as fossil fuelled agriculture stalls. Of course, it would also increase demands on the existing rural population and infrastructure simultaneously.
This would only work up to a point as the trickle becomes a flood of increasingly desperate people fleeing the cities.
I have the sense that this is already happening to a certain extent – in the UK, where I live, there are a growing number of, essentially, homeless itinerant folk who simply park their camper vans, trucks, caravans and even tents more or less at random, and then live there indefinitely.
I can’t see how this is going to end well, people will inevitably compete ruthlessly for what little resources are available, particularly so in a chronically over populated country like UK.
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OK, I didn’t want to be Anonymous, I have posted here previously as “rag”. It was late dec 2023, possibly jan 2024. How do I tag a comment, please?
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Welcome back rag.
You can either:
1) Create a WordPress account and be logged in when you comment here. or
2) Stay logged out and sign your comment with rag. I will edit the user name from anonymous to rag as I’ve just done.
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I’m actually prepping for pre-collapse and post collapse. Doing all the typical self reliance efforts, knowing that I’m still deeply connected to the industrial system but am also planting food trees and things that might provide a nice stopping point for hunter gathers in around 100 years or so. If things don’t pan out that way climate wise or fallout wise, well, it was just a bet.
Bonus- I just like to tend garden and perennial plants, slowly move our local land to a more low intensity food system.
Funny you should mention fungible goods in a possible warlord/scavenger future. I brew hard cider and beer, and plan to do some distillation, but have to tread carefully there, as it’s illegal right now.
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It’s illegal to do homebrew? That’s crazy to me
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Homebrewing is legal- distillation to higher alcohol content is not.
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Oh right! You can’t be trusted not to kill yourself drinking the methanol or whatever it is
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Maybe there are a lot of cultural atheists who actually have the gene/s for religion? And when pushed enough, some kind of spirituality arises? When I consider how many of my great and grandparents were atheists, plus both my parents, I think there must be some genetic component along with all the cultural conditioning?
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You know Alice Friedemann is arguably one of the most knowledgeable and she is super anti religion
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Good point. I forgot about Alice.
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I am still shocked by nearly 160 trillion dollars in deferred maintenance. I haven’t finished that episode yet.
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“That phrase “sustainable abundance for all” from the Elon tweet on the prior comments page has left me dumbfounded…. .my most hated phrase in the human language.”
Dear Chris. Never, I repeat NEVER join LinkedIn and follow anyone in the sustainability profession. You will literally explode with hatred 😂
Here’s the latest post from Gaya Herrington…
“As humanity faces systemic poverty, global warming, and unprecedented pollution, we must rethink the current model and seek new solutions.
A well-being economy shifts the focus from output to outcomes, aligning lasting financial success with ecological and social priorities. This approach drives innovation that benefits both people and the planet.
Together, we can build an economy that supports thriving communities and ecosystems. Read my blog post to learn more.”
Her blog post is titled Markets, business, and the well-being economy: Rethinking progress for a prosperous future – https://lnkd.in/eQp7urUD
Which leads me to one of the most confusing (maybe hated) statements I read far too often on LinkedIn…
“Together we can achieve sustainable prosperity for all within planetary boundaries. We know what to do. We have all the solutions available already. It’s time to act.”
Cheers 🍻😀
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This paragraph is a cracker…
“In a well-being economy, the definition of progress is expanded. Businesses gain recognition for efforts that, among other things, reduce pollution, strengthen communities, promote circular resource use, restore biodiversity, or maintain fair and living wages. For example, a company that delivers renewable energy adds value by positively impacting community health and climate stability. When economic measurements account for such contributions, markets flourish in ways that reinforce long-term security and quality of life. This approach aligns market efficiency and competitiveness toward goals that meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s realities.”
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I like to follow the big consultancy firms who constantly talk up their sustainability / impact credentials and services. I generally pick their top dogs in the climate / sustainability field.
An interaction the other day with the Australasian Leader Climate and Sustainability from Arup who also leads a Victorian government sustainability committee, included this..
Me… “Isn’t it impossible to decarbonise a supply chain because there are no viable replacements, ready and scaleable, for fossil fuels in mining, heavy transport, aviation, shipping or high heat processes such as steel or silicon chip manufacturing?”
Her.. “Campbell, so true! What a challenge. Supply chains will be decarbonised when the economy is decarbonised. The economic decarbonisation needs clear signals — measurement and incentives — and that will come from companies targeting their scope 3 emissions.”
It reminded me of this classic post turtle story – https://planetsmagazine.com/2021/07/27/post-turtle/
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I’m finding Grok already makes much more sense than most “experts”. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs and won’t be missed until the grid becomes unreliable.
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Rob you say that Grok makes more sense than experts, then what do you make of the latest paper using Grok to test CC hypotheses. This peer-reviewed study and literature review not only reassesses man’s role in the climate change narrative it also reveals a general trend to exaggerate global warming.
https://scienceofclimatechange.org/wp-content/uploads/SCC-Grok-3-Review-V5-1.pdf
https://www.malone.news/p/the-climate-scam-is-over
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Yikes! I glanced at the paper and do not have the skills to assess it’s validity.
Here are a few general thoughts.
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Finally!! An article that doesn’t make me fear AI for its insane intelligence factor. The whole thing reeks of human shenanigans tinkering around with Grok so that it would produce this type of report.
And I know my cognitive bias must be going through the roof because all I wanted to do while reading the Robert Malone piece, was beat the shit out of him. His article felt like he was smiling and just saying over and over, “I told you so”.
Nice review Rob. It calmed me down a little. Hey Stellarwind72, I remember one of your deal breaker’s is if they don’t believe in man-made climate change… definitely stay the hell away from this report. You’ll end up with an ulcer.😊
Next week this same crew will have a Grok report that shows we can achieve “sustainable abundance for all” via the great green energy transition. (kidding but I really do see this tool being used as a way to give hopium so that the masses don’t do something crazy like stop working or stop consuming… whatever it takes for the elites to hold on to their status for as long as possible)
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So realistically we can expect one thing from AI and that is that it will send our little brains ape shit.
My AI said, my AI is better than your AI, I spy with my little AI something ……………….
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You’d get an A+ mark for writing that paragraph in a high school or university course.
Which explains a lot.
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Thanks for the entertainment, Cam.
The only way I’ll ever achieve true acceptance is if all of the Gaya Herrington types drop dead overnight. LOL. Her and her ilk are more like the unofficial PR firm for Business as Usual… and they’re too indoctrinated to ever figure it out. Useful idiots.
The only category worse than this is the extreme human supremist crowd. People that say things like “is there any intelligent life out there besides us?” or “humans are the most successful species to ever roam this planet” or “he didn’t deserve to be treated like an animal”.
And when a person fits into both categories… Whew! Time to get my blade out. Their scalps are worth the most.😊
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Rob got me thinking with his excellent observation above about people reverting to spirituality once they get to a certain awareness level.
That was a comment from someone on a different blog. Have seen this cropping up more lately… regarding true acceptance. It’s slowly turning into a derangement syndrome for me. Maybe I’m just jealous that I can’t get there. I also know that most of this audience can’t get there either. I think reaching true acceptance is more like being a Buddhist monk or willfully decreasing energy consumption… yes it’s possible, but only for a select few.
Dowd always talked about how he and his wife would “make” themselves be grateful for every meal, ever new season (winter, summer, etc), or even just waking up in the morning (Ah, I’m so grateful that I get to live another day). LOL. Yes, stop and smell the roses, that kind of thing. But it has an element of fakery and a touch of insanity, IMHO.
And besides, the whole thing is built around massive denial. People correctly come to the conclusion that civilization is going (and needs to go) extinct… layer upon layer of denial had to be peeled back in order for them to get to that conclusion. But peeling back those last couple of layers… forget about it. That’s where they stop short. None of these people are pushing for what is really “true acceptance”, because that would involve accepting a worldview more towards pessimism/nihilism.
And that’s where Rob’s observation comes into play. This trend makes sense on the commonsense scale. (if it’s between nihilism and fairytales, sign me up for fairytales). But it doesn’t make sense when I compare it to my trajectory. Every big “next level” moment of my journey has given me even more confidence that the universe is meaningless and there is no afterlife. There’s no way I could just all of sudden do an about face and see it differently.
True acceptance is about understanding things like:
The title of this great song sums it up for me. (I also included a beautiful cover of it)
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Elliott Smith was an 90’s influential indie musician that struggled with drugs and died too young from either suicide or murder.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Smith
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/elliott-smith-mn0000172167
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Yes, he wrote beautiful music. A real loss.
With regards to becoming spiritual in the times of collapse. I am personally trying to find it in music. I think that music is perhaps the most special thing that we as humans bring into existence. Nature provides us with such a richness of sensual stimulus however it doesn’t bring forth complex music (not that I am aware of). Perhaps GOD is a guitar lick.
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If you’re interested, there’s a documentary about Smith called Heaven Adores You. Saw it like ten years ago. Can’t remember if it was good or not. Looks like it’s free on Roku. I might have to watch it again.
And I totally agree with you about music. This line from my fire essay has only gotten stronger:
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“Life´s a bitch, then you die” – source:
Saludos
el mar
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My personal take:
The first and second law of thermodynamics dictate that the universe will at some point be completely dark, completely cold and completely silent forever, as energy cannot be created, only converted, and every conversion leads to waste heat that disperses across space. This is the empirical side that shows that no matter what humans do, death is not optional in the extreme long-run. Decay is the most basic rule of of existence (at least in this universe).
On the logical side: I have observed that humans seem to love to jump from a description to a prescription. Such as “Life exists, therefore we must keep Life alive for as long as possible”. This is not a logically valid conclusion. As per Hume’s Law, there is no logical mechanism that can derive an ought from an is. One could also argue that “Entropy can only ever increase, therefore we must increase entropy” (this would translate into burning everything that can be burned – coal, gas, oil, trees, animals, humans, algae, powdered metals, plastic waste… – as fast as possible to help the universe achieve its final state more quickly). Same issue. It’s not logical. But human cultures are full of this “reasoning”. For a species that calls itself “sapiens”, it seems to be extremely inconsistent from a logical perspective. The meta-joke is that you cannot even have something like “X is logical, therefore we must do X”. Still the same illogical pattern.
As far as I can tell, “meaning” is fluff that a human brain came up with to make itself feel better, to distract itself from fully understanding what framework it is fused with. MORT fits perfectly. I wouldn’t even call it pessimism or nihilism (that’s also human brain fluff) – I prefer the term “unfiltered observation of reality”.
In regards to collapse, I like to see it like this: There is the so-called “Medea Hypothesis” which argues that terrestrial life periodically nukes itself (most mass extinction events on planet earth are caused by internal, biotic factors, not external abiotic ones like asteroids, gamme rays or supernovae) roughly every one, two hundred million years. Humans fit very well into this pattern.
What to do with this information? Well. Again, as per Hume’s Law: there is no ought to conclude from this. It just is.
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Nice take. You had me at “My”. If you had used the word splodge a couple times, I’d of thought you were James from Megacancer.
“unfiltered observation of reality”… Brilliant. And not nearly as scary sounding as nihilism. Even has a slight satirical vibe of The Onion or George Carlin.
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ps. I’m sure I’ll be quoting some of your excellent post. You should leave a nickname so that I can give you proper credit.
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Drones are catching up to artillery as the preferred method of killing in Ukraine.
To avoid being jammed they now control the drones with kilometers of fiber optic cable spooled out the rear of the drone as it flies.
I wonder what the effect of this difficult to cleanup long-lasting plastic coated glass rubbish will be?
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/solving-the-drone-dilemma-can-russia
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They are inadvertently building a net to catch said drones. Problem solved.
Maybe they can use it for fast internet after the war 😃.
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LOL LOL LOL
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New essay from my favorite doc with integrity Dr. Malcolm Kendrick.
He explains why so many citizens have good reason to believe covid was a plandemic despite it being a real but botched event. And why so many citizens welcomed totalitarian leaders.
I think he foreshadows that citizens will support the vaporization of democracy when collapse picks up steam. You can see it starting now in Europe.
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2025/03/22/why-do-so-many-believe-covid-was-a-plandemic/
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Peak plutonium-238 threatens to end long distance space travel.
Also a very nice lesson on the complexity of generating energy without burning carbon.
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HHH with a fresh and excellent way to explain how our monetary system works, and why no energy growth causes collapse.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-20-2025/#comment-787111
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It is actually much worse than that. Without the ever expanding ‘growth’ the whole economy implodes, likely in a manner that is reminiscent of the Titan submersible, this means it will be catastrophic and shockingly fast. This is because there are too many parasitical loads : in the analogy above, those additional loads would be fuel, insurance, maintenance, road infrastructure, policing & courts & prisons & on & on.
In reality, those additional parasitical loads are 90% of society – teachers & schools, central and local government, healthcare, military, waste management (Google Birmingham UK waste worker strike) and literally everything that makes any first world modern city seem civilized and pleasant.
I spend a lot of time (too much) wondering if there will be a period where competing businesses merge. E.g. Five airlines merge into two, then one of those fails, then the state steps in as owner of last resort. As the pace picks up, owners of capital (and maybe managers e.g. pension funds) start to catch on and attempt to sell in order to find a safe haven. Warren Buffet might still live long enough to ‘invest’ his cash mountain, only to die before discovering that his trailer parks, farm land, etc. is (perhaps ironically) worth nothing. Because markets are anticipatory (Google), stock prices collapse very quickly and precious metal prices go into orbit. Paper owners of metals lose everything and we get to see ‘jump you fuckers‘ for real. Physical owners eventually learn you can’t eat it.
We have already passed the point in time of continuous economic expansion. Germany is negative, which means the EU has stalled, repairing and restarting Nord-Stream is a sticky plaster on a shotgun wound.
At risk of sounding like Canadian-Prepper (Nate Polson) – this is it!
On the other side of the coin, 99.99% of people are still living like the party is going to continue forever. In a couple of years the eldest child of my youngest sibling will likely be starting university – I cannot reconcile what I understand with what I witness (from those that must be in denial).
A little levity : At Costco and most other places when I’m out and about, I practiced (past tense) Situational Awareness. Recently, I’ve raised the bar – now I look for other people that look like they are practicing. So far no luck.
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Yes.
Don’t you have this strange feeling that money is currently losing its power?
By that, I mean, after some level of it, necessary for basic needs, then it just becomes problematic: one doesn’t know what to do with it (fear of losing) or can’t use it for anything really meaningful (sure you can always buy the latest gadget, but then what?). And money doesn’t solve physical impossibilities anymore. I guess, the only thing that people, who really have a lot of it, can do is try to influence political institutions with it. But even that, doesn’t go that far.
So, the strategy I am witnessing now, is that people are trying to work as few as possible and spend as much as possible. Maybe they are right: at some subconscious level, they know it’s already over.
Did I make any sense?
Yes, I agree.
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Thanks for stopping by. I hope you decide to hang out here on a regular basis.
I agree with your belief that the collapse will be catastrophic and fast. I blame the extreme debt we are using to buy growth, and the complexity of our 6 continent supply chains, but I’ll think more about the parasites you worry about.
Would love to hear your prediction of how much longer we have.
I also watch people in Costco. I don’t see much awareness. I was the only person excited when the sardines and organic oats went on sale.
Here’s my Costco levity experience. About a month ago I saw someone I recognized. He saw me looking at him and I wanted to go up and say hello but I couldn’t remember his name. On the way out I remembered it was David Holmgren of permaculture fame. I followed him for years when he was active in the doomasphere. I live on Vancouver Island which is a long way from his Australian home. It’s possible I was wrong but it sure looked like Holmgren.
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More from HHH…
https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-march-2025/#comment-787165
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As well as big mergers, I think we will see the state buying or seizing essential industries.
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Without a doubt my all-time favorite music documentary is Runnin’ Down a Dream (2007). Over 4 hours long, full of great footage and stories… entertaining all the way till the end. Free on some streaming platforms.
If you’re into Tom Petty, it’s an airtight guarantee you’ll like it. But Tom is such a cool dude that I don’t think you even need to be a fan of his music to enjoy this great film.
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I’ve never tried it but I bet being high on heroin is a nice way to live. For a while any way.
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Me neither. One of the few drugs I never messed with.
Coping with the nightmare of full consciousness… makes perfect sense to me why drugs are so popular… but like Carlin explains in this clip, it’s not sustainable.😊
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I already have some alcohol and I plan to add a few cartons of nicotine. I really don’t like the feeling of marijuana.
I have no experience with anything other than pot. What drug do you recommend a prepper have in the cupboard for end times?
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Hmm, fun question. If I was stocking my doomsday bunker with recreational drugs… I’d go heavy on pills and psychedelics.
Pills – muscle relaxers & pain relievers like Soma, Valium, Vicodin, and Percocet. (I’d stay away from Oxycontin because it’s much more addictive and ends up making all the other pills ineffective… in my experience)
Psychedelics – shrooms, LSD, and MDMA. (DMT also, but I’ve never tried it)
The pills would be a daily thing just to get through the mad max day. The psychedelics can’t be used daily. They’d be more of a treat so that I’d have something to look forward to (maybe couple times a week).
I’d also stock up on marijuana. Flower and edibles. If you don’t like the feeling when you smoke it, try eating it. Completely different feeling. 5-10MG THC is a safe dosage to experiment with. Chocolate works better for me (a cleaner high) than sugary candy and gummy bears.
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Thanks kindly but that’s too many choices for me.
I’m the guy that standardizes and tries to only stock one brand/model of anything after I figure out the best choice based on quality, price, availability, shelf-life, etc., etc.
What would you pick if:
– you can only have 2 in your cupboard
– you don’t want to spend a fortune
– they need to have good shelf lives because you don’t know when you’ll use them
– they need to be low risk because you’re not going to test drive them
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Gotcha. Ok, so we are just talking about having this on hand so that it can be used when SHTF (but not for purposes of exit strategy, just for fun and coping). In that case I’d stick with pill forms. Just a guess, but I’m betting the shelf life on these two would be 3-5 years minimum.
#1 would be a pain killer instead of a muscle relaxer. I recommend Percocet.
#2 would be a psychedelic. MDMA (I prefer Molly instead of Ecstasy).
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Excellent. Would you buy on the street or online?
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I’ve never tried the online method. I know a couple people that have successfully bought kratom (powder) on the dark web… but that’s it. But ya, might be worth trying.
Street prices are always all over the map. But just to give you an idea; ten years ago, percocet’s were usually $5-10 per pill. And Molly was between $10-20 per pill. Hopefully inflation hasn’t hit the drug world too bad.😊
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Thanks. We have a problem here with some drugs being “enhanced” with Fentanyl. Do you know if either percocet or molly are subject to this risk?
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No idea, but I just did a quick search and damn!! Fentanyl seems to be in everything.
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Fentanyl is nice and cheap and gives a kick to anything its added to. Also extremely dangerous.
I have a friend who’s an ambulance attendant. He says a a lot of people are dying from Fentanyl here.
Maybe I’ll stick to vodka and nicotine for the end of the world party.
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https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-20-2025/#comment-787131
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Rintrah today marvels at how screwed Egypt is because its overshoot exceeds everyone else’s overshoot, and wonders why whenever Egypt experiences a crisis its birth rate goes up.
https://www.rintrah.nl/egypt-the-worlds-most-doomed-country/
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What happens if Egypt turns into the next Syria because of this? And remember, Trump and Netanyahu want Egypt to take in people forcibly displaced from Gaza. Most of the Middle East is severely overpopulated.
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That’s the core issue. There are far too many people for the land and water in that region, and that’s with plentiful fossil energy. Imagine when serious scarcity begins.
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The Refugee crisis in Syria caused a rightward shift in European politics and Syria has ~22 million people. Imagine what a similar crisis in Egypt would do? Where would the refugees go? How would Europe respond?
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B explains why nuclear won’t save us from fossil carbon depletion.
It’s a good one, he put some effort into this essay.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/the-nuclear-non-solution
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New big picture energy roundtable with Nate Hagens, Art Berman, et al.
I haven’t finished it yet but the first thing I noticed is that Berman is on again about a permanent oil plateau, and Hagens chose to highlight that quote in the teaser intro. WTF?
Bingo. That explains a lot of things like tariffs, DOGE, US withdrawal from Europe, pivot to China, takeover of Canada, etc., etc..
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I suppose if you shorten the timeframe lots of things can look like a plateau even when they most certainly are not
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Doesn’t it sound a lot like the Irving Fischer claim on October 21 1929, that stocks had “reached a permanently high plateau” just 9 days before the stock market collapse?
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Berman is again vague on what he means.
I think I heard him say that a no growth plateau has the same effect as a decline so you can call the end of growth whatever you want.
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Preptip:
I got a useful tip from Canadian Prepper today.
Kiwix is a free open source multi-platform app for downloading and viewing Wikipedia and other open sources of information when not connected to the internet.
Could be handy when the internet becomes unreliable or if you need to shed monthly expenses.
I tested Kiwix on Windows and it works well. Download speed for the libraries is very good.
I got the libraries:
Many more libraries are available.
https://kiwix.org/en/
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i just downloaded wikipedia on the basis that i wonder how much longer the web is going to work, too.
other good libraries:
Project Gutenberg Library – Books in English https://library.kiwix.org/viewer#gutenberg_en_all_2023-08
Chemistry stack exchange https://library.kiwix.org/viewer#chemistry.stackexchange.com_en_all_2024-10
Khan Academy (English – US curriculum) https://library.kiwix.org/viewer#khanacademy_en_all_2023-03
Medicine libretexts https://library.kiwix.org/viewer#libretexts.org_en_med_2025-01
Simon
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Sam Mitchell bought a shotgun couple weeks ago, and it has taken over his life. While I don’t condone his gun safety behavior, his videos have been excellent lately (if you’re into listening to dark thoughts).
I left him this message. I’m betting other gun owners here can relate to this gun fever craze:
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I worry about Sam. He’s too unhappy. Trump seems to have made it much worse.
I saw he recently posted a video saying he’s not prepping but I didn’t watch it.
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It started when he turned 65. He fell into a deep depression. And ya, Trump has only made it worse. If he can avoid killing himself, I’m betting he’ll be the next big name doomer that suddenly finds god.
That video that you are talking about was another great one. He might talk you out of prepping.😊
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The video has been replaced with the following error message “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Terms of Service”
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Bummer.
On another video someone was relieved and was saying maybe Sam came to his senses and removed it. Sam replied with:
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https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/03/los-problemas-de-la-transicion.html
Good summary of our energy problems!
https://beamspot.substack.com/p/indice-de-lavadoras
Saludos elmar
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Thanks. The first link blames the Heathrow airport power failure on a grid made fragile by renewable energy.
I listened to a BBC report that blamed the Russians for the Heathrow power failure without of course providing any evidence.
They really really want war.
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Summary: https://beamspot.substack.com/p/indice-de-lavadoras
When I started this series, I could see the problems coming, but I needed to do some calculations to see what it would be this time, to confirm my suspicions. But the slowness of my neurons has made the immediate future I was trying to explain become the past.
So this is where I was planning to explain what was going to happen next, and yet events have gotten ahead of me, I’ve fallen behind, and it seems that the development of the Peak Oil issue, like the environmental issue, is accelerating.
So let’s proceed in chronological order.Future predictions that are a thing of the past.
The idea I had when I started writing this series was that we were close to reaching the critical point: the point where there’s no room for one more MW of renewable energy.
The surprise for me is that it arrived earlier than expected , not much either : on Easter Sunday 2022 , as already explained in the relevant entry.
From then on, the predictable thing: when production cuts began to occur, the famous curtailments , the next step was the collapse of the price of electricity during daylight hours , putting all electricity production in a difficult position because it was below the exploitation prices of all energy sources .
And after that, the inevitable bursting of the bubble : operating plans, seeing the prices at which electricity is being paid, begin to be reversed as the lack of economic profitability and the unviability of this type of project from a business perspective become evident.
There were several reasons why I expected this to be slow: the pace of installations, the expected electrification rate that I expected to increase somewhat, the number of DC power plants we have, and the “Iberian exceptionality” law.
However, the pace of installation has accelerated, especially due to rising electricity prices, and, in turn, this same increase has led to a decline in demand. The timid electrification that had been expected has turned out to be quite the opposite .
It also underestimated the impact of photovoltaic instability .
On the other hand, I have also been delayed: I began to glimpse the problem in September 2021 , I started writing towards the end of that same year, I started to investigate (those graphs at the beginning are not done in a day without more) and to analyze, to document myself, and I was already at Easter 2022. The Covid hangover has also helped, obviously, especially because of the implications in my work sector in terms of semiconductor shortages.
The long-term implications, on the other hand, along with other work and family issues, have complicated matters.
Thus, the conclusions that prompted me to begin writing manifested themselves physically throughout the writing process itself , which has caused what I thought a priori to be a posteriori. Hence, I’m talking about what is now a past when it was simply a future at the time I got into this matter.A busy present.
However, the fact that events are moving faster doesn’t mean this has stopped. It just means it’s gaining speed… and magnitude.
I had a vain hope that an early setback, as it turned out, would stop things, the explosion. It’s certainly more of a “rapid deflation” (and behind the scenes) than a full-blown explosion . But the rest of the important dynamics don’t cease, nor do they slow down.
This very week, marking the transition from February to March 2024, is being shaken up again. This time by two important issues: the drought, and more curtailments, in this case, of nuclear power plants!
That, due to the rains in part of Spain, they are causing the flow of the Ebro to rise, with the hydroelectric plants in that basin at full capacity and therefore without regulation capacity, and in passing, the strong winds with overproduction of wind power have meant that the nuclear power plant has had to stop to leave room for operation for gas as well as wind and hydro power (which, I repeat, in these circumstances has no room for maneuver, something that requires an article per se).
The economic implications are back on the table, and this time there are voices saying this is a disaster, while champagne celebrations are conspicuous by their absence.
In short: This start of the year ALREADY brings with it problems in managing electricity production that usually appear later, and they point to ways that the electricity and economic situation for producers will worsen.
Furthermore, the drought has opened up another possibility of kicking the problem down the road: using surplus renewable energy to produce (desalinate) water , thus making these foolish investments more profitable. In the style of Hydrogen 2.0 driven by Germany, only this time in a traditional version.
However, the underlying problems begin to emerge if you look closely, which isn’t easy because they are precisely the ones that aren’t of interest.
My favorite Evil Cyberbat has posted a link to a study on accounting , which is revealing regarding what has been discussed in this series.
Basically, 53 of the 75 most populated cities in the USA, or 70% of the major cities in the Galactic Empire, are bankrupt.
The report makes it very clear that pension plans are the main cause of this problem, with New York being the worst of all. Just this week, there have been stories about New York; apparently, there are massive company flight rates, and it seems the economic situation in the (financial) capital of the world is terrible.
There has also been a major meeting of NATO members who are already warning of sending coalition troops to Ukraine , of the need to increase arms spending, and of the fear that Trump will leave NATO in the lurch.
The problems in Ukraine in recent weeks, with the fall of Adveeka, as well as the systematic genocide that the Israelis are carrying out against the Gazans, and the problems in the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, through which many oil tankers pass, paint a very bleak picture. Although they are highly topical, they are revealing the future, the path we will be following in the decade ahead.
Let’s not forget the more than a month of protests by farmers and transporters, which also deserve their own post, since the underlying reasons are the same: rising diesel prices.
Play silly games…
Following this series, a certain person started sending very bellicose messages against me, saying many unpleasant things in what is a classic “ad hominem.”
That “exchange” of “opinions” was actually quite enlightening, so I’ll explain some of the niceties I gained, judging by that person.
The thing is, on LinkedIn, during a period when I was still active (now I’ve practically abandoned it due to lack of time, but above all, lack of interest), I published the entries in this series.
At one point, he directly accused me of lying in this series, without providing any evidence, technical reasoning, or argument. He was simply outraged by the lies he believed I was spreading in my writing.
Lies for which I had to apologize and flog myself in the public square, according to that person.
To this day, I still don’t know where the intentional lies lie, or even where the errors are. It seems that this individual, who works for a photovoltaic SME (obviously), a technical specialist—that is, supposedly knowledgeable, an engineer if memory serves—never, at any time, pointed out to me any technical errors, any calculation data, engineering, energy, or electronics.
No demonstration or reason of your own field.
His only claim is that I was lying.
Honestly, I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me where my mistakes are (which I’m sure there are, we’re all human), and whether those mistakes, whether technical or in terms of approach, are relevant.
And on top of that, he demanded that I apologize for expressing my opinions, in addition to trying to stop me from exercising my freedom of expression.
Clearly, he blamed me for the sun not shining at night.
It is curious that a couple of weeks (or less) after he disappeared from the Telegram channel associated with Dr. Turiel’s blog (at my “invitation”), his own boss (it is an SME of three people, the CEO – his boss -, him as CTO – Chief Technical Officer or technical chief – and another partner also with a position that begins with C, that is, boss… and zero employees) expressed in an article in the press that the electrical network had to be changed, since the problems (caused by the intermittency and instability of the photovoltaic system) were the fault of a network that “is not up to date” and that “is not capable of managing the power”.
Which is, de facto, a veiled acceptance of the problem . That same grid hasn’t had any problems until now. And blithely saying it can’t handle renewables is the same as saying that uncontrolled intermittent renewable energy (RIRE) can’t be simply integrated and causes other problems that force the grid to upgrade.
The question in this case is how did we get here?
I dare to double down: how is it possible that an engineer like this would bet on a technology that a minor would be perfectly capable of seeing as unprofitable?
Because any child, at 10 years old, is perfectly capable of seeing that photovoltaics do not produce electricity at night, which is precisely when we need it .
Of course, many people, no matter how old they are, believe two things that are misleading: that storage can solve these problems, and that prices, while still high, will come down, especially if the government distributes money like “fairy dust.”
But, as engineers, the first thing we must do is crunch the numbers, make a forecast, compare data, and sizing things up.
That’s the exercise presented in the first installments of this series . Nothing a high school graduate with a spreadsheet, some patience, and skill can’t do. No college degree is required.
Yes, if there were enough storage, there wouldn’t be a problem. But do we have that means? What’s planned? What costs? I’ve already answered this question .
That’s the job of an engineer, by the way.
The second flaw, that everything is going to go downhill… is true, but with a vengeance.
Since electricity is a power, and everyone is betting on the same thing, the obvious result is that sooner or later a “saturation” point would be reached. It was Easter Sunday 2022, as I said.
From that moment on, by producing when the sun wants it, not when consumers need that power, there is surplus production… and the price drops to zero. More supply than demand.
And yet, at peak demand, after sunset (and precisely because of this), there is no production… and the price soars.
This means that at peak solar power, there’s no economic return, and all producers lose. ALL OF THEM . In the weeks that it takes to write this article, a series of other related events are taking place that are worthy of separate analysis (doubly so, since the non-obvious limitations of hydroelectric power must be explained), and which are putting both nuclear and combined-cycle power plants in the spotlight.
Because the problem of oversupply is that it affects ALL producers . First and foremost, those in photovoltaic power are the ones causing this mess (note that in these February-March 2024 dates, it’s wind power that’s the culprit), but combined cycle power, and even more so nuclear power, which were designed and calculated to produce 24/7, see their accounts severely compromised by reducing their production or their income.
However, those that are able to manage supply , such as combined cycles (almost exclusively) , compensate their bills at peak demand times by dramatically raising prices during peak demand hours to cover those losses. And yet…
The result is that the large number of REID systems has only triggered volatility. During these times, prices are so low that no one profits (except for some customers… if they’re lucky enough to have certain contracts, because the public sector doesn’t ), while during peak hours, prices skyrocket… just when the vast majority of people, working or not, need to use that energy.
Obviously, this situation benefits no one. And the presumed solution, the one that is conspicuously absent, is storage.
Well, there are two problems here that come together. The first is the issue of deadlines.
Economists are very curious. Their financial formulas are usually income/expense or similar. Ratios. Functions of money in terms of money.
As an engineer, however, the most common thing I deal with are functions where everything is a function of time.
The only thing economists have right there is precisely the calculation of interest, the only formulas in which the time variable appears.
And what the heck do I mean by that?
Well, it’s simple: according to these geniuses, when what is appearing now appears, the solution will “appear,” that is, the installation of storage systems will skyrocket.
Magic Potagia. Fairy Tales.
First, because they ignore the variable of time, which is precisely what counts for interest payments. Some kind of solution may be implemented (which isn’t the case), but until the problem is solved, there are benefits that remain, and interest must be paid.
But the solution is neither here nor there.
And here comes the second failed point.
Many people believe that if the necessary investment is made, technology prices will drop and become more profitable.
That’s the idea behind the huge investment in renewables: the belief is that if you throw enough “pixie dust” (read: investments and subsidies, money, especially public money) at a problem, it will sooner or later become economically profitable.
Wishful Thinking, conveniently translated as Magical Thinking.
Because, as of today, the massive investment in renewables is clearly a disaster . The economic problems of wind power, especially offshore wind power, and even many onshore facilities already in operation, have been explained many times in this series, with what they’re charging (and many are charging above what the pool is paying, according to specific contracts), and almost all large photovoltaic installations.
Those that have suddenly come to a standstill almost everywhere in the world.
In other words, the enormous public investment, in the form of debt, does not produce any real economic results.
Something totally predictable.
Something that we engineers, with half a brain, are capable of figuring out and calculating, as has been demonstrated in this series.
But the discourse is still valid. And many people, like that person who attacked me
Like many people. Like our rulers.
And those of us who dared to calculate and say that this was not going to happen were silenced as useless fools at first, as conspiracy theorists later, and as birds of ill omen now, as those responsible for the fact that something that physics, without much knowledge, clearly demonstrated, has become a reality.
But that’s where Magical Thinking comes into play, the bias that says that when a person’s salary depends on not understanding something, then they don’t understand it, and other such niceties that can be summed up in something more resounding: stupidity.
And that someone like this character invests a ton of money, probably going into debt (who knows, maybe even taking out a mortgage) to set up a company, hoping to ride on the back of the €, hit the jackpot, and thanks to public funds (for his own private benefit), while fervently believing that he was doing a favor to society, to humanity, and on top of that getting rich waiting for prices to go down (and if not, for the rest of us to pay for it, through subsidies, which in his opinion ensured profits even if the “business” was ruinous), is a demonstration that biases and greed blind the most distinguished.
I insist, this result is obvious to anyone with common sense who stops to think a little. You don’t have to be an engineer, or do you have to be a meteorologist to tell if it’s raining when you go outside?
It’s a silly game, and who plays silly games…
Win stupid prizes.
That is, bankruptcy.
But this game isn’t just played by SMEs. Above all, it’s played by governments at all levels, with the European Union at the forefront.
And big companies, of course.
Yes, in theory, big companies “can’t play this game.” Which is beneficial for them, even if it doesn’t seem that way.
Because if this were a truly lucrative business, there would be no need for the Union, or any government for that matter, to invest a fortune: large companies have been investing in this issue for a long time, and they don’t invest in it beyond a “greenwashing” approach.
There must be a reason.
But it’s precisely these large companies that should invest: they have the capital, personnel, knowledge, economic power, vision for the future, and the interest in remaining in the energy market.
If the EU has interfered, it’s because many people think that if they invest a lot (much more than any other company has invested) in this area, they will make it profitable.
Of course… who pays the interest? And when will the investment be recovered? Because, given what we’ve seen, it doesn’t seem like Spanish society is exactly becoming more electrified. Nor does European society, for that matter.
As Margaret Thatcher said, this ends when other people’s money (that is, the people’s) runs out.
Another prize we are finding is that the instability produced by renewables, and which some contacts have told me in recent weeks, causes problems among the population in the form of power outages, blackouts and other stories, California style (which is much worse), and which we are faithfully following in this area, although it remains to be seen what the authorities will do (in Germany they have doubled down on coal, so they are managing to keep this somewhat at bay, but the economic recession in which the Teutons are stuck is another manifestation of this problem).
That is to say, when faced with a problem we already have, what we always do is shirk responsibility and pass the problem on to the weaker party.
And that only delays decision-making and the adoption of solutions. Expensive solutions, if they exist, are all the more reason to silence the problem .
So the weakest (workers and the unemployed, the people in general) are the ones who are paying the bills via higher electricity bills and/or suffering the power outages.
But that problem has a difficult solution. The bill can be passed on to SMEs, which would very likely lead to the collapse of a large portion of them (I was already laid off from one due to its precarious situation, among other reasons, due to the high price of electricity), thus increasing unemployment and poverty. Or it can be passed on to large corporations… but they are already leaving due to the high cost of everything .
Industry has been disappearing from Europe for years. That industry, which was the best payer there was. That industry that Germany is leaving behind , that “European economic locomotive,” at a standstill, the one that closed the plant where I worked, or the Nissan plant (with many more unemployed), or the aluminum industry (a major electricity consumer and with very high technical restrictions regarding stability), or the high-performance refined steel industry (a German specialty) made from recycled steel melted by electric arc.
Or they can blame the “evil and polluting nest of far-right extremists” that is the primary sector . Yes, those farmers and transporters who complain about bureaucracy and the high costs of diesel (a scam we’ve already discussed), fertilizers (which have skyrocketed due to the same scam as well as the boomerang sanctions against Russia), the obstacles put in place to certain practices (due to the environmental problem), etc. Another topic that Dr. Turiel has already addressed and deserves a long explanation and a long post… or several: it is at the heart of the current problem of our society, along with other issues.
Or the State assumes these expenses in the form of more debt, a debt that cannot be repaid because it will end in sovereign bankruptcy sooner or later. And it also increases inflation.
In other words, the REID approach isn’t just not working. It’s actually worsening the problem, and we can’t afford the “solution . “
The ultimate reason I was attacked for what is written in this series is one and only one: that person was suffering tremendously (something obvious given the “decibels” of his expressions). And he was suffering because his creed, his religion, his belief in the “solution” was already being proven false. And with that “smoke,” his financial investment and his commitment to the future evaporate. And the outlook points to ruin.
So, we’re finding that the gamble has failed. The problem of intermittency hasn’t been anticipated at all, as was to be expected given how politics works—always reactive, never preventive. So now that we’re faced with the problem, the only thing left to do is to take desperate measures that don’t and won’t work , like headless chickens, while doubling down (a typical course of action) and resorting to the sunk-cost fallacy.
In reality, we are dealing with a “lose-lose” bet (lose-lose, meaning that whatever you do, you lose) instead of a “win-win” bet (where everyone wins).
We have done nothing but throw good money after bad solutions.
But the cultural foundation doesn’t allow for a change of course . We’ve been sold the REID approach as a form of planning, when in reality, what’s been done is to exploit a popular perception to drive a business, an economic-political agenda.
It is the “planning” of economic growth envisioned by a series of actors, which also appeals to certain political and social interests, among which we must highlight posturing (“we are good, the best, because we are committed to renewable energy to save the planet”) and moral supremacy (“those who say otherwise are deniers”). There has already been a TV advertisement that basically stated what the High Priestess of the Holy Sanhedrin said: that those who do not support the Holy Photovoltaic System are deniers, or, as the Ministry of Energy Lie and Population Reduction has been right to point out, collapsing or delaying.
This accusation deserves another entry, because it opens the door to propaganda, psychological warfare, and other very ugly matters that announce that ecofascism is already here and that it will not fall without taking some (many) people with it.
Meanwhile, our gamble has backfired. The investment isn’t paying off by a long shot. It’s clear that much more is needed to make this work, things we can’t afford financially.
Things that the cultural foundation and the inertia of public opinion, heightened by political functioning, allow us to even address. Belief in the Divinity of Holy Progress and the Power of the Almighty Man-God is at stake.
The religious dimension of our culture is another of the great obstacles, probably the greatest.
So here we are, with public debt (both national and European) that keeps growing and that some politicians are already talking about cutting in order to stop the bleeding , as well as private debt (especially that of large-scale industry, which is disappearing from Europe at a forced pace).
An unsustainable and unpayable debt. And its causes are taboo, anathema to any minimally reasonable political and social approach.
Some oil-colored future forecasts.
Some people might wonder what the war in Ukraine and the Palestinian genocide have to do with this . The first thing that will come to mind, not least because it’s been discussed here, is the relationship with the gas that came from Russia and now comes from the US, as well as the oil that comes through the Suez Canal, and the goods that are now diverted around the Cape of Good Hope.
Both assessments are correct: the price of things increases, inflation, and that leads to economic stagnation, the much-feared stagflation, as well as economic recession .
That alone is a problem, and it bodes ill for pension plans. And for interest rates, which, in this scenario, aren’t going to be cut.
The issue of interest rates is complex: if they’re high, it’s better for pension plans (hence the interest in keeping them high given the risk of them going bust), but they make state debt (which is where the millions to inflate the renewable energy bubble came from) more expensive to maintain, so it increases the chances of sovereign bankruptcy on the other hand.
And that’s where the darkest part of this whole mess comes in.
On the one hand, we have this problem with investment in renewables, making investments unprofitable (those in which pension plans are involved), that the debt that has been contracted to produce this bubble has a cost that will never be profitable, that the problems caused by an electrical system that does not provide us with what we need are very expensive and difficult to solve, and all this causes citizens to become impoverished, industry to flee due to lack of competitiveness, farmers cannot feed the people profitably (which in turn increases inflation), and therefore, the social issue is becoming hot, while the economic situation looks very bleak .
Faced with an increasingly obvious unpayable debt , financing problems, deindustrialization, renewable energy that has meant a covert bailout for southern European countries (Spain and Italy, with very different governments, and which many praise for their “good economic performance”) but which is about to become an enormous burden due to the bursting of that bubble, it is not surprising that governments are overwhelmed .
The turbulent situation , which is giving wings to both the far right and a large number of citizens who simply reject all types of politics (among whom I count myself ), is causing much concern, especially in an election year.
And here comes the key to all this: 2024 is an election year in Ukraine , Russia (in spring in both cases, just a few weeks apart, and presumably problematic for Volodymyr Zelensky ), in the European Union (does anyone know when they are? Because it seems that few are interested, despite being the most important for us ), and, above all, before everything and above everything, in the headquarters of the Imperial Government: Washington.
I think it’s no secret that this November will see, presumably, the most important round of elections of the entire year, of the entire world, and probably of the entire decade.
Given the current situation, many measures are being taken in Washington by those who hold the reins to try to prevent the handle from being taken away from them.
The sanctions against Russia have proved to be very interesting for the American government: they have gone from being practically insignificant in terms of supplying liquefied gas to Europe to becoming one of the most important. Specifically, in Spain, they are now the main supplier, displacing Algeria. This has meant a huge business for the Americans, pumping capital from an increasingly weak and deteriorating Europe. This has helped revive fracking just in time, and which is essentially a “blood transfusion” from a moribund economy to a terminal one, with the idea of keeping the latter somewhat alive.
In that sense, the recent gas export ban is another thing that helps the US: by turning off the tap to Europe, the price of gas that was previously exported drops, and that helps the American economy sustain itself a little more.
Think that they only need a few months, until November arrives.
Things, however, look bad for Europe, especially for Germany and Poland. We already know that the “locomotive” is slowing down, and France is willing to try to take over, but it’s not much better off either.
This , coupled with the Ukraine issue and rising inflation in these parts (and looking set to remain high) , puts the union in a very bad position. The fear of NATO, the need to increase arms spending (debt) in an environment of high interest rates, while industry is declining, seems attractive: it’s another breath of fresh air for industry, which could now be “recycled” from making cars to making tanks and ammunition .
Even so, the population’s reluctance cannot be resolved this way . And the debt crisis cannot be solved by issuing more debt, even if it’s just to finance a war industry.
A war economy is needed to “fix” the problem .
Spoiler: even that doesn’t work.
In that situation, renewables that cannot give us what we need when we need it (which will contribute to our economic and/or military downfall), or the decline in car sales in general, including electric ones, will be the least of our problems .
Regardless of whether we get involved in the war or not. And it will be a decisive factor, even if it’s ignored.
Conclusion.
The dream of renewables is beginning to prove incoherent .
Nothing new, everything was more than predictable with some logic.
The economy is failing (just look at the closed bars and protesting farmers). The modern concept of the nation-state is disintegrating before our eyes. The welfare state is unsustainable under these circumstances, and social cohesion is going down the drain.
The problems of REIDs will become increasingly evident, the economic situation will be turbulent, social tensions will not ease, and inflation will remain high at best, further eroding the purchasing power of the majority of the population.
An incompetent ruling elite that only knows how to posture when what we need is sweat and sacrifice, the weight of history and of actions that Aureliene describes so well , and a situation in which physical reality is disregarded by a culture that believes that human will is above physical, biological, technical and real limitations will take its toll on us.
The cure for humility will be very hard.
Because it turns out there are options. It’s just that no one wants to accept them.
Abandon electricity, or rather (for now), disconnect from the power grid before it abandons us.Beamspot.
PS: The situation these weeks regarding renewables, nuclear (with several plants shut down) and the release of reservoirs in the midst of the drought predicts several “spin-offs.”
Saludos
el mar
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I like this paragraph:
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Dr. Tom Murphy loves the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and has started a series of posts to discuss it.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/03/ishmael-overview/
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I tried real hard, but I just couldn’t bite my tongue. Left this TL;DR comment. Kind of risky because Tom has made me look stupid with some of my prior anti-quinn comments. DQ fans are so protective of Mr Quinn. I hope Murphy doesn’t zing me on this one.😊
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Excellent post Tom. I’ve read the book twice. 2022 and 2023. Loved it. If I had Nate Hagen’s magic wand and could make every person on earth read one book, it would be Ishmael.
My views have changed dramatically in the last year and half since I learned more about energy, thermodynamics, the MPP, and denial… to the point where I don’t particularly like this book anymore. But I would still choose it for the world because of how easy Quinn makes some difficult concepts accessible. He had that Carl Sagan gift of being able to rip down your worldviews without being offensive about it. Ishmael is the perfect reality wake up call.
But Quinn’s energy blindness is remarkable. Not one mention of the word “fire” can be found in any of his work (I’m probably exaggerating, but not by much). Fire is a constant taking from the planet, and a constant exuding of pollution. It should’ve been the beginning stage of his “Takers” rather than agriculture.
Fire was harnessed over a million years ago. The long-term use of it eventually culminated with Sapiens being injected with the nightmare of full consciousness (FC) around 200kya. No other species has ever been near this level of consciousness. Why? Because no other species has harnessed fire… Ok, I know everyone’s not on board but if you can suspend your disbelief for a minute… let’s look at some of DQ’s stuff. The top line in quotes is from Tom’s post. The line underneath is my ramblings:
“Takers imagine they possess special knowledge to rule the world—a knowledge wholly absent in dumb Leavers (who, Takers would say, live like animals).”
No ‘imagine’ necessary. Takers do possess special powers absent in Leavers. It’s called FC. Takers are correct that Leavers lived like animals. Impossible to not live like an animal until FC shows up.
“Nothing like this happened before Takers became self-styled gods.”
And why is that? Because nobody had ever harnessed fire, therefore no existence of FC.
“Various Leaver cultures that tinkered with agriculture walked away from it, but doing so would be dreadfully difficult for Takers because it would amount to admission of colossal defeat.”
Yes, but it would also amount to going backwards on the energy train. Which is impossible. The MPP will not allow willful reduction of energy.
“The net effect is to disabuse Alan of the sense that life is miserable without planting and controlling food.”
Pre and post agriculture is the same in terms of life being miserable. Prior to FC you just can’t understand it… hence you’re living like every other animal. After FC, you understand it enough that you have to invent meaning out of everything… especially in regard to the afterlife. No longer living like any other animal.
“Alan is finally in a place to work out the premise to the Leaver story. It’s startlingly simple, making Alan laugh: humans belong to the world, as has every living being since the beginning.”
Agreed but only if we are talking about pre-fire humans.
“Nothing says we must revert to Stone-Age lifestyles”
Not sure what that even looks like. But this is something Quinn never goes into great detail about. Why? Because when you do the math, you will see that if it’s all about sustainable cultures and humans belonging to the world… then yes you do have to revert… to pre-agriculture… and then pre-fire. Try to imagine what pre-fire humans are doing… the same thing as every other animal… our modern brains cannot accept that this is the only way humans can “fit in”.
“Alan speculates some about the original Takers being identified as Caucasians, now synonymous with “whiteness,” but Ishmael shows little interest and does not run with this.”
Boy I wish Ishmael had some interest here. This particular skin pigmentation does not start showing up until 7-8kya. Just in time to become the eventual architects, rulers and beneficiaries of humanity’s fossil fuel peak. LOL, not a popular topic, but very interesting.
Quinn was a master of what FC requires us to do… create meaning out of nothing so that the bleakness of it all can be hidden and denied. In his mind a species that constantly uses fire and with some type of lite agriculture, can absolutely fit in with the web of life… Quinn was dead wrong.
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Tom replied back. He basically told me to stop being such a cocky, know-it-all, prick😊. But he said it in a very nice & respectable kind of way.
And just with this little sample below, you can tell he is not at all interested in the theory that long term use of fire is the key to full consciousness. (and c’mon, you absolutely cannot say what likely enabled agriculture without at least mentioning FC or eToM)
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Well done Chris. I don’t think Murphy will attack you but if he does you can hold your head high.
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Thanks. Ya, he was cool with his reply. Except I hate how he just dismisses the importance of fire so quickly. Won’t even think about the dot connection to full consciousness or eToM. It’s the equivalent to sources early on in my journey that would barely mention the word denial.
But I still predict an attack from one or two DQ fanatics over there.😊
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Chris, you could ask him if agriculture, especially grain agriculture was possible without using metal, as all metal tools and implements are concentrated and shaped by use of fire?
Are there any examples of humans that created a civilization without the use and mastery of fire or metals?
Did the use of metals allow greater efficiency in agriculture to free up enough humans to live in urban settings and achieve the specialization that comes with civilization?
In Australia where the indigenous people didn’t develop use of metal and intense agriculture never took off, to allow urban settlements to develop, prior to Europeans turning up..
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There are literally zero humans that do not use fire. Let alone a civilization that does not use fire.
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I never got into Quinn, but he does seem to be a phase that a lot of doomers have to go. My main issue with his work is that “takers” are much more natural, normal, animal, than “leavers”. Takers get the resources and reproduce in higher numbers – that’s what nature “wants” animals to do. Though as I have noted before, some animals do naturally limit their reproduction to the available resources, like earthworms. Other animals, like rabbits, just keep breeding as much as predators and food allow.
In someways, we could make a fair argument like this:
In the post oil world, lots of these questions won’t be an issue. Because humans will just get along as best they can, limited by resources naturally occurring in their area. Thousands of unique perspectives, cultures and solutions will find their ways to the humans.
Likes of Hagens, Quinn, McGilchrist, I’m sure have their hearts in the right place. But their work often comes across as intellectual masturbation – this idea that a grand narrative will shift the culture, or at least change the minds of our leaders and intellectuals. Maybe you could argue the bible or communism are grand ideas that have had a big impact, but we can just as easily argue grand sweeping narratives cause more harm than good.
My opinion is probably closer to Kunstler’s – humans just do what they think is a good idea at the time. And what is a good idea? It’s collecting resources, mating with someone attractive as you can manage, and having babies. Tale as old as time 🙂
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Connecting some dots and making a prediction:
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Sadly I listened to Alastair Crooke on Judge Nap today. Alastair said that the Trump National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said that the administration wants to decapitate Iran and then they will dictate a written agreement with Iran to not have any Nuclear weapons program whatsoever , additionally they want Iran to have NO defensive missile system and they will not be allowed to have any foreign policy (i.e. they will agree to be a vassal of the U.S./Israel). Don’t see how they will agree to that. If no agreement within two months the U.S. will attack and when they start to lose they will use nukes. Bad times coming.
AJ
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Yes, I watched the same episode.
I believe there are 4 aircraft carriers in the region.
I guess there’s a chance Trump has offered some carrots behind the scenes for Iran to agree without him looking soft to his masters in Tel Aviv.
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I don’t know if I commented about it before on the site. But at the start of 2025, I had this picture for the coming year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torii.
More precisely, 2025 being the year out of the transition phase which started with covid.
These last few weeks, whenever I come read some news here, I am telling myself, this intuition may turn out correct, in that it increasingly seems to be the year where the dashboards all turn red. A year of revelation.
I just wanted to share.
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That’s how it feels to me too.
There are many unstable triggers in play and any one of them could set off a cascade of events.
Tensions are rising everywhere. Wouldn’t surprise me if a trigger we didn’t expect happens.
Maybe it’s China’s turn?
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I know my previous comment is pretty vague and could be read both ways.
But I think we are going to be surprised in good ways (if we let ourselves be). Sure, failure of anything too big, too complex, too centralized, too energy intensive, too devoid of margins, too optimized is in the making. And everything, and everyone dependent on these systems will feel the consequences.
Yet, in the background, I feel a thawing, a renewal. New foundations, for a different age, at a different scale. Radically different. More in line with natural forces, but also our deep and complex nature. 2025 is an end, as well as a portal into a new beginning.
Also, in response to previous conversations: the “spiritual plane” is orthogonal to the axis defined by personal preferences (I like/I dislike, or I fear/I hope). The starting point of spirituality is what is (present tense), before interpretations, ideas, beliefs, the whole artillery of deviations…
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Mike Stasse today on population.
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“The world will never reach 10 billion people”
I highly doubt it will reach 9…
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An interesting Documentary on the fires in Los Angeles in January of 2025.
They actually do make some interesting recommendations on how to make houses more fire-resistant, but does that involve chemicals?
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Gaza (and Palestine in general) is being used as a testing ground for surveillance and repression.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
Sooner or later, Western governments will use these same methods against their own populations, (they already are in some cases) .
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Well you don’t see this every day in the doomasphere.
Never heard of David Murrins. Apparently he’s a physicist although I would never have guessed. He has a gift for speaking really fast word salad to give the impression he has a secret sauce understanding of modern history that makes him skilled at predicting what happens next.
I didn’t absorb much except China is getting ready for a big war and its first step will be to take Australia and New Zealand to deprive the US of the pacific. So all you Aussie’s and Kiwi’s that lurk here and chuckle at Trump taking Canada, you’d better brush up on your mandarin.
Also, we don’t have to worry about Tel Aviv controlling Trump because Putin has some blackmail on Trump and is the real controller.
Sad thing is when SHTF and everyone is surprised because no one saw it coming the news media will be interviewing people like this for answers instead of those who understand MPP, MORT, overshoot, EROI, and complexity.
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Can I make one recommendation Rob? Stop watching Canadian Prepper. He is a fear monger. Go back over his alerts and you will quickly see that it is pretty much all alarmist bunk.
Just my 2 cents. Spend how you will.
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Yes, he’s a click generator. I think he overstates political risks and understates physical risks like overshoot and depletion. He is a good news aggregator as long as you draw your own conclusions.
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I think the automatic earth is a better news aggregator, some of the commentators are worth reading though there are many extreme opinions there too.
https://www.theautomaticearth.com/
I find Covid and Coffee to be a good blog for news views.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/
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Thanks, I used to follow The Automatic Earth every day but drifted away when Nicole Foss left and Ilargi stopped writing about overshoot. Also, if I recall, their RSS feed is crap. I’ll have another look.
Thanks for the tip on Coffee & Covid. I’ll add it to my feed.
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xraymike79 paints a picture of agriculture at 2C (2030) and 3C (2045) temperature increases.
Reality will probably be worse because I did not see any awareness of simultaneous energy scarcity and degrowth.
How fortunate we still have a “narrowing window” to fix it. 😦
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/24/agriculture-in-the-crosshairs-breadbasket-collapse-at-2c-and-3c/
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Oh, thank goodness!!! I thought the window had already slammed shut. We got this.😉
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Some people need a glimmer of hopium.
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The EU is already under strain now. How will Europe handle such a situation?
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This is a bit off-topic (although it may be labeled by some, as low-tech or a form of minimalism).
Today, I just found out about gemini. Not the AI, but the protocol: https://geminiprotocol.net/, https://geminiquickst.art/.
It seems to be a minimalistic alternative to www.
Out of curiosity, has anyone any experience with it?
(PS: I am not implying anything about the survivability of this technology against collapse)
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I have not tried Gemini but it looks promising for those seeking a simpler more private experience on the web.
Personally I have focused on getting myself setup for the web going away, either because it becomes unreliable like everything else complex in our lives will, or because I become so poor I cannot afford it.
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Thank you for the answer.
Yes, I agree about preparing for no internet. (If you look closely, internet is only needed because of the increasing reliance of the dominant system upon it, and we are all somewhat dependent on the dominant system, so…)
That was simple curiosity from my end.
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Sarah Connor has a new one about a funny topic. Doomers getting therapy. Hilarious to me because all I picture is the aware (and down to earth with reality) doomer paying to get help from a clueless fu#king moron.
Sarah’s advice of reaching out for therapy from someone who deals with hospice situations is probably the best option… outside of finding a well versed doomer therapist. It’s not Me, It’s You
Still trying to piss off the DQ community though😊. This was my reply to a good comment about M Dowd.
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@Rob Mielcarski, As a Canadian, you should cherish Canada’s universal healthcare, despite the missteps during Covid.
The number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical bills. A important step of fixing health care in the US is removing the layer of parasitic middlemen known as insurance companies, and switching to single payer.
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It is nice the Canadian system does not bankrupt us but I very rarely used it before covid, maybe once in 40 years. I’ll have to be in really bad shape before I use it now. Killing about 20 million people worldwide is a little bit more than a misstep.
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Preptip:
I think it is important for people to stay doing everything normal when they are first finding out about the everything predicament. Rushing to change your whole life in response to this information will just cause stress and turmoil. This is especially the case if you have a partner or children. Making changes slowly over time enables you to adjust to the shock. It also ensures you have carefully think through your decisions. For example, it took 10 years from finding out about peak oil to me moving to a country property. If I had rushed off to be a WWOOF or some such thing my life would be much, much worse by now.
Just as an aside, I remember a NTHE retired guy lamenting that he didn’t want his wife to buy a small greenhouse – because what’s the point we’ll be dead soon? All I could think was he was a mega prick denying his wife something that would bring her a lot of happiness, was easily affordable for them, and would improve their self-sufficiency.
Another example was a man who took his young family from an affordable suburban house with a backyard garden to an off-grid yurt situation. His wife was trying to raise three young ones including a baby completely off grid in the bush. This is selfish, irresponsible, and egotistical. Being a shit husband or father is not saving the planet. No wonder some of these people end up so depressed. Making stupid life decisions will do that to a person – eg your wife leaves you, your kids hate you.
So back to my original advice, go slow. Make incremental changes. Guard your physical and mental health as it is critical to surviving modernity and what comes next. If you have people that depend on you, your obligations are to them first, not your idealized version of eco-utopia. If you have a family, a lot of off grid and low impact lifestyle choices can be made fun and educational. Home composting, raising chickens, making food from scratch. Start where you are and don’t be so hard on yourself.
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Very much agree Monk. It also took us around 10 years from learning about LTG to moving to a country property.
What I’ve learned since, in the 40 years we’ve been here, is that we will not be much better off when collapse comes, but in the lead up much better off, because we are part of the local community. It would be vastly different if we just joined the local community much later. It takes time, a lot of time, to be an accepted part of a local rural community.
Also today compared with 40 years ago, there is so much more available information because of the power of the internet to obtain information. This information is not in a vacuum, it’s within a vast amount of information that no-one has any hope of reading it all in a lifetime, so being selective in information gathering can lead to incorrect conclusions.
In the last bit of your post.. “Home composting, raising chickens, making food from scratch.” I’ve been thinking recently about the chooks. How will the grandchildren in 50 years time be able to keep the chooks safe from predators (like introduced foxes here) without galvanized wire for the chicken yards/pens?
It’s just another reason I think of why we do what makes us happy today as in the longer term future all bets are off..
Another story that grabbed my attention today was this one about the problem of some ‘armyworms’ now decimating human monoculture crops if we don’t add ‘something’, in this case a natural (cough,cough) cure, which would be OK in all ‘organic’ type certifications, yet totally relies upon the modern world to continue, to be able to feed 8.2B+ humans…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-27/australian-fungi-bacteria-kills-fall-armyworm/105069826
The natural world, that we’ve massively changed is coming for us at the end of modernity…
Sorry to go off on a tangent from your important topic, but it’s all part of the make small changes that get you closer to the natural world, without making major decisions that could make you much unhappier in the longer term. Life is for living and enjoying as much as possible, no matter what we have learned about the prospects for the future.
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Lots of fears in your post Hideaway.
🙂
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Charles, it’s not fears, it’s acceptance of the world we have created and live in. There are an innumerable quantity of feedback loops from everything we’ve been doing to the natural world over the last 100,000 years, with an acceleration of the change up to the present time.
We are now in an era of such massive change, that many feedback loops which have a lag time have not come close to kicking in yet.
There is no way to even predict what all the feedback loops that we’ve done to the climate and other species will be, especially as modernity ends, so every type of thinking of we can go back to a simpler type of living, farming, hunter gathering is just more human hubris in not accepting our situation.
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🙂
I am interested in knowing what types of emotions you harbor when you examine the situation.
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For me, numb.
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Interesting. That’s a very specific, precise choice of words.
You could have said calm, placid, even indifferent, unconcerned. But numb, that’s another story.
From my experience, numb is when there is underlying pain so strong that the body/mind protects itself from it by shutting the senses down.
For instance, when our fingers are numbed by the cold.
Anyway, when there is numbness, I know I go slowly to uncover it (it’s like patient shovel work around it, wait, let some of it ooze out, etc…) and reconnect, because if the whole pain were to explode all at once, it could be unbearable and terminating.
But maybe that does not apply in your case and it’s different. I really don’t know.
Best 🙂
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For me it’s sadness, knowing that there is nothing anyone can do to change the situation. It’s a path humans have always been on, yet not knowing it.
Also a bit if incredulity that there could be so few people that have worked out exactly where we are headed, while most people believe in fairytales, either religion and/or a bright green/nuclear future with trips to the stars.
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Thank you for the answer.
I wish I could cheer you up. I am not sure, I can.
I felt anger for a long time, and then sadness. Now, I am at peace. I feel we are going towards life. (And yes, the road to that may be incredibly bumpy)
There is an element of faith in my stance. I am ready to recognize wholeheartedly: “if things are unfolding that way, it’s because it has to”. But maybe more importantly, I focus on that which I don’t know, rather than that which I know.
This is not meant as a criticism, just maybe as a further opening. I will try to say it in a gentle way.
There are those who don’t see the turning point. They look at the past and extrapolate the trends. For them it can go on forever.
Then there is another way to reason, more refined: to see the system as it exists and understand that it can’t continue. But, still, this is based on the past. That which we have seen, we know existed (since we can study it, it’s already of the past).
And then there is that which is unknown.
I can tell you for sure, there is going to be some kind of a future: whatever anyone does, can not (it seems, so far 😉 break the fabric of reality. I see that, and that’s enough to bring me joy. To me, to accept the future as it is, unknown and not under my/our (which is really me in disguise) control is of the same nature as accepting the great unknown (death) and all the other unknowns, uncontrolled.
If one stays under the sentiment that everything that is unknown is there to get him, then life becomes unbearable.
I am really happy to get out of this illusion of control. To me, it’s redeeming to be dethroned from the driver’s seat.
We know this system can not continue, we know reality is as it is today. Stark, but survivable, livable, and even enjoyable for many. Tomorrow is another day, I am looking forward to seeing how everything reconfigures. The worst that could happen is to stay blocked in the old recipes, recipes for disaster.
And about fairytales (the original ones), some of them (at least) may not be only tales 🙂
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Hi Charles,
Not saying this applies to Hideaway (how the hell would I know) … but your comment reminded me of a good Sam Mitchell rant about some of his newfound fears regarding collapse. He became collapse aware around 2008. Because of his age (he’s 65 now) Sam has always been convinced that he would get out of this world just in the nick of time before collapse hit. He no longer believes that and its now adding to his dread and misery.
I’m lucky. Too new to the doomasphere to have had those thoughts yet. Probably the only hopium I’ll never experience.😊
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chicken fence
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This is one of the reasons we grow a variety of bamboos.
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Simon has several times here recommended the book Dissolving Illusions by Dr. Suzanne Humphries.
https://dissolvingillusions.com/graphs-images/
I have not yet read the book but I believe she uses official public health data to show vaccines are not the miracle technology we have been aggressively led to believe.
I believe her book was at the top of the list of books our “healthcare experts” wished to discredit during covid suggesting it is probably the most accurate and important book on the topic since they said and did everything exactly opposite of correct.
Dr. Humphries was just interviewed by Joe Rogan.
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This is a must listen!
Dr. Humphries is the Gail Zawacki of vaccines. I love her.
Just got the Dissolving Illusions audiobook so I can read it on my walks.
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I finally watched this interview. Was really good.
And because of what False Progress had said in his comment regarding Suzanne, I was watching her like a hawk for any red flags. Only noticed two things. She got really uncomfortable and defensive the few times they went to the internet to look up something she had been talking about. But I can easily chalk that up to her constantly being “fact checked” or whatever so out of habit she just instantly goes into that defensive mode when someone starts pulling up the internet.
And the only other thing was that she uses the phrase “the fact of the matter” way too much. Seems like that phrase started out in the courtroom and has evolved to the tv talking heads and is now used by every jackass on the planet… and its usually used when the person does not have confidence in what they’re saying. But I did not get that vibe from Suzanne. She just needs someone to tell her to stop saying it.
And that was a very bold claim by you to call her the Gail Zawacki of vaccines… but I totally agree. So ya I would vouch for Suzanne, no problem. If she’s a fraud, then I will never be able to trust my radar again.
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Thank you for confirming I might not be crazy. My friends and family disagree with you.
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Be aware of how religious Humphries is:
https://drsuzanne.net/2012/08/in-vaccines-we-trust-paul-offit-threatens-religious-and-philosophical-vaccine-exemptions-a-response-by-suzanne-humphries-md/ “Through the resultant lack of faith in the human creation and the God who does actually have the power to heal all through both the design of the body and miracles, seeps the arrogance (and ignorance) of doctors and scientists who think they can outwit God’s nature.”
Years ago she was on YouTube talking to another deeply religious woman who treated the implausible story of Noah’s Ark as fact. Humphries made no effort to contest her. I’m having trouble finding that because at least one of her channels was pulled.
Just the article above shows she’s too religious to be a pure scientist, and you noticed how she’s overconfident with “the fact of the matter” claims, aka dogma.
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Hello False. Ya, the religion stuff could definitely be a problem. But that article is from 2012 and even if she still feels that way… I don’t know, no big deal to me.
I’m glad Rob took the high road and let you back in the door. You get points from me for just being back here and commenting. It equals good taste and judgement. I’m all for hearing your thoughts on any other topic besides covid/vax.
Except for that crime demographics thing… have a feeling me and you are gonna clash big time over that topic… so let’s avoid that one too.😊
Bottom line for me; anyone with the balls to attempt the 86’d sneak back in move, is cool in my book.
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I think Humphries talks too assuredly, but with enough kernels of truth to keep her plausible on the surface. She’s also listed in the Encyclopedia of American Loons, as is RFK, though that site can lean too left for me, praising Black Lives Matter while ignoring all the riots and pointless extra deaths it’s caused.
In the spirit of full un-denial, Rob could tackle that whole topic, but I understand fear of having one’s blog panned as “racist,” so this is the last time I’ll bring it up, otherwise. Sort of just passing though, anyhow.
Just check out Roland Fryer talking to Bari Weiss at UATX (one of the better interviews) about POC who favor pragmatic change vs. wallowing in resentful crime culture. He was temporarily forced out of Harvard for not accepting the narrative of cops supposedly killing random blacks for no reason, or at higher rates than arrest-resisting whites. His life mission has been finding raw talent among overlooked people who don’t need classic DEI to succeed. A very good economist.
FYI, I didn’t really try to sneak back in, since I’d committed no real sin. Seems I was either discreetly unblocked or the site loses track. Saw an interesting piece here via Google and replied.
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Hey Rob, I have indeed gone on ad nauseam about this book, because the graphs in it show such a compelling story that they were what first caused me to question vaccine efficacy. The safety side came later. My first reaction to seeing these graphs was, what’s the source; as you note, it’s health service data from all over the world, and you can find the data sets they use if you look. Having seen that the graphs are from a reliable source, this was the start of my journey regarding the holy sepulcher of the church of progress, and it has made me very few friends, but has potentially saved my children from harm. A journey I’d make again in heartbeat. I will observe that this data should be looked at by anyone who cares about vaccine efficacy, because it is really beyond any reasonable doubt if you put aside your beliefs and prejudices, and just look at the world.
Simon.
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Thank you for making me aware of Dr. Humphries. I have added her to my very small list of heroes.
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The result of your awareness is fewer harmed kids, Rob. Something we can all appreciate. I agree that she’s a hero. I’ll similarly salute RFK. Who are the others for you?
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I especially admire people who figure out important things that no one believes.
Dr. Ajit Varki
Dr. Dennis Meadows
Dr. Timothy Garrett
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
I probably missed a few.
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It’s a good list! I’d add Dr. Pierre Kory, especially as lately he’s trying to wake people up to chlorine dioxide. He has also talked a bit about how he’s seen remarkable improvement in people in ICUs by giving them high dose vitamin C; I’ve just seen that Dr. Humphries does the same (https://drsuzanne.net/dr-suzanne-humphries-oral-intravenous-vitamin-c/), so that’s tomorrow evening’s viewing.
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I also admire Pierre Kory.
He saved lives by doing what worked rather than what he was told to do during covid.
Kory was savagely attacked. Time has proven him correct and the authorities with their fact checkers wrong.
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Wow. Talk about an eye opener. Thanks for the link.
Too much to consider.
As an aside I am trialing DMSO. Let you know how it goes.
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I have varicose veins from an old bicycling injury (my leg was so badly squashed it ended up damaging the valves in the veins, I think). I’ve been trying DMSO for this over the past 8 weeks or so (mixed with some colloidal silver), and it does seem to be helping.
niko, was it you who talked about trying L. Reuteri yogurt? I’m making my first batch tomorrow, after having had some positive effects from L. Casei.
Simon.
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Hi Simon,
not much success at getting yoghurt to form mostly kurds and whey.
I need to get another strain.
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just some more ramblings from a madman –
Funny what you start to notice after you’ve become overshoot aware. I haven’t watched a King Kong movie in well over ten years. The 1976 remake was always my favorite. Only because I have good memories of watching it as a kid with my dad. So I started it last night but never finished because I got hung up on two issues that I had never noticed or thought about.
First issue was that the whole expedition was put together because some hot shot executive for Big Oil thought there was massive amounts of oil on a newly discovered island (infared technology or something showed oil). I don’t remember this at all. Most King Kong movies are about finding an exotic island so they can film a movie with their blond bimbo movie star… nothing about oil. This movie was made 50 years ago and the writers knew that the audience wanted to see Big Oil depicted as the bad guy. It got me wondering if this was the first example of Hollywood portraying Big Oil as the bad guys. (I doubt its the first time, but so far I have not found any prior examples… if you guys know of any, let me know)
The second issue was the depiction of the natives on skull island. They’re almost like monsters. LOL. All I could think about was Old world meeting New world.
The fact that I’m the poster boy for falling for the noble savage myth, pretty much explains my bitterness. But I don’t like the word savage. It’s prejudiced. Not to the natives… screw them, they’re just stupid humans like us (not quite as horrible, yet) … Energy is what I’m referring to. This ‘energy prejudice’ has got to be the most guaranteed law of life in the universe. Safe to say that the New world has never defeated the Old world… ever! And majority of the time it’s gonna play out exactly like our encounter:
Maybe these encounters have happened millions of times. I’m betting it’s only a handful, if that. Either way, Old world is undefeated. There’s always gonna be a small percentage of Jane Goodhall types from the Old world that know how wrong/evil their side is being… but it’s kind of like the ratio of overshoot aware vs unaware. The masses can’t help themselves. They’re preprogrammed to treat that lower class energy with extreme prejudice. Somehow the body knows from millions of years of evolution and always chasing energy… it knows it wants nothing to do with those older, harder, less comfortable EROEI days.
From the perspective of the Old world, it’s always gonna look like the King Kong movies where the civilized, high-energy pretty boys run into the scary and disgustingly primitive, low-energy monsters. LOL.
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I get the feeling that the old old world (China) is going to teach the old world (us) a lesson soon.
List movies that portray Big Oil as the bad guy.
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Interesting. Even AI can’t find one earlier than ’76. More than likely Meadows famous book Limits to Growth (1972) had something to do with this breakthrough. I’m still looking but your Grok search confirms that my research skills are still ok. I came up with every one of those movies (except Local Hero).
Cinema is filled with that caricature of the despicable greedy business owner (Mr Potter from ‘Its a Wonderful Life’). But so far it looks like King Kong is the first time where Big Oil was specifically attached to that character. (just talking Hollywood. I’m sure we could find many examples in literature)
And that movie Local Hero (1983) looks promising and has great reviews. It’s free on Roku. Gonna watch it tonight. Sounds like a comedy-drama with a feel good story –
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I rated Local Hero 9 out of 10 and consider it a “pick” which means it’s one of the movies I can watch over and over again.
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Hello movie buffs,
I agree that Local Hero was a notable film. The human drama was surprisingly touching and authentic despite also being a bit quirky. Looking back at it now, it makes you think if things on our planet could have turned out differently if human stories like this could have somehow curtailed Big Oil earlier on. (We now know the answer, a resounding no, but it may have been delayed) Even in the early 80s when the film was made, I the overall feeling of the film was a wistfulness of what could have been, I think it even more powerful now. I just wanted to add that the soundtrack by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits is outstanding. The instrumental theme song Going Home is 10/10 in my book and totally captures the nostalgia feeling. Maybe it’s the perfect Collapse tune, a swan song for this current incarnation of humanity?
Hope everyone is travelling well.
Namaste, friends.
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Ya, this was excellent. One of the better films I’ve seen in a while.
It’s one of my favorite genres. Very similar to Doc Hollywood (1991), The Grand Seduction (2013), Waking Ned Divine (1998), and the tv show Northern Exposure (1990).
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We must be clear about this. Ignorance will not save us from collapse.
https://futurocienciaficcionymatrix.blogspot.com/2025/03/hay-que-exponer-las-cosas-con-claridad.html
by Quark
“I’ve been holding debates online for years. And the response from the vast majority of people is that peak oil supporters are Malthusian scarecrows.
For a long time, people have warned of an imminent collapse in global oil production, only to find out a short time later that there is no such collapse. “Renewing” projected dates is of little use if they are never met.
All these failures have introduced into the “collective unconscious” the fact that all predictions of a collapse in oil production have been wrong, and therefore, all subsequent predictions will be wrong as well. Authorities tell us there are 50 years’ worth of reserves, and the general opinion is boredom, because there’s always enough oil left for 40 years (regardless of the day you read this).
As if that weren’t enough, the energy transition will make the use of fossil fuels unnecessary in just a few years.
But what do the objective data tell us?
1st). In the last twenty years, we have consumed 600 billion barrels and discovered only 100 billion. The peak of discoveries was reached in the 1960s, and since the mid-1980s, oil consumption has systematically outstripped new discoveries, reaching a deplorable low in the last decade .
Therefore, the decline in oil reserves is enormous and very rapid.
2nd). Official oil reserves are false . Everyone knows that in the 1980s, the dispute over OPEC quotas led to an increase in official reserves in almost all OPEC countries, without any discoveries. Even worse, since then, official reserves have remained stable, despite the fact that they have made almost no discoveries and continue to extract large quantities of oil each year.
3rd). The reason for errors in predictions is technology.
This new mantra hasn’t served to increase reserves, but it has been able to keep production stable, while older fields were depleting their reserves to levels as high as 80-90%. In other words, Hubbert’s old theory that when a field reaches 50% of its reserves, its production begins to decline has been “eliminated” through infill drilling, both horizontal and vertical. Large fields, in particular, have been squeezed to the limit using these techniques, while maintaining production almost intact.
4th). Just when it seemed that conventional oil was entering a plateau, shale oil arrived to shatter the forecasts. Here, we did make a mistake of underestimation, and since 2010, shale oil has grown to single-handedly sustain the increase in demand over the past fifteen years, as all the oil production charts show.
5th). Recent statements by some of the sector’s leading CEOs (shale oil USA) warn of the exhaustion of the most productive points by 2028 and of all interesting points by 2032, which ensures an absolute collapse of US production.
6) Saudi Prince MBS knew very well what he was talking about when he predicted a collapse in shale oil production by 2030, and also said the same for China and Russia (until 2040). He, better than anyone, knows that the fields are depleted and that when horizontal drilling reaches the upper layers of each reservoir, production will plummet, regardless of the size of the field, including the enormous fields in Saudi Arabia.
7th). The energy transition is just a cover.
The IEA has just updated its energy production forecast for 2024.
Despite trillions in investments in renewables, we remain dependent on fossil fuels. In reality, all energy sources continue to increase their consumption . Demand for electricity will skyrocket by 2024, but renewables will only cover 38% of new primary energy demand, increasing consumption of all other sources (nuclear, oil, gas, and coal).
Solar and photovoltaic energy only generate 5% of total primary energy (compared to 80% for fossil fuels), and we already have problems extracting critical raw materials (as the IEA itself acknowledges in its forecasts).
And we cannot forget the problems of the energy transition itself.
In contrast, IRENA presents figures showing a 92% penetration of renewable energy in new electricity capacity expansion projects.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/26/92-5-of-new-power-capacity-added-worldwide-in-2024-was-from-renewables/
Yes, renewables are growing, but so is the consumption of fossil fuels and nuclear power. What good does it do to “reduce” natural gas and coal from electricity generation (in some countries) if their global consumption (at least for gas) continues to rise at the same rate as in recent years?
Without a massive storage system to serve as a backup, we’re doing nothing except sinking the renewable energy industry when prices plummet at midday and rise when renewable energy isn’t being generated (at night).
8th). In an attempt to prolong the boom and maintain living standards, we have ballooned global debt to clearly unaffordable levels. Only the continued intervention of central banks, providing cover for government debt, has allowed markets to finance themselves without problems, fostering a huge bubble in financial assets over the last decade, due to the disappearance of risk due to central bank intervention.
This in itself wouldn’t cause a collapse, but when oil production begins to fall sharply, it will create feedback loops. Without investment, oil production plummets rapidly, and the systematic abuse of debt has placed us on the brink of financial collapse if trust in the system is lost, since fiat money has no intrinsic value.
If we include shadow banking, global debt exceeds 700% of global GDP , according to some estimates. Madness has invaded the trading floors, and no one has any control over what might happen when we’re dealing with these incalculable figures. All the growth since 2008 has come from a substantial increase in debt. There is no natural growth; everything is artificial, based on worthless money…
————————————————–
Now let’s take the data mentioned in the previous comment, shake the cocktail, and see what comes out.
1st). The world depends on oil for everything.
This isn’t a wild goose chase. Think of all the objects in a room, all the items in a store, all the machines in a company, all the food in a supermarket. Everything, absolutely everything, has needed oil to get to that location.
If oil disappeared tomorrow, we would collapse to an indescribable level in just a few weeks.
2nd). Oil substitutes depend on oil .
The extraction of raw materials for the energy transition, the transportation of coal, and the transport of all kinds of elements to create photovoltaic or wind farms all depend on oil.
There is nothing we can do in the next twenty years to prevent this statement.
3rd). Starting in 2030 (I don’t care if the date varies a few years earlier or later), oil production will begin its abrupt decline . It’s math; oil production can never exceed the recorded reserves. They can lie all they want with the “official” data, but there are no miracles.
4th). They may not tell us directly what’s going on, but we have to read between the lines.
a) Making America great again means not depending on others. World trade is going to collapse irrevocably, “guess why.” The policy of imposing tariffs ( the latest example ) is a means to an end: returning to self-sufficiency (for resource-rich countries like the USA) as a system to avoid foreign dependence.
b). The fight for resources is evident and no longer hidden. Trump has verbalized everything we’ve known for a long time. Resources are lacking, and they must be obtained at any price. Even by force of arms.
c). Europe knows it can’t rely on the US to provide its own resources. Suddenly, it says it needs to rearm (again, fight for resources), and it also approves the unbridled search for resources on European soil , overriding national legislation.
d) Suddenly, you have to get a three-day survival kit . Thinking that Russia is going to invade Europe and we’re going to war only works as a perfect excuse.
e). From time to time, they send us “messages.”
Macron, the end of abundance .
IMF, the great reset of 2020 .
Ray Dalio warns about the danger of US debt .
The digital euro is moving ahead.
The summary of all these points is clear. There are no more friends or enemies; it’s all “every man for himself.”
That after all these points, we still have to explain that we’re facing a disaster of unprecedented magnitude is insane. It’s true that we only see what we want to see, but we must also learn that “ignorance (intentional or not) will not save us from collapse.”
You can review all the links to form an opinion, and at the same time, analyze the contrary forecasts to compare them with the actual data.
In 1972, the Limits to Growth study warned us of a turning point toward degrowth around this time (2020-2030). Subsequent reviews have confirmed that the data are consistent with the central scenario of the first study.
Of course, we’re free to think whatever we want, but the data is there for everyone to check.”
Saludos
el mar
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Great entry, el mar- lots of facts and links to facts. For those like me that don’t read Spanish, here is a link on gdp/debt ratios. Couldn’t find one that included shadow bank figures, but ~350% is bad enough. This outfit is not some hair on fire doomer, but a financial analyst to the corporations of the world. Awareness is dawning, but full understanding of the implications – not so much.
https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/special-reports/look-forward/global-debt-leverage-is-a-great-reset-coming
Re; monk’s comment upthread – yes, eat the elephant one bite at a time. The collapse of modern industrial society is a big one. We’ve been homesteading for over ten years now, and know that we are still deeply connected to the matrix. I’m still doing the acceptance/non-acceptance dichotomy. Growing a good bit of our own food, learning the land we live on are small steps, but luckily, I get satisfaction from the chores I do, and am at least doing something, rather than stewing in despair.
PS to Rob- once more WordPress said I was logged in, but did not take the comment, had to rewrite. You’d think I’d save a copy before hitting reply since it’s happened several times in the past. Sigh. Dunno where the glitch is between my fingers and your eyes, but so it goes.
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Hideaway on the energy untransition.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-20-2025/#comment-787262
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Rintrah revisits the latest evidence and concludes his warnings about covid transfection policies have been vindicated. He thinks there’s a chance this could be a civilization ending event.
Note that he does not discuss rising cancers in young people which I am hearing more and more about.
Do you see why the silence on the US funded Wuhan source is so remarkable and troubling?
https://www.rintrah.nl/i-was-right-about-the-covid-vaccines-setting-people-up-for-constant-reinfections/
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I’m not that deep into the potential COVID vaccine issues yet… but this sounds really disturbing.
It’s as if several existential threats to humanity are converging to attack all at once. The image of a juggler who keeps getting thrown more balls at his hands while he’s performing his tricks comes to my mind. No matter how skilled he is, sooner or later he won’t be able to handle them all. And when that happens, he won’t just drop one ball, he will drop all of them.
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xraymike79 today discusses whether geoengineering can prevent the coming bread basket collapse he discussed in his last essay a few days ago.
He also reviews Dr. James Hansen’s recent work which shows the climate science consensus is too optimistic, and concludes Hansen is also too optimistic.
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/26/notes-on-the-breadbasket-collapse-and-a-critical-blind-spot/
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Geo-engineering is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.
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Geoengineering is very much like debt.
It allows you to kick the can until energy scarcity prevents you from continuing, and then the correction happens so quickly from a higher elevation that you do more damage than had you avoided geoengineering and accepted the pain.
We don’t do voluntary pain.
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An interesting podcast with Tom Murphy.
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Thanks. Laid back, winging it with no agenda is more Tom’s strength… I could’ve easily listened for another two hours.
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Interesting theory.
All of the people we had high hopes for in Trump’s team have gone silent, or are behaving contrary to years of track records that gave us hope. For example, RFK Jr. is focused on silencing students critical of Israel on US university campuses, rather than saving children from vaccine harms as he promised. Gabbard supports killing Yemeni citizens. Patel says Israel is his top priority.
Bret Weinstein, who is Jewish, is very concerned and suggests that the Epstein island videos, and other forms of blackmail, are being used to control people that are compromised by embarrassing behavior. He suggests some form of amnesty is needed to counteract the blackmail and to free them to do their jobs.
I’m thinking there are 2 possibilities here:
Can anyone think of other theories to explain what we see?
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I think some of this may be the Epstein files. There was some talk on X that considering how debauched RFK Jr. was in his youth he may have gone to Epstein isle (he was a heroin addict at one point). But I think that most of the Trump appointees know his personality pretty well (mercurial, insecure sociopath) and so self-censor or say the minimal to support Israel and then move on to their agenda. To be “successful” in Trump’s “employ” one always has give him praise, accept blame and then do what they can trying to stay below his radar.
I don’t think the deep state has secret plans that they divulge to the unaware. I think on an institutional level they know energy is very important to maintaining power and hence our need to control it. It’s all about power and how to get it, keep it and use it.
AJ
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If the USA runs out of (fracking) oil, finding a replacement will be a matter of life and death.
The second alternative is completely plausible!
Saludos
el mar
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What is the 2nd alternative?
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We’ll have to wait for el mar, I think he means death is a definite possibility.
Adam
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I think he’s talking about the second possibility pointed by Rob: overshoot collapse is closer than we think.
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Correct!
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I’m sure you guys have already heard about this pyramid discovery. Sabine talked about it today.
I only watched a couple minutes. I had already made up my mind two weeks ago that this was just another story created by confused fire apes to help hide and deny the bleakness of it all… Sabine agrees, she gave it a 9/10 on the bullshit meter.
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Sounds like nonsense. Plus no mention of the most interesting thing about pyramids. Why would a relatively poor civilization spend decades of it’s scare surplus wealth on a spaceship for visiting the gods?
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pyramids, temples, the statues on Easter Island… LOL, the nightmare of full consciousness is a bitch. And it’s quite hilarious picturing an entire civilization dedicating all of its precious resources on these ancient monuments so that they could appease the gods or whatever… that were completely made up in the first place by their own ancestors.🤭
Outside of something drastic like finding an alien spaceship under the pyramids or whatever… Can you think of anything that would totally make you have to reevaluate your story? For me its proof of burial practices. I would love for them to discover some type of cemetery from 500k or a million years ago. Would push me back to square one and give me a huge jolt of excitement.
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HHH on how the global monetary system works.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-march-27-2025/#comment-787360
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Dr. Tim Morgan I sense is struggling with his awareness like the rest of us.
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Note: I watched a few minutes of the movie Margin call right before posting this.
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Now Imagine what happens if/when there is a margin call on all of those deflated assets…
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B contemplates European insanity.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/europes-remilitarization-myth
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Europe is not going to re-arm anytime soon. Why does Europe (and the West more broadly) think that Russia wants to re-establish its former empire, or even take over the whole continent? Do you think a bit of projection might be occurring?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
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What I don’t understand about the whole of Europe being worried about Russia, is why they think Russia could be bothered with the rest of them?
An aging population with clapped out land and mostly used resources, where a vastly overshot population will fight you at every turn, does not make for a compelling target for expansion.
Realistically, why are Europe not begging Russia to join the EU to gain access to a free market of Russian resources with everyone being much happier and better off? (This would of course make the NATO alliance obsolete and pointless).
It’s pretty obvious that the politicians are so out of touch with reality, almost everywhere, that all that’s going to happen is between the lot of them they tip us into collapse a bit earlier than would have otherwise happened. Perhaps it’s the nature of people that go into politics in the first place, that makes them immune to realism.
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All good questions. Nothing makes sense. It’s very troubling.
My best guess is subconscious animal instincts have taken over. European leaders know there is nothing they can do to fix the economic decline their constituents care about, so they are attempting to redirect blame to an external enemy that also happens to have resources that might breathe some life into their economy.
Look at Keir Starmer. The UK is falling apart and he does nothing except worry about Russia on the opposite side of his continent.
Hope seems to be fading on Trump achieving peace with Putin. It looks like the war will continue until one side decisively wins.
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“Hope seems to be fading on Trump achieving peace with Putin. It looks like the war will continue until one side decisively wins.”
Yes I never thought that Trump would achieve anything there because it is about him not Russia. Russia doesn’t care what Trump wants.
So much of what the west does seems to be bluffing to me. Even in the Middle East all it will take is one sunk aircraft carrier and the US is sunk on the world stage. They know that they can’t stop hypersonic missiles.
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Hello Hideaway,
Hope you’re finally getting some moisture and your autumn harvest is fruitful despite the dry conditions. I wanted to comment when you mentioned growing bamboo for all sorts of utility reasons but I thought you might be a bit jealous as this year at our property in Far North QLD the bamboo has excelled itself with our abundant rain. They are just bursting with vertical vitality and the most verdant lushness; I am totally enamored with this species. There are a few lurking here who probably feel the same. I can’t think of any other living thing that capable per cubic volume to add biomass and soak up carbon, and at the speed we need. Long may bamboo all around this planet continue to reach for the skies (until their spontaneous flowering, that is).
I just wanted to also say that I echo your sentiments with regard to why Russia would want to meddle with greater Europe now. It is like inheriting an aged, however ornate, building that needs constant maintenance and repair, just for the sake of keeping it up because of historical value. The days of Europe as a Disneyland for the affluent West are waning, but still why not just visit and enjoy the offerings of an overseas holiday or the grand tour (preferably back when the process of getting there and back could be considered tolerable)? There’s no need to own the run-down castle if it’s enough to just tick the box and say, been there, done that. And that’s just the infrastructure part of the deal, not to mention dealing with the internal dramas of each country playing out in overshoot ground zero. It would be like attending a dysfunctional multigenerational (and cultural) family gathering with all the in and out-laws and trying to keep order and sanity as well as footing the bill and the clean up for the party. No thanking you!
The countries of Europe are fighting for existential survival as nations, cultures and even population, scrabbling at a diminishing resource pie to which they are contributing less and less but have appetite and need to consume even more. Conflict and ultimately war become the tried and only means to not only keep identity but also maintain social order, all whilst trying to dig a bigger fingerhole into the pie. They need a conflict with Russia to justify the purpose of Europe–without an “us versus them” the “us” loses meaning and an individual country eventually will be seen as a competitor to another member of the former “us” group. Europe needs to think Russia is after them, psychologically it serves to bolster its ego that they are still a desirable and influential world power, not hanger-ons quickly approaching used by dates. I don’t mean to be so harsh but if playing at war, and a nuclear war at that, is their collective game, then there should be some bitter home truths to swallow first.
As for the EU doing a 180 and begging Russia to join them, that logical and potentially mutually beneficial pathway unfortunately is blocked by a very menacing troll on the bridge carrying a big club, called the US of A. After all, the States needs the biggest Us against Them to justify their hegemonic actions. It just won’t be allowed and the European governments know they are caught between a rock and hard place so better continue to sleep with the rock they know even though it is a fickle and even unfaithful partner.
It really is crazy times. I am trying to just hang on around the corners wondering how I can just give into the ride and let it all go. Every day I make a great effort to do something that grounds me to the wider processes of life, and that’s where the majesty of the bamboo really helps.
Hope everyone is travelling well.
Namaste.
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Hi Gaia, It’s still very dry down here, with brown grass everywhere, no autumn break yet.
I love my bamboos and treat them very kindly, giving them plenty of water via both drip irrigation and sprinklers. Water is something I’ve always been very aware of in our often drought ridden country, which is one of the reasons we bought in one of the wettest most consistent rainfall areas of Victoria. I have access to a lot of irrigation water, which costs a lot due to the ever growing fees of “water rights” from a perennially flowing creek, lots of piping, pumps and fuel use. It’s one of those aspects that has made me acutely aware of our dependence on modernity/complexity and where it’s all come from.
I’ve managed to accumulate 10 different types of bamboos, with the majestic Bambusa oldhamii, Phyllostachys vivax and nigra all growing to around 10 metres in height, with the first 2 having culms of around 8-10cm in diameter. One I’d like to get that I’m still missing is moso. I bet I’d be jealous of the bamboos you have up there though!!
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Just speculation, but could the reason be that the USA sort of owns Europe?
Or maybe Europe thinks they can actually breakup Russia and own the resource-rich areas? That is a fool’s thinking if you have read your history
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I heard another good idea today. A lot of European elites have their careers linked to the EU project. As the European economy contracts there will be a tendency to simplify and unwind the EU back to its original (often fighting) states. The elites are using the Russia boogeyman as a reason for the EU to exist and to ramp up debt spending to hold the EU together and preserve their jobs.
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Can Pakistan avoid economic collapse?
Agricultural sector, recognised as backbone of Pakistan’s economy, is confronting unprecedented challenges
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1295270-can-pakistan-avoid-economic-collapse
Note that Pakistan had a fertility rate of 3.4 in 2022, while Nearby India and Bangladesh have a fertility rate of 2.0.
Someone on discord (where I first saw this), said
On top of all that Pakistan, has nuclear weapons…
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Hi Stellarwind72, ……” Can Pakistan avoid economic collapse?”
The answer of course is no, just like everywhere else. However Pakistan may go into collapse a bit earlier/faster than everyone else.
I’m fairly sure that when Pakistan falls into disarray like a Sri Lanka on steroids, we’ll read about it in the media as an economic problem of their own making due to lack of exports/income or some such nonsense, instead of being in massive overshoot.
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Some of these third world countries could have been fine if they didn’t have such crazy large populations. I have heard that Pakistanis are very friendly and welcoming to visitors. That collectivist culture will be a help when times get tough.
Pakistan also faces a lot of challenges:
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I don’t know what’s got into xraymike79. He was mostly silent for years and now he’s writing one monster essay after another, plus some poetry.
Most of it’s too depressing even for me to read.
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/30/biodiversity-collapse-climate-feedback-loops-the-population-bottleneck-and-human-extinction/
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/27/the-unseen-accelerators-of-climate-change-and-the-final-unraveling/
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/26/notes-on-the-breadbasket-collapse-and-a-critical-blind-spot/
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/24/agriculture-in-the-crosshairs-breadbasket-collapse-at-2c-and-3c/
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/21/3-4c-becomes-the-gateway-to-a-post-civilizational-dark-age/
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/20/analysis-how-soon-will-large-scale-collapse-happen/
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Since it seems to be spreading like the plague, I just assumed xraymike is on the AI train. I assume it with everything I read nowadays… especially something with over 120 references. (in the comments, he confirmed that he uses AI for help on everything)
I like this gloomy essay a lot. My big complaint is the use of the year 2100. Maybe that was one of the parameters mike gave to the AI. Every section gives good details about why WASF (which is what I enjoy most) but then most sections get derailed because of lines like this:
My brain will never grasp the seriousness of any statistic dropping 0.1 in 200 years. And the “could drop to 7.8 by 2100” completely wipes out any urgency anxiety I might have had. The whole essay is written in this style. I really do think AI is programmed to do this. Yes, tell it like it is…. but spin it in a way that will never cause immediate panic.
A couple poems ago from mike, I started thinking about why the hell do I get mad if I suspect AI was used? Just like the Sarah Connor thing. I’ve been sticking to my guns way too much on this topic. It’s all entertainment at this point. Just be interesting, be a good storyteller, and do whatever it takes… And mike is good at using the AI.
So ya, I was definitely wrong and even kind of embarrassing about it. Getting angry because their content for my pleasure might contain computer assistance to make it even more entertaining for me while I read it on my computer… Haha!! It’s already crystal clear. Time for this luddite to embrace the technology. Don’t be surprised if you start seeing a dramatic increase in the sophistication and education level of my writing skills.
I don’t know though. Accepting it is one thing, but using it is a whole nother story. I’m sure my pop culture brain could come up with some good stuff… “Hey Grok, blending the dialogue & writing styles of Quentin Tarantino and Werner Herzog, write me a story about conquering fire being humanity’s original sin.”
But I don’t wanna play that game. Bunch of fire apes using the same toy to impress each other… I have a feeling AI will actually end up having the opposite effect and make me less impressed with the written word. Blog sites, medium, and substack will be dead to me if this pace continues. Un-denial and Megacancer will eventually be the only sites I visit.
Thats why video format will always be king of authenticity. I can envision a time where AI is so rampant that every article and essay in existence has the high quality of Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway… while most videos have the low quality of Dumb and Dumber (until AI figures out how to start making good videos).
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Good catch. AI probably explains his productivity.
I’m old school. I think it’s ok to use AI to help with research, but you should cross check the results and express them in your own words.
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Your suspicions are correct.
https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/03/30/biodiversity-collapse-climate-feedback-loops-the-population-bottleneck-and-human-extinction/#comment-76284
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Good prompt, here you go LOL
FADE IN: Smoke hangs over a barren plain. Primitive. Eternal. The camera pans across blackened trees and bone piles. The world hasn’t been ruined—it started this way.
NARRATOR: There was once a silence in the world so pure, it ached in the ears of beasts. Before man. Before fire. But not before the hunger. The hunger is older than God.
EXT. CAVE MOUTH — NIGHT
A CROUCHED FIGURE, naked except for soot and blood, drags a burning branch stolen from a lightning-blasted tree. Around him, the forest whispers in a thousand languages: owl shrieks, wolf breath, the crackle of leaves debating whether to die.
This is OG, but don’t think of him as some caveman cartoon. He’s the first director. He’s composing the shot of his life. Behind him trail a tribe of curious, terrified followers.
OG (to his people):
You see this? This… is God. But you hold it wrong and God eats your face.
He thrusts the flame into the cave. Shadows jerk and dance across the walls like demons caught in the strobe of their own resurrection. The tribe recoils.
OG (grinning, manic):
I didn’t make fire. I conned it. Tricked it outta the sky like a hustler with loaded dice.
NARRATOR (V.O.):
In stealing fire, man did not tame the world. He declared war on it. The flame was no gift. It was a dare. The kind that echoes through every atrocity.
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Nice one! I could easily read an entire novel of that.
I have a funny story about AI and books. A good friend of mine from childhood, Ryan, is a career lifer in the slimy sales world of telemarketing and B2B. I worked with him for a couple of years when I lived in Los Angeles. We just went from building-to-building walking into offices to try and speak to the decision makers. Ugghh, that B2B stuff is a nightmare. You have to take pictures of directory’s, dodge security, lie your ass off to secretaries and office managers… and if you have a really horrible boss, he will want business cards at the end of the day to prove that you actually went in to all those offices. Our success rate for getting a sale was usually under 1%. For scheduling future appointments, it was closer to 10%.
Ryan’s latest venture is in the healthcare industry and has to do with EMR (electronic medical records). Ryan has a new partner who is good with AI. They had AI write a book about the product their selling and the EMR world. They self-published a bunch of copies. The partner also knows how to manipulate “best seller” lists. They would buy a certain amount of their own book at a specific date and time… and this method would put them on various “best seller” lists.
The whole reason for this book was so they could get past the gatekeeper of these doctor offices. Show the secretary a best seller book about EMR’s… and you’re in like flynn. And then go impress the decision makers. LOL.
Ryan said they are making a killing. Most money he’s ever made in a year. Close to 100% success rate for being able to speak with the decison maker on their first visit. And then 50% success rate on getting the sale by the 3rd visit. The very expensive products are usually never sold in the first meeting and typically take 5 or 6 until you can get them to sign on the line which is dotted.
The success Ryan and his partner are having right now is unheard in the B2B world. All accomplished because of AI. You gotta love it.
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That is an amazing story! I also work in B2B haha. I am starting to use AI for work and loving it!
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Gail Tverberg updates her predictions.
Gail expects a financial crisis to start in about 4 months that will be worse then the 2008 GFC. Portions of governments will fail.
She is optimistic that a different more energy dense economy will emerge and that there will be opportunities for success for those that make good use of available resources.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/03/31/advanced-economies-are-being-pushed-toward-financial-collapse/
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Personally I’m happy if I have food the next 5 years. Warm water is a plus. But I will keep my eyes open for opportunities to become a warlord.
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LOL. 🙂
Very odd that not one commenter so far has asked. “ummm, what do you mean by more energy dense economy?”
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I just went and looked it up, from Chaisson’s work…
“Furthermore, Eric Chaisson, in Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature, points out that there is a very long term trend in the universe toward more complex and more energy-dense structures. His analysis seems to suggest the possibility of evolution toward a different kind of more complex, energy-dense economy ahead.”
I think Gail has missed the point on this, a more energy dense economy is exactly what we’ve had for the last 200 years. The amount of energy required to produce a tonne of grain for an urban area is way higher than it was 200 years ago, when all the mechanisation and fertilizers are accounted for, especially in all the developed countries.
Material gathering is becoming more energy dense, because of lower grades, more remote, deeper mines with harder ore indexes and greater strip ratios. Energy is becoming more energy dense as it is taking more energy to collect energy for civilization’s use.
In Chaisson’s work he didn’t follow through the increased energy density to the logical conclusion about stars. The larger the star the more energy dense it is to start with, and continues to increase the energy density as it matures past the stage of ‘main sequence’, when fusing higher elements from helium to iron. At iron instead of releasing energy in the fusion reaction, it consumes energy instead leading to large stars to collapse in a supernova.
It’s where I think human civilization is close to with nuclear power plants and renewables (including storage) all using energy instead of providing net energy in their production and lifetimes, so once fossil fuels use starts falling in an accelerating decline civilization does it’s own ‘supernova’ of collapse.
Small stars, like small human settlements (Dunbar number), never get to increasing energy density ( they only fuse hydrogen slowly at roughly the same density and can last trillions of years. Possibly likewise for small human hunter gatherer settlements/groups.
Everyone seems to miss the point about the relevance of size/scale to the complexity reached of any self adapting system. They are integral and completely related to each other. You can’t have one without the other developing in a lock step fashion. You can’t undo one without the other also falling, with the largest systems tending to have the shortest lifespans and falling/collapsing the fastest.
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Thanks for trying to figure out what Tverberg was hinting at.
Are you sure you’re not confusing density with intensity? Material and energy gathering are become more energy intensive for the reasons you explain.
Energy density is falling as we add wind and solar to the mix of coal, gas, and oil.
I assumed she was hinting at something like a fusion discovery.
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I know Chris will love this… According to AI ..
“Energy Density:In this context, “energy density” refers to the amount of energy required to produce a unit of output (e.g., goods or services) or the amount of energy consumed per capita.
Economic Implications:
Higher Energy Consumption: An energy-dense economy typically consumes a larger amount of energy to power its industries, transportation, and other economic activities.
Reliance on Energy Resources: Such economies are often more dependent on energy resources, such as fossil fuels, to fuel their growth.
Potential Challenges: Reliance on a single or limited number of energy sources can create vulnerabilities to price fluctuations, supply disruptions, and environmental concerns.
Economic Growth and Development: The relationship between energy density and economic growth is complex and can vary depending on the specific context and the efficiency with which energy is used.”
I think energy density in the Chaisson terms is the same as your and my understanding of energy intensity, and it is his work that Gail quotes. Chaisson quotes processes in stars which are very much increasing energy intensity in a smaller volume as gravity increases within stars as they undergo fusion of heavier elements.
Rob …. “Energy density is falling as we add wind and solar to the mix of coal, gas, and oil“
The energy we obtain is very much falling in density, but the energy input to make and use them is increasing, hence the increasing energy density input per unit of output energy.
In large stars, the energy input for fusion of heavier elements increases while the output decreases, until we get to fusing iron which takes the highest gravity/pressure and highest temperatures to fuse, yet releases less energy than put in to make it happen.
Perhaps Gail has not understood Chaisson’s meaning..
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How did she get the date July 2025? She and Tim Morgan are right for the most part, but there are too many moving parts to give an exact date.
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Arthur Berman shares with us his profound insights on the importance of trusting settled science like mRNA transfections, climate change, and a permanent plateau of oil abundance, and how accepting reality must be combined with spirituality and transformation to survive.
My life would be empty and I’d be a lost soul without the great master Berman.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/rethinking-science-reclaiming-wisdom/
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LOL. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you talking shit like that. I like it.😊
I’m guessing Art recently went heavy into researching Native American culture for the first time in his life. Would explain some of his craziness. But at the same time, this article gave me the impression that he thinks humans were doing just fine up until the start of the industrial revolution. LOL, I don’t know what to make of Art… other than BAU when it comes to dealing with the nightmare of full consciousness.
Was gonna leave a smart-ass comment telling him he’s making things way too complicated and to focus on this moment we are in right now as the peak of insanity, and maybe things will make more sense… but what’s the point, he’s just gonna tell me to piss off.
There were a few contenders, but this line took the prize for most alarming. With everything we now know about that time period, seems straight out of the ruling elites’ mouth:
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It really pisses me off when someone is condescending about something they know nothing about.
Especially when the implication of being wrong is injury or death.
Whether mRNA transfections were necessary, or safe, or effective is not a matter of faith and trusting experts.
It’s a matter of whether the evidence supports the claims, and for mRNA transfections, they lied about everything, and they ignored data that showed little benefit and significant harms.
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More on the blackmailing of US leaders, including RFK Jr., to force support of Israel.
You can skip this. I listened because Charles Eisenstein sometimes has interesting things to say.
Conclusion: Unlike other US leaders, RFK Jr. did not molest children, however he may have been unfaithful to his wife and is probably protecting her. Suggestion is his wife needs to offer amnesty so RFK can return to making MAHA a success.
They are also concerned that this blackmail is forcing a war with Iran that civilization might not survive.
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Trapped in narrations…
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For the history of SV40 in vaccines and why it is so dangerous see the Rogan interview with Dr. Humphries above.
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What is SV40?
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It’s a DNA virus that was accidentally introduced into the human population in the 1960’s via a vaccine derived from monkey kidneys and is known to be one of the most effective stimulators of cancer growth.
“Somehow” SV40 got into the covid mRNA transfections that we injected into billions of people and was not disclosed as an ingredient.
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Israel killed emergency medical workers in Gaza and buried them in a mass grave.
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Both US parties ignore the atrocities.
We can see the awesome power of the Epstein island videos.
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