By Gaia Gardener: On Growing Coffee

Thank you to Gaia for contributing this essay on her experience with growing coffee in Australia, and my apologies for the delay in posting. I have been procrastinating everything in my life of late, I’m sorry.

When I think about end of growth implications, and the coming scarcity of things we now take for granted, coffee is at the top of my list of things I will miss. My favorite moment of every day is the first sip of the triple espresso Americano I make every morning.

Preptip:

We cannot grow coffee here in Canada and someday I will probably have to make do without. As a hedge against inflation, and as a buffer for the early days when supply will likely be intermittent or unaffordable, I stock a fair amount of coffee.

I have learned that unopened roasted beans taste fine well past their best-by date. I have not yet done enough tests to know how much past the best-by date is ok, but I currently assume at least 2 years.

I consume 50 g per day which is 1 Kg every 20 days. When scarcity arrives, I will reduce my consumption in half to double the duration, and then halve it again if necessary. I stock about 20 Kg of roasted beans, plus 10 Kg of canned ground coffee which has a longer shelf-life, plus 6 Kg of instant coffee which has an infinite shelf-life.

When my preferred source of caffeine is no longer available, I will switch to black tea, which I also stock in large quantities because it has an excellent shelf-life, and is still very inexpensive.

One of my projects this year at the farm I assist is to construct a shipping container size dehydrator which we plan to use initially for making tea from black current leaves. Apparently it’s a tasty healthy tea, but alas has no caffeine.

As the end of growth approaches we know there will be price inflation for necessities. The price of all food has increased a lot in Canada over the last few years, but coffee stands out as one of the worst. I buy the cheapest espresso beans available in my community and the price has almost doubled over the last 4 years from $14/Kg in 2021 to $22/Kg today.

Why are coffee prices increasing?

Grok: Coffee prices are increasing due to a combination of environmental, economic, and geopolitical factors affecting global supply and demand. Severe weather events, particularly in major coffee-producing countries like Brazil and Vietnam, have significantly reduced crop yields. Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, has faced droughts, frosts, and excessive rains, leading to lower arabica bean production. Similarly, Vietnam, a key supplier of robusta beans, has experienced droughts followed by flooding, cutting output. These disruptions have tightened global coffee supplies, with some estimates suggesting deficits for multiple consecutive years.

Rising global demand is also a factor, as coffee consumption grows in markets like China and India, alongside steady demand in traditional markets like the U.S. and Europe. This imbalance between shrinking supply and growing demand has driven wholesale prices up, with arabica beans surpassing $4 per pound in early 2025, a level not seen in decades.

I’m sure printing trillions of dollars to force a little more growth from lethargic energy supplies, while using an engineered virus as an excuse, probably also has something to do with the price increases.

Also, after reading Gaia’s essay, it’s clear there is a lot of human and fossil energy required to produce coffee, which no doubt has also contributed to the price increase.

Now over to Gaia…

Some days I am just so disheartened by what is happening on our planet on all fronts, but yet we must bear it and bear witness to the fullness of what we as a species have wrought. That is taking more courage than I ever believed I could have, but yet I must try and it certainly is a comfort to have friends on your site who are sharing similarly. I am finding great joy in communing with nature, especially through tending food plants and feeling so much gratitude for their sustenance for body and spirit. I have been wanting to share snapshots in picture and words of my experience on the land to add to the collective wonder and appreciation of so many others’ homesteading stories and images, including your fulfilling season at the farm. I think I can manage in bite-sized snippets, and if a picture can tell a thousand words, then I should be out of business sooner or later!

I think you Rob are the number one coffee addict that I know and definitely the most prepared for when the SHTF. I think you could open SHTF Cafe at the End of the World, it only needs one table and chair just for you! In honour of your habit, these are the very first photos I will share relating to our property and lifestyle. You may refer back to the post where I described in some detail (and you thought it was TMI until I clarified a very critical point!) how I successfully processed coffee from bush to bean–for possibly the first and last time as it took quite a bit of effort for not very many cups of the finished drink, which I don’t even imbibe! I do drink decaf but there is no feasible home method for that, unfortunately. I cannot say how my single estate grown coffee tastes, but it did smell as heavenly as anything when I was roasting the beans, so at least that is something.

Coffee in Flower

The photo does not depict the intoxicatingly sweet fragrance from these flowers, just divine! This particular plant is a prostrate form and the flowers are layered on long branches, very attractive.

Ripe Coffee Berries

Here is the same plant about nine months later, with the berries finally ripe. Our property is located in highland tropics and the cooler climate which slows ripening of the fruit is supposed to produce a more complex flavour profile. I enjoy eating some of the red berries, the scant pulp has an appreciable sweetness, somewhat caramel-like, and the red skins which are loaded with antioxidants taste a bit like raw green beans, not unpleasant at all.

Berries and Squeezed Beans

It took about 15 minutes to pick this bowl of berries, not too onerous as one just strips the branch from top to bottom. Squeezing the berries to pop out the beans, usually 2 per berry, sometimes 3, takes a bit more time and I found it best to do it underwater otherwise the beans have a tendency to fly everywhere. Then you have to soak the beans for 24-48 hours to ferment off the slimy pulp surrounding them (this is what makes them slippery suckers that shoot in every direction).

I didn’t take a photo of the drying and hulling process, which is the next step. I placed the beans in a mesh bag and sundried them for about a day. You know when it’s dried when the outer parchment-like husk starts to crack a bit along the middle of the bean. Removing this rather hard covering is the most time-consuming and tricky part of the operation. I looked online for advice and it seems like putting the beans in a food processor that has plastic blades (some models have plastic blades for stirring function, I happen to have this) which won’t pulverise the beans is the best solution if you don’t want to try to remove the parchment layer by hand. There will always be some beans to be hand hulled, usually they rub off in 2 halves. The plastic blades agitate the beans enough to slough off the dried parchment hull on most of the beans, but you have to do this in small batches. Then you still have to somehow separate the beans from the removed hulls and the best method is winnowing, tossing the beans and hulls up and down on a tray in a current of air (on a windy day) and the air blows the hulls away whilst the heavier beans drop back down into the tray.

Finally, you will have achieved getting green coffee beans that are ready for roasting. You can do this on the stovetop, constantly shaking and stirring the pot, or in an oven, also turning the beans, but I found the easiest way is to use my hand-crank popcorn maker which is basically a pot with a metal wire stirrer on the bottom that you can keep turning whilst on the burner (this is an essential device if popcorn is your thing, and a very useful one in any case because you can toast all manner of nuts and seeds–and now coffee beans!) This took about 8 minutes of cranking (and heating) but so worth it as the smell of roasting coffee is as heavenly as the smell of the flowers from whence they originated. I was really quite chuffed when I got to this stage just for that irresistible aroma which was actually emanating from my own beans!

Roasted Coffee Beans

Viola! As you can see, I think I roasted them to an espresso strength. At long last, you have in your hand the pitifully meager result of all the work I have tried to describe in painstaking detail. In total, I think I processed in my first batch enough coffee for one person drinking one cup for about a week or less. But that’s not the point, which was really to experience all the labour involved if one had to do this by hand so we can appreciate all the more how mechanisation (and exploited labour) are the reason why we have so much for not much effort on our part other than probably the final grinding and boiling water. It highlighted for me the impossibility of being able to self produce (even if one lived in the right climate) even a fraction of the foodstuffs we take for granted daily if we were to use our own labour. In this example, I still had to use some modern devices, and certainly fossil fuels made possible the final brewing, which is the whole point of the whole endeavour. Very sobering indeed, rather than stimulating as from caffeine.

Well, it looks like it still takes Gaia 1000s of words to describe anything even when accompanied by pictures! I hope you all enjoyed this first pictorial installment of Gaia’s garden and kitchen. For all you coffee lovers out there, enjoy what you have whilst you can! This documentary has probably prompted Rob to invest in even more quantity of coffee, not a bad idea really. No doubt it will be a trading commodity in our near future.

Namaste everyone.

779 thoughts on “By Gaia Gardener: On Growing Coffee”

  2. Oh you lightweight. I’m an unemployed hermit that drives not even 2 miles per week… and I crushed your score at 5.1 earths😊(I’m sure the food questions are where this game is won and lost)

    Those type of quiz’s are completely inaccurate and stupid of course… but they are kinda fun. If anyone scores a 6 or higher, let me know… cuz that would be impressive.

    Ecological Footprint Calculator (you don’t have to give any personal info to see your score)

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      1. Not just the calculator, I get frustrated that such intelligent people Hagens, Rees etc think there is any validity in an ‘ecological footprint’ analysis that excludes non renewable resources in a highly interdependent system.

        Any realistic ‘ecological footprint’ that includes the non renewables used is in overshoot at 1 minute past midnight on January 1st. (not counting seconds).

        We have very limited effect on ecology without the use of the non renewable resources inputs, so why exclude them when they are such an important aspect of reality?

        A lot of people totally unaware of our situation of massive overshoot, would come to the conclusion that their country is not doing badly if the ecological footprint was in September or later and consider only minor change was needed..

        To me it begs the question that those with lots of knowledge of overshoot are fully aware of ecological footprints severe limitations, while those that don’t know, think the situations not that bad, so what’s the point of it at all?

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        1. I forgot about that key point.

          I had to reword my question a couple times to get Grok to agree with you.

          Excluding non-renewable resources from ecological footprint calculations makes human overshoot appear much less serious than reality so why pretend the calculations have any validity?

          Grok: Excluding non-renewable resources from ecological footprint calculations indeed underestimates human overshoot by ignoring the depletion of finite resources like fossil fuels, minerals, and metals, which are critical to modern economies. The ecological footprint, as typically calculated (e.g., by the Global Footprint Network), focuses on renewable resources and biocapacity—land, water, and ecosystems that can regenerate—while treating non-renewables as a separate category or omitting them entirely. This approach can make overshoot appear less severe because it sidesteps the long-term consequences of extracting non-renewable stocks that cannot be replenished within human timescales.

          The validity of these calculations is debated for several reasons:

          1. Methodological Limitations: The ecological footprint prioritizes measurable, renewable resource flows (e.g., cropland, forests, fisheries) and carbon sequestration capacity. Non-renewables are harder to integrate due to their finite nature and lack of a clear “sustainability” threshold. Including them would require complex assumptions about depletion rates, substitutability, and technological advances, which introduces uncertainty.
          2. Practical Focus: Proponents argue the footprint is designed to highlight pressures on renewable systems, which are more immediately tied to ecological limits (e.g., soil degradation, deforestation). Non-renewables are often addressed in separate frameworks, like resource economics or energy transition models, which can lead to a fragmented view of sustainability.
          3. Understating Overshoot: By focusing on renewables, the footprint can give a false sense of security. For example, a country might appear sustainable if its renewable resource use aligns with biocapacity, but it could still be heavily reliant on non-renewable imports or extraction, masking the true extent of its ecological impact. This omission obscures the global race to secure dwindling non-renewable stocks, which drives geopolitical tensions and environmental destruction.
          4. Criticism and Alternatives: Critics, including some ecologists and economists, argue that excluding non-renewables renders the footprint incomplete. Alternative frameworks, like the Planetary Boundaries model or Material Flow Analysis, attempt to account for both renewable and non-renewable resource use, though they face similar challenges in quantifying long-term impacts. Some suggest hybrid metrics that integrate depletion rates of non-renewables, but these are not yet standardized.

          The calculations retain some validity for tracking renewable resource pressures and raising awareness of biocapacity limits, but they fall short as a comprehensive measure of human impact. Pretending they fully capture overshoot is misleading, as it downplays the existential risks of non-renewable depletion. A more honest approach would pair the ecological footprint with metrics explicitly addressing non-renewable resource use, even if imperfect, to better reflect reality.

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          1. These calculations “aren’t even wrong”, they frame the problem incorrectly so any output isn’t meaningful. They’re trying to reframe what is fundamentally a communal problem as a atomized consumer issue. It’s just another form of denial really, it gives people the false impression that if they “do better” (or more likely just feel more guilty), then somehow they could possibly “save the planet”. It’s absurd. If you go to the hospital and they treat you with modern drugs & equipment that require modern civilization to build, your “footprint” should include all of the infrastructure that went into building all of that equipment and manufacturing those drugs. If you own a car and never drive it, your footprint still needs to include everything that went into making that car. It’s impossible to calculate that at an individual level, so they just sort of handwave it away.

            Hideaway’s point is an even more straightforward critique, if you use a non-renewable resource, your “ecological footprint” is theoretically infinite within that framework.

            Even if you accept their framework that it is an individual issue, the calculation doesn’t include what people do for a living. What if I’m a vegan who walks to my job at a plastic factory?

            I’m not sure who made the ecological footprint thing up or what their original intentions were, but it seems to me the most likely reason its being promoted is because its a thought-stopper that reframes a complex societal issue as an individual responsibility issue. No need to change the system, just change yourself. It’s just like recycling. No need to fundamentally alter the way materials are used in society, which would require an overhaul of the economic system. No, you can do your part by just putting your empty bottles in the blue bin. Problem solved!

            Whenever you see something framed as a “personal responsibility” thing, ask yourself if it’s really an individual issue, or if its being framed that way by some interest group that doesn’t want the system to change.

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            1. What we really need is a computer model that contains every environmental parameter identified and couples those to human activity on the planet. World3 from 1972 as an early example. As far as I know, humans in 2025 still do not have such a model. There are individual models that look at isolated factors, and some that try to couple an isolated factor to the economy, such as https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html
              Fun fact: this model tells you that you can have ~10 billion humans on a planet that has warmed by ~7 degrees Celsius with everyone getting an average of ~100 000 USD in GDP annually in the year 2100. Screams MORT. Especially because it does not contain: coral reef extent (fried globally at just 2°C), sperm counts (https://energyskeptic.com/2025/spermageddon-sperm-is-declining-around-the-world/), resource depletion/ore grades (hint to Hideaway), wildlife populations (https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/hockey-land-mammal.png), microplastic contamination (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1 – 0.5% of older people’s brains is microplastics, with dementia cases even above that, 50% increase per decade at this time – this alone is a limit that is not at all considered by environmental footprint analyses) and so many other things.

              Now, why do humans, who have the cognitive capacity to measure gravitational waves, communicate at the speed of light and harness the most powerful forces in the universe through fission and fusion, not have a model like this? SCREAMS MORT.

              But such a model would be the only biophysically adequate way to do proper analysis that really takes into account the complexity of the system as a whole, to have all the key facts on one single dashboard. My best guess is that such a dashboard existed, it would be showing RED ALERTS all over the place and the average human would simply… ignore it. Because MORT.

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  4. Instagram SUSPENDED Me Over Gaza – Censorship Spirals Out Of Control

    Instagram and Facebook are censoring criticism of Israel. Apparently, Israel has issued more takedown requests than any other country.

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  5. I remember when stocks bounced backed after the 2008 crash and achieved nose-bleed price-to-earning ratios ALL of the experts discussed for several years how the stock market was irrational, unsustainable, and did not reflect the true state of their businesses or the economy.

    Then a denial switch flipped and most stopped talking about the bubble and got on the bus.

    I often wonder what is the fundamental force driving stock price growth when the economy is anemic and limits to growth signs are everywhere?

    This short paragraph by HHH is the best explanation I’ve seen to far.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/short-term-energy-outlook-april-2025/#comment-788208

    And as the corporate buybacks return so will the CTA’s and foreign investors.

    Stocks have become one big shit show that only reflect the ability for corporations to borrow more money to repurchase stocks and then everyone follows.

    This can continue longer than anybody thinks it can. Until the credit taps get turned off it will continue.

    It’s quite remarkable that the retirement security of most people in the rich world is dependent on companies borrowing money to purchase their own shares.

    When I was young, retirement security was dependent on the growth of profits.

    We’re like a starving snake eating its tail to survive.

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    1. Just like that extreme “on the farm” ratio flip of 90/10 turning into 10/90 within a couple hundred years… there’s a similar ratio flip in the stock market world regarding speculative stocks. I’d have to find the Noam Chomsky speech that talks about this… and I’m not gonna do that because I’m done listening to Chomsky.

      But just going off my memory… something like in 1987 the stock market looked like this; 97% non-speculative / 3% speculative… by 2007 it had flipped to 3/97.

      (my wording is probably wrong as I have no idea about stocks and such, but I’m pretty sure the gist of my message is correct)

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    2. I am making good money right now on Bitcoin, gold, and gold mining stocks. Might as well enjoy the party while it lasts. Just for the hell of it I tried answering the Ecological Footprint Calculator with the lifestyle of a typical American. We have a woman working part time for us whose husband commutes 30 miles each way and travels by air a lot on business. They have a large home, one daughter living with them, all food comes from grocery store or restaurant. The answer: 11.7 earths. I’m sure this is not atypical (mine was 5.3 earths). This just shows that it is impossible for any of us modern humans to become sustainable. The collapse will be an extinction event.

      Might as well try to make money and enjoy ourselves. Wife and I just got back from Montreal (2 hour drive) for four days where we enjoyed some good food, drinks and entertainment.

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        2. I’m glad you said that. I think I’m reading your comment correctly. (but maybe you really are envious of that)

          His comment was annoying. I’m probably just jealous that he’s making good money in an industry where I have no idea how to make money. And the woman working part time for him… I’m guessing an indentured servant (nanny, housekeeper, tutor).😊

          Technically, he’s got the right attitude… “Might as well enjoy the party while it lasts”

          I don’t know. The way I feel about his comment is better expressed through this classic clip starting at the 0:45 mark. I’m Doc and he’s Johnny:

          ps. I feel the same way about Fast Eddy. Reminds me of me…. how I really hate him. LOL

          pss. I didn’t understand the “hit the gym” comment either.

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          1. Wanted that to be mostly funny with just a tiny bit of rudeness. I think I got the ratio flipped. Sorry Anonymous. Just a bad reaction I have to money.

            Deep down its probably a jealousy combination of the money, wife, living it up… which btw is exactly what I preach with my party like its 1999 bullshit… so ya, very hypocritical of me to still react to money like that. A lifelong distaste for rich people is a hard habit to break.😊  

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        3. Mine too. I turned down a high paying role reporting to the CEO of one of our largest construction companies back in 2018. I said no thanks I’d rather be the driver of my family’s 24m2 mobile tiny home. We were out of the city and chilling at the beach the next day. I think if I’d taken the role I’d be divorced or dead or both by now.

          I don’t envy people who can carry on in the BAU space but I can understand why they do. It’s comfortable there.

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  8. Based on the hype and actual progress made a year ago I found it quite surprising that Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder says AI progress has stalled across all vendors.

    She’s not worried and believes a likely to occur innovation will restart progress.

    Maybe.

    In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have been surprised because all of our super complex technology with big material and energy footprints has stalled including space travel, air travel, nuclear power, cpu power, cell phone features, etc.

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  9. I’ve been closely following the Trump team’s attempt to negotiate a peace between Russia and Ukraine.

    The whole thing makes no sense.

    In fact it’s crazy making if you actually think about it.

    The United States:

    • organized a coup in Ukraine to install a friendly government;
    • armed and trained the Ukraine military;
    • encouraged Ukraine to provoke Russia;
    • told Ukraine to refuse a peace deal they were ready to accept in the early days of the invasion;
    • provided Ukraine with money, weapons, and intelligence;
    • directed the war including deciding what targets within Russia to strike;
    • despite all of this, Ukraine is losing.

    Now the US is pretending to be a impartial mediator between Ukraine and Russia, when the war was actually between the US and Russia, and says if both sides do not accept its terms the US will walk away.

    WTF?

    Brian Berletic does a nice job of explaining the insanity here.

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    1. I’ll have to watch the video, but something that’s very important to understand about Trump is that he plays to his own crowd. While out of office, Trump railed against Biden for mismanaging the war (tacitly acknowledging that it is a proxy war, but whatever), and during the campaign Trump said he would bring peace to Ukraine. This means that bringing an end to the conflict would be a major foreign policy win for him. Most Americans have lost interest in the Ukraine war. Walking around the very liberal area I live in, you don’t see any Ukrainian flags out in front of people’s houses anymore. 2 years ago it was common.

      Trump also does not want to appear weak, if he stops sending weapons it’ll be read as a betrayal of Ukraine, and he’ll get blamed for Russia winning the war. Continuing to send weapons while negotiating a peace is the only way he gets to say he brought peace without being blamed for losing the war.

      A bigger issue is that if the US goes into a recession, which is looking more likely this year, then it will look very bad politically to continue spending money on a war that most people in the US no longer care about. It’ll look even worse to Republicans, who have been wanting to end the war for years now.

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  10. Xraymike79 with a long one tonight. Excellent. I don’t know all his work, but I’m betting this is one of his best. Even if ai did every single word, mike is probably spending mad amounts of time training that thing. His skills stand out from the pack.

    Franz Kafka’s Labyrinth: Existential Absurdity in an Age of Collapse | Collapse of Industrial Civilization

    For the TL;DR, I tried to shorten it down to 1/1000th. LOL. Still gives a good feel for what the whole essay was about. If you dig it, you’ll wanna read the the full thing for sure.

    The modern world is a labyrinth of systemic absurdity, where solutions metastasize into the crises they claim to solve. 

    To feed billions, we raze forests for monocrop fields, drench soil in synthetic fertilizers that harm soil’s microbiome, and pump aquifers dry to irrigate crops that deplete topsoil at rates far exceeding natural formation. 

    Cities, hailed as hubs of progress, are monuments to unsustainable logic. Concrete, civilization’s favorite building block, requires mining limestone, burning it at 1,450°C, releasing roughly 8% of global CO₂—all to erect structures that will crack under climate stresses they helped create.

    Civilization’s relationship with water is a tragicomic farce. We engineer megadams to “harness” rivers, only to watch them silt up and starve deltas of nutrients, collapsing fisheries that fed millions.  Meanwhile, Coca-Cola drains villages’ wells to bottle water sold back to them at markup—a perverse alchemy where life’s essence becomes a commodity.

    Modernity’s most enduring legacy is waste. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating monument to convenience culture, grows by 1.5 million tons annually.

    Civilization’s ultimate absurdity is its worship of GDP—a metric that counts oil spills as economic boons (cleanup contracts!) and cancer treatments as “productive” while ignoring the collapse of pollinators or topsoil. Governments subsidize fossil fuels to the tune of trillions annually to sustain growth, ensuring ecological bankruptcy.

    Modernity’s burrow is a maze of contradictions: billionaires building apocalypse bunkers in New Zealand while funding the fossil fuel empires melting the glaciers above them. Elon Musk’s Mars colonization fantasies, sold as a backup plan for humanity, ignore the fact that terraforming a dead planet is less feasible than healing our own.

    The creature dies not from an external attack but from the weight of its own terror. Our paralysis mirrors this: the more data we gather, the less we act… Tainter saw this in Rome’s bloated bureaucracies and Mayan terraces choked by silt—societies so entangled in their own survival machinery that they strangled themselves with it.

    Fossil fuels powered civilization’s ascent but scripted its demise… To survive, we must let the walls crumble. But like the creature, we’d sooner suffocate in our own architectures than face the responsibilities beyond them. The scratching in the walls? It’s not the end approaching. It’s the truth, clawing its way in.

    Yet to dance is to defy the Castle’s verdict, to reclaim the present from the jaws of the future. The dance is not a denial of collapse but a defiance of oblivion—a way to etch “We were here” into the teeth of the storm. The future is terminal, but the present is ours to haunt.

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  11. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/uk-scientists-outdoor-geoengineering-experiments

    UK scientists to launch outdoor geoengineering experiments

    UK scientists are to launch outdoor geoengineering experiments as part of a £50m government-funded programme.

    The experiments will be small-scale and rigorously assessed, according to Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria), the UK government agency backing the plan, and will provide “critical” data needed to assess the potential of the technology. The programme, along with another £11m project, will make the UK one of the biggest funders of geoengineering research in the world.

    They must know that the situations is worse than the mainstream media will admit. Geoengineering is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.

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  12. Good one today from Gail Tverberg.

    I like it when someone provides a simple underlying explanation for complex phenomenon. Gail excels at this in today’s essay.

    The big take-aways for me include:

    • The world is transitioning from abundance to scarcity.
    • The world economy is hitting limits to growth.
    • The US is hitting limits to debt growth.
    • Why China has shiny new infrastructure while US infrastructure is falling apart.
    • Moving manufacturing from China back to US probably won’t happen.
    • Diesel scarcity will be the first big energy problem.
    • No one, including Trump, is driving the bus.

    Gail gets quite specific on what we should soon expect:

    What I see ahead.

    (a) Recession seems likely, starting out as being barely perceptible, but getting worse and worse over time.

    (b) World output of physical goods and services will begin to decline almost immediately. In particular, products manufactured in the US using inputs from China will become difficult to obtain, as will goods imported into the US from China.

    (c) I expect that commodity prices will fall. Deflation seems more likely than inflation. If inflation does take place, I expect that it will take the form of hyperinflation, with central banks issuing huge amounts of money, but there not being very many goods and services to purchase with this money.

    (d) I expect that many banks, insurance companies, and pension plans will fail. I expect that governments will not be able to bail them all out. If governments do try to bail out all these failing institutions, the result is likely to be hyperinflation, with not much to buy.

    (e) Many governments have plans for digital currencies to replace the currencies we have today. I am doubtful that these plans will work. For one thing, intermittent electricity is likely to become an increasing problem. For another, government organizations, such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the United Nations are likely to start falling apart. Even the United States is likely to become less “united,” or it may comprise fewer states.

    (f) I do not see gold as being very helpful for the long term. It seems like small silver coins will be much more tradable in the future. What we will really need is food, water, and shelter. I expect that these will go mostly to workers producing these essentials, rather than to hangers-on to the system.

    (g) A few businesses may do well. Figuring out how to produce food in quantity, locally, may be helpful. Converting unused buildings to shelters for poor people may also be helpful. Private “protection” services may also do well.

    (h) The stock market provided great returns for US investors in the 2008 to 2024 period, but this cannot be expected to continue. A likely result is that returns will fall very low or will turn negative.

    (i) Borrowing is likely to remain challenging, or get worse. Lenders will increasingly recognize the default risk. Some lenders may go out of business.

    (j) Over a period of years, trade will change to be more local. The US will lose its status as the holder of the reserve currency. It will no longer try to be the policeman of the world.

    As with Art Berman, Gail’s spirituality and hope for a miracle is ramping up in lock-step with her acceptance of the proximity of our demise:

    The Creator may be creating a religious ending that we are not aware of. In fact, such an ending could come very soon.

    Otherwise, dissipative structures are very often replaced by other dissipative structures. New economies may gradually grow up in different parts of the world. Perhaps the new economies will figure out new energy sources that we are not aware of, or make better use of declining energy types. According to Physicist Eric Chaisson, the long-term trend is toward more complex, energy-intense dissipative structures being formed.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/04/24/brace-for-rapid-changes-in-the-economy-the-world-economy-is-reaching-limits-to-growth/

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  13. Winter tarp off to allow soil to dry before tilling in about a week. I’m simplifying this year and only growing what I like to eat, in an amount I’m able to eat, and vegetables that aren’t too hard or fussy to grow:

    • potatoes
    • squash
    • beets
    • carrots
    • radishes
    • spinach
    • kale
    • cherry tomatoes

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  14. WordPress froze me out again, had to reboot. This was what I wanted to enter, way upthread when the topic was still coffee and what will be going away:

    Back to coffee- Here is my plan.

    Chicory is a plant that has been used for years as a coffee substitute/blend ingredient. (No caffeine, but a similar flavor)

    https://www.homegrounds.co/chicory-coffee/

    I just checked, and caffeine pills are a thing, and cheap. 

    Chicory grows quite abundantly in our area, just another weed. I just need to learn how to dry and prepare it, mix the right amount of caffeine pills, and voila! Will just take some getting used to. As much more important things will need getting used to as descent accelerates.

    Chocolate will be the tough one. Surprised no one mentioned that other tropical luxury we’ve become accustomed to.

    A sharing session on what other substitutions/changes everyone has in mind should it come to that might be useful and informative. In general, if s*** gets real, luxuries like coffee would actually be one of the first to go.

    I’ve slowly been taking steps, and every single one makes me wonder how in hell people did it before fossil fuels. I’d be dead by now (born in ’56).

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    1. Thanks for the tip.

      I agree there’s a lot we take for granted that only exists because of fossil magic.

      I remember looking for caffeine pills a couple years ago but could not find any at a reasonable price. I just checked again and I can get pills at the equivalent of $0.12 per 400mg (2 strong cups of coffee) which I think is pretty good. I’ll buy some.

      Growing chicory doesn’t seem too hard but the process of drying, roasting, and grinding in the quantities I drink would be a time consuming and electricity hungry task.

      When the crunch comes I’ll probably pop a couple caffeine pills and sip a cup of hot water. Then when the pills are gone I’ll make do without.

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      1. It seems this is a very good time to load up on caffeine.

        The best value caffeine (500 pills x 200mg) on Amazon has been constant at $55 for years until a couple weeks ago when the price dropped to $30.

        The best price in local discount superstores is 5 times the Amazon price.

        In case you’re not aware of CamelCamelCamel, it’s a great service for checking the price history of anything on Amazon. I always use it before buying anything because Amazon vendors often play games with wild swings in prices, so by checking Camel you know when to be patient.

        https://camelcamelcamel.com/

        As usual, there is no quality information on the web regarding caffeine pill shelf-life. I’m going to assume unopened bottles have an infinite shelf-life like most other dry drugs.

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  15. I’ve mentioned this channel before but in case you missed it here’s today’s video.

    He covers all the big geopolitical news but adds a biophysical spin to help us understand the driving forces.

    This clip starting at 33:40 discusses the terrorist shooting in India and then explains that tensions escalated because aquifer depletion will lead to much suffering and death for countries on the short end of the water straw.

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  16. George Carlin would’ve been an un-Denialist if he were alive today. Good compilation video of him bouncing around in different decades talking about things that are still relevant. He had that Johnny Cash thing of getting cooler with age. 

    Carlin’s career masterpiece is this three minutes at 22:12 – 25:24. Video is queued up.

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  17. Hey Rob,

    A while back you introduced us to a podcaster who had an excellent episode regarding the horrors of WW2 (heavy on the details of Russian soldiers raping civilians).

    Could’ve been a month ago or six months. Can’t remember. Tried, but I couldn’t find it, mainly because I don’t know a keyword to search for… I think it was the first show for a new series he was doing about the ugly shit you never hear about from wars.

    Any idea who I’m talking about? Just wanted to check and see if he has any new episodes.

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      1. Ahh, there it is. Thanks.

        Unfortunately, that series ‘Evil’ is now only available for paid subscribers. But he’s got enough free content to keep me busy. And thanks for the other two channels. I’ll check em out. 

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    1. I’ve been to Israel a couple times on business, and I’ve worked closely with many Israelis.

      They are super motivated to succeed and are very aggressive, both personally and as a state.

      They need more land and water to grow.

      They see the Arabs accomplishing very little with their land and the Israelis think they can put it to better use.

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    2. It is also even more crazy to think they are essentially the same ethnicity!

      Racists are always impressively dumb.

      I think some level of xenophobia might be natural. But the mental hoops people jump through to do geocidal racism is mind boggling. They are killing their own people genetically speaking

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  19. Hideaway’s story is becoming polished.

    #301: How bad could this get?

    Brandon, you just don’t get it do you?

    Civilization is a self organised system that uses resources, turning them into waste. Because of the physical laws of the universe, entropy and dissipation, any civilization relying upon highly concentrated minerals and metals from the planets upper layers, must be self terminating.

    As mineral and metals, highest and easiest to obtain ore grades are continually lowered, an increasing quantity of energy is required to just maintain whatever level the civilization reached. This is impossible on a finite planet in the long term. We are reaching those limits.

    There is no choosing what types of energy we use, as all types used in our modern world rely upon fossil fuels for their mining, transport, processing, manufacture and deployment. Renewables and nuclear do not repay their full energy cost when no ‘boundaries’ are included in EROEI or ECoE type calculations.

    Our current civilization only reached it’s scale of complexity, involving a 6 continent supply chain because of the overall size it’s grown to. Human ingenuity is only a part of the equation, as all the indigenous hunter gatherer tribes absorbed into our modern world in the last few hundred years, have all had as much human ingenuity as the rest of us, but none developed modernity.

    We now have a civilization that totally relies upon complexity to just obtain the lower grade fossil fuel energy, and all the lower grade minerals required for our current way of life, let alone building anything ‘new’. If we can’t maintain what currently exists, in terms of mining, agricultural and industrial capacity there is zero chance of building anything ‘new’.

    As Dr Tim has explained over and over, we are already running into ECoE limits, which is causing massive feedback loops of higher debt and lower standards of living across the world, so changing to something different is just fantasy. There is no choice in the direction we are heading, it’s a physical certainty.

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    1. #301: How bad could this get?

      Brandon …..”or a wise transition to a smaller and more efficient economy, without all the pointless and destructive economic activities that are driven by brainless economics and world-destroying finance.“

      There is no choice, we live in a physical system of civilization that totally abides by the laws of physics.

      We cannot go to a smaller more efficient economy without a collapse of the existing system first. Then we will not have the ability to do the mining for minerals and metals as they require all of our existing modern complexity to gain access to, as we only have the really low grade ores remaining!! Likewise for food with most of the world’s population now in cities, a long way from their food sources, which rely upon modernity for production and transportation.

      Then add the simple reality we have most likely knocked the climate out of the stable Holocene period, making agriculture impossible once the climate returns to it’s normal unstableness and the ‘smaller economy’ is very, very, small and looks nothing like ‘modernity’.

      What you continually fail to grasp is that to build or change into something ‘new’, that you envisage, takes a whole lot more energy and materials than we use at present for all the ‘new’ way of doing anything, and our existing system is at the most efficient possible in gathering metals, minerals, food and water, with high levels of complexity.

      The ‘other’ uses of energy and materials, which you call ‘inefficient’ or ‘wastes’ are an important market for that allows the ‘efficient’ gathering of our energy and materials. Destroying the markets for the perceived ‘inefficient’ uses of energy and materials, destroys the viability of the businesses necessary for ‘efficient’ gathering as they also have to operate ‘efficiently’.

      You are correct we are going to lose it all anyway as we run into energy, material and environmental limits. To think a physical system running on the laws of physics can be changed by ‘wise’ choices is just human hubris in not understanding that our system of civilization follows physical laws, just like all prior civilizations. Only this time we are orders of magnitude larger than prior civilizations.

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      1. #301: How bad could this get?

        Brandon, It’s not just human ingenuity that allowed us to reach the complex modern world. If it was just human ingenuity, then we would have encountered many indigenous groups with really modern technology over the last few hundred years, yet none had ‘modernity’.

        Why not, if it’s all about human ingenuity??

        It has also taken markets to grow to allow the specialization of everything we have in the modern world. this complexity allows us to mine low grades of ores, using computer modelling of ore bodies and directional drilling of drill rigs, with fancy sensors and GPS location with great precision.

        Even farmers use GPS tracking to help plant crops in the most efficient manner on modern grain farms, likewise for fertilizer applications and use of herbicides and pesticides. The entire Green Revolution was about increasing the yield from the land, which has provided enough food for the 8+ billion humans alive today.

        Brandon …” If we use carbon pricing to drive down the volume of wasteful discretionary consumption“

        This is part of the trouble of your simple solution. It will also drive down the consumption of everything else as well, sending many businesses bust, including those that manufacture ‘essentials’, while sending up the cost of everything made from fossil fuels, which is everything..

        Complex civilization has forever been coming up with simple solutions to problems, only for the solutions to create many more unpredictable problems, which require further solutions, making the civilization even more complex in the process.

        Brandon …. “Food can be produced a lot more efficiently without fossil fuel derived chemicals. Land and soils are dramatically improved by using the simple principles of regenerative agriculture instead,“

        Could you please stop promoting this idiotic nonsense that you know nothing about. As a farmer for decades and former state secretary of an organic certification body, including a lot of time on a certifying committee, that has visited many different types of organic, biodynamic, permaculture and regenerative type farms, you write nonsense about this topic like a person who read a few books and thinks they are an expert.

        I’ll spell it out simply for you. If you take a whole lot of minerals off an area of land, to feed a city, the production will fall over time if you do not replace those minerals. Eventually Liebig’s law of the minimum works it’s magic, turning fertile land into a desert. It’s been noticed throughout history that forests precede civilization and deserts follow..

        Your arguments never seem to address the problem of lots of essential businesses going bust that make both discretionary consumer items and essential items, that is often one and the same, for example computer chips.

        We have only reached our level of complexity because of the size of the entire market, plus the fact the overall market has been growing for 2 centuries, that allows for the sales of everything to increase.

        We can’t stand still without collapsing, let alone shrink, as we lose the means to gain access to the metals and minerals required. You also keep forgetting about entropy and dissipation as if human ingenuity can overcome these laws of physics.

        The other aspect is you believe all you have read about renewables having multiples of energy return, when they clearly don’t if you are prepared to do the research to find out for yourself. The high EROEI numbers often cited for renewables all have wide boundaries included, which don’t come close to explain the high embedded energy in their manufacture.

        Typically the EROEI calculations only include the throughput energy of the process and never cover the embedded energy of all the machinery, buildings, mines, ports, roads, bridges, transmission lines or any of the energy used by the workers from designers, to managers, accountants, lawyers, foremen, factory workers, installers etc of the entire process, which uses the bulk of energy, materials and cost of building renewables.

        Once the full cost is included the energy return only just covers the energy cost of building it, and that’s before any inclusion of energy costs for overcoming intermittency issues, from day to night let alone summer to winter. Nuclear also suffers form the same types of problems in calculating EROEI.

        Only an understanding of this will enlighten you enough to see that there is no carbon free future for modern civilization at all. There is no modern civilization without the use of fossil fuels and dreaming otherwise changes nothing.

        I do not deny that fossil fuel use is destroying the climate we’ve enjoyed for the last 10,000 years, nor do I think the world will suddenly ‘come to it’s senses’ and stop burning them, because that’s when modernity ends. As an entire human race we’ve collectively decided we like modernity a lot more than a future of climate knocked out of the Holocene.

        For most people surviving today is what’s important, as there is no future if you don’t survive today, so I don’t expect humanity to voluntarily collapse by deliberately winding down anything. Surely the 94.5GW of new coal plants started in 2024 in China tells you something about the direction humanity is taking?

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  20. Mike Stasse found a video by Alan Watts on the meaning of life targeted at loners. (I’ve not finished it yet but it looks promising).

    On loneliness and awakening…

    I totally stumbled on this while adding insulation to the rear door of the campervan. I just put my phone on Bluetooth and let YouTube talk to me while….. Working alone! How appropriate… now I’m not qualifying myself as a chosen one, just to be clear. I don’t know who chose to title the video this. But I’ve clearly given up on the rest of the world, humanity has deeply disappointed me, and whilst I do occasionally speak to some face to face, it’s rather rare…. most of my friends are now online because that’s the best way to find others who think like me, AND keep me sane. You know who you are. AND I’m not feeling lonely, at all.

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  21. Husband and I finally got our chicken coop finished over the Easter Holiday. Looking forward to growing a decent harvest next season. Instead of trying to grow everything, I am going to focus on the basics we actually eat and are easy to grow. Carrots, lettuce, onions, potatoes, pumpkin, courgette, kale, celery. Might try tomatoes and chilli peppers again, but we are just a bit too cold and windy to grow them without a high tunnel / tunnel house.

    Plants I am sick of growing:

    • radish (barely eat them),
    • bell pepper/capsicum and eggplant (hard to grow in our climate and susceptible to bugs),
    • fancy Asian cabbages, broccoli (too much cabbage moth),
    • cauliflower (goes to seed too much in our dry climate and is a meh vege)
    • corn (such a meh vege),
    • beetroot (didn’t eat enough, I prefer them pickled).

    My favourite perennial foods are strawberries and asparagus.

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    1. Best two asian veges that I grow are Kang Kong (water spinach) in summer in moist ground and Kai Lan (chinese brocoli) in winter grown for stems and leaves. Choy sum is also a fast summer green like Kai Lan.

      For capicums try the mad hatter it is prolific and doesn’t get the bugs like bell peppers.

      We have grown chokos (chayote) this year and are pickling them in vinegar and curry spice. Amazing.

      Spring oniond (shallots, green onions are better to grow than onions as you can just harvest stems and they regrow from base.

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      1. My husband and I love Choy Sum! Thanks for the growing tips 🙂

        I forgot about spring onions and chives – absolute champions in my garden

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  22. Sarah Connor posted an old speech about “the realities and dangers of our dependence on energy and the frailty of complex civilization”, from some high-ranking military dude (Hyman Rickover) back in 1957. It’s pretty damn good.

    And fifteen years prior to ‘Limits to Growth’, makes it even more impressive. Rachel Carson is the only name I consistently hear prior to Donna and Dennis Meadows. And the only name I hear prior to Rachel’s is Thomas Malthus. So it’s always nice to hear from one of the unknown or forgotten people who understood reality and our predicament. 

    Energy Resources and Our Future

    What lifted man – one of the weaker mammals – above the animal world was that he could devise, with his brain, ways to increase the energy at his disposal, and use the leisure so gained to cultivate his mind and spirit. Where man must rely solely on the energy of his own body, he can sustain only the most meager existence.

    It seems sensible to me to take a long view, even if this involves facing unpleasant facts. For it is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost, are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account. Oil and natural gas will disappear first, coal last. There will be coal left in the earth, of course. But it will be so difficult to mine that energy costs would rise to economically intolerable heights, so that it would then become necessary either to discover new energy sources or to lower standards of living drastically.

    For more than one hundred years we have stoked ever growing numbers of machines with coal; for fifty years we have pumped gas and oil into our factories, cars, trucks, tractors, ships, planes, and homes without giving a thought to the future. Occasionally the voice of a Cassandra has been raised only to be quickly silenced when a lucky discovery revised estimates of our oil reserves upward, or a new coalfield was found in some remote spot.

    Now I did get the vibe that Hyman was too heavily invested in humans and making sure that his species (and civilization) continue on for a long time… but at the same time, put this guy in a room for five minutes with me, Hideaway, and Rob… and we could’ve easily set him straight. LOL.

    And although he didn’t have nearly the appropriate weight assigned to the topic, at least Hyman did mention my favorite topic: Man’s first step on the ladder of civilization dates from his discovery of fire

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    1. Hyman Rickover is legendary in the U.S. Navy. He is the reason U.S. nuclear submarines have had a near spotless safety record. He was aware of peak oil — he probably knew Marion King Hubbert. His remarks at this convention should be included in a list of the Most Important U.S. Speeches Ever, right up there with Honest Abe, JFK, MLK and others.

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  23. This sucks. Bad news for my hero Sam Mitchell. I guess he fell off a roof and broke his shoulder and pelvis.

    A long time ago I was told that a pelvic fracture is usually a death sentence for an older person. Not that the actual break kills them… more of an unrecoverable starting point towards death.

    I’ve known two different people that this has happened to. Both were in their early 60’s and had good health. Six months later they were receiving hospice care.

    Hopefully there are different levels of broken pelvic bones, and Sam’s is one of the lesser ones.

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    1. There should just be a rule…Once a man is over 65 years old he should never climb a ladder or work on a roof or gutter. This is a surprisingly high killer or old men. Even if there is recovery, quality of life is never the same once you have sustained a serious bone break in older age

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      1. A main reason is micro clotting damage that dislodge later and cause strokes. If blood thinners are given at the time of a hip break the outcome is much better. I would think that nattokinase would help after too to remove clots.

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        1. The main reason might be that men have less survival instinct than women 😉
          It is the act of climbing on a thing where a man can fall some distance that is the problem. OId men shouldn’t do it. I have seen so many examples of this in real life. When a man retires, his ladder should be confiscated as he cannot be trusted with it.

          I am being facetious – but on a serious note, preventing the trauma from occurring in the first place is a good strategy.

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    2. Ouch, please keep us posted on Sam’s recovery.

      I just spent two days on my roof breathing microplastic dust, acetone, and styrene while applying fiberglass gelcoat, luckily without an accident.

      If my lucidity takes a turn for the worse you’ll know it’s from toxic chemicals.

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  24. There is something very suspicious about Doomberg. I can’t be bothered reading or listening to him enough to figure out what it is. But it bothers me that he seems to have come out of nowhere and influences key people in the peak oil sphere. I have similar issues with that Peter Zeihan guy.

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    1. Me too. Doomberg is WAY too confident about all of his beliefs for my taste.

      My guess is he’s found a profitable niche advising people with big portfolios who are peak oil aware but want to believe that we’ll be ok.

      Doomberg has that confidence that makes people vote for a charismatic movie actor moron like Ronald Regan.

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      1. I’ve only ever heard him once in passing. He had a few hot takes on some political machinations and gave a high level overview of what he thought of energy markets, but it was nothing particularly deep or insightful. I turned off whatever podcast I was listening to with him after he made some off the cuff comment about how even if the world ran out of oil, engines could just run on natural gas. I forgot the exact context but he basically presented it as self-evidently true that it substantiated some sweeping point he was making without really providing any supporting evidence. Maybe he has better analysis behind a paywall, I’m not sure, but from what I heard he didn’t sound very rigorous.

        What I do know is that he’s giving away investing advice for free, which means either his advice isn’t actually tradeable, he isn’t confident enough in his conclusions, and/or doesn’t have a good enough track record to start his own fund to trade on his research. It’s easy to sound confident in a talk show, but unless I see audited returns I tend not to believe any investment “experts”. Real experts typically don’t give away valuable information for free.

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        1. Doomberg’s message is when demand exceeds supply the price will rise, which will stimulate innovation and make lower quality reserves economical to create more supply, and some day, far in the future when the abundant shale oil is exploited, we’ll go nuclear.

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  25. Couple good ones from HHH today….

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-25-2025/#comment-788376

    I think a lot people don’t understand banking in general. Most people think their money is warehoused at a bank when they deposit money into their account.

    No the bank takes your money and buys dollar denominated assets to back your deposit. The bank buys short term government T-bills with your deposit. Which are very liquid and can be sold in order to get cash when needed. Banks are earning 4% on your deposits currently.

    People don’t realize their deposits are funding government spending. People view banks as money warehouses because they can write a check or use a debit card at any time and access their money.

    When you spend money your bank deposits become someone else’s bank deposit. And the banks continue buying short term debt to back the deposit. It’s just someone else’s deposit instead of yours now. And the banks are still making 4% on the deposits.

    All the deposits are created by the banks in the first place when they loan money into existence. Money or deposits are literally destroyed through the process of repaying a loan. The liabilities side of a bank balance sheet shrinks as loans are repaid.

    When you repay a loan principal plus interest. The principal portion of the loan is destroyed. But because of the interest expense you payback more than was loaned to you in the first place.

    This means that you could take all the dollars ever loaned into existence and use them to pay off the principal. Then there would be zero dollars, zero deposits. But there would still be trillions owed in interest expenses.

    The fact that the interest expense is being paid. Means more dollars are leaving the economy than were lent into it to begin with. Loan growth has to be exponential. Or things become very deflationary.

    Low and negative interest rates aren’t inflationary. Just a sign we can’t get growth regardless of how low interest rates go.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-april-2025/#comment-788358

    The EV industry in China is an extension of the coal industry. Coal is heavily used in the production of EV’s and solar panels.

    EV’s are coal powered cars in China. Regardless if solar panels are used to produce electricity to power EV’s or if coal is directly burned to create electricity. It’s all an extension of their coal industry.

    The Chinese aren’t escaping their demise due to lack of oil. They are accelerating their demise due to lack of coal by going all in on EV’s and solar panels not only for themselves but for most of the rest of the world as well.

    Pakistan’s nice solar industry was built in factories in China for instance, using coal.

    When the coal is gone there will be no EV and solar industry in China.

    The Chinese will likely ramp up coal to liquids as the diesel supply contracts. Putting further stress on their coal supply.

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    1. Hmm…

      I wonder if I could go Breaking Bad and make synthetic caffeine for a nice little post-collapse income stream?

      Nope.

      Grok: Synthetic caffeine is produced through chemical synthesis, typically starting from readily available chemical precursors. The most common method involves a multi-step process derived from urea and other organic compounds. Below is a simplified overview of the synthetic caffeine production process:

      Starting Materials:
      The primary precursors are urea and cyanoacetic acid or related compounds like malonic acid and methyl chloride. These are sourced from chemical suppliers and chosen for their availability and reactivity.

      Formation of Uracil:
      Urea reacts with cyanoacetic acid (or malonic acid derivatives) through a condensation reaction to form uracil, a pyrimidine base. This step involves heating the reactants under controlled conditions, often with a catalyst or solvent, to facilitate the formation of the pyrimidine ring structure.

      Methylation to Theobromine:
      Uracil is then methylated (addition of methyl groups) using methylating agents like methyl chloride or dimethyl sulfate. This introduces methyl groups at specific positions on the uracil molecule, transforming it into theobromine (3,7-dimethylxanthine), a close chemical relative of caffeine.

      Further Methylation to Caffeine:
      Theobromine undergoes an additional methylation step to add a methyl group at the 1-position of the xanthine structure. This is typically achieved using methyl iodide or another methylating agent in the presence of a base or catalyst. The result is caffeine (1,3,7-trimethylxanthine).

      Purification:
      The crude caffeine is purified through processes like recrystallization (dissolving in a solvent and allowing pure crystals to form) or sublimation (vaporizing and condensing the caffeine to remove impurities). This ensures the caffeine meets pharmaceutical or food-grade standards, free of residual solvents or byproducts.

      Quality Testing:
      The final product is tested for purity (typically ≥99%), potency, and contaminants using analytical methods like high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or mass spectrometry. Tests also confirm the absence of heavy metals, microbes, or other impurities.

      Packaging and Distribution:
      Purified caffeine is packaged in airtight containers to prevent degradation and shipped to manufacturers for use in pharmaceuticals, beverages, or supplements.

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  27. It’s like a good joke that never gets old.

    The guy who runs the only site dedicated to peak oil, does not believe in peak oil.

    Thank god for Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/opec-update-april-2025/#comment-788373

    DC: Supply is higher at high prices than at low oil prices. I am talking about World Supply. Let’s give a concrete example. In 2018 the average World Price for Brent Oil was $89/b in 2024 US$ and World Supply of C plus C was 82.9 Mb/d and in 2020 the average price of Brent Crude in 2024$ was $50.85/b and World C plus C supply was 76 Mb/d. In 2024 the average annual price for Brent Crude was $80.52/b in 2024 US$ and World C plus C output was 81.8 Mb/d. The basic idea is that supply is relatively higher at a higher oil price even when we are past peak oil output so that at $100/b output will be higher than it would be at $50/bo. This is freshman level Econ 101, not hard to understand.

    JT: Very dishonest Dennis

    Everyone here knows that 2020 was the lockdown. Supply had to be reduced because there was no demand. Price reflected the loss of demand. You can’t produce more oil than the system can absorb.
    Can price bring on supply? Sure but it’s not some elementary calculation of supply and demand the way the army of dult economists explain things.

    In 2013 oil was WTI $91.00 and inflation adjusted to 2025 $124.00 2018 was WTI $57.00 and inflation adjusted $73.00

    Why didn’t you include that in your example? Cherry picking numbers to make your argument undermines your credibility maybe that’s why Mike is so mad.

    Secondly high prices do not immediately result in higher production and you know that. It takes time to deploy CAPEX and bring new production online. But low oil prices can immediately reduce production because of necessity. Bringing production back from a low price event isn’t a supply demand function the production was already built.

    Lastly to believe oil is headed to $100.00 is to avoid the last 4 year trend.

    2022 $ 87.40 $94.93 second column is 2025 inflation
    2023 $ 70.60 $73.59 adjusted
    2024 $ 69.29 $71.88
    2025 $ 65.00

    Oil prices have been steadily declining so maybe the pie in the sky EIA and IEA that are so often quoted here have no clue what is going on.

    Inflation adjusted oil today is 30% cheaper than 2022. If what you say is true production should have already fallen off a cliff. Inflation adjusted today’s prices are half of 2013!!! What you’re witnessing is the death of the industry which seems to be what everyone wants anyway but it isn’t being caused by EVs it’s being caused by geology.

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  28. Nice to see Gail Tverberg’s work be acknowledged by ZeroHedge.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/world-economy-reaching-limits-growth

    Then you read the comments…

    In case anyone here is not familiar with this rode-hard old hag, Tverberg – she’s a de-populationist from way back in the days of all the ‘peak oil‘ Bull-****-On-a-Stick in 2008.   Remember all that…?  A Chris Martenson fellow traveler back in the day for that Scam-ola.

    These old Collectivists just can’t hang it up, and here she is again – damn near a generation later as be their wont, to sell the de-population Scam, this time all nicely dressed up in a wrapper of ‘growth limits’.

    We have everything we need for a peaceful and prosperous planet of 10 billion.

    We don’t have a population problem or a resource problem.

    We have a sociopath problem.

    Hang all the club of rome kissinger-gates-schwab Commies like this hoor before the depopulation laugh is on us.

    I remember the peak oil schtick from waaaaay back.  Jay Hanson.  I believed it too, until I realized it was BS.

    Because the LAST time they trotted out their BS, they were all about converting corn to fuel.   Then came the solar scam.  She is part of a grifting merchant class that is hell-bent on making the people panic, for their benefit.  
     

    nearly 30 years ago, I had lab with a guy who was working on bio fuels synthesis (he was the TA).  The process involved making syn diesel from human waste and E.Coli bacteria.   All that was needed was electricity.   It was expensive, at the time, but complete and fully feasible.   
     

    When a merchant tells you about doom, bet against them. 

    If the human race is at the “limits of growth” it is *ONLY* because governments are destroying cheap energy.

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    1. LOL. I had a feeling that zerohedge’s audience was full of clueless f’ing morons. 

      Thought about leaving a comment, but those dipshits will only treat it like this clip below. I’ll be the hysterical Kate while the rest of them continue to honor society’s number one rule; always look cool at all times… image is everything.

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    2. I read ZeroHedge daily and it is a really mixed bag. Lots of libertarian dross and right wing crap. Once in awhile it has something good. I was recently thinking that I would stop reading it because the dross and crap were becoming overwhelming. Maybe I will.

      AJ

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    3. How bad could it get?

      >[N]early 30 years ago, I had lab [class] with a guy who was working on bio fuels synthesis (he was the [Teachers Assistant]). The process involved making [synthetic] diesel from human …

      Preparing mentally for how bad it could get – I expect there to be more than one occasion when a particularly fat person, in the process of dying after significant ‘amputation’ – gets to see an engine start, that is running on “bio-diesel”.

      I expect the majority of people characterized by the zero-hedge comments to suffer, some of the suffering will be richly deserved.

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  30. Monday , April 28, 2025 , 1:25 PM

    https://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/am-montag-landesweiter-stromausfall-in-spanien-auch-portugal-und-frankreich-betroffen_f500dbed-98b5-4243-ba45-39eb2586782b.html

    Blackout in Spain, Portugal, Part of France

    A nationwide power outage occurred in Spain on Monday afternoon, also affecting parts of Portugal, Andorra, and France. The cause of the outage has not yet been determined.

    There is a widespread power outage in Spain and Portugal. “Plans to restore the power supply” have been initiated, the Spanish electricity grid operator Red Eléctrica announced on Platform X. They have begun restoring supplies in the north and south of the country. The cause is being investigated. Parts of France were also affected. Millions of people affected by power outage

    The power outage affected millions of people and caused significant disruption to daily life. Reporters from the German Press Agency reported that there was no power in both the imperial cities of Madrid and Barcelona on Monday afternoon. The Masters 1000 tennis tournament in Madrid was also affected, and was initially suspended. 

    The Spanish railway company Renfe reported that at 12:30 p.m. (local time) the entire national power grid had failed – trains had stopped at all stations and had not departed. 

    The Spanish newspaper “El País” spoke of a “massive power outage,” but only on the mainland. According to reporters, the Canary or Balearic Islands were not affected. In neighboring Portugal, a blackout extended across several regions – from the north to the south of the country, broadcaster RTP reported.

    The cause may have been a fault in a high-voltage line in France. This then interrupted the power supply in both countries. The French grid operator RTE has now issued a statement stating that parts of France were also briefly without power.Hacker attacks cannot be ruled out

    Further information on the extent of the power outage and its cause was not initially available to dpa. Spain’s national cybersecurity agency INCIBE is investigating whether a hacker attack could have been behind the outage, according to El País. The Spanish government has called an emergency meeting at the offices of the Spanish grid operator following the outage, according to Spanish media reports.

    In the small state of Andorra, located in the Pyrenees, the power outage lasted only a few seconds, the energy supplier FEDA reported on X. The outage was caused on the Spanish side and the electricity was bypassed thanks to the “automatic reconnection with the line coming from France.”

    Saudos

    el mar

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  32. We are electing a new federal government in Canada today.

    The 3 main parties are silent on the covid crimes, including the easiest to accept obvious crime of killing 20+ million people via funding gain of function research at the Wuhan lab. As a reminder, that’s more than 3 times the number of people killed by the Nazis.

    One can accept and act on this primary crime without having to act on the much harder to accept secondary crimes of withholding effective treatments and coercing ineffective and unsafe mRNA transfections into billions of people.

    Yet the main parties are silent.

    A 4th party, the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), which the mainstream media ignores because it is “far right fringe”, does want to hold the covid criminals to account, however they have zero chance of being elected.

    Unfortunately, the PPC denies the reality of climate change. On the other hand, the climate change policies of the main parties have zero probability of reducing the threat because they do not understand our overshoot predicament.

    My options are:

    1. do not vote
    2. vote for the PPC

    What should I do?

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    1. And similar to you was the choice of voting for Trump (PPC wanabee?) or not voting. I voted for Trump and now regret it and should have not voted. But then maybe Harris would have won and started WW3 already with Russia. She would have been just as bad as Trump with regard to Gaza/Iran.

      I empathize with your choice (not a choice).

      AJ

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      1. It’s not just that the majority of citizens choose bad leaders.
        It’s that there are no good leaders to choose from.
        If citizens demanded good leaders, some would step up because they’d have a chance of winning.
        If citizens demanded the covid criminals be held to account, it would be on political platforms.
        The conclusion is obvious, our leadership choices and policies are what citizens prefer.

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        1. This may not just be a problem with individual voters, but a system problem (or predicament). In the US, we have a first-past-the-post voting system which is quite effective at filtering out wise, competent, and ecologically literate candidates. Even if people in Canada want accountability for the covid crimes, the system itself may be blocking such actions, just like it blocks effective action on climate change/overshoot.

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          1. On the lack of covid justice, it is the fault of citizens.

            Not one person I know wants justice for the covid crimes.

            My current theory is that most citizens can’t face the reality of how incompetent and/or evil our leaders are, nor can they face their own error for believing obvious bullshit, like for example, that it was possible to test a brand new drug technology in months rather than the usual 10+ years, especially a drug technology that had failed multiple prior tests, and so prefer to forget the entire episode, including the US funded gain of function lab leak that is at the root of all 20+ million deaths, regardless of specific cause.

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            1. A 4th party, the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), which the mainstream media ignores because it is “far right fringe”, does want to hold the covid criminals to account, however they have zero chance of being elected.

              Unfortunately, the PPC denies the reality of climate change. On the other hand, the climate change policies of the main parties have zero probability of reducing the threat because they do not understand our overshoot predicament.

              It certainly doesn’t help that the people calling for accountability for the covid crimes destroy their credibility by denying climate change.

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              1. The mainstream parties push climate change policies that have not, and will not, reduce the threat.

                What’s worse, an idiot that doesn’t understand the problem, or someone that denies the problem?

                If the policies pushed by the idiot do not reduce the threat AND make life harder for lower income people, then maybe on balance the denier is the lesser of the two evils.

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                1. The mainstream parties push climate change policies that have not, and will not, reduce the threat.

                  Is it because they are actually stupid or it is because the system (a.k.a the Superorganism) prevents them from implementing such policies?

                  If the PPC believes something that is obviously false, (like denying climate change), why should they be trusted on other major scientific issues?

                  You’ve asked multiple times why Nate Hagens hasn’t talked about the covid crimes. I suspect it’s because the most of the most vocal critics of the covid response destroyed their credibility by denying climate change. It is like the boy who cried wolf. Even though he was right the last time, no one believed him because of his previous actions.

                  https://www.postcarbon.org/delusion-to-the-left-denial-to-the-right-episode-20-of-crazy-town/

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                  1. Regardless of superorganism forces, if they are not stupid (or in denial of overshoot) they would be capable of accurately explaining our predicament, but they can’t. They have the childish belief that CO2 is our only problem, and that non-fossil energy can reduce it.

                    My guess is Nate Hagens bought into the mRNA transfection bullshit. He never discusses his beliefs so we’ll never know for sure.

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                    1. If our leaders spoke honestly our predicament, they would get voted out of office (e.g. Jimmy Carter in 1980). Most of the electorate is ecologically illiterate and would prefer that politicians tell them comforting lies instead of hard truths.

                      If it became widely known that growth is no longer possible, the financial system would unravel. People would pull their money out of the stock market. Why would banks keep making loans if they know they can’t be repaid in real-terms?

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                    2. You’re evading my main point.

                      I argued that a politician that denies climate change is less bad than a politician than accepts climate change but proposes solutions that won’t reduce the threat and will worsen the lives of low income people.

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                    3. I argued that a politician that denies climate change is less bad than a politician than accepts climate change but proposes solutions that won’t reduce the threat and will worsen the lives of low income people.

                      They might be slightly better in the short term on that one issue, but deniers in general tend to be worse on other environmental issues as well such as biodiversity.

                      https://www.npr.org/2025/04/17/nx-s1-5366814/endangered-species-act-change-harm-trump-rule

                      https://grist.org/climate/the-trump-administrations-push-to-privatize-us-public-lands/

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            2. In my electoral riding there were 78,853 votes cast.

              Of those, 329 people (0.4%) voted for the only party that promised justice for the covid crimes.

              This means that even people who refused to be transfected with mRNA do not care about holding the criminals to account.

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    2. In New Zealand it is illegal to encourage / tell people who to vote for on election day. It seems you are all allowed to do this in Canada. Our “right wing” parties didn’t campaign on covid, but they have quietly launched a new inquiry, to supersede the first one by our Labour Party. They have quietly been undoing a lot of damage, but there still seems to be fear of speaking out loud about the issues with covid

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    3. We also have a federal election that I’ve already put in a postal vote for. As none of the candidates of any party will talk reality, the only thing I could think of was to vote for an independent, before any major party.

      Fortunately/unfortunately we have preferential voting, so a vote usually comes back to one of the 2 major parties, unless an minor party or independent gets up.

      Both major parties have just made a commitment to not do any deals to obtain government if there is a hung parliament, which they will both break if they think they can form government with a couple of independents.

      BTW if you don’t hear from me for a couple of weeks, it’s because I’m in New Guinea and have no internet….

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  33. Movie recommendation. Black Mountain Side (2014). Free, full movie link below. 

    Archaeologists find a strange structure in northern Canada that appears to be thousands of years old. The team members become isolated when their communications fail, and their sanity begins to unravel.

    I know, sounds like another bad rip-off of John Carpenters ‘The Thing’. But this was a good rip off. It’s pretty much a guarantee that I’ll like your movie if you lean heavily into isolation, paranoia, and snow. Especially when the slow buildup of tension and suspense is done right. And not much gore other than a couple of scenes.

    Low budget. The actors are a bunch of unknowns, and it shows in their performance. The dialogue, at times, is laughable. But it’s not that big a deal because the beautiful setting and perfect pacing make up for it.

    No dumb decisions/mistakes by the characters. My only complaints were with the cigarette smoking. It’s way too much. Started to become comical after a while. And too many characters aren’t wearing gloves, or they leave the door open to their cabins, etc. C’mon Mr Director, you’re setting is in the freezing snow where it gets 50 below at night… attention to detail, please!

    The ending is not spelled out for you, but I thought it was perfect.

    A while back I recommended The Last Winter (2006). That’s one of my favorites when I’m in the mood for this wintery cabin, isolation horror stuff. If you liked that one, guarantee you’ll like this one… has that same climate change supernatural thing going on. 

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  34. One of the better Ukraine war interviews I’ve seen in a while.

    The Trump peace initiative will probably fail and it will become a forever war fueled by the Europeans.

    I don’t see any 5-D chess. I see a whole lot of clusterf**ks.

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  35. Some of the wealthy elite like Elon Musk are now going on and on about declining birth rates. They come up with all these stupid ideas to get people to have children. But young people keep saying over and over – the cost of housing is the problem. Governments be like what if we paid people to go on dates? LOL they want to chuck a bit of spare change at women, but not help young women actually have somewhere to live. Pathetic stupid rich people.

    The whole natal crisis thing annoys the shit out of me. Most sensible people understand how over-populated by humans the world is. We don’t care if a reducing birth rate means the overall population will start declining. We are actually happy about it.

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    1. It annoys me too. The falling birth rate is the ONLY good news these days.

      Queue Hideaway from his tent in New Guinea via a Starlink connection to remind us that a falling population means falling complexity which means accelerated collapse.

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      1. Lower population just means less people overall that will suffer when we collapse. Does it really matter if it’s a bit sooner or later? Perhaps for the rest of life on Earth it does matter..

        I’m not there yet….

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  36. I’m from Spain. Yesterday, at 12.30 PM, the whole country, Portugal and part of south France went full blackout for more than 5 hours.

    It was a shock for the 99% of the population. Nobody could understand what was happening. The chaos was massive, with hospitals switching on their emergency diesel-powered support systems, airports operating at minimums, comms coming and going, people becoming trapped in elevators everywhere, supermarkets closing because they couldn’t accept payments from their customers, massive traffic jammings because traffic-lights were off…

    During the first hour, people looked at each other with amusement and confusion on their faces. By the second hour, fear began to add to the mix. From the very beginning, I only had a thought in my mind: “Already…?”

    Gradually, painfully, power was restored. First, to critical infrastructure. Second, to cities. Third, to the countryside. Almost 24 hours after the outage, there are still places were power remains down. No one knows for sure the cause of the event, all that’s been said is “a massive anomaly compromised the stability of the power grid”. Cyberattack? Design flaw? Human mistake? Nobody knows, and everyone says this was impossible to foresee. But people like me, who are aware of what’s coming, know there are several scientists in my country who have been warning us about the threat that a disorganized implementation of renewable energies poses to the stability of the power grid.

    We have power again, with few exceptions that I’m sure will be solved throughout the day. But I can’t help to wonder when this will happen again… and when will power be out for good. If I had any doubts about our predicament, they went obliterated yesterday. Now I’ not just read and talked about it. Now I’ve experienced it.

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    1. Thank you for the update from Spain.

      Given authorities are unsure of the cause this suggests to me a complex instability in the system which could be explained by reduced 60Hz momentum resulting from the replacement of heavy spinning turbines with momentum free solar and wind generators.

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      1. That appears to be the cause, according to some experts’ first analysis. They say it’s something that astonishes even then, an event so unusual that it should never happen again.

        Needless to say, these statements haven’t been enough to lower all the eyebrows that raised yesterday among the population… There are a lot of people still scared by the scale of what happened, and many are citing statements from scientists who were not so optimistic about the “green future” and the ease of abandoning fossil fuels and nuclear energy thanks to wind and photovoltaic energy, all of it without needing to send BAU to the trash.

        I think many eyes were opened yesterday around here, at least for a while. I wonder how many of them will remain like that, and how many will close again now that everything seems to be back to normal, for the time being…

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        1. My bet is people in rich countries will get used to an unreliable grid just as people in poor countries have.

          I believe momentum can be added to a solar/wind system by building machines with heavy spinning flywheels attached to motor/generators. That will add a lot of cost to the system, and will burn up more fossils mining the required materials, and is in addition to the expensive batteries needed for 24/7 electricity.

          No problem for countries with strong economic growth that can increase their debt. 🙂

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        2. Tim Watkins with an interesting deep dive into the Spain grid failure.

          https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/04/30/the-problem-squared/

          Okay, the event in Spain wasn’t pan-European – Portugal is to Spain what Ireland is to the UK when it comes to electricity; when the main generator fails, the junior partner fails with it.  Nevertheless, that outage in southern France should be a particular concern, especially if the interconnector failure turns out to have been the proximate cause of the wider cascade.  The technocracy has bet the house on the idea that a problem shared is a problem halved, and that building something akin to a continental grid will remove the inertia issue, so that they can proceed with the complete decarbonisation of electricity.  But in the real world, the problem shared is turning out to be a problem squared… particularly as public pressure results in electricity-rich states like Norway and Sweden refusing to supply excess electricity because of the increase in domestic prices that results.

          Spain may face political pressure for similar reasons.  While Norway and Sweden are rich in hydroelectric power, Spain – particularly its inland arid regions – has long been viewed as a potential solar electricity powerhouse, with the potential to supply excess solar power to much of western Europe.  Absent though – as we saw on Monday – is any means by which western Europe can repay the favour by providing its (fast declining) inertia in return.  And so, Spain (rather than the UK, which is also well into an energy death spiral) may be the first to face up to the realities of life with an intermittent, unstable and unreliable electricity grid… although the recent appearance of the Dark Lord with a report (which must have been written prior to the event in Spain) that concludes that Net Zero is “doomed to fail,” opens the possibility that the UK may be the first European country to come to its senses.

          There is one last sting in the tail of the frequency/inertia problem which we have thus far avoided.  Because European states still have high gas and nuclear (and in Germany lignite – because fuck you!) capacity – even if it is forced to shut down when the wind is blowing – the electricity grids can be restarted.  But this shouldn’t be assumed.  A widespread outage over a long enough timeframe would result in the Grid operator having to “black start” the system.  In effect, re-energising the entire system from scratch.  A process which first requires energy generators to re-energise themselves and to generate sufficient excess electricity to power up the wider Grid.  Nuclear, coal and gas power stations have the ability to do this… wind and solar farms do not.  So, this is becoming a major risk as the penetration of NRREHTs in European grids along with the shutting down of fossil fuel and nuclear generators makes the possibility of a dead Grid ever more likely.

          Given the extent to which we have electrified and digitised our way of life in the last few decades, this should terrify almost everyone, and especially those within the technocracy whose power and status depends upon a firm electricity supply.  But the technocracy – and the politicians who genuflect before it suffer an inertia problem of their own… not the inertia of physics and engineering, but the blind inertia of previous investment.  Across Europe, they are now far too invested in the doomed to fail Net Zero project that even an event as difficult as that in Spain on Monday will be rationalised out of existence rather than face the reality that we would be plunged into a new dark age in the event that we faced the kind of black start crisis which will be inevitable if Europe continues on its current path.  Sadly – and all too predictably – however, nobody with the power of decision is going to change course before the crisis hits… by which time it will be far too late.

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  37. This is why when discussing our predicament I always try to call it overshoot.

    Overshoot is the umbrella over all the specific problems.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-25-2025/#comment-788414

    Paul Pukite: This diagram shows that multiple global crises—like fossil fuel depletion, climate change, air pollution, and geopolitical conflicts—overlap and amplify each other, creating compound, systemic risks.

    In essence:
    Each problem isn’t isolated; their intersections (e.g., fossil fuel depletion + climate change → resource wars) create new, bigger challenges.

    Compounding effects mean solving one issue (e.g., air pollution) might not matter much if the intersecting crises (e.g., climate refugees, political instability) continue unchecked.

    Public narratives (like focusing only on air pollution) can obscure deeper systemic threats (like existential risks to global civilization).

    In short:👉 Intersectionality multiplies complexity and makes single-issue solutions ineffective.

    Hideaway: Very much agree with Paul’s analysis, but have additions.

    All the points mentioned are part and parcel of why we collapse. However the author, like most others misses the role of complexity and growth as a function of continuing complexity’s importance in every aspect of the modern world.

    Our modern civilization is just like every other civilization that has ever existed and collapsed, only orders of magnitude larger.

    Civilization itself is a self adapting system, a physical entity that has behaved like every other self adapting system we know of, that grows, increases complexity, reaches climax and collapses. The larger the system the faster the collapse. It’s a physical system based upon movement of energy within the system.

    Every self adapting complex system that grows, does so until it reaches maturity, or it runs into some type of energy constraint or habitat constraint before maturity and collapses prematurely.

    Even those that reach maturity eventually fail due to entropy and dissipation, more inexorable processes of our physical reality. Our continuing complexity is the only reason we are able to access the energy, minerals, metals food and water we do gain access to after depleting all the high grade resources.

    The complexity only came from both human ingenuity and market size that allowed for every speciality that exists. Take away growth or size of markets and our ability to gain access to resources plumets.

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  38. https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-25-2025/#comment-788420

    HHH: Lack of growth. The debt required to keep everything going can’t be serviced much less repaid. Not in world with a contracting energy supply. Doesn’t matter if solar and wind are a thing.

    There will be no growing or inflating our way out from under the debt. Governments everywhere are in denial. With every round of fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus we go deeper into debt, not only public debt but private debt as well. Then we are left without the growth needed to repay the debt.

    Collapse will begin as a monetary collapse. A collapse in the actual monetary system. Which will lead to a sovereign debt crisis and currency crisis around the globe.

    You have to have a functioning monetary system in order to have an economy that is able to produce oil, coal, natural gas, solar and wind.

    And the actual monetary system is the commercial banks that create all the loans via collateralized lending.

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  39. xraymike79 today on Ockham’s razor.

    https://collapseofindustrialcivilization.com/2025/04/28/william-of-ockham-and-the-collapse-of-complexity-a-razors-edge-for-the-end-times/

    William of Ockham and the Collapse of Complexity: A Razor’s Edge for the End Times

    Born during the chaotic aftermath of the Black Death, which wiped out a third of Europe’s population, Ockham developed his philosophy in an era when grand institutions clung to complexity while failing their people. Feudal lords enforced labyrinthine land laws to squeeze starving peasants; Ockham’s insistence on minimal assumptions would have retorted: “When the plague renders your contracts void, what survives but the simplest truth—that men must eat?” Seven centuries later, we face a parallel evasion of reality: as of April 2025, NOAA data reveals atmospheric CO₂ concentrations surged at a record-breaking rate in 2024—3.75 parts per million, the highest annual jump ever recorded. Yet the Trump administration suppressed the findings, burying them in social media posts instead of the agency’s usual press releases. Here, Ockham’s Razor cuts through the noise: the simplest truth—that we are losing the fight against climate collapse—is being obscured by institutional cowardice and bureaucratic sleight-of-hand (Environmental Integrity Project 2025; Friedman 2025).

    Our current predicament reveals an even deeper irony: we now spend trillions subsidizing fossil fuels while pouring billions into “high-tech renewables” that, according to J.P. Morgan’s Heliocentrism report, have increased global solar capacity without displacing fossil fuel dependence. The renewable energy revolution has become its own kind of scholasticism—a complex theology of lithium batteries, rare earth minerals, and solar panels made in coal-fired factories. These technologies, while reducing direct emissions, simply replace one form of extraction with another:

    • Cobalt mines where children work in toxic pits to power electric vehicles
    • Lithium extraction that drains Andean groundwater for grid-scale batteries
    • “Green” hydrogen projects that consume more electricity than they produce

    Ockham would see this as the same old pattern: multiplying entities (new mines, new supply chains, new waste streams) rather than addressing the root problem—our refusal to reduce consumption. The J.P. Morgan report confirms this: despite $9 trillion spent on renewables since 2010, the renewable share of final energy consumption crawls forward at 0.3%-0.6% annually, while fossil fuels still power 80%-85% of industrial production (Cembalest 2025). The razor’s judgment is clear: no technology can sustain infinite growth on a finite planet.

    Hideaway, do you know if policies to force reduced consumption of discretionary items must also reduce the supply of non-discretionary items due to reduced system complexity?

    In other words, even if total supply falls faster than total consumption, is it possible to maintain non-discretionary supply by concentrating the contraction in non-discretionary items?

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  41. In case you haven’t heard of him, Scott @ Kalibrated is one of my favorite Ukraine war analysts.

    He’s very independent and does not collaborate with or read any of the other tight-knit alt-news Ukraine people, and rarely appears on other channels.

    His thing is monitoring primary sources of data and sharing his opinion of what’s actually going on with little very bias towards Ukraine or Russia, and without caring what anyone else thinks.

    I find him kind of refreshing.

    Today’s live stream included a pretty good rant starting at about 22:00.

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  42. https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/longtermism-the-key-to-human-survival-ddc

    Longtermism: The Key to Human Survival?

    Central questions to longtermism, namely how do we prevent our potential extinction caused by AI, nanobots, or a mishap in the great hadron collider and all the rest, is rapidly becoming completely moot. Irrelevant. As natural and mineral resources decline and pollution starts to take its toll en masse these questions will suddenly look entirely fictional, something akin to: ‘How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ The only question in front of us, is how do we wish to leave this way of life behind? The fast and furious way via nukes, followed by a multi-year long nuclear winter and taking most complex life down with us (something akin to the way of the dinosaurs)? Or gracefully, and perhaps finding a way to become a member of the many species surviving the bottleneck ahead…? I would personally opt for the second option, as it leaves at least a slim chance for us to evolve into a better version of ourselves. One which is better adapted to the radically changed climate and biosphere and perhaps — only perhaps — blessed with a little more wisdom than what we, their unwise ancestors, possessed.

    Maybe longtermism could become helpful if it was ecocentric and biophysically grounded.

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  43. Got this Caitlin Johnstone article from Steve Bull. I liked it. I used to follow her back when I paid attention to WSWS, Peter Joseph, the Intercept, Scheerpost, Naomi Klein, etc. I don’t know Caitlin’s overshoot awareness level, but if it’s anything like those other sources than she’s probably not very aware.

    It’s Always About The System – by Caitlin Johnstone

    Liked these paragraphs best. In the first one, she’s talking about how to sharpen your denial control… although I don’t think she understands that she’s talking about denial.😊

    Most try to at least keep a foot in the door of their imperial indoctrination, so they don’t have to experience the psychological discomfort of letting it close completely. But that’s where the truth is. Coming to a lucid understanding of the world necessarily means abandoning all untruths for truth on every level. If you can work up the courage to really do this, the entire mainstream western worldview gets flushed right down the toilet.

    It’s always the system. Western countries are full of shitty people with shitty beliefs who do shitty things to each other all the time. This isn’t because westerners are inherently shitty, nor because humans are inherently shitty. It’s because here in the western empire we live under capitalism, which encourages selfish behavior and cutthroat competition against each other, and because we are indoctrinated into accepting the tyrannical white supremacist propaganda of western imperialism.

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  44. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/middleeast/israel-wildfires-jerusalem-intl/index.html

    Wildfires rage outside Jerusalem, forcing evacuations and road closures

    Wildfires raging near Jerusalem forced evacuations in several areas and led to several major road closures on Wednesday, as firefighters struggle to contain the flames amid dry conditions and high winds.

    Israel is seeking international assistance to fight the fires, as the defense minister says the country is “in a time of national emergency.”

    “This is perhaps the largest fire ever in the country,” Jerusalem District Fire Department Commander Shmulik Friedman told reporters on Wednesday afternoon. He warned that winds in excess of 60 miles an hour are expected “in the near future,” dramatically increasing the risk of the fires.

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  45. Curious minds want to know…

    When Nate Hagens (at 15:28) says, “Do you worry as I do that the flame that is civilization is dimming because the credibility of science is dimming due to recent events?”.

    Does he mean that our most trusted healthcare authorities lied about all of the covid science including the fact that the US government funded creation of the virus at the Wuhan lab, and they coerced an unsafe and infective novel transfection technology into billions of people that did not need it, while blocking safe and effective treatments from people that did need them?

    Or does he mean that wingnut anti-vaxxers undermined our expert healthcare authorities’ efforts to save lives from a deadly virus that emerged from a pangolin in the Wuhan wet market?

    It’s very odd that someone so concerned about science is silent on the biggest scientific issue in decades that killed about 20 million people.

    The rest of the interview is very good. Jean-Marc Jancovici is a great man.

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    1. LOL… Well, there goes my exclusive interview with Nate that I was so close to booking on behalf of un-Denial.😊

      Nate: Rob, I think you should probably unsubscribe. No matter who i interview or what I post you come up w some criticism about some other issue that wasn’t covered thats more important etc.

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  47. Interesting interview with Antonio Turiel. It’s nice to to put a face to his blog that I have followed for years.

    Key points for me:

    • Rising hydrocarbon liquids over the last decade masks an important issue: A lot of the increase is natural gas liquids used for plastics and is unsuitable for diesel.
    • Diesel today is down 15% from it’s peak in 2015-2017.
    • Diesel scarcity is harming South American miners.
    • Diesel scarcity reduced Argentina’s agriculture harvest by 20% last year.
    • The Export Land Model will soon reduce Nigeria’s exports of oil to Spain.
    • Europe is preparing for war to secure resources.

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  48. Coffee and Covid blog reported on RFK. This is good news to move things in a the right direction.

    Yesterday, the Boston Globe ran a story headlined, “RFK Jr. will order ‘placebo’ testing for new vaccines, alarming health experts.” What would we do without alarmed health experts? Is there any other kind? Anyway, not only was the Globe’s article another fine example of journalistic malpractice, but for careful readers, it accidentally cut the vaccine industrial complex’s femoral artery.

    On some future day, aging medical school doctors will look back on our time, and tell their fresh-faced students how, back in the day, pharma firms used to test vaccines by leaving them out overnight and seeing whether they were still there in the morning. If the wee vaccine fairies didn’t spirit the needles away in the small hours, then Bob’s your uncle: approved.

    I exaggerate, but just barely.

    Yesterday, Secretary Kennedy and HHS made what could be the simplest but most impactful announcement in American history (if you count in total life-years-saved). From now on, with limited exceptions (like the annual flu shot), the FDA will require all vaccines —including those already on the schedule— to be tested against an inert placebo, like pure saline.

    “All new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure — a radical departure from past practices,” an HHS spokesperson told The Washington Post.

    Haha, you innocent doves are probably naive enough to think that’s already how it works. You were living your lives with aplomb, bing-watching reboots of 1980’s television classics with your loved ones, arguing about the meaning of life with AI chatbots, and generally minding your own business in the blissful ignorance of trust in scientists to use common sense, and believing to the core of your beings that of course they are testing all new medicines against placebos.

    It’s not like they can go around comparing new shots to injecting people with bleach or arsenic, you probably thought. How else can they determine efficacy and safety?

    You trusted that they were doing the work. You gullible dopes actually believed they weren’t just chanting “supercalifragilistic” ten times and hoping for the best.

    💉 But no. Here’s the giveaway: despite the article’s main theme was about how testing against placebos alarms experts, the Globe never bothered to explain how vaccines are currently tested. If non-placebo testing is so wonderful, then why didn’t that information come first, right up front? But that bit was conspicuously absent, concealed behind empty technical jargon and meaningless buzzwords like “correlates of protection” and “biological responses.”

    Nearly every other drug except for vaccines must succeed against a placebo. But under long-standing FDA regulations, vaccines are excepted. They are not tested against placebos. They are usually tested against other vaccines, or (I am not making this up) against heavy-metal solutions, creating a kind of jabby feedback loop. Old vaccines, already approved, are assumed to be safe and effective. So if your new vaccine’s side effect profile is no worse than the old vaccine you’re testing against, then shazam, you have a winner. It’s safe!

    Sometimes, new vaccines are even tested against older versions of the same vaccine, and sometimes the FDA will allow pharma to test a new jab against itself.

    Not only that, but they don’t even test for efficacy anymore by measuring whether the drug actually reduces the disease or prevents hospitalizations. They just test whether victims’ immune systems produce certain antibodies. If so, they assume that also means fewer people will be hospitalized for the disease, which is a classic but oddly-named logical fallacy called “begging the question.”

    They know it’s circular reasoning, yet they all keep pretending “everything is going to be fine.”

    But now it’s all over. Placebos are back! You are probably feeling relieved and thinking, good, at least we have that debate settled, glad we have all behind us now. Sorry! Au contraire, mon ami. We must now deal with the experts.

    💉 The experts, you see, do not agree that any of this is common sense. It’s right in the headline: placebo testing policy alarms experts. But why? Why are they so alarmed? Wait till you see this.

    “Vaccine and public health experts,” reported the Globe, “said the statement from HHS is misinformation.” So. The experts offered three basic arguments. First, they argued it’s unethical to withhold a “known” vaccine from people who need protection (they always offer kids and measles as their example). Second, placebo-controlled trials are expensive and take longer than antibody trials, potentially slowing vaccines’ time to market. And third, they unironically argued some drugs might not make it.

    Michael Osterholm, the University of Minnesota infectious-disease expert on Biden’s transition team, said the change threatened the existence of coronavirus vaccines. I’m not sure Osterholm realized what he was admitting there. If covid jabs can’t survive a placebo-controlled trial, then… they shouldn’t be sold. Again, it’s common sense, doc.

    Jab salesman and former FDA advisory board member Dr. Paul Offit viewed improved transparency and higher safety standards as threats. “You are watching the gradual dissolution of the vaccine infrastructure in this country,” Offit said, without any exaggeration whatsoever. But Offit’s quote was another accidental confession. If the entire system collapses under the weight of gold-standard testing, then what we had before wasn’t science to begin with. It was a house of gold-plated cards held up by blind trust in bureaucratic shortcuts.

    💉 The Globe and the rest of corporate media studiously ignored a very basic problem with all the experts’ arguments: the simple fact that all other drugs require placebo testing. So any ethics concerns, delays in releasing, additional expense, and ‘risks’ of non-approval are equally applicable to all other medicines. Somehow, for all other drugs except vaccines, placebo testing is considered not just acceptable but de rigueur.

    What jab experts need to explain isn’t why placebo trials are ‘too risky’ — it’s why vaccines get a hall pass while new blood thinners, cancer drugs, and antidepressants must run the full gauntlet. If a heart drug that could save millions is required to beat a sugar pill in a fair fight, why not a shot you’re giving to a perfectly healthy infant?

    It’s such a basic question that a child could ask it: Why should vaccines get different treatment from every other drug? And yet, not one corporate media outlet reporting on HHS’s new placebo standard dared to touch that critical distinction. Combine that with their complete omission of how vaccines are currently tested — or not tested — and it’s obvious: this wasn’t journalism.

    It was institutional propaganda dressed in bylines and pull quotes. As a critical reader, always ask yourself: What obvious issue is the article conveniently overlooking?

    The experts aren’t afraid that RFK Jr. is wrong— they’re afraid he’s right. They are terrified the public might start noticing how little scrutiny vaccines have actually received compared to every other drug on the market. If experts were confident in the science, they’d welcome placebo trials as vindication. Fine, go ahead and do your little placebo trials, you’ll see we were right all along. Their panic tells you they’re not afraid of being disproven — they’re afraid of being exposed.

    This simple policy change was much more than a first step. It was a seismic move. With only a little luck, it could change everything.

    🌍🌍🌍

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      1. and arranged to have the doctor who suggested that they should all wash their hands locked away in a mental institution, where he was beaten to death by guards. Ignaz Semmelweis’s story is useful reading for anyone who still trusts medical authorities.

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  49. What do you think the world’s (human) population will be in 75 years? Just a basic educated guess. My upper bound is around 2.5 Billion, likely it will be smaller than that.

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    1. Ahh, I see you’re in one of those fun doomer melancholy moods. Thinking about some dark, heavy topics. Probably listening to some good but depressing music. Maybe a glass or two of red wine… Oh wait, that’s what I’m doing.😊

      And since I don’t have the will power to abstain from sharing my predictions, I’ll play.

      2050 – 2 billion
      2100 – 500 million
      2150 – 50 million
      2200 – 5 million
      2250 – zero

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        1. No agriculture at all by then. Too hot for most life to be living above ground. Nothing to eat for the unlucky few that are trying to keep the human race alive. Nuclear radiation leftover from war and the 440 power plant meltdowns just adding to the chaos… humans will fade away like a dream.   

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          1. Too hot for most life to be living above ground

            What about at higher latitudes? Most of the warming will make polar regions more temperate rather than heating the Tropics. These are maps of the Earth’s climate before and during the Paleocene-Eocene-Thermal-Maximum.

            https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021PA004325

            Here is a contemporary Köppen climate map

            But I agree with the sentiment of the rest of the comment. In light of all of those nuclear reactors, maybe it was Germany that made the right decision by closing them down, rather than France.

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    2. It is likely that most of us won’t be here to know so it is not a relevant question as there is no answer. Speculating has no purpose.

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      1. Oh c’mon you big Scrooge😊. Speculation is fun. It’s all we do with the stock market… actually it’s all we’ve ever done since waking up with the nightmare of full consciousness. 

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    3. I like the idea of using carrying capacity maths for this. There are three eras to consider and we need to guess when they will end. The age of oil is easy, but the others are difficult. There scenarios are friendly and conservative.

      1870 to 2070 – the age of oil. Starting population is 1.3 billion.

      1600 to 2150 – the age of modernity / expansion. Starting population is 500 million. I assume slower collapse of older systems in some areas, plus massive ecological collapse. Interestingly the maths doesn’t give this much of a population drop.

      9000 BCE to 2150 CE – the age of agriculture. This assumes environmental conditions continue to worsen year on year, which is unlikely (but possible). It depends on climate change and other serious ecological events. Maybe this end date could be much later.

      The results of modelling this conservatively are:

      2070 – 650 million

      2150 – 500 million  

      2150 – less than 1 million

      I personally think less 300 million by 2090 is likely based on my understanding of carrying capacity and assuming systems collapse is worse than mainstream predictions suggest.

      The impact of nuclear failures, nuclear war, super volcanoes, and rapid warming are hard to predict, even for people with really clever models.

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  50. Maybe with Hideaway in New Guinea with no means of correcting us we can indulge a little hope for BAU before returning to our default pessimism.

    The Peak Oil Chat group took a super deep dive into hydrogen based solutions today. I only listened with one ear but there’s a lot of substance and new ideas here. I’ll probably listen to it again more carefully while sanding my roof tomorrow.

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    1. LOL. I forgot about the pit bull being away. Uh-oh, nobody’s guarding the gates to un-Denial.

      It’d be great if Hideaway came back in a couple weeks and this site and all of us have turned full blown hopium… Brandon style. 😂😂

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