Today’s guest post is by Hideaway, the originator of Complexity Theory, the only new idea in the study of human overshoot since Varki’s MORT 10 years ago.
For those who have not followed Hideaway at Peak Oil Barrel or here at un-Denial, Complexity Theory argues that any species that is dependent on any non-renewable resource must grow or it will collapse, because as a resource depletes the quality of its reserves declines, which requires increasing complexity and energy for extraction to maintain the flow of supply, and increasing complexity requires a growing population, because each brain can manage a finite level of complexity, which requires a growing supply of resources to support the growing population, and because recycling non-renewable minerals without losses is impossible, and since the energy that supply chains depend on is mostly non-renewable, a point is eventually reached where the complexity of supply chains must break down, and the species returns to a state that is not dependent on non-renewable resources, which for humans is a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
Complexity Theory, if true, is important because it implies any plan to mitigate the effects of human overshoot like climate change, species extinction, pollution, or resource scarcity, with population reduction policies, or a steady-state economy using a full-reserve asset-backed monetary system, or voluntary degrowth, or balanced budgets, will cause a reduction of complexity, and therefore the population and its lifestyle that depends on growing complexity for resources will collapse, possibly quite quickly due to the many self-reinforcing feedback loops in supply chains, and the extreme level of current human complexity and overshoot.
In today’s post Hideaway focusses on a quality of energy that is required to support complexity, Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI).
“EROEI is the ratio of the amount of usable energy (the exergy) delivered from a particular energy resource to the amount of exergy used to obtain that energy resource.” – Wikipedia
For anyone new to the concept of EROEI, here is a simple way to visualize it. Imagine we discovered an oil field with a gigantic quantity oil but it was so deep that the machines used to drill and pump the oil burned all of the oil obtained. This energy source has an EROEI of 1.0, because energy obtained equals energy used, which means it contributes nothing to civilization (except pollution), and will not be exploited for long because oil companies cannot make a profit.
Any useful energy source must have an EROEI higher than 1.
Most advocates of non-fossil energy believe it has a plenty high EROEI and therefore we can and should transition from burning fossil energy. Hideaway here calculates that their EROEI assumptions are far too optimistic.
Hideaway has spent several years patiently trying to educate and persuade dozens of alternate energy advocates, with, as far as I can tell, zero success. I believe this is yet more evidence that Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT theory is correct because energy experts are plenty smart enough to understand Hideaway’s calculations, yet are incapable of doing so.
Given that Hideaway’s Complexity Theory predicts we will soon collapse no matter what we do, why is the truth about EROEI important? Because if Hideaway is correct and non-fossil energy is not making enough net contribution to our civilization, then subsidizing and prioritizing non-fossil energy will increase the rate of depletion of non-renewable resources, which will reduce the time to collapse, and probably worsen the pollution and ecosystem destruction our descendent hunter-gatherers must cope with. In other words, using non-fossil energy will worsen the problems their advocates are trying to solve.
Truth here therefore is a big deal.
Hideaway should be commended for the significant original research he did here.
His conclusion sheds light on why everything seems to be breaking all at once now, and why our leaders are obsessively fixated on regime changing Russia and Iran, two of the very few remaining big sources of exportable oil.
A few years ago, when I couldn’t get a mining project to work economically by using just renewables for the power source, despite the claims of “renewables” being the cheapest form of electricity, I knew I had to go and find out what I was missing. Using diesel to generate electricity at remote mine sites is extremely expensive, so if there was any truth in renewables being “cheaper”, it should be validated at remote mine sites.
I searched for every document I could find about how EROEI was worked out and found many documents discussing great EROEI for renewables, but precious little on how much energy went into building solar panels, wind turbines, or batteries. If I traced far enough back to references of references, I eventually found some numbers, but mostly just plucked out of the air with some basic calculations on Aluminium production and glass production, with a few about silicon wafer production and the energy used in the processes alone.
Even the nuclear industry had a way they worked out their often touted 100 to 1 energy return on investment. The following is from the World Nuclear Association, quoted!!
“Peterson et al (2005) have presented materials figures for four reactor types:
- Generation II PWR of 1000 MWe: 75 m3 concrete and 36 t steel per MWe.
- ABWR of 1380 MWe: 191,000 m3 concrete, 63,440 t metal – 138 m3 concrete and 46 t metal/MWe.
- EPR of 1600 MWe: 204,500 m3 concrete, 70,900 t metal – 128 m3 concrete and 44.3 t metal/MWe.
- ESBWR of 1500 MWe: 104,000 m3 conc, 50,100 t metal – 69 m3 concrete and 33 t metal/MWe.
The AP1000 is similar to the ESBWR per MWe but no actual data is given.
Using gross energy requirement figures of 50 GJ/t for steel or 60 GJ/t for metal overall, 1.5 GJ/t or 3 GJ/m3 for pure concrete, this data converts to:
- Generation II PWR needs: 225 GJ concrete + 2160 GJ metal/MWe = 2.3 PJ/GWe.
- ABWR needs: 414 GJ concrete + 2760 GJ metal/MWe = 3.2 PJ/GWe.
- EPR needs: 384 GJ concrete + 2658 GJ metal/MWe = 3.0 PJ/GWe.
- ESBWR needs: 207 GJ concrete + 1980 GJ metal/MWe = 2.2 PJ/GWe.
In common with other studies the inputs are all in primary energy terms, joules, and any electrical inputs are presumed to be generated at 33% thermal efficiency.
The figures now in Table 1 for plant construction and operation, and also for decommissioning, are from Weissbach et al (2013) adjusted for 1 GWe. They are slightly higher than the above estimates, but much lower than earlier published US figures (ERDA 76-1). Our fuel input figures are 60% higher than Weissbach. Hence our EROI is 70, compared with 105 in that study.”
My way of thinking is that if you dump 191,000 tonnes of concrete and 63,440 tonnes of metals, mostly steel with ‘some’ copper, aluminium, etc. all together in a pile somewhere, it does not materialize into a ABWR nuclear power plant all by itself. All the bits and pieces need to be carefully constructed into very certain shapes and combinations, plus built in the correct order to become a nuclear power plant, therefore their calculations had to be horribly wrong!
If we dumped that quantity of those materials, in there correct shapes, onto the North Sentinal Island where some of the most isolated primitive humans exist, would they turn it into a nuclear power plant? The answer is obviously also NO!!
What if we left a very specific set of written instructions for those people? Again NO as they do not know how to read, nor do any calculations.
How about leaving the cement, reinforcing steel, gravel, sand, and all the instructions of how to put it all together to make concrete in some sign language form, to just make the foundations? Once again NO. How do you give instructions for just the right consistency, or to get all air bubbles out, or to work the surface correctly when in the setting process? You can’t, it only comes from experience of working with concrete.
Even if we had a group of knowledgeable teenagers, who could read and follow instructions, would we get them to be totally responsible for the foundations of a nuclear power plant? Again NO, as we need engineers and experienced concreters to build something that will last decades and is highly dangerous with failure of something like the foundations of the reactor chamber.
From this line of thinking, extended to solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, geothermal, plus even oil , gas and coal, there has to be an inclusion of all the energy inputs, which includes the education of the people involved in construction and operation, as well as all the energy inputs to the trucks, bridges, ports, mines, roads to mines, etc., etc., that all have to exist for building of anything to be possible. We only have one possible way to include all the inputs, money, or the cost of building and operating any form of energy source.
Money, or cost is certainly not going to be a perfect way to work out the Energy cost of building anything, plus it needs to be compared to something to come to a conclusion about the EROEI.
Firstly, we know that fossil fuels certainly can or could provide the net energy for everything else in a modern civilization, from the simple fact that modern civilization exists at all, at least for ‘most’ in the developed countries.
As the price for every energy supply appears to be different all over the world and different for each type of energy, I decided to look at the wholesale price or cost of energy at the world’s manufacturing hub of South/East Asia as a starting point. The question is over what period? Going back to 2012 the average price of crude oil was often over $100/bbl, while in March 2020 it was $16/bbl.
Should the price be from a single year when a solar panel factory starts production, or should it be over the years when the factory was built?
Should it be when the adults who are working in the factory were at school, or perhaps when the engineers, accountants, lawyers and managers were at university?
Maybe it should be when the mine providing the silicon was established, or the ships and ports where they load and unload were built? OK no easy answer at all.
Anyway, I decided to look at the average wholesale price of energy in different forms over the last decade (from 2013- 2023) as it encompassed times of higher and lower wholesale energy prices. What surprised me most was that oil, gas and metallurgical coal all had around the same average wholesale price over that period of around $US43/MWh, with thermal coal cheaper. It was cheap enough that the wholesale price of electricity in Asia during this period was also around the $US40/MWh.*
*Of course there are variations from year to year and from one location to another, but interestingly when I worked out the average price for oil over the prior decade 2003-2012 is was also around the same number, roughly $70/bbl that corresponds with around $41/MWh for the energy content using 1.7MWh/bbl.
Once I had a base number it was fairly easy to just compare the total lifetime cost, both capital and operating and maintenance cost of any energy producer back to how much energy was produced.
I decided to use $US40/MWh as the average wholesale cost of energy for every type of energy producer, as the base for the capital, operating and maintenance costs over the lifetime of operation. This cost to build and operate the plant can then be compared to the total lifetime output for that plant. The actual base number doesn’t really matter as I’ll explain towards the end of this article.
For our purposes here is a simplistic example. If an oil well returned $400 worth of energy over it’s lifetime, while only costing $40 worth of energy in total, to build and operate, then the EROEI was 10/1. As in it cost 1MWh of energy and returned 10mWh of energy, in this case oil.
I had no idea at all about what type of results this form of calculation would give me, or if it would be close to the often touted 10 or 20 to 1 returns that are needed for modern civilization to exist, until I worked out as much as possible.
I was not interested in theoretical cost, I wanted actual existing examples so I could compare different energy delivery types. Finding the actual numbers proved a lot more difficult than I expected. All over the place are headlines of a new development with an expected cost of $XYZ. Often though, the completed cost was vastly different to ‘expected’ capital cost. Then there was also operating and maintenance costs which many projects are very coy about, again giving some expected costs, with nothing about actual operating costs released, this depended upon the energy source.
For some like the nuclear industry, it’s fairly easy to find average O&M costs from public companies or industry announcements. The nuclear industry reports this for US reactors, with the average being around the $30/MWh as per World Nuclear Association (includes fuel costs).*
*Anyone paying attention can immediately see that in a world of $40/MWh energy cost an O&M cost of $30/MWh means that this form of energy cannot deliver a 10/1 ratio of EROEI. It’s 1.33/1 before including any capital costs.
OK, here are some examples of what I came up with…
A relatively new coal fired power plant in Queensland Australia, that was a highly efficient design, based on super critical operating temperatures, situated right next to the coal mine, where they dig the coal themselves, so no “price” paid for coal, had an EROEI of only 5.09/1.
This coal power station cost $US750M to build, including all the costs associated with the coal mine and conveyor system (4km), with an operating cost of around $US4.68/MWh for staff and sustaining capital.
Assuming the lifespan to be 40 years then over the plant and coal mine life of 40 years at a 90% capacity factor, it will produce 750Mw X 24hrs X 365 days X 40 years X 0.9 capacity factor. = 236,520,000MWh of electricity into the grid.
Total cost of capital plus O&M over this lifetime = $US750,000,000 + 236,520,000 X $US4.68 = $1,856,913,600 or $7.85/Mwh, giving an EROEI of $40/7.85 = 5.09/1.
The overall formula is adding all costs in $US to keep everything consistent, then divide by the $40/MWh average cost of wholesale energy over the last decade or so. Then compare the cost to build and operate in MWh with the total MWh the plant will produce over it’s lifetime of operation.
Using exactly the same method, I came up with an EROEI of a new gas well, connected to the system and paying their share of O&M to the pipeline authority in Western Australia of 23/1. The capital cost of drilling 2 wells and building a simple processing plant, plus joining up to the main gas pipeline, plus the fees to pipeline operator comes to a total cost of $US25,750,000, while the return is 15,000,000 MWh of gas delivered to customers.
In Saudi Arabia there are still old wells that have a total capital plus operating and maintenance cost of $2.5/bbl. That comes out to an EROEI of 27/1. These are the old legacy wells drilled decades ago and still flowing well. The Saudi’s also have newer wells at a much lower EROEI, yet I can’t get data on this of actual costs.
The New England Solar Farm in northern NSW, is still being built at a capital cost of around $US858M for a 720 MW plant, an expected life of 25 years with an expected capacity of 5.5 hours/d on average. It also has 400MWh of battery storage, or about 35 minutes at the rated capacity. In terms of O&M costs in solar circles I’ve seen 1% of capital costs as the base used for the first decade, with costs expected to be 2-3% of capital costs thereafter. I’ve used a constant 1.5% of capital cost as the basis for my calculations.
1% of Capital cost of $858M = $8.58M X1.5 O&M X 25 yrs = $321,750,000. Add capital cost of $858M = $1,179,750,000. Divide by cost of energy $40/MWh = 29,493,750 MWh.
How much electricity will the plant produce over it’s life 720MW X 5.5Hrs/d X 365d/y X 25 Yrs = 36,135,000MWh ..or an EROEI of 1.22/1.
A wind farm near me of 132MW capacity, at a capital cost of $US193,000,000 and an expected O&M cost of $7.53/MWh, with expected production of 7,227,000 MWH over it’s life expectancy of 25 years. It was meant to have a capacity factor of 37% but has been running well below that at only 25% capacity, which is the number I’ve used. I’ve also noticed that fairly often during the day when I pass it, even with a good breeze, it’s often mostly stopped, and when I check the wholesale price at the time, it’s negative, meaning they deliberately shutdown the plant to avoid a cost to send electricity into the grid.
Anyway cost of $193,000,000 + 7,227,000MWh X $7.53/MW = $US247,419,310 lifetime cost. Divide by $40/MWh = 6,185,482MWh to build. The EROEI is 7,227,000MWH divided by 6,185,482MWh = 1.17/1.
Hinkley Point C nuclear plant with a latest estimation of $62,000,000,000 capital cost, an output of 1,564,185,600 MWh over a 60 year lifespan plus the same O&M costs of $30/MWh as in the US NPP fleet, works out with the following… 62B + 1,564,185,600hrs X 30/MWh = $108,925,568,000 lifetime cost, divided by $40/MWh = 2,723,139,200MWh to build while producing only 1,564,185,600MWh of electricity over 60 years or an EROEI of 0.57/1. In other words less energy produced than went into building and operating it!! (assuming there is any accuracy in the methodologies ‘cost to build’)
For curiosity I worked out a fracked well based on some industry numbers from D Coyne and others on the Peak Oil Barrel web page. Assuming the capital cost of the older wells was around the $US10,000,000 plus O&M costs averaging $US12/bbl, and a return over first 120 months (10 years) of 375,000bbls oil equivalent, then the cost is $10,000,000 + 375,000 X $12 = $US14,500,000. Divide by $40/Mwh = 362,500MWh for a return of 375,000 bbls which equals 375,000 X 1.7MWh.bbl = 637,500MWh. The EROEI is therefore 637,500MWH divided by 362,500MWh cost or 1.76/1.
Assuming the wholesale price of energy was a too low a number to use in the first place, because only the largest businesses pay this cheap price, while all the people involved in every aspect of their daily lives have to pay a much higher retail price, what does it do to all the EROEIs shown?
Lets take a quick example using a cost of energy as $80/MWh instead of the $40/MWh of the approximate wholesale price of energy to reflect the ‘retail’ costs people actually pay.
In the first very simple example we had an oil well that cost 1MWh of oil energy to build and returned 10Mwh of oil energy. In that case the energy cost was $40/MWH.
Let’s double the energy cost to the more realistic $80/MWh cost. However it still only cost $40 to build and operate, all we changed was the base price of energy we use to $80/MWh. It’s now only costing 0.5MWh of energy to build and still returning 10MWh of oil energy so the EROEI has gone up to 20/1.
Exactly the same happens to all the EROEI numbers we worked out, they all doubled. The ratio between any of the energy producers stayed the same. In fact we could use whatever number we liked for the overall energy cost, it’s just the EROEI numbers that change, but are always related back to each other.
In summary, assuming the original $40/MWh wholesale cost of energy, and $80/MWh for comparison, we get the following EROEIs:
| $40/MWh | $80/MWH | |
| Kogan Creek coal power station | 5.09 | 10.18 |
| Old Saudi oil wells | 27 | 54 |
| Permian fracked oil wells ~2015 | 1.76 | 3.52 |
| NESF Solar Farm | 1.22 | 2.44 |
| MTG Wind Farm | 1.17 | 2.34 |
| WA gas wells | 23 | 46 |
| Hinkley Point C nuclear | 0.57 | 1.14 |
None of the new energy types, including nuclear give us anything like the 10-20 EROEI that’s needed for modern civilisation to operate, yet the older fossil fuel plants have given us a much higher numbers on average well in excess of what’s often cited as the required EROEI.
Taking another new coal mine, the Leer South one in W Virginia USA, has a resource of 200,000,000 tonnes of metallurgical coal at an energy content of 8.33MWh/tonne. So the return for this new mine is around 1,666,000,000MWh in total over decades. The capital cost was around $380,000,000 and operating cost of $72.49/tonne. This works out at an EROEI of around 4.48 at the $40/MWh rate or 8.96 at the $80/Mwh rate for energy cost of building and operating the mine.
This mine and the Kogan Creek coal fired power station I mentioned earlier are both late coal developments, not considered viable in earlier times when easier to obtain coal resources were available. It’s the same with the fracked oil from the Permian, only left until recently as the energy prices were too low for them to be considered. The Leer South mine has seams of coal 2-3.5 metres in thickness with waste between the seams and between layers in the seams. Likewise for Kogan Creek.
These are not the thick, easy to mine types of coal deposits we built civilization with 50-100 years ago, so have a much lower EROEI than the easy to get and now depleted coal from around the world. Yet both are decent EROEIs at the $40/MWh cost and much higher EROEIs than any of the newer energy producers.
In conclusion, it should be obvious to everyone that any energy producing facility that costs a total of under $US26M over it’s lifetime (the small gas field in WA) and delivers 15,000,000MWh has a far better return under any metric than one that delivers only 7,227,000MWh (and intermittently at that), the Mt Gellibrand Wind Farm for a total lifetime cost of over $US247M.
All the ‘costs’ associated with any of energy producers are spent by the providers of the goods and services to build and operate the plants. People spend the money they earn working on these things, on food, heating their houses, cooling their houses, getting to work, their kid’s education and food, holidays, etc., the list is endless. Yet every single cent spent by anyone in the chain anywhere has an energy cost associated with it somewhere. Spending over $US247M must have a much higher background energy cost than something only costing under $US26M.
Understanding this cost difference, then comparing just these raw numbers to countless research papers that try to make out that wind farms have a better EROEI than the gas wells/plant costing only 10% overall, yet producing more than double the energy, has to make you think we are just deluding ourselves.
I know my numbers and methodology are far from perfect, yet they seem a lot more honest in comparing differences between the various energy providers and clearly show we have trouble ahead as the older much higher EROEI type energy producers are rapidly declining. These older types, even in the fossil fuel domain, are clearly the most profitable ones, so humans being humans are likely to use these much faster than the newer more marginal energy sources.
I saw a comment by HHH saying the economies of all countries are MUCH worse than we are being told. That might explain the crazy acceleration in debt just reported by Steve St. Angelo, Trump’s desperate tariff behavior, and the war drums everywhere.
Wars and rumors of Wars. . . starting to make me think that we are RAPIDLY approaching a big fall (maybe days to at most weeks). It is looking like peak stock market (AI mania like dotcom mania), peak debt (like 2008 but sooo much more). And wars (Ukraine/Gaza) and rapid moves toward MORE WARS (Venusuala, Iran/Middle East/WW3 starting).
And to top it off Gaia (and some of the rest of you) got me started reading “Black Autumn” (It is predictable prepper fiction of which I read volumes years ago) . . . what a way to waste time (meaning it’s excellent for the genre, thuroughly depressing/accurate and makes me want to SCREAM at the universe) or just lapse into complete denail like all those arround me? Is ignorance bliss????
AJ
Don’t forget the best barometer of geopolitical/economic pressure.
Gold.
Now $4000!
Yeah, I started buying it 30 years ago and have continued to buy up to last year. BUT, what good is it? It is only good if we had a reset like the Great Depression and civilization continued. If we have the Collapse we all see coming it is worthless. Sure I have food, booze, water and guns, but what I wish I had was a gray man spot to live at. Being 30 treacherous road miles from a town of 30,000 in a rural area of about 2000 means we will still probably get overrun by lots of people. Nothing is safe or long term in a true Collapse.
AJ
The trick is to sell your gold and buy sardines and vodka right before the collapse.
I live in a decent gray man location but it’s 15Km from the farm. If gas is not available for my 3L/100Km motorcycle my backup plan is an eBike followed by a regular bike, assuming health and age cooperate.
I should have mentioned that the farm has a second home that is rented to farm workers so if it gets really bad I may have an opportunity to move to the farm. The farm’s at an excellent location and is easy to defend.
I’ve questioned different people, mostly relatives in the city about what they would do if TSHTF with collapse. They invariably say they would turn up at our small farm.
It begs the question of how many people know about the farm you work at and the likelihood of masses of people turning up there, just as TSHTF, not later when down the slope of collapse, but right at the beginning as everyone notices things are falling to pieces. Surely the owners have their own relatives and perhaps good customers that are all thinking the same as my relatives..
I agree with AJ up thread about being “gray man” as in completely unknown in the area and as far away as possible from civilization, so it takes a great effort to get near the place even now. it means my place is probably going to be overrun with people we know turning up, using their last fuel to do so etc, and realistically there is not many, if any, places to hide…
Yes, it’ll probably be sardines, vodka, movies, and long walks.
With regard to locations in Oz, there are some people on islands off the coast that have prepper populations and intend to make a go of it. An ocean crossing seems to be about the only thing that would guarentee you won’t be facing the marauding hordes? I also used to be in a prepper group and one member had a sailing boat/ship that they lived on and the plan was to survive at sea until the chaos passes, then come back to land at a chosen spot/time.
I am glad for this space to check in with too. I listened to Scott Ritter re Ukraine/Russian interview this morning, and yes war seems as close as it has ever been in several spots around the world. This was a good interview, cathartic in some ways to listen to. At least some people know what the hell is going on, and aren’t afraid to state it plainly.
Hello there my friend AJ,
I am so with you and send you all my strength to face what we here have the courage to un-deny. We can’t be any other way now, and soon many others will have their veils lifted. I am thinking of the land you’re faithfully caretaking and the many trees that you’ve planted, and can sense that like myself, having contributed in this way gives you much joy and peace. I know we all think it’s not going to make any difference now but t is not the quantity but quality of our effort and intention that shows our highest character and that is still worth living with and for.
Some times I like to try to step out of my human skin and seeing with human eyes (which of course is impossible to do so completely) and for every calamity that is awaiting us, perhaps the rest of the natural world is thinking that is their chance at some kind of salvation. This greatly helps me balance my inner turmoil, trying to see the whole process as part of Life and the natural law and order continuing as we know they will. It doesn’t redeem or lift any of the sadness I have for the suffering, nor do I wish that because I think being depressed and remorse-filled is the most appropriate human feeling we can have for this situation, anything else or nothing diminishes my highest vison of my humanity.
This is our lot and we can and must and will be able to live with and through it. What a blessing and comfort it is to have the company of like-minded and hearted friends here, it makes the path forward bearable and more noble.
All the best to you and your family.
Namaste, friend.
Thank you for your kind words. They mean alot.
I fear like Hideaway above that all my relatives and others that know I am somewhat prepared will attempt to make it out here. I will of course have to take them in, and then we will all starve slowly.
I contemplate my non-existence (death) all the time and on a certain level feel peace knowing it approaches. The vast time from the Big Bang to now was unknown to me and so will be the heat death of this universe when all our remaining atoms are quiet (if that is how it ends).
It is glorious to have been alive and witnessed this moment with some limited awareness of the majesty of the Universe and Life. But, onward with the MPP my atoms “want” to keep the entropy going with new Life while this star ages.
Thankfully I have defective denial genes and can see a small amount of reality as it is.
All the best to you and your family.
Namaste, friend.
AJ
Hello AJ,
Thank you for sharing your beautifully expressed and uplifting thoughts which I embrace completely. It is just so good to know our consciousnesses are connected in not just an understanding of but most importantly, peace with our ultimate reality.
Go well, friend and brother in both sorrow and joy.
Let us look forward to hopefully many more meetings here, with each new day being a bonus and gift.
Namaste.
(h/t dave@megacancer). Sensed some pro USA vibes with the creator. And he’s simplifying the hell out things. I’m not buying what he’s selling, but I did enjoy the video. And it reminded me of a comment from a while back where I tried to explain why international law doesn’t apply to the US:
https://un-denial.com/2024/06/13/coping-with-awareness/comment-page-3/#comment-101171
Good video, thanks.
The book Guns, Germs, and Steel provides additional geographic and biophysical explanations for why civilization emerged as it did. It discusses things like having countries aligned along a similar latitude (Europe) facilitates technology and trade. Europe also had domesticable animals, Africa did not.
FYI, the sponsor of that video, Farmland LP, used to employ an overshoot hero of mine, Jason Bradford. Many years ago he ran the Reality Report podcast and has written an excellent book on the future of agriculture.
Here’s an episode of Reality Report which is I believe the only recorded interview with the deceased grandfather of all Themists, Jay Hanson.
https://un-denial.com/2018/03/26/by-jay-hanson-reality-report-interview-november-3-2008/
I listened to this today, but want to watch as well, as the maps and visuals etc tell the story. Great combination of geography and history combined (fav subjects at school). And a bit clever to put this together to sell their product. You should stick your comment underneath his vid perhaps…And no mention of Australia and our rivers! we are an afterthought often.
btw, we downloaded The Wall the other night, but alas no subtitles, watched for a while anyway and remarkable scenery but it was very dialogue heavy, so had even less idea what was going on.
Tonight we’ve got The Lost Bus lined up. A nice break from Northern Exposure reruns. (though I do like comfort telly to fall asleep too) This one has Mathew McConaughey in it. I vaguely remember this from 2017 LA fires about a bus load of kids. I assume he saves the day – otherwise it would not be much of a movie to watch!
This film The Lost Bus was the 2018 Paradise fire (a collapse blogger writes about), and I could not even watch it, I get too tense at night and need to escape from reality, not be reminded of it. Yes – I am a wuss. The 2019/20 fires in Australia were the last straw that broke through and started the collapse understanding trajectory for me.
“And no mention of AU”… LOL
Ya, the dialogue in ‘The Wall’ is a key feature to being able to appreciate that movie.😉
Comfort telly is about the only thing I can watch these days (other than an occasional movie). I like Northern Exposure too. The ones I’m into right now are MASH, Barney Miller, Newhart, and China Beach. But I can’t binge watch the way I used to.
And funny that your partner keeps the petrol full. He’s got some doomer in him, lol. I’m not a prepper at all, but I’m very OCD about two things. Having a full tank of gas & keeping my five-gallon water jugs full at all times.
I seem to be avoiding movies that might cause any stress or discomfort. My goto comfort food these days is the 1958 Peter Gunn series and of course Columbo which I’ve seen every episode a gazillion times.
I have Northern Exposure queued thanks to recommendations here. Never heard of China Beach but it looks promising and I’m adding it to my library.
You are in for a quirky treat with Northern Exposure. It is meant to be set in Alaska, but apparently was filmed somewhere in Canada, not sure where. When watching now i notice the logging truck that seems to make an appearance in the small town nearly every episode, that I never saw first time round. It’s lovely nostalgic viewing, puts me to sleep like a dream.
Fun facts to ponder:
I haven’t paid much attention to climate change for a while because the other threats of resource depletion, accelerating debt, and war seem more imminent.
This most recent episode of Alex Smith’s Radio Ecoshock suggests climate change is catching up.
I remember scientists saying we must move mountains to not cross a 1.5C rise because 2C is incompatible with civilization.
Now scientists say we’re already at 1.5C, the temperature rise is accelerating faster than anyone predicted, and 3C is probable by 2050, which, based on their track record, means we’ll hit 3C well before 2050.
2050 is very close for a young person today. 🙁
https://www.ecoshock.org/2025/10/accelerated-warming-experts-freak-out.html
3° C by 2050? That is terrifying. Basically, we would return to the climate of the Pliocene within my lifetime.
J Doe here.
In 2018, Dr. Ramanathan published this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07586-5
Essentially, he cautioned in that comment that global warming will happen faster than the IPCC predicted, and that 2050 might see close to 3°C on the current trajectory.
What you might not know is that Dr. Ajit Varki is real-life friends with Dr. Ramanathan, and when Ram asked Ajit why no one was listening to him (his publication was mostly ignored by almost everyone, including most climate scientists, at least publically) and Ajit told him about his MORT hypothesis. It’s hilarious, in a morbid way.
Great story, thank you.
That might explain why when I first met Dr. Varki he was primarily concerned about climate change and its denial. I think I succeeded in widening Dr. Varki’s overshoot perspective, but failed (I think) of helping him see the covid crimes.
Terrifying thought: What happens when the s**t hits the fan in South Asia? India and Pakistan both have nuclear weapons…
Before Pakistan and India nuke each other over shared glacier water that no longer exists, Pakistan will fulfill an agreement with Saudi Arabia to provide it nuclear weapons when Iran gets nukes, which is pretty much any day now since the US deceived and attacked Iran while it negotiated in good faith.
What happens if Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran all have nuclear weapons? Nothing Good, I assume.
Does this report take peak oil into account?
“Put in Your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.”
-Revelation 14:15
Many people say the most realistic dramatization of nuclear war is the 1984 BBC film Threads.
I have it in my library but have not yet watched it.
Canadian Prepper recently did a two part, scene by scene review of the film.
The film is so eerie yet also very gritty and realistic. Quite difficult to make a movie that feels haunted and realistic at the same time. I enjoyed it, but it left me in a bad mood for several days because of how creeped out I was
I watched both the prepper’s interpretation of it and the original “Threads” (available on youtube) last night.
Whenever I discuss with people about the future of civilization, they inevitable get to a nuclear war, or climate catastrophe, or major real pandemic, or, or…
The reality of just having rapid energy availability depletion doing all the same bad things by itself, seem to escape people altogether. I’m not saying that any of the catastrophic things we talk about wont happen as governments get desperate etc, but they are not a necessity for collapse.
Even without the catastrophic event or events, the financial failure from inflation, as skyrocketing oil prices most people out of the market, which then sends industries and businesses broke, creating massive unemployment, all without increasing oil supply, because we are past true peak, will still bring about most of the dismal stuff portrayed in ‘Threads’.
That film is a stark reminder that no matter how well prepared you think you are, the govt (or perhaps local warlord) can, and likely will, just end your preparations with something completely unexpected, with no regard to your ‘rights’ of any kind..
Great film. My MORT always made me avoid this. And I had very low expectations of watching it with Nate running his mouth the whole time. But his commentary was excellent. I eventually got into a groove where I was always hoping he’d pause the video and give me more info.
My only complaint was with Nate playing with his phone during the movie. It was mainly during the 1st video. Annoyed the hell out of me. LOL. Hey Nate, if you can’t help yourself with the phone addiction, then for your next movie commentary, turn around with your back facing us and do it MST3K style.
And just in case anyone has never seen that show. They watch a horrible movie and just riff on it the whole way through. It’s brilliant. This is my favorite one:
Not directly related, but this episode shows how some parts of the world works. More low tech but the diesel use is more direct. Truckers traveling for months delivering goods. Bald and bankrupt shows how the central parts of the Eurasian continent works. Enjoy watching using a lot of water.
Damn I love this woman.
Sabine had a triple shot of espresso today and tells us which mysteries of the universe we will someday understand and which will forever remain mysteries.
Good video. My only problem is that she seems to be collapse unaware in the extreme. There is no physics research in the future (10 years or 100). We are now at the peak of our scientific knowledge of the universe and universal laws and will rapidly go back to gods and superstition, if we don’t go completely extinct.
Sad.
AJ
Yes, it’s amazing that someone so smart can be so blind to things so important and so obvious. MORT must be true.
Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is already on my list of polymaths in denial:
https://un-denial.com/2018/09/03/on-famous-polymaths/
I saw Xraymike79 on your list of good guys. Forgot about him. Unsubscribed a while back because I was sick of AI poetry. I just checked out his site. He actually managed to squeeze in an essay today. My notes are in parenthesis:
Cascading Collapse: America at the Edge of Systemic Breakdown | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
Sorry if I’m being unfair to mike. I’m in a pissy mood today. I used to love mike’s writing style. WTF happened? If I didn’t already know the answer was AI, I’d still be wondering the same thing as Samuel Jackson here:
oops, forgot to que up the video. Starts at 1:56
That’s not X-ray’s voice. He used to be one of the best writers.
An unintended consequence of scarcity and complexity:
I’m sure that the tens of thousands of kilometres of collective fibre cable left tangled behind in fields, forests, waterways and roads won’t have any further unintended consequences for man or beast.
The irony of the title Drone Warfare is Destroying our Germanium Supply almost escaped me. It doesn’t matter what destruction is caused by these minions of terror, godforbid the price of rare earths skyrocketing!
The image of the hundreds of drones stacked on the shelf was truly sobering especially as this represents an infinitesimal number of the 4 million produced by Ukraine alone annually. All our worst sci-fi nightmares are now true; the skies will be even more blackened with this new plague when the war expands.
As the US Secretary of War exhorted, we are in the business of destroying and killing and we will do so with ferocity.
Interestingly, just yesterday I listened (and sang along at top voice) to a classic anthem of the 80s (every now and then I have an 80s music nostalgia urge which usually leads to hours of trolling through YouTube videos), Kyrie by Mr Mister. It seems to me like an antidote to war songs. Kyrie, eleison–Greek for Lord have mercy. We beseech mercy from all quarters, forgive us for we know not what we do.
Namaste, friends.
I’ve been trying to understand why Russia has not responded more aggressively to the bombing of its oil refineries by US puppets.
Imagine what the US would do if Russian puppets bombed Texas refineries.
Something isn’t right.
Maybe this is a scarcity strategy to drain everyone else first by providing force majeure cover for breaking export contracts, increasing imports, and a reason to ration discretionary use by Russian citizens.
The Dark side of the AI boom.
Good video. 1,200 of these things in the US.
LOL, the whole thing has an Easter Island 887 statues, ring to it.
I agree, the video is very interesting. We’re goin’ out like a supernova.
“We’re goin’ out like a supernova“… Totally makes sense to me.
The largest of any type of complex dissipative system is likely to be the fastest collapse at the end. It’s because so many of the internal parts of a very large complex system are so far removed from the outside environment, even though they rely upon inputs from the outside for energy materials, waste removal etc, through other subsystems of the complex system..
It’s like a surface to volume ratio that makes larger organisms of all types have much better internal circulatory systems to move energy, materials and excess heat around.
Think of the people that live in the inner city areas as similar to the cells in heart muscles, kidneys, the brain, pancreas etc, etc. They totally rely upon delivery food, energy, materials and waste removal for every aspect of their survival. For the civilization the sewers, trucks, electricity lines etc have to keep working normally or they are finished. Just like the heart muscles totally rely upon the blood to keep flowing to all other areas of the body to gain food, energy, take waste, heat and products away etc.
Provided all the other parts are working normally, the farms, trucks, roads, water supply, sewers, electrical power etc, all operated by other parts of the system, then they function normally. However if any of these other parts of the system fail, then the inner city people are in a lot of trouble and if they fail/collapse, then the rest of the system will also quickly collapse.
It’s just like when the heart muscles can’t get the proper nutrients, blood supply or waste removal. It’s central to the whole system operating at all. When it fails the whole complex system quickly collapses. The exact same can be said if the kidneys fail or the brain, or the intestines, or the pancreas. The whole complex system is totally reliant on all the parts working normally for it to function. If any fail catastrophically then it’s over for the whole lot..
It’s exactly the same for the highly complex human civilization. We totally rely upon so many different subsystems, that themselves rely upon a host of other complex subsystems to operate at all, including the central money houses. While energy is what powers the entire system, money is what allows the energy to flow to all the subsystems in our complex system.
I don’t think an animal body is a good analogy for our complex civilization, it’s way more than an analogy, I think they are the same with all the same physical processes happening within. In other words all large complex dissipative structures follow a law of physics in their lifespan that ends in catastrophic collapse at the end. Supernova for the largest of stars, because they are so much more complex than the smallest of stars, and death/collapse for all living systems and systems that mimics life.
Nice explanation.
In addition:
– The monetary system requirement for growth despite falling EROEI and falling mineral quality results in an exponential rise in debt as we approach the end, and this debt will act as an explosive when money printing no longer works.
– Leaders will start wars rather than face the rath of citizens angry about failing economies, and wars will accelerate the collapse.
Chris Martenson recently disclosed what his goals are for his homestead.
He’s trying to get setup to house and feed 50 people on the assumption they will require a security team of 24 (4 pairs working NSEW in 3 x 8 hour shifts) plus people to run the farm.
He also said he has shot a half million rounds practicing.
This is exactly the premise of the doomsday book series (The Black Autumn series by Jeff Kirkham) I read and recommended some months ago.
Do people really want to survive that much that any and every creature will be shot on sight? Will having this mentality and being able to execute it be considered the most successful mutation for our further evolution? Like Chris, I also wish to renounce my human membership if that is so.
Is it too sacrilegious to add here that at the moment of killing one should ask what Jesus or Buddha would have done?
If someone has to die to decrease the pain and suffering, why not just choose ourselves? Is our one life worth killing hundreds others who also want to just live? Now we begin to understand the heart of Israel, despite our outward despising of them, they are proving out in the open how we could act ourselves if certain circumstances pushed us to our existential limit. I am sore sorry and saddened by this but face it I must.
Namaste, friends. May the highest vision of ourselves be our actuation; let us invoke courage and compassion together!
I’m with you Gaia.
My guess is Martenson’s team will quickly switch from defense to offense when another team does something that makes it difficult to feed 50.
Going to war over food is not for me.
My plan is to make a go of it via the farm I help until it becomes too difficult or dangerous, then hole up as a gray man enjoying sardines and offline movies until I run out of food, then exit on my own terms.
Gaia, it’s simply MPP in action. If some of us choose to exit instead of killing everything that approaches, then evolution favours those with the guns and willing to use them, which is precisely why collapse will be fast and bad.
Think of Chris on his farm with his band of warriors, at first protecting the farm. Let’s assume they are successful for a period of time in defending the property. Eventually something will break down that they don’t have a replacement for, so with less attacks on them, or perhaps none if they are really successful, then they will start to make advances into the world around them to see what they can ‘gather’, or take from others..
If it’s in the mentality that ‘our group’s survival’ is worth a lot more than others, then the same logic applies to taking by force from others. Hence we get what is happening in Gaza.
Reality is much more complex than that, fortunately.
You might enjoy this video, which outlines that with a seemingly simple game:
And that’s probably only one way to think about it.
Best.
Indeed, there seems to be a follow up: in this video they incorporate in the model the connectivity between people when playing the prisoner’s dilemma:
The funniest about it all, is that they have all these nice models and theories, then they test with real humans, and it doesn’t exactly turn out as expected:
I love the conclusion: “the more you allowed players to choose who they were playing with, the more likely they were to cooperate”.
It would be interesting to propose to the scientists to research versions of games where the rewards either grow with time (during phases of growth) or decline (which we are to increasingly expect), to see how this modifies the conclusions. The speed of change would be an interesting variable too.
Thanks for reminding me about the Kirkham book. I’ll start listening to it when pruning black currants at the farm tomorrow.
Hi Rob and everyone,
Black Autumn a good escape (well, not that we want to escape to TEOTWAWKI), what I really got out of it is the detail of planning that these hardcore preppers have in thinking through the scenarios from the first moment of the meltdown (a rogue nuclear event, perfectly plausible) and into the day to day of maintaining and defending the Homestead as society quickly crumbles (scarily plausible). I still haven’t watched the movie but the book was clear enough.
I realise it’s MPP in overdrive and I’ve already lived all my life as a beneficiary of the main engines of MPP, but still, I can’t and won’t kill over food if that’s what it’s going take for my personal survival over someone else’s. I know many times along the line of evolution our ancestors had to take this path of kill or be killed otherwise I wouldn’t have the privilege of being able to say any of this so cavalierly, but somehow this evolution has also produced countless individuals who have chosen to live with altruism as their guiding beacon, many even to their death. If the world degenerates to this, I also have a plan for a way out, much like Rob I will go into hermitage mode (I’m already nearly there as I have demonstrated by my disappearance) but instead of eating sardines it will be beans (still so chuffed you make the beans and rice regularly). I have plenty of books, CDs, and DVDs to numb myself before I make my final choice (I will have a vigil of nonstop David Attenborough docos to see myself out).
Thank you to everyone who has responded to my invitation to consider more of the unknown. Marigold (a most cheerful and honest flower!) has practically read my mind in parts of her response, thank you for taking the time to expand on the topic. And thank you Hideaway for balancing the scale with your grounding thoughts. I am heartened to see Charles’ comments again, we have shared many a discussion/connections, which are always open hearted and ended. I only wish I also had more time to communicate by post so for the time being, let’s work on our telepathic abilities then! Seriously, I do not claim to have any, nor am I seeking such, it’s enough for me and my life to just work on the senses, thoughts and feelings that I have as they are far from being mastered. But a good part of how I see the world comes from keeping antennae extended and circling for mysteries that solve my existential need for connection and feeling of wholeness.
Speaking of connection, I have been at once scintillated, abashed and humbled by Chris’ faithful indexing to Gaia’s prior commentary. I am thinking you may have missed me but then again, with all those posts to refer to, you shouldn’t have to! It really is eye-opening to re-read what one wrote in the past, words do have a way of charting personal change as much as the weather. I am hoping to be able to live up to the ideals of Gaia past even as Gaia present seems ever more despondent and weary. My heartfelt gratitude and love to everyone for believing that Gaia future will be able to integrate what needs to and go forth and out with light.
I have now posted daily since my “return” only 6 days ago, and it feels like I never left! This is such a comfortable space to be, like slipping into old shoes (actually I prefer going barefoot or Crocs, but you know what I’m trying to say).
This week upcoming may prove to have a few surprises, or not? 7 October is the 2nd anniversary of the event that unleashed the mask and gloves-off war, could it also mark another dramatic escalation by Israel with Iran? We’ve had a three month reprieve with both boxers corralled in their corners but the fight is not over and Iran has been expecting such. Stay well and safe, everyone.
Namaste, friends.
🙂
I can’t think of a better choice than watching David Attenborough documentaries as the end nears.
Attenborough is inspiring! He’s 99 years old and released two new documentaries this year: “Ocean” and “Deep Ocean: Kingdom of the Coelacanth”.
It does look like an attack on Iran is imminent. I have no idea what will happen. Some military experts think Israel will be destroyed. Some think the goal of Iran regime change will be achieved. Some think Iran will destroy the gulf oil infrastructure out of spite for being mistreated and deceived. Some think it might go nuclear.
My next post, if I write it, will be on something I think a lot about these days. It is the norm today for people to have completely different understandings of reality, usually none of them correct, with no humility of uncertainty, or desire to adjust views closer to truth as new data arrives. I started paying attention to this with covid mRNA transfections but I see it everywhere now.
Is this a side effect of MORT? Or social media bubbles? Or what? It feels like a strong new phenomenon but maybe its always been with us but less visible in times of peace and plenty.
Hi Rob,
Hope you’re enjoying the cooler days of Autumn and it’s full of colour except Black.
I think that when Sir David shuffles off his mortal coil we will be in the death throes of our modern civilisation, but hopefully our blue, green, frozen, living planet will then have a chance to evolve without our influence. May that be some years away yet, for all our sakes.
I think it’s always been part of our human condition to be in different realities with MPP in play. When differing realities clash, each seeks to double-down on their views, unless one can be overcome with force, including genocidal means depending on the perceived existential threat or power advantage involved. For example, the reality of the native peoples of the New World met its end when the Europeans arrived, the same for the indigenous of Australasia. Certainly there was no humility on the conquerors’ part, and no intention of adjusting views. Religion may have been a convenient frontsman but resource control (including utilising human slave labour) pulled the strings. This pattern is constantly true today as throughout human history, visible to any with eyes to see, for one’s time of plenty is directly due to another’s loss of peace.
We of Empire have small awakenings to our differences in understanding of reality, now so easily promulgated by social media, but all pale in comparison to the cataclysmic outcomes of the ending of civilisations at anothers’ hand.
If the physical laws of the universe and how they carry out in our biosphere are the ultimate reality, and we then very soon we will experience the supercollider effect of all perspectives melding into one. It will matter not if humans believe that Jesus will return to save or the earth will burn nonetheless, what will be will be, regardless of our belief, understanding, or witnessing.
Yes, it is astounding that polymaths who live and breathe these laws cannot fully understand that we have created our own inexorable formula for doom.
Namaste, friend.
I had a nice day in the sun pruning an acre of black currants while listening to Black Autumn. I’m enjoying the book so far.
I also MacGyver’d a cheap solution for drying our hazelnuts. I took an old clothes dryer, disconnected its 240V heater, and connected the dryer to a standard 120V circuit in the greenhouse so we can tumble and blow cool air on the hazelnuts to remove the husks.
Yesterday I harvested 200lbs of potatoes, washed, and bagged them for sale.
Almost all of them sold at the market today!
You’d definitely be an essential personnel in a Doomsday homestead! Well done, Rob for all your good work. The farm is so fortunate to have your CPU power and attendant manual skills.
Tumbling the hazelnuts to remove the husks is one thing (I have varieties that drop free from their husks), but how do you crack and remove the shells at the farm? And then, do you peel the skins too? For home quantities, I used to line the nuts up in the crack created between two concrete pavers next to each other and then go along the line with a satisfying whack with hammer which usually split them cleanly. Some are blanks, it always amazed me that the shell could look so big and full but there’s nothing inside. I never bothered with removing the skins as they usually come off easily once roasted–all nuts, but especially hazelnuts, were made for roasting! I am salivating just at the thought of the scent coming from the oven! But, I’ve learned that you gotta watch the nuts on the tray and give them a shake, over-roasted burnt nuts is a poor prize after all the work.
An acre of black currants is a lot of plants! Do you use a battery secateur to prune? That has been a game-changer for us for general pruning, this model by Stihl is worth every cent.
https://shop.stihl.com.au/asa-20-battery-secateurs-as-system-kit
During the 2 week working session when my husband came up we clocked over 14,000 cuts (it has a counter), if we had to do them by hand they would have fallen off! I assume you can get it in Canada? It’s almost too easy to use, very well balanced in the hand, you have to remember that it’s a serious tool and keep fingers away from the blades as they respond with the trigger pull.
I just checked Stihl Canada and it doesn’t seem to be on the product list, at least on line. Worth checking out if it’s available, the farm should equip with you this. The battery lasts for about 1000+ cuts so it’s best to have a few spare so you can work continuously.
I really enjoy hearing about your farm exploits and especially since I know that you are enjoying the healthful and productive work.
Go well, friend.
We sell the hazelnuts in shell so have not had to figure out how to crack the shells. The husks mostly fall off once they are dry. We’ve got the hazelnuts in totes in the greenhouse with big fans circulating air and when they’re close to dry we transfer them to the clothes dryer for a final tumble.
The farm has an electric Felco pruner.
https://canada.felco.com/products/felco-822
It has a big battery that you wear as a backpack and then a cable attaches to the pruners. It runs several full days on a charge and the pruners are very powerful. I thought they were an unnecessary complex gadget when the farm purchased them but now having used them on the blueberries and black currants they definitely save a lot of time and effort.
Tomorrow I’m blowing out the irrigation lines in preparation for winter, bearcating (big industrial grass trimmer) the blueberries in preparation for applying more sawdust mulch, and harvesting the remainder of my beets.
Your potential next post sounds very interesting. My next one might be something about how nothing ever changes. Like the lunacy of spending all your energy on pyramids & statues… or data centers & rockets to Mars.
I was watching one of those 80’s documentaries, and it was talking about the birth of the VCR. The film industry was desperately trying to shut it down with legal battles. A bunch of actors, writers, directors, producers and heads of the studios were on record saying how this is gonna destroy the film industry. Of course, in hindsight the vcr ended up doing more for the film industry than anyone could have ever dreamed.
Always more concerned with the short term instead of long term. Always defending their livelihoods, sticking to their guns, even if it’s to the detriment of everyone else. Whether it’s some Hollywood guys trying to block the vcr so that BAU can continue for them… or the lead industry and its decades long downplaying of lead poisoning… or Big Oil hiding their own scientific research from the public… or Big Tobacco and their decades of lying to the public… or the elites and their motivations… it always comes back to the MPP and that famous Upton Sinclair quote.
Feels like there’s an essay in there somewhere… but it also feels like it might be a lesson in futility… as in, “no shit, sherlock”.
Oh well, back to the chain gang.
If you do, don’t forget a mention of Monsanto who knew about the dioxin in Agent Orange and what it would do to people and went ahead with it anyway, as the precursor to the rest of their anti life activities.
I am off on a carbon walk shortly in the neighbourhood to ramp up the deep litter system for the chooks. Lots of stuff lying around clogging up drains that can be collected.
I’ve got some more sleepy science teed up to listen to, taking a break from Ligotti audio, will return when the mood strikes 😉
This one about all the things science cannot explain was quite wonderful and will listen again while fully awake. Cosmic perspective I find comforting, as a human animal I will live and die, and never know the answers why.
We did some socialising over the weekend, a rare occurrence, so the cognitive dissonance is strong. I topped up my prep stash this weekend too, after spending more time on here, I am more aware of the tenuousness of our situation than ever, which I completely put out of my mind during the move. The only thing that my partner has ever taken to heart, is that he keeps the petrol in the tank pretty close to full for a quick escape from the city! Most other things there is just lots of eye rolls, oh well.
Me: If Costco doesn’t sell it, I don’t buy it.
Black Autumn: If Costco closes, we’re fucked.
I call bullshit on half a million rounds. Unless he has a lot of cash and a fully automatic. Larger calibre bullets are not cheap. Plus your gun would be worn out.
That did not ring true to me either. It was an audio podcast while working at the farm. Maybe I misheard him.
Hideaway explains why he chose his nickname…
I’m pretty sure Don’s a smart dude, but if he’s having trouble understanding you Hideaway, send him the ‘Why technology can’t go back, For Dummies’.😂
The collapse is accelerating…
https://srsroccoreport.com/breaking-news-global-debt-surges-1h-2025-as-world-faces-seismic-shifts-as-world-debt-jumps-the-most-since-2020-pandemic/
Found this link in Tom Murphy’s comment section. It got me thinking about what the big blob will look like that far into the future.
Nate Hagens flew to New York to discuss the changing climate caused (in part) by people flying, then flew home to discuss how we are living in a Twilight Zone episode.
It’s an excellent Frankly episode worth watching with a recap of peak oil and its implications.
Hideaway on hydrogen.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/09/25/311-putting-it-together-part-two/comment-page-2/#comment-47878
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2025/09/25/311-putting-it-together-part-two/comment-page-2/#comment-47869
If you’re having difficulty understanding how the genocide in Gaza can be conducted in plain sight by a small weak country that is opposed by every country in the world except one, the most powerful democracy in the world that was founded on the idea of freedom and human rights, then you might enjoy this monologue by the young depressed aware retired doctor Goobie in which he provides historic perspective on similar genocides conducted by the only country that funds and enables the Gaza genocide.
Just started listening now Rob, he gives a nice little rif on the salmon at the start, just like the comment re Alice F review of that book. Also the line ‘they reproduce and then they die’ reminded me last night i got through half of the Varki interview with Rachel (planet Critical) and he mentions the grandma theory of why we persist after the reproductive years.
A conversation I had on Discord (BTW, this is a collapse aware server):
For anyone who maybe be lurking here and has discord, Here is a link to the full conversation
https://discord.com/channels/415671701549088790/725132190559764521/1421999679691821076
LOL, looks fake, doesn’t it? Forgot about this channel. Used to watch his videos to wind down at night. James is a cool dude. IIRC, his wife was a huge raccoon lover and after she died, he became the Racoon Whisperer in her honor.
This was the one that went viral and put him on the map.
That’s a lot of raccoons! They look fat and well-fed. His neighbors must be royally ticked off at him for feeding them…
I posted most of these videos on the oil fracking process 7 years ago. They’re great for visualizing the energy, materials, and complexity required to extract oil today.
Oh the insanity!
Cool vids, especially the time lapse ones. Made me get in the mood for Koyaanisqatsi. And just to keep the “Gaia show” going😊, if you haven’t seen this film, Gaia’s glowing review back in April should be enough to get you to try it.
And just for a tune up, everyone should check out Hideaways comment a couple replies upthread from hers. It’s a doozy.
https://un-denial.com/2025/04/10/by-gaia-gardener-on-growing-coffee/comment-page-1/#comment-111731
This has been done about 2,000,000 times in the US.
What is the total number of fracked oil wells in the US?
ChatGPT:
This clip gave me a few laughs. You gotta love the evolution of progress.😉
Very good and sadly true.
If you’ve cut back on monitoring the geopolitical insanity and extreme risks in the world today, this is a remarkably candid interview to catch you up.
It’s hard to believe how incompetent and unwise our leaders have become.
Alice Friedemann reviews a book on how animals act as vital nitrogen and phosphorus pumps in ecology and how humans have disrupted this system.
https://energyskeptic.com/2025/eat-poop-die-how-animals-affect-the-world/
What did I tell you? There are no coincidences in this universe. The poo is following me everywhere now!
That last sentence is interesting for a half woo and half science being like myself. If animals change the chemistry of the world by instilling fear, then what apocalyptic havoc have humans wrought?
I like the mantra Eat, Poop, and Die. I recall a post exchange with Chris on returning our bodies to the planet as some sort of compensation for everything we’ve taken out. Circle of Life and all that. The scale will ultimately be balanced when all our atoms coalesce back into the Sun, giver and taker of all. Until then, we continue with the EPDing as best as we can.
One of the main ideas in permaculture that stuck with me is to provide a forest like setting at the top of your property to attract animals so that their poop is released there and flows down hill to the rest of your property.
Naru is an interesting case study. Millenia of migratory sea birds pooping there left a build of poop. So much that Naru was mined for phosphate. This was used to make Australia and New Zealand very wealthy by fertilising our agriculture sectors. Naru was once a paradise with fish and the ability to grow anything. Now the people are the fattest in the world and rely on imported food. Naru itself is now a shell, the whole middle has been mined out. Attracting birds and giving them somewhere to poop is invaluable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate_mining_in_Banaba_and_Nauru
Charles Hugh Smith on the AI bubble.
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2025/10/will-ai-crash-economy.html
Renaee discovered a gem written by Gaia in May 2022. Copying it here for more exposure.
https://un-denial.com/2022/04/01/sidestepping-genetic-reality-denial-by-manipulating-behavior-for-overshoot-harm-reduction/comment-page-3/#comment-61664
Good find Renaee. Always nice to strike gold when mining through the older comments.
Gaia is the oddball here when it comes to choosing an all-time favorite comment. For all the other contributors, I’m betting it would be pretty easy to narrow down our top ten posts in order to reach a consensus number one for each person. But it doesn’t work that way with Gaia comments😊. If we asked 100 people we’d get 100 different favorites.
I have two that stand out in my mind. That insanely hilarious post of hers about how to cope without toilet paper (can’t find it dammit). And then this one which was a reply to my very first white skin rant on this site. Her excellent reply got me to chill out on the subject for a while until I could start grasping topics like the MPP.
https://un-denial.com/2024/01/21/by-hideaway-energy-and-electricity/comment-page-3/#comment-93654
ps. It’s funny to see me walking on eggshells trying to bring the topic up. I make it sound like I just stumbled onto this stuff yesterday.😂
Thanks to Gaia’s suggestion my supply of toilet paper increased from 10 years to infinite years, and my electricity use decreased due to less frequent hand washing and showers.
https://un-denial.com/2024/04/09/radical-reality-by-hideaway-and-radical-acceptance-by-b/comment-page-2/#comment-96017
Thanks Rob.
LOL, yep, it’s still one of my favorites.
Your link doesn’t take me to the comment. In case anyone else has the same problem, try this one:
https://un-denial.com/2024/04/09/radical-reality-by-hideaway-and-radical-acceptance-by-b/comment-page-2/#comment-96017
ps. One of these days your gonna need to teach me your trick for finding comments. The search function does not work for me with comments, only works for the featured posts.
Read the whole toilet paper thread! I really could have used this info a couple of weeks back 🤣💩 I have just planted a patch of comfrey I got from my sister over the weekend. I used to have loads of it, but now starting all over again. Lots of good tips from Charles and others re plant alternatives too. Yikes, I must get off here and get to work. I have 2 kilos of powdered milk that is just past it’s due date this month and I must do something with it now – yoghurt! (unless it’s one of those things that may last a bit longer?#preptip)
I believe regular powdered skim milk lasts well past the best-by date. I’d personally assume unopened is ok at least 10 years past best-by.
You need to pay more attention to the best-by date with high fat powdered milk because the fat may go rancid when exposed to oxygen. Trust your nose.
I just checked and it is indeed full cream powdered milk. The open packet still smells fine, but I reckon i will use up that kilo, and leave the other unopened kilo bag for a while longer 🙏
I have access to an administrator search that is not available to you.
ChatGPT tells me that when I turned on pages for every 50 comments (to improve performance) only the first page is indexed by search engines.
To fix this I have to upgrade to a more expensive plan, install a plugin, and customize my theme.
I may do this someday after I find time to research the value of optional commenting systems that are available with a more expensive plan.
Hello everyone,
I sensed my ears burning and now I’m blushing but it’s the warmest feeling to feel so appreciated and loved, thank you. I trust you all know that I love you, too. We are family here and all connected and I mean this to expand to the universal; out of all the words and worlds I create and know, I yearn for this one truth to be that from which my thoughts and actions spring.
Thank you for re-visiting that outpouring; these thoughts remain my steadiest compass points although the path forward has become even more obscure and desperate with the world events since. The suffering in Gaza has silenced me into abject agony at times, and I am ashamed that is the only price I have had to pay to witness such. I take much comfort that you are here as family to help me bear this and give me more courage to ride out into whatever doom awaits.
It is so good to be able to laugh as well as cry. Much more cathartic and cleansing even than a good bowel movement. I recall writing that toilet piece with total sincerity hoping that it would be of practical value, no shit! But Chris has forever smeared it with facetiousness. You should know that Gaia is not above toilet jokes. As all doctors know, (having being one in a previous life), poo and poo habits are favored and regular topics of conversation, often at the dinner table. Now I look at poo truly as brown gold, it will be one of the most valuable resources we can produce locally to keep up fertility of the soil when our alchemy of air fossil-fueled fertilisers (thank you Rob for introducing us to that amazing read) deflates in earnest.
And now for something new that I must share with this motley and esteemed crew. I know we here are mostly steeped in the science and rational (I still have my woo membership card, and I wouldn’t be surprised if others here do, too) but here’s something I just discovered that might expand our collective minds. What do you think of this podcast that I just got directed to (as a woohoo, there are no coincidences in the universe) and have been binge listening since? I know Chris will appreciate this side dive, we are psychically connected soul siblings, after all. Anyway, I’ll just leave it at this for now and look forward to any discussion arising.
https://thetelepathytapes.com/podcast
Well, that’s as brief of a Gaia post as I can manage for today. I am so touched that you would want to hear regularly from me, even if it’s just a quick hello. I send everyone my love and best.
Namaste, friends.
Charles, paging Charles, your perspective is required in triage.
Hi Rob,
Thank you for asking for my perspective. As I said, I don’t have time to listen to the full podcast and analyze it step by step. More importantly, this is a topic I do not comprehend enough to address correctly. (I don’t even know if it possible to answer your request: as soon as there is triage, there is shaping of reality. So, if the reality that is being shaped excludes these aspects, they won’t exist. At some level, belief comes first.)
To me it’s _as if_ (this description is flawed because centered on the physical reality), there is a dimension perpendicular to the “commonly accepted” reality (3D+linear time). I think about it like the things that a dog or a bat perceive, but I don’t. At the bottom of this additional dimension, there appears to be no time, no distance. It seems one can access this dimension to get or modify information. As a result, there is a host of possible phenomenons: telepathy/mind reading, seeing without eyes, remote viewing, prayer/hand healing, precognition, telekinesis…
(Another way to see things, is simply, that everything is within. There is no outside, there is no separation, since all that is experienced is experienced within. When there is no separation, telepathy, telekinesis is natural. You can experience this when deeply conscious: forget the scene, stop looking at a puppet model of you observing an object. This is very simple, but we have learned doing it backward)
I am keeping it short, because I believe I am just further misleading. And I don’t want to. Any description is misleading in some way (it can’t be complete). Words are prisons.
At last, I don’t think the goal is to acquire “special powers”. This is a side effect. Simply if exploring any of this has an appeal to you, do it, if not don’t. Like cooking or anything else when living freely. Doing what makes one joyful, without any expectations, any goal, spontaneously.
Cheers.
PS to Renaee: if your brother wants to connect, it will be my pleasure. Same proposition as for Gaia gardener, I can connect with some people who enjoy exploring this aspect of life. For exchanges, tips, fun…
Thank you Charles.
I’ve loaded a few episodes of the Telepathy Tapes on my phone and will listen to them while harvesting potatoes in the rain and mud today.
Thanks Charles, that’s very kind of you re my bro. I am going to be talking to him again soon and will mention this. There is much I would like to say on this topic of telepathy in the context of Theory of Mind, as it seems it’s an extra theory of mind, that goes beyond the ordinary. But will let these thoughts perculate for a while, as I go about the doings of the day 🙂 ps = I have listened to the podcast before too – another doomer friend put me onto it.
Hi Gaia gardener,
Ah, I am so happy you stumbled on the topic of telepathy, or is it that it stumbled on you.
Sorry, I don’t have time right now to listen to the full podcast, even if I’d really like to: I have got other priorities right now and I must focus. So I hope, I don’t say too many off-topic/stupid things.
I believe the most important aspect is to experience it yourself. If you want, I can connect you with people who have been experiencing this realm for some time now. It’s also something you may want to play with Chris and progress together (the emotional link between people seems to matter, there is something like a concordance of vibrations which makes it work).
Best.
I don’t mean to trivialise this topic, but I wanted to share this short video clip from Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the main character Buffy is afflicted with a demon virus that enables her to ‘hear’ other people’s thoughts as her thoughts. If you watch the clip it brings to mind, in a funny way, the many philosophical concepts that arise from being able to share thougths, that people have grappled with for ages (Sorry Rob, I noted that you hate philosophy!)
Next up I consider that my thoughts can be like a voice in my head, as if I am talking with someone or ‘rehearsing’ a line, or there can be just a vague fuzzy background kind of stream of thougths, like a radio that goes out of tune from time to time, or there can be a thoughts without a thinker, where just a flow carries on, and then the sense of ‘me’ comes back into focus, and I wonder where I was. Then there can be those moments of quiet and stillness, no thoughts, in awe or from a shock of some kind.
I think there are thoughts, and then there is a META thought that believes it is me or the one doing the thoughts.
This can be described in psychological terms as splitting, and I think this was what the buddhist teaching was about, in that it was a psychological teaching, not a spiritual one.
While the body of course exists here as an organism and it influences thoughts as well as the environment, the psychological ‘someone’ who has thoughts and can share thoughts, seems to be entirely transient, it comes and goes, has no fixed reality, it’s made up on the fly so to speak.
So given all that = that is my starting point for considering Telepathy. I wonder if this jibes with how others see it, and if not, do any of these points makes sense?
I would consider that anyone going down the path of believing in telepathy is well on the path to ‘going woo’.
That clip from Buffy is a great example, if it was possible, then you’d be quickly drowning in too many minds all thinking/talking at once. It also means that humans would have never made it out of the jungle in Africa as we wouldn’t have ‘heard’ of dangers coming as there would have been to many thoughts from those near us.
Also why don’t any of the people that believe this stuff ever get deafened by the chatter of every creature with a brain, nearby dogs, cats, mice, rats, flies, ants, bees…
It all comes back to something like Vardi’s MORT where people are susceptible to nonsense as some type of group defence mechanism.. AIMHO of course…
Of course people can and do learn about others, so can sometimes work out what someone might be thinking, mostly because of past experiences and interactions with them and what they have stated or done in the past with similar situations. There is nothing ‘woo’ about it at all…
I wish Hideaway would stop walking on eggshells and tell us what he really thinks. LOL. I can picture Charles shaking his head at the certainty of it😊. The woo is kryptonite to Hide. Makes him curl up in pain. Haha!
Here’s a good woo thread we had last year. Worth reading Hideaway, Charles, and Gaia’s comments. It was from a connection I was making with Gaia’s revelation of her real name.
https://un-denial.com/2024/09/14/by-kira-hideaway-on-relocalization/comment-page-3/#comment-106684
For the record, I do think there is some crazy unexplainable things out there, but I also think the nightmare of full consciousness has us overthinking and analyzing so damn much that of course we’re gonna “hit” on a few here and there. Very easy to remember the rare hits and even easier to forget the billions of misses.
My NDE is a good example. When told one way, it sounds like a slam dunk supernatural experience. But told another way it sounds like a clear case of the guilt from the way I handled my dad’s death had my subconscious create this fantastical moment where my dad was warning me to not handle my mom’s death the same way I handled his. Which is exactly what I was already obsessing about. (and of course this fantastical moment was only made possible by the DMT dripping into my brain because of how ridiculously fast my heart was beating at the time)
The thing with the Telepathy Tapes podcast, is that it is convincing. There are people with Autism who are non verbal, referred to as non speakers, and the test is the child is in one room, and the parent (usually the mum) in another. the mum thinks of a long random set of numbers and writes them down. Then the child in the other room is asked to write down the numbers and does so, and gets it correct each time (then they do it many times).
I am inclined to take this at face value as to what is happening. But my explanation is that our brains are remarkably complex, unfathomably complex in some ways, and that this is possible without a supernatural explanation of alternative reality, or realms or ‘the field’ or any of the other terms discussed in the podcast.
To me it comes down to the basic split btw spirit and matter, spirit being the olde worlde word now replaced with the more sophisticated word ‘consciousness’. So you either see that every conceivable experience possible comes via the apparatus of a brain and nervous systems, or for plants, via chemistry in the way they share and communicate, or those on the other side of this split, see that consciousness comes first and produces the brain and all other phenomena.
For my whole life I was in the latter camp without really knowing it. It was axiomatic for me, based on all the early influences of my life, I just assumed that was how it was. Until eventually with collapse awareness, I felt compelled to delve deeper and question this.
But I have also come to the conclusion that although I think its 99.999 etc percent certain that brains comes first and every other experience I have emerges from there, I don’t know this for sure, as i can’t get outside of this experience to have that insight. Those who claim they do have such insight, are drawing conclusions from experiences, about reality, that I don’t think can be relied upon. It’s beyond the human event horizon to know for sure.
Thanks re the other link – will have a read too 🙂
I am really glad to be able to air all this stuff with such bright minds and hope that expressing how I see it (not walking on egg shells either!) is taken in the spirit of truth seeking, not one upman ship!
Also – here is a link to Jem Bendell who has also gone in depth to explore this in his book and essays where he refutes our absence of free will (a bit arrogant I thought, to wipe awake the entire lifetime of the work of Sapolski for example in one essay) but he does and in this essay, he also has a link to the Telepathy Tapes podcast. He considers himself a man of science and acutely aware of confirmation bias, so it was interesting to see the way he got to land where he does with his views.
https://jembendell.com/2025/05/06/science-has-not-proven-there-is-no-free-will-almost-the-contrary/
I thought this would be interesting for this audience. Horseshoe crabs is in decline. Horseshoe crabs is where useful. Its blood is used in testing vaccines. They are a key stone species in some parts of the world. They are freed after blood letting, but 30% dies in the process. Horseshoe crabs is threatened because of overuse, urban sprawl and pollution. Interesting picture in this link.
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/horseshoe-crab-blood-miracle-vaccine-ingredient.html
Thanks to Mike Stasse for finding this peak oil channel run by another old white guy with 30 subscribers but fortunately, unlike me, he’s sharp and witty.
Another righteous rant against the empire by Indrajit Samarajiva from Sri Lanka.
He seems to be economic bubble and ecocide aware. I’m not sure that he understands the energy implications for all countries of the empire imploding.
https://indi.ca/how-it-ends-the-coming-market-crash-cant-com/
I feel his desire for the economic/civilizational collapse. Surrounded by relatives that think this growth bullshit can continue on forever . . . let’s all invest the max in our 401k, buy insurance for health? property?, save for the future/your retirement (yea, death).
I guess I’ve been on the economic system collapse bandwagon for 40 years and everytime the rabble say, “see the economy recovers and keeps moving forward”. I want it to crash and everything except food (and friends) to become worthless (even though we would probably lose everyone here due to the internet going away).
I do like his way of writing (poetic with references to great literature (Yeats).
AJ
I keep hoping that Hideaway says something stupid so I don’t have to copy his comments here as a store of value for his future book.
But he never screws up.
LOL. Oh, that is too perfect. Right after we get done clowning on the ancient Egyptians and Easter Islanders for wasting their surplus away on useless monuments… then I read this excellent rant about our colossal wastefulness of energy & materials just to move specks of metal from the mountains to Ft Knox… maybe not exactly for afterlife purposes, but it’s still the same😊
ps. Don’s trying to play dirty over there:
Take it as a compliment Hide. I’ve read the manifesto and a few other things. From what I gather, Ted Kaczynski was always the smartest guy in the room.
I saw that cheap Unabomber shot.
Attack integrity when there is no rational response to an unpleasant point you want to deny, and destroy your own integrity in the process.
The problem is Ted was wrong in thinking that anything could be done to stop the march of technology until it all collapses under it’s own weight anyway.
The hardest aspect to understand is how civilization is a physical process of entropy, just like a living organism. It has a start, growth, aging then death, which for civilization we’d call collapse.
Ted missed this in his manifesto, thinking humans could change, which makes him just like nearly 99.999% of the population. We all enjoy the benefits of civilization too much, to give it all up voluntarily, so make up beliefs in some processes to continue it at ‘some’ level.
Every prior civilization that collapsed, has had a rebirth of civilization later in the same vicinity due to there being plenty of high grade resources for the new civilization to use. Our current civilization will never be repeated as we are using up every reasonable grade of mineral and metal, dispersing them across the world. Once our civilization is gone there will be no high grade resources to mine for millions to billions of years, which is just too long for humans..
Our situation can certainly drive people mad, as it did Ted, thinking of some type of solution where there never was one. Humans do not like being ‘not in control’, yet we never were, just thought we were….
I’ve added the 2005 BBC TV mini-series Egypt to my library. Several of the episodes focus on the project to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Many useful things could have been documented in the hieroglyphs including societal goals, history, science, technology, agriculture techniques, water management, construction methods, etc. etc.
What did the vast majority of hieroglyphs discuss?
Life after death.
Why did they spend surplus wealth on constructing pyramids that served no useful purpose when they could have built nicer housing for citizens, or cultural venues, or schools, or even palaces for the leaders?
Pyramids were vehicles to ensure life after death for the leaders.
I’d say this is yet more evidence of the validity of MORT.
Here’s a ChatGPT summary of the hieroglyph texts:
Nice one. And freaking hilarious.
For the same reason those Easter Islanders spent their surplus building 887 gigantic useless statues… AKA, the nightmare of full consciousness.
If reincarnation is a thing, please oh please send me back as anything but a human.
My deceased friend Gail Zawacki had a brilliant overshoot aware mind and an exceptional talent for prose. She was a serious fan of philosopher Albert Camus, so much so that she named her beloved dog Camus.
Al Jazeera just released a dramatized biography of Camus and despite my dislike of philosophy I decided to listen to it out of respect for Gail.
It was a waste of time. Camus had a bleak outlook and compensated for this by having sex with every woman he met and destroyed many lives in the process.
Camus’ central idea is that the universe is irrational and meaningless and any search for meaning leads people into conflict.
This may be true for vacuous philosophers unfamiliar with physics however for those that take the time to understand the laws and goals of the universe there is plenty of purpose, meaning, and awe.
Life is the universe’s most effective invention for helping it to achieve its goal of converting high quality energy into low quality energy, and humans are the species at the pinnacle of energy degrading abilities.
Having a brain capable of understanding this and the staggering complexity of life is more than plenty for anyone searching for meaning.
Camus was awarded the Nobel prize for “literature”, as was Barrack Obama for “peace”, and mRNA scientists for inventing a “miracle vaccine”.
Dr. Ajit Varki with his MORT theory explains why humans exist, and why they have uniquely powerful brains, and why most humans, like Camus, have no clue about anything important.
MORT also explains why Dr. Varki has not been awarded the Nobel prize.
Very nice summation – I appreciate and agree! and that’s what I have got from reading the various ways you have put forward MORT on this site. I esp like the story about the aliens and what they would observe coming here I read last night, but now I don’t seem to be able to find it again 🙃
And brilliant sum up of complexity as well with your trip – wow. We had a somewhat similar experience here recently on a smaller scale, with getting insanely complex equipment that can cut roots out of pipes on the end of a very long hose, and then use a camera on that hose to somehow mend the holes in those pipes remotely?. But most likely it will only be a temporary solution as the thirsty trees find their way back into the sewer pipes. The outhouse or dunny would have been the way to go 💩
Thanks for the kind words Renaee.
I think this essay titled “On Religion and Denial” is what you’re looking for. It’s one of my favorites.
https://un-denial.com/2016/11/14/on-religion-and-denial/
Thank you Rob, that’s kind of you too, to point me in the right direction, and yes that is the one. And I now see that there is a favourites Tag (and menu link) – it’s taken me a while to find my feet on your site. I must say that I have had some big feelings come up and regrets in some ways that I did not find your site sooner, I don’t know why I did not come across it. I just saw now the interview Rachel did with Dr Varki, and will most def listen to this. The images you included on that post speak to me immediately re male/female qualities, and you have provided this kind of summary on so many other people’s contributions, all in one spot, it is quite remarkable. As well as coming across comments from Michael Dowd over the years, it was from him i learnt the most – the crash course. I realise that I needed a new online doomer home – and this is it 🙂
Gosh Rob,
I just realised how much I miss your killer dry humour!
Next on the list for the Nobel Peace Prize of course is DJT, that will truly prove to me that we’re just a sideshow in this universe, wonders of life and physical laws nonwithstanding. During his vomit-inducing speech to the assembly of generals he actually said that it would be an insult to America if he weren’t awarded it.
I have a whole shelf of books on philosophy but now they serve only as relics of a time when I thought meaning could be found in human thought, and thoughts of human thought. What a very human-centric illusion! Every day is a wonder, just the idea we’re alive and here, moving forward in time and space. There are no words and no need for words. Which is another reason I just stopped for a while. But I have missed the company and I know that we need each other’s kinship and support even more as time unfolds. So count me in for the long count. I am always together with everyone here in spirit, and I endeavour to let that be known as best as I can.
Be wonder-filled. Love to everyone.
Hi Gaia, I and others here deeply value your company and knowledge. I do hope you show up once in a while. Maybe it would be easier on you if you didn’t feel the need to say something deep and long each time. Maybe just say hello, I’m doing ok and my fruit trees are having a good year…
I’m back from helping a friend to construct a water treatment plant for a small community of off-grid cabins.
Thanks to all of you for keeping the site interesting and vibrant and civil in my absence. I have not yet read all the comments but will soon. It was very nice to see that Gaia stopped by.
I assisted a directional drilling crew to drill three tunnels under a highway and to pull a 4″ high density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe through the tunnels, then pull another 3″ HDPE pipe through the 4″ pipe, then after the crew left we dug holes and trenches to weld the pipes together and head up the hill towards the treatment plant and underground tanks we built on previous trips.
It was very interesting to learn how directional drilling works. The equipment is powerful and precise and no one operating it has to exert any more effort than pushing a joystick thanks to the magic of diesel.
It was also a nice lesson on the diminishing returns of self-reinforcing complexity in our society.
Start with a water source that is clean and has been consumed untreated for 60 years without making anyone sick.
The existing water system consists of a tiny dam, a valve, and a pipe running downhill.
Then decide that the water might be unsafe and force the community to invest $50K+ to treat it with chlorine, and just to be sure, also irradiate it with UV light and pass it thorough a sand filter.
Then force us to hire an engineer who knows nothing about these systems and pay him $10K+ for a signature so that the government official has someone to blame in case something goes wrong.
For the last 60 years during winter a small quantity of water was flowed into the lake to prevent the exposed pipe running under the highway in a culvert from freezing.
But now the water contains chlorine which is considered toxic pollution and may not be dumped into the lake.
Which means we have to keep the pipe in the ground as it passes under the highway to prevent it from freezing.
Which required 3 days and a crew of 3 men with a $1M+ directional drill rig, plus 2 men with a $1M+ vacuum truck, plus 2 women with pickup trucks to control traffic, plus rent an excavator for digging holes and ditches, plus buy many hundreds of feet of expensive plastic pipe, plus buy an HDPE welder, plus transport the crew and equipment and parts from faraway places, all with diesel.
But now the system is so complex that it requires remote monitoring, which requires an internet connection, which requires more plastic pipe in the ground to run optical fiber.
But there isn’t enough sunlight in the winter to power all of this with solar panels so a backup propane burning thermo-generator if required to keep the batteries topped up.
Which means someone in a pickup truck will have to deliver chlorine and propane to the site from 50 Km away on a regular basis.
It’s been 60 years without a single person getting sick so obviously our luck must be running out and thankfully we have eliminated this risk for another 20 years before the solar panels and batteries need to be replaced.
Except the climate is changing and the once full reservoir is starting to dry up in summer so maybe in 20 years (or less) there will be no need for a treatment plant and residents will use a bucket to get drinking water from the lake, and an outhouse to conserve water, assuming they can afford and find the gasoline necessary to travel the 100 Km round trip to enjoy their cabins.
We live in an insane world. 😦
Hello there Rob,
Haha, I tried to sneak back in whilst you were away, just in case you wouldn’t notice! Seriously, I have missed everyone and everything here, and am so pleased to know that there are many new members of this happy little band. I hope to “stop by” more regularly, and even stay a while! I do feel very much at home here, but to appreciate that even more, one has to leave every now and then.
It will take me a few days to process what you’ve described, another exercise in futility that is both our lifeblood and death warrant. Crazy making, isn’t it? But it shows your good will and much admired competence to help out with this project, so that should count for something.
Namaste, friend and fearless leader!
Fantastic (what a absurd world), can I borrow this history? I am writing a piece about public health gone mad. What if we include slavery footprint in this calculation? I think slavery footprint and ecofootprint is highly correlated.
Sure, unless you are famous with millions of fans meaning my friend might read your essay and I’d lose a friend.
Would you please pick a nickname for this site and I’ll edit your previous posts so we can follow your conversations?
Don’t watch this Hideaway, your head might explode. This douchebag was a regularly cited source back in my Michael Dowd days. I don’t think I’ve ever seen McKibben’s name mentioned once on un-Denial. That’s why I like it here😊
8:09 – If they keep with it (the Trump administration shutting down wind farms), a thousand years from now, archeologists will be trying to explain how this aqueous Stonehenge emerged off the coast of Rhode Island. If we (usa) keep at this, our role in the world, a decade from now, will be as the kind of colonial Williamsburg of internal combustion. A place where the rest of the planet, if they can get tourist visas, come to gawk at how people did things in the olden days. And that should be especially aggravating for americans because this technology was invented here.
13:35 – The same charismatic object in our galaxy that brings us light, warmth, and via photosynthesis our food, is now willing to provide us with all the power we could ever want. That’s the kind of moment that changes civilization. Similar to how the industrial revolution changed civilization.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cod-rationing-uk-fish-and-chips-shortages-b2833387.html
In the 1990s, there was a major collapse in cod populations in Atlantic Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery
Once I got fully across our predicament, I came to the unsettling conclusion that WW3 would be inevitable. I’m not the only person who has thought this – it has been circling in doomer circles for decades.
It is devastating to see I will probably be right. All I can hope for is that the resources run out at a faster rate than man’s ability to wage war.
And I guess no one is going to bother safely shutting the nuclear plants and coming up with millennia-safe storage for nuclear waste before it all breaks out. We can’t do this without an intact supply chain.
What role do you think WWIII will have in reducing population?
It is interesting to look back at other war times throughout history and see that most people die from disease first, then starvation. The world has a very large elderly population. It will be harder for them if health services are disrupted and government spending is reduced.
As a doctor I cant se this healthcare can continue, its extremly complex. China’s chemical industry produces large volumes of basic chemicals like benzene, toluene, acetic acid, and other foundational organic compounds. These are essential building blocks in the pharma supply chain. Rawmaterials comes from refineries in Russia. Active molecular ingredients from this precursors is made in other factories. 50-80% of all APIs is made i China. API is made in bulk and distrubuted all over the worl. Tablets, capsules etc is made i different locations. Ingredients i everything from plastics, soy, glass, minerals (TitaniumOxid) etc Child labour (mines) and forced labour is includet in some this work. “it came to light that the government in the UK had given contracts to companies in Malaysia who used child labour to produce PPE products for delivery to the UK during the pandemic. How can the healthcare industry address modern slavery? | Action Sustainability
As one of the large elderly population (is 72 elderly?) I think if health services are disrupted (in the U.S.) a good portion of the “elderly” will seccumb to the lack of prescription drugs. I am on only one drug (eye drops for glaucoma), but most of the middle age and older U.S. population is on multiple drugs because of their “Western lifestyles”, i.e. simple carbs/highly process foods diet, obesity, lack of exercise, multiple mRNA shots, etc.). They would rapidly seccumb to the cuttng off of their prescription drugs and access to high tech medical interventions.
If a nuclear war comes, most in the Northern Hemisphere will be gone instantly with those in the Southern Hemisphere probably going some weeks/months later if there are no direct nuke strikes south of the equator (“On the Beach” book/movie). Those of us to survive the initial strike of nukes will linger for a while. Will any humans survive? Who knows, probably to many variables to say for sure (how many nukes were fired, how good is Zuckerburg’s doomsday shelter?).
AJ
People are wondering how we’ll care for a growing senior population with a shrinking labor force. Well, this is part of the answer.
Sad but true. Probably a good portion of young people will be angry at the older people too for hoarding all their resources and living extravagant lifestyles. A prime example of this is the housing market in Western countries. It is like active hatred towards young adults.
Since my parents let me live with them until into my mid 20s, I’ll make sure to take care of them.
You are doing very well to be on just one prescription drug at 72. I rely on steroid inhaler for asthma/bronchiectasis and this is a potent reminder if ever I go off this for a few days, that breathing and everything else gets difficult. And they have made it that you cannot purchase more than one prescription at a time here, so can’t stock up on this either. Both my parents are on a plethora of pharmaceuticals, even though they are both pretty well for mid 80s.
Hi Ian, all good questions. How much oil do the UAE have? It’s a state secret. They had 50B bbls of reserves in the mid 1980’s. They have produced and sold/used around 30-32B bbls since 1990. their reserves have grown to the current 98B bbls in the late ’80’s and stayed there ever since. All without any major discovery of new super giant oil fields..
It’s also irrelevant, as the exercise was about showing the actual cost in old energy for the new energy, plus I’ll always add we get not just ‘energy’ from those barrels of oil but also ‘products’ which modern civilization requires to function, which is what always gets left out of the conversation, because it then becomes too complex.
The reality is the entire topic is highly complex and we probably shouldn’t be comparing just energy with energy, because it’s almost never just that. However us humans are too simple minded for the entire conversation at once..
In the above numbers there was no allowance for interest costs, opportunity cost plus the return of energy from the electric producers in the calculations was way above the realistic useful electricity energy return.
What use will the electricity be after they run out of oil, then add 5-10 years? Most machinery will no longer be working and no imported replacements will be happening as they have no way to pay for them without exports. Tourism will be dead without oil, food imports negligible or none. Their population has grown from somewhere around 80,000-95,000 up to 1960 to around 11 million today over a 100 fold increase..
The UAE could have bought themselves enough CC gas generators and used their huge gas reserves for many decades, with around 215Tcuft gas in conventional reserves and another 160Tcuft in unconventional reserves. Just the conventional reserves are enough to produce 95 billion MWh of electricity, 30 times as much as the nuclear power plant over it’s life…
So what’s it all about the spending on nuclear and solar? Probably just to keep people employed, off the streets, and the economy going within UAE so the locals didn’t stir up too much trouble about the inequality of wealth.
Energetically and economically they would be far better off with the gas fired combined cycle turbines, and a few GW of solar panels to look green (which should have a positive EROEI by themselves), and save the oil for sales later…
To me it’s all looking like it’s window dressing to display how modern civilization can keep going when it clearly can’t, once oil production starts to fall steeply..
James has a new post today. The Spice of Life – MEGACANCER
No doubt Ligotti has had the most influence with pushing me in the direction of despising the blob and wanting to do all current and future life the biggest favor possible by blowing up this cursed goldilocks planet. Megacancer has had the 2nd most influence in that regard. (and not to leave Rob’s site out of the mix, un-Denial is the only reason I can even understand what the hell Ligotti and James are babbling about)
ps. In my reply to Gaia (upthread a bit), I touched on acceptance a little. Disregard whatever I said. This is what True Acceptance means to me:
This is what the blob looks like pre awareness journey:
This is what it looks like post journey:
Nice gothic animation on the second one. While I get the logic of this quote above, he too is personifying nature to take the blame in speaking in this way. Maybe tongue in cheek but it still is.
What comes to mind is that comedian who said, maybe Nature wanted plastic, that’s why we are here (I am sure you have heard the skit?). But even using the word nature with a capital N like this, is part of anthropomorphising and trying to explain what we don’t understand. Nature in this sense can stand in for words like “The Universe” which people quite often use now as the new word for God. ie it was a sign from The Universe 😉
I like the second para best in this quote. I think the line ‘inexorably pushed throughout their lives’ is the MPP in action, driving reproduction and survival.
I know that part of my inclination to read books like this is morbid fear, and wanting to face the worst possible explanation of what humans are or are capable of (and not with non fiction, only real documented accounts). That was also the case for me reading Straw Dogs, by John Gray, esp the description of life in the Gulags, or equally, reading the cultural collapse section of Dimitry Orlov’s 5 stages book. But this is something I have been doing even before being collapse aware, as part of understanding human psychology, why evil exists and as self help.
Anyway, there is still a place for Bambi and Thumper in this world too – opposing forces or opposites is an ongoing theme of this existence. If you decided to be miserable for the rest of your life and a pessimist, you could not do it, despite yourself you would still laugh and be happy sometimes, likewise if you ‘decided’ to be happy all the time, you could not do that either. Puppets 🤷♂️ (though I think Ligotti covered that re pessimists too, even in moments of ‘bliss’ they would still believe life is not worth living lol)
I remember reading somewhere that Ligotti has an ailment that prevents him from ever feeling joy or pleasure. LOL, sounded like some made-up bullshit that a horror author would diagnose himself with to boost sales. Your comment made me go searching for the name of it, Anhedonia – Wikipedia
While I was looking it up, I came across this interview.
The Lovecraft eZine interviews Thomas Ligotti – The Lovecraft eZine
I hope I never get whatever the hell it is that Ligotti has. Not having music would be the equivalent of losing my gallows humor. (btw, that new name popping up in my life, David Benatar, is mentioned in the interview as well)
ps. Here’s that classic bit by George (5:22 – 6:00). LOL, why are we here? plastic!!… assholes
Oh I’m so glad you looked up the George Calin clip – love it!! Really did have a LOL and a tear too. where would we be without doomer humour and the absurd, and even the bit at the end, all we are is the big electron. He’s great. Yes as long as we can still laugh sometimes, it’s ok. I guess that’s why pairing humour and tragedy together has always worked.
Anhedonia sounds like a complicated way of just being severely depressed or the older melancholia. I went through about a year of being very anxious and depressed around 2015-6 and music and all other enjoyable things did go away, I did not want to leave the house, watch telly, see anyone. All I could do was things like play cards or do a rubix cube, nothing to do with emotions. So something in the brain can happen, and music can go away, but it can all come back too, apparently. Not for everyone. I did a 7 day intensive ‘retreat’ that involved being with strangers in vulnerable and intense ways, and all sorts of selp help psychological practices that did help. None of the meds I went on did anything, I think they all made it worse, and I got off all of them within a year, thank goodness.
I did not read it all, but the question posed by one person starting at “Greetings, Tom. In past interviews you’ve mentioned how you experienced nightmares quite frequently throughout your life.”
Well his long response to that was very telling.
The part he said about humour in his writing was also interesting as I have had a number of chuckles while listening to the book. That’s one of the things I like about it. he said this comes from exaggerating the grim and nihilistic.
The nuclear power plant built in UAE. It is a 5.6GW power plant that cost around $US32B to build to completion although the original contracts had the price at around $US20B. Like all nuclear power plants that take over a decade to build, despite timelines of 5-6 years cost blow out..
We know the running costs of nuclear power plants from the World Nuclear Association number of $US31.76/MWh, which covers operating, fuel and maintenance costs..
The sums are therefore easy, assuming a 60 year operating life for this NPP ..
5600MW X 24hrs X 365d X 60yrs = 2,943,360,000MWh of electricity production..
At operating costs of $US31.76/MWh X 2,943,360,000MWh produced = $US93,481,113,600 lifetime operating cost. Add the $32B in capital costs = $125,481,113,600 total cost of the energy output of this NPP over it’s life span.
Using Charlie Halls EROI method of 10Mj/$ spent, the input energy costs are 1,254,811,360,000Mj.
Divide by 3,600 to get to MWh = 348,558,648MWh input energy, compared to output of 2,943,360,000MWh, or an EROI of 8.4.
Now how much does it actually cost the UAE if they paid for it all in oil, their only export…
$US125,481,113,600 divided by $US68.72/bbl = 1,825,976,624 bbls of oil. the energy content of this oil at 1.7MWh/bbl = 3,104,160,260MWh.
In other words they are spending a bit over 3.1 billion MWh’s worth of energy to get 2.9BMWh of energy back, again a negative sum gain..
Of course I’ve skewed the numbers to favour both the solar in the prior post and the nuclear in this post. I assumed 100% capacity factor for the NPP not the actual 93% capacity they actually have, that allows for regular maintenance, fuel swapping etc. Plus there is no allowance for end of life demolition costs for either solar or nuclear..
This nuclear power plant in the UAE is often held up as a beacon of how cheap nuclear can be without all the red tape of western countries and yes the capital costs end up being only half of what something like the Vogtle NPP in Georgia USA are. What every proponent of the nuclear industry leaves out is the massive operating and maintenance costs, plus decommissioning costs at end of life (which I’ve left out as well).
It’s clear that none of this is close to being able to maintain an industrial civilization that continues to use low and continually lowering grades of ores of pretty much everything, with a requirement of around an EROEI of 10-20.
One of the largest criticisms of the above is how it would all cost less barrels of oil, if the price of oil simply rose. This ignores the not so minor detail that current price of oil is around the average over the last 20 years. Should oil price rise to around double and stay at the higher price so the average price also doubled, then the inflationary impact on everything else would likely make the solar, batteries and nuclear installation and operating costs also double or more. We saw the price of solar and batteries rise during 2022 when the price of oil rose for a short period.
Another criticism with the solar farm is that the 24/7 operation at 1GW wastes a lot of produced power and this could be used for other purposes. Sure it could be like hydrogen electrolysers to make hydrogen out of excess power etc. This is true, but when adding the extra energy created by utilising the excess, it comes at extra costs. Including hydrogen electrolysers, then compression equipment, storage equipment and all associated O&M costs, all it does is lower the overall EROEI. I did some rough calculations on using the excess energy from the UAE new solar to turn it into hydrogen and came out with a EROEI of 0.4 instead of the 0.86 it obtains as just a battery and not using the excess electricity created. The capital and operating costs of hydrogen electrolysers that can utilise excess electricity intermittently is just too high. Like every other industrial process this works most efficiently operating 24/7, and on then off again for short periods shortens the life span of the equipment, while maximising the operating and maintenance costs.
Interestingly, solar by itself as an add on to the grid, so no batteries and just O&M for the solar panels, in the UAE at an average of 10hrs/d solar, plus allowing the full 30 year life span gives an EROEI of around 6.1. This assumes the cost of $2.6B for a farm of 5.2GW of solar, a full 10hrs/d operation at name plate capacity, which is all impossible as capacity fades with high temperatures, the panels themselves will also degrade over time, plus the full extra 5.2GW of added electricity can be used, which is unlikely.. Remember solar panels by themselves cannot run an industrial civilization where continuous processes are required in the making of nearly everything.
1.8 E9 barrels of oil equals how many years of production for UAE? How many bbls does UAE have left in proven reserves? They will have spent or borrowed that vast sum of USD 125 Trillion over 60 yrs (since no inflation was factored in, no time value discount rate either but ws there a cost of capital interest rate imputed?) and surely there will be no oil left in 60 yrs, or even 30, maybe 20, so are they ahead with the electricity capacity replacing the FF energy?
What could be the cause?
Another video, this one being the latest peak oil chat ….
In this video, Charlie Hall comes out with a quick and dirty, (his words) way of working out the EROI, being for every dollar spent assume around 10Mj of energy. Then went on to quickly work out some of the EROI of the new oil fields that were mentioned by Dan in Dan’s presentation, getting extremely high EROI numbers..
These high numbers he was getting is because the initial number he uses is completely wrong and I hope to show why below. Sorry about the long post in advance, but it’s necessary as it’s all so complicated and again this is still the short version without going into all the complexities of every bit…
Using UAE as the example, because it a perfect set up, and today’s current oil price which is very close to the average price of the last 20 years…
Current oil price is $US68.72/bbl and assuming there is around 1.7Mwh of energy in a barrel, then the current price of oil is around $US40.42/MWh. I’ll be using $US40/MWh for simplicity..
The new lifetime cost of the solar and big battery being built in UAE will be around $12.1B, which accounts for all capital and operating costs. Initial $US6B spend on 5.2GW of solar and 19GWh of batteries, with batteries replaced at Year 15 (cost $US3.4B) and a total of 30 years of operation O&M cost, of around $US2.7B over life of operation. As in 1.5% of capital cost per annum…
Total spend over life of operation $US12.1B. The idea is to set up a renewable system that runs at 1GW 24/7, throughout the year…
Total energy gained from solar and batteries 1000MW X 24hrs X 365d X 30 years = 262,800,000MWh.
Using Charlie Halls quick and dirty method of EROI the total energy spend is 10Mj per $1 spent…
$12.1B = 121,000,000,000Mj. Turning Mj into MWh I have to divide by 3,600 = 33,611,111MWh
According to Charlie’s method the EROI is 262,800,000/33,611,111 = EROI of 7.8 which is around acceptable to run civilization..
However what does it actually cost the UAE? They have to sell oil to be able to pay for the solar, batteries and O&M, $US12.1B worth of oil. How much energy is in this oil? $US12,100,000,000/$US68.72 = 176,076,833 bbls of oil.
What’s the energy content of this oil? 299,300,616MWh.
In other words the UAE have to spend 299,300,616MWh of oil energy to get 262,800,000MWh of electrical energy, both at around average wholesale energy prices. Where is the gain of 7.8 EROI as per Charlie’s calculation?? It’s simply not there at all. Any energy supplier to the world, where they ‘spend’ around 300MMWh’s worth of energy to get 262MMWh in return is a poor deal in energy terms.
In the UAE the solar insolation is estimated at an average of around 10hrs/d which makes it one of the best locations in the world for solar power. Yet even here, a single cloudy day would mean that the 19GWh of batteries would go flat during the following night as they wouldn’t have recharged during the cloudy day, so the entire 5.2GW solar and 19GWh battery bank would not be able to run an Aluminium smelter as there is not enough power for a guaranteed continuous industrial operation.
A huge weakness in everything discussed around renewables is how many homes it will power. It really upsets me how all the reporting, is of how a new installation will be able to power 50,000 homes, or whatever number, as if this had any meaning. We need and require continuous power for industrial applications, the making of everything we surround ourselves with. We only have the efficiencies of our current industrial world because of continuous operations in mines, processing plants, smelters and factories everywhere. If it’s not operating 24/7, then it’s not as efficient as possible, and many/most heavy industry, as in heavy energy users, require 24/7 operation as they damage equipment without consistent heating.
Aluminium smelters are a perfect example of this. The pots where the Hall-Heroult takes place turning the bauxite into aluminium, takes 20-30 days of continuous power, where the pet coke in the anode drives off the oxygen (as CO2) to form aluminium. If there is a sudden break during the process then what’s already been partly turned into aluminium within the pots solidifies and can cause extreme damage.
Later I’ll go through the numbers for the recent Nuclear power set up in UAE as this also cost them oil to build…
I only tuned in because I saw a comment that mentioned they got into a good argument towards the end. But I ended up watching the entire video. I enjoyed these two very intelligent/aware fire apes bargaining with each other that they’re not hardwired for destruction. Here’s some quotes with my notes in parenthesis.
17:55 LK- I believe that one of the root causes behind these dominance hierarchies is the impulse for status. (Duh!)
31:33 NH- I was in a good mood because I realized that it’s not humans per se that are to blame for what’s happening. It’s this unique combination of surplus, large numbers, sprinkle in a few psychopaths… and you end up with what we have today. (lol, talk about grasping at straws)
33:04 LK – We have numerous studies now which suggest that people who get a higher placement in the hierarchy tend to have less empathy. They tend to undervalue those below them. They tend to be more likely to cheat both in games and their spouses. (Are you telling me that as your EROEI increases, the more of an asshole you become? Holy shit! Groundbreaking)
38:45 LK – When you look at Goliaths in general… they tend to have lots and lots of resources. And they tend to be the some of the richest individuals in society. (Duh!)
54:33 NH – Humans in the presence of lootable surplus versus humans not in the presence of lootable surplus is a very different animal. (Sounded kinda deep at first glance, but what is he actually saying? Takers are different than Leavers. Or better yet; humans that have attained full consciousness versus humans that have not attained it, is a very different animal. LOL, thank you captain obvious)
1:58:30 – 2:06:00. This is their disagreement. Luke says anyone working in the oil business is a dick. It hurt Nate’s feeling, lol. Think I side with Hagens though. By Luke’s logic, pretty much everyone’s a dick (especially those in marketing/advertising). This kind of goes with Billy Bob Thornton’s Landman character quote regarding oil shaming, “there aint nobody to blame but the demand that we keep pumping it”. Also weird for Luke to talk so much about the impulse of status and then wonder how someone would increase their social status by working for big oil.
2:01:22 LK – You can be a guard at a concentration camp but still be a good family man when you go home. I’m sorry, but to me the former kind of overrules the latter. (Of course I love this quote because its identical to when I used to compare humanity to Nazi’s sitting around the dinner table with their families. Yes, some good there. Good father, good husband, good friend, etc… but the evil far outweighs the good. Was searching for some of my older comments about this but I couldn’t find any. BTW, the search function on this site is worthless. So much so that I’m positive it’s user error somehow😊)
2:12:26 LK – I have a lot more hope about people and a lot more hope in general about the future as well. When I first started this, I had a fairly grim view of humans and how we conduct ourselves without authority but that’s completely changed for me. (I give Luke a 0% chance of making it to the end without going woo-woo)
But even with all my complaining, this was still a pretty good conversation.
Life’s one big blob. I think I’m gonna make bumper stickers of that. lol. I slowly started looking at it that way a while back. No such thing as species or individuals. Just little pieces of the big blob. And it only cares about maximizing energy consumption. Breaking through resource constraints is always the goal. If there’s something beyond fossil energy (nuclear fusion or whatever), the blob will find a way. Maybe not with this current crop of expert resource barrier breakers (fire, solar energy, ancient solar energy) but just give it a couple hundred million more years and the blob will eventually figure out how to bust through.
This big blob outlook makes it easier to see Apneaman’s quote that “all life is a slave to the MPP”. My fire essay got it backwards. The blob didn’t go “off grid” by discovering fire. Nor was it some freak accident. The blob did exactly what it’s always trying to do.
This famous Jurassic Park clip explains it perfectly:
That’s a nice little summary of the video there Chris, thanks. I watched all and had pretty much the same thinking about it..
” My fire essay got it backwards. The blob didn’t go “off grid” by discovering fire. Nor was it some freak accident. The blob did exactly what it’s always trying to do.“
Well spotted, I agree. The more I look into everything about life, complexity and civilization itself, the more I’m convinced it’s all just another physical process of increasing entropy. Any animal having access to fire just increases the energy gradient decline faster..
I’ve actually seen a Kookaburra (a bird) pick up a burning stick and drop it in an unburnt area. The obvious goal is to burn more and scare more small animals out of the new burning area, which quickly becomes food for the bird, therefore increasing the speed of entropy…
Like definitely has hopium and I agree will probably go woo at some stage. He has no idea about EROEI and just accepts all the green guff, as per the later disagreement with Nate.
yeah I listened to this in its entirety over a couple of trips to work. Luke clearly doesn’t understand energy. If all those “dicks” that work for big oil stopped working his life as an academic would be over in a flash.
I just found this quote today and want to share it. It’s very basic but still fun to collect them.
Found in the book “The human predicament” by David Benatar.
Funny. I never heard of David Benatar till your comment. And now I’ve seen his name a couple more times today in various places. This mention in an article from the Guardian just caught my attention. I think the universe is telling me to check out this dude’s work.😊
I wanted to know if having a kid on a burning planet was right. I found that antinatalism is seriously taboo | Life and style | The Guardian
Hello there bro, hope you’re traveling well. It’s your long lost sis here sneaking a comment in and hoping I’ll be forgiven and welcomed back into the fold…
I’ve been okay, if you can call it alright just trying to make some meaning from every day in a world that’s becoming increasingly unrecognisable to my physical, mental, and emotional self. I don’t think I have anything else to ever say again that will express this angst fully, which is not a small reason why I just haven’t said anything. I have been filling the days with a lot of doing, expending energy and resources most certainly futilely but nevertheless, something in me still needs to anchor on something I can still call a purpose. I am not even close to the enlightenment which promises peace by acceptance and just being. I don’t know if I even wish for that, seems a cop-out to want a state of bliss when the magnitude of planetary suffering is so great. I am wrung out but by being so, perhaps I can absorb more sorrow and allow for joy to soak in, too.
Perhaps there are many here both old and new who are grappling with similar feelings in more or less measure, and I do so see and understand you, and wish to share courage and strength.
I don’t know if I’ve got it in me anymore to write my erstwhile Gaia-length and style outpourings, it seems I’ve said everything I wanted to at the time I needed to. I will be forever grateful for this oasis that soothed and quenched a thirst for knowledge and a longing to be understood. I still come to the well regularly and my lack of comment in no way reflects a diminished craving for being a part of this kinship. I really am very sorry not to have checked in earlier but you know how it can be, things get out of routine and then inertia takes over. Maybe I can take baby steps back into writing, I would like to try, anyway.
But today I overcame that block when I saw your comment that you have only just heard of David Benatar, that makes two of us! I wanted to share this recent incredible piece in our Australian mainstream news, don’t know if any other Aussies saw this but I was actually flabbergasted that this topic was aired openly and deeply. Maybe the tide is turning in realisation of the rational and humane choices remaining to us. Then again, a philosophical antinatalist will probably be branded with the same iron as “baby-killer” so this could start a wave of persecution for those who espouse this view. We shall see. We are so divided now that even the centre is like shifting sands.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-21/antinatalism-child-free-climate-change-human-suffering-baby/105695328
The other news I wanted to share with you, Chris, is that I’ve submitted my application to renounce my US nationality. You’d understand completely. I’ve been wanting to do this for years but now I feel so strongly that I must before I die otherwise I can’t live with myself. It’s not a statement that will change anything and I know I am still a child of the Empire and always will be, but it means a great deal to me nevertheless to throw off this shackle, even if symbolically. It will cost $2350 USD and there’s a long waiting list for the interview at the consulate before the cord can be cut, but I am so ready.
Sending love and best to everyone here. It’s so nice to be fully present and accounted for again.
Namaste, friends.
Simply eloquent!
You have enumerated all of the angst many of us share as we endeavor to grasp acceptance of of our inability to alter the imminent reckoning of our own creation.
Like you, I continue to pursue my dissapative programming, unable to dispassionately find stillness in the face of inevitable looming demise of our species.
I find the natural world the best palliative, at least for interludes of a day or so, as it allows me to shut down the internal problem solving dialogue that cannot process a null verdict.
There is surely denial still in my veins as I try to believe that some fractional chance allows some version of our species to remain in a pre-technological context, wild as the planet that nurtures us.
Thank you for sharing your clarity!
Hello Crosstimbers,
So lovely to cross paths here. Thank you so much for your comment which gives me much fortitude to keep going. That we are not alone in this walk into and through the tunnel makes it a worthy, nay, even noble, mission to complete, especially knowing that any light forthcoming is not outward but inward.
I’ll join you and everyone here in spirit when we immerse ourselves in nature.
All the best to you and your family.
Namaste.
There she is… finally. About damn time!
I love the ripple effect of Florian’s comment. Only mentioned Benatar to say where the Eliot quote came from… next thing you know I see Benatar’s name popping up everywhere… and it even got you to come out of the witness protection program. LOL.
I agree that the topic of antinatalism being in the mainstream media is shocking. Getting harder and harder for evil Empire to keep peddling the same old bullshit. And bravo for renouncing your US nationality. I love it! Is there a way for me to renounce my human nationality?
Regarding the five stages of collapse grief, I think I’m officially done with denial, guilt, and bargaining. Doubt I’ll ever see those guys again (at least until the grocery stores are empty or the power grid goes down for good😉). But I just noticed that guilt isn’t one of the stages. What? How can this be? That was the main stage I hung out in. Just look at my first essay here about natural burials and you can clearly see I was drowning in shame. You can also see a little bit in the fire essay, especially the Good Will Hunting “it’s not your fault” thing. Someone needs to update those stages to six.
So the only ones left are anger, depression, and acceptance. I have good stretches without anger or depression, but those bastards always come back around. I highly doubt I’ll ever be able to get rid of them completely. As far as the holy grail stage of acceptance, I’m with you about it being a cop out. Acceptance for me is understanding that nothing is what it seems, and this carbon pulse nightmare will be over soon enough.
Great to have you back Gaia. And don’t worry, you’ll always be welcomed back into this band of misfits. You’re a Goonie for life. But I might have to give you the David Webster (Band of Brothers) treatment for a while. lol
And regarding the “erstwhile Gaia-length and style outpourings”… you’ve always been a low quantity / high quality contributor. I think you put too much pressure on yourself to “wow” us (which you are always successful at). But it’s gotta make it tough to comment. I’d love to see more posts from you. You don’t have to be as extreme about it as me (we all know I’m the heavyweight champion of high quantity / low quality).
But even if we only get a Gaia post once every couple months… it’s still good enough for me.😊
Love you, too. Thank you for the much needed virtual hug, right back at you! See you and everyone on this page again soon.
It’s great just knowing you are still around and I think a lot of us understand how the entirety of our situation can get us to the point of asking ourself, ‘What’s the point of posting anything’?
I’m often at that point, but then someone, somewhere, pops up with some total cornucopian comment and it triggers me to respond and do some sums etc…
It’s just nice to know you are alive and healthy, welcome back and even just small comments are fine.
You’re the best, Hideaway, hope you and your family have been well these past months. Heartfelt thanks for your encouragement and care as well as all the knowledge you generously impart.
I will now practice as you suggest with a small comment but a serious one, too. You can consider my recent hiatus to be just following your alias but if ever I was really not well or mean to disappear entirely (another topic for another day) I promise to let you here know, and I hope that others would do the same, how’s that for a pact? You are all dear to me and I feel so proud and lucky to be spinning on this planet at this time with you. We’ll see it through together, come what may.
Namaste, teacher and friend.
Hi Gaia
I am new to the little family here and Chris and I have been bantering back and forth quite a bit the last few days, with similar recent interests in what we are reading. He said you were taking a break from here and that you are in Nth NSW, I am down south in suburban Melbourne. Good to meet you virtually 🙂 You are very eloquent and lovely in your expression!
I think the link you shared on ‘our’ ABC, is from the same author as the link that Chris shared to the Guardian about antinatalism as well, the woman is called Bri Lee (just checked and yes she has penned both) so she is promoting her book and getting some good coverage – I am glad. I hope there is not backlash as you said.
I share those big feelings. I just finished reading an article Rob had put on this site from Gail Zawacki way back from 2014 about trees dying from pollution, esp ozone, all over the globe. I now want to make sure I love and appreciate each one all the more. She also said how incredibly resilient the trees are, and this was wonderful to read, but all the sadder in that they cannot withstand the current conditions.
Hello Renaee,
The pleasure is all mine to meet you, another fellow Aussie (as you have read I was born American but I have chosen to make Australia my home and country) and kindred spirit, here on Rob’s beloved blog (at least to us!) By the way, I may be a bit slow but from his conspicuous absence I am assuming he’s off on another well-deserved camping and hiking expedition, at least that’s what I am hoping! Once when I checked in surreptitiously I learned he was going on a helicopter ride to an island, neat!
I trust you and your family are well, and I am sure you are really looking forward to the longer daylight and warmth ahead to make up for a rather cold winter, even by Melbourne standards. I am one fortunate bird who makes her winter home in the Atherton Tablelands of Far North QLD whilst my summer nesting ground is the equally idyllic Huon Valley of Tasmania, at least this has been my migratory pattern for the past 12 years. Our family is now in a transition to relocate permanently up north where the climate will hopefully be more conducive to growing more of our own food, with warmer temperatures, deep volcanic soil and abundant rainfall. I shudder to think that once I thought it was possible to be “self-sufficient”, if anything, these past 26 years since my husband and I arrived in Australia have shown us how categorically mistaken we were, having maximised every manner of energy and resources to set up two small acreage properties in two disparate latitudes of this continent. But, to have had the joy of picking cherries off a tree that one planted and nurtured, as well as mangoes from another (okay, I’m actually not a bird, but a fruit bat!)–well, it has certainly been a humbling and fulfilling experience. Every passing season increases my awe and respect for the members of the majestic plant kingdom, to me they are the undisputed champions of evolution, long may they flourish. They can certainly thrive without us, but we owe every aspect of our lives to them. Trees have provided me more than physical sustenance, being with them can be a spiritual awakening. I am certain you understand me and I am so delighted to meet another tree-hugger, we are many here.
So lovely you found and joined this band of misfits (as Rob often calls us, hopefully endearingly) but I am very much touched that you consider us a family.
Namaste, new friend.
Thankyou Gaia, I did sense a tight knit and convivial space here right from the start, and I am glad to be a part of the band of misfits 🙂
I do know what you mean re the plant kingdom and that feeling of awe. Last night I listened again to some ‘sleepy science’ in the middle of the night when I awoke, endless facts about the amazing plant kingdom and some of the more rare and astonishing feats of plants, as well as geology, waves, weather, all set to soothing music. I had the thought that to reduce suffering on a broad scale, that I hoped we could all ‘go out’ with a virtual reality like this with some kind of gas that puts us to sleep and we leave the Earth to recover without us. Such thoughts came to mind after listening to the GailZ interview Chris recommended. She was such a down to earth, common sense person, no formal science background but she put it all together and the interview covered a lot of ground of the typical pathway of a doomer that I related to as well.
Wow – how lucky you are to have had such a pattern over 12 years to travel back and forth seasonally like that. I have been to the Atherton Tablelands and remembered it as farmland only in the tropics with rolling hills and it was incredibly lush and beautiful. In the early 90s I hitch hiked all the way from Melbourne to Cairns on a hippy trail with a group of people and that was our final destination. I have never been to Tasmania but I hope to. I had a couple of doomer friends from the Huon Valley, but since I deleted my facebook account I lost touch with them.
And picking fruit from trees you planted is the dream. The house we are living in now has some mature fruit trees, it’s the house my partner grew up in that we have inherited from his Greek parents, so we are stuck in the western suburbs but with no rent or mortgage so grateful for that. I also grew up on an orchard (goulburn valley Vic) surrounded by stone fruit trees, and my dad’s side of the family were orchardists and market gardeners going way back.
Out my window I can see the apple tree in blossom and it is so sweet (a granny smith). With a recent plumbing mishap we had here (no toilet for a week) it got lots of extra water and liquid fertilizer! We have a mature almond and an orange tree too, and out the front, lemon, olive and kumquat, and apparently a small cherry tree, which I had not even noticed but partner assured me that’s what it is, so must give that some TLC. I busy myself with growing and gardening too, what else to do at this stage, but I know it wont make a jot of difference. everywhere around us is built up to the extreme.
But the days are getting longer and there is more sun, and you are right it has been a really long cold winter, lots of Antartic blasts and wind. Despite the sound of the freeway in the background lol, there is birdsong in the mix too for a while longer and I am glad 🦜 💚
Hello Renaee,
What a beautiful picture you paint with your thought and cheer filled words! I am so happy that you and your partner have a lovely homestead to nurture and be nurtured by together. It is not the size of the land or where it is that creates a feeling of home and peace, this as we know, comes from within. It’s becoming ever more clear to me, especially in these strange last days of the life we’ve known, that it is our great task and joy to just live and give where we’ve been planted, I am continually learning from our beloved trees!
I’m so glad that you have cherished memories of growing up in a rural area surrounded by fruit trees, I’m sure there was a lot of hard and good work for everyone, too. I share your gratitude to your partner’s parents for their foresight to plant so many fruit trees; it’s part of their expression of love and care to provide a way for abundance through all the seasons of life.
My husband and I chose not to have children (we had trees instead!) but it was always our hopeful vision that one day the land will sustain others who pass through. Right now it’s definitely helping out the resident wallaby, possum, rodents, and birds!
I also wanted to share my appreciation and respect for your wise and kind thoughts regarding how we may fill our spirits with wonder and blessing, especially during our last conscious moments of this one bright spark of life. I look forward to re-visiting this ultimately life-affirming topic with you.
All the best to you and your family. Enjoy the apple blossoms in your peace-filled haven. Apple in Chinese (my ancestral heritage) means peace fruit, by the way.
Namaste.
How do you think peak groundwater will interacts with the other peaks?
Here is a link to the paper.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298
Where ‘day-zero droughts’ could happen as soon as this decade
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/23/climate/day-zero-drought-water-scarcity
Indi with a good essay today about technology and the idiocracy that comes with it.
The Technological Generation Gap — indi.ca
I left a comment regarding the “on the farm” ratio flipping.
But Indi got me thinking about when did the idiocracy take full control of me. I’d say it was somewhere in the mid to late 2000’s. At that point I was already an MP3 addict and audio pirating machine. Could not go anywhere without earbuds. Grocery store, at work on breaks and lunch, at home when I would go outside to smoke, heck even just to go to the bathroom…. always making sure that there was never a moment where I could just sit in silence and collect my thoughts.
Around 2007ish, the torrent downloading pushed me into the next level with video. All of sudden I was a binge-watching fool. Ten plus episodes a day from tv shows like Lost, the new Battlestar Galactica, and Heroes. Slowly leading to less and less time spent with humans.
Looking back its funny. In the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s, you could say I had a phobia of being alone. Nowadays it’s all I know… and prefer.
Live stress-free with UN-DENIAL knowledge!
Saludos
el mar
Good stuff. I think Alan was talking directly to me. My doomer supremacy is out of control. And my new nihilistic supremacy is probably gonna get me assassinated. LOL
ps. There’s a possibility that this isn’t even Watts. I’ve listened to many hours of him, and he speaks much slower than this. Plus, it seems like most of these philosophical short videos are AI created. (4 years ago, I had to spend some time searching for these clips… now they’re everywhere)
That’s from Bill Rees’s newest essay. Fatal delusions and the curse of ‘maximum power’
I used to not get hung up on the vax stuff, but I guess Rob has rubbed off on me. I can definitely be labeled an anti-vaxxer. I will never allow any type of jab into my body (only exception would be an instant lethal injection😉). I’m not certain but I think this is the overall consensus of un-Denial.
And since I believe this site to be the cream of the crop when it comes to reality, I’m wondering what you guys think of Bill’s stance. Like do you ignore/forgive this aspect but then soak up everything else he has to say? or are you more firm on this issue like Rob? (I think Rob’s completely done with Bill at this point)
I thought about leaving a comment but I’m not ready to mix it up with the godfather. He’d crush me like a bug (unlike fire, collapse, human extinction, etc… I’m not confident/cocky about anything vax related). My comment would pretty much be a carbon copy of what I said to Dave Pollard a couple months ago:
Something that i have tossed around in my mind a lot too….
From the start I was wary of mRNA vaccines and opted to go with what i thought was the more traditional sort of vaccine being AstraZeneca, which was phased out (aka banned) in this country a few years back now. For me at the time, I took the risk of blood clots over what I thought were the unknowns of Pfizer. And only had the two initial shots with no ill effects.
In the mid 2000s I spent 7 years working with an org that closely tracked the beginning of GM Canola crops in Australia, and the trials of other crops that followed, and during this time I learnt about the revolving door btw regulatory bodies and ag companies both here and in US, and this whole experience ‘primed’ me to be suspect as there was so much corruption in biotech corps coming to light. (The full story of Monsanto DaveP recently had a link to in his end of month links, was fascinating)
During the pandemic I closely followed Jem Bendell’s writing and trusted his expertise, given I had first really got my head around collapse after his academic paper. He went into a huge amount of detail, reading the scientific papers and often a lot of stuff I did not fully understand. So I had my gut feelings then deferred to what I thought was an expert to affirm my belief, the text book definition of confirmation bias!
As the heat of the whole situation cooled off, I have wondered about my stance and come to the conclusion that I don’t have any way to know for myself, and I am just relying on second had info and it’s just too bloody hard.
Like your example with Bill Rees and others in the field who I respect and look to for info, who are completely pro vaccine, so it is very hard to understand how this is possible. Another example, Eliot Jacobson recently boasting about how he just had his 11th booster!! I confessed to DaveP a while back that I am one of those ‘rabid anti vaxxers’ and I sent him a paper from a med journal that also influenced me a lot (a link from Jem that I did read) and he said that it was certainly one of the better papers he had read, but it did not change his mind one bit and he was not going to argue it with me, which was good coz I did not want to either.
With Dave’s writing, the thing that drew me in was he seemed to be the only collapsnik who was writing from the understanding that we are not making any of this happen or doing life. To me that showed an insight that I see as well and was key to how i see and understand collapse and life in general. So that’s what has kept me reading Dave’s blog, even though I find there are issues that I don’t align with at all in his politics. But the bigger picture perspective tells me those values and preferences are from the conditioning that has shaped me and are not personal, this is the key.
Having said all that, it’s quite possible that the whole ugly saga of another Covid like situation could rain down upon us and god knows what would happen next time round. I find it remarkable that this has not happened sooner because of intensive animal farming and now bird flu as well, AND because of the insane amount of gain of function quackery going on still in labs around the world.(as Bendell reported it in his most recent book).
And also it is very different if you were one of the people who lost someone directly or were injured by the vaccine, then it’s not so easy to be philosophical about it all. in my own family it was just another off topic area, don’t go there subject, that in the end was not as important as the things that brought us together.
Having worked in pharma/biotech in my youth I understood the whole thing about regulatory capture of the FDA/healthcare ecosystem by Pharma. Yet, I was willing to trust them on the first Covid shot (J&J). After I got Covid 2 months later I lost all faith in anything the government said.
However, I don’t think a blanket anti-vax policy is rational. Vaccination appears to historically had good results (the erradication of Small Pox), Polio, Tetanus. Both Bill Rees position and virulent Anti-Vax seems to me to be irrational. I would still get Tetanus boosters, but other vaccinations ???? I would question more seriously.
AJ
Vaccines have never got rid of tetanus. If you tread on a rusty nail the medical system will recommend a booster. Tetanus is treatable with oxygenation of the wound and anti-biotics. It will only grow in anoxic environments. I will never get another one having now read up about it in more detail. I have probably had five in my life.
do you reckon we’re getting digital id’s in this country Nicko? The poor poms.
most likely. Even more excuse to stay away from the net
I share your view, and here’s some recent evidence as to why.
Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee that told everyone not to get the CV19 vax because of all the health problems it would cause. She did this repeatedly after the CV19 vaccine rollout to wake up the public up to the dangers of the injections. She listed heart disease, auto immune problems, blood clotting and turbo cancers popping up everywhere, including the brain. These are just a few of the many problems caused by the CV19 vax that led to disability and death for millions of people around the world. The things Kingston revealed about why nobody should get the CV19 vax have now been officially acknowledged by the top doctors and researchers in the world at the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) this past week.
The things Kingston revealed about why nobody should get the CV19 vax have now been officially acknowledged by the top doctors and researchers in the world at the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) this past week.
I would probably still get a tetanus jab or the whooping cough jab. I haven’t had Mrna therapy and never will. (The big change for me in the last five years has been that my trust has been destroyed – and it’s not just with the issue of vaccine science).
Daniel Quinn’s protégé, Tom Murphy, is trying to play the shell game today:
8 Billion Will Die! | Do the Math
Tom is absolutely correct. It’s so obvious that humans with their full consciousness & mortality salience were able to live in harmony with nature for a couple million years. Which proves our species does not “stand out” and belongs in the web of life. Also proves that harnessing fire is perfectly fine and has no long-term consequences.
The only error we made was the wrong turn when the Holocene period came around which ended up guiding our culture to “wage war against the Community of Life”. Surely we won’t make the same mistake.😉. Ugghh. Once again, if you don’t buy into critical moment theory your story sounds silly.
Skip this garbage and instead check out the videos on Crazy Eddy’s newest post. I’ve pushed ‘Dominion’ over here a couple times. If you can make it through that one, congratulations you’ve mastered your MORT.
Why I will celebrate Human Extinction
ps. This is a good religious song with funny lyrics. My favorite is:
But would I be a good Messiah with my low self-esteem?
If I don’t believe in myself would that be blasphemy?
What is happening the people ICE is arresting. Maybe sometimes the people complaining about “Trump Derangement Syndrome” are the ones in denial…