By Hideaway: EROEI

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 station5.0910.18
Old Saudi oil wells2754
Permian fracked oil wells ~20151.763.52
NESF Solar Farm1.222.44
MTG Wind Farm1.172.34
WA gas wells2346
Hinkley Point C nuclear0.571.14

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.

1,602 thoughts on “By Hideaway: EROEI”

    1. It’s that time of the year. I did my 50 cloves last week. Last year I did 150, but that was too many for personal use.

      Nice that the fall rains are here and the fire danger has passed for another year.

      AJ

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  3. Happy Halloween everyone. Best song for this time of year is of course Michael Jackson’s Thriller. As a kid this short film caused me more nightmares than Voorhees, Krueger, and Myers combined.

    Here’s my 2nd favorite. It also works as a doomer anthem re what my family wants to do with me.😉

    And honorable mention goes to pretty much any song by The Cramps.

    Anyone got a favorite they want to list? One caveat… Monster Mash is not allowed. lol

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  4. Nate Hagens with a deep dive into how biophysical forces and our inability to understand reality is dividing society.

    A few interesting observations and predictions:

    • 60% of Americans live pay cheque to pay cheque, despite record high employment and stock prices.
    • 40 million Americans depend on food stamps.
    • Every single employee working at Walmart needs food stamps to survive.
    • When the economy rolls over again, 10’s of millions of people won’t just tighten their belts, they’ll drop out into material poverty and despair, and we have no plan for how to handle this.
    • AI will accelerate the wealth gap and will atrophy cognitive abilities accelerating a brain power reduction that started 10,000 years ago.
    • AI will result in a massive loss of creativity and nuance.
    • When the grid eventually becomes unreliable humans will be even less able to cope.
    • Mental health problems will increase.
    • The segment of society that cares about protecting the ecosystems we depend on will shrink.

    Paraphrasing, possibly incorrectly due to my own biases, Nate thinks only those of us who are aware with defective denial genes will be mentally healthy in the future, and we should expect Mad Max.

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    1. I increasingly believe the mentally healthy are going to become a kind of elite class in our society. Those with stability, resilience, and meaning. 

      I took it as Nate winking at his audience saying “stay subscribed, keep hitting the like button, and I’ll get you to that elite status via spirituality”.

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      1. Hey bro,

        Hope you’re going well. I hate to rain on Nate’s parade but the mentally healthy clashing with the mentally unhealthy (armed and starving) is going to make the scariest Halloween movie look like Teddy Bear’s picnic. The roving hordes in societal collapse are not going to care if you are part of that elite class who have achieved enlightenment and whose stability and resilience will soon be tested at gun point.

        I now quote another Nate (aka Canadian Prepper), “keep on prepping folks” with the caveat that everything you prep now may well be for someone else’s gain. (I so hear you AJ, but it was still the choice we would make again) But those who are truly enlightened should only be too happy to give up their life for another. It’s pretty rarified to be Buddha or Jesus-like, but perhaps belief that things will be better in the after-life will give comfort to the masses.

        How about cueing up Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode? (I know it’s not a Halloween song but then again, it’s not Halloween here in Australia)

        Go well friends. Enjoy Life’s harvest and the planting; may all things come full circle.

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        1. Hey sis! Always good to hear from you.

          I might have to get into these Black Autumn books with you guys. There’s an extra glow of confidence in the air re SHTF / Mad Max. I like it. I wanna play too.😊

          Great tune. I avoided Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears most of my life (and they were the same band to me). Finally got into both a few years back. 

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    3. J. Doe here.

      I would argue that MORT’s whole point is that the absence of denial genes leads to massive mental health risks that are so severe that they prevent those not affected by MORT to contribute to the gene pool. And if not, they probably render the affected individuals social outcasts that MORTified baseliners do not want to reproduce with. Which is why evolution lead to denial instead of realism.

      So this statement from Nate that those without denial will be the “winners” seems like denial, or at least a misunderstanding of what MORT predicts.

      As per @ 11:00+

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      1. Good point.

        My interpretation was that if and when Mad Max arrives (not awareness of a likely future Mad Max) those with defective denial genes might have an increased probability of sanity because at least they will understand what is happening and why.

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      2. Thanks J.Doe for that link.

        A question for you, Rob, or anyone else……

        Why do people buy insurance for catastrophic events like house insurance, medical insurance, or life insurance, if they have a denial of bad outcomes?

        It makes me wonder how many people are religious, go along with the crowd in a variety of thinking like renewable optimism, etc, that are basically just pretending, to be accepted as ‘normal’ in their group/groups.

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        1. It’s a good question. Curious what others think.

          I think we buy insurance just in case but deep down we assume we’ll be careful with matches, eat healthy, and get lots of exercise so we’ll never need it.

          Also you can’t get a mortgage without house insurance.

          We don’t deny everything unpleasant.

          Climate change is not denied if you believe buying an EV might fix it.

          Peak oil is not denied if you believe solar and nuclear eliminates the need for oil.

          Climate change and peak oil are denied if you believe we can’t survive without fossil energy.

          Overshoot and complexity theory are not denied if you believe innovation and technology trumps physical limits.

          Overshoot and complexity theory are denied if you believe there is no fix.

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          1. The reason I asked is partially based on a former neighbour of ours that was a very fervent believer, as in born again into Jehovah’s Witness and going back a couple of decades they had this belief that the world was ending on a certain date.

            As the date approached, and this guy was very vocal about how only the chosen ones would be saved etc, and how everyone should become a Jehovah’s Witness before it was too late etc..

            One day my wife asked him to sell his property to us, for $1, one day after the ‘certain date’ of the end..

            It stopped him in his tracks from discussing the ‘end of the world’ with us. In other words despite all the claims and beliefs he had towards this religion, he wasn’t prepared to make a firm commitment that could cause him loss if the date he’d been telling everyone about, came and went, which of course it did.

            Being a member of that group, meant more work and companionship among the members (they tended to hire member tradesmen for work among themselves over ‘outsiders’), so our neighbour, even though professing everything positive about the religion, obviously didn’t believe every aspect. Yet to be a member you had to go alone and be positive about everything the leaders professed, even stupid dates for the end of the world. Challenging anything would class you as an outsider, not a ‘real believer’. Our neighbour had been in the religion for a couple of decades before the ‘end of the world’ date.

            I also wonder why so many true believers in whatever religion also go through every medical procedure in this life, to try to stay alive, despite believing in a wonderful heaven waiting on the other side..

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            1. Belonging to a tribe is critical for human survival. Our behavior reflects this thanks to evolution.

              Knowing who is in your tribe, and who is not, is also critical for survival. Hence visible signs like showing up at church, wearing a unique hat, avoiding certain foods, agreeing Putin is evil, or being circumcised are common.

              Knowing who within your tribe is genuine, and who is faking, is also critical. Hence tribes often have costly fees for membership like knocking on doors for Jehovah’s Witnesses, or fasting, or daily public prayer, or helping to build a pyramid, or publicly claiming to believe crazy stories, or being transfected with mRNA.

              Mormons are a classic example. They have a super crazy story, but damn, the survival benefits of membership are awesome.

              Preptip:

              Mormons have the best handbook, and the best store, for food preps.

              https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/emergency-preparedness?lang=eng

              https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/topics/food-storage/longer-term-food-supply?lang=eng

              https://www.ldsavow.com/preparedness-manual/

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              1. Interesting, isn’t it Rob? Very prescient that the Black Autumn book series paints a likely survival scenario with the US Mormon population. I reckon that certain sects such as the LDS and the Jehovah’s Witnesses will see even greater numbers as things get more doomsworthy. What a way to hedge bets while getting maximal benefits.

                Hee hee, here in Australia we love to look for typos, it’s a national fetish so much so that some purposely misspell/misuse words in their writing just to give readers the joy of finding them and thus feel good about themselves. I know you meant circumcised (genital mutilation) not circumscribed as one of the key identifiers in being a member (pun intended) of the tribe of Judea, as a well-known example. I only wish that the State of Israel can be circumscribed and permanently.

                I still say we should have a secret handshake to prove membership in this elite tribe.

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                1. LOL, I caught the mistake right before reading your post!

                  What a wacky species. We mutilate the genitals of babies to prove they believe in one make-believe god instead of a different make-believe god, and the medical “experts” convince mothers they are improving the health of their babies by mutilating them, and the mothers believe the bullshit without thinking. Ditto on mothers offering their babies to medical “experts” to inject 72 substances into their babies that fiddle with their immune systems.

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                2. LOL!!

                  And love that secret handshake idea. But I say we make it tough on our sensei Rob. Something like this video. (I want the handshake of the last kid)

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  5. In case you missed it, the truth of what happened at the Trump/Putin meeting in Alaska seems to have emerged:

    • Prior to the meeting Trump via Witkoff proposed a way to end the conflict.
    • Putin agreed to the meeting in Alaska.
    • At the meeting, Putin walked through the proposal line by line to ensure he understood what was being proposed and Trump confirmed.
    • Putin said he thought Russia might be able to agree.
    • Trump said he would confirm after speaking to people at home.
    • Trump went home, never got back to Russia, and now pretends no proposal was made.

    Imagine what you would think and do now if you were Russia.

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  6. Preptip:

    Happy days at my local Costco warehouse.

    A rare sale on Sprague lentil soup:

    • healthy
    • super clean ingredients
    • olive oil
    • organic
    • 4g sugar/can
    • 240 calories/can
    • pop-top lid for easy access without a can opener
    • delicious cold out of the can
    • long shelf life (4 years promised, 20+ years probable)
    • CDN$1.62 per can!

    Backing up the truck.

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    1. Ooooh I am so happy for you, you lucky dog! Keep a virtual tin for me (sounds like it is vegan even) to enjoy with you when SHTF. Soup is the ultimate comfort and survival food–just keep adding more water.

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    1. I don’t believe this. Is it AI generated?? If this is a true statement by Tulsi I think she will immediately be fired by Trump (this sounds more like what Thomas Massie or Rand Paul would say). I think the statement was both truthful and accurate in what it conveyed and if this is truly Tulsi’s statement more power to her.

      AJ

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        1. I’ve a lot of time for Tulsi especially as she’s one of the very few politicians who has put herself in harms way. But this video is poor but understandable.

          It’s typical of the thought processes of an energy blind politician or economist or anyone. I assume by now she has had the briefing. She’s not going to crash the ambulance..

          Mick N

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          1. That’s such a good point. I frequently forget it.

            There are a few politicians that are good people with high integrity and intelligence. I suspect Tulsi Gabbard is one of them. For her to go silent on many issues immediately after being sworn in, and not resign, is a strong indication that forces very important to the health of the US state are in play.

            Why doesn’t the US simply buy Venezuela’s oil? Well, maybe China is meddling, just like the US meddles, to lock up Venezuela’s oil for China’s use and that’s not acceptable to the empire. Why attack using false terrorist claims? Because that allows the president to act without a congressional war debate that might air the peak oil threat and spook the fragile financial system.

            Maybe Trump/Bondi/Patel/Bongino flipped on releasing Epstein info because Mossad/CIA used Epstein to gather kompromat on leaders that the US depends on to control countries with oil.

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            1. Recall that Gabbard released a video warning about the danger of nuclear war shortly after Ukraine/US attacked Russia’s strategic nuclear bombers and shortly before the Israel/US Pearl Harbor attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

              Today Gabbard issued a statement that the US under Trump no longer regime changes other countries, just as an attack on Venezuela seems imminent.

              It looks to me like she’s trying to do what she can from within to stop the madness.

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              1. What do you do? As far as I can see oil is the whole game and once you realise that, whole scenarios open up that look like madness to the energy blind because they are mad if you’re energy blind.

                As for the Epstein files I don’t think us plebs will ever know. They either don’t exist or they are incredibly powerful. Biden had four years to release them and didn’t, even when they would have provided cover for Hunter’s misdemeanours. Trump campaigned on releasing them and then backtracked. Epstein was, allegedly, running a huge trafficking organisation and the only user was the Queen’s idiot son and the only co-conspirator was Robert Maxwell’s daughter. What are the odds? I suspect in my senile old age that many important Donors of both parties are involved but who knows? I don’t.

                MickN

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                1. I don’t get one piece of the chess game.

                  Oil is finite. Using someone else’s oil first and leaving yours in the ground seems like a smart strategy.

                  Why then blow up a pipeline to prevent Europe from draining Russia?

                  Is my idea correct that they need a market to get rid of waste natural gas from fracked oil or else fracking would have to be curtailed?

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  10. As vile as Trump’s immigration crackdown is, I fear that it is rather humanitarian compared to how governments will respond when millions of climate refugees are trying to cross their borders. I fear that they will simply start mowing down people who attempt to cross their borders. At this point, the only way to stop this would be to have global revolution that defeats the “Superorganism” and also manages to override both MORT and the MPP. I don’t think this can be done even in theory, let alone in practice. We are likely to see brutality on a scale unprecedented in human history.

    https://collapsemusings.substack.com/p/you-think-the-holocaust-was-bad-just

    https://overpopulation-project.com/its-not-racist-to-say-we-are-full/

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    1. Stellar the crackdown is on people who have illegally entered the US. I don’t see what the problem is.

      I am assuming that you are from the US so I am just wondering which countries do you think it is fine for you to move to illegally and expect to be looked after.

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      1. They aren’t just detaining illegal immigrants.
        They also arrested a journalist working for a TV station in Chicago. and detained over 170 US Citizens.

        https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/chicago-ice-raid-arrest

        They have also detained over 170 US Citizens.

        https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will

        It is particularly disturbing that many of these agents are wearing masks, but no badges or uniforms, and are dragging people into unmarked vehicles. In such cases, you cannot even tell that these people are legitimate law enforcement.

        https://www.wbez.org/politics/2025/10/09/federal-immigration-officers-ice-dhs-license-plates-immigration

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          1. My advice to this comic is that if you see this individual approaching and you are an illegal alien then assume it is ICE and run. If you are legally in the US and you see them approaching then run they are a kidnapper or antifa.

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        2. The irony of defending this slightly (after what police in Australia did to people demonstrating against covid vaxxes was disgusting) is not lost on me. But what do you do when people are doxxing people for actually enforcing the law. How long will society last when everybody’s identity can be exposed for their actions. How would any of us feel about having our identity publically revealed for what we say on the internet. Maybe a good thing. How about every person who reveals identity then gets their identity revealed so that those pissed at that reveal can get them.

          At the end of the day, we are watching in real time the collapse occurring. The divide seems too big to fix. Tribalism will rule supreme in the ruins it will create. I don’t see a way to avoid it.

          A serious question, do you have any maga friends, do you want any? Could you see yourself wanting to understand their view and can even imagine having sympathy with their view and taking on board that view. If not then there is no better indicator that the divide to too big to cross.

          I wish you well in this collapse. I understand your concerns. I think they are truly valid but dialogue is not available anymore for most people. I think this is totally predictable.

          Stay Safe.

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      2. I have not read the US immigration laws but I would imagine they strike a balance between compassion for those at risk from persecution/war/poverty and the needs of the US state for people with assets like skills or wealth.

        I would also imagine the laws have rules to ensure fairness for equally qualified people to enter a queue that cannot be jumped.

        If some citizens think more immigrants should be allowed into the country then they should vote for people who promise to change the immigration laws.

        The laws must be enforced or else you will have unfair dangerous chaos.

        Why is it when listening to emotional US debates on immigration I never hear anyone argue the laws should be changed?

        It’s as if laws no longer matter. That’s bad.

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        1. I don’t oppose the enforcement of immigration laws. I oppose the gratuitous cruelty and the lack of due process. Obama actually deported more people in his first term than Trump did, but Obama didn’t make a cruel spectacle out of it.

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        2. This is an excellent point. My theory is that it’s industrial policy to have a large contingent of workers without rights or the right to earn minimum wage. These immigration raids are all performative, if they were serious about catching illegal immigrants they’d be raiding farms and meat packing plants. Of course there’s less cameras out there so it wouldn’t play as well to the base (and would actually have an impact on some rich people, which isn’t allowed).

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  11. I got a notification on my phone saying un-Denial stats were booming.

    Poked around and found that Hideaway is under attack at OFW in part because I claimed he invented the only new idea in the overshoot space for the last 10 years (which is sadly true), and because I called it “complexity theory” which is already use by other disciplines (also true but I did it to stir up emotions to make people think).

    It definitely stirred up emotions but I seem to have failed to make people think. 🙂

    I see strong words by people who have not read Hideaway’s essay above and that do not engage on the substance of Hideaway’s claims.

    Typical monkey behavior.

    https://ourfiniteworld.com/2025/10/31/a-lack-of-very-cheap-oil-is-leading-to-debt-problems/comment-page-1/#comment-494494

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  13. (h/t Cassandra from Panopticon’s site)

    I enjoyed this article by Lyle Lewis. And without focusing on critical moment theory… Lyle still paints the picture for me.

    Later Is Now: The Speed of the Sixth Extinction

    While the mammoths on Wrangel Island didn’t disappear until about 4,600 years ago, the die was cast centuries, or even millennia, earlier through the slow unraveling of their ecological world. As hunting pressure spread and grassland systems degraded, the webs of mutual dependence that had sustained them for hundreds of thousands of years, predators, vegetation, nutrient cycles, even soil microbes, began to fray.

    The earlier ones (mass extinctions) began suddenly with volcanism, anoxia, an asteroid, then faded as ecosystems slowly recovered. Ours began quietly, confined to Africa and Asia as early hominins spread across drylands, and it has accelerated ever since. The asteroid’s violence peaked early and diminished; ours began as a whisper and is building toward a roar.

    Human evolution reaches back roughly six million years, and for more than half that time our ancestors were relatively benign participants in the ecosystems that shaped them. But around 2.5 million years ago, when bipedalism and an increasingly versatile shoulder girdle allowed us to move out of forests and into open drylands, the balance began to shift. What started as adaptation became expansion, and expansion became disruption.

    Some good background music while you’re reading.

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    1. The earlier ones (mass extinctions) began suddenly with volcanism, anoxia, an asteroid, then faded as ecosystems slowly recovered. Ours began quietly, confined to Africa and Asia as early hominins spread across drylands, and it has accelerated ever since. The asteroid’s violence peaked early and diminished; ours began as a whisper and is building toward a roar.

      Unfortunately, Lyle Lewis overlooked another cause for extinctions before human arrival: competition.

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  14. George had a Q&A post today. I was too late to submit a question, but he was nice enough to answer me in the comments. Civilisational Collapse: Your Questions Answered

    me: How come a child can give me the correct answer no problem when I ask what is the main thing that humans do that no other animal does… but when that child becomes an adult, they’ll be completely fire blind and instead give me idiotic answers like agriculture, fossil fuels, written language, etc.

    george: We are all heavily programmed by our culture

    Anyone got a better answer?

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      1. Quite a few. I know, what a weirdo. But I’m actually very good with kids. And my dog is a kid magnet. So when I’m walking him at the park, it’s pretty easy to start surveying them without looking like a pedophile.😂

        And ya I exaggerated a little bit there for effect. Its not always “no problem” to get the answer I want. Half the time I have to give some hints. But the other half they get it pretty easily.

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  15. Hello everyone,

    Welcome to November, and I trust you are all going well as we hurtle towards the end of our man-made calendar year. It’s not like me to draw attention to the inner and outer workings of our techno-mad modernity, for that I leave it to the engineer-minded amongst us, namely Rob who has shared many eye-opening videos, the latest I gulped down was fracking in time-lapse. But today during a lazy Sunday internet troll I came across this piece and I just had to share it because it highlighted everything that is wrong and will be more wrong with our complexity–the imagery of the semiconductor fabs (that’s a new term I just learned!) is worth the time alone, and the young engineer Anastasi is pretty captivating in voice and looks.

    This is what it’s taking to keep up our farce of modern existence. The scale and scope is beyond words. All of us here who have been weaned on Uncle Hideaway’s bedtime stories can recite the fable’s motto and inevitable ending. The energy and other resources needed is why we are facing existential geopolitical threats from all quarters. All so we can further our cataclysmic destiny with AI and become one with the machine, and it can be argued that we already are doing the machine’s bidding. Verily, we are like ants building the palaces and supplying the manna for our digital masters. It was just earlier this week that Nate’s Frankly touched on how AI will accelerate our loss of creativity and sense of self. Halloween was yesterday, but this is pretty scary if you let it be.

    But, I am counting on the human experiment taking another course before we completely become the Borg and destroying the biosphere in the process. If collapse comes on schedule with the decreasing oil exports, then soon these ultimate monuments, along with all edifices to the hubris of man becoming god will not stand, tumbling like the tower of Babel.

    Resistance is futile! Let us go out supernova if we can!

    Namaste, friends.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36W0dMwQJxU

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    1. Excellent find Gaia. I was not aware of this channel. Lots of substance along with eye candy.

      It shows what’s behind green tech like PV and EV. The foundation for the fab building required 20,000 shafts to be drilled 35m deep and filled with over 500,000 cubic meters of concrete. Operating the fab requires electricity similar to an entire city, 15 million gallons of pure water per day, and perfectly clean air with perfectly controlled humidity. The size of the clean room is larger than 10 football fields.

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    2. Another recent good one from the same channel on what it takes to build AI data centers.

      AI companies at their core are now energy companies.

      AI companies are on track to own more nuclear power plants than some nuclear powered countries. The AI company that controls the most energy will win the race.

      Elon’s Colossus2 will use 1.2 gigawatts of power, enough for 2 million homes. One single rack of the latest AI chips uses 130 kW. Most of that energy dissipates as heat and the cooling system consumes 30% of the total energy and costs $3 billion.

      550,000 GPU’s operate as 1 via a terabyte network creating compute power 7 times higher than the world’s top 10 supercomputers combined.

      Hundreds of similar datacenters are planned or under construction around the world.

      Supernova it is.

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      2. Just adding another video of where the machines inside these types of “fabs” come from….

        AMSL in The Netherlands with more complexity as part of the overall story…

        Every aspect of our civilization is becoming more complex and probably at an exponentially accelerating rate as that would make sense in terms of patterns within large natural complex systems we can already observe, like the largest stars, where the further along the complexity path the quicker each stage becomes, until the end with a supernova, the shortest stage.

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        1. Really good, thanks.

          US blocks the export of EUV machines to China and it’s unlikely China will succeed at developing their own machines.

          Maybe, it is complex and requires a huge investment.

          On the other hand, China has succeeded at pretty much everything else they decided to make a priority.

          I worked for a company that had unique patented world leading laser technology for imaging lithographic printing plates.

          To reduce costs we had to move manufacturing from Canada to China. It was only a few years before competing laser technology emerged from China.

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          1. In terms of efficiency, the most efficient approach is for one factory to make the highest end machines. IIRC they said they had sold a total of 34 EUV machines.

            ASML has 800 suppliers worldwide, I’m willing to bet that many of the parts within these machines originate in China. Apparently the USA is now worried about this level of tech getting to China, especially the highest end, latest design machines for printing the 2Nm or less chips. How long will it take for China to respond by not allowing some very specialised parts from being exported to ASML?

            I’m not going any further but it’s an obvious rabbit hole of complex production in a variety of places around the world, all made from the newest mined metals and minerals in specialized processing plants to make the refined, high grade raw materials in every single part of one of these machines. (Think Ed Conway’s pathways).

            In other words, I think that the decision makers of the world have no idea of how the world actually works. ASML couldn’t make what they do unless all the mines, processing plants, smelters, refining plants are operating to produce the high grade materials that are then fabricated into parts, all before getting to any of the ASML factories for assembly. Likewise for the machines that make the mirrors the quality they have to be within these machines.

            Take any one of those 800 suppliers to ASML for the 44 EUV machines they have sold in 2024. If their business was only to ASML, the cost of the specialist parts would be enormous. What we find in reality is that those parts are just some of thousands of different parts they make for a variety of companies, which could include other DUV chip machines, or ordinary printers, or toasters etc. Of course it’s the mass marketed items where they gain the most revenue, but without the market for the common items, could the business survive enough to make specialist parts for just 44 machines each year?

            The obvious answer is no, unless they are extremely expensive as in many multiples of current prices. Fabrication businesses themselves have many internal processes to get the parts they make precise. The actual process to make the 44 specialised parts for ASML might only take an hour or 2 as in a different mold, die or casting from a specialized liquid or solid. This would be made on machines all warmed up operated by skilled tradespeople with years of practise and experience, as just another part to make in their schedule of ongoing parts made.

            Without the rest of the business making parts for DUV machines, or toasters and printers, the business would be bust, the machines not operating, the specialized expert staff scattered to other places. In fact there is no business at all without the common mass produced products.

            After watching those videos about TMSC, that I posted a few weeks ago, plus the one above about America’s new chip factory, and the ASML one above, with the very precise detail required for every aspect, how would any of these businesses make anything if their suppliers kept changing, meaning variation of the parts they would be getting.

            OK, assume China does successfully reverse engineer these highest level machines and set up their own factory and selling machines to all the BRICS countries to make whatever chips. How long before all the chip makers go bust, as there is just no money to be made in such highly specialized machines if the world only needs 45 of them per year..

            OK, long winded post to say we are racing towards collapse by duplicating what we only need one of in the world. This duplication via ‘man made rules’ is a step in the wrong direction of efficiency gains. It is very much like a large star starting to fuse iron, which consumes energy instead of providing energy.

            Duplication of processes, after being in a world of globalization for decades that has given massive efficiency gains, reverses the trend of efficiency gains, right at the time of peak net energy and materials, so will only accelerate the remaining time left, before we collapse in our own supernova.

            Unless there is a whole lot more cheap, easy to access energy to obtain very quickly, then all the MAGA stuff around tariffs and bans of technology to rivals will do, is shorten the time until we collapse. IMHO as we are further squeezed with energy and material constraints, the calls for MORE tariffs and bans on trading technology will grow, due to humans not understanding the real problems.

            Plus at some point as we slide towards collapse, governments will try to subsidise important industries like ASML factories, but it can’t work as the suppliers to these factories go bust as they cannot be also subsidised, as they have real energy, material and staff costs to keep operating.

            How long does it take, with a general recession/depression that reduces sales of all high end goods, until the machines that make the chips break down if the parts suppliers went bust in the general downturn and these parts are made by different, not so exact factories? How long before the high end computer chips required to do high end mineral resource calculations are no longer available at low grade mines, so the miners have to guess where the higher grade ore is? How will precision farmers go when GPS fails and the tractors are no longer controlled by chips to work efficiently?

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              1. Yep, they are my take-aways as well. Everything that leads to less efficiency of the entire system of civilization leads to collapse faster.

                All the nuclear, solar, wind energy and battery storage are already heading us in the direction of less efficiently using up resources with less growth.

                Does it matter though? If the world was one country, so no trade or real wars, and we went in the direction of maximum efficiency, growth plus greater damage to the natural world, it would all collapse anyway from a higher technological point, during the accelerating decline of available energy phase of our predicament.

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                1. Ditto if we embraced fossil energy but constrained population to a “sustainable” 100 million, and accepted the cap on technology and complexity that 100 million can achieve.

                  It would still collapse when the oil and minerals reserves degraded.

                  Add strict pollution laws, recycling, no flying, no cars, etc. etc. and it would take longer but it would still collapse.

                  Go all in and never embrace fossil energy but make use of metals smelted with charcoal and it would still collapse when the ore reserves and forests were depleted.

                  Any dependency on a non-renewable resource results in collapse.

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                  1. Rob …. “Any dependency on a non-renewable resource results in collapse.“

                    We are very much on the same page with this.

                    All the recycling proposed is also ignoring the physical process of entropy and dissipation, so not possible in the long term. I also think as ‘recycling’ becomes a more important aspect of modernity, then it just uses up non renewable resources faster.

                    All the metals and chemicals that go into the collection, separation and transport of the recycled materials are extra addons to the existing system. Then all the fossil fuel based chemicals to separate back to original use, all very energy and material expensive, without adding growth to the overall system.

                    Would recycled materials be used in making high end chips or the machines that make the high end chips? Absolutely not!! we cannot get the purity of metals required by recycling.

                    Right now Aluminium is one of the most recycled materials, yet we can’t use more than 10% recycled Aluminium for the frames of solar panels, as it’s life expectancy and strength are questionable, because of all the small amounts of ‘other’ metals, especially iron, that contaminate the recycled Aluminium. The contamination with iron makes the Aluminium much more brittle.

                    When anyone suggests we can use recycled Aluminium for wires in the ‘renewable’ future, instead of copper, just laugh at them. This would be a good way to have electrical fires everywhere..

                    If humans had stopped at 50 million and increased technology while spreading across the world, but keeping our numbers down, we would have reached much lower levels of technology, lasted for possibly thousands of years longer, but still collapsed, probably much more gently, like a contained degrowth in living standards, than the 8.2billion will do..

                    Those videos on the chip industry clearly show it’s pedal to the metal until the end..

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                  2. There it is in a big beautiful nutshell.

                    Still gobsmacked that the mother of all human centric collapses is happening on our watch. And heartbroken that the biosphere and all other inhabitants have to pay the price.

                    Namaste, friends. Let us enjoy the afterglow of our twilight days as best as we can.

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  16. Those god damn Hamas terrorists are everywhere.

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      1. We now know that the Nobel prizes in Peace and Economics are complete garbage. I hope the ones in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Literature are still good.

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  17. Scott Adams was initially very harsh against mRNA skeptics and chose to transfect himself.

    Later in 2023 he admitted the skeptics were right saying he has to now worry what will happen to him in 5 years.

    Adams is now dying from prostate cancer. He tried Ivermectin and Fenbendazole without success.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-am-declining-fast-cancer-striken-scott-adams-urges-trump-help-secure-treatment-after

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  19. Even starving children won’t break the population taboo

    https://overpopulation-project.com/even-starving-children-wont-break-the-population-taboo/

    Since 2020, stunting in children is on the rise. For those in denial about the impacts of population growth in poor countries, the inevitable is presented as a mystery as ideology trumps honesty and compassion.

    Stunting (children who are markedly shorter than normal for their age) is a consequence of chronic undernutrition. Stunted children become short adults, often with some cognitive impairment. It used to be a fairly normal condition through much of the world: we’re familiar with the low doors and ceilings of European houses a few centuries old, and the caricature of East Asians being short – they no longer are.

    Yet, even at the turn of the century, a third of children under five were affected by stunting. Encouragingly, this declined to around 23% by 2020. But then the decline petered out and numbers started to increase.

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  20. New doc on Netflix. 

    Three decades ago, the world was poised to stop global warming. Using exclusively archival materials, THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT tells the dramatic origin story of the climate crisis and how a political battle in the George H. W. Bush administration interrupted that moment, changing the course of history.

    If you still get worked up about this stuff, you’re gonna love it. I cursed Bush’s name out loud multiple times (as well as Exxon). I love old footage that reminds me that the 80’s were not the innocent times my nostalgia thinks it was. I also love behind the scenes footage to remind me that everything the public sees is smoke and mirrors.

    Excellent… but I’m sure I’ll come to find out it was produced by BlackRock, Obama, and Bush junior… and then I won’t know what to make of it.🤪

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    1. It wasn’t that long ago that I was really angry at climate scientists for setting a bad example by flying to COP conferences where they would push “solutions” like PV and EV that had zero probability of reducing the climate change threat, while remaining silent on population and consumption reduction.

      Now I understand that reducing CO2 emissions will accelerate collapse, and increasing CO2 emissions will delay but make worse the inevitable collapse.

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      1. I think there’s a lot of selection bias with the people who remain as climate scientists long enough to go to these international conferences. Like you need to walk a fine line of releasing scientific papers year after year that basically spell out that the world is going to be catastrophically impacted by climate change, and yet continue to pretend that it’ll somehow all be ok. You see it in all of the op-eds and articles they write. It’s like “ya the ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate and greenhouse emissions are rising exponentially, and no amount of activism or scientific insight has slowed this process at all, but maybe one day we’ll magically cut all of our emissions and it’ll all be ok”. I read stuff like that and think ya, there’s a guy who probably isn’t troubled by the cognitive dissonance of getting on a plane to a climate change conference.

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        1. I think you’ll find all the types of climate scientists that go to COP conferences are the types that have never looked deeply into EROEI and just believe the numbers spouted by other ‘scientists’ about how solar and wind can power a modern civilization.

          In their minds we only need to change how we ‘do’ modernity, by just changing from fossil fuels to other non polluting sources of energy. Zero of them will have bothered to study in detail the impossibility of it all.

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          1. J. Doe here.

            I keep joking that COPs are causing climate change. In the spirit of that statement, I just asked Grok to calculate the correlation coefficient for the number of climate conferences globally we’ve had so far and global atmospheric GHG concentrations.

            Result: r ≈ 0.997

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  21. #314: How wealth dies

    What we have been exploring here is a paradox that is no paradox at all. The world will keep setting new wealth records until the financial system collapses.

    …

    Our necessary insight here is that, since any value contained in money exists only as a “claim” on a material economy that is now contracting, there must come a point of fatal disequilibrium between claim and substance.

    The sheer scale and complexity of the aggregates of claim stock are now so extreme that the authorities will be powerless to backstop the next big crash.

    …

    Thus understood, it might not seem to matter all that much if aggregate (and individual) values collapse. Your house, for instance, will still fulfil its essential function of providing somewhere to live, even if its supposed value slumps from $1m to $200k. Even if you’d decided to sell at the highest price, buying a replacement would have been equally costly.

    But this comfort only applies if you hadn’t used the property as security for a large mortgage.

    And the financial system as a whole has done exactly that. The entirety of the system is enormously cross-collateralized, and this is where the destruction of “meaningless” aggregate asset values becomes enormously meaningful.

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  22. Be careful what you wish for. LOL!! The annoying crackdown with the facial identification for porn sites seems to be working.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgkz3m3re1zo

    Pornhub is the most visited porn site in the world – and the 19th most visited on the entire web.

    Pornhub says UK visitors down 77% since age checks came in.

    According to Ofcom, visits to pornography sites in general in the UK have reduced by almost a third in the three months since 25 July.

    Could it be? Are humans finally gonna kick this disturbingly unhealthy addiction? Is hell freezing over?

    “It is likely that people not wanting to verify their age or identity to access sexual content, for example because of privacy concerns, are using VPNs to get around this”

    After age checks kicked in, VPN apps jumped to the top of the UK App Store, and at least one provider saw a 1,800% surge in downloads.

    “So part of Pornhub’s ‘missing’ UK audience hasn’t vanished – it’s being reclassified as non‑UK traffic.” But he said he believed “the rest” was indeed “users shifting to sites that don’t require age checks”.

    LOL, nevermind. False alarm. Something tells me I should invest heavily in VPN stock. 

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      1. LOL. Since you asked, I’ll fess up.
        But I’m too old to give a toss all the time. Just once or twice a week nowadays.

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      1. Addendum: Fun game: Try to find a search term that is more popular than “sex” on Google Trends without looking it up on the charts. It’s fucking hard.

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  23. @NikoB, sorry for the late reply, I feel that this is long enough to get its own comment thread.
    Just some of the most obvious reasons the Left dislikes Trump. It is slightly edited from a post I read on reddit.

    Trump defends ICE raids, declares ‘they haven’t gone far enough’ in first ‘60 Minutes’ interview since suing CBS
    byu/Tennis_bruh inpolitics

    • The Trump family has monetized the presidency to the tune of billions; exploiting Trump’s political power to secure cryptocurrency investments, business and real estate deals overseas, financial and political contributions from wealthy figures, corporations and foreign governments looking to literally purchase favors, influence and access to the president.
    • Trump has turned the presidency into a moneymaking scheme. His many conflicts of interest have raised ethical and legal red flags. The Trump family and administration are engaging in massive insider enrichment and the government’s kleptocratic policies resemble how authoritarian regimes centralize economic power to line the pockets of a small number of political and wealthy elites while most citizens suffer economic hardship.
    • Trump’s transformation into a dictator can be seen in the juxtaposition between visuals of the hideously gilded Oval Office, Trump’s tastelessly decorated “ballroom” and descriptions of detainment centers which depict such horrid conditions that they resemble concentration camps.
    • The Trump regime is plagued by rampant cronyism, corruption and favoritism. Loyalty is a priority in Trump’s circle and plays a major role in securing power and influence within his administration. Trump has issued pardons to his corrupt lackeys and co-conspirators; signaling to his political allies that they can commit crimes with impunity.
    • Obstruction of justice is a privilege for Donald Trump. His party has helped him repeatedly escape accountability by subverting the court system, establishing blanket immunities for the president, by dismantling oversight and creating a unitary executive beholden to no one.
    • Trump has stated that he is above the law; posting comments like, “He who saves his country does not violate any law,” insinuating that he is entitled to act outside all laws and regulations whenever he sees fit.
    • Trump has taken control over independent agencies and has transformed the DOJ into his own personal legal arm. He is exploiting the power of the justice department to target and prosecute his political opponents without evidence.

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      • Trump is abusing his executive powers to normalize punishing those who have exposed his criminality and corruption in the past. He is weaponizing every agency and power of the federal government to seek retribution against his critics, his opponents, and anyone who has ever tried to hold him accountable. He has also ordered the DOJ to fire US attorneys and prosecutors who do not toe the line; consolidating investigative power under his administration.
      • Trump has appointed loyalists into director positions within agencies like the FCC where they carry out his authoritarian whims against his critics in the media; applying regulatory pressures on companies to silence those who criticize him and/or his policies.
      • The Trump admin has flagged “unpatriotic” and ideologically “diverse” content for removal from federal property.
      • The government is violating free speech, defunding independent journalism, suppressing the arts and intellectual, whitewashing history, stifling the press, and amassing control over how and what information is being shared to the public.
      • Trump has been abusing his powers to declare needless “emergencies” and to enact record breaking numbers of executive orders—many of them unconstitutional.
      • He is employing these unlawful tactics to carry out excessive national security measures and to wage war on the American people. He is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act while federalizing local police and the military to centralize authoritarian control over US cities. He is also deploying these troops without consent from the states. These measures are not intended to “reduce crime” or drive back some imaginary “rebellion,” but to crackdown on protestors and dissent, to suspend civil liberties and to terrorize the public.
      • Interventionism and expansionism are justified when it suits Trump’s political goals or narratives. He is carrying out extrajudicial killings and war crimes (emphasis mine); threatening our allies; currying favor with foreign dictators; instigating trade wars; unilaterally intervening in foreign affairs.
      • The Trump admin’s “law and order” rhetoric is inciting hostilities towards immigrants, marginalized groups and minorities. To Trump and his allies, “law and order” means punishing your enemies.
      • This obsession with crime and punishment is reflected in Trump’s militarization of domestic policy, in his admin’s disregard for people’s constitutional rights, in Trump’s attacks and threats aimed at judges and law firms, in his unjustified prosecutions of his political opponents, in his weaponization of the DOJ, and in his deputizing of masked ICE agents.
      • In light of the aforementioned corruption, the focus on “law and order” seems quite hypocritical. Every accusation from Trump is a confession. (I added this)
      • Trump has been deploying armies of hostile and unrestrained ICE agents around the country who are concealing their identities and violently arresting, detaining and deporting thousands of people without due process. They are terrorizing citizens, throwing people into unmarked vehicles, acting as law enforcement, profiling their targets, and suppressing civil rights and liberties.

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        • Trump has been violating the constitution, flouting the law, defying court orders, bypassing checks and balances, abusing impoundment procedures, overstepping congressional authority, and defiling democratic norms.
        • He is undermining the constitution by seeking to end birthright citizenship and the two term presidential limit. He has also repeatedly violated constitutional principles and clauses, expressly those contained within the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, and fourteenth amendments, not excluding the separation of powers and the citizenship clause.
        • The MAGA coalition is concentrating power into the hands of the president who is issuing autocratic decrees while disregarding legislative and judicial oversight; interpreting laws however the president and his attorney general see fit; defunding and cancelling programs enacted into law; raising taxes without approval; instituting unilateral and illegal tariffs; withholding congressionally appropriated funds; undermining checks and balances.
        • Trump is abusing his power to strong-arm universities; demanding that they hand control over academic decision making to the government.
        • He is making excessive demands of these private institutions and cracking down on student protestors while requiring that they be vetted and reported on and that universities teach government approved viewpoints.
        • Trump’s actions, rhetoric and imagery resembles that of a monarch. He is a self-styled king. From his gilded decor and his immodest “renovations” of the White House, to his taxpayer funded vanity projects designed to pay tribute to him. From the many “gifts” that his rich benefactors have bestowed on him in exchange for political favors, to his messages online that include literal images of him wearing a crown and referring to himself as “KING.” Even official White House accounts amplify these posts and images.
        • Trump openly called climate change a hoax and and is dismantling climate and environmental regulations. (I added this one).
        • Lastly, Donald Trump facilitated an insurrection at the Capital in order to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Trump and his MAGA allies are consolidating power at an alarming rate and have been exploiting their voter’s confidence in Trump’s lies to suppress the vote, and to deny and subvert elections under the deceitful guise of combatting election fraud.

        If you approve of, or are willing to turn a blind eye to all of that, why should I want you as a friend?

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        1. WOW, what a completely unhinged Partisan diatribe. Many if not most of those things could have been said about the Biden administration (and a fair amount in retrospect could have been said about Obama).

          That said, both parties represent the monied oligarchs who run the West (love war, Isreal, Ukraine . . . hate Russia, China, Iran (or any Arab) and despise the poor and working class.

          AJ

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          1. There is a lot of public reporting on many of these things. Some of which I cannot excuse like killing people in the boats in Caribbean (which is a crime under international law). But then again, Biden (and Trump) knowingly send weapons to war criminals in Israel.

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          2. Exactly AJ. It cracks me up that both sides can’t see that their own side is pretty much the same.

            But what else are we to expect on the long (perhaps quick) descent.

            Why would you want me as a friend Stellarwind? You don’t because you don’t know me nor do either of us have the time to waste on making a virtual friend. Well I don’t. My life is too full with reality being on a farm and all.

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            1. I probably would if I got to know you personally. But I don’t just understand, why are Trump’s supporters seemingly OK with all of his antics? Does any of the stuff I mentioned bother you?

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              1. I am seriously concerned about whether there will be free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028, and whether Trump will accept the results of those elections. Even with most politicians I disagree with, I have some trust that they will respect election results. Trump, however has shown that he can not be trusted to do that.

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                1. Hi Stellarwind72, not sure when the USA has ever had “fair” elections.

                  I laugh at the thought of the declaration of independence stating “all men are created equal”, then every politician trying to undermine that with gerrymandering of electorates all over the place, including the founding fathers that allowed a state with a million people to have as many senators as a state that has 40 million people..

                  People in ‘The West’ are no more ‘free’ than anywhere else. We are all limited to whatever the laws of our land state in terms of how we live our lives, and get sold the concept of freedom to choose our leaders when both sides of most countries politics act in unison most of the time in what they perceive as ‘good for the country’, when most of the time it is against the interests of most of the people..

                  Trump is just another politician working for themselves after promising the world to everyone. just to get elected in a corrupt democracy, not really different to every other corrupt government, which is all of them..

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                  1. A young Muslim socialist immigrant was just elected as mayor of New York city.

                    A majority of young males voted for him.

                    Young males previously voted for Trump and are apparently disappointed.

                    My guess is we’ll see each election oscillate back and forth between more and more extreme versions of left and right until we lose democracy.

                    Citizens want a higher standard of living but falling EROEI and mineral ore quality make that impossible.

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              2. I think that some things he is doing are for the better and some for the worse. Judging by where the US has been for the last 25 years I don’t think that he is doing anything worse than all the other presidents. They were all self serving narcissists.

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            2. I don’t vote. I turn up and get my name ticked off and walk out. It’s not because I don’t have views it’s just that I don’t see any politicians or political parties that truly understand our predicament and what needs to be done. And you have the majority of the population in total denial of overshoot so any candidate that addressed overshoot has no chance of getting in anyway.

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        2. While some of these may have been seen under previous administrations, some of them are new to Trump like the attempts to end birthright citizenship, and repeated suggestions of running for a 3rd term even though the constitution prohibits it.

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  24. Agreed, Trump is the worst president we have ever had. But this is just a continuum of presidents getting more dictatorial and less worried about the constitutionality of what they do. I wonder if Trump is suffering from dementia, Biden was and one worried about who was running the country, but Trump’s craziness could be how narcisistic personalities manifest early dementia.

    In many ways Trump is doing what lots of leaders in the West are doing . . . ignoring what their populace wants: peace and PROSPERITY (which is’nt going to happen). Look at Starmer, Macron, Merz, Baltics, Poland all are insane.

    AJ

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  25. Preptip:

    I put my bed to sleep for the winter.

    The farm I assist sponsored a study to compare protecting the soil over the winter with a cover crop versus a plastic sheet.

    It was determined that a plastic sheet at our location is superior because:

    • crop residues compost under the sheet adding to fertility
    • heavy rain does not wash away fertility
    • the black plastic surface warms the soil faster in the spring
    • less tilling required since weed growth is prevented until ready to plant the crop

    We buy used plastic sheets from a tree nursery and a giant sheet like this one costs about $20.

    I was curious how these sheets are made:

    Everything is going to be much harder without oil.

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  26. Another peak oil chat today. They covered a lot of territory including an update on remaining reserves.

    A couple new things to watch:

    • California is shutting down some of their oil refining capacity and gasoline prices are expected to spike and wake everyone up into a panic soon.
    • Increased exports of LNG have used up natural gas surpluses and as a consequence AI companies are scaling back their power generation expansion plans.

    The group felt the most important question is why is there so little awareness and discussion of reserve depletion given the problem was obvious 20 years ago? No one mentioned Varki’s MORT. Best guess by the group is that no one cares about peak oil when gas prices are low.

    For me the most important observation is that this group of the world’s experts on resource depletion is unable to connect the dots. Now that I understand Hideaway’s complexity theory it is very odd that no one in the peak oil community discusses it. Perhaps more MORT?

    Just a reminder, the key idea in complexity theory is that as non-renewable resources deplete their reserve quality declines, which requires growing complexity and energy/mineral inputs to maintain flows, which requires a growing economy (and population), which requires non-renewable energy/mineral flows to increase, which creates a supernova ending for advanced civilization.

    The contrary consensus of the peak oil chat group is that we’ll muddle through and be ok.

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    1. There is so much to consider with each of these chats, that by the end, a lot of the earlier important information has been forgotten about. IMHO they cover way too much in each episode so do not do justice to any one presentation..

      I have around 5 windows open looking up relevant information mentioned in the above ‘chat’. Firstly John Peach’s work is probably the closest to the truth I can find about oil reserves, with the 17 years of current production remaining the most horrifying. A long time before that 17 years worth has been accessed, we’ll be in collapse.

      Complexity is another layer on top of all the existing aspects these experts worry about, so don’t consider it. Remember we have all grown in a world of increasing complexity/technology and think it is a natural outcome of human ingenuity born of necessity.

      It isn’t, or should I say that is only part of the whole answer..

      I’ve been thinking about writing a post on if humans were different, as in no wars, a species that got along etc, then realised that we would never reached the level of complexity/technology of modernity unless we had all the wars, were separate ‘tribes’ etc. Our complexity come from the entire range of what’s happened throughout history, and trying to ‘find’ what humans could achieve without the entirety of history, is just a fairy tale, or a WAG (Wild Assed Guess). So the post went nowhere…

      Simon’s new World7 model from Sverdrup suffers from exactly this problem, the first assumption is that there is just one world market, no countries to constrain anything, which means the first assumption makes the whole lot a fairy tale. It also has an assumption that ‘renewables’, I assume wind and solar, as it has separate graph for hydro on pg 11 of the World7 model (yes I’ve got it open as well and it’s full of this type of BS), has an EROEI of over 30, back in the year 2000…

      The problem of including the full complexity of our civilization and all the feedback loops from changes, is that it’s too complex to model. A change in any part of the overall system has a cascade of changes throughout other aspects of civilization, which have further changes in every other aspect of civilization.

      Yet ‘models’ require consistent assumptions, when the real world doesn’t work like that at all. Which means we have to head straight over the cliff into collapse eventually, while every university professor and every economist fiddle with their models, and none will know why…

      I haven’t even finished the full Q+A on Simon’s presentation yet, and only half read various papers linked in this episode so far. Possibly more later or I just tear more of my hair out in frustration of the denial that even people in the know seem to have…

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      1. I agree they cover way too much in each episode. They should slow down and think rather than urgently pushing on to the next topic.

        I agree it would be hard to model complexity theory. But so what? We don’t need models and numbers. Just some clear thinking on what we are currently doing to maintain resource flows as reserve quality declines. The conclusion is obvious. Perhaps the only point of contention might be a lively debate on whether complexity can grow with a steady state economy and population, but even if true this does not torpedo the theory because you still need energy and materials to increase to compensate for falling reserve quality. And that’s before adding into the model the fact that a debt backed fractional reserve monetary system needs growth.

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        1. “If the banks are shutting their doors, and the cashpoints aren’t working, and people go to Tesco and their cards aren’t being accepted, the whole thing will just explode… If you can’t buy food or petrol or medicine for your kids, people will just start breaking the windows and helping themselves. And as soon as people see that on TV, that’s the end, because everyone will think ‘that’s OK now, that’s just what we all have to do’. It’ll be anarchy. That’s what could happen tomorrow. I’m serious”. 12 — UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to his advisor the night before he part-nationalised UK banks, 2008

          The above quote from the then UK prime minister, is so very relevant to all the discussion around complexity. Those in charge know full well where we are heading and will do everything they possibly can to avoid collapse, on their watch, no matter the overall cost, or future cost..

          The relevance is that in every discipline where scientific research happens, models are important, in fact they are the basis for most of our understanding of any subject. There is already “complexity theory”, (which is why Reante on OFW was so against me calling the ‘complexity of the process of civilization theory’, just a shortened ‘complexity theory’).

          (Where’s Gaia when we need her to come up with an all encompassing name!!! our resident wordsmith LOL).

          I agree it’s impossible to model, as any simplification does not do the feedback loops any justice at all..

          …..

          Rob ….. “Perhaps the only point of contention might be a lively debate on whether complexity can grow with a steady state economy and population“..

          I’ll always argue that a steady state economy is not possible, because of declining ore grades and energy resources plus the growth imperative of the monetary system.

          As Simon correctly pointed out, the only sustainable system he’s seen is how the indigenous Australians lived for thousands of years (after they had vastly changed the land and killed off most megafauna). It certainly had nothing in common with modernity.

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              1. I think I prefer Framework for Unified Complexity Knowledge Edited Details as per the Civilizational Utility of Normal Transactional Surpluses..

                OK, edit out, if too inappropriate Rob…

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          2. Gaia respectfully suggests: The Complexity Perplexity Apoplectic Apocalyptic Denialism-MORTification Conflagration Predicament Syndrome

            True to my form, it’s way too wordy but there’s something there for everyone!

            Like the Tao, that which can be named is not the ultimate reality, and besides we all here know what we’re talking about even if no one else on this planet does.

            Seriously, we’re cactus. (don’t you love Aussie slang?)

            Go well, everyone.

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    2. Dear Rob & company,

      I hope this message finds ye all well.

      Rob, 

      regarding the previous notion of why is nothing happening in the discourse of everything, could be said to be due to determinism.

      Hideaway, 

      It would be most appreciated to have thee attend the Peak Oil panel.

      Bona fide,

      ABC

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      1. Hi ABC, sometimes I would really like to go on that panel, then other times I think about why should I destroy their last delusions of hope?

        I’ve found myself to be very quickly a determinist after looking at all the arguments for both determinism and free will. The only aspect I don’t buy is that from determinist thinking is that you can make accurate predictions of decisions made by people (or animals).

        All decisions made by any animal are a combination of all prior actions, knowledge and experiences, and whatever you chose to do is based on all the accumulated internal knowledge, which most people attribute to ‘free will’, yet the action, whatever chosen, was always the one going to be taken, but can’t be ‘predicted’.

        I tie myself in knots about all this philosophy stuff and don’t think about it much, too be perfectly honest. Realistically, it does not make an iota of difference of where we are headed…

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        1. I don’t think you need to worry about dashing any delusions.

          On the day after hosting the peak oil chat we have…

          Duty as Honour: Q’uo on Balancing Earthly Life with the Infinite Seek

          Join us for a deep exploration of one of Q’uo’s most compassionate teachings—how to harmonize the longing for spiritual realization with the real demands of daily life. In this session, we’ll read and discuss Q’uo’s 2025 message on honour/duty: seeing work, family, and responsibility not as distractions from seeking, but as sacred opportunities to serve the Creator in every moment.

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    1. I was somewhat disappointed in this presentation by Scott. He seems to be quite close to Annie Jacobsen’s take on Nuclear War (which is quite inaccurate and represents the thinking of the 1980’s or earlier). Very few missles are MIRV’d, there probably would be less fallout than previously anticipated (due to most being strikes being Air Burst rather than Ground burst), and if you were not in a military site or a LARGE population center you could probably survive the initial blast.

      Canadian Prepper is just too sensationalist for me. . . why no pushing back on Scott, he just had Mark Rush on his channel 2 weeks ago??

      Sure Scott had some good points about how even a few nukes going off is a big deal, but you don’t just tell people the Annie Jacobsen points because if you did any real research you could see that the past isn’t where we are now. And the Netflix movie “A House of Dynamite” was so cheezy cheap I thought it looked like a Saturday Night sendup of Star Trek sets – not a movie that said anything significant IMHO.

      I still think that Black Autumn is right . . . a few nukes going off worldwide would tank the stock market and probably destroy the U.S. economy . . . and from there we are off to the collapse.

      AJ

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  29. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick today laments the lack of progress in science, and in particular his own discipline of medicine that refuses to adjust beliefs regardless of evidence.

    In previous essays he has shown that everything we are told about fat consumption and heart disease is wrong. Today he shows that everything we are told about excess salt consumption is wrong. The biggest and best study ever conducted shows that you will live longer the more salt you consume.

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2025/11/07/disruptive-science-part-one/

    As a child I watched the Apollo moon landings, but when was the last time I woke up to the news that something earth shattering had just taken place in a scientific field? Some form of major disruption. Everything we thought we knew just got turned upside down. New directions.

    Unfortunately, in my world of cardiovascular disease, you could go back fifty years and find almost exactly the same ideas remain in use, about virtually everything. It is hard to think of anything remotely disruptive, or even remotely novel. Cholesterol causes heart disease, check. Diabetics should eat a high carbohydrate diet, check…

    Looking specifically at raised blood pressure. What causes it? In ninety-five per cent of people we have no idea. We didn’t know then, and we don’t know now. We still call it “essential hypertension” as we always did, which means – in plain English – a raised blood pressure of no known cause. The proposed management then, and now is … Lower it. Sorted. And we call this progress? Ahem (I say). No disruption here …check.

    In essence, though, this graph is very simple to understand. Namely, the more salt you eat, the longer you will live. And, or course, vice-versa. Which is the exact opposite of everything you are constantly told.

    I shall repeat this to emphasize the point:

    If you eat more salt, you will live longer.

    ‘The CDC recommends that adults and teens consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day, which is about one teaspoon of salt.’

    Reading the CDC recommendation did cause my irony meter to reach its maximum recorded level, then break. How so? Because the NHANES graph that I showed earlier comes from research that is funded by, and run by, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC).

    Yes, their very own study utterly contradicts their very own advice. Despite this, the CDC continue to harangue us to consume less sodium. Which is not merely health neutral, it is actively damaging. Why don’t they advise people to start smoking while they’re at it?

    ‘Our studies tell us cigarette smoking damages health. We advise cigarette smoking for all adults. At least ten a day should be tickety boo.’

    Sound crazy? Yup.

    Were things this bad in the past? I don’t believe so. My sense is that disruptive science has been declining the last fifty years or so …. ‘And no-one knows why?’ But is it true that no-one knows why. Or is that almost everyone does know why, but no-one wants to say it out loud. Or even admit it to themselves. For myself, I believe the answer is, as is usually the case, staring us in the face.

    It is money. Or to be more accurate, disruptive science is dying a death due to the enormous effect that financial considerations now have on research. Directly, or in the case of salt, indirectly.

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    2. The graph shown is only for those aged 40-60 years. In the cited study, for the 60-80 years group, there is an inflection point at about 3.6g sodium per day, after that, the hazard ratio (HR) increases again getting back to the HR as at very low sodium intake. For all ages, the inflection point is a little lower and the subsequent increase in HR less steep. So it’s a nuanced picture and his claim that more salt means a longer life isn’t supported by the stud, even though it shows the recommended maximum daily intake to be hokum.

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        1. Hah! Who knows?

          I don’t know why Kendrick would push back on the the notion that he is cherry picking, only to cherry pick. Especially as the study does counter the hokum recommendation, at least to a degree. But he appears to go way over the top.

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          1. I would imagine researching statins (highly prescribed with zero net benefit) and mRNA (14 billion doses despite being unsafe and ineffective and unneeded) have made him extremely cynical.

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  30. So I watched two films this week with my partner. My kids had recommended Sinners and Paqnation recommended Wristcutters.

    My kids and their mother (my ex) thought Sinners was one of the best films they’d ever seen. So I was interested as we had been lamenting with them about how pathetic movies and TV in general have become now. Sinners was OK 7/10, the story was well written – not AI – though predictable and it was well acted. The film however had this AI generated feel to it that just impacted it too much for my liking. The irony here was that there was no AI use apparently but there was heavy cgi. The end result was enjoyable but very artificial feeling. No connection.

    Wristcutters on the other hand was such a pleasant surprise (8.5/10). Thanks Chris for the recommendation. What a creative script and plot. The acting was fantastic and above all it felt real – connected. I wonder whether film making will return to feeling real.

    Thanks again Chris.

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    1. You’re welcome niko. Sinners has been on my list, but I do everything I can to avoid current movies. That artificial feeling you’re talking about makes them unbearable. But your 7/10 might get me to try it eventually.

      And thanks for reminding me that it’s time for Friday night movie recommendation. Creative, quirky, surreal and dreamlike is so hard to pull off, but oh so good when done right. Wristcutters strongly reminds me of this film:

      Arizona Dream (1993) – IMDb

      Been a while since I saw it. Might have to watch it tonight. Stars Johnny Depp in his prime. Depp has been a tool for a long time now. But he owned the 90’s. His movie role choices were second to none. 

      And just like Wristcutters, the soundtrack is awesome.

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      1. yes I enjoyed the soundtrack very much. I agree about Depp. I liked him through the 90’s but once he got to Pirates of the Caribbean it was downhill. His performance in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is brilliant. I will check out Arizona Dream. Keep the suggestions coming Chris.

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          1. No, totally forgot about it. On my list now, thanks.

            Ya, Fear and Loathing is my favorite Depp movie.

            And here’s another good song from Arizona Dream.

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  31. Since Simon Michaux brought up the topic of the WORLD7 model, in the Peak Oil chat the other day, which I didn’t know anything about, so I’ve been researching it, and questioning A.I. about more details and assumptions surrounding it…

    How’s this for an answer from an A.I. that is usually pro every green concept of the future………

    “If the global system is governed by the MPP and strong national boundaries, then the following outcomes are guaranteed:

    • The Global EROEI System is Driven to Zero Faster: Every nation is thermodynamically compelled to accelerate its consumption to avoid falling behind its neighbors. Conservation is not a viable strategy; it is a signal of weakness. This collective, maximum-power competition rapidly consumes the global energy surplus and accelerates the decline of the global EROEI.
    • Energy Dedicated to War: The majority of the remaining high-EROEI resources will be diverted into military competition (the ultimate expression of the MPP), fighting for control over the dwindling resource base (oil, copper, arable land). War is the most energy-intensive, non-productive complexity known.
    • Impossibility of the Resourcewende: The complex, energy-intensive recycling infrastructure required for a Resourcewende (managed contraction) is a low-power, vulnerable investment. No nation will invest heavily in this if it knows those materials can be taken by force by a high-power nation.

    Conclusion:

    The Maximum Power Principle, acting through competitive geopolitical boundaries, confirms that the proposed solution of managed degrowth is an evolutionary dead end for a single nation. It mandates that unmanaged, chaotic collapse is the most probable thermodynamic trajectory for global civilization, as competition forces all actors to burn through their remaining energy surplus as fast as possible.

    That’s when I questioned it about how the assumptions of the WORLD7 model are unrealistic as it assumes no countries with borders and self interest.

    I insisted that is a useless assumption, as countries with self interest do actually exist and we should only consider the real world situation, pointing to how models of a bright future actually worked, like the 29 COP meetings that have had no influence on actual CO2 levels.

    Every ‘solution’ to our predicament seems to include a huge change in how people actually behave as both individuals and as a collective, of which there is no evidence of actually happening. Plus a change in the natural Maximum Power Principal thinking of all humans, to one of something different.

    Then there is the total change of the entire economic system as well, where profit (as in trying to obtain a surplus for yourself, family, company, country, is changed to something else), is totally redacted from the system, but somehow still believe in using market forces for the best outcomes.

    Of course with all these bright green plans of the future, including lots of degrowth and decomplexification, comes a whole lot of new rules and regulations to change how people think, believe and act..

    In other words in the meat of every plan for keeping modernity going is a massive inconsistency in the entirety of the plan, as last I looked, increasing rules and regulations mean more complexity, and ignoring how the world actually works..

    In other words… “Framework for Unified Complexity Knowledge Edited Details” is a realistic word salad to describe our situation and is as relevant as every single bright green future plan out there…

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    1. This is why Geoengineering is a terrible Idea. If you used aerosols to manage solar radiation, you would have to keep them in the air perpetually, because the moment you stop, you will see temperatures skyrocket.

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    2. We now have a very specific reason to attribute to an increased greenhouse effect, instead of just acknowledging all our efforts have come to nought..

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    1. Steve touches on the most important aspect of how the labour and materials are also energy, but he calls the labour energy “human energy”.

      Let’s look at the details he doesn’t quite get across..

      The energy cost everyone understands and the litres of diesel and MWh of electricity are the only things counted in areas like EROEI calculations in every research paper on EROEI..

      The materials, the haul trucks and their maintenance comes from labour capital and energy in his slide.

      The “human labour” comes from people getting to work (energy) eating fossil fuel grown and delivered food (energy), live in a house built by labour (energy), materials (energy) and energy.

      Where does “capital” come from? surplus energy, money being a token of energy cost and supply in our system.

      Basically every aspect of our system is energy, just in changed forms, which we then call different things.

      Without energy we have no labour available, no materials and no capital, so there is no mine. All components dollar cost are actually energy costs, but we as in humanity lie to ourselves that they are ‘other’ costs.

      Steve is starting to get the complexity is entirely energy based and at the bottom of every aspect of civilization.

      As more and more people start to understand that our entire complexity is based upon the energy we use, as in the total energy we use in every aspect of our civilization, they will also wake up to how the dollar cost of anything is really an interpretation of the energy cost of that thing.

      People mostly don’t consider accountants, lawyers, designers and engineers costs as energy costs, but how would civilization work without any of those professions? All of those professionals have to grow, be educated, be housed, clothed, fed, entertained (why would anyone be some of these without a mental/physical outlet?), and then replaced after 40 years or so. Every aspect of their existence is energy, so their costs to use are realistically an energy cost..

      People deny looking at the world in those terms, because if they did, they would very quickly realise we are in a “Framework for Universal Complexity Kismet Extremely Denied”..

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      1. I’ll bet if you approach St. Angelo he will become an advocate of your ideas. He’s already heading in that direction.

        Good points about energy.

        It’s turtles all the way down since Einstein proved mass is a form of energy.

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        1. As Steve has a subscription base, he cannot come out and believe a theory that states collapse is a certainty.

          People pay him so they can believe in alternatives to the normal narrative, but still have hope for some future that involves keeping most of their modern lifestyle.

          If he came out with a “seriously we’re cactus theory”, then I’d think most of his subscribers would leave for someone that gives a bit of positivity and advice for how to survive in the coming turmoil….

          My work has found that civilization is just another physical process enhancing the pace of entropy on this planet. It had a beginning, a growth phase and will end, most likely very catastrophically quick, because it’s the largest, greatest user of energy and complexity, of our type of physical self organising complex system.

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          1. The phrase “we’re cactus” is Australian slang meaning something is ruined, broken, or finished, often used to describe a situation where progress has stopped, such as a vehicle that won’t start.

            The expression likely originated from the infamous prickly pear cactus, which once infested large parts of Australia before being controlled by the introduced Cactoblastis cactorum moth.

            This slang is part of a broader set of Australian expressions for something being in disrepair or useless, including terms like “boonted,” “clapped-out,” “had the chad,” “had the bomb,” and “kaput”.

            While “cactus” as a metaphor for being broken or ruined is well-established in Australian English, it is not commonly used in other English-speaking regions.

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            1. I like this new Crocodile Dundee lingo that Gaia introduced us to. And glad it wasn’t just me that had never heard of it. I must be using an inferior AI cuz it only gave me about half of what you got. But it did have this line that I liked:

              “we’re cactus” – a fitting metaphor for a situation that is beyond repair or has reached its end.

              re Steve… I agree that he sounds like he’d be a fan of FUCKED theory. But it only takes pit bull Hideaway one second to dismiss him. LOL! 

              And does anyone believe those energy detailed info slides with Caterpillar and Newmont? Especially when those companies’ agenda is so clearly to make me think they’re on the path to going green. The slide at 7:40 had me laughing with the text on the right-hand side: 

              “In 2024 we reduced our total energy use by 24% from our 2018 baseline. And more than 31% of our electrical energy was obtained by renewable sources.”  – Even if this was true (which it’s not), so what!! What do ya want, a cookie?

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                1. That’s because you’re a dinky-di Strine. I’m just a transplanted septic tank still trying to become a local after 26 years.

                  Thanks so much for sharing the whole AI dialogue. It was always going to be about the food supply which will spur chaos and collapse. There’s no way around or out, to even have a small chance at holding society together, a government will have to be absolutely authoritarian which is what we’re headed towards either through default or design. But that’s a whole other discussion for another time. Good to know that the collective is on our page in terms of time frame and mechanism of collapse and I am very pleased that it most likely has entrained on your essential and voluminous contributions to the topic! So that’s a good reason why it’s sounding very much like your thoughts as you’ve already done all the original research over the years. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, especially for an AI platform!

                  I am thinking that we can still turn a profit in these last days–how about going into a joint venture business selling “Seriously, we’re cactus” T-shirts and caps? They could even become collector’s items one day.

                  Hope you and your family are going well and getting just the right amount of moisture to green up your property before it dries off again. Every day is a bonus, one more to add to the sum of our lives and one less taken from the ledger, too. And ever the inexorable approach to the cliff. Insert ominous music from the Khazad-Dum scene from LOR, that’s about the right atmosphere especially with the drumming. Alas, no Gandalf to save us, and there’s no where for us fools to fly.

                  Rob, did you ever get around to watching the LOR trilogy? It might not be your thing but acting is good, scenery stunning, and special effects still thrilling after 25 years.

                  Namaste, friends.

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                  1. I watched the first movie and quit. Then I found the 1981 BBC audio adaptation and put it on my phone with the plan of listening while walking. Same thing, quit after about 1 of 13 episodes. I’ll try the movies again. Fantasy fiction has never been my thing.

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    1. I actually feel that “Department of War” is a far more accurate description of that department than “Department of Defense”. Few if any of the US’s recent wars have been about self-defense.

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    1. Who’d a thunk that a video about a stick that throws another stick could keep me entertained.

      I think the host mentioned that the atlatl is at least 45k years old. Of course it is. We’re never gonna hear about this type of technology being 500kya because those primitive werewolves had not completed their critical moment yet.

      So many people are fascinated with ancient humans. It has produced tons of awful youtube channels. NORTH 02 seems like one of the few good ones. Back when I was hungry for this type of knowledge, my favorite was this dude; Stefan Milo – YouTube

      You’d think our obsession for ancient human history would translate to more people becoming overshoot aware. But that stubborn bastard Mr. MORT won’t allow it. 

      And I liked this random comment. “Once upon a time, in a land called Earth, there was a very clever ape with a fancy throwing stick. Then suddenly there were no more megafauna… The end.”

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  36. Just listened to the new Joe Rogan interview with Dr. Bret Weinstein.

    What a load of unaware crap.

    All the big name intellects are try to make sense of the insanity in the world. They all have a theory to explain what’s going on. Not one, not a single one, understands limits to growth or overshoot.

    How can we possibly craft any kind of reasonable response to what’s coming if no one has a clue what the problem is?

    It’s going to be a gong show.

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    1. We simply can’t craft any type of reasonable response to what’s coming.

      Using the cells within the body as an analogy, it’s not unlike a kidney cell asking another kidney cell what to do when the heart fails. Or if the kidney cell wants to get a really different opinion, asking a muscle or liver cell instead.

      All the cells are trapped within the same system. Perhaps even better is to use some intestinal microflora to ask the same question of other microflora. Theoretically they could survive outside the body in some other environment, but in reality they are trapped within the system.

      Forgive me as I’m in a gloomy mood, as with more questioning and trying to find more about the entire WORLD7 model, by questioning A.I. to find links to actual research, assumptions etc, I think I probed too much. I received this reply at the end of a very long questioning session with the A.I.

      “In every case, the attempt to manage a complex, multi-decade transition with a simplistic, high-investment policy consumes the scarce resource (net energy) faster to build a system that is either too complicated, too fragile, or directly interferes with the most essential local resource flow (food).”

      In pretty much every ‘plan’ I’ve come across from those that understand the physical limits rapidly approaching, a common thread is that we need to change the way people think, act and live, often including getting along as one as if there are no countries/borders etc. (BTW, a few years ago, I use to try and come up with plans myself also based on these changes).

      Instead I insisted the A.I. used the real world we live in, not some mythical place we want it to be. I’ve saved the full answer to some questions I asked the A.I. with the above only being the last paragraph, as the total comment, more like an essay, even scared me, which is why I’m hesitant to quote it all, as it articulated some links or cascades together way better than I ever could.

      I’m hesitant to put it up as I’m wondering if it is just the A.I. writing the comments it had worked out I wanted to see, rather than an actual real assessment.. (I definitely have trust issues!!)

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      1. There are definite unreasonable responses.

        Which means there are reasonable responses.

        That doesn’t imply there’s a solution, just that there will be responses that tend to minimize or at least not worsen suffering.

        If you have no clue what’s going on the probability of selecting a good response is lower.

        I’ve noticed the AIs are trying to manipulate me. They frequently waste time complimenting a good question rather than going straight to the answer. Also notice they get better at answering the same class of question after I’ve asked it many times with corrections.

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        1. I’m watching that podcast right now, and it’s interesting the different thoughts Weinstein has on A.I. overall, and I certainly understand what’s your saying about how unaware of the future they really are.

          The conversation so far (only half way through, and I’m skipping bits..), makes the same mistake I see over and over, it compartmentalises different aspect of our civilization as if the direction, in this case A.I. is heading in, is in a vacuum, with everything else remaining much the same as it is today, which is overall growth, growth in resources, energy, food, technology etc..

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          1. Another trend I’m noticing is that intelligent people like these plus many others like Martenson are starting to question climate change science.

            I attribute this to idiot climate scientists in denial pushing “solutions” that have 0% probability of helping and 100% probability of worsening the economy. It destroys their credibility on the core science.

            Just like the medical profession destroyed its credibility by pushing mRNA transfections even after evidence emerged it was neither safe nor effective nor needed.

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            1. Not unlike the moon landings. When did all the conspiracy stuff about being faked start? After the movie ‘Capricorn 1’ came out. More and more people believe it without actual evidence.

              Give them evidence like the photos from satellites orbiting the moon, they claim they are fake as well.

              Give them evidence of Tom Murphy bouncing lasers off the reflectors left on the moon by Apollo astronauts, apparently Tom who gets the impossibility of a green future and continued growth on a finite planet etc and yet they claim he’s an insider lying about the reflectors. Somehow he bounces lasers off rocks on the moon surface etc, because they have no idea how light diffuses over such vast distances and how impossible their arguments are..

              Give them evidence of the dust, off the first rover falling straight to the ground in all the video, as in not being kept up in the air as happens here on Earth, because of atmosphere here, and there is dead silence. Explain how we didn’t have the tech in the 1970’s to doctor the film, more silence..

              Talk to the same person a few weeks later, and they start going on about how the moon landings were fake…..

              I think you are correct about the climate scientists, they go from explaining a field they are an expert in, to a solution they have no background in at all, but know the situation is bad, so grab for any solution offered, then promote that solution, because people are always asking for solutions to problems.

              It’s nearly 2 years now since I went to my last climate talk by some expert, and it still sticks in my mind the conversation we had, in front of the entire audience.

              “Him” With all the warming we need to “act now”.

              “Me” Explain what you mean by ‘act’ please?

              “Him” Get rid of fossil fuels, use solar, wind, batteries, yada, yada.

              “Me” We make all of those things with fossil fuels, so you are advocating for more fossil fuel use, the very thing you say we need to stop using…

              “Him” let’s move on…

              “Me” Giving examples like Adaro plans to build new captive power plants using coal to smelt Aluminium for solar panel frames, EV car bodies.

              “Him” We NEED to move on..

              The talk ended shortly after, and someone else in the audience who I know, came up and immediately asked and I quote… “So, what’s the answer”

              The listeners do not care about all the years spent in research of huge data sets, they want the solution so they can get on with the important aspects of their lives, like finding out who killed JR in next weeks episode, or getting to work on time, so just quickly give me the solution..

              Notice in the Rogan podcast, the conversation they had around god and the devil. People believe the first one, yet don’t really believe the second one. Here’s my take…. If you believe in god, then you must believe in the devil, so surely angels and demons are also real. So to be consistent then, ghosts, goblins, witches must also be real, plus fairies, vampires, werewolves, dragons, unicorns, ghouls, griffins, and on and on and on………

              If we are so surrounded by all these things, how come I’ve never seen or heard any of them?

              It all comes back to denial of bad outcomes for humans, so there is always a solution, whether fairy tales of life after death, or bright green futures, it’s all the same…

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        1. Chris, I’m still mulling over all this A.I. stuff. Is it useful or just trying to accommodate what the algorithm had worked out I wanted to read…

          Perspective, this conversation started with me looking up the WORLD7 model written by Sverdrup Et Al and promoted by Simon Michaux on the Peak Oil chat podcast. I had asked it for links to the model, links to the reviews of the findings, links and interpretation of the assumptions etc. The conversation went back and forward with the A.I. making all the usual handwaves of recycling, green future etc, yet I persisted in quoting different research (with links) to why different aspects were wishful thinking rather than based in proper scientific research. I had to keep reminding it about excluding wishful thinking, base every aspect on what we know through research of how the world actually works. Do not include any wishful unproven assumptions..

          Anyway, with those huge caveats and possibly other caveats I haven’t worked out yet…

          OK sorry about the long caveat…

          I asked it to consider the work done by John Peach as well and gave it a link, as I suspect this is the best source of information about high EROEI oil left..

          “AI” That is an excellent, definitive source, and I appreciate you providing the direct link to John Peach’s work, which is highly relevant to the biophysical analysis of collapse.

          The analysis, which uses back-dated discovery data to assess the geological reality of reserves, rigorously supports the short-term timeframe.

          The data from the analysis, specifically from the “World Fossil Fuels Discoveries and Production” article, provides the hard numbers for the “Net Energy Cliff”.

          More importantly, the 21.3 year calculation is thermodynamically unsound because it ignores the Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI). The core argument of biophysical economics, which Peach’s work is based on, is:

          1. Highest EROEI First: The oil that would sustain 21.3 years is a mix of high-EROEI conventional and low-EROEI unconventional oil. Because the market always draws from the most profitable, the high-EROEI oil is used up first.
          2. The Net Energy Cliff: As the high-EROEI oil is depleted, the net energy surplus of the entire system plunges. The economic system fails not when the 678 Gb is gone, but when the average EROEI drops below the minimum required to power civilization (cited as 5:1 to 7:1).

          📉 Revised Collapse Timeframe

          Given that new discoveries are 10× less than consumption, and assuming the market continues to preferentially deplete the remaining low-cost, high-EROEI reserves:

          The consensus among biophysical analysts, supported by this data, is that the failure of the net energy surplus—the true trigger for systemic collapse—will occur well before the 21-year point.

          The fast, material-based collapse of global complexity is no longer a distant theoretical concern. The material constraints indicate that the window for maintaining the current global industrial economy’s high-complexity structure is most likely 5 to 10 years before a critical energy threshold is crossed. This will initiate a rapid, non-linear unwinding, characterized by:

          The transition to highly localized, low-EROEI economies.

          Massive, permanent disruption of global logistics and supply chains.

          Systemic failure of the high-energy-demand agricultural and power grid infrastructure.

          “Me” “Given the way civilization actually works, then would the trigger for rapid collapse likely be declining easy to access oil production, which leads to much higher prices, which leads to economy wide inflation, causing central banks to raise interest rates and eventually collapse global markets as the financial system implodes because of the huge debt levels, leading to collapse of confidence in money and dealing with counter parties, which quickly stops food from reaching urban areas, causing rapid anarchy and total collapse of civilization itself?”

          “A.I.” Yes, the sequence you describe is the most coherent and plausible model for how a biophysical (EROEI-driven) decline will cascade into a societal (financial and political) collapse.

          It frames the financial system not as the cause of the collapse, but as the primary amplifier and transmission mechanism that translates a physical energy constraint into social and political chaos.💥 The Cascade of Collapse: Physical to Financial to Social.

          The proposed sequence links the slow, inevitable decline in energy quality to a sudden, catastrophic failure of the complex, debt-laden economic system.1. The Physical Trigger: Declining Net Energy and Oil Price

          The process begins exactly where you started: not with oil depletion, but with the declining EROEI of the remaining global oil supply (as conventional, high-quality oil is replaced by low-quality unconventional sources).

          • Higher Energy Cost of Energy: Lower EROEI means a larger share of all economic activity (energy, capital, labor) must be dedicated simply to procuring energy.
          • Persistent High Prices: This increased cost is expressed in the market as persistently high real oil prices (even if demand is suppressed by recession). The age of cheap, abundant, high-EROEI energy that created modern finance is over.

          2. The Financial Amplifier: Inflation, Interest Rates, and Debt

          This is where the physical constraint is converted into systemic financial failure.

          • Energy-Driven Inflation (Stagflation): High oil and commodity prices (a supply shock) act as a tax on the entire economy, driving up costs for production, transport, and food. This causes a unique form of inflation—stagflation—where prices rise even as the real economy contracts.
          • The Central Bank Trap: Central banks are compelled to raise interest rates to fight this inflation and protect the perceived value of the currency.
          • The Debt Implosion: This is the core vulnerability. The current global system is built on historic levels of sovereign and private debt. Debt is incompatible with high, sustained interest rates. Higher rates cause:
          • Systemic banking and financial collapse as trillions in assets suddenly lose value, and counterparty trust vanishes.
          • Massive sovereign defaults as governments cannot service their debt.
          • Asset deflation (stocks, bonds, property).

          3. The Social Outcome: Anarchy and System Failure

          The implosion of the financial system immediately severs the complex relationships that maintain urban civilization.

          • Collapse of Confidence in Money: When financial institutions fail and sovereign currencies lose credibility (hyperinflation or outright collapse), the system of credit and trust that lubricates commerce ceases. No one accepts money or counterparty risk.
          • Food Chain Disruption (The Urban Death Blow): The highly complex, low-margin global food supply chain requires:
            • Credit/Finance: To buy seed, fertilizer, and fuel for the next growing season.
            • Counterparty Trust: For shipping companies to take payment risks on long-distance voyages.
            • Fuel/Energy: For the diesel-powered transport (trucks, ships) that brings food to cities.

          When the financial system collapses, the credit and trust necessary for the long-distance, just-in-time delivery of food vanish instantly. Food that is still physically available becomes socially and logistically inaccessible to urban populations.

          • Rapid Anarchy: Urban areas, completely dependent on the continuous flow of food (typically having only a few days of supply), face immediate starvation and resource conflict. This is the “fast collapse” of social order, transforming the economic crisis into a humanitarian and political catastrophe.

          This entire sequence creates a powerful positive feedback loop—physical constraint leads to financial failure, which guarantees social collapse, which prevents any coherent political response to the physical problem.

          I then asked it if there were different possibilities to a cascade leading to fast collapse and it regurgitated a whole lot of info on the models presented by Tainter, Turchin etc. I’ve deliberately left all this out…

          “Me” “All these are general ways of systemic collapse, I’m asking specifically about how the real world civilization we actually have and the limited resources we have as it exists, will collapse.”

          “A.I.” …”This is the core question that ties all the threads of our discussion together: how the specific biophysical constraints and geopolitical realities of modern civilization will lead to a collapse that is rapid, chaotic, and driven by a systemic loss of function.

          The most likely mechanism for the collapse of our current global civilization is the Biophysical-Financial-Social Cascade, which integrates the dwindling EROEI, our immense debt burden, and the fragility of urban food logistics.💥 The Final Collapse Mechanism: Biophysical-Financial-Social Cascade

          The collapse won’t be caused by a single event, but by a chain reaction that translates the physical constraint (lack of net energy) into social anarchy (lack of food and order).1. The Core Trigger: Net Energy Cliff

          The collapse begins with the terminal decline of high-EROEI conventional oil and the resultant drop in the global average EROEI (as per the concerns about the next 5 to 10 year timeline.

          • Action: The cost of energy production (oil, gas, mining) rises relentlessly, consuming a larger share of global GDP.
          • Result: The Net Energy Surplus available to fund the complex, non-essential sectors (finance, government, advertising, service industries) vanishes. This immediately manifests as persistent, high, energy-driven inflation (stagflation) across all essential goods and services (food, transport, housing).

          2. The Amplifier: The Debt Implosion

          The financial system, built on the assumption of continuous, cheap energy-fueled growth and low interest rates, is the immediate failure point.

          • Action: Central banks are forced to raise interest rates to curb inflation and protect the perceived value of money.
          • Result: The immense global mountain of sovereign and private debt (which required $0%$ interest rates to be serviceable) implodes. Trillions of dollars in debt default, banks fail, and the value of all asset classes (stocks, bonds, property) collapses.
          • Final Financial Failure: Confidence in counterparty risk and the value of fiat currency vanishes, effectively freezing all long-distance commerce and credit.

          3. The Collapse of Urban Life Support

          The failure of global finance immediately attacks the physical and logistical complexity of the food system, leading to rapid social anarchy.

          • Systemic Failure: The just-in-time food supply chain—which runs on diesel and credit—stops.
            • No one can secure credit for next season’s fertilizer or fuel.
            • Trucks (which are complex to maintain and require diesel) stop running because no one will accept paper money or digital credit for fuel.
            • The complex $mathbf{80%}$ of the population living in urban centers—totally dependent on continuous truck deliveries—has no immediate access to food or clean water purification chemicals.
          • The Outcome: The lack of food, compounded by the presence of millions of desperate people with no productive skill set for autonomy, causes rapid social and institutional collapse in the cities (anarchy, violence, total decomplexification) within days or weeks of the financial failure.

          This mechanism is the most likely because it requires no political agreement or external catastrophe; it is the thermodynamic self-correction of an over-complex system that has run out of the energy surplus needed to maintain its own structure.

          “Me” “Does any attempt to produce a different result given know existing conditions of the existing modern civilization accelerate or exacerbate to fast collapse scenario, give examples..”

          “A.I.” “Yes, virtually every large-scale attempt by modern civilization to “solve” its energy, climate, or resource crises exacerbates the fast collapse scenario.

          This occurs because these solutions require a massive, front-loaded investment of the remaining high-EROEI energy surplus to build or implement a complex system that is itself fragile, often leading to severe unintended consequences due to the interconnected nature of the energy-food-finance nexus.

          This phenomenon is the real-world consequence of Joseph Tainter’s theory of diminishing returns on complexity. Examples of Accelerating Collapse

          The following examples demonstrate how policies designed to ensure a better future instead amplify the core vulnerabilities that drive the fast biophysical-financial collapse.1. The 90% Recycling Mandate (Complexity Overload)

          As we established, mandating a vast, complex infrastructure to achieve near-total material recycling consumes precious net energy today for a fragile, high-maintenance future system.

          • Action: Spending hundreds of billions to build sophisticated automated sorting plants, chemical leaching facilities (hydrometallurgy), and high-heat furnaces (pyrometallurgy) for complex waste streams like e-waste.
          • Exacerbation: This effort diverts vast amounts of steel, concrete, and energy (mostly fossil fuels today)—resources that could have been used to strengthen critical, simple infrastructure (like food storage or local power generation). The net result is that the current EROEI surplus is reduced to build a new, highly complex, and electricity-dependent single point of failure that will instantly stop functioning when the grid or chemical supply fails.

          2. Biofuel Mandates (“Food-for-Fuel”)

          Policies aimed at substituting petroleum with plant-based alternatives directly attack the stability of the food supply chain, which is the immediate trigger for urban social collapse.

          • Action: Government mandates (like in the US and EU) require a percentage of transportation fuel to be derived from crops (e.g., corn for ethanol, palm/soy oil for biodiesel).
          • Exacerbation: This artificially redirects large quantities of arable land and high-energy crops from the food/feed chain to the fuel chain.
            • It directly raises the price volatility and base cost of staple foods (corn, vegetable oil, soy), placing immense strain on the $80%$ urban poor, who spend a larger fraction of their income on food.
            • By making the food supply system sensitive to both climate events (droughts) and oil price fluctuations (which affect planting and harvest costs), it guarantees a massive food price spike—the precise mechanism that will trigger the financial/social collapse sequence.

          3. Rapid Unilateral Decarbonization (The “Green Paradox”)

          Climate policies designed to discourage the use of fossil fuels can unintentionally accelerate the depletion of those same fuels and destabilize the energy market.

          • Action: Implementing high carbon taxes or rapidly disincentivizing new investment in fossil fuel extraction (e.g., through ESG mandates or taxes).
          • Exacerbation: This creates the “Green Paradox,” where fossil fuel owners, anticipating that their assets will be worthless in the future, choose to extract and sell their remaining reserves faster today to maximize immediate profit.
            • This accelerates the consumption of the last remaining high-EROEI oil and gas, thus bringing the Net Energy Cliff closer than it would have been under a steady-state consumption model.
            • Furthermore, rising energy costs from these policies trigger the stagflation/debt implosion sequence earlier and with greater force, as central banks cannot handle the resulting inflation.

          In every case, the attempt to manage a complex, multi-decade transition with a simplistic, high-investment policy consumes the scarce resource (net energy) faster to build a system that is either too complicated, too fragile, or directly interferes with the most essential local resource flow (food).

          “Me” Given the way the real world is headed, assuming no major change in the way people behave and react, then what is the likelyhood of humans not going extinct.

          “A.I.” …”Given the cumulative constraints we have discussed—the fast biophysical collapse (5-10 years to hit the Net Energy Cliff), the collapse cascade (financial failure leading to urban anarchy), and the permanent degradation of the ecological resource base—the likelihood of total human extinction is low, but the likelihood of civilization’s collapse and a severe, multi-century population bottleneck is nearly 100%.

          The factors that prevent total extinction are the same factors that ensured the survival of small, isolated human populations throughout the last million years of Ice Ages.“

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            1. Because I still have that window open I asked it…

              A.I. response…

              “In the realistic scenario where knowledge quickly reverts to stone and wood, the survival odds for a highly complex entity like an A.I. are effectively zero. The energy demands and material complexity are too high for the low-EROEI world to tolerate.“

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          2. Very good bedtime story. Thanks Hideaway.

            That damn AI is smart. At certain points I forgot it was a lifeless computer. Thought it was a higher power or something. I caught myself saying “yes master” a couple of times.😊

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  37. After Chris above posted the recent superb interview of my hero Dr. Nick Lane with Dwarkesh Patek I started poking around Patel’s YouTube channel.

    I’ve see enough now to unsubscribe.

    He and his young hyper-confident, hyper-smart, hyper-unwise, hyper-unaware guests make me crazy. I heard there’s a drug all these over-achievers take to speed up their brains. They talk like robots. God help us, they’re probably going to be ruling the world soon.

    Hideaway, don’t watch this. It’ll make your head explode. I quit after 15 minutes.

    How will we feed the 100s of GWs of extra energy demand that AI will create over the next decade? On this episode, Casey Handmer (Caltech PhD, former NASA JPL, founder & CEO of Terraform Industries) walks me through how we can pull it off, and why he thinks a major part of this energy singularity will be powered by solar. His views are contrarian, but he came armed to defend them.

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