All Posts (1-100)

Eric Weinstein: A Case Study in Denial (August 8, 2020)

Cream Lake Hike (August 5, 2020)

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes by Daniel Everett (July 7, 2020)

Biased Cognitive Biases (June 30, 2020)

Sabine Hossenfelder’s Lost in Math (June 28, 2020)

Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (revisited) (June 14, 2020)

By Nate Hagens: Earth Day 2020 – The State of the Species (May 28, 2020)

Gail Tverberg on what to expect… (April 21, 2020)

Providing Alcohol to an Alcoholic (March 5, 2020)

Denial is Proportional to the Unpleasantness of the Reality (February 27, 2020)

On the Avengers and Denial (January 30, 2020)

By James: Merry Christmas from the Big Bang (December 17, 2019)

Ajit Varki: Our Only Hope is Legitimate Fear-Mongering (October 22, 2019)

By Ronald Wright: A Short History of Progress Revisited (October 19, 2019)

By Tim Watkins: What Extinction Rebellion is Getting Wrong (October 16, 2019)

Mariwood Lake Hike (September 15, 2019)

On Boneheads (September 12, 2019)

Cape Scott Trail Hike (August 29, 2019)

Bedwell Trail Hike (August 8, 2019)

By Nate Hagens: Reality 101 Short Courses (August 8, 2019)

Endgame (July 31, 2019)

By Tad Patzek: On the Green Queen’s Race (July 5, 2019)

By Geoffrey Chia: Open Letter to Extinction Rebellion (July 5, 2019)

By Gail Zawacki: On Themism and Seeking Scapegoats for Reality (July 4, 2019)

Removing the Safety Valves (June 10, 2019)

Saving the World by Recycling My Garbage (June 8, 2019)

On the Emergence of Behaviorally Modern Humans: The Denial to Domesticate (DtD) Theory (May 7, 2019)

Homo Oblivion Oblivious (March 22, 2019)

Mashup (March 17, 2019)

By Tim Watkins: The Green Deal is Hopium (March 6, 2019)

On GMO (February 26, 2019)

By xraymike79: The Inconvenient Truth of Modern Civilization’s Inevitable Collapse (February 20, 2019)

One Strange Rock: A Must Watch (February 19, 2019)

By Tim Morgan: Primed to Detonate (O O Canada) (February 18, 2019)

The Canadian Weasel: A Whiny Species (February 15, 2019)

By Tad Patzek: On Human Overshoot (February 2, 2019)

By Nate Hagens: Reality 101: What every student (and citizen) should know (February 2, 2019)

By Michael Mills: How to Avoid Population Overshoot and Collapse (January 28, 2019)

By Chris Martenson: Collapse is Already Here (January 26, 2019)

By Jack Alpert: Why a One Child Policy is Not Sufficient (January 16, 2019)

By Gail Zawacki: Why Are Climate Scientists Less Than Truthful? (January 11, 2019)

By Tad Patzek: A Requiem for the Beautiful Earth (January 8, 2019)

On Meaning (January 7, 2019)

By Tom Lewis: It’s Too Late to Brace for Impact (January 3, 2019)

By Antonio Turiel: The Sunset of Oil (2018 Edition) (December 19, 2018)

By Gail Zawacki: Diva of Doom Interview (December 16, 2018)

What if we’re denying something else? (December 14, 2018)

Eat the rich, save the planet? (December 13, 2018)

By Tim Watkins: Climbing Everest in High Heels (aka “It’s the overshoot, stupid”) (December 11, 2018)

Yellow Vests (December 10, 2018)

By Hugh Montgomery: Are Humans Like a Virus on Planet Earth? (November 27, 2018)

Comfort on a Razor’s Edge (November 9, 2018)

New Badass in Town: Jean-Marc Jancovici (Radio Ecoshock interview) (October 31, 2018)

By Peter Watts: The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC (October 30, 2018)

By Jack Alpert: On Sustainability (without the bullshit) (October 20, 2018)

Good Times Bad Times: A Short Break from Denial (September 20, 2018)

By Tim Watkins: The Three Vortices of Doom (energy, debt, state) (September 13, 2018)

By Tom Murphy: The Energy Trap (we all scream for ice cream) (September 10, 2018)

By Tim Garrett: The Global Economy, Heat Engines, and Economic Collapse (September 5, 2018)

On Famous Polymaths (September 3, 2018)

By James Kunstler: The Uncomfortable Hiatus (September 3, 2018)

Arnica Lake to Elk River Hike (September 3, 2018)

If this blog goes dark… (August 13, 2018)

By Bodhi Paul Chefurka: I’d rather light a candle than curse the darkness (August 7, 2018)

By Richard Nolthenius: Will the End of Growth Tame Climate Change? (August 4, 2018)

On Oil (July 29, 2018)

Reunion Faux Pas (July 28, 2018)

On Sexual Selection and Extinction (July 19, 2018)

I Remember… (July 17, 2018)

On Shock and Awe (July 17, 2018)

On Meta-Denial (July 15, 2018)

By Dave: Dear God (July 4, 2018)

By Alice Friedemann – On Fake Peak Oil Demand (July 4, 2018)

James Hansen On and In Denial (June 26, 2018)

By Norman Pagett: The oilparty is over (and so is our food party) (June 24, 2018)

By Respect Silence: Why “Saving the Planet” is a Misleading, Lost Cause (June 24, 2018)

By Irv Mills: My Peak Oil Journey (June 14, 2018)

By Ajit Varki: Did Human Reality Denial Breach the Evolutionary Psychological Barrier of Mortality Salience? (June 8, 2018)

On a Red Queen: Diesel to get Diesel (May 29, 2018)

Michael Pollan on Psychedelics (May 24, 2018)

By Jean-Marc Jancovici: Can we save energy, jobs and growth at the same time? (May 20, 2018)

Amazed and Worried (May 14, 2018)

By Gail Tverberg: How the Economy Works as It Reaches Energy Limits — An Introduction for Actuaries and Others (May 11, 2018)

By Nate Hagens: Where are We Going? (May 10, 2018)

By Dahr Jamail: Update on the State of the Planet: How Then Shall We Live? (May 3, 2018)

By Sam Harris & Bart Ehrman: What Is Christianity? (May 2, 2018)

By Tom Murphy: The Future Needs an Attitude Adjustment (May 2, 2018)

By Jack Alpert: Unwinding the Human Predicament (April 29, 2018)

By Nate Hagens: Contrasts and Continuums of the Human Predicament (April 29, 2018)

By Ugo Bardi: The road to the Seneca Cliff is paved with evil intentions: How to destroy the world’s forests (April 23, 2018)

By Paul Mobbs: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics – The Gaping Hole in the Middle of the Circular Economy (April 18, 2018)

On Superior Pattern Processing, Magical Thinking, and Human Success (April 14, 2018)

On Apollo: The Most Impressive Human Achievement (April 12, 2018)

On the Trans Mountain Pipeline (April 10, 2018)

By Paul Arbair: The World in 2018 (part 4) (April 4, 2018)

By Steven Spencer: Interview with Richard Nolthenius (April 1, 2018)

By Richard Nolthenius: The Thermodynamics of Civilization (March 27, 2018)

By Jay Hanson: Reality Report Interview (November 3, 2008) (March 26, 2018)

By Ajit Varki: Why are there no persisting hybrids of humans with Denisovans, Neanderthals, or anyone else? (March 26, 2018)

By Tim Garrett: Linking Wealth, Energy Demand, CO2 and Climate Change (March 25, 2018)

For explaining why humans are odd
To Varki and Brower we applaud
A great mystery they solved
With denial we evolved
And created the Higgs, overshoot, and God

Denial not only makes us believe in god, it is god, because denial created us, and denial may destroy us.

The human brain, the God it believes in, and the overshoot it enabled and denies, all resulted from the same improbable genetic adaptation that occurred about 100,000 years ago.

Varki’s MORT theory explains much of the strange water we swim in every day, and also explains why most can’t see the water.

Denial is the reality that must be most aggressively denied to avoid collapsing the house of cards that keeps us functioning.

The most amazing thing about human overshoot is that we do not discuss it.

You know you are in trouble when reduced CO2 emissions from an economic collapse caused by low-cost oil depletion is not sufficient to prevent civilization collapse from climate change caused by previously emitted CO2.

Our only choices are do we want to fall from a higher elevation later, or climb down from a lower elevation sooner?

What we should do but won’t do will happen anyway, unfortunately too late.

Things that can’t continue usually stop too late.

Truth is like poetry and most people hate poetry.

All 8 billion of us owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains; 6 billion of us also owe our existence to nitrogen fertilizer created from natural gas by Haber-Bosch factories.

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up.

Thermodynamics, expressed through genetics, creates beings incapable of not maximizing energy consumption.

Denial is evolution’s solution for permitting intelligence to coexist with our (Maximum Power Principle) subconscious decision makers.

While it digs its own grave, all the mind can do is entertain fantasies and create excuses.

When the only paying job in town is sawing off the branch which you are sitting on, you….saw away! You might refuse to saw and hang yourself from that branch, but the end is the same anyway, and that option is much less fun. (Cynic @Megacancer)

Never underestimate the human capacity for denial. (Gail Zawacki)

It is remarkable that a brain emerged from a cloud of hydrogen and figured out the laws of physics that governed, and possibly made inevitable, its own creation and destruction.

We have met the oblivious and they are us.

All 8 billion of us originated from one small tribe in Africa about 100,000 years ago that gave birth to a child with an improbable mutation for a more powerful brain that denied reality. The other tribes were soon toast and we took over the planet. We’re all close cousins. I love you all. Except the deniers.

Meaning comes from understanding why we can understand there is no meaning.

Way too many smart people with big reputations are wrong about everything that matters. Something’s gonna happen that gives them an excuse not to have to admit they were in denial.

One of the most, if not the most, precious and rare things in the universe is the human brain. We have a cosmic obligation to use it and to confirm it works.

Building a competition for maximum power on top of a finite energy source equals exponential build-out and collapse. (James @ MegaCancer.com)

The fact that most believe in sustainable growth is proof that most are in denial.

Fire to cooking to intelligence to denial to god to plotting to capital punishment to self-domestication to Apollo 11 to 7 billion too many.

Nothing makes sense without the light of evolution and thermodynamics, and for one unique species that’s intelligent enough to understand both but chooses not to, you need to add denial to the list.

Lots of elephants in the room, but no adults.

A problem with a solution that does not require me to sacrifice anything does not require denial, unless the solution won’t work, like renewable energy.

And you, be you fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. And you, so not to be distracted from my command, deny reality.

The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim. — Gustave Le Bon

Labor without energy is a corpse. Capital without energy is a sculpture. – Steve Keen

Debt is a promise to produce more wealth in the future than we do today, so that we can consume more wealth today than we could without debt.

One way or the other, population will fall. One way is civil, the other is not.