Essays by Me

Mashup (March 17, 2019)

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

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

On Oil (July 29, 2018)

I Remember… (July 17, 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)

On Burning Carbon: The Case for Renaming GDP to GDB (February 8, 2018)

On Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons (January 7, 2018)

The Great Story (A Reality Based Religion led by Michael Dowd) (December 19, 2017)

Reality Denial Harm Prevention: A Proposal for Screening and Licensing (October 30, 2017)

Imagine You Are a Smart Leader (July 19, 2017)

Why my interest in denial? (June 25, 2017)

On Free Will and the Great Barrier Reef (April 25, 2017)

On the Tragedy of Trends (March 12, 2017)

Tribes Trump Reality: War is Probable (February 5, 2017)

It’s Time to Get Real: Trump’s a Symptom, Not the Problem (February 3, 2017)

You know you are in trouble when… (January 6, 2017)

Climate Change Policies: 2 required + 1 optional (November 27, 2016)

On Religion and Denial (November 14, 2016)

What would a wise society do? (June 27, 2016)

On the Wealth of Citizens: An EU Perspective (June 24, 2016)

Denial is Layered: What is Your Blind Spot? (June 21, 2016)

Interest(ing) Denial: 0% for 90 Months (April 30, 2016)

On the Leap Manifesto (April 25, 2016)

WASF (April 24, 2016)

Overshoot Awareness: The Pros and Cons (April 5, 2016)

Denial and Depression: An Informal Survey and Analysis (April 4, 2016)

book review: The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane (March 29, 2016)

Why is my message so unpopular? (March 25, 2016)

Overpopulation Denial (March 25, 2016)

Why We Want Growth, Why We Can’t Have It, and What This Means (January 30, 2016)

Peak Oil and Low Prices?? (January 3, 2016)

COP21 and Air Travel (January 3, 2016)

Coincidence or Expected? (December 20, 2015)

COP21: Doubling Down on Denial (December 13, 2015)

un-Denial Manifesto: Energy and Denial (November 12, 2015)

Not the Trees Too Damn It!: On Gail Zawacki (October 27, 2015)

Is Austerity Rational? I Think So (October 25, 2015)

Yuval Harari’s Sapiens (October 25, 2015)

A Summary of Our Predicament: Overshoot Is a Bitch (October 24, 2015)

The Big Question: Can We Climb Down? (September 28, 2015)

50/50 Democracy (July 4, 2015)

Post Peak Oil Choice: Inflation or Deflation? (June 29, 2015)

Peak Oil and Debt (June 27, 2015)

Renewables (June 24, 2015)

Efficiency (June 24, 2015)

Socialism 2.0 (March 26, 2015)

Are We Experiencing the Peak of What is Possible In the Universe? (March 25, 2015)

Climate Change is a Really Hard Problem, Really (March 11, 2015)

Why Are We Printing Money? (February 14, 2014)

The Big Picture on One Page (February 12, 2014)

Party-on or Not? (February 12, 2014)

What to Expect as We Collapse (February 11, 2014)

The Universe and Its Purpose (February 11, 2014)

book review: Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen (February 11, 2012)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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