Topic: Overshoot (1-100)

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)

On the Avengers and Denial (January 30, 2020)

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

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

On Boneheads (September 12, 2019)

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

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

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)

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)

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

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

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

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

On Oil (July 29, 2018)

Reunion Faux Pas (July 28, 2018)

On Sexual Selection and Extinction (July 19, 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)

On a Red Queen: Diesel to get Diesel (May 29, 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 Nate Hagens: Where are We Going? (May 10, 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)

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 James @ Megacancer: Shiva Dancing (March 25, 2018)

By xraymike79: Evolutionary Dead-Ends (March 19, 2018)

By Tim Morgan: The need for new ideas (February 23, 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)

Catch-22: On New Year’s Resolutions (January 1, 2018)

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

By Brian Davey: Limits to Economic Growth? (December 18, 2017)

On Onions, Gods, and Mars (December 5, 2017)

By Jacob Freydont-Attie: The Cross of the Moment (December 2, 2017)

On Winning the Game (November 28, 2017)

By Nate Hagens & DJ White: GDP, Jobs, and Fossil Largesse (November 27, 2017)

By Gail Tverberg: The Approaching US Energy-Economic Crisis (October 18, 2017)

Lunch Price Increase (September 22, 2017)

video review: Crude: The Incredible Journey of Oil by Richard Smith (August 15, 2017)

By Alice Friedemann: German Military Study on Peak Oil (August 14, 2017)

By Chris Martenson: Signs of Distress (August 11, 2017)

By Alice Friedemann: Why Did Everyone Stop Talking about Population & Immigration? (August 4, 2017)

By Richard Heinberg: Are We Doomed? Let’s Have a Talk. (July 27, 2017)

By Ron Patterson: Africa in Peril (July 19, 2017)

By Ugo Bardi: When governments operate in “cheating mode” (July 17, 2017)

By Joe Barry: Over-population is the Real Cause of Climate Change (June 12, 2017)

By Nicole Foss: The Automatic Earth Primer Guide 2017 (May 18, 2017)

By Erik Lindberg: Economic Growth – A Primer (May 6, 2017)

By Gail Tverberg: Elephants in the Room Regarding Energy and the Economy (May 5, 2017)

By Nate Hagens: Blindspots and Superheroes (May 3, 2017)

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

7.5 billion and rising (April 24, 2017)

By Ted Trainer: Your Oil Wake Up Call (April 8, 2017)

By Gail Tverberg: Why Energy-Economy Models Produce Overly Optimistic Indications (March 29, 2017)

By Tim Morgan: Chinese Whispers (March 11, 2017)

By Geoffrey Chia: What you should not say in public… (March 1, 2017)

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

By Tim Clarke: The Demise of the Global Oil Industry: Best Case 2022 (February 1, 2017)

By Alice Friedemann: Book Review of “Failing States, Collapsing Systems: Biophysical triggers of Political Violence by Nafeez Ahmed (January 31, 2017)

By Louis Arnoux: Twilight of the Oil Age: Out of Gas by 2030 (January 13, 2017)

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

Debt Up(date): This Will Not End Well (January 4, 2017)

By James Howard Kunstler: Forecast 2017: The Wheels Finally Come Off (January 2, 2017)

By Chris Martenson: As We Enter 2017, Keep the Big Picture in Mind (December 31, 2016)

Solving Overshoot with More Overshoot (December 22, 2016)

An Election Worthy of Angst (December 19, 2016)

By Raúl Ilargi Meijer: Mass Extinction and Mass Insanity (December 8, 2016)

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

By xraymike79: Some Fun Facts for a Dystopic Future (November 2, 2016)

Supply & Demand (September 28, 2016)

By Gail Zawacki: The Waste Land (September 25, 2016)

On the Quantity and Quality of Women (July 4, 2016)

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.