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The world economy is at a major turning point, which is why we should brace for rapid changes in the economy. The world is moving from having enough goods and services to go around, to not having enough to go around. The dynamics of the economy are very different with not enough to go around. The hoped-for solution of higher prices doesn’t fix the situation; after a point, adding more buying-power mostly produces inflation. Other solutions are needed. The world economy is reaching what has been called “Limits to Growth.”
Economies throughout the ages have grown until their populations grew too large for resource availability. Researcher Peter Turchin has studied the general pattern of overshoot and collapse scenarios. The chart shown in Figure 1 is based on analyzing eight such cycles in the book Secular Cycles. The fossil fuel age began over 200 years ago, and it now seems to be reaching its end.
I doubt that President Trump thinks in terms such as secular cycles or overshoot and collapse. But tariffs and government cutbacks engineered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seem like they might be approaches that will allow the world economy to contract in a way that could be helpful in keeping the collapse from taking place excessively fast.
In this post, I will try to explain the situation further. The issue we are facing is really a physics problem. Governments can print money, but they cannot print resources, especially energy resources. Our bodies are accustomed to having a certain amount of cooked foods in our diets. This, by itself, encourages population growth and eventual overshoot of the resource base. The self-organizing system somehow chooses its own downward path, not falling further or more quickly than necessary, under the Maximum Power Principle. This is what we are encountering now.
[1] In physics terms, the economy is a dissipative structure. Dissipative structures are self-organizing structures that require energy to grow but are only temporary.
The universe is filled with dissipative structures. Humans are dissipative structures, as are all plants and animals. Hurricanes are dissipative structures, as are star systems. Ecosystems are dissipative structures. All these things are temporary. Even economies are temporary, but no one tells us this detail.
The kind of energy that is required varies with the dissipative structure. Green plants use sunshine. Animals require plant or animal food. Humans have evolved to eat a mixture of cooked food and raw food. While a few raw food enthusiasts can get along using a blender to break up food into small particles, the general pattern is that our modern brains require the nourishment that cooked food can provide. Thus, humans need both food and some type of fuel for cooking at least a portion of the food. Fuel is also helpful for heating homes, ridding water of pathogens, and providing transportation.
Many things that we think of as man-made are dissipative structures. Governments are dissipative structures. Governments grow and often become too expensive for their citizens to support. The energy governments use is indirectly obtained through the use of taxes. A little of the energy used by the governments is purchased directly by governments to power their vehicles, and to heat and light their buildings.
Much more of the energy required by governments is indirectly consumed. For example, a portion of the taxes collected goes to pay public officials. This pay is used for things the public officials use, such as food, transportation, and housing. All three of these things require energy at many places in their “lives.”
- Food – Sunshine to grow; oil to cultivate and transport it to the store; electricity for refrigeration; natural gas or electricity for cooking; human labor for many tasks.
- Transportation – Fuel to make the metal and other materials used in making the vehicle; human labor to construct the vehicle; fuel to operate the vehicle.
- Housing – Diesel to prepare the lot where the house is built; energy of many kinds to create and transport materials such as lumber and wiring; human energy to put the pieces together; electricity for lights after it is built; natural gas or electricity to heat the home after it is built.
In fact, every part of GDP requires energy. In some cases, this is “only” human energy. Of course, human energy requires food, some of it cooked (or broken into tiny pieces with an electric blender).
Businesses in general are dissipative structures. So are international organizations of any kind. Cities seem to be dissipative structures. Religious organizations are dissipative structures. Any organization that seems to grow, pretty much on its own, is a dissipative structure.
[2] If the energy sources needed by a dissipative structure become scarce, this can badly disrupt the dissipative structure.
Hurricanes that pass over warm water tend to maintain their strength, but if they go over land, they quickly dissipate. If an animal is deprived of food, it will become weak and eventually die. If a government is deprived of revenue (and the energy sources that this revenue indirectly buys), it will no longer be able to provide the services it has promised. It may default on its debt or collapse.
[3] Many dissipative structures seem to be programmed to eventually go downhill and collapse, even when plenty of energy seems to be available.
Obviously, running out of energy isn’t the only way a dissipative structure comes to an end. Most humans don’t starve to death. Instead, when humans get to be 70 or 80 or so years old, they lose some of their strength. They more easily succumb to illnesses. Other animals are similar. Tomato plants in our gardens seem to be more prone to infestation by pests after a month or two of bearing fruit.
[4] Even economies seem to be programmed to go downhill and collapse.
Economies have a problem with their populations becoming too large for available resources. For many years, it appears that added debt (money supply) can be used to temporarily work around a resource problem. For example, a dam purchased with debt may allow irrigation so more food can be produced for a given population.
The problem with this approach is that the benefits of added debt reach diminishing returns. At some point, an economy discovers that adding debt doesn’t add much energy supply; instead, it simply leads to inflation (and, indirectly, higher interest rates to compensate for this inflation). Also, for governments, the interest on debt becomes a greater and greater burden.
The US government seems to have reached the point of having too much debt. The US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently published this chart related to US debt:
US taxes need to keep rising, as a percentage of GDP, just to repay US government debt with interest. This is a path that can lead to hyperinflation. This seems to be the underlying reason for DOGE and the tariffs.
Adding infrastructure such as roads, pipelines, and railroads can be helpful in the beginning. The additional infrastructure enables new businesses to be built that make use of this infrastructure. Initially, the tax revenue from new businesses makes it easy to repay the debt with interest.
But additional roads, pipelines, railroads and other infrastructure are not nearly as helpful. They may add capacity, but they don’t materially change the transportation options. The tax revenue added is less.
At some point, simply maintaining and replacing all the infrastructure becomes burdensome. Adding debt for the replacement of infrastructure becomes burdensome because the new replacement infrastructure adds no new functionality. It just maintains the old functionality. The interest on the debt must come from somewhere, but it is not built into the system the way it was when totally new infrastructure was built. Today’s approach is simply to increase the debt level and hope that the revenue will come from somewhere else.
A related issue is that old factories tend to be less productive than newly built ones that benefited from the latest advances. This allows new factories (perhaps in another part of the world) to make goods in a more cost-efficient way. An older factory is likely to lose out in price competition against a newer, more productive factory elsewhere.
[5] The analysis of Turchin and Nefedov in Secular Cycles suggests that economies often go through the pattern shown in Figure 1.
Economies discover a new resource. Perhaps they have conquered a new land, and they have eliminated the old inhabitants. Or they have cut down trees, allowing more area for farming. At a given level of technology (and fuel for the technology), a given area of arable land can support a particular number of inhabitants. If the population gets too high, the size of farms tends to fall too low to support the farmers and their families. This pattern happens if families allow multiple sons to each inherit a share of the family farm.
Alternatively (and more likely), if the population gets too high, the younger sons don’t inherit any farmland. They start working in services and or on crafts of various kinds. But these alternatives to farming generally don’t pay very well. The many workers with low wages become less able to pay taxes, creating a problem for government funding.
As the population rises, wages of these lower-paid workers become increasingly less adequate to cover the necessities of life. With inadequate nutrition, populations become more subject to epidemics.
According to Secular Cycles, as these problems arise, debt is increasingly used to work around the problems. Slow population growth and increasing debt are characteristics of the Stagflation period shown in Figure 1.
Eventually, economies fail. Governments can fail due to a lack of adequate tax revenue or by being overthrown by unhappy citizens. Alternatively, they may lose a war against another country with better weapons (made with energy supplies). All governments, as dissipative structures, can be expected to eventually fail, one way or another.
[6] The world economy now seems to be headed on a path similar to that shown in Figure 1.
The world economy now seems to be reaching the end of the age of fossil fuels. I believe that the world first entered the stagflation era in 1973, when oil prices first rose dramatically. At that time, it became clear that oil must be used more sparingly. To help economize on oil, smaller, more fuel-efficient cars began to be imported from Japan and Europe. In some places, oil was being burned to generate electricity; this electricity could sometimes be replaced by electricity from nuclear power plants.
In the 1980s, added debt became more important. Companies were told to use “leverage” to become more competitive with producers around the world. Instead of fearing credit, it should be embraced. Computers were increasingly used, and world trade was expanded. World trade very much facilitated the production of complex goods, such as automobiles and computers, because it allowed a very wide array of raw materials to be used in manufacturing.
Figure 3 suggests that world trade stalled in 2008. There has been a slight downward trend since that date. With tariffs, world trade will likely fall more quickly in the future.
One of the underlying problems facing the world economy is the fact that major types of energy supply have been falling relative to world population for a long time. The high points seem to have been in 2004-2007 for oil, in 2011 for coal, and in 2001 for nuclear (Figure 4).
Middle distillates (diesel oil and jet fuel) are particularly important in world trade. Middle distillates are plentiful in heavy oil, such as that found in Russia, the oil sands of Canada, and Venezuela. Diesel is important for operating farm equipment, large trucks and ships, and construction equipment.
Middle distillates are in short supply because it is hard to get the price up high enough, for long enough, to compensate for the high cost of extraction, distillation, and transport. If the price of diesel rises much, the price of food tends to rise. Voters don’t like high food prices. This seems to be a major reason that both Russia’s oil exports and Venezuela’s oil exports are subject to sanctions.
Without an adequate supply of middle distillates, world trade needs to be scaled back. I believe that this shortfall is the physics reason underlying the push for increased tariffs. The fact that these tariffs are particularly high against China means that long distance transport across the Pacific Ocean will be scaled back. Shelves in US stores will increasingly lack goods made with Chinese inputs.
[7] Modeling of the overshoot and collapse problem has been done since the 1950s. A recent model suggests that world industrial output is likely to fall quickly, about now.
In 1957, US Navy Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave a speech explaining the importance of fossil fuels to the economy and to the military. He then explained that we could not expect fossil fuel extraction to last very long:
It is an unpleasant fact that according to our best estimates, total fossil fuel reserves recoverable at not over twice today’s unit cost are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050, if present standards of living and population growth rates are taken into account.
Much modeling has been done since that time. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology did a series of analyses which they published in 1972 in the book, The Limits to Growth. The most recent update to this analysis shows the following summary exhibit.
The 1972 model and its update both look at the world economy from an engineering point of view. The analyses ignore the roles of governments, debt, and many other things important to the economy. The original authors of the 1972 Limits to Growth analysis said that they didn’t have much confidence in the accuracy of their forecasts after the decline had begun because of the many omitted factors.
The disturbing thing from the 2023 analysis is that it shows industrial output dropping about now. This is what I would expect to happen if there is a big drop in world trade.
[8] The world economy is self-organizing. It doesn’t seem to depend on the actions of any one person or group.
The Universe keeps growing and expanding. Many people believe that the Universe spontaneously sprang out of nothing and began to grow. I believe that there was a Creator.
An intricate system of evolution is taking place, with new dissipative structures arising and old dissipative structures coming to an end. The dissipative structures that last are the ones best adapted to the Earth’s ever-changing environment at that time.
Somehow, the world economy (and other ecosystems) maximize the total output of each part of the system, under the Maximum Power Principle. This isn’t dependent on any one system being more efficient or working better than another. Instead, the world economy tends to maximize the total output of the system, given the energy supplies (and other resources, such as water) available. Thus, the world output of goods and services is unlikely to fall so catastrophically that it quickly wipes out most of the world’s human population. For example, if industrial output is limited, it may be concentrated especially on replacement parts for current machinery and on machines needed for food production.
The intricate nature of evolution and the many dissipative structures formed, together with the Maximum Power Principle, leads me to believe that the Creator is still active today.
It seems to me that the self-organizing economy utilizes whatever leaders are available. They don’t need to have good motives for their actions. It isn’t that Donald Trump is a better leader than others, or that his ideas, as promulgated, will take a hold. The system works through many leaders of various political parties. Each leader is somewhat replaceable by other leaders. The underlying physics of the system is what leads to the changes that take place.
Religions seem all to be created by the same Creator. They seem to have many functions, including binding groups together, teaching “best practices” regarding getting along within a group here on earth, and (when resources are short), fighting against other religious groups. Religious organizations seem to be part of the self-organizing economy, as well.
[9] What I see ahead.
(a) Recession seems likely, starting out as being barely perceptible, but getting worse and worse over time.
(b) World output of physical goods and services will begin to decline almost immediately. In particular, products manufactured in the US using inputs from China will become difficult to obtain, as will goods imported into the US from China.
(c) I expect that commodity prices will fall. Deflation seems more likely than inflation. If inflation does take place, I expect that it will take the form of hyperinflation, with central banks issuing huge amounts of money, but there not being very many goods and services to purchase with this money.
(d) I expect that many banks, insurance companies, and pension plans will fail. I expect that governments will not be able to bail them all out. If governments do try to bail out all these failing institutions, the result is likely to be hyperinflation, with not much to buy.
(e) Many governments have plans for digital currencies to replace the currencies we have today. I am doubtful that these plans will work. For one thing, intermittent electricity is likely to become an increasing problem. For another, government organizations, such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the United Nations are likely to start falling apart. Even the United States is likely to become less “united,” or it may comprise fewer states.
(f) I do not see gold as being very helpful for the long term. It seems like small silver coins will be much more tradable in the future. What we will really need is food, water, and shelter. I expect that these will go mostly to workers producing these essentials, rather than to hangers-on to the system.
(g) A few businesses may do well. Figuring out how to produce food in quantity, locally, may be helpful. Converting unused buildings to shelters for poor people may also be helpful. Private “protection” services may also do well.
(h) The stock market provided great returns for US investors in the 2008 to 2024 period, but this cannot be expected to continue. A likely result is that returns will fall very low or will turn negative.
(i) Borrowing is likely to remain challenging, or get worse. Lenders will increasingly recognize the default risk. Some lenders may go out of business.
(j) Over a period of years, trade will change to be more local. The US will lose its status as the holder of the reserve currency. It will no longer try to be the policeman of the world.
[10] There are a lot of things we really don’t know.
The Creator may be creating a religious ending that we are not aware of. In fact, such an ending could come very soon.
Otherwise, dissipative structures are very often replaced by other dissipative structures. New economies may gradually grow up in different parts of the world. Perhaps the new economies will figure out new energy sources that we are not aware of, or make better use of declining energy types. According to Physicist Eric Chaisson, the long-term trend is toward more complex, energy-intense dissipative structures being formed.
“Societies” in Figure 7 seem to be similar to today’s economy.
Clients who moved into a new apartment in Vienna several years ago were misled about the source of their energy: instead of renewable energy, fossil fuels were being used. With the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the resulting spike in energy prices, the green dream was shattered—even though the final goal of switching to renewables was within reach.
https://youtu.be/SLcqbT7GWOQ?si=URF7MrxLASo6–lm
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/04/29/iberian-peninsula-blackout-spains-power-grid-taken-down-by-israel-4-days-after-madrid-did-this/
Is the blackout punishment for Spain cancelling munitions to the Zionist entity?
The allegation seems to be
Also:
This is how superstorms (in theory) might have taken down Spain’s electric grid.
I am doubtful that Israel is up to this kind of mischief.
“Renewable power grids in Europe use unencrypted radio signals to add and shed loads. Signals from the Radio Ripple Control can be hacked with a Flipper Zero device. “?
https://dividedconquered.substack.com/p/was-the-blackout-in-spain-caused
I thought Melody Wright is good in talking about the US housing crisis.
The name of the video is The Housing Market Is In a Massive Bubble.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIt48I_hgE0
She points out that the way previous financial problems were solved was by hiding financial solutions in the housing market. The problems of the past have been kicked down the road. Now, the things are worse. She points out the fraud that the FHA encouraged in the recent past (under Biden), allowing people who had defaulted on a mortgage essentially get away with it again later. The WSJ had an article on this topic:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bidens-mortgage-relief-fuels-higher-housing-prices-policy-loans-risk-cb0a1974
Melody Wright expects home prices to start dropping, perhaps as soon as May.
She briefly touches on commercial real estate, which is also in a massive bubble.
Of course, the US is not alone in having a real estate bubble problem. China and other countries have this issue, too.
the powers that be will not allow the bubble to pop expect a large drop in interest rates which will lead to inflation rinse and repeat that is also why cashless is where we are heading with Trump setting up crypto-currency that way negative interest rates will be employed so expect the bubble in real estate to get bigger. Trump is the logical choice for president during these potentially turbulent times, in order to control the masses USA needed a good role model someone they could feel comfortable with since the masses are pretty simplistic Trump is the perfect choice as his iintelligence would be on par with the masses. A simpleton for the simpletons the perfect marriage to quell the masses. Imagine if Kamala was in power and she done what trump is doing there would be uprisings everywhere. Look at the results from the vaccine this will not end well it has all gone quiet they have won we will be sacrificed. Even the stockmarket is going up everytime a tariff is reduced so this must be how collateral damage will be contained as limits to growth start to assert themselves. The powers that be have prepared well it will be interesting to see what happens in six months when the chinese tariffs have the full effect.
You may be right:
“The powers that be will not allow the [housing] bubble to pop; expect a large drop in interest rates, which will lead to inflation.”
Clearly, a major drop in housing prices would create a huge problem for banks and for federal agencies financing homes. The government could not bail out all of these organizations, causing a problem.
Whether a low interest rate, plus a lot more debt, could solve this problem is unclear. It seems like home prices are so high, and wages of middle income Americans so low, that even with lower interest rates, they would be unaffordable.
A drop in interest rates won’t fix the problems of all of the commercial real estate that has problems either. Unoccupied office space isn’t worth much. Neither are empty malls.
there are no ”powers that be”
the only power is that which seeks to render the planet itself into a profitable enterprise as quickly as possible.
everything else is subordinate to that.
politicians are temporarily put in office to that end……..they fantasiise about having control—-but ultimately they do not.
they are steamrollered by the drive for higher profits from converting resources into money and tangible assets.
few of us are exempt from that…..it is a contract we are all signed up to.
a contract of self delusion.
a house is a block of embodied energy
as long as energy prices and availability keeps rising, house prices will keep rising
when that is no longer the case, prices will start to fall—and then collapse
This is an excerpt from the WSJ link above, talking about how FHA borrowers were bailed out:
unless i’m missing the point, surely that was a strategy to prevent homelessness?
homeless families become an even bigger burden on the state, than assistance given to sustain people in their homes.?
Few people in the west prefer to remember the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, called “Vietnam Reunification Day” in Hanoi.
It was a totally preventable disaster.
I have talked about the OSS agents who saved the life of Ho Chi Minh in 1945. A medic , named Paul Hoagland, administered the shot which saved the life of Ho.
What happened to Hoagland after that is unknown.
It is unlikely that Hoagland knew any history. Even if we don’t go to European history, there was the example of Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino guerilla leader who initially welcomed Americans but later formed a guerilla war after he learned the Americans were not going to leave.
Aguinaldo’s rebellion lasted for 3 years, far longer than what took USA to take Philippines over, and a muslim people called the Moro launched a 11 years long rebellion in the southern island, something few Americans are aware of.
The idiot in OSS (his name has been erased) who made the decision to save the life of Ho, who had communist tendencies, probably did not know that history, and Hoagland, like a typical American, just did what he was told to, without thinking about the future.
If Ho had been killed in the jungle in 1945, we would never have heard about Vietnam at all since only Ho was able to unite all the communist factions. With Ho gone, the communist leaders would have fractured and defeated systematically and few Americans would have ever heard about Vietnam.
Yet there is no record of Hoagland being shot up by unknown assailants. He and his entire family deserved death for causing the Vietnam War and making the Third World uppity, which led the world to where we are now.
Without Vietnam , which led to the Algerian rebellion (The French used Algerians to fight in Vietnam and when they returned they taught guerilla warfare to the locals), and the independence of most of Africa, at least the resources of Africa would have been exclusively used by the Westerners.
Vietnam’s example made life difficult for the Westerners as the Third World began to claim more resources for themselves.
Keeping the Third World desperately poor and using all of their resources for next to no cost is what drove the civilization, and Hoagland’s screwup significantly led the world away from there.
Also the Vietnam Memorial at Washington DC, designed by a Chinese, should be destroyed. The stones came from mainland China, and no Vietnam vets feel it is insulting. I think it is farcial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reunification_Day
Picture captions:
“Statue commemorating the “Victory of 30 April 1975″ at the Museum of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign”
“A street in Da Nang, Vietnam. Flags are being displayed on the occasion of Reunification Day, a national holiday”
“A sign in Hanoi, 2009, depicting the moment a Viet Cong tank crashed into the Presidential Palace on 30 April 1975.”
“A large road sign in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, commemorating the 30th April 1975. The pictures bears the declaration of a total victory.”
Ho Chi Min City is the new name for Saigon.
I started high school in 1972 and it was a big relief that this fiasco was pretty much over by my graduation in 76.
Still had to register for the draft one year, just a bogus post office application.
Juan, a friend of mine recalled the invoice he handled for sand bags charged to Uncle Sam….$50.00 each…!!!! The best sand that money could buy.
We know the real reason for liberating the country, ching, ching, all aboard the gravey train.
Now we buy farmed raised fish, cheap furniture sold at Home Goods and sneakers from them…and they may become the next China for or leach corporations…what a country.
If Hoagland administeted a lethal dose of whatever he put into the syringe none of you would have heard anything about Vietnam.
Kulmie, it was a money making operation to give purpose for our over bloated industrial military establishment.
Just got from Columbia South Carolina.
World class Museum of World’s Military.
Best firearms collection I’ve ever seen, better than the Smithsonian in DC…OUTSTANDING
Lots of military in the Carolinas..
Can’t be too prepared.
Not arguing:
I don’t think firearms work very well.
Two groups come to mind: Orthodox Jews, Amish. Very different but my sense is non violent and seemingly very resilient to outside pressures. Mostly minimizing harm, not pacifist; not sure about Amish, generally non resistance I guess.
Yes, I know the obvious, but the oppressors to the Orthodox are more or less gone, the Orthodox are still here. Multiple thousands of years speaks well for the validity of the ideas.
Don’t have a clue why except perhaps the five jar rule, first 10% is a tithe – hold the group together with a set of teachings which has withstood the test of time.
I think we need a narrative which in general works and needs reinforcement which is simply gathering once a week to reinforce beliefs. Don’t find that in guns or the range.
Dennis L.
Thou protest too much. You harp all day about how the 0.1% will crush the rest of us, but at the same time you want a guy who is at best in the top 5% to grasp and do the bidding of the 0.1%. For what? So he can get crushed a few years later? Do you understand how poor is your logic? If you want a guy to do the 0.1% bidding, pay him like 0.1%. You led a very sheltered life, if you miss (routinely) these elementary steps.
Unlike Chucky’s 200/400 Worcestershires, who were probably mostly uneducated and would not have realized the result of their deeds, Hoagland worked for OSS.
Aguinaldo’s rebellion (now renamed US-Philippines War in newspeak) was the first experience of US counterinsurgency operation in the overseas and would have been taught to all OSS agents, even to a lowly medic like Hoagland.
Hoagland should have at least sensed that the diminutive guy he was ordered to save could become the next Aguinaldo. And Ho did become about 10,000 times worse than the Filipino guerilla leader.
Well, it is the OSS’ fault that it hired a moron to do the job.
pay was too short. read about evolutionary principles and how they affect us all. it will be a refreshing read.
Revolution was defeated in Malaya, Indonesia and South Korea. With enough brutality and tactics they were suppressed.
As usual you trot out some chucky lore, because you can’t really address the core problem of your fantasies. How can a doctor, a 5 percenter at best, do the bidding of the 0.1 percenters, unprompted? perhaps you can construct a society where people who inject commies with the proper serum will go to heaven, but it does not work, specially with people who got some education who can see through your act and demand to get paid for anything they do. and think of the crimes against truth that they would have to commit, while they pretend to go out and harness space energy, or something something singularity.
and if you tell them, you do our bidding and we will welcome in the 0.1 percent, pretty soon the 0.1 percent has become 10 percent and does not work anymore. yuo really should study some evolution. It is not going to kill you.
@drb753
Any fool would back then would have been aware of the name Aguinaldo, the Usama bin Laden of the day.
Some Americans are complete idiots, acting like automata without any thinking. But still Hoagland or his superior should have thought about Aguinaldo instead of following orders like a bunch of morons.
I have no trouble doing the bidding of those above me but unlike Hoagland and the morons above him I have brains and would have acted accordingly at that spot.
You proffer economic/political Machiavellian psychopathy as a solution to the world’s problems, when in fact it is what’s created/compounded them.
Doubling down on evil won’t help.
Evil plus evil just makes everything eviler.
we didnt double down on anything
we doubled up on energy consuption—year on year
You won’t get me arguing that an industrial-technological system based on infinite growth in a finite system isn’t doomed.
It doesn’t help though that we have an ‘operating system’ for the industrial-technological machine that is akin to the mind of a Machiavellian psychopath.
This is what we already have.
Kulm advocates for an ever ‘purer’ version of that system through embracing an ever greater scale of evil.
kulm has his own agenda
to which we lesser mortals are not privy
Life is hard, resources are scarce, civilization drivers are few and far between.
The window of advancing civilization is now being closed because of sympathy on ‘lesser peoples’.
The drivers of technological civilization are much more psychopathic tham Machiavelli or me. They have no mercy and have minds similar to a computer, and nothing moves them.
Zuckerberg closed his experimental school for disadvantaged kids after that attracted Trump’s attention. Everything is just a tool for them.
The future drivers have no time for ordinary people . They are no more than tools for the Future
I just ignore Kulm. He is a Fast Eddy wannabe without the humour.
Good advice, Fast Eddie was a broken record about us privileged white folks living the easy peezy lives and how he wished to see us crunching on the head of a rat while dying from the jab.
Little did he know a caste in India does just …clears the fields of rodents and roasts the on the stubble and devours them
All is Dust and Mike Jones
Kulm’s psychopathic Machiavellianism is a pretty good expression of the West’s mentality more broadly.
I don’t have time right now to go into it, but Kulm is obsessive about doubling down on evil, so there will be plenty of opportunities to come.
Western political/economic thought is dominated by a kind of psychopathic rationalism.
Machiavelli was probably pretty influential on that score.
These days, the political mind in the West is dominated by a kind of ‘left brain’ lowest common demoninator thinking, and that is the kind of world we live in now – one dominated by the left brain.
The trouble being, that this kind of left brain thinking excludes all of the wisdom, empathy and aspects of life that make it actually worth living – these all come from the right brain, as the kind of attention that comes from the left brain is incapable of perceiving them.
Also, what comes from the right brain is the ability to see the big picture, to see systems and connections between things, it is the part of our brain that we use to watch for danger. The left brain is the bit we use to target food, the right brain is the bit we use to keep an eye out for predators/danger so we don’t get eaten in the process of obtaining it.
By creating a world that focuses on the left-hand path, we’ve paid no attention to the mounting dangers – our systems prevent us from even looking to the right to see the danger, like blinkered horses.
.
I’ll be coming back to this.
No Vietnam. No sixties. No mass consumption in the Third World, which means more for the advanced world.
What mine is mine, what yours is mine and forget about any negotiation…Seems reasonable to me so we can be a parasitic social caste..it’s worked in India
He who has the guns makes the laws
The Natives were not consulted when USA was formed.
Yes, I’ve read enough of your gripes against making decisions based on decency, humanity etc. to get the gist.
The trouble being, as I said before here, it’s already what’s been happening.
We’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
Looking around at the world, the psychopathic Machiavellianism just hasn’t worked so far.
Supercharging it won’t help.
Doubling down on evil is just going to result in greater evil.
Not harsh enough, not hard enough.
Being more harsh to the third world would have gained at least one more century of progress as the world’s resources would not have been wasted wantonly to develop the poorer corners of the world.
I kick Chucky around all the time because thanks to Chucky the European colonial powers had to recruit the help of the colonials, who became more uppity and demanded more resources for themselves.
I showed the clip of Siem Reap in around 1930. Nobody there wore shoes or shirts. Now it is full of lights and tourist stuff.
In the old days the good things of life, whose supply was limited, were only available to those of certain social status. That way, a lot of time could have been gained to make sure the new tech were in place to exploit more resources from space, although the gains would have been monopolized by those who invested on it with nothing for the masses.
Instead, despite of Dennis L’s hallucinations, the Hordes are about to win, ending all progress and making everything return to the bad old days, because of a lack of resources to go on further.
Evil or harshness to your fellow man is not the way to go what we need is a cheap replacement for the fossil fuels and white hydrogen is the way to go . Once the cheap replacement has been further developed then man can begin the great American dream for everyone on the planet
Kulm, the world is already run on as Machiavellian and psychopathic a basis as is humanly possible.
There just isn’t room for more psycho – even if everyone wanted it.
Every niche for the psycho in the political/economic ecosystem has already been filled by psychos. Collectively, they already make psychotic decisions to the maximum extent that it is humanly possible.
And even if more psycho were possible, a greater level of, frankly, satanic darkness hardly seems like something to encourage or look forward to.
It makes me wonder you know.
You wonder what the world would be like without this Chucky person, but thanks to you, I am wondering what the world might’ve been like without Machiavelli and his pagan anti-Christian writings!
Maybe the Pope should have ordered Catholics to burn his books instead of merely banning them in 1559?
Instead, as it stands, after hundreds of years of Machiavellian psychopathic influence, things appear to be ending the only way they ever could under such an evil system, which is in a doomed and miserable world.
Since such replacement is not available we have to make do with what we have , namely push the two legged animals to the end.
Any takers for this scenario , Copy/paste MoA .
” I’d suggest that it’s not particularly Trump holding back a realistic peace solution. Keep in mind the Minerals Deal and Trump thinking Blackrock taking control of the Panama Canal is an American Victory. When Russia completes the SMO and especially if they take Odessa, then the value of Ukraine as a profit center evaporates:
Why a Land-Locked “Rump” Ukraine Would Hold Little Appeal for Western Capital
Black Sea access drives returns. Roughly 90 % of Ukraine’s grain, metals and bulk cargo have always moved through Odesa–Mykolaiv ports. Losing them eliminates the deep-water export channels that made big-ticket port, LNG and green-energy concessions attractive. Logistics costs on replacement rail/truck routes into the EU soar 30-50 %, wiping out margins.
Privatisation pipeline collapses. Planned sales or PPPs for ports, offshore gas blocks, hydrogen corridors and coastal tourism assets vanish into Russian control. Without those high-value deals, BlackRock’s reconstruction vehicle shrinks from a prospective $100 bn platform to a niche donor-aid fund with far smaller fee potential.
Industrial heartland lost. The Donbas coal–steel complex and the 6 GW Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant—key IPO candidates for Western investors—would be outside Kyiv’s control, further draining the asset pool.
Land-locked penalty. World-Bank data show systemic freight delays and higher costs for land-locked economies; that drives down internal-rate-of-return assumptions and investment multiples.
Investor behaviour.
BlackRock: may keep a token advisory role, but without scalable, FX-earning hard assets the IRR falls below its private-capital hurdle.
Vanguard & State Street: passive funds will hold only tiny index weights—economically negligible.
Bottom line: Strip away the coast and industrial east and the very assets Western financiers hoped to privatise or refinance disappear. The remaining, land-locked Ukraine offers too little scale, too much logistics friction and too few headline deals to justify large Western-capital deployment; the anticipated “windfall” all but evaporates.
Posted by: AmericanIconoclast | Apr 28 2025 19:23 utc | 72
Makes sense, but it’s not clear to me that Putin has the appetite for taking the entire coast. He seems not to want to even take the 4 regions they’ve officially annexed.
“He seems not to want to even take the 4 regions they’ve officially annexed.”
Why ever not? They are home to his fellow ethnic Russians. Please explain yourself. Would you be willing to repeat that to Putin’s face?
Putin doesn’t want to appear too aggressive. He is wants to take more land than we think, but not for the reasons we think. He knows that Russia can never trust the West and that he will through existential necessity have to enlarge the buffer zone- through a slow burn of attrition warfare. Not that he wants to. He has to. And he needs to balance this against preserving the Russian economy and maintaining popular support/moral for this war as the West hungrily salivates over Russia’s natural resources. ( Plus he has to keep an eye on his “ally” China.) Easier to do if you are winning, albeit slowly, and not manifesting as all-out invasions like the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars or like IDF massacres of Gaza. So Putin is diplomatically ignoring the peace plan noise by the West. He knows it’s all BS and I am sure he is plenty sick and tired of it.
“Softee softee catchee monkee”. 😉
I would agree that a land locked Ukraine is of little value. Even if it turns out to have exploitable minerals, if they are landlocked, the cost of exporting them will be too high.
With the decimated male population killed off, the mail order bride business should be very profitable. Also, Cargill, the privately owned grain merchant here in the United States, can completely control that market and monopolize that market too in Europe. Plenty of opportunities, just got to apply yourself and know where to exploit.m
Dmitry Orlov pointed out that when the central government of the Soviet Union collapsed, there were still a lot of people who went to work, even when they were not paid. They did get a free lunch at work, however.
And there were a lot of people who were successful in using what resources were available, thinking along the ideas you mention. They figured out how to use resources that still seemed to be available.
Chernozem is mostly in the South. Land locked Ukraine will have poorer, acidic soil that is heavily forested (just like my soil here).So they are really getting nothing going for them. No sea (although I sort of agree with Ivan below), no grain, no minerals.
Blackout Spain
I forward a very interesting article by Antonio Turiel, in which last year he
explained what was the reason of the almost mega energy accident in Spanish on the 22nd of May 2024.
This time they might have turned off the combined cycle gas turbines
to save money.
When combined cycle gas turbines are shut down (instead of keeping them idling), it seems it takes a long time to restart them.
Using only renewable it seems that there are big fluctuations in supply.
If they did this it might be because there is a gas shortage in Europe with the war on Russia (many articles have come out abiut this subject.
If that is what happened, surely Spain or Europe cannot say now to be in troubles for going on supporting Zelensky’s war…
Please have look to the article to give your understanding, I’m not an expert of combined cycle gas turbine…
Thanks.
https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2024/05/chispazo.html?m=1
The grid blackout in Europe is reported to be due to “anomalous atmospheric conditions”.
This translates into the onset of summer and Spain’s switch to renewables, as a result of which on sunny days Spain’s solar generation exceeds demand and electricity prices go negative.
Mismatch between demand and supply causes frequency instability.
An alternating current grid requires that all generators are synchronised and produce alternating current which is in phase and at a stable frequency. If the frequency departs too far from 50Hz, equipment can be damaged, and circuit breakers trip to prevent damage.
Solar panels and windmills produce direct current which has to be converted to alternating current via invertors.
That alternating current has to be in phase with the grid current, which becomes problematic if there are large fluctuations in output caused by clouds obscuring solar panels or highly variable wind speeds.
Electricity generation by large thermal power stations using steam turbines is inherently more stable than renewables because the rotating parts can weigh many tons and the inertia of the rotating parts significantly inhibits frequency changes.
What happened was a cascade effect, once circuit breakers tripped, demand exceeded supply, frequency dropped and there was a chain reaction.
In summary, Europe is even more f—-d than we thought, renewables are the problem, not the solution.
Posted by: CitizenSmith | Apr 28 2025 21:05 utc | 99
” The way in which the quasi-market operates is entirely a matter of choice. However, the dead hand of prior investment leaves the political class reluctant to make changes. And so, we have a system divided between the generators, the grid operator, the retail supply companies, and a regulator whose role (although you may be forgiven for not knowing it) is to keep prices low for consumers… even at the expense of energy security. More recently, a whole raft of net zero regulation has been thrown into the mix – most notably the 12% and rising levy on electricity bills to pay for the fast-failing switch away from gas central heating and the installations .”
It is complicated . Tim Watkins explains .
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/04/27/the-two-horsemen-of-the-net-zero-apocalypse/
Tim Watkins talks about the craziness of Britain’s electricity system and the desire to solve global warming, among other things, in this post.
He starts out
And he ends up, talking about using geoengineering to hold down temperatures:
Tim Watkins seems to think that there are a whole lot more available coal and natural gas and uranium reserves than I do. Geo-engineering is sort of the opposite of what was done on January 1, 2020, when rules went into effect that cut substantially the amount of sulfur that shippers could put into the atmosphere. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/biggest-change-in-fuel-since-leaded-gas-went-away-could-raise-prices.html
I have read that James Hansen thinks that the reduced particulate matter is the reason why temperatures have recently been spiking. The geoengineering would attempt to reverse this effect.
Thanks Ravi, it seems an explanation in line with what explained by Turiel about the problem occurred in Spain on the 22nd of May 2024.
Combined cycle gas turbines may have been switched off yesterday and Turiel explained that, on the contrary, a ‘safety net’ needs to be always running.
If that is correct, it is difficult that reality will come out quickly, because, like for mandatory vaccines and adverse events, many people in government positions could be directly guilty of what happened.
This is such a fascinating graph. A frequency drop of 0.15Hz was enough to take down Spain and Portugal,
https://x.com/Nexuist/status/1916875080228917471/photo/1
Pretty amazing. It means the resistance of these lines is less or of order 0.1% of the total impedance. I would have never guessed. Surely they must be adding capacitors and inductors online.
As I understand it, combined cycle plants use turbines to provide the correct electricity frequency per second. These plants are relatively slow to ramp up. They usually provide baseload electricity. These are the plants that keep the frequency stable on the grid. These plants are much more expensive to build, but tend to be slow to start up, unless they are already in standby mode.
I think of “Simple Cycle” plants as “peaking plants,” that can go on line quickly. They tend to be inefficient in their use of natural gas. They are cheap to build, however. They don’t necessarily use turbines, as I understand it. This allows them to start quickly.
Zerohedge has someone commenting on the situation in Spain. One thing he things he says is too much hydro capacity down for maintenance, simultaneously.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/power-restored-spain-portugal-net-zero-becomes-headache-brussels
Power Restored In Spain, Portugal But The Situation Reveals A Very Serious Underlying Problem…
The US has installed PV at military bases across the country to aid in black start of the nation’s power grid.
DOGE seems to be working, but slowly.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-treasury-unexpectedly-reports-sharp-drop-debt-borrowing-needs-rates-slilde
US Treasury Unexpectedly Reports Sharp Drop In Debt Borrowing Needs, Rates Slide
There will be a lot of capital gains taxes collected this year. So far it looks like next year, not so much.
Yup murica!!!
The Olduvai beckons .
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/spain-hit-massive-really-massive-power-blackout
“Major power outage across parts of France, Spain and Portugal.”
Investigating the problem. Trains and air flights interrupted. Less Internet usage.
Did you all notice that at the time of the blackout the generation was 73% renewable? 60.x solar and 12.x wind.
Something I read said perhaps one of the issues was the lack of inertia that normally would stabilize short-term fluctuations.
Found it – from ZH: https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/1916857352197701963
By that I assume they mean mechanical inertia in the turbines. I guess clouds drifted over their various solar plants all at the same time.
Yes. I am guessing the Russians have been working on technology to guide clouds so that they hang over Western solar plants.
Presumably you need only 1/3 of the plants to be covered within a few minutes, and then 20% of generating capacity is gone. Also presumably, more smaller solar plants is a bit better than a few large ones, although they also need to be widely spaced.
Just spit balling here – maybe it’s just the temperature?
Perhaps these things are pretty fragile, a little change in temperature here or there, and suddenly it’s all cactus?
Down here, rail lines warp in the heat, roads melt, etc.
Perhaps a ‘relatively modest’ change to regular operating conditions can create a large impact?
A ‘state change’ caused by an unexpected differential in temperatures between here and there, with the lines/systems that span the difference unable to cope?
Those people with ‘electronic keys’ are locked out of their apartments.
Interesting, would have thought locks run on batteries, guess that would be a problem as well. Metal key guy here.
Dennis L.
Batteries at the end of their life cycle can fail at any time.
According to commenter ‘Democrycy’ at ZH:
“Spanish authorities are asking to activate “Status 3 (the highest level)” of the Territorial Emergency Plan! Means military on the streets.”
And just recently the authorities were issuing warnings to lay in so many days’ worth of supplies: water, food, etc. Predictive programming, like Event 201, which foreshadowed the “pandemic” ? A.k.a. “scam”, false flag, etc. ?
Apparently, about a third of the remaining supply is coming from solar.
The sun sets in Madrid at 21:04 today.
New report from zero hedge:
Also, from Bloomberg:
This is one of the issues of running a lot of renewable energy it doesn’t provide the “inertia” the electric grid needs. This is one reason wind and solar cannot be ramped up.
The WSJ says:
It also sounds as if the disconnection in France was brief.
“induced atmospheric vibration’”. I’ve never heard of this phenomenon. Has it occurred anywhere else before?
I looked to see what I could find:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/world-news/rare-atmospheric-phenomenon-behind-huge-31527467
Rede Eletrica Nacional (REN), Portugal’s grid operator, has since put out a statement, claiming that the outage is related to a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”.
It said: “Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior of Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 KV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration'”.
It added: “These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.”
This suggests that temperatures changed quickly in Spain, which affected the high-voltage power lines. As a result, this caused strange movements in the electricity, which made the power systems stop working together properly.
Since many European countries share power systems, the problem spread to other areas, including Portugal.
This is not very helpful, I am afraid. We only learned that high voltage lines were particularly affected.
Obviously the media isn’t going to tell the truth……
…..that the rare atmospheric phenomenon was caused by the Pope’s soul soaring up to heaven after the funeral.
the spanish blackout, whatever caused it—is a useful lesson…..
power supplies dont just fade away—-they just go off……..
this is what diehard ofw’ers have been warning about for years—the power goes off and your food stores and petrols station are emptied—within hours.
no fakes, no hoaxes…no plots by the chinese
just blackout.
an unlit world will not be a pleasant place.
‘Extreme weather’ to blame for power cut chaos across Europe.
So says the Telegraph (UK). “Extreme weather”. Even the weather has gone far right now, then. At least it lets our woke and moderate politicians off the hook.
Follow Javier Blas . There is no spinning capacity . A race against time . No payments ,
” I’m in Spain and trust me the issue isn’t the darkness…No payments possibles without cash (so no food and transportation), very limited internet and no clue whether it’ll actually be resolved..
Javier Blas
@JavierBlas
·
2h
If you can read this, assume 12 hours (hopefully less, but always good to plan for worst case)
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/1916853037273927855
Will this be the final nail in the coffin of renewable energy ? The problem is even if yes , what can Europe do ? No coal , no gas , no nuclear . Now a scenario . UK courtesy ” Nett Zero ” has gone out on a limb shutting down FF power plants — an event like this is now written , * Climate Change * takes no prisoners . 65 million on an island with a carrying capacity of 5 million . Best of luck ,
Also,
It’s a race against the sunset to restore power in Spain.
In about four hours, Spain will lose ~1/3 of its current electricity generation (sunset is ~9pm Madrid time).
Spanish national grid is trying to reactivate (black start) as much spinning generation before that.
as i pointed out the other day……
if you skim a pebble across a pond—you can watch it bounce less and less till it finally sinks……you know where its headed.
but if you live on the pebble…each bounce reassures you that everything is fine and will carry on as normal,
Putin did it . 🤣🤣
A writer I follow in Spain nailed it .Use translator .
https://beamspot.substack.com/p/renovables-sostenibles-y-bemoles
From the post:
Zerohedge has now added
This is remarkable. Politicians refuse to acknowledge reality. When the politicians do enough harm to the people will the pitchforks and burning torches come out?
We are well past that line in the U.S. Yet advertising has the people in thrall. In Europe also.
Thank God for the Han who know how to think.
Let’s keep in mind China has a larger renewable system spread across a much larger distance than Europe. Thank God for the CCP.
From “Haystacks” by Tie Ning
“Maybe in the world we live in no ideal life exists to be found, but that is the world we have to live in together. We have, through hope and despair, to understand the meaning of life, to search for tenderness between human hearts.”
Since it is dubious humans have ever landed on the moon, I would replace the astronaut in the Olduvai graphic with an Iphone or the logo of your favorite internet provider. I personally think the AOL logo would be the best replacement for the astronaut on the Olduvai Theory graphic.
Chaos . Go to YT and enjoy the panic .
No cell, no internet. And people think I’m crazy because I am trying to get my ham radio communications in order, ie. using weal signal modes that don’t require internet or cell to function, like JS8Call, Winlink, CW. But the complexity and bugginess will kill you. A very steep “learning” curve. Heading up to a HAM radio meeting in Norfolk, VA today to see if anyone, anyone, knows how to use a Yaesu 991A or an Elecraft KX3 with Linux Mint Cinnamon 2.1 Wilma or Xia version. Been all over the internet, etc, and no one can tell me why I can not transmit despite having downloaded the apps etc.
Believe me, you don’t want to be messing with this when you really need it to work. I feel for those UKR soldiers who have had to figure out how to operate all the Western technology crap they have been donated which doesn’t work.
Brian Berletic on Telegram nails it. Russia makes equipment that is purpose driven, i.e. to function in a situation of total war, whereas the US makes weapons that are profit driven, buggy as hell and prone to failure –just like the automobiles today. Lots of profits when you can’t service your car and have to rely on the dealer and factory to do the plug-in computer ” Ka Ching” “diagnostic” and tear apart your car to replace a simple gasket.
Ella Fitzgerald’s song “A Tisket a Tasket,” instead of “I lost my yellow basket” should be “my car’s got a leaky gasket. ”
When music was music.
Here in Portugal, the blackout happened around 11am.
The first explanation I heard was that it had been a cyber-attack (LOL).
For a moment, I wondered if the dreaded Carrington Event had returned to wipe us all out. But apparently it’s just another psy-op of some kind, or perhaps an experiment. I’m affraid we’ll never know for sure.
Initially it was said that the problem could take 72 hours to solve, and this led many people to the supermarkets to buy canned goods, batteries and candles, as well as fuel.
Gradually, the service began to be restored after 7pm, but at the moment more than half the population is still without electricity.
Thanks for the report from Portugal!
I noticed that this article has been posted on Zero Hedge, which is a good thing. But at a personal level, it shows me why I have begun to withdraw from this debate within my own family and friends.
The commenters here at OFW, might have a variety of different outlooks and opinions, but there is a general acceptance that a *Global~something* is in decline and not going to improve any time soon.
When you read the comments on Zero Hedge, below this *very same* article by Gail, you observe a sad reality. There seems to be no clear basic understanding of this 200 year fossil fuel predicament, and why it is in decline, and will eventually take with it,.. everything we have understood as modernity.
At a personal level, I have cautiously, (ie without hysteria), tried to inform my family and friends of this declining oil dilemma, with almost no success. In the last 3 years I have withdrawn from that debate.
Its clear to me that we’ve been looking to the horizon, for two decades, searching for the approaching collapse; and now it is here. As a boomer, I will do ‘boomer’ things to keep the plates spinning as best I can.
My new project, is to help Gen Z family members to practically navigate this decline. We could berate them [Gen Z], for their *stooopid*, lack of knowledge or interest in understanding the ‘why is this happening?’, but, it sadly,.. is happening, and as a boomer, I want to do what I can to ‘leap-frog’ their ignorance, and help in practical ways. It gives me a ‘purpose’ for my remaining years, and maybe one day they will come to the conclusion that “Crazy Uncle David,.. wasn’t as crazy as we once thought”
David Butler
28/4/2025
People who have had a chance to look at truth in the eyes, and refused to do so, like those zerohedgers, probably are mot much use to society and can be safely added to the useless eaters bin.
I hadn’t noticed my article on Zerohedge until you pointed it out. (I was at an appointment for a while this morning.)
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/world-economy-reaching-limits-growth
Usually, Zerohedge links back to the specific article, so I see a lot of pending comment hits. This time, it linked back to the site itself, so I don’t get the notices.
I have not had good success, either, in getting people I know listen to my story. There seem to be a small percentage willing to listen. Others cannot imagine anything other than BAU.
I have been trying to help my own children, but it is hard to do very much. Some seem to keep a foot in both camps–growth should be possible for a while, but maybe there is a possibility of long-term decline.
telling kids and g/kids gg’kids they are not going to have what you had is a task to be avoided if possible……
so most people do…..
the kids arent interested anyway
I have told my daughter to order things like athletic shoes that might be short supply later now. That seems to be a message that resonates.
when my g/daughter bought her 2nd aston martin—-i tried to suggest stashing some cash instead—-just not interested…….
she’s not wealthy—just has a well paid job…..for the moment.
grandpa doom….thats me….
I think, with an Aston Martin, one says it all.
Dave,
Personal preparation is wise, I think being a doomer is not healthy nor useful.
We are going to make it, we always have made it. Looking down the path appears hard, looking up things are possible. That will require a society and biology seems to be very good at arranging social norms when necessary.
The trick is to stay off the metaphorical railroad tracks as the train comes by.
Dennis L.
Nate Hagens might be a good resource. He is from Gail’s long ago group, is now a university professor (so, speaks to the young)… and talks about navigating the Great Simplification.
https://www.youtube.com/@thegreatsimplification
I have known Nate for years. We worked together at TheOilDrum.com.
That’s not true. Some of them acknowledge it but it is a very small percentage of them. A lot of spent their formative years in the Happy Motoring era so they have no idea of what scarcity is.
Gail,
many thanks for the post. Below you commented, referring to WordPress:
“Sometimes something intended to fix one problem “breaks” something else in the system. ”
Now, isn’t that the stone cold truth about lots of systems?
Yes, definitely true.
Also, I notice that the link for signing up for comments is “Feedly Comment LinK.” I expect that WordPress will say something like, “Talk to Feedly about your problems. Not something we did.”
I changed one setting last night which, in theory, might have a tiny chance of fixing the problem. You might see if it helps.
Rats reportedly causing issues with constructing a UK nuclear plant:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/rat-infestation-disrupts-uk-nuclear-plant-construction
I seem to recall reading something else on rats in the UK, something about rats the size of cats?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-21/birmingham-bin-strike-rats-size-of-cats/105080074
Rats the size of dachshunds now:
“Shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Alex Burghart, told MPs: “Rats the size of dachshunds are terrifying the local residents.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/rats-the-size-of-dachshunds-terrify-birmingham-residents-as-bin-strike-prompts-fear-of-surge-in-rodent-borne-diseases/ar-AA1DwKSf?ocid=BingNewsVerp
Is there a selection process going on that favors larger size rates, with more food to eat and few predators?
Hi Gail, thanks for another interesting read.
I’m in the middle of some work on “Limits to Growth”.
I’ve found their thesis to be fundamentally flawed and going forward, someone needs to come up with a better paradigm.
“Symptom predicaments of overshoot like climate change are intimately connected to overshoot and cannot be reduced separately, period. Also, the idea of reversing or stopping any symptom predicament of overshoot can be safely ruled out until overshoot is reversed and stopped. Our behavior of using technology is what is causing overshoot, so any claims of using technology to reduce, reverse, or stop overshoot can also be safely ruled out, regardless of whether the ideas were facilitated by AI, robots, and/or other technological devices.”?
https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/2024/02/what-are-most-popular-forms-of-hopium.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
“ . . . to establish the difference between a problem and a predicament, noting that problems have answers or solutions but predicaments only have outcomes. The other primary goal here is to establish the fact that all of our modern environmental issues are symptom predicaments of a root predicament – ecological overshoot. Name almost any issue – climate change, pollution loading, energy and resource decline, biodiversity decline, extinction, food and water security, etc. – and one will discover that these aren’t “problems.” They are symptom predicaments of ecological overshoot – without reducing overshoot, they likewise cannot be reduced. . . . “?
https://erikmichaels.substack.com/p/the-psychology-behind-the-misunderstanding
So, are you recommending somehow reducing population?
Central Europe diving into debt
https://ekonomika.pravda.sk/ludia/clanok/749711-nas-dlh-prudko-rastie-vytrcame-aj-v-medzinarodnom-porovnani-stav-je-vazny-horsie-ako-my-je-na-tom-uz-len-rumunsko/?utm_source=pravda&utm_medium=hp-box&utm_campaign=shp_3clanok_box
Increasing debt seems to be a symptoms of the problems the world is now facing.
Thanks for the information..
🙏🙏
The Bible prophesied 7-year Tribulation is at humanity’s doorstep & the time to escape is very short. To read more, pls visit https://bibleprophecyinaction.blogspot.com/
I don’t know how much of this to believe. This is one interpretation.
Didn’t click on it myself. Perish the thought. BPA’s comment implies he’s pre-trib; pre-trib is for pussies lol. Does the venerable Tulsi Gabbard star as the Hand’s antichrist? If so, I’ll click.
its definetly the end times if we’ve got the rapture on ofw now.
sheeesssshhh
not even eddy pushed BS that far—and that’s saying something.—-though he got abducted by aliens sometimes.
though—to be fair ….Trump fits the description of the antichrist to a T.—–perfect I’d say.
….now…..dyou think you could arrange for just Trump to be raptured??
and leave the rest of us behind?—come to think of it though—i know a few folks who deserve a good rapturing.
the whole world would be grateful for that—we could get back to normal—no maganuts….. unless you could fix it so’s just the maganuts get raptured. Would they take the don??? He’s been a bit of a sleazeball by all accounts.Hegseth and RFK dont look too good either.
Let us know on that one—-please?
then i could concentrate on organising a different kind of rapture—-have you though about that?—-now that really is something else.
Sin and rapture at the same time.—you should try it—-someone you know might just be very grateful. Someone begging for more rapture does wonders for the ego.
so who’s eddy you might ask
well…..eddy took the BS artist of the year award on OFW ten years in a row.–long before you showed up.—-he wouldnt like it if you stole his title.
you coulda been a contender though.
For a while, I was thinking Anthony Fauci was the Antichrist. But I didn’t know what characteristics that Antichrist needed to have.
I’m sure that goblin meets more than a few of the necessary criteria.
I thought it was Biden.
How many times have we seen him trying to suck the innocent soul out of children and when he was told that people were starting to ask questions, which meant he had to stop, he arranged a mass slaughter of children by the 10s of thousands instead, then gleefully soiled himself just because he could and demanded ice cream.
If that’s not enough evidence, how about all those times, out of nowhere, he started talking to the long dead.
Past that, ask the man himself.
https://youtube.com/shorts/ERAo3O8R8fs?feature=shared
The Antichrist isn’t a singular Human. But a system, nation or ideology that controls and manipulates us. It most likely is an incorporeal entity.
Maybe a little triggered?
Two bucks say it is going to be 70 years or more.
The bible is a work of fiction. You can never understand how the real world works if you hold onto mythology.
It is a narrative, not unlike the narrative our politicians are giving us today. No one then understood the physics of what was happening. No one now would want to know the physics of what was happening because it would scare people too much.
Back then, leaders told convincing narratives that hopefully would get people to work in the proper direction, just as they do now. Leaders would tell the people that not sharing with the poor was the cause of the collapse they were observing. They should all repent and at some point, things would get better.
Now the narrative is “Let’s all work to prevent climate change.” Or, if they wanted more “demand,” to try to raise prices for oil prices, they would encourage D. E. I., because, with more income, hopefully these newly added folks would buy more products that require the use of oil. Perhaps go out to eat more, for example.
The stories about heaven and hell have mostly been added in more recent times than the Old Testament. Several cultures seem to have ideas about heaven and hell. These were convenient for motivating the underlings into doing as they were told. But following the rules was necessary to keep order. Having this system was much cheaper than trying to use police enforcers to keep people doing desirable things.
Having this system was much cheaper than trying to use police enforcers to keep people doing desirable things.
Living in Eurasia I am getting a sense of how well various religions have done at steering people in the direction they want, while maintaining a functional society with sufficient human development. And I am getting convinced that religion 2.0 (catholicism, shia) > religion 1.0 (orthodoxy, sunni). Of course Christianity also has 3.0 in the form of various protestant groups. and they have performed well for a while although now everything is collapsing. I have little doubt that there will be new religins in a century or so.
Your thoughts on Orthodox Jews if you are to do so.
Superficially seems to have much in common with Amish.
Dennis L.
orthodoxism…..of whatever stripe….functions on the premise of currying special favour of whatever god you bow down to……(as opposed to the know-nothings who dont do it right)……..
if you dont understand that, check world religions, they all have extremes.
ultimately you/they are genuflecting to a lump of rock or a piece of wood…..covered in gold leaf maybe….but still no more than that,
No one has ever demonstrated otherwise.
They did not go inbreeding
Yes, very very superficially. The difference of course is ideology. But, to be honest, their higher ups seem quite comfortable with sacrificing them when it is advantageous.
“It is a narrative.” Yes, we as human’s need narratives which work in the time they are intended. As we learn more, we advance our narrative. E.g. cosmology, it is changing with JWST.
We have had many narratives in this “space.” For one, oil running out in the 70’s. Nope, not yet.
Then there is some guy with the “cubic mile of Pt.”
Dennis L.
For a supposed work of fiction, it seems pretty true.
In one sense, archaeologists use it as a source to make finds, it’s reliable historically, etc. Seems true in all sorts of other ways as well.
Seems to me that the only myth that needs to go is the ‘myth of progress’.
If it’s true, does that mean God will send all the unbelievers to eternal damnation for having been born in non-Christian countries? What kind of God is that? Sounds like a demon, really.
If you think God is a demon, then what would heaven be for you?
How about answer the question. What kind of God would condemn beings to eternal suffering for being born in a region where the “correct” religion isn’t being taught?
How about you answer mine? If you believe God is a demon, what would heaven be like for you?
Prototypical religious nut: refuse rational discourse, dodge the question, and instead pose a question of your own and insist that I answer it instead of addressing the original point.
And I’m not your servant – you can Google things just as easily as I can.
Here’s a nice thought for you ivanislav:
When asked by the interviewer, Fabio Fazio, how he “imagines hell,” Pope Francis gave a short response.
“What I am going to say is not a dogma of faith but my own personal view: I like to think of hell as empty; I hope it is,” Pope Francis said.
heaven is an abstract human concept—nothing more
To this and comments below. God is only 80:20, choose or move to the 20.
Dennis L.
@Dennis
It is not God. It is Joseph Juran.
“To this and comments below. God is only 80:20, choose or move to the 20.
Dennis L.”
The minority can ‘leaven the whole lump’ – for good or bad – might as well be for good:
” Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:6–7, ESV)
the other day we were all offered a free rapture ticket
nobody took up the offer Hugh
guess why?
Maybe the answer to your question may in some way be connected to the answer to mine.
And it seems to me that you are the one who is doing all the insisting.
Hugh, firstly biblical faith is based on free will so there’s that central mythology that also needs to go in your opinion, along with the myth of progress. Secondly, the Western myth of progress is nothing more than a rebranding of judeo christian manifest destiny aka the Israelite Chosen Ones being commanded to be a light to the nations. Illuminati the nations, with usurious merchant banking and double lending standards for Jews and gentiles, and war, always war, the cheating kind.
I had never thought of this:
“the Western myth of progress is nothing more than a rebranding of judeo christian manifest destiny aka the Israelite Chosen Ones being commanded to be a light to the nations.”
Both sound a whole like denial of Limits to Growth.
As I keep reminding people, Limits are only applicable to earth, we are not going to be bound to many of the limits earth imposes.
No, I don’t think humans have a future in space with current engineering.
Dennis L.
dennis
current engineering depends entirely on current energy resources
(end of space story)
Firstly, a lack of free will and there being a God are not mutually exclusive.
Secondly, the myth of progress is secular in nature. Was it influenced by Christianity? Probably, but it’s not Christian.
Finally, you have a tough row to hoe if you are going to argue that Jesus, who flipped over the tables of the money changers and was executed, was any sort of capitalist banker.
In my opinion, Jesus was motivated more by radical compassion than the profit incentive.
Perhaps you can torture a different conclusion from the Gospels.
Academically, when it comes to free will in the Bible:
The consensus of scholars who focus on the study of free will in the ancient world is that the Bible does not explicitly address free will.[11][12][13]
The leading scholar on the subject of free will in antiquity, Michael Frede, observed that “freedom and free will cannot be found in either the Septuagint or the New Testament and must have come to the Christians mainly from Stoicism.”[14]
Frede wrote that he could not find either the language of free will nor even any assumption of it in the New Testament or the Greek Old Testament.[11] According to Frede, the early Church fathers most certainly developed their doctrine of free will from the pagans.[11]
Another Oxford scholar, Dr. Alister McGrath, concurs entirely with Frede, “The term ‘free will’ is not biblical, but derives from Stoicism. It was introduced into Western Christianity by the second-century theologian Tertullian.”[15]
Pauline expert, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, unequivocally insists that, “Paul firmly believed in divine determination as an intrinsic part of his whole conception of God.”[16]
So, there you go, there are Christians, including Paul, who didn’t/don’t believe in free will. And the concept seems to have been introduced to them.
I don’t happen to believe in free will, but I will grant that if it exists, then it must happen acuasally, probably by the Grace of God.
And if I contradict myself, well, then I contract myself. I contain contradictions like everyone else – including people who argue for faith-based existence of ‘free will’ while criticizing others for having faith.
historically reliable
like the part where the sun stops and the red sea parts—and stuff?
How about the part of the modern myth of progress that dooms the human race and whatever other species as well?
How’s that working for you?
And there’s plenty of truth in the Bible.
It can’t all be so easily written off I’m afraid. I think I heard that around 17% of the world’s population are Catholic, but don’t quote me on it.
A lot of people get a lot out of it.
If it was all untrue, nobody would be Christian.
And Christianity is still there, despite all attempts to destroy it.
It will probably still be there when modernity falls apart.
Seeing as we’re talking history, here’s a snapshot of what’s generally agreed upon by historians when it comes to Jesus:
“There are no substantial doubts about the general course of Jesus’ life: when and where he lived, approximately when and where he died, and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity. When we begin to probe beneath the surface, difficulties and uncertainties arise, but for the present we shall stay on the surface. I shall first offer a list of statements about Jesus that meet two standards: they are almost beyond dispute; and they belong to the framework of his life, and especially of his public career. (A list of everything that we know about Jesus would be appreciably longer.)
Jesus was born c. 4 BCE, near the time of the death of Herod the Great;
he spent his childhood and early adult years in Nazareth, a Galilean village;
he was baptized by John the Baptist;
he called disciples;
he taught in the towns, villages and countryside of Galilee (apparently not the cities);
he preached about ‘the kingdom of God’;
about the year 30 he went to Jerusalem for Passover;
he created a disturbance in the Temple area;
he had a final meal with the disciples;
he was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities, specifically the high priest;
he was executed on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate.
We may add here a short list of equally secure facts about the aftermath of Jesus’ life:
his disciples first fled;
they saw him (in what sense is not certain) after his death;
as a consequence, they believed that he would return to found the kingdom;
they formed a community to await his return and sought to win others to faith in him as God’s Messiah
The Historical Figure of Jesus
E.P. Sanders
i’m a very lazy gardener
i’ve just checked my bible—its ok to go and buy a slave—my life will be much easier from now on—i hate gardening.
I do hope you are not a pick n mix godbotherer.
I’m just saying those are the historical facts of Jesus’ life, if you don’t like those, take it up with the historians.
There’s truth in there.
You can open up new avenues of criticism, and for each one, there will be a counterpoint.
And in the long run, I’m still betting Christianity is here to stay, because it’s true.
If something is not true, then into the dustbin it goes.
But Christianity is still here. . .
Remarkable really.
Miraculous even.
walking on water
hmmmmm
If you want a miracle, how about the fact that the coming collapse is taking so damn long?
I’ve been waiting for about 20 years. . .
just to be on the safe side though…..
next time you fly—make sure the pilot is an atheist….. get it in writing.
might be as well to apply the same rule to trains and buses as well—oh and taxis too.
ya never know
and stay away from stonecasters
I don’t understand your comment.
if the pilot is an atheist—he wont raptured in mid flight
jokes never work if you have to explain them
Why would the pilot have to be an atheist, he would just have to be a non-Christian. Do you think the Christian God intends to Rapture Jews, Muslims and Buddhist too?
ok ok
i will hand the pilot a questionnaire
then tell all the other passengers—i daresay i’ll get a free drink out of it
I have never really given too much thought about renewables, since no matter how powerful renewables might be, they are not reproducible.
In other words, you cannot use renewables to create more renewable stuff.
To build the facilities to produce the items needed for renewables, fossil fuels are needed. I have never seen any facilities which only used renewables to build all the facilities.
I don’t think it is possible to eliminate fossil fuels in the entire process, and until that happens, which won’t be easy (I don’t need terms like ‘it will be bumpy’ since it is not really an alternative) I don’t pay too much attention to renewables. It is like breeding mules, which are more efficient when they are alive, but cannot be reproduced again.
I agree. Solar panels are simply add-ons to a fossil fuel based system. Fossil fuels are also used to make the electric transmission grid, used to transmit grid electricity.
Solar panels are also a problem at the ends of their lifetimes. The materials tend to be polluting, some much worse than others. The materials are not recyclable. This is not considered in cost/benefit analyses.
Where are the results — such as wind/solar actually going solo? Or, are we not supposed to ask that?
Wind and solar going solo are not working very well as add-ins to the current system, but there may be some uses for them solo. They seem to run desalination plants, intermittently, for example. Perhaps the people in Pakistan have figured out how to use them to supplement a very intermittent grid (see comment below).
Wind turbines have been used for a very long time to pump water. Such pumping can go either way: to get water for humans and animals, or to dry out fields. They could be used that way again.
There have been ideas of using wind turbines to make ammonia fertilizer.
https://www.fertilizerdaily.com/20241223-researchers-demonstrated-a-wind-powered-device-that-converts-air-into-ammonia/
If these ideas are really economic, businesses will make use of them without subsidies.
Solar panels don’t reproduce themselves, but we have a fair amount of them now.
Guess is used locally they work.
Disposal of the panels bothers me.
Main expense of photovoltaics is not the panels, but the supporting structure and the land used. Only an idiot puts them on a roof; there is a lot of handwaving when this ie mentioned at meetings.
Use locally, generate H and I suspect it works; yes, it is a project of mine as it has been done. Team effort, JBL is working or has H internal combustion engines. Summer energy usage for farming does occur in the summer when solar is maximum; how convenient.
Fish are going to be a problem, world needs fish, tough to raise fish in space.
Dennis L.
babelfish seem to be critical for space travel
Gail
Why can I no longer make replies to OFW via my email inbox?
Ive done unsubscribe and then resubscibed—doesnt work.
Thanks
Norman P
I don’t know.
I have trouble with my comments taking awfully long to load on OFW. Are other people also having problems with that?
for some reason i can’t open any links in the comments via my email inbox either
Yep but I assumed it was because you still had me on probation from my previous, incorrigible residency here.
No, I don’t think I am causing the problem. I can try to contact the help desk and ask about the problem. (It may take time to get an answer.)
WordPress keeps making updates to its software, changing things. Sometimes something intended to fix one problem “breaks” something else in the system. The site is written primarily in PHP, which some have declared to be close to a dead language.
This is an article about WordPress:
https://elementor.com/blog/programming-language-wordpress/
Hmmm, “incorrigible,” I am liking you better already.
Dennis L.
I also have problems with comments not appearing for some time after posting, and with failing “nonce verification” whatever that is. Which is insulting because I can assure you all that I am not and have never been what we English call “a nonce”, all my other sins notwithstanding.
All I can suggest is to refresh the page from time to time using that circling arrow at the top of the browser . And to go to the previous page and then come back. This seems to work a lot of the time.
A permanent solution would be to move the forum to Substack, but I understand it’s hard to move to a new platform, especially after so many years here. So it might be better to put up with Word Press and say to ourselves: “Just be happy with what you’ve got, folks, because it’s never going to get any better.”
Interesting article on solar power in Pakistan:
https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/opinion/the-rooftop-revolution–pakistan-s-unnoticed-solar-uprising
“22 GW worth of solar panels imported/installed in a single year”
“The emerging modern energy market comes with various difficulties to navigate. High-value urban customers who have defected either partially or fully from the grid create a significant crisis for utility companies.”
and to conclude:
“If one views major cities in Pakistan through Google Earth, the glittering solar panels can easily be noticed on rooftops. It’s important for the world to take note that these shining rooftops across Pakistan are evidence of a silent but powerful revolution, in which adversity drove ingenuity and people exhibited resilience in the face of government neglect and rejected the notion of being left in the dark. To conclude, “The Sun rises even when the system fails.” “
Let’s see
https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/how-much-power-1-gigawatt
1 GW is good for 100 million LED bulbs
so 22 GW is good for 2.2 billion LED bulbs
Pakistan has about 200 million people
So 22 GWs is good for 22 LED bulbs for each person.
I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
And I don’t think Pakistan made any of such panels, probably coming from China, made with Chinese coal.
According to Gonzalo Lira, former journalist from Chile, who went to Dartmouth College, married a Ukrainian gal from Kharkov where he lived, and was allowed to die in UKR prison after trying to flee from the UKR thugs for speaking out against UKR, the worst feeling (after being hungry, thirsty, and shivering in the cold I would suspect,) was being in the dark with no communications after power outages.
I guess the one thing that can be said about solar power/batteries, even if they won’t last a lifetime, is that they’re better than nothing. They run your flashlights and radios, if only for a little while, as long as you seal off your windows so as not to advertise you have a power source. Kind of like not cooking on a fire to advertise you have food.
It will lighten up Pakistani houses until the panels fail but won’t really change anything long term.
I am guessing that it is businesses that mostly use them. Or perhaps the richer homeowners, too.
This is an excellent point.
Light and communication. With these two things, everything else can be coordinated at an time. With coordination, a better outcome is always possible.
Hubbs… you wouldnt happen to have that quote reference handy would you? I like to add quotes to project documentation. This one really resonates.
This may be the one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkH63nn5J9I
I also remember his remarks on another podcast affirming that after age 40 or 50, you simply can not hump a backpack in a war like they were expecting these older UKR recruits to do.
Thank you!!
Someone has to sit in the dark.
The electricity supply is so intermittent in Pakistan that adding solar panels with intermittent electricity fills in some of the times when grid electricity is not available. Presumably there is a way to make solar panels secondary and grid electricity primary in each home. Pakistan is close to the equator, so its days are relatively the same length all year long. It has a vary varied climate.
https://intentionaldetours.com/best-time-to-visit-pakistan/
I would guess that the solar panels are concentrated in areas where sunshine is available for quite a few days of the year. In this way, solar sunshine can act as a back-up to the electric grid for quite a few businesses. They can stay open more hours. I am doubtful that this would be enough hours for refrigerated foods, but it might be helpful for cash registers and LED lights and schools.
It might be the solar panels are useful enough, without backup batteries, to be used in this way, quite a few places near the equator. Businesses in Pakistan, in theory, could even use them to operate air conditioners. So could households in Pakistan. But, my guess is that air conditioning would not have an adequate pay back to justify the cost of the electricity in those countries. (As the world gets poorer, I expect that air conditioning will mostly not have an adequate payback, anywhere.)
My solar + batteries paid back purchase price already . It runs nine chest freezers, A/C , electric tractor, home lighting, Ag well and domestic well. My farm produces vegetables and meat so there are food calories produced . That is solar power is converted to food calories.
Most people eat food that costs 10 calories of fossil fuel to create one calorie of food. I can produce food with zero fossil use and yes there are embodied costs in manufacture but when the oil runs out maybe experimenting in how to live without it will pay a premium at least until it wears out or breaks.
Claims of how solar doesn’t work by people who don’t use it seems speculative and ill informed.
Will you be able to pay property taxes? Are you able to pay property taxes now, from your farm income?
Gail, My home , whether in the country or in town, still demands I pay taxes. They don’t ask me where the money comes from ,my farm or other off farm income. I can feed my wife and I without fossil fuel inputs. Doesn’t need to pay All the bills so long as it reduces costs somehow.
I have produced something like 1million$gross of pork sales over the last ten years. Solar covered freezers and water but feed and processing ate most any profits. Taxes probably came from off farm income but then property has increased in value so in a way farm will have paid its taxes if I ever sell.
I think solar has a place in small scale farming . It isn’t a replacement for diesel, but if it can get me ( or someone else ) by a couple more decades I’m good. I like the dependability of power supply and at my age a lot of horsepower is just wasted energy anyhow.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1915783186103087507
An AI-generated music video, inspired by the iconic 1960s revolutionary song “We March on the Great Road,” features characters resembling Trump, Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Elon Musk
Secretary of State Marco Rubio. In fact, the US Secretary of State’s full name is Marco Antonio Rubio. Hmm. The President should order him to change his name to Mark Ruby. There is no need for all those “o”‘s at the end of his names. If Spanish and Portuguese dropped the o’s and a’s from the ends of their words, it would save the world a lot of work. It could halt global warming in its tracks virtually overnight.
Or maybe the President should just change his name to Donaldo Trumpo and be done with it, and change the US currency to 100 centos to a dollaro. [/sarc]
Actually, you should abbreviate ‘dollar’ even more, coming back to the original name of 5 letters instead of 6: daler or taler 🙂
Ethymology dollar
“monetary unit or standard of value in the U.S. and Canada,” 1550s, daler, originally in English the name of a large, silver coin of varying value in the German states, from Low German daler, from German taler (1530s, later thaler), abbreviation of Joachimstaler, literally “(gulden) of Joachimstal,” coin minted 1519 from silver from mine opened 1516 near Sankt Joachimsthal, town in Erzgebirge Mountains in northwest Bohemia. German Tal is cognate with English dale. The spelling had been modified to dollar by 1600.”
https://www.etymonline.com/word/dollar
Amazing what can be done with AI. I remember when Disney cartoons were drawn by hand (at least that is what we were told). Multiple drawing shown one after the next, to provide action.
I’ve done the math and unfortunately, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the calamity of global worgling, since a text in Portuguese only has 5% more characters than the same text in English. And alas what difference does 5% more CO2 emissions make?
In short, we’re doomed!!!
I’ve been referring to JD as Eyeliner Vance for months now so it’s fun to see the new Chinese viral videos (via ZH). A good combination parody of the MAGA mythos and peasant reference in another video too.
https://x.com/timeforainews/status/1915735282936131915?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1915735282936131915%7Ctwgr%5E4c2d4b0fd849c53edc86c059d43ec2db05e9846b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Fwatch-weird-chinese-ai-videos-mock-trump-and-vance
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/watch-weird-chinese-ai-videos-mock-trump-and-vance
“How Much Is Enough?” by CHS
Excerpt: How much is enough? In our “growth for growth’s sake” economy, the answer is “there is never enough” because continuous expansion of consumption is necessary to drive “growth,” without which the global economy will collapse into a Depression of great suffering.
https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/how-much-is-enough?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1692393&post_id=162227593&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=4cyn7j&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
CHS talks about how he has cut back consumption, and it has worked just fine. Of course, he is older, like many readers of this blog. He isn’t trying to impress a would-be girl friend, or to pay back big student loans on a modest income.
The economy does need continual growth, and that can only come with more consumption of energy products. Something has to go wrong, somewhere.
The economy does in fact need continual growth as well as continual population growth. The problem facing the global economy today is that politicians have stolen from the future to pay for the present. So what you have is a growing population that can no longer support growth, because they just don’t have the financial means to support the continual growth economy. I worked with an assistant mgr for a grocery chain and he made good money but his rent was $2400 a month so he had had his mom move in who also couldn’t afford her rent.
This ZH article is a perfect example how politicians can ruin the lives of future generations.
‘They Lied To A Whole Generation of Kids’
Excerpt: “We’ve got $1.7 trillion in student debt on the books and we’ve got 7.6 million open jobs right now – most of which don’t require a 4-year degree,” says a frustrated Mike Rowe in his ubiquitously velvetty tones.
“And we’ve got 6.8 million able-bodied men who are not only out of the workforce, they’re not looking.”
It’s generational, Rowe tells Theo Von. It’s not about the pay, he adds, noting that there’s no enthusiam for the work:
“We took shop class out of high school, we robbed kids of the opportunity to see what that kind of work even looks like.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/they-lied-whole-generation-kids
Then you have college kids who can’t afford rent so California is looking to pass this legislation.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-floats-plan-allow-homeless-students-sleep-cars-amid-housing-crisis
And I will add that back in the 70’s many High Schools were also teaching trades. Growing up in the 70’s, my High School taught electronic repair, how to become an electrician, woodworking. It cost, NOTHING. Now you pay tens of thousands for that privilege. My High School even got me my first job.
Me too, I took wood and metal shop every semester and year, my favorite time during the class day. It was all boys that I can remember and learned welding, metal foundry casting lathe and all machinery, what a blast.
They school even provided auto repair schooling, but my buddies and I did that after school on our own time….back then cars were easy to work on ourselves and plenty of older brothers show us.
Betcha if they had those still many behavioral problems would go away.
I know there was a Home Ed course, but have no idea what it taught. This was in the70s
it was free back then because the entire economic system ran on cheap surplus energy.
if you check your history books, for uk anyway, there was no mandatory free schooling until the 1870s….
rich kids went to uni….less well off bought apprenticeships in various trades—poor kids went down coalmines from the age of 6….in 1842 that was raised to 10, in 1874 it was raised to 12, with compulsory education for all..
free uni started post ww2 i think.
we can no longer afford it, it was a short term anomaly.
no such thing as a free lunch..
“it was free back then because the entire economic system ran on cheap surplus energy.”
This trend started in the early to mid 80’s when fuel was still very cheap and affordable in the US.
The education industry just saw it as new customers that helped pay for their Sports programs where Head Coaches earned millions of dollars per year. Now Head Coaches in college sports programs can earn 10+ million per year. Those worthless scholarships help pay for that.
Then local universities saw dollar signs and followed suite.
Minutes to memories:
“I worked my whole life in the steel mills near Gary, and like before me my father helped build this land.
As God is my witness, I earned every dollar that passed through my hand. ”
Loss of family farms, manufacturing etc. it was seen coming even by musicians in 1985.
From the article:
I have said previously that Georgia has a problem with college students who cannot afford housing, too. At least some of these students live in tents in the woods near campus. I imagine there are others who sleep in cars.
Maybe next they can change all the housing codes to permit cob houses with rocket stoves. That will really bring living costs down and jump start the neofeudal world order befitting our resource constrained world while still leaving enough rentier extraction possibilities for an “aristocracy,” which seems to be the whole point of “civilization.”
Betcha your property taxes will increase along with other fees and insurance…probably add an HOA monthly cost too. Still make living there in a cobb house even more of a hell
Growth. Economic growth. It means that we do not husband our resources. Instead we end up competing with other nations to use up our resources as quickly as possible. A race to scarcity. I wonder how old Gail was when she first realised that the economy could not grow indefinitely?
I started investigating energy limits when I was 58. I started OurFiniteWorld.com two years later, in 2007. As an actuary, and as a math major in college, I knew for a very long time that growth could not continue, especially at a high rate, for a very long time. I worked with interest rates and forecasts. I could not imagine how these could continue. I could not imagine that retirees (including me) could be as wealthy as models predicted. I had looked at books regarding some of these issues much earlier.
I was a casualty actuary, not a life insurance actuary, so in a sense, these issues did not involve me directly. But I knew I had a conflict of interest with my employer writing about these issues. My earliest writing was in an actuarial magazine, and in an advertising magazine for my employer.
Thank you for the info, Gail.
Yes, agree on economy; economy is biology and that is self regulating albeit somewhat unevenly and in extreme punctuated with change, ask a dinosaur.
Energy seems self renewing, from a human point of view it is the time during renewal.
If we can use the solar system things do not change, but pollution is moved off spaceship earth, and the energy is tapped much closer to the source. But, we do not do this with biology, we use machines, e.g. Optimus-3 and variants.
Dennis L.
>If we can use the solar system
We can’t.
Period.
I was about to write a post concerning the pathetic scene of Trump and Zelensky talking in Saint Peter like in a confession settlement, but the most important news of the day is that (I guess) Israel has blown up the containers arriving from China of raw materials for missile fuel in Iran port.
My idea is that they used drones to reach the containers on the ship during its travel by the ocean.
Background info:
https://maritime-executive.com/article/second-shipload-of-ballistic-missile-fuel-nears-iran
https://maritime-executive.com/article/second-shipload-of-ballistic-missile-fuel-nears-iran
I don’t think this article talks about Israel blowing up the containers of missile fuel arriving from Israel. It starts out:
It does have raw materials for missile fuel.
This is an AP article:
https://apnews.com/article/iran-explosion-fire-bandar-abbas-72637c6b3e152a30045275f57ace29ed
I didn’t find anything about Israel being involved. My impression is that they usually aren’t very successful with their attempts using missiles. Maybe drones work better.
No one could never find a news saying Israel being involved, but one can find a news saying that Israel denies involvement.
For example here:
https://www.timesnownews.com/world/is-israel-behind-bandar-abbas-port-blast-amid-nuclear-talks-with-us-big-iran-explosion-iran-blast-news-article-151506209
On the other hand, going on expressing my opinion (as I indicated above saying ‘I guess’ and if I still can), I think that some warm war between Israel and Iran can indeed start, as provocations from both sides are going on quickly.
The world does not turn to sentimental tales.
= From the movie Hara-Kiri, by the Kageyu(inspector), who buries the story of the desperately poor samurai and his family’s tragedy
I was complimented by Fast Eddy who said “When men were men” when I used this quote.
===
https://youtube.com/shorts/6nvOoYQ0O7o?si=0CiE-IFblnfpx76E
Those who sympathize for the girl have no place in the Future.
We are descended from the worst predators, who killed, stole and ravaged those who were weaker than us. I and Keith debated about this. I was more extreme than him.
Although the clip above was probably staged, if I produced it I would have ended it with an able-bodied, better dressed man stealing the pot from her, spill the gruel to the ground which she would try to eat from and the man kicking the girl unconsciously, and later walks near the area with his better fed son, watching the now-dead girl being eaten by a bunch of crows, telling him that ‘this is life’.
About which Keith agreed with me, although he was less extreme than me. My thinking was not based upon anything written after 1960.
My grandparents completely missed the 1968 revolution, and instilled me the older values which I still retain. As a result I don’t think like the older people here who lived through the 1960s, even though I never lived thru it.
When resource depletes, the older values, instilled when there were less, will return with a vengeance. My refusal to abandon such values will never endear me among some circles but that’s OK. My values are the values which sustained life for millennia and will prevail in the end.
Sounds like you were raised by sub-zero sum game Machiavellian psychos. You have my sympathy. I’ll pray for you.
Well put.
Dennis L.
That is how the world works.
I have rarely failed by having old style values when everyone else did not.
please define ”old style values”
pre 1950—pre 1900?
pre 1800—-1700???
pre christian?
choose your era—and I will unearth some very unpleasant ”values” for you
Around the time of Herbert Spencer, one of the forgotten heroes of civilization.
i looked up Spencer.
one of the priveleged classes.
his values were ‘survival of the fittest’
have you ever seen a coalface 1/4 mile underground—and thought what it must have been like for a child of 6 to work there?
Horrific enough with modern equipment and lighting .
and that was just the coalmines—check out ”houses of industry” for orphaned kids—if you have the stomach for it.
or just read Dickens.
are they the ‘old style value’ you hanker after kulm?
I take it they are good, so long as they dont apply to you.
///you dont need anything to get energy ot of hydrocarbons///
has me mystified—–short of tossing a match into a gallon of perol
petrol
Personally, I care not about it at all, Kulmie.
I lived my life nearing 70 years old and saw enough on YouTube about Medieval peasant life to know that I won’t survive 24hours..like this one video tells it.
I already passed the finish line and won the lottery life entry…boo hoo all you want here if it makes you feel better. As Gail has pointed out most here are old boomers, so we don’t have much time left anyhow.
So, why mellow about what’s coming?
I thought it was all over back during the financial and energy crisis in 2008.
Lot of worry and concern for no reason, just like CC, with close to 9 billion on the Earth, we all know there will be a die off…mainly old and young folks along with diseases and famine. So what…
Why You Wouldn’t Last 24 Hours in Medieval Times
Medieval Times Discovered
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iAtogaNHxS4&pp=ygUmV29udCBsaXZlIDI0IGhvdXJzIGluIG1lZGlldmFsIHNvY2lldHk%3D
Think you could survive a day in the Middle Ages? Think again. Life in medieval times was brutal, filthy, and downright dangerous. From deadly diseases to bizarre laws and back-breaking labor, most modern people wouldn’t last 24 hours.
Medieval life wasn’t all knights and castles most people lived in harsh conditions that would make you want to time travel right back to the present.
By keeping all ‘good things’ out of the hands of the masses and only the privileged class being able to enjoy them, the world would have gained at least 2 more centuries of advances which would have been enough to reach Type I Civ.
Instead the world is facing general collapse.
Woulda, could a, shoulda
I know that term very well
Use it on the golf cpurse playing a round with my partners…
It’s all milk under the bridge Kulmie
Get Over It already, will you
No argument with that, “life in medieval times was brutal, filthy, and downright dangerous”.
“Most ‘modern’ people would be dead within 24 hours”.
Very likely considering how weak, lazy, living among lots of other people, believing in modern medicine and modern law and massive government ‘modern’ people are.
This post title says ‘Brace for rapid changes’.
Well do it!
That video is a good educational story. Maybe a bit extreme on the negative side, but draws attention to all the things that made like so bad.
You could use that to plan your future life and maybe last a bit longer than 24 hours.
It should be obvious that ‘people’ are the main cause of a miserable existence in those times so plan to live remotely, and almost coincidentally that’s where there will be the best chance of finding or growing food. and clean water.
Doctors and lawyers should be few there, or at least not organised to live off you.
Find your own leeches, they have their uses.
Lawyers? can’t think of any use for them.
At 82 now and don’t take any medication although admittedly was grateful for an antibiotic for one infection and threw out others as the side effects were worse than a ‘possible’ infection.
And still waiting after 25 years for the stroke I was told I will have if I don’t take blood pressure tablets everyday for the rest of my life.
You should already know about basic hygiene
Its not hard to build a shelter or light a fire and cook some basic food ( that you caught or grew).
There is plenty of information on survival, so make use of it.
OK so lots will die anyway.
That’s Natures way.
The ‘human’ way of keeping every life going whatever it takes is not Natures way (or Evolution if you prefer).
Survival of the fittest (and sadly death of those not fit enough) results in a species that might continue for a long time.
Trying to keep everything the way it is will
confirm a mass die off for most.
But just maybe there will be those who find a place and have absorbed enough knowledge
to continue our species a bit longer and even in a better way.
Kulm is very repetitive, and he also thinks that this is going to happen due to some civilizational values movement. it is in fact due to physical forces, with none of his beacons of light (or beacons of chuckyness) doing anything except follow the tide. Nevertheless, what he says is generally true. I just wish he would not spend 15 comments per post on it.
If one is not a member of the master race, at least in the West and Russia, opportunities to stay above serfdom are essentially trying to be firmly in the trading class. I am guessing that is 2 or 3 chances in 100. One could try to be part of the clergy, but I see the church so weak and unable to cope, wherever I look, that if you climb into the wrong bus leaving the station you will never recover. By that I mean there will be fierce competition in the religious camp, and it is unlikely that the decrepit institutions will win.
Human behavior is flexible according to the situation and the environment humans are in at the time.
When times are tough, it may be necessary to be callous, stingy and coldhearted. When times are easy, on the other hand, it may be an excellent strategy to act generous and empathetic. Because generosity and empathy are often reciprocated ten times over. It depends on the situation, the environment, and the culture one is living in.
Take the case of Sir Bob Geldof, who I presume Mirror would categorize as ‘Judaeo-Irish’ as his father’s mother was of Ashkenazi stock, after feeding all those Ethiopians, Bob went on to be knighted—building up a fortune in the tens of millions, owning a yacht, and hanging out with Panagiotis “Taki” Theodoracopulos—all on the basis of his generous, empathetic reputation.
If he’d said in 1985, “Sod the starving Africans”, none of this success would have happened, and he’d have gone down in history as a talentless racist musician with a reputation just a notch above Garry Glitter’s.
People who capitalize the poor are legion. In late 1890s those who called for the welfare of the slums were legion. All of such people parlayed their fame to try to enter the leisure class.
But such messages are listened only in certain periods of history. In most cases capitalizing over the poor did not work since few people cared about them.
the Quaker industrialists certainly did.
The accounts of their attempts to improve their worker’s condition are numerous and well documented.
yes—times were tough, but improvements were made
For some who worry about a hot war between India and Pakistan — will not happen . India has to retaliate but it does not have the capacity while Pakistan has the dettarance capacity . Trump washing his hands off gives a signal to China ( Pakistan aligned) — this is in your backyard . India is no position to fight a war against Pakistan and China simultaneously . No , no nuclear war . Nuclear is deterrence only .
Interesting.
I am guessing that no nuclear war will start anywhere.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/massive-explosion-rocks-port-strait-hormuz
Massive Explosion Rocks Port On Strait Of Hormuz
Of course, higher oil prices is what a lot of people want.
Definitely not a good place to have an exploding pager detonate.
At this juncture it seems a Handy place at which to direct another positron beam tho.
This may have been an accident and not foul play.
about 0.1% chance of being an accident. The rest of the odds are foul play.
I am afraid you are right. Which culprit? Maybe some substack writer knows.
Here you go(pay close attention to the now deleted UK R Report post at the bottom).
https://geopolitiq.substack.com/p/was-the-explosion-at-irans-shahid?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
Sorry, not the bottom, it’s about halfway down. The video at the bottom clearly shows separate fires.
High tariffs are for sectors where alternatives are available:
From the WSJ
China Quietly Exempts Some U.S.-Made Products From Tariffs
Beijing has been canvassing companies and waiving duties on U.S. goods in sectors where it lacks alternatives
Wikipedia is usually pure MSM, but it has an interesting entry on Catherine Austin Fitts.:
Catherine Austin Fitts (born December 24, 1950) is an American investment banker and former public official who served as managing director of Dillon, Read & Co. and, during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush, as United States Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing. She has widely written and commented on the subject of public spending and has alleged several large-scale instances of government fraud. Among her initial observations upon taking office was that the department had a $300 billion portfolio of mortgage insurance but only employed one certified actuary.
Fitts has researched and commented on government spending. In a 2004 study published in World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, she purported to find “evidence that a very large proportion of the nation’s wealth is being illegally diverted since several decades into secret, unaccountable channels and programmes with unspecified purposes, including covert operations and subversions abroad and clandestine military R&D at home. Public institutions have been infiltrated and taken over by shadowy groups in the service of powerful private and vested interests, often at the expense of the common good.”
In 2017 Fitts co-authored a report, with Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore, that claimed to find $21 trillion in “unauthorized spending” by the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development over a 17-year period.
Fitts has claimed that HUD’s mission of spurring economic growth is secondary to what she contends is its use as a fundraising mechanism for military and intelligence agencies involving a complex securities scheme using HUD-backed Ginnie Mae investments. According to Fitts, HUD overpays to rehabilitate public housing and funnels the difference into unaudited black budget programs at the behest of national security agencies.
She has given interviews in alternate media, such as kla.tv, alleging fraud in the US central banking system and US government (“21 trillion dollars have been stolen”) and “massive fraud” in the 2020 election and Electoral fraud in US elections for many years before 2020.
She publishes the Solari Report and has 4-5 minute blurbs on line with John Titus, on his You Tube site called “Best Evidence. ” I think Titus is in the middle of his 5 or 6 part series called “Bankrocracy.”
Thanks, I’ll have a look at John Titus and his videos.
I heard Catherine Austin Fitts speaking at one of the first “Peak Oil” conferences I went to. That was in 2006. Dmitry Orlov was another speaker at the conference in New York City.
I am not sure exactly what she talked about. I think one theme was that the economy changes, as it goes from a situation where everyone knows their neighbors and children can all walk to school. In this more limited situation, there are checks and balances that don’t exist as complexity sets in. Things can go wrong that no one tells you about.
no one tells you about them—because no one knows about or accepts, them—-hence the term ”fake news”……
fake news encourages people to go on as before—thinking nothing will disturb their current existence……
and maybe it wont—-for a few more years……
no one can be precise about it anyway
I actually agree to Vit’s argument to some degree.
The engineers are trained to find anything, to the very end.
I have suggested this method for some time – all the energy usage would be blockchained, and if people use the energy for frivolous uses, their allotted energy allowance is cut.
Thereby energy usage for people who do not actually contribute to civilization can be cut significantly.
If there are no more energy coming online, existing energy consumption will be cut, in a very brutal way. It cannot be avoided.
There will be no mercy, no quarters given.
That will lead to the energy consumption of the poorer countries and poorer regions of the richer countries plummet significantly, in some locales back to the stone age.
When we can’t produce any more we will limit access to it. Problem solved.
So, an energy hungry blockchain scheme to control depleting energy?
Haha, you know when the system is on its last legs as the ideas to save it are thru added complexities.and those complexities require higher energy inputs.
At this point, some of the energy purchased goes to help ailing energy companies. The energy purchased tends to be stranded natural gas, or even stranded geothermal energy in Iceland. Stranded coal (too expensive to ship or put of electricity lines to) is another option.
This might be a double post
Blockchains will consume much less energy that what a person consumes per capita.hihis might be double post
Rationing by other means .
Much more extreme. No resources at all for the unnecessariats at all.
kul,
Starship is being worked on, new blast pits at both TX and FL, huge sums of money are being spent. Who? Someone, some group with very deep pockets understands there are serious issues.
H is being more and more frequently mentioned, JBL is working on IC engines which run on H.
Life is a strange thing, biology works, there is an old saying “Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. Biology is like that.
Some of us believe in a creator; when we get to space in an industrial way, perhaps there will be our cubic mile of Pt. I know, that is crazy, but life is crazy, still it is.
Oil is not the problem as I see it, fish in the ocean are or lack thereof are. We have a wonderful spaceship, earth; we need to move the inorganic pollution off earth. For you worriers, don’t worry, there is always something.
There is an alternative; spend one’s entire life waiting for the end of the world only to see it not come and have one’s personal end come. The latter is a certainty, so far life, biology, works pretty well.
Dennis L.
I do not plan my life on the end of the world. I have my own life, about which I prefer not to talk, but overall I don’t think the system can be saved, especially with nonexistent technology or stuff which are just reinventing the wheel.
Bezos’ blue origin exposed
https://mileswmathis.com/bezos2.pdf
(Miles Mathis has beaten Musk a lot, and I know you won’t bother to find and read these articles, but I think Musk is a scam based upon other sources)
To make what you propose workable even to some degree we need time, which we don’t have. If the world’s top hats listen to me they will gain maybe half a century so your contraptions can be built. However we don’t have the time without a massive reduction of energy usage in the poorer regions of the world.
The link also has some information showing that sending the six ladies up into zero gravity for a short time must have been fake also. There is more also.
if the general fakerama goes on much longer……
there will be more people involved in doing fakes than there are involved in real life activities……
soon everyone will be ”faking it”
Just like the last days of USSR
The ones doing real activities will be blowing up oil tanks in Iran, secretly.
ah—-but what about all the fake oil tanks
I love reading Miles Mathis. I don’t believe a quarter of what he writers about is accurate, but he never fails to entertain.
Someone needs to hire the engineers, however. They look at the cost of extraction relative to the cost of their inputs.
Yes, engineers. Engineering is very hard, it needs to have precise numbers and calculations lest the bridge fall down or a space telescope found to be near sighted, think Hubble.
Engineering is data centric, narratives won’t hack it which is a problem for many people. We have too few engineers to bring back much manufacturing I suspect unless, AI, and Optimus-3.
This makes problems for those whose life is invested in narratives which are not congruent with understandings of data. Engineering basics seem to stay somewhat the same over time although the frontier advances.
Dennis L.
dennis
Engineering is energy centric……
A blacksmith might turn out horse shoes, but he lacks the engergy input to turn out miles of railway track……
So, Norm, for a young person it may be prudent to become an accomplished blacksmith to prepare for the future economy that will evolve.
I remember one person who father was an architect and he told his son do NOT enter his field, he could not find any work while the Great Depression period, nothing, other than Gov projects, were being constructed.
WWII changed all that ..with plenty of stuff in the ground
My guess is that It takes too much energy to blockchain energy. Too much computing power too much data storage and too much water (coolant) and electricity. I am basing this on tim watkins’ analysis of why programmable digital currency will never happen.
It’s much easier to physically turn off electricity to targeted areas to ration it, much as Ukraine has been doing to residential areas in Kiev as Russia blows up Ukraine’s infrastructure, so Ukraine can ptioritize the remaining productive capacity to “essential “ needs.
Will it cost more energy to micromanage all the resources or to let the unnecessariats continue to use the energy?
The first will cost much less energy.
Young and houseless in Austria
(Tatoos and piercings everywhere…)
https://youtu.be/xIuwdHjINrI?si=SCML5URxKWz7hZ3a
Ayup. I was in the USA 4 weeks ago and the urban centers are full of these people. Depopulation is taking place.
I’m amazed at how some people are willing to ink themselves up and treat their body like a walking billboard. I don’t get it. Former NBA player Chris Anderson aka “Birdman” is a perfect example.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F5a%2F7d%2Ff4%2F5a7df4d55db85f6ef28aee6cf71fb61a.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=f11ebe2388ac1e4d0a2c8147da7bac1df57328bc596126c2da99826746d91d70
It seems they are all at it these days. I see lots of ladies in photos and videos who could be beautiful if it wasn’t for the fact that they had themselves painted like a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape.
The video is not available in Oz.
Anyway, we have the tattoo thing here as well, plus a hideous housing unaffordability and surging homelessness.
Fertile ground for serious mental health issues – and that’s without the rest of the disastrous background of our times.
Perhaps the prevalence of tattoos/self-mutilation is a symptom of ramping mental illness?
There’s a lot to be unhappy about.
Homelessness was once rare in my city. In my youth, you could get arrested for not having small change in your pocket on a charge of vagrancy (it’s like Pyongyang here, with a different brand of dystopia). Nowadays, right across the street from where a kid I hardly knew died in the cells of a long-gone police station, there’s now a homeless woman living on a bus bench.
Hugh, not an expert, opinion only:
Once we have orphanages which probably had Sunday services, a set of rules and also hope.
Once we had old folks homes, generally in the Midwest associated with a farm. Farmers who lost their farms were described in less than favorable terms at my grandmother’s table, even on Sunday which was after church.
We had TB facilities for the infected, my aunt was in one for couple of years, when I visited she waved from a window.
Once on the VA grounds we had domiciliaries, a bed, a rocking chair and access to health care at the Center which provided education for residents. It was not uncommon to see a stack of chest films 12″ high. At Wood, the chairs dated from the Civil War, very sturdy. Veterans passed and were buried on the grounds. While not warm, the place had a very humane felling to it. I have read only about 5% of the population can kill other humans, it seemed to me that many of those I saw had a very hard time living with the reality of past combat.
All that is gone now, so much improved, community care; well perhaps community neglect. Ideas which don’t seem to work.
There was a story I read in French, many years ago. At convents there was a small, revolving door with a shelf at the bottom. Women who could not support their children placed them on the platform, turned the door and their child was gone.
From copilot:
“These rotating doors, known as “foundling wheels,” were used in convents and hospitals across Europe, including Paris, during times of hardship. Mothers could anonymously place their unwanted babies in these wheels, which rotated to safely deliver the child inside the building.
The children were cared for by nuns or volunteers, though many faced challenges like disease and malnutrition. Healthy babies were often baptized and given names by the caregivers. Some children were eventually adopted, while others grew up in the care of the church or orphanages. ”
My recollection is some of the children met a “humane” passing, not a pretty story.
Life has never been easy, I think with children it is a job for two and then at times a real test of endurance for the pair. My feeling is an advantage is the adults can double team the child.
Dennis L.
No, it’s never been easy. I think it’s generally economically harder now though on people than it was when I was born in the 70s.
Socially, the 60s probably saw the end of a lot of old rubbish, which I didn’t have to grow up with. In my parents’ generation, there was far more stigmatization for poverty, having divorced parents, being born out of wedlock, being left-handed, etc. Although standard religions probably also fell out of fashion from then on, bringing its own set of problems.
Economically, the overall picture is probably something like a relatively difficult time up until the wars, then a period of relative comfort, followed by increasing discomfort up until now.
Now though, economically, it must surely be bad for the kids. The housing situation is absolutely disastrous. The cost for an average house is well beyond the means of the average wage earner.
If the kids aren’t already minted, they’re screwed and the homelessness is ramping too.
But yes, it’s not the first time in history things have been bad. During the depression there was a lot of homelessness. I’m a bit surprised that we don’t seem to have slums being built out of whatever materials are to hand springing up all over the place – although there are vast areas of dog boxes going up, but they still want hundreds of thousands for those. I presume the authorities must be vigorously stamping out any DIY attempts.
The inequality is off the charts really.
It will only get worse too.
Survival Lilly from Austria most recently talked about taxation in Germany, in the name of “climate change” with the drive towards cramming more people into smaller hovels to reduce energy demand for heating. I like her.
A convenient way to get people to use less energy, without bringing up the horrible problem of “running short.”
I expect that multigenerational living, or living with house mates, will get more popular as well.
I bought the biggest house I could afford on the assumption that my children, and their children, wouldn’t be able to afford their own homes and we’d all live together.
That seems to work, my grandmother lived with us.
Laughing quietly, grandmother liked to do the cooking at Christmas, she purchased the meat and proceeded to cook the hell out of it. We all ate well but chewed energetically.
Dennis L.
In “Last chance to see” Douglas Adams travelled to various locations in the hope of encountering species on the brink of extinction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See
We got a diesel Hilux.
According to Wikipedia,
There is also a book and a television series, following these efforts.
I looked up 2026 Toyota Hilux (pickup truck)
This article seems to expect that a choice of diesel engines will still be available.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/2026-toyota-hilux-everything-we-know-so-far/
So perhaps it is not really that close to extinction.
Toyota guy here. I would kind of like one, not available in US, pollution issues and they have minimal trim to be kind.
Dennis L.
What a wonderful tour de horizont, Gail. Many thanks! I too have been following peak oil since 2005-ish. But I want to take up your comments on the creator.
This is as I see it and of course I am not expecting anyone or any of your readers to believe. The creator placed a compass in every human, first life, and the essence of that life is peace. The compass needles are the longing for peace.
So humans scuttle off and discover oil and fill the earth with stuff- more than the total weight of all living things – and come to realise they are on the Titanic heading for massive icebergs. All are going to die, that is fundamental. Before or after the ship hits the icebergs.
So if you are going to die, what is point? You look inwards, look at that life inside you asking “why am I here, then” and the thing you get back, under all the urges, egos, distractions, is a longing for peace. In fact experiencing peace is the only thing that truly makes you happy.
After 20 years of thinking about oil, progress, economy and systems I am of the mind to encourage all to let peace be the guide and we have a chance of having the experience we long for even as losing our comfort of daily life and the discomfort of hitting the icebergs starts to kick in. http://investorsinpeace.substack.com
human beings are the energy source for the billions of microscopic life forms that live on us and iside us.
it is they who provide the compass for our life and living,….they keep us alive to ensure their survival—it is they who resist diseases on our behalf, for purely selfish reasons……they are not always successful, somethimes they are overwhelmed by other invasive organisms or truama.
it is they who make our survival happen.
it is they who are the dominant species…the micro-organisms….on earth, noy us, nor anything created by any deity.
such criiters can be seen ….as can the things they do with us and for us (and against us).
no god….so far…. has passed that test of physical examination
If the Creator is not a part of the creation, then the creatures inhabiting the creation would not be able to detect the Creator’s presence by physical means. So, it would be unsurprising that the Creator has not passed any physical tests.
However, if there is no Creator, how can the existence of the Universe and the existence of your own conscious mind be explained?
You are a scholar and a gentleman, Squire. So, you must have pondered this issue long and hard before coming to such firm conclusions about the existence or non-existence of a Creator. Such a Creator needn’t fit in with the Biblical or Koranic or Rig Vedic account.
How can you be sure that there is no such Creator?
The Anthropic Principle suggests that the Universe’s physical laws and constants are fine-tuned for the existence of life, but doesn’t have any helpful suggestions about how this fine tuning might have happened.
Moreover, how can you—as a sentient being rational with understanding and moral and aesthetic sensibilities and capable of contemplating your own existence—not consider that there may be entities and phenomena that are beyond the physical and that your own mind may be one such entity?
Every single religion and spiritual philosophy ever invented might be mistaken, and yet a Creator might still have had a hand in the creation of the Universe and even in the continuing creation going on constantly within it.
Perhaps there isn’t a Creator, but nobody has convincingly explained how the Universe got here and the first living cells got here and human minds and consciousness got here without one. And these things are all crying out for a better explanation than the Tommy Cooper one that they happened “jus’ like that!”
John Michael Greer has a unique take on this. Did God create the universe? No – because there isn’t one god – there are many. The universe created all the gods and all the other creatures in it, including us. That’s what JMG believes. A bit of a Copernican revolution of a theory, that.
So who created the universe, according to JMG? We can’t say, but probably black holes give birth to universes, in his view. So universes are a bit like humans in that respect – they have ancestors.
But that leaves the question, who or what created the first ancestor? Who was Gail’s first ancestor, for instance? A microbe? Big questions, these.
Yes, I read several “popular” cosmology books in the 1980s and 90s on how black holes could lead to new universes with various parameters and physical laws, some of which could be optimized for life to exist. A whole new level of of evolution there.
“The universe created all the gods and all the other creatures in it, including us. ”
Well, that sounds a lot like God really.
Seems to me that there is one true God, who created the universe, and its rules, and thus set the scene for the evolution/development of all of the other supernatural and natural beings that inhabit it – if he didn’t just create everything fully formed, which he could, because he’s God.
no, the universe was born, just like you were. Did God create you? No, your parents did.
maybe we got it all wrong
maybe he was a procrastinator like everyone else, rested for 6 days, then did a panic rush job on the 7th.
that would explain a lot.
The universe created the gods lol. JMG comin atcha with the postneopaganism. What a kook.
A dimensional universe birthed by a black hole would be like baby bear ripping the guts out of mama bear.
You never know. Look at how a caterpillar turns into a chrysalis, turns into goo, and comes out a butterfly.
“The universe created the gods lol. JMG comin atcha with the postneopaganism.”
Nailed it.
I’ve read with interest the debate on evolution, cognition and adaptation in the course of human history.
I’m just throwing this ‘out-there’
I’m guessing that most of us visitors to Gail’s ideas and missives, are likely boomers. Probably, like me you have studied this peak oil, EROEI, surplus oil, and reduction in resources, for possibly 2 decades, and whilst we might have nuanced differences, we sort of,.. all know where this is all heading.
I’ve been observing the antics of Gen Z. Now whilst they probably have no awareness of peak oil, EROEI….etc., They do seem to be aware that something is not quite right. Even if they don’t know why,.. they seem aware that the career progressions that their boomer parents and grandparents enjoyed from the 1960’s has gone.
As boomers we worked hard because we could see a future which was potentially better than that of our present 17 year old self. Gen Z don’t have that vision of a future. They [Gen Z], might not know the reasons why, but for sure they know that hard work, sacrifice, and building a career towards a brighter future, [which worked for us boomers], is just not there anymore.
Consequently their attitude to work, wages, lack of freedom to leave the parental abode for their own housing, plus lack of interest in dating, finding a partner, children…. etc. is just not on their future ‘radar screen’
Could it be that their [Gen Z], subtle change to this new [fossil-less], world environment, is a micro- evolution in play.
Could it be that Boomers and Gen Z, [having adapted to their different resource availability profiles], are, in a very micro-evolutionary sense, two different species of humans?
David Butler 26/4/2025
Thanks for the post.
There isn’t much discussion about how the very youngest members of human industrial society will deal with our predicament.
David , I am one of the the very thorough Eurasian here . Your POV is entirely USA +Canada + EU based . I work with the exchange students who come to Ghent under the Erasmus program ( paid holiday via EU funds ) . You have no idea how unprepared they are for the coming future . There only only problem is where to go on Friday evening and where to stash there weed and condoms . The students who listen to me are from poor European countries . Tell me what can you do with a degree in ancient Egyption languages ( courtesy EU funds ) . ? As to Asia , I would have to use a lot of cyberspace to what is the situation of the youth ( at least on the Indian Subcontinent ) . I have been working with Erasmus students for over 15 years and paying out of pocket to buy free beers and food . Sorry but you have no idea about the ” energy illiteracy in Gen Z .
Moving on to a personal experience . In Belgium before Covid one could visit the house doctor without appointment( you were in a Q) but during covid they made a rule with prior appointment only . This rule applies today . My house doctor is aware of my work on peak oil so he attends to me on priority when he see’s me in the waiting room and he charges me no costs . His only request is can you come at 6. 30 PM ( last appointment) if the problem is not life threatening , He wants to discuss Peak Oil etc for about 30 -45 minutes . He is fascinated , Same with my dentist . The problem of ” energy illiteracy ” is not for Gen Z but the general public . I am not exempting anyone .
I don’t think that Boomers and Gen Z are two different species. I think that Gen Z thinks that religion has gone wrong, especially ones that are from mainline denominations and catholicism. See this chart of church attendance.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Pew-Research-Church-Attendance-of-Religiously-Affiliated.png
Evangelicals, who place more emphasis on the Old Testament, and God’s wrath against those who do wrong, seem to do much better in their attendance.
I am not sure what comes next.
Governments will no longer be very helpful in protecting people. They will again need a religious group to affiliate with.
Gen X. . .
The forgotten generation 🙂
My suggestion that Boomers and Gen Z were different species, was a bit tongue in cheek.
My greater point is that Gail’s notion of ‘self organising systems’ is not only correct, but the very solution for every intelligent organism adapting to their future.
Self organising Boomers starting point is that they have accumulated many assets from the 70’s and thus, form strategies on keeping those assets. Their strategy tends to involve some *derivative* of “rice, beans and ammo.”, to get them through their last 20 years.
Self organising Gen Z starting point is no assets, no future, and no clear path to gaining assets or a worthwhile future. I think it is imperative that we stop thinking like boomers and seriously watch how Gen Z handle their Predicament/Dilemma, because as *energy illiterate* as Gen Z very clearly are,.. they and their approach to a future of 60 years, without the advantages of fossil energy, will become the baseline of the future.
I’d like to stretch this very valuable ‘self organising systems’ concept to Gen Z seagulls, but I’ll save that for some future debate.
Take Care, and play nice. We are on the same side, even if at times, it seems otherwise.
David Butler 27/4/2025
Don’t forget interdependent origination of Buddhist lore (sometimes called dependent arising). No creator god(dess) or God(dess). Every appearance of consciousness linked to causes and conditions – no permanent identities. Vast cycles of time as beings experience rebirth and eventually reach enlightenment. This makes more sense on many levels and has answered more of my questions than Abrahamic religions’ cosmologies. We are experiencing a “deteriorating age” or end of an age, but it may be about 300 years from the ultimate end, according to Tibetan Buddhists. https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-interdependent-origination/
We just exist. No questions needed.
This was essentially the Buddha’s view, minus the suffering.
The Buddha had a similar worldview to Lisa Simpson.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/1557a1f7-b24a-4337-8bc7-10767c2c42aa
One Buddhist website told me:
According to the Buddha there is no reason why we should wonder why the universe exists. There will be a reason, but that reason is not of any interest for us. We as suffering beings should try to deal with the universe in order to deliver ourselves and others of the ever recurring experience of suffering.
Jesus suffered too, look at where it got him…
Sam Kinison Preaching 1975
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=le6SVfMbEhs&pp=ygUbU2FtIGtpbmlzb24gamVzdXMgc3VmZmVyaW5n
They said that after he went into comedy Sam secretly supported Pentecostal churches. And, though he was vulgar in his comedy he would make references to Christ. When he died he was conversing with (I believe the Lord) and at first said I don’t want to die. But, then after a little bit he very calmly said ok, ok. I’d love to think he’s with the Lord and that we will see him
God Bless..in the end we all die..
Still waiting for the second coming..
It’s been only 2000 years..
” I don’t think that Boomers and Gen Z are two different species. I think that Gen Z thinks that religion has gone wrong, ”
Gail , they are not religious at all . Ever wonder why churches are selling for $ 1 in Europe ? The Boomers or whatsoever have no interest in religion . YOLO is the motto .
YOLO = You Only Live Once .
The Gen Z in the West has experienced a safety net from the ” cradle to the grave ” after WW II . This was built on a nett energy surplus . The music is playing but the party is over .
People seem to need to have connections to other people. This can be family. It can also be friends. When you read articles about happiness, connections to other people seem to be important.
Churches and religious organizations are one way of adding to these connections. In the past, they have helped young people find spouses of a similar religious belief to their own.
So I see connections to be very important. Churches can sometimes help with the peace part, too. There are a lot of things we don’t need to worry about.
It seems that modern secular institutions are moving in the opposite direction. Encouraging people to form human connections solely based around occupation, income or gender or race makes cooperation a lot harder because it narrows their social network too much for human survival. Right now, we can afford to be uncooperative because we still have surplus energy but going forward a lack of cooperation can become a matter of life and death. Experiments with humans in remote settings have shown that interpersonal conflict can contribute to negative outcomes for the group. Norman doesn’t believe in God but how does he propose people who are different from each other be brought together to cooperate? Government doesn’t really do a great job. Corporations don’t either.
Dmitry Orlov in his book Communities that Abide makes the point that sustainability groups that are bound together by a religious belief stay together much better than others. It even helps to have a little persecution of the group against the others.
Groups bound together simply by an interest in sustainability don’t tend to stay together. They vote on a leader, but when things don’t work as planned, members tend to leave.
Dennis L … I have a new idea for you to investigate with your AI tools. We can scoop hydrogen from the sun and send it to earth for use in clean energy fuel cells. What say you? We need a big space-ship with some sort of spoon or cup on the end. I am trusting you to fill in the details. The whole world is depending on you and Elon.
That would require a cubic mile of spoons.
There you go.
Dennis L.
Jupiter is a far easier source of hydrogen.
Why are pubs in the UK closing down . An analysis by Tim Watkins .
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/04/20/okay-boomer/
in a 1.5 m stretch of road near me, there used to be 11 pubs….now there are 2
if no one patronises pubs, they close.
i wouldnt have thought it was a difficult question to answer
Thanks, that was a very good write up by Tim Watkins
.I’m the same way about purchasing my cup of Joe…I never purchase it at coffee shops now…never mind a donut… Total ripoff… McDonald’s still has a senior coffee small for .69 cents in South Carolina and .99 cents in North Carolina with no senior coffee in Florida.
They still offer a free refill with a new cup (maybe because of COVID?) but order a hash brown is now $1.99 for the hockey puck.
I used to order their hotcakes or pancakes but they nuke the frozen stack in a microwave oven, before it was made on a grill…big difference. I could do that at home myself…
Anyway, the next dinosaur in the chain are fast food joints.
PS I buy frozen pizza and add fresh toppings myself, boiled onions, green peppers and mushrooms….better than take out at half the price
When disposable income is low, people cut back on discretionary spending. Going out to a pub is definitely discretionary spending.
Just listened to Public Radio Marketplace program about this topic about using less and buying non name brand substitutes.
They say it’s going to take time to see it in their bottom line
All of the home buying takes a while to go through official figures as well. Often would-be buyers have to find a real estate agent, get approved for some level of loan (or monthly payment), then go out and look at homes, and put down a contract. If everything goes as planned, the sale may go through. Quite often, contracts don’t go through, however, sometimes because of something found in the inspection.
Also, all the uptick by folks that are purchasing durable goods like refrigerators and air conditioners and such made in CHINA….and overseas to beat the tariffs
In my neck of the woods, I haven’t seen many closings, mostly because the bars and clubs cater to wealthy people.
College students and recent grads are still considered wealthy.’
The local economy will be in trouble if the wealthy cut back on discretionary spending. A cutback by the wealthy on discretionary spending will probably have the equivalent effect of the United States defaulting on its bond debt.
I expect that the wealthy cutting back on their spending will cut back on airline finances, and force some of them to bankruptcy. Maybe Boeing will go broke.
There will also be a cutback in cruise ship operations, and on international vacations of all kinds. Economies that depend on vacation travel (Hawaii, island communities everywhere) will struggle. So will poor countries that depend on tourism and fancy clothes for the rich.
Maybe, in the end, the many cutback will bring about something equivalent to the US defaulting on its debt, but I wouldn’t count on it happening very soon.
Your’s is one optimistic outlook! ~ 15 years ago one Eugene Gilbo wrote a book on the post-industrial civilization. His main point was that in the absence of resources civilization will concentrate in clusters that that they will be able to protect. Those will be small and rare. The rest would turn to cyberpunk territories with nothing or even worse.
The order of survival is
Me .
My family
My clan
My tribe
My people
My nation
OR
As in Afghanistan
Me against my brother but my brother and me against the invaders .
Biology.
Dennis L.
Psychiatry.
Sounds reasonable.
According to Wikipedia,
So the cyberpunk group are the folks who want solar panels and batteries to solve their problems, along with Apps they download on their phones. This group doesn’t focus on their real problems and how to fix them.
It is my understanding that many economies, in the past, consisted of relatively small groups of people living together in a place that could be defended against intruders. Defendability seems to have been chosen over having the best characteristics for growing crops.
No. The cyberpunk group are made up of people who think we can have a complete breakdown in the social order of a society and yet still have readily available advanced technology. The cyberpunk group believe this because they think technological advancement is an unstoppable force. They also think corporations will just get larger over time and that will compose most of economic activity.
Cyberpunk fiction is basically the Singularity with an unhappy ending. “What if current trends continue forever” is 99% of science fiction.
___________________________________________________________________
“Defendability seems to have been chosen over having the best characteristics for growing crops.”
Somolia is probably easier to defend then less arid areas but it’s not a place people are looking to move into. Its best defense is its lack of desirability.
Hi Gail – here’s a bit from Grok 3. It came after a series of questions about how your work aligned with that of Ophuls, Clugston, and Tainter. Fascinating how it carried that rather voluminous analysis into a specific example.
Your assumption about the Hohokam’s peaceful existence due to their desolate land has some merit but requires nuance, especially when aligned with the works of Gail Tverberg, William Ophuls, Christopher Clugston, and Joseph Tainter, and their perspectives on resource limits, complexity, and Black Swan events. Below, I address your hypothesis, integrating these scholars’ frameworks and the Hohokam’s context, focusing on their long-term stability and potential conflicts, within a concise 300-word response.
The Hohokam thrived in the Sonoran Desert (circa 200–1450 CE) through sophisticated irrigation systems, cultivating crops like corn and cotton in an arid region. Their land, while seemingly desolate, was fertile along the Gila and Salt Rivers, supporting a dense population (up to 80,000 by 1300 CE). This resource wealth, per Clugston’s focus on non-renewable resources, made their territory valuable, not isolated. Their advanced canals, a hallmark of Tainter’s complexity, required significant labor and organization, suggesting social stability but also potential vulnerability to disruption.
Evidence of peaceful living exists, notably the Salado tribe’s non-violent integration during the Classic Period, adopting Hohokam practices without conflict. However, walled villages and platform mounds in the Sedentary Period (975–1150 CE) hint at defensive needs, possibly against rival groups. O’odham oral traditions also describe a civil war involving the Wuṣkam, suggesting internal or intertribal conflict, though archaeological evidence is inconclusive. This aligns with Ophuls’ view of internal strife as a collapse precursor.
Tverberg’s energy lens implies the Hohokam’s irrigation systems, reliant on stable water flows, were fragile to environmental Black Swans like droughts, which could spark resource competition.
Tainter’s diminishing returns on complexity suggest that maintaining canals and social hierarchies strained resources, making the Hohokam susceptible to unforeseen shocks, like climatic shifts or immigration pressures from northern tribes.
Thus, while the Hohokam’s “desolate” land supported long-term stability, its agricultural wealth likely attracted attention, and their complex systems invited Black Swan risks, challenging the notion of uninterrupted peace.
Interesting. I am not very familiar with Willam Ophuls’ work. According to Wikipedia,
One of the things he argued was
“virtually all the philosophies, values, and institutions typical of modern society are the luxuriant fruit of an era of apparently endless abundance. The return of scarcity in any guise therefore represents a serious challenge to the modern way of life.”
I would agree with this!
It does not matter wheter you take animal or plant proteins for muscles. Even other factors are negligible:
Impact of Vegan Diets on Resistance Exercise-Mediated Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis in Healthy Young Males and Females: A Randomized Controlled Trial
“Conclusions
Our results demonstrated that the anabolic action of animal vs. vegan dietary patterns are similar. Moreover, there is no regulatory influence of distribution between the two dietary patterns on the stimulation of myofibrillar protein synthesis rates in young adults. This trial was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04232254).”
https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/abstract/9900/impact_of_vegan_diets_on_resistance.771.aspx
Outstanding! you are all ready for what is coming. Bugs and beans will keep you strong. I hope you are young and healthy as the subjects of this study.
There will not be much alternatives, except humans find out how to produce cheap proteins synthetically.
I doubt it. Milk and eggs are very cheap. I have 20 chickens or so, that we use to control parasites in sheep. We don’t feed them and they produce eggs.
The problem is that chickens also need some space with food for healthy living. Recent egg price spikes prove it.
Cheap food was an illusion.
we still do not feed them.
No shit drb you don’t feed them at all even in winter? Do you mean that you don’t buy them feed but just feed them milk and animal guts or do you mean you do nothing to get eggs other than rotate them?
they eat a lot of manure as fermented greens. The parasites (various species) are 2 to 6 mm long, so they see them. And there is a lot of hay on the floor that they scratch through all day (the sheep refuse the outside of the bale because of mold and degradation due to rain). Surely August and September hay (we had a very late season last year) has many seeds. Currently we have one chicken for about 13 sheep. The chickens also look good. They are healthy. It’s a nutritious diet.
This is really very useful because sheep are indestructible except for parasites. Someone local who locks his sheep in winter loses many lambs. And he even disinfects with hydrated lime! I lost two out of about 100, but it was only because mom made 5 (she has only two tits). We can manage 3 or 4 by rotating the lambs under the sheep and giving cow milk to the other one or two, but not 5.
You have to lock them in winter because the lambs are sensitive to cold. at least for the first 2-3 weeks. The sheep themselves can be outside with -38, no prob. These lambs born in February March will become ready while eating only grass, which costs zero rubles.
Given the great success we are going with hundred egg layers (about one layer for two sheep) staying at or near the farm during the warm season, and they will also get sheep guts for proteins and sheep and cow skins for fat because we are starting to butcher, but otherwise same diet. In summer there are many insects here, and millions mice. We are also trying some turkeys and guinea because they are better foragers. The sheep are out to pasture during the day but at night we lock them. Eventually we want to see if we can do 8 weeks broilers in summer with manure, guts and oats for profit.
Wow drb you’re the man. I’ve learned something momentous from you today and I thank you for that. I realize now that ruminant manure is more nutritious to chickens that I had realized. I just hadn’t made the connection: the manure is loaded with protozoa (protein with all the amino acids) and short-chain fatty acids (from anaerobic bacteria metabolizing of the cellulose) because those are ultimately the two primary macronutrients of the ruminant.
Had gotten out of chickens years ago in part because I hadn’t gotten them a mobile coop going and they’d periodically get eaten by foxes but now I’ll get the coop going and the livestock guardian dogs will quickly learn to protect them. Had been thinking I needed to get a black soldier fly larvae farm going first before getting back into chickens. Thanks so much.
What breed(s) you running?
And what the hell kinda sheep are you running that’ll throw four and five lambs?
Hey, sorry that I do not have a lot of time but: ruminant manure is rich also in electrolytes, it is alkaline, and is rich in vitamins and enzymes. It is particularly good for pigs also and some breeds will get to size solely on manure. I don’t do pigs because I do not have a lot of personnel, and they are escape artists. I just sold all the bulls for the same reason.
The chickens were from my manager’s flock. I do not know the breed. The sheep are Romanov (I think they are originally icelandic, black lambs, black head and black legs). They are small but very fertile (4 lambs a year). They can breed every 8 months, but that requires some trickery, like suddenly introducing a new ram while suddenly also giving them some oats (most sheep breed once a year). Because they are the breed of choice in the north, where they eat a diet rich in grass, they have a reputation for mild taste which is favored by our Muslim clients. We can talk further when I have time tonight.
https://breeds.okstate.edu/sheep/romanov-sheep.html
Appreciate your time drb. Right I remember coming across Romanovs online as the most prolific sheep. Hadn’t realized that they were that prolific. Yeah, I assumed that there must be some flushing (with oats in your case) of the ewes involved. I’ve got a few Icelandic for wool, among other breeds, and they are very tame which must help a lot with your management system. As to the chickens I was just wondering if they might be a particularly good foraging breed or not is all.
there are no chicken breeds to speak of around here. it is either broilers or homestead chickens, meaning very mixed animals. I expect the 100 that will arrive to be very mixed. Me and the workers eat all eggs, and they are of different colors.
The OK State article I linked is quite good. 1/2 Romanov is also what we do. Romanov is the perfect animal but they are small. We have a Dorper ram for the next round (probably we need 2 or 3), but virgin Romanov need to be mated with a smaller Romanov ram.
so there is a bit of manpower cost with this breed, rotating lambs under the sheep, buying the 2nd quality milk, feeding the lone lambs, and keeping separate flocks of young sheep and mature sheep. Also for marketing reasons it is best to give the finishing lambs some grains, which means one more flock(people in Moscow may want the grass fed thing, we can easily oblige by putting some lambs with the cows)
I think the proper pairing for manure use as feed is chickens with sheep or goats (or rabbits), meat cows alone, milk cows with pigs. I do expect that as energy supplies dwindle, people who want red meat will switch more and more to lamb, because it is so much more energy efficient. also more nutritious.
I grew up eating quite a bit of lamb. My mother’s father raised sheep when she was growing up, so they ate a lot of lamb. Keeping lambs seems to require the right technique, however. The land where they lived in Wisconsin was quite hilly, so it was not very good for crops.
Thx for the additional info drb. Romanovs are like the goats of sheep reproduction-wise. Very uncommon around here but might keep my eye out and see if I can snag a few sometime.
Gail, there are also other aspects. In this acidic soil we end up with a lot of fireweed, yarrow and other broad leafs in the hay. not optimal for cows, just fine for sheep. Pasture does improve (more grass, more hay, fewer non grasses) where they or the cows graze but we can only let them graze near our bases due to bears and lone wolves.
Also sheep keep a pasture clean much better than the cows, killing all small trees except conifers, both by stripping leaves and stripping bark.
MG, I raise mealworms for my Chicklids Oscar fish and they loves them. Easy to do is in a container with breakfast flakes and something moist.
In East Asia they fry them up to a crisp and reportedly they are delicious 😋.
Next time these Oscar fish have any left overs, I may try it myself…but they are always hungry
I didn’t realize you can buy fish (Chicklids Oscar fish) from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=oscar+cichlid+live+fish&adgrpid=1343603785172172&hvadid=83975559155032&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=79645&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-83975603113425%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=30004_14610452&mcid=fab8f4cb7bb036bdb749ca6844139d31&msclkid=51824c33bebc15b2e16724385ff87c9b&tag=mh0b-20&ref=pd_sl_4yxet6b99o_e
It looks like they would provide pretty expensive food unless they start reproducing.
Gail, I was talking about the mealworms to eat, it the fish themselves…they are super smart and know me as their friend…I love them too much to ever eat them.
The mealworms are common eats in Asia.
Actually, if one wishes to raise fish to consume the one to raise are Snakeskin Gouramis…they are raised in SE Asia too I had them in my outdoor pond here in South Florida.
They have an air duct in their skull if oxygen gets too low and eat both algae plants and mosquitoes larvae and worms, whatever…somewhat beautiful like their related Blue Gouramis sold in Per shops.
I used to be deep into raising fish myself.
One can even do it in my The basement with a diy pond.
Just keep the water circulating, and partial water changes and clean, not too difficult
Anecdotally, I know of a few folks who switched from vegan to nearly carnivore for health reasons.
Same here; one complained about general tiredness and repeated migraines whilst on a vegan diet. That went away when they reintroduced meat. These studies are obviously flawed.
They are not flawed. They are funded to get a certain answer.
I was a vegan athlete in my 20s, underweight, had to wake up in the middle of the night to eat, injury prone, had social anxiety issues. Discovered The Automatic Earth and read Nicole’s ecological Paleo advocacy and the ensuing discussion and switched to that. Found out I had a turbocharger I didn’t know existed even compared to when I was playing ball in college on the standard American diet.
Vegans don’t do well in mortality studies. In fact, very low BMIs don’t do well, either. At least one of the problems is that they don’t fight off infections well.
India with 1.3 billion has only won 1 gold medal in the athletic competition Olympics . Reason vegan by religion so poor nutrition . Anyway man was a hunter gatherer before he became a farmer . Old caveman drawings show humans hunting animals and none show a plough . The problem is that the protein we consume is now animal farm factory produced — thanks to oil . When the oil goes so does the protein .
As far as I know, most Indians eat cheese and milk in dishes. So they are not vegan. This is an article I found about veganism in India.
https://www.theveganschool.org/post/veganism-in-india-a-historical-and-cultural-perspective
I don’t think Indians have worked on practicing the skills needed for Olympic sports. That is important, too.
Have come across the BMI story a number of times. This may or may not be of interest, it supports that idea.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321612#when-is-a-person-underweight
Dennis L.
Gorillas: “We told you so …”
Gail , cheese and milk is not protein . The problem is the amino acid chain that is lacking because of no ” animal ” based protein . Plant based proteins viz chick peas , beans etc don’t make the cut . Of course the fact that there are no proper coaching facilities adds to the discourse of failure .
Plants have all the 20 amino acids used in proteins (including all essential amino acids; some can be converted to others), but their distribution is not optimal compared to animals. But you’re not “missing” anything.
“Our bodies are accustomed to having a certain amount of cooked foods in our diets. This, by itself, encourages population growth and eventual overshoot of the resource base.”
That is an interesting point, Gail and it challenges Reante’s idea of a ‘natural law’ (the supposed practices of hunter-gatherers) that humans must keep in order to maintain a stable existence. Rather humans are engaged in a cyclical process, and failure and collapse are already, ultimately, built into human needs and cultural practices.
Industrial civilisation is just that same process of the expression and satisfaction of the instincts on a more complex scale, and there is no ‘natural law’ against it. Rather we are compelled by nature to construct ultimately unsustainable cultures. Some construct simpler cultures but they are still ultimately headed for collapse.
Moreover, humans are not a set species but rather we are in a long, ongoing process of evolution, with constant genetic alterations of the species, and it is a process of becoming what we are not rather than of sustaining what we are. Clearly then there is no ‘natural law’ that is aimed at the mere preservation of our species as this species.
Obviously ‘law’ is a metaphor anyway, as if nature has a conscious and intentional system of ‘legislation’. Nature is just blind causality in action, it does not ‘aim’ at anything. We might as well just speak of the ‘law’ of cause and effect, but non-existence is just as much an effect and indeed it is the destiny of every species.
No, Mirror. “Blind causality” precludes intelligence and, therefore, you are flat-earthing biology. That’s willful ignorance. You might say that elemental physics is blind causality, and I could understand why you might make that mistake and not have it be willful, but even that would be incorrect because we know that RNA have memory and can intelligently assemble themselves out of free nucleic acids (the landmark Spiegelman’s Monster experiments that led to Mullus’ RT-PCR tests). Welcome to animism!
And what Gail wrote about cooked food is true: the only major discovery, that I’m aware of anyway, of 21st century cultural anthropology is that which found that modern humans evolved exactly because earlier hominids harnessed fire for cooking meat both with and without water and that enabled the hominids to digest much more animal fat and animal minerals which comprised the necessary surfeit of micronutrients necessary for the tripling brain size to modern humans volumes.
Population growth and overshoot are fundamental dynamics of natural law. All species are subject to those dynamics. What the high-functioning animist cultures of yore did so well was base their cultures around paying close attention to those dynamics as they played out in their local ecologies such that a dynamic equilibrium was maintained.
It’s a facile abstraction to say that humans are always in the process of becoming what we are not instead of sustaining what we are. Adaptation to constant change isn’t a negation of specieshood on any level.
Thanks for the engagement.
Quote on RNA:
At first glance, this system might seem like it’s cheating the rules. It’s doing something suspiciously life-like, even though there’s no mind, no design, no intention behind it.
But here’s the twist:
It’s still 100% obeying the rules of physics and chemistry.
There’s no magic. No conscious agent. No purpose injected from outside.
The “weirdness” is not that causality is violated—it’s that simple causal rules, when looped back on themselves in dynamic systems, can produce unexpected outcomes that look purposeful.
This is what we call emergence.
Imagine a stream of water flowing down a mountain. Blind causality says: water flows downhill. Simple.
But now imagine that, over time, the water carves a path—creates riverbanks, digs valleys, changes the terrain. Then that new terrain changes how future water flows.
That’s what RNA does: it reshapes the landscape it’s flowing through, which in turn shapes future flows. Still blind causality. Just recursive and evolving.
Mirror I can barely remember what it was like to tap my way around the internet as with a long cane, in blind causality, because I hadn’t forced myself to learn how to think and feel. “Oh, look what this materialist like me says – take that reante.” Nevermind the false analogies to erosion, huh? Or producing your own content.
Taking a snippet of a length of RNA from one saltwater beaker and putting it in anither beaker with free nucleic acids and polymerase and shining light on it results in the same length of RNA being produced. That’s not recursively reshaping a landscape. That’s growing again, as before, in a new landscape.
If you don’t believe in Free Will then it’s no wonder you’re stuck. The good news is that it’s just a habit that needs breaking. I know, easier said than done but that’s as it should be. If you’re just plain lazy then you’re living a catch 22 and so be it, we’ll just have to grin and bear it.
I did not quote a ‘fellow materialist’, I chatted with AI about what you had said and it was kind enough to produce sharable paragraphs to sum up why I was right and you were not. That is how it goes.
Then you’re not even just standing still while reality moves forward. You’re retreating.
“If you don’t believe in Free Will then it’s no wonder you’re stuck.”
Will exists, but ‘free’ will is an illusion.
Nothing happens that isn’t determined by various internal and external factors.
In any case, if free will exists (which it doesn’t), then it is a weak force.
Weaker than an electrode in the brain.
Weaker even than propaganda.
I’m aware that pigs will never be free to fly Hugh but that’s not what the term free will implies is it? I’m also aware that our subconscious and unconscious are often leading the way but that’s no less a form of our will than our metaconscious will. Feel free to engage with the term as everyone else does, as in, on its own merits. 🙂
“Feel free to engage with the term as everyone else does, as in, on its own merits”
There is no free will, so it has no merit. I understand it’s a common illusion, but it’s an illusion nonetheless. So, to the flames.
I don’t do things just because most people do either.
Not so surprising – seemingly paradoxically, not believing in ‘free will’ makes one less likely to follow the rules.
“I don’t do things just because most people do either.”
That’s a Hugh Mungus claim. 🙂
Not knowing you personally, I won’t call you a liar or mistaken. But from personal experience and observation, I have found that most people do a lot of things simply because most other people are doing these things.
Culture; etiquette; language (including tone of voice, intonation, use of idoms, etc.); taste in fashion, cuisine and music; gestures, and even eccentricities are mostly learned from other people and adopted either through conscious (either freewill or compelled) or unconscious (spontaneous or natural) imitation.
If you don’t do any of these things, you are a very rare individual swimming in an ocean of NPCs.
Congratulations!
“If you don’t do any of these things, you are a very rare individual swimming in an ocean of NPCs.”
True, I am not ‘free’ either – I am also a product of various internal and external factors.
No argument from me there. I am not claiming to be better, just a little different, and there is no escaping reality.
But I am fated to be less likely to follow ‘the rules’.
I am, for example, one of fewer than 1% of adults in my city who refused the “vaccines”.
Why did I refuse when so many others complied?
Well, at the macro level, that would be because I am a product of various internal and external factor that are outside of my control, same as the 99% plus who accepted the shots.
I can’t bring myself to believe in free will after the events of those years.
It killed the magic for me.
That’s a fascinating point you make, Hugh.
“I can’t bring myself to believe in free will after the events of those years.”
I think I know how you feel. I’ve been exasperated so much at my fellow humans since COVID started that my fingers finally learned how to spell that word.
Perhaps we don’t have free will in a physical sense if every effect is the result of a cause; but we can still have free will in a psychological sense because we can choose which flavor of ice cream to buy on a whim from Baskin Robbins, or in a political or sociological sense since we can ponder and decide and then implement the decisions we arrive at based on deliberations, such as “to be….. or not to be?” or “Shall I comply and take these injections or not?”
And even in the physical sense, there are arguments both ways about free will.
Another point is that Mirror is fond of quoting the German philosopher Nietzsche on will to power. Nietzsche rejected the conventional idea of free will, viewing it as a construct that obscures the true motivations of human behavior.
I am not sure if the will in fee will and the will in will to power are the same will though. But if they are, I guess that would mean that Nietzsche accepted that humans have a will, only not a free one.
“Agency – Do We Have Free Will?
One of the things most misunderstood is the concept of free will. Most people have the misconception that we all have free will and (more or less) can “do whatever we want.” In reality, this is actually false. While we have the ability to make certain choices, those choices are all constrained to certain norms on average, based upon the reward of dopamine.”?
https://problemspredicamentsandtechnology.blogspot.com/2021/03/agency-do-we-have-free-will.html
Tim, is it relevant that Nietzsche was German? You are ‘fond of quoting’ the Judaeo-British ‘philosopher’ Bertrand Russel but no one is going to hold that against him. Who you quote is up to you. The ethnicity of a philosopher and who quotes them does not really leap out as salient facts? Do they? Maybe for you?
Mirror, that’s a good question. Is it relevant, that Nietzsche was German?
I’m not sure, to be honest. I merely mentioned it in view of the convention that it is common to mention the nationality of cultural figures, even major or prominent ones, particularly if they are not part of one’s own country’s milieu or that of the United States, which is everybody’s second home in these matters these days.
As to whether Nietzsche’s German nationality was relevant to his work, I’m sure the British philosopher Bertrand Russell could have written a book on that question.
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I would suppose Nietzsche’s German nationality was relevant to his views as a philosopher for several reasons.
Because I’m too busy, and also not smart enough to expound about these reasons, I’ll leave it up to my AI pal to enumerate them:
Cultural Context: Nietzsche’s philosophy emerged during a time of significant cultural and intellectual transformation in Germany. The influence of German Idealism, particularly thinkers like Hegel and Schopenhauer, shaped his early philosophical development.
Critique of German Society: Nietzsche often critiqued aspects of German culture, including nationalism, anti-Semitism, and the moral values of his time. His critiques were informed by his experiences and observations within German society.
Influence of German Language: The nuances of the German language allowed Nietzsche to articulate complex ideas about morality, power, and existence. His stylistic choices and use of language reflect his cultural background.
Rejection of Tradition: Nietzsche’s rejection of traditional German philosophical norms can be seen as a response to the intellectual environment of his time. He sought to break away from established doctrines, including those prevalent in German philosophy.
Historical Legacy: Nietzsche’s ideas have had a profound impact on German and European thought, influencing existentialism, postmodernism, and various cultural movements. His nationality plays a role in understanding this legacy.
In summary, while Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas are universal, his German nationality provided a significant backdrop that influenced his thought, critiques, and the reception of his work.
“You are ‘fond of quoting’ the Judaeo-British (sic) ‘philosopher’ (sic) Bertrand Russel (sic) but no one is going to hold that against him.”
I understand it is rude to use the term (sic) to draw attention to another chap’s faux pas, and I wouldn’t normally do so, as I make enough faux pas myself. But I would like to point out that (1) Bertie did not identify as Judeao-British but primarily as British.
Quantifying Bertrand Russell’s ethnic heritage in percentages is challenging due to the complexities of ancestry and the blended nature of national identities, but as you are asking about relevance, a rough approximation might look like this:
English: 50% (from his father’s side)
Welsh: 25% (from his mother’s side)
Jewish: 25% (from his maternal lineage, though he did not identify strongly with this heritage)
These percentages are not definitive and are more illustrative than precise. Russell primarily identified as British, which encompasses his English and Welsh roots. The Jewish aspect, while part of his heritage, was less central to his identity and philosophical work.
On the other hand, Nietzsche’s primary identification was German. His ancestry included elements of Swiss and possibly French heritage, reflecting the diverse cultural influences of his family. No known Jewish roots there. 100% Goyim. But, as you say about Bertie, nobody is going to hold that against him, are they?
Fond of quoting Bertie, am I? How often have I quoted him and how many words of his have I quoted in the past ten years?
I’ll wager I am not nearly as fond of quoting Russell as you are of quoting Nietzsche. You’ve cut and pasted a considerable number of lengthy sections of his dense prose, some of which appeared in paragraphs as long as your arm.
I would never describe Bertrand Russell as merely a ‘philosopher’ in quotation marks. That would be inaccurate. He philosophized quite a lot. He may have been a bit of a prat, just as Nietzsche supposedly went bonkers, but both men were obviously genuine philosophers, who philosophized assiduously as a full-time job and produced reams and reams of very useful, worthy, and—well?—relevant philosophy that has kept generations of subsequent philosophy students like your good self entertained, hopefully enlightened, and out of mischief.
/////Then that new terrain changes how future water flows.////
correct me if i’m wrong mirror
but i think water will still flow downhill
Not always, there is capillary action, which involves another set of factors determining how the water behaves.
The water still doesn’t get to just decide out of nowhere, free of any deterministic factors, where it would like to flow.
Sorry (not sorry :P) to drag the irritating lack of free will argument into your comment.
every october—26th to be precise—the salmon leap up my local weir
quite the local spectacle….
this coming year i must go there and wait for capilliary action to send them the other way.
“this coming year i must go there and wait for capilliary action to send them the other way.”
Or just go down to your basement and watch the rising damp 🙂
Hilarious Norm thanks 😀
Norman, do all these Salmon leap the weir of their own freewill? Or do they do so because all their mates are doing it? Or do they have a spontaneous urge to do so built in—the weir-leaping instinct?
Hugh, capillary action is all very well in capillaries, and plays a crucial role at the scale of small blood vessels, and particularly in soil and sediment, it is negligible in water bodies larger than a few centimeters in diameter, where gravity is usually the dominant force in the movement of water—although large vessels moving through rivers and canals can also move a lot of water, as can Norman when he his doing the 1500-meter breast stroke at the local swimming pool.
“Hugh, capillary action is all very well in capillaries, and plays a crucial role at the scale of small blood vessels, and particularly in soil and sediment, it is. . . ”
Ha, ha, ha. . .
And yet my point stills stands, unassailable, protected by the laws of physics 🙂
And water doesn’t get to exercise its ‘free will’, and move acausally, free of external or internal deterministic factors, in either case.
Although, if anyone can point to a single case where water moves acausally, free of external or internal factors, I might be in trouble.
Same goes for a single decision made by the salmon if anyone can point to a single decision that the salmon makes that isn’t influenced by various internal and external deterministic factors.
Even the simplest of the salmon’s decisions, involving the fewest number of neurons, to try to make the test as fair as possible.
But we can’t accurately predict the precise movement of a water molecule in the flow of zillions of other water molecules. Ergo, the assumption that each water molecule is moving entirely under the influence of causal factors remains just that—an assumption, although a very reasonable one in terms of our understanding of physics.
If a molecule of water were to move a-causally, we would not be able to detect it, so you won’t be in any trouble, Hugh.
Same goes for a single decision made by the salmon if anyone can point to a single decision that the salmon makes that isn’t influenced by various internal and external deterministic factors.
Again, since we can’t see inside a salmon’s mind, we have no way of knowing how the salmon reached this or that decision. Its decisions may be influenced by various deterministic factors without being dominated by them, as far as we know.
All those people who took the jabs were certainly influenced by all sorts of factors. Some of them may even have been influenced by messages from people like us warning them not to get injected, but in their minds, these warnings were set against other factors that they considered more important, like the need to keep their job, to protect granny, or to avoid being socially ostracized.
Hence, it is arguable that they allowed themselves to be forced into compliance of their own free will. Yes, you could see it that way. 🙂
Quote:
The idea that hunter-gatherers lived in long-term ecological equilibrium is a modern romantic fiction. Like all species, they were subject to the same cycles of population growth, resource depletion, and collapse. Archaeological evidence shows repeated cases of overhunting, local extinctions, and migrations driven by ecological strain. While some groups adapted in the short term to local conditions, none were immune to boom-and-bust dynamics—because these are not cultural failings, but biological and ecological realities. The notion of a wise, animist harmony with nature says more about our present-day yearning for lost balance than it does about the actual dynamics of past human societies.
and the other biggie…..
our brains have not had time to evolve since we were hunter-gathering…..
we still look to the supernatural for the cause of any misfortune
Our brains are smaller than when we were animists, and they continue to shrink. That’s clearly devolution and not evolution. Those that find their psychologies well-adjusted to civilization might say that their shrunken brain is an evolutionary adaptation to the compartmentalizing nature of social complexity, or perhaps an efficiency gain. But that’s the cosmetic nature of fearful rationalizations that seeks to paint lipstick on the pig: the bigger the brain the more potential cerebral HP a brain has at its disposal, and the voluminous cerebrum is where all high-functioning culture comes from because its job is to pattern, to reason. Brains grow from the inside out like everything else. If the brain is shrinking it is the cerebrum that pays the price. Last in first out. And if the cerebrum that reasons is paying the price then that causes fear in the ancient brain because a failure to reason is the definition of lostness, and lostness brings subconscious fear which itself, in turn, creates a positive biochemical feedback loop of failure to reason.
Realize that, unlike elemental evolution, the emergent phenomena we call biological evolution is a two way street. Evolution or devolution. Don’t nothing biological come for free, so live free or die, because the holistic, complex ecological responsibility that comes with living free is what exercises the cerebrum, and the mostly cooked, nutrient -dense spoils of that daily, deep ecological patterning of perennial systems feeds the grow and maintenance of that most nutrient intensive organ. Don’t be envious now, brother. Just go get it.
FTR Norm that reply was more to Mirror than to you even though it came in reply to your comment on the brain.
Smaller brains could still work better, for other reasons.
Perhaps it is partly related to the size of the animal (or human). Domesticated animals are generally smaller than their wild equivalents.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4603525/
Good points on the brain, Gail. No doubt the civilized brains are more adapted for civilization.
Sweeping generalization, Mirror. Of course there was no shortage of animist societies that failed to live up to their cultural values. Life is messy and complicated and doesn’t always go according to plan. I specified “high functioning” for a reason. And a *dynamic* equilibrium, so you’re also strawmanning me by flat-earthing again.
Are you high functioning? Am I high functioning?
Does human wisdom exist at all? If so, then collective human wisdom also exists.
Also, Mirror, consider the Eskimo with their igloos and skin canoes, the Lapps with their reindeer and their diet of 500g of reindeer meat, the Bushmen and Bushwomen of the Kalahari who live lives of leisure within their slender means, the Anderman Islanders who will attack and try to kill anyone who turns up on their beaches—more Churchillian than Churchill.
Doesn’t the survival of these folks—and there are dozens or even hundreds of examples of such groups—down to modern times invalidate the claim that “the idea that hunter-gatherers lived in long-term ecological equilibrium is a modern romantic fiction”?
Just asking for a friend who is a keen anthropologist.
Well obviously all humans who have survived have survived but that obviously does not mean that all humans are not subject to boom and bust cycles. That is missing the point about a ‘natural law’ that ‘legislates’ a ‘harmonious’ and ‘sustainable’ lifestyle that avoids cyclical overshoot and collapse through supposed ‘higher decisions’ about sustainability and birth control. It is an ecological fantasy and history shows that humans just do not act like that. It is garden of Eden stuff.
And I suppose that there is some ‘natural law’ about how all the other species ‘ought’ to behave to avoid boom and bust cycles even though they do not. Nature acts how it acts, including us, and it is not ‘wrong’ or ‘illegal’. That is just silliness. Nature is what it is and it not ‘supposed’ to act any other way than how it does. The whole idea of ‘natural law’ as ‘legislation’ that is to be ‘obeyed’ to avoid how nature really acts is just made up and silly nonsense.
Nature is just blind causality and the rest is stories. Humans may want the world, and themselves, to be entire calculable and controllable and all of the ‘bad’ outcomes to be avoided but nature is not like and there is no ‘law’ that says that it is ‘supposed’ to be like that. It is a fantasy in a world that always culminates in death, extinction and even the end of suns and galaxies. Nature is just blind causality in motion, it does not ‘aim’ at anything and it really ‘means’ nothing and it is not ‘illegal’. Maybe you can see that.
Did you look at Figure 7? Chaisson’s chart suggests that there is indeed a direction to what is happening. The direction is toward more complexity and more energy density.
Something is happening besides randomness!
Humans are the one kind of animal that has been able to incorporate fossil fuel energy into their system. This allows them to out-compete all other animals. This is the reason why humans are subject to overshoot and collapse. Animals do indeed have cycles in their populations, depending on predators, food availability and weather. And practically all animal species that have ever lived have become extinct.
The overshoot and collapses practically never (or perhaps never) have killed off all humans. Survival of the best adapted works well. Humans even made it through the ice ages. But we may at some point suffer the same end that nearly all animal species have, especially if there is not a Creator looking out for us.
“Nature is just blind causality in action”.
Anything but. If you look at the math, it becomes clear that we couldn’t have evolved randomly out of the primordial ooze.
Quote:
The idea that life couldn’t have evolved “randomly out of the primordial ooze” misunderstands how evolution and the origin of life actually work. Evolution isn’t pure chance—it’s random mutation combined with non-random natural selection, which builds complexity gradually over time. The odds only seem impossible if you assume life had to appear all at once, like winning a cosmic lottery. But early life likely emerged through self-organizing chemical systems—something we already observe in nature, from snowflakes to crystal formation—not magic, just chemistry under the right conditions. Life didn’t leap into existence fully formed; it unfolded step by step, with natural processes doing the heavy lifting.
And how do you know this, Mirror?
Do you know with certainty that life evolved out of nonliving matter? Or is this conjecture based on your inability to imagine any other way life could have appeared given your knowledge of physics and chemistry?
While there is a scientific basis for the hypothesis that life evolved from nonliving matter, definitive proof is still lacking. The transition from simple organic compounds to complex life involves numerous steps that are not yet fully understood.
According to my AI Pal, who is a gung ho Darwinist:
Abiogenesis research faces several significant unsolved problems, which continue to challenge scientists. Here are some of the biggest issues:
1. Origin of Life Precursors
Formation of Complex Molecules: While simple organic molecules can form under prebiotic conditions, the pathways leading to more complex biomolecules (like proteins and nucleic acids) remain unclear.
2. Self-Replication Mechanisms
Transition to Life: Understanding how simple molecules transitioned to self-replicating systems is a major challenge. The exact nature of the first self-replicating entities is still unknown.
3. Environmental Conditions
Early Earth Conditions: Determining the specific environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, pH, atmosphere) that favored the emergence of life is difficult, and multiple scenarios have been proposed without consensus.
4. RNA vs. DNA
RNA World Viability: While the RNA world hypothesis is prominent, it is unclear how RNA could have formed and replicated in the absence of cellular machinery. The transition from an RNA-based world to one dominated by DNA and proteins is also not well understood.
5. Formation of Protocells
Compartmentalization: Understanding how simple organic molecules organized into protocells (primitive cell-like structures) that could maintain homeostasis and perform basic life functions is a key unsolved problem.
6. Catalytic Processes
Role of Catalysts: Identifying the catalysts that could have facilitated the necessary chemical reactions for life’s emergence, especially in the absence of modern enzymes, poses a significant challenge.
7. Integration of Processes
Coordination of Chemical Pathways: How multiple biochemical processes integrated to form a cohesive living system is still poorly understood, including the transition from nonliving chemistry to living cells.
Conclusion
These unsolved problems highlight the complexity of abiogenesis and the need for interdisciplinary research to uncover the pathways that could have led to the origin of life.
These are earlier articles I wrote:
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2018/08/02/supplemental-energy-puts-humans-in-charge/
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2020/12/02/humans-left-sustainability-behind-as-hunter-gatherers/
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/10/23/rising-energy-costs-lead-to-recession-eventually-collapse/
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/08/17/humans-seem-to-need-external-energy/
Kevin Walmsley says that Boeing is in real trouble, because all of the things that it has contracted to do (particularly for the military) depend on rare earths and other imports from China. China has also black listed Boeing by name, so that nothing can be exported to the country.
With Boeing’s recent plane incidents and safety issues, perhaps that’s not a bad thing.
The only question is if Airbus will survive. there is not going to be a lot of civil aviation going forward, but Russia for example flight tested the SJ100 last week. 100% Russia made, including avionics, which used to have always a western component here and there.
Why the powers in the West are shutting down aviation:
1. Due to peak oil, all forms of mechanical transportation must be radically cut back. One of those evil CIA, WEF, type organizations are publicly saying that 5 years from now the average citizen in the West will be limited to 1 short haul flight every two years(?) if memory serves, preferably 0 flights if they get their way.
2. Elon Musk has openly stated that anyone who continues to put money into the F-35 or any other advanced jet is a moron wasting more money.
3. The US and SpaceX are openly discussing the new Golden Dome. This is a network of starlink “like” satellite based lauch platforms that can shoot down any incoming hypersonic missile. To my mathematical mind, it is obvious that such a system makes ALL fighter jets completely obsolete.
4. There is not a single technical reason why that system can’t be operating right now.
5. Trump, and Musk, act as if such a system is already in place.
6. The future of aviation is drones for both civilian and military purposes, lots of small drones. Which is more deadly and non destructive of valuable material wealth. A gigantic ICBM with a gigaton nuclear bomb, or 17 million drones the size of 4 beer caps that can identify a living human being, fly into their centre body mass, and explode? ( I estimate that if 1″ x 2″ x 3″ 750,000 such units could fit in the average highway trailer.)
The world power appears to be encouraging as much destruction via obsolete military hardware as possible, which is kind of a new form of dissipative structure…
This is behind a paywall but the tariff war is already having an impact as some Chinese factories are shutting down. That’s not good because that could trigger civil unrest in China.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/our-export-orders-disappeared-chinese-factories-shutting-down-laying-workers-ft-finds
Rodster , here is the article .
https://archive.vn/j6JfY
About “inflation” and/or “deflation” of prices —
My idea is, both can exist simultaneously — if things like the US dollar’s lack of “reserve currency” status contribute to “hyperinflation” due to money-printing, the dollar cost of SMD (sweeet middle distillate) oil can increase with it, but not inflate enough to keep up with the inflation in the cost of extraction & transport of such oil — so, inflation of the oil price would occur, but not enough to keep up with increasing costs (effective deflation in the oil prices — http://oil-price.net/ ).
The planet gave us hydrocarbons, uranium, and thorium. The hydrocarbons are giving us the time to get smart enough to utilize the uranium and thorium which will carry us to the end of our sun’s life. The generation IV and V nuclear generate high industrial heat at atmospheric pressure with hundreds of industrial applications including synthetic liquid transportation fuel. Making electricity will be less than 50% of applications. There is lots of oil, coal and natural gas remaining and it will last a long time if we are not burning it for heat and electricity.
The future’s so bright!
Uranium seems to be in short supply also. What uranium is available is mostly under the control of Russia. In theory, recycling can be done, but as a practical matter, there are few places (France, perhaps Japan) where this is done. The US has been depending on recycled nuclear bombs, but these are running short. I wrote an article about some of the problems. There is a reason why nuclear generation of electricity has been falling!
https://ourfiniteworld.com/2024/11/11/nuclear-electricity-generation-has-hidden-problems-dont-expect-advanced-modular-units-to-solve-them/
The US doesn’t extract thorium. IIRC, it is primarily a secondary product available with other extraction.
“recycled nuclear bombs”. Excellent and could even be considered eco-sensitive.
Next is a plan to recycle F35s into homeless shelters.
According to Physicist Eric Chaisson, the long-term trend is toward more complex, energy-intense dissipative structures being formed.
I would count both ‘Cryptocurrencies’ and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ as examples of ‘energy-intense dissipative structures.
These are going to drive up the demand for nuclear energy
But we are a long, long way from having the uranium to make more nuclear electricity. It looks to me as if we don’t have the uranium to support today’s reactors.
You are all ignoring ecology and planetary limits by focusing on oil
We need oil to grow food. Thus, it becomes very important to us. Parts of the petroleum mixture are used to make a whole lot of other things, including medicines, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, fabrics, plastics, and building materials. It is difficult for today’s humans to get along without.
Dirt is the primary limit, supposedly 50% of the dakota top soil is gone, blowing in the wind.
Dennis L.
Interestinv that you cite Dakota, never kniwn as a breadbasket, as an example
Soil isn’t dirt! It is a living marvel.
I know it gets called that in North America but using such a pejoratively tinged term tells is a lot.
This is a planet that flourished with 100 times the CO2.
But without us….meaning people
…also people flourished without fossil fuels and advanced civilizations, with a lot less of them and not one we have now…
Answering to both you and Norman. I do not see how a high CO2 world becomes less hospitable to humans. Humans had not evolved then, that is all. Of course, we will not thrive in an atmosphere which is 80% CO2 (that was the dinosaur era), but I doubt the current era will even reach 0.5% CO2.
the growth patterns of our food supply depends on the atmosphere in which we exist now.
change that atmosphere only slightly, and our mode of life and living will cease to be.
its called the balance of nature if you want a name for it.
it suits us—a different balnce will not suit us.
Yes, but it will change for the better. That is what I am trying to say. It is, I think, proven that higher CO2 has fertilizing effects, in greeenhouses, the Sahel, or the Arctic. But it only works up to 1000 ppm, then it saturates. We are at 400ppm now. we used to be at 360.
you miss the point drb
if…..as seems to be happening right now, the rise in c0 2 takes out the major glaciers of the himalaya, thats the water storage gone for india and pakistan.
the inevitable result of that will be nuclear war.
nothing—-but nothing….functions on this planet in isolation.
Once they are done with their war, other will colonize the place and grow crops. glaciers are hardly the only way to store water. both russia and the US have vast artificial lakes for example. I have to explain everything around here.
er…….
where dyou think the water comes from, in ”vast artificial lakes?
the same place as Dennis’s cubic mile of pt or something?
Precipitation. I assure you there are no glaciers in Russia. But take a look at the Volga, Dniepr or Don courses.
i’ll persist with this nonsense in the hope that the co2 thing will assist somebody else…….
i fear you are a lost cause drb.
changes in co2 concentrations will affect climate, and thus weather…..this is happening now.
this will afftect patterns of precipitation everywhere.—and thus all climactic patterns—-different foodcrops need different sun and water inputs year round, as to the insects that pollinate them
we, and the foodgrowth we rely on, are adjusted to those patterns in broad terms…..
disturb those patterns and you will have food growth disruption…. and food shortages and eventually famine……
as the ofw farming fraternity will confirm—farming above all needs stability of environment…..
no use having food excess somehere else, if it cant be accessed by other people where it is needed.
I am happy for your humanitarian spirit Norm. I on the contrary understand that here and there there will be population reduction. It is ongoing in nearby Sri Lanka for example. It is ongoing in your country. Also, this could well have been a false flag since India has been naughty according to all powerful people in the City. It will be figured out in a few days.
But do not give up hope for humanity! Even in Saudi Arabia, agriculture flourishes without glaciers, where people put in the effort to catch runoff. Imagine in Pakistan, where they have a reliable monsoon.
Norman, you have got it all wrong about the carbon dioxide level going up causing runaway global warming, mate.
Calm down, take it easy, and forget all about Thermageddon.
You are mistaken about all of it, because you’ve been taken in by the bamboozle, as Carl Sagan would have put it.
One simple physics point for you to consider: A warmer world is a wetter world, because there is more evaporation and more condensation in a warmer world.
This is one experiment you can try in your kitchen sink or bathtub. When the water is warmer, it turns into vapor and depending on the ambient conditions you can literally see the steam rising.
In a warmer world, there will be more rain in most places and deserts will shrink. Assumedly, glaciers in the Himalayas will simply former higher up. Those particular mountains are over 8,000 meters above sea level. There are over 100 peaks more than 7,000 meters high.
Himalayan glaciers span a wide elevation range, with most of the ice storage from 3,700-4,300 meters above sea level.
Temperature in the troposphere falls by 6.5ºC for every 1km rise in elevation. Ergo, a “global warming” temperature rise of 6.5ºC would move the glaciers about 1km higher up the mountainsides.
Not even Al Gore is suggesting the Earth is going to heat up that much.
Tell you what—why don’t you go back to sleep and I’ll wake you up when Plymouth Rock remains fully submerged even at low tide?
“03:34 for more than the initial 300 000 years
03:37 of our species
03:38 the climate did not allow grains to be grown on a large scale
. . . as we emerge from
03:48 the last ice age
. . . provides the ability to grow
03:58 grains at scale this cool
04:00 stable temperature arose once during the
. . . 320 000 years or so
04:10 of our existence as a species and when
04:13 it arose
04:14 civilizations popped up all over the
04:15 planet . . .
04:17 for the first time never before had a
04:21 cool stable temperature
04:22 allowed humans to conveniently store
04:24 food for the
04:26 hard times never before had a cool
04:29 stable temperature encouraged human
04:31 population overshoot . . . “
“Water vapour is the most dominant greenhouse gas. Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and amplifies any warming caused by changes in atmospheric CO2. This positive feedback is why climate is so sensitive to CO2 warming.”?
https://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas-intermediate.htm
postkey
i gave up trying to convince the fakeaholics in here some time ago.
“Norman, you have got it all wrong about the carbon dioxide level going up causing runaway global warming, mate.”
No runaway?
“Look at the chart of the interglacials. Note that at the Peaks of heating, it goes suddenly up and then back down. I think that is methane in play with Global Heating. It suddenly goes up as high as 17 C GAST and then comes crashing back down once the methane flow decreases.
The Interglacials are run away heating events that are started by the Milankovitch Cycles, but those cycles do not run the gauntlet with them..
What causes the sudden cooling? My speculation is that it is a massive increase in cloud cover caused by water vapor condensing up near the stratosphere. We are presently up 10 % in Water Vapor in the sky if we say we are at 1.5 C GAST rise. If we go up from 15 C present (approximately) to 16 C, we will go up another 7% in water vapor and if we go up to 17 C our total increase in water vapor will be 24%.
I am convinced that it would be idiotic not to believe that a 24% increase in Water Vapor would not cause significant increased cloud cover. If so, we could have that sudden rapid cooling that the interglacials always show us. Something causes that cooling, and I believe it is cloud cover. Remember Global Heating is approximately 0.2% of the escaping heat from the Earth being returned by the Greenhouse Gases. If we were to block out 2 percent of the sunlight with increased cloud cover the Earth would cool quickly as the interglacial charts show.”?
https://www.facebook.com/JoseBarbaNueva/posts/pfbid031Jv7pHJDUte4jFJENSpCmW7GB41f1ryZ1Wy5GQzgTue723PH4VoE8D2rzoP6zNwil
agreed
but with an environment that supported critters entirely different to ourselves.
comparing then and now is nonsense
Events to watch in the next two weeks .
1. Takedown of DJT when his 100 day honeymoon period is over .
2. A hot war between India and Pakistan . It is a survival issue for Pakistan as India has said it will stop supply of water under The Indus Sutlej water treaty .
Lots of things to worry about!
Trump’s position in the world is the very definition of zugswang. No wonder every hen in the world is pecking at him. Washington’s paralysis is even more palpable now.
He’s the top rooster.
His reputation as a hustler,
which is what I think you meant by
“zugswang”,
has earned him the admiration
of all the hens and the envy of
all the roosters
(see Norman).
revealing your lack of knowledge (and by association, experience) in such matters is embarrassing to read.
You’re right. I’m was never a top rooster.
I wouldn’t pretend to know what it is
like to be you or the Don.
you confirmed my opinion
”top rooster” or any other idiom in that respect you care you choose, is always confirmed by another person—never yourself.
which of course eliminates the don immediately.
as to myself, i offer no opinion either way
Hi Gail
So many thoughts
Surely with all the money printing we should see inflation in oil prices? $60 oil seems cheap. Or is it that the printed money only goes to pay government employees so it’s a small number of people that can actually spend on things like cars and holidays?
Do you have any idea why the EU is moving to EV’s? Even with incentives the uptake is still only around 15% of cars sold. If they go ahead with banning ice vehicles in 5 years time an 85% reduction in vehicle production(that’s after massive decreases already since 2020) will wipe out the industry and probably plunge Europe into some very dark times.
Thanks
Wayne
EV’s and renewables are scams . Why is the EU moving towards EV ? Simple , the EU is headed by scamster Von Leyden who was shifted out as Germany’s defense minister because of corruption and the went on to purchase Covid vaccines from Pfizer worth Eur 3 billion without due process via What’s App and now says she deleted the exchange of communication with Pfizer . The automotive industry is now in an irreversible decline . Nothing is going to save it .
Drive an EV to save the world greenies.
Seriously, if you have room for a shitload of solar panels, an EV for local-ish travel works well.
An e-bike is way more efficient, but they don’t come with full body massage seats, aircon, or 17 speaker, 2,000W, 7.2 sound systems yet. You can be assured the Chinese are working on that though.
Recession seems to trump money printing, so I am guessing that oil prices will be stable or fall.
It is kinder and gentler to tell people to move to EVs (which really aren’t affordable, and electricity to operate them wouldn’t be available either) than to tell them they will have to do with vehicles of any kind. Take care of the vehicle you currently own.
Cuba made do with US cars from the 1950s for a long time. Perhaps the equivalent thing can be done now.
1950s cars had just an engines, wheels and seats
they dont make them like that anymore
It was fairly easy to make replacement parts for them.
Gail,
Many “modern” conveniences don’t need replacement parts. Patek charges $1K to clean a simple watch; the complex ones are not even close to a “cheap” multifunction wrist watch for say $20.
Modern cars are very reliable compared to cars of the 60’s.
A TV of the sixties had tubes, yes tubes. Warm glow, they failed over time and eventually filaments burned out.
Compression knock was controlled by tetra ethyl lead, hmmm, not such good stuff.
Dennis L.
So none of your John Deeres need maintenance, i guess.
That is mostly due to the computer revolution which car manufacturers to incorporate computer electronics into almost every facet of a vehicle’s operation because….they could charge more money.
Many producers have been following this mantra of
making more expensive or luxury machines because then the profit margin can be higher. If the trend ever reverses and computer hardware becomes more expensive, “smart” features in cars and evs would become more modest. Another situation is than rather make “dumb” cars, most manufacturers may choose to stop making cars.
Europe is moving to electricity because they have no other choice. Europe has very little energy, certainly not enough to drive its luxurious lifestyle. Europe is also moving to hydrogen, blending hydrogen with natural gas. They’re aware of the limits, the fact that going full-scale electric is unfeasible, but it’s the best they got. Like everyone else, they’re hoping that something will come up in the meantime.
The other option, of course, is plundering Russia and/or Ukraine.
it is quite natural that human beings view their problems on a human timescale.
this fundamental flaw in our psyche allows whackjob politicians, to point to ”what we had” 50 years ago, then restore it in exchange for votes.
and dimwits collectively deliver their votes—it never works of course—it can’t.
our current problem started when…xx-ooos of years ago, we put a cash value on the planet, and decided it was property….and began buying it and selling and fighting over it.
no other animal does that……territories yes, but ownership….no.
once we had money-exchange, it was inevitable that it would accumulate in few er and fewer hands,
and when wars break out, it is the poor who are required to fight to preserve those assets of the rich.—Though most of the rich do not know the real source of their wealth.
we used to fight over land assets–because that was the source of food energy and wealth.—all the old european wars were on that basis. Thats where empires came from. Capitalism can only survive of infinite inputs of new capital….on a finite planet. That makes collapse certain.
Now we are down to money itself, on the basis that money represents wealth, when, as we here know, money is just energy exchange.
Hence the current nutcase in chief thinks tarriffs will substitute for cheap energy, and somehow pull the USA back from Wile e Coyote’s cliff edge.
but he is just the symptom—all of us are the disease……… we live on exchange of cash and owning our bit of the planet.
And I’m as guility as anybody else.
And stuff running out “sometime between 2000 and 2050”….puts us precisely in the mid 2020s, or more or less now.
I’m afraid you are correct.
Actually, Norman, you are more guilty than most of us, because you’ve been doing it longer than most of us, and you are old enough and midwitted enough to know better than us dimwits. So if you can’t kick the “disease,” what hope have the rest of us got?
Here are two quotations from Robert Heinlein that I remember from my younger and even more foolish days:
“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime: the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
As for Trump, no doubt there’s a method in his madness, in addition to a madness in his method. It has something to do with acting like a bull in a china shop, and upsetting the apple cart, and tearing own the old as a necessary preparation for building the new—something he learned as a real estate developer, I believe.
I have a copy of Heinlein’s “Stranger in a strange land” but the closest I have come to reading it is listening to Iron Maidens song by the same name.
Was the film “Starship troopers” based on Heinlein’s book? A terrible film as I recall, is the book any good?
Looking at energy reserves to production ratios, there’s no real sign of supply constraints. Yes, we face geopolitical tensions and climate change challenges, but our reserves are still incredibly abundant: oil will last about 50 years, gas about 50 years, and coal over 150 years at current production rates.
If we consider resources that will become economically viable in the next 5-10 years, these numbers jump significantly – oil could last 150+ years, gas 200+, and coal a whopping 500+ years. And these are still conservative estimates! Plus, renewables continue to grow rapidly.
We might face serious problems from climate change, but we definitely won’t be running out of energy sources in the centuries ahead.
The problem is that prices don’t rise enough to make these supposed “reserves” viable. At most, they bounce up and down.
A high price on oil means that food must be high priced, because oil is very important in food production and transportation. Voters do not like high-priced food. They will vote any politician out of office who lets food prices rise very much. This fact, by itself, puts a lid on oil prices. What tends to happen is that prices fall too low for producers. They voluntarily cut back production, hoping that that will raise prices. But it doesn’t do much. Less oil tends to mean recession, and with recession comes low prices, not high.
Per copilot, Dakotas face a loss of topsoil in the next 2-5 years at which point oil will not be the issue. I see it on my land and in one area secondary to very poor farming techniques the loss is substantial. But, it was profitable for the person who rented the land who is now gone, gone, gone. Painful lesson.
Dennis L.
“. Voters do not like high-priced food. They will vote any politician out of office who lets food prices rise very much. This fact, by itself, puts a lid on oil prices. ”
There is no lid on oil prices if new laws are passed that justify high food or energy costs such as a zero carbon mandate. Public opinion can and will be manipulated if the desire is there to manipulate.
The state/wealthy still have the ability to to this even if government finances are not so great.
I think the limit is what citizens will tolerate. They will vote politicians out of office, or they will physically harm the politicians. They will not allow overly high priced food, regardless of what the law says.
Vit , you don’t understand the trifecta of the 3 E — Energy , Economy , Ecology . They work in tandem and not independently . Neither do you understand the concept of EcOE and affordability . You have no inkling about reserves and resources . Seems you have been reading a lot of MSM crap .
raviuppal4, i like your comments, but it is too theoretical, you are far from harsh energy reality. Believe me, my colleagues in energy sector and I will not stop until we’ve extracted every last exajoule of energy for the sake of self-wealth. Oil prices, debts, etc. are just fluctuating numbers that are manipulated when the game is worth the candle (and it is!). We do not care about academic opinions, climate change, economic fluctuations (like 2008 or 2020), all we seek is more and more zeros on banking accounts. The industry operates on practical selfish realities, not academic ideals. 3E trifecta presents an elegant theoretical framework, but fundamentally conflicts with human psychological drivers.
Having spent 20y+ in the energy industry, I’ve encountered predictions about peak oil and energy collapse – from when primary energy consumption was just 200-300 exajoules to today’s 600+ exajoules. These predictions have consistently failed to materialise. Even prominent voices in the depletion movement like Art Berman is now shifting the narratives.
Art thinks that prices will go up and up. Unless they do, it is hard to get investors to invest, especially as the better drilling areas get depleted. Oil prices don’t go up very much, partly because if they do, food prices go up. High food prices make voters angry. So politicians make certain that oil prices stay down most of the time.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E_ERTRRO_XR0_NUS_C&f=M
You can see that the number of rotary drills goes up and down with oil prices. Also, drilling tight oil from shale requires a lot more “holes” than drilling conventional oil wells.
This chart only shows wells, but you probably know about prices. Oil prices were high in the 2011 to 2014 time period. Once oil prices began dropping, the number of drilling rigs went down. The number of drilling rigs now is low, but not nearly as low as after the price drop in 2020. Price matters, when it comes to figuring out how many workers to hire.
“So the thesis of this book stands or falls with the correctness of the decline rate that Brown gives us. Therefore I have calculated with several different parameters as regards the decline rate, and all point in the same direction. The difference between them is a few years at most. Therefore I assume that my thesis is solid, which is that the end of global net oil exports in 2030-2032 (Brown’s scenario) is a best-case scenario.
Collapse can, I think, begin in earnest already in 2026, only because of too little diesel exports. Observe that oil exports vanish successively, more and more, not all at once.” ?
https://un-denial.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/lars-larsen-the-end-of-global-net-oil-exports-13th-edition-2024.pdf
Blog from Lars Larsen
https://skogslars.blogg.se/
Saludos el mar
Thanks for the reminder! Forgot about Lars and the diesel thing. That is one zinger of a preface he writes in this updated work.
Quote: This means that I might begin to starve already during the winter 2025-2026, and die around 2030 from starvation, at the latest, instead of in January 2036, as I believed before, if I for some reason cannot pay for partaking in farming in the countryside, or survive in some underground bunker. End Quote
It took a few iterations to push Grok 3 in the direction of Lars Larsen’s conclusion, but it finally went this far:
Recalculated Probabilities: With deflationary demand collapse, the probability of significant net oil export decline by 2030 rises to 75%, as low prices and domestic consumption (Export Land Model) choke supply. Larsen’s near-total collapse by 2027 remains unlikely, at 25%, due to non-OPEC resilience (e.g., U.S. shale adaptability) and potential OPEC cuts stabilizing prices. Black Swan events, like financial crises, could elevate this risk.
Gail has long ago forecast that it will be low prices of oil and finished products that will shutdown the oil industry . Today I purchased diesel at Eur 1.48 lit . At high I have purchased at Eur 2. 30 lit . This is a time when total worldwide inventory of crude and finished products it at an all time low , peak oil c+c is 2018 , the shale production will start it’s decline . Just repeating myself ” Oil is the blood and diesel the haemoglobin ” of IC . It was a good party but all parties must end .
Where did Grok go wrong ? Grok did not study about the ” flavors of oil ” . It took oil production in totality and not in grades . Shale does not produce a lot of middle distillates . Diesel is king .
Here is someone who has forgotten more about the oil industry than I have learnt in 20 years of studying peak oil . Read the comments .
https://www.oilystuff.com/forumstuff/forum-stuff/paying-down-shale-oil-debt-at-62-50-breakeven
Oil production is being affected by low prices and rising costs (including share buybacks and dividend commitments).
For example, Exxon Mobil needs a price of $88 a barrel to meet these commitments (and that’s not even considering the impact of new steel tariffs).
https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/trade-turmoils-oil-market-bite-is-already-leaving-lasting-scars/
A broken business model . Breakeven is $88 and you sell at $ 60 . Is this not strip mining of the last pieces ?
Vit, I admire your optimistic outlook and your can-do attitude.
I don’t know wether you will turn out to be right or wrong, but if industrial civilization survives, it will be because of the efforts of people like you, and not of the Eyores who pervade this site, who have adopted an outlook that convinces them that nothing good will ever happen and everything will be a disaster from here on.
For these characters, any positive or upbeat development or forecast is evidence of a scam, and if it wasn’t for bad news, they wouldn’t have no news at all.
“nothing good will ever happen”
It might be a good idea to give a thought to what “good” as per the above means.
Is the current madly materialistic civilization that hubristicaly disregards nature in a mad quest to replace it with machines “good”? Does all the industrial stuff make anybody any happier, healthier? Doesn’t look it!
it has made us all healthier—but only so long as machines power our ”health factories”
pre 1800, you were lucky to live beyond 50—now we live to 80+ but only courtesy of fossil fuels,
Maybe. But the fact that one lives longer doesn’t mean that one lives a healthier life, as evidenced by the widespread obesity and physical degradation, where people live longer only because they’re pumped up with chemicals.
The same goes for happiness, contentment. None of the technology around makes people any happier, on the contrary. People are soulless zombies obsessed with material stuff.
Be it as it may, whether or not there is an urgent energy predicament, it would behoove people to give a thought to whether they really need more energy to make more stuff that makes them more miserable.
i tend to agree wuth you……
but we have locked ourselves into a materialisric lifestyle that functions on the demand for ”more” of everything……
my life—and yours—depends on it…….
and you would not be willing to sacrifice your current existence for the benefit of humankind in general……any more than i would.
i can say that with certainty because you have the means to sit at a keyboard participating in this debate.
the lifestyle of your g.grandparents would be unlivable for you
Tim:
“I don’t know wether you will turn out to be right or wrong, but if industrial civilization survives, it will be because of the efforts of people like you, and not of the Eyores who pervade this site, who have adopted an outlook that convinces them that nothing good will ever happen and everything will be a disaster from here on. ”
Amen. People laughed and loved before fossil fuels and those feelings will still be here when coal, oil and gas is gone.
>> People laughed and loved before fossil fuels
Fair enough, but I won’t fault anyone for wanting to move past death by gangrene, typhoid, tetanus, and all the rest. Civilization has its pluses.
//////gangrene, typhoid, tetanus, //////
all that stuff was exaggerated and spread by doctors working for the chinese.
i didnt know that myself until i found out about it on ofw
easily cured by injecting bleach or drinking cod liver oil
or something.
Dear Norman, spend you autumn days dissing something else than cod liver oil …
you misunderstood my reply
i have never had bubonic plague or leprosy
which can only be the result of imbibing it several times a day
What Art Bertman seems to not grasp is that fossil fuel (net energy) production/consumption doesn’t even need to start falling for things to get bad, it just needs to stop growing.
And then, again, it won’t be the falling curve of fossil fuels (net energy) that will start the collapse of systems, but the very way our economy is built.
What I’m saying is that economic, financial, logistical problems will happen so much more faster and much before the curve starts falling hard due to lack of growth, so much so that people won’t even realize the fossil fuel (net energy) problem, and will think it all as being purely an economic crisis.
And then, when Art Bertman says “oh, but in the 2040’s we’ll have the same amount of fossil fuel consumption as today” he’s completely ignorant that by then, all of society’s systems will break up, because as Gail much correctly pointed out, the system needs ever more maintenance, and maintenance doesn’t create growth. That’s why the Chinese problem is so much worse than it seems – they’ll have a trifecta of hard demographic collapse, net energy collapse and… Their monstruous, highly complex and expensive, even superfluous, unecessary and inefficient infra-structure, which right now is brand new, which will need larger and larger, unstopably so, shares of energy dedicated to its maintanence.
Of course, they’ll just let it all turn to scraps.
I agree. Art Berman doesn’t understand that our problem is a per capita problem. Oil consumption needs to rise with population.
Art also doesn’t seem to understand that the price of oil will not rise very much, very consistently with depletion, in part because if it does rise, food prices rise, and politicians will be very unhappy. Oil supply falls because of low prices, not high.
I think that the issue of price means that since the surplus energy, which can from now on be obtained from what is reportedly about a half of all oil reserves left, will be lower, more economic value, or higher prices, will have to be paid for whatever oil is extracted for extraction to be feasible. In other words, the less surplus energy extracted oil provides, the less it can be used for discretionary items and more has to go to essentials. At some point, extracting oil will become unfeasible.
But there are other factors that might completely change these predictions, most notably demographics. The occidental world is heading for a population collapse, most countries are below the reproduction rate. Hard to predict how that will change the equation.
Did you hear this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6KptpOuo7E
Grok summary: The speaker debunks overpopulation fears, noting that global birth rates are plummeting, with 75% of people living in countries below the replacement level (2.1 children per woman). Using “social half-lives,” they illustrate exponential population decline, with industrialized nations like Japan and South Korea seeing births halve every 20–50 years.
This “birth gap” threatens economic systems, as seen in Italy, where births (under 400,000) cannot replace retiring workers (1 million aged 50). The root cause is increasing childlessness, not smaller families, driven by delayed parenthood due to financial crises and societal pressures. Introducing the “Vitality Curve,” the speaker shows how the age of parenthood has stretched since the 1970s, reducing the “energy” for family formation as people delay.
Steve St Angelo who runs the website srsroccoreport.com likes to refer to our predicament as the “energy cliff”.
The Mar-a-Lago Accord strategy paper published by Hudson Bay Capital last November (a kind of framework for Trump & Co)
A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf
wants the US$ to be devalued and retreating from its function as a world reserve currency because this causes high interest rates.
Question: as this happens, what does that mean for the global oil market in US$?
If this is tempered with unintentionally, the situation could become very dangerous indeed
I think that the US has no choice but to retreat from being the reserve currency. Tariffs can be thought of as an attempt at controlled demolition of the current system. The system was clearly going to fail; this is an attempt to allow the system to fail in a more controlled way.
If the current system falls apart, new trading plans need to go into effect. The US can perhaps trade with Canada and Mexico (and perhaps Greenland). The US’s own oil is pretty light, but Canada has the oil sands. I am doubtful that these sources will be enough to keep the economy up to the current level, however.
Thanks, Gail, for showing the US debt graph in Fig 2. This graph of the Federal Reserve shows more detail (but not the projection):
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN
We can see a terrible jump of US$ 3Tr because of the Wuhan virus and that may be the reason why Trump brings up this issue again. Xi Jinping should have stopped all international flights already in January 2020. I wrote this article:
10 Mar 2020
Impact of Corona Virus similar to some earlier peak oil scenarios
http://crudeoilpeak.info/impact-of-corona-virus-similar-to-some-earlier-peak-oil-scenarios
In the FRED graph, readers are encouraged to edit the graph and add as 2nd line the WTI oil price.
You will then see that there a 2 important oil price related kinks
(a) when oil prices went upwards of 25$/b
(b) in the 2008 oil price shock year and the financial crisis this oil shock caused.
The take-away from this is that oil crises cause permanent damage to the financial system and therefore the economy.
The shale oil stopped physical shortages in 2010/11 but did not solve the oil price problem which has now morphed into the “cost of living crisis”. Shale oil will peak in the next years. Trump’s drill-baby-drill will not make a big difference because this is already happening anyway with annual decline rates of 40% or thereabouts.
Annual Interest payments on US debts have reached the levels of defense expenditure. So you are right when you are saying that the US has problems being the world’s policeman. This is one of the critical turning points towards the geopolitical cliff
Thanks for the additional elaboration. This post was getting quite long with the detail I put in.
The world economy was to some extent “damped down” in 2008. This happened again in 2020. We are now in danger of having it very much more “damped down.” I suppose this may happen in a stair-step fashion. There may be on step down, and then what seems to be a plateau, followed by another step down.
Many of us think that it would not have helped one bit if Xi stopped those flights. Incidentally in late February 2020 I hosted someone coming from Japan at my university. the flight originated in Bejing. After 3 days of driving him around I came up with something. Eating a few garlic cloves fermented in honey (long ferment, takes at least 3 months) fixed that.
The economic system seems to work through a lot of people. Xi is one of them.
The economy was already doing poorly in 2020. Politicians were looking for a way to keep protestors off the streets, and covid provided perfect cover. Peak crude oil was in 2018. Peak crude oil per capita was in 2017.
China stopped accepting most recycling January 1, 2018, meaning that when ships were sent across the ocean with goods to the US and Europe, there often was little cargo to fill containers for the return voyage. This indirectly raised shipping costs. This problem, and the loss of jobs in China, did not help the world economy at all.
There was also a rule for ships that greatly added to costs, effective January 1, 2020.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/regulation/new-maritime-fuel-rule-will-increase-shipping-costs/
These things have contributed to the contraction.
“ . . . what do you do if you
24:48 believe
24:48 that you have a a virus or a bacteria or
24:53 fungus or some type of biological
24:55 uh entity that it has the potential of
24:58 producing a pandemic and the conclusion
25:00 of that study
25:02 was that you immediately shut down
25:04 international travel . . . ”
I’d bet money that the United States still dependent on consumables made in China for providing medical services.
There were no lessons learned or adjustments made to deal with deadly pandemics in the future. The U.S. is no more prepared for a pandemic than in February 2020.
I would agree that most medicines have a supply chain that comes through China. There might be a few that have India-only supply chains.
A majority of OFW readers believe that the 2000 pandemic was a man-made pandemic. It didn’t work as planned, except that the vaccine companies were temporarily able to make a lot of money.
“The world is moving from having enough goods and services to go around, to not having enough to go around.”
If the hints were not good enough with Trump saying he wanted to seize Ukraine’s resources or France and Britain wanting to defeat Russia so as to seize its resource wealth, then that would be a good base to start with.
An infinite growth global economy in a finite world, meets cruel reality with finite resources.
Good points!
The pacifists seem to have all disappeared up their own—-
All highly civilized (wealthy people) folk seem open to using violence to settle international disputes now.
There was some talk in the U.S. shortly after 9/11 of reinstating the draft. In retrospect, a draft seems more likely now than in 2002.
https://indi.ca/america-is-crashing-like-sri-lanka-did-hopefully-worse/
Here yo can read about limits of strategies!
Saludos
el mar
This article starts out:
“Americans are currently experiencing something entirely foreign to them. Consequences. ”
Later:
“control demolish themselves as a center of world trade” is a good way of describing what is happening.
There is a lot more to the article.
” Donald Trump has crashed multiple businesses over the years and come out ahead, why not crash a whole country, or the global economy while you’re at it?”
The author expects that the motive of those involved is to make money off the market gyrations.
Never ceases to amaze amaze me the inane conclusions come to by otherwise smart people. There’s disaster capitalism but there is no such thing as Collapse capitalism. Collapse capitalism would be like putting on a suicide vest in order to bag some virgins: clinical insanity.
Really great article Gail thanks. You really let loose. I dare Zerohedge to post it.
“The final stages of capitalism, Karl Marx wrote, will be marked by developments intimately familiar. Unable to expand, and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system will begin to consume the structures that sustain it. In the name of austerity and government efficiency it will prey on the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens. It will increasingly relocate jobs, including both manufacturing and professional positions, to countries with cheap pools of labor.
Industries will mechanize their workplaces to trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class – bulwark of a capitalist system – initially disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes decline or remain stagnant.
Politics in late stage capitalism will become subordinate to economics, leading to political parties hollowed out of any real political content, and abjectly subservient to the dictates of corporations and oligarchs. But as Marx foretold, there is a limit to an economy built on the scaffolding of debt expansion. There comes a moment, he warned, when no new markets are available, and no new pools of people who can take on more debt. Capitalism will then turn on the so-called free market itself, along with the values and traditions it claims to defend. It will in its final stages pillage the systems and structures that make capital possible. As it causes widespread suffering it will resort to harsher forms of oppression, and attempt in a frantic last stand to maintain profits by looting state institutions in contradiction of its avowed nature. The final stage of capitalism, Marx grasped, is not capitalism at all.”
– Rev. Chris Hedges
and the last stage of democracy is not democracy at all. but then, we always deluded ourselves about both. capitalism was underpinned by the Texas Railroad commission monopoly on oil prices, and democracy was always for show, in Europe after WWII or in America after 1963.
Yup. If the greatest trick the proverbial devil ever pulled off was to make people think he doesn’t exist, then the greatest trick the Elites ever pulled off — until the now 5 year old DA, that is — was ‘democracy.’
Marx’s and Hedges’ fatal flaw, other than not being ecological/energy thinkers,is dehumanizing capitalism. Mechanizing it. Automating it. Becoming fatalistic about it That’s a ridiculous thing to do. It’s as ridiculous as being fatalistic in general, about anything. No different from what FE does. Ultimately, it’s facile. And such flawed analysis amounts to little more than functional controlled opposition because its anticapitalism serves the MAHA-style controlled opposition contemporary national socialisms that are being engineered.
In reality it’s a living, breathing, top-down, managed human system. There’s a self-organizing, Elite management protocol that oversees, as best it can, what needs to be done with the managed System in order that THEY maximize their own chances of surviving. I know it as the non-public Degrowth Agenda.
capitalism requires an infinite source of fresh capital (on a finite planet)
simple as that
Norman, that’s why Musk is aiming at Mars. He wants to recruit the Martians into the Ponzi.
And don’t forget, human imagination is infinite, allowing the system to draw on huge amounts of imaginary capital.
Norm so does Marxism, national socialism, and Communism, it’s just that with Communism, it’s just that with Communism the capital is mostly just sublimated within the goods and services themselves. Welcome to civilization – they all require an infinite source of fresh capital on a finite planet.
“Everybody is levered up the ass, betting on a future that will not come to pass.”
At least this observation rhymes beautifully!
Thanks, that’s well written and thought provoking. There’s a comment under the article that was as well.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-10-2025/#comment-787794
Thanks again Gail for your great work!
Having been around the early “peak oil crowd” in the years 2000, it became clear what the ongoing shift was about, but not the exact calendar of it.
The calendar of collapse is all of a sudden taking a more accurate shape. What Jean Laherrère rightfully named the “bumpy plateau” as soon as 2003, may well be “advancing” to the downward cliff stage.
I wish Jay Hanson was still around for his well deserved time of glory.
You have been involved for 25 years. Wow!
I didn’t get involved until late 2005, so I am very close to 20 years with my involvement with this issue. I remember James Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov were involved before I was. So was Charlie Hall. This is a photo from 2011.
https://ourfiniteworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/after-bpe-conference-at-pub.jpg
The caption on this said, “Gail Tverberg, David Packer, Charlie Hall, Joseph Tainter, James Howard Kunstler, and someone I can’t identify, in a bar after conference talks after the 2011 Biophysical Economics Conference talks.”
David Packer was the Springer publisher who was trying to get people to write EROEI articles and other things that didn’t directly mention anything bad happening in the future.
Jay Hanson predicted a complete failure of the electrical grid, from a resdence in Hawaii as I recall. My lights are still on, his prediction was from about 2000 as I recall.
Dennis L.
Denise , it is Richard Duncan’s ” The Olduvai Theory ” . He sets the slide in 2012 and the end in 2030 . 100 years of IC .
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Olduvai-Theory-1930-2030_fig2_276145812
I was thinking of Jay Hanson and his site Dieoff.org. My mistake.
Dennis L.
It looks to me as if he placed the downslope too soon. He starts the oil fast downslope in 2012, and talks about blackouts. The peak of oil per capita seems to be in 1979 at 11.15, and the amount per capita at 2030 is at 3.32. The cliff starts at 2012, with perhaps 25% of the drop occurring before them. This would put consumption at 2012 at 11.15 x .75 =8.363
There is no way that oil consumption per capita has fallen off as far as implied by the 3.32 per capita at 2030. Look at Figure 4 above. It has been quite flat. The fast drop off (forecast for 2012) has not yet started.
Pushed Grok 3 a bit further on a timeline by adding some variables; after it gave a fairly low probability for Lars Larson’s 2027.
Timeline for Exponential Slide:
If hoarding [diesel] starts in 2027, initial disruptions (10–15% output drop) emerge by mid-2028, driven by logistics bottlenecks.
An exponential slide—defined as a 50%+ decline in global real goods output—could begin within 2–3 years (2030–2031), as shortages cascade across sectors.
Substitution (e.g., biofuels, electrification) is limited; IEA projects only 5% diesel demand met by alternatives by 2030. Black Swans, like financial crises, could accelerate this to 2029.
Conclusion: Post-hoarding, an exponential slide in global output likely starts by 2030, with 2031 as the median estimate, driven by diesel’s irreplaceable role and systemic fragility.
Hi Gail, thank you for your honesty, another fine article.
You are welcome!
The oil issue is over, electric will run the world soon enough. Will the next issue be with the sun running out of fuel.
Unfortunately, we need a whole lot more than electricity to operate today’s economy. It doesn’t transport goods across the ocean, for example. Solar energy has the additional difficulty of being mostly absent in winter, when heat is needed most. Solar panels tend to be polluting at the end of their lives.
And an all electric infrastructure still needs fossil fuels to power IC, which we don’t have. People need to understand that fossil fuels built IC and not electric. You need the same inputs to keep the system working as it was designed in the first place.
It’s like trying to use diesel fuel in a gas powered car and expecting it to work the same way.
Move industrial processes to space, no shortage of energy, no problem with pollution.
Next problem please.
Dennis L.
Technological Superstitions.
https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2014/09/technological-superstitions.html
Next hopium please.
Rodster
Move them with oxcart, donkey cart or horse cart?
Or unicorn cart?
Next equine species please.
dennis——with that level of faith in the non existent, you could start a new religion
Norm,
Can I encourage you to tithe? Excellent idea, need some sort of a website which accepts tokens, I mean CC.
Dennis L.
Lots of them take credit cards.
Hi Gail, As I’m sure you’re aware the three pillars of modern life are:
1. concrete
2. steel
3. fertilizer
These three cannot be made with electricity instead require
large amounts of fossil fuels for their creation.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.
You are pretty much correct, I am afraid.
There is a way that wind turbines can be made to produce nitrogen fertilizer, but it is not being done in quantity.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095965261500709X
I also found this 2024 article:
https://scitechdaily.com/stanford-developed-device-produces-critical-fertilizer-ingredient-from-thin-air/
Stanford-Developed Device Produces Critical Fertilizer Ingredient From Thin Air
I don’t know the cost and feasibility of doing this kind of thing at scale. I agree with concrete and steel, however.
Mark , you are referring to Vaclav Smil . It is actually four , you forgot plastics . Minor adjustment .
Plastics are awfully important, too.
Agree with your understanding of earth resources.
1. Pollution will be the largest problem, recent WSJ article on waste water from Permian basis is interesting, very difficult to get rid of it, trying wind to evaporate water from brine basins.
2. Starship is coming up soon, incredible sums of money are being spent on the new launch pad. People with incredibly deep pockets know what you know and are looking for solutions.
3. My guess is the limiting factor for current world population will be farming and fishing for food in a manner that does not destroy that ecosystem resulting in irreversible in human lifetime spans in loss of soil and fish.
4. I do not believe this will be “allowed” to happen. There is a great deal of work in making our spaceship earth, even for “GOD” it is not easy.
5. Many here think I am into wishful thinking. I have followed this stuff since the very early seventies, late sixties of one includes Ehrlich. None of the disasters has happened in over fifty years. The man predicting total electrical failure twenty five years ago died before it happened, and it has yet to happen.
We will not solve tomorrow’s problems with today’s or yesterday’s tools. We are getting new tools. My guess is we are moving towards a H economy. Move all industrial processes off earth, get rid of earth pollution, populations seem to be self limiting, at least human populations.
I appreciate the articles, helps plan one’s personal life for the upcoming bumps.
Dennis L.
Ravi explained that the max is 2030. Not arrived yet
We are not getting new tools. Just old tools sold on jacked up prices with new names.
solar tractors, solar mining in the arctic, solar ships. solar semis.
solar tractors maybe, indirectly, H, can make H with DC, no inversion issues. There is that pesky Pt problem, but Starship to the rescue.
Mining, my guess droids to search asteroids, mine, refine in space.
Solar ships, maybe, perhaps much less cargo movement if manufacturing/mining is done in space. A gravity well makes delivery somewhat easy excepting heat issues.
Solar semis, H probably, first guess is to use it in combustion engines, JBL comes to mind. Gail has concerns about size of trucks, if majority of product is dumped down the gravity well, another problem solved/avoided – this assumes it is not dropped directly on your home.
Yup, it can be done, it will be done.
Dennis L.
Iit can’tbe done and it won’t be done. Starship won’t be good forcanythingm
How soon is “soon enough,” though?
Electric will not run the world.
To begin with, electricity is not a source of energy, it’s a medium. The energy carried by electricity must come from somewhere. None of the renewable forms has an energy density comparable to hydrocarbons, not to mention that electric devices are much more complex and require more raw materials than oil-based machinery. The required materials are not even available on Earth in sufficient quantities or would take an insane amount of time to mine and process. Another issue is buffer needed to store energy due to the intermittent nature of renewables. There is no technology able to provide a buffer of sufficient size.
When oil is depleted, or becomes uneconomical to extract in the sense of not providing enough surplus value, the current civilization is toast. Petroleum people, like Art Berman, say that there are some seven decades of oil left, but that figure is highly questionable because future development won’t necessarily be linear and all sorts of factors will play a role, such as demographics, where a population collapse is expected in a few decades.
Another huge issue is natural gas used to produce fertilizer to feed the population. Natural gas cannot be replaced with electricity, even though if enough electricity were available, there’s probably a process that could be used to produce fertilizer by other means. People might even figure out a way to power themselves with batteries, what’ya know, eh … (just kidding).
Can a new source of energy be discovered and is there enough time for that before oil runs out, so that new infrastructure could be built? Good question. It seems that the future existence of the (industrial) civilization depends on it.
Don’t try and do it on earth, probably can’t be done. Starship is too large for any practical, current use. Mars, wow, that looks like a tough place to live.
Optimus-3, mine in space, solar electric in space, solar heat for refining in space, close flyby of sun, maybe Mercury, etc.
Population will adjust itself, this is happening in S . Korea, even US. God built it that way, our adjustments are getting easier, we give a pill to the women rather than slaughter the men in battle.
With each Starship launch, it looks better; advanced society populations are self limiting. Pensions a problem, see Starship and Optimus-3; unlimited wealth.
Dennis L.
I more or less agree about things adjusting themselves.
In fact, that’s what we’re seeing. The mad materialistic craze of consumer capitalism is starting to wind down.
I don’t see wealthy (college educated) women downgrading their expectations.
Many of them do not see any real alternative to going to college , getting into lucrative career and making a lot of money.
In general, people’s expectations are what they see in the media.
I agree. I do not watch television, at least partly for that reason. Movies are just a bad.
“God built it that way, our adjustments are getting easier, we give a pill to the women rather than slaughter the men in battle.”
Yep, the pill and modern feminism constitute the best de-population initiative so far. Way more effective than e.g. the COVID jab.
So the imminent population decline may not, in fact, be directly from resource constraints, rather an ideological/cultural consequence.
The autism epidemic from childhood vaxxes is a wildcard, since many of the tech-bros et al appear to be on the spectrum, Rain man-style.
It’s almost as if they’re creating a different type of human.
The pill and feminism do not do anything for consumption. They do not discourage economic development or medical care.
Autism has no benefit. Tech bros are just delusional. These guys would have been bullied into a coma a couple of decades ago or sacrificed in ancient times. Many people have an innate dislike of nerdy people, particularly nerdy men.
Electricity is a carrier of energy and not a source of energy . Got it .
ravi
you steal dreams and replace them with nightmares.
kindly desist
Move the processes to space excepting agriculture, don’t have a clue about fish problem.
H economy is possible with existing engineering. As diesel is fading, it will be H.
Dennis L.
Kindly note that diesel is an energy source while hydrogen is an energy carrier. Some form of primary energy is needed to produce hydrogen.
Hydrogen can be used with existing engineering, if fact it’s already blended with natural gas to increase its calorific value, but you need energy to produce hydrogen.
Where exactly will that energy come from?
He thinks the energy comes from his cubic mile of Pt.
That does not exist, and I don’t know what to do with that much Pt, probably more than what is in the entire solar system.
Solar photovoltaics, H is the storage/transportation medium. The problem is the catalyst for H manufacture. Starship may well fix that.
If the pessimists are right, betting on something with a very slim probability of working is a no brainer as the other side of the coin is always total failure.
From copilot:
Interestingly, during Earth’s formation, most of its platinum sank to the core, but meteorite showers enriched the crust with this precious metal. Copilot seem to think that most of the Pt is part of earth.
https://hir.harvard.edu/economics-of-the-stars/
Some thoughts on asteroid mining in above referenced article. Copilot thinks gold can be used while less efficient. If one has enough of it, who cares?
It is not going to be easy, but humans are built to survive; where there is a will there is a way.
It is not going to be easy.
Dennis L.
So 19th century-ish
There will be lots of willpower. Ultimately going nowhere.
Using hydrogen for storage and buffer is one possibility, but you’re back to square one – solar power obtainable from photovoltaic panels has lower density than oil. Plus the infrastructure is much more complex and fragile. Moreover, the hydrogen molecule is very small and hydrogen makes existing pipelines brittle and crack. Probably a no-go. Hydrogen is a net energy sink.
Bit of both.
Electricity straight out of solar panels, or a coal fired power station is an energy source for all the users downstream.
You could debate that the actual source was the sun’s energy, or burning coal also.
Electricity out of solar panels or a coal-fired power plant is NOT an energy source – it’s a carrier of solar energy and heat produced by the combustion of coal, respectively, where you might argue that the latter is solar energy as well, as the energy stored in coal is in fact heat from the Sun.
The point is that – for all intents and purposes, the actual origin notwithstanding – you need sunshine or coal to produce electricity in the above two cases, while you don’t need anything to get energy out of hydrocarbons.